Майкл Уильямс - Before the Mask

Ember masked a smile. The Lady still stumbled on the name of the Solamnic hero whose lance had driven her back into the Abyss.

He has hidden it so long , Takhisis continued, that they teach the mages that the blank stone is a substitute, a replacement in case another stone is lost or damaged .

“Indeed,” Cerestes conceded. “So I have told Verminaard, who rummages in rune lore constantly.”

So I have seen , Takhisis said. Perhaps the time will come when all the runes will lie before him, the blank rune adorned with its symbols ….

“What then?” The dragon was eager, hungry for the forbidden knowledge. “What then, Lady?”

Then we shall wield the greatest of oracles , Takhisis purred. The augury that has lain silent and broken because the rune was blank, its symbol forgotten. All of this time, it seems, L’Indasha Yman has kept the secret .

L’Indasha Yman? Of the druids? Ember thought. And she has not used this power? Takhisis is lying. Or she is holding something back.

The girl , Takhisis said, her deep voice lazing over the words. She’s something to do with the runes … with the sounding. I know it .

Ember shifted uneasily in the cramped chamber, awaiting the connection between the girl and the runes that Takhisis seemed about to make.

When I… came here, there were things forbidden me. Things he hid from me in my banishment. Things I have forgotten as well. So you must continue to learn for me, to do for me … for now .

That ice in her voice, Ember thought. She knows more, and she is not telling. But with these runes …

The Nerakans have her now , Takhisis informed him. They intend her for my temple’s first sacrifice, because of her lavender eyes. But they will not destroy her, nor will they keep, her forever .

“Suppose they find her secrets before ... before we do, m’Lady? Nerakans have a way of gathering secrets.”

The voice of the goddess rose softly after another long, uncomfortable silence. The Nerakans are my servants. They will not rebel. But if they do, and if they dare to sound the rune … All of the gods will know it at once. And whom, my dear Cerestes, do the hundred clerics worship? Who controls armies in Sanction and Estwilde? All that the Nerakans would augur in the runes are their own deaths .

“This … quarrel with Laca,” the dragon offered, shifting the ground of the talk.

Will cost him a son , Takhisis interrupted. Of that I am certain .

“But what of the other? This Verminaard—”

Is no less the son of Laca Dragonbane, fool! the Dark Queen announced sharply. The cavern walls seemed to recede, and the dragon began the slow transformation back to his human form, back to the dark mage Cerestes.

He should have known. The silence as to Verminaard’s birth. Daeghrefn’s cruelty and marked prejudice against the boy. The lack of physical resemblance between father and son. Astonished at the Lady’s tidings, Cerestes suddenly felt frail, baffled and cold, as a whole cloudy history of deceit and betrayals formed at the edge of his understanding, something he needed to know, needed to use.

I will use one , Takhisis said and chuckled. The other is … dispensable. Lord Laca has left me an abundance of sons, and I shall need only one of them. For the blood of Huma runs through Laca Dragonbane, and Huma’s line is tied with the sounding of the rune. I need just one of Huma’s line. He will be the last survivor .

“B-But how, Highness? How do the young ones fit?” Cerestes asked. But the goddess was not telling. The dark eye above him faded, and the exhausted mage lay at the center of the chamber, his black robes, tattered and split by the Change, scattered to the far corners of the cavern. Again the uncovered slant of light glowed silver and gray from the mouth of the cave, and the mage rose blearily and crouched at the edge of light, stitching his robes back together with spells.

I shall win , Takhisis prophesied, her voice no more than a whisper of thought or memory, no matter what anyone chooses, I shall be triumphant. Go now and do my bidding, Cerestes ….

Verminaard could not forget the girl.

At night, in the midst of his meditations, her hooded form and the black tattoo on her leg haunted him, as did his fleeting view of her as her horse turned on the far side of the stone bridge and she rode away, bound to the saddle and guarded by bandits. When Aglaca bent to his devotions, Verminaard would draw forth the Amarach runes, turning them intently in his hand as if some new symbol on the ancient stones would appear to give him a clue as to her name, her origins….

Why the bandits held her as captive.

He had no idea why she drew him so, but he thought of her all his waking hours, and especially when he was supposed to be at his studies.

Not long after the hunt, through Cerestes’ suggestive power, Daeghrefn appointed the mage official tutor to the boys. It was an acknowledgement rather than a promotion, but now Cerestes began their instruction in earnest, with rigorous classes in higher astronomy, mathematics, and ceremony. As Verminaard scratched on parchment the phases of the black moon and learned more powerful dark spells, Cerestes quarreled with Aglaca, who was now forced to attend the lectures but sat stubbornly in the corner, still refusing to give himself to the new mysteries.

In the midst of this new academic pressure, Verminaard found his mind wandering, wool-gathering in long, adventurous fantasies in which he rescued the girl from dragons, from ogres, from other dangers. The mage would rap the table, and Verminaard’s thoughts would return grudgingly to the castle’s solar, to the sunlit classroom made suddenly strange by his own imagination and consuming dreams. Aglaca, poring over his botanicals rather than the books of spellcraft, would regard him with concern, and Cerestes would scowl and point to the text. Verminaard would renew his attention with energy, with promises….

And in a matter of minutes, he would be lost once more in thoughts of the girl. Once, in high summer, when the images of her were still unmanageably strong, he boasted to Aglaca all he had imagined.

It was late evening, one of those summer nights when the darkness itself delays and the world seems to hover in a half-light until nigh onto midnight, an evening when nightingales keep awake the restless. After a few minutes of practicing a slow, graceful fighting kick, Aglaca had stretched against the battlement and asked him unsettling questions.

Had he seen her eyes?

The expression on her face? What color was her hair?

He smiled at Verminaard’s stammer, his dodging answers.

“I suppose you could draw her portrait, then?” Verminaard retorted coldly. Not ten yards away, three ravens settled ominously on the crenels, and Aglaca shivered and turned away. “I saw little more than you, Verminaard, though I’d wager I could pick her out by the way she sits a horse.”

He looked out over the battlements toward the reddening west as the sun settled on the Solamnic foothills.

“’Tis summer again, Verminaard,” he continued, his voice distant and softer still, scarcely audible over the boding and rustling of the roosting birds. “And when the summer comes, dreams spill over into waking hours. My father told me to beware that time. ‘High summer smoke and deception, light sickness,’ he called it.”

“A right poet, your father is,” Verminaard grumbled, catching only the final phrase. “But I’ve enough of his verse and your cautions for this long season.”

Aglaca lifted an eyebrow. When Verminaard began to grumble and declare, it was always a sign of recklessness and challenge—a ride on a hunt, perhaps, or a climb up a sheer rock face. He was predictable, and though the shape of the deed might change, Aglaca knew a deed was coming, that Verminaard was sick of shadows, eager for the tumult of chase and discovery. Aglaca smiled to himself and shielded his eyes against the last reddening flood of sunlight. The deed was coming, and he did not mind at all.