Майкл Уильямс: Before the Mask

“You are Daeghrefn of Nidus,” she noted, drawing a small iron kettle from a shadowy nook in the rocks.

“The dayraven. The stormcrow. Your castle is not far from here. Why? Why do you travel on a night such as this? Where did you think you were?”

The woman cried out softly to Abelaard. The boy helped her closer to the fire. Daeghrefn ignored them, his eyes fixed on the druidess. “You know already who and why and where,” he muttered, “and you’ve augury enough to know more. Why ask?”

L’Indasha glared at him and stalked into the darkness, returning with the kettle brimful of water. “It would take more than augury to sound this foolishness,” she said, soothing the man’s wife with a soft brush of her hand. “Out in the Khalkists on the worst of winter nights, your wife and small son behind you like a straggling infantry. What could have . .. ?” Like the melting of ice or the settling of ashes, a slow awareness seeped into L’Indasha’s mind. She tried to hide her face when the truth came to her, but Daeghrefn saw it.

“Ah,” she breathed. “You’ve been cuckolded, haven’t—” The druidess glanced down at the woman. The thin cloak had fallen and now revealed the source of the woman’s crying. She was about to give birth. L’Indasha didn’t finish the sentence. Daeghrefn lurched up angrily with a clatter of breastplate and greaves.

“It is not your concern, druidess,” he growled. He wished for a secret blade, for a sudden lapse of the Oath, and surprised himself with his own edged and ready anger. “Nose into your vegetation and your failed gods if you want,” he murmured, his voice deep and menacing. “Pry into the heart of the oak and the phases of the moon, into whatever mysteries and omens you consult when your wits fail you. But keep out of my affairs.”

The druidess stared at him darkly.

Brown, he thought absently as the wind outside whistled and eddied. Her eyes are brown … His wife cried out again in Abelaard’s small arms. “Too soon!” she wailed, her long scream rising in pitch and volume until it became deafening, as chilling as the wind in the mountain passes below. Daeghrefn covered his ears as L’Indasha rushed to attend the woman. And then, as suddenly as it began, the scream cut off. One of the cats yawned in the cave’s far corner.

L’Indasha’s face was grim. The woman’s pulse fluttered and faded, then surged again as she cried out in agony. Reaching for the kettle, for soothing herbs—for anything—the druidess cast her eyes on the bucket by the mouth of the cave. The last of the moonlight played almost cruelly over the ice. On the glazed surface of the water, the light took the form of thick stone, the snow like white robes swirling around a distant childbed…. Another child. Another child was being born tonight. It was the other face, the brother to this bastard child. Somewhere, in some warm and nurturing country. But this poor woman lay moaning in an icy cavern, her first son young and helpless, her husband unbalanced and venomous… . L’Indasha Yman fought down her anger and bent to the work of the night.

Huma’s kin were being born.

Somewhat later, in the uncanny silence, something in the depths of the cavern stirred from its hibernation with a stifled, painful cry. Daeghrefn strained to make out the distant sound as the creature scuttled deeper into the cave, where its cry echoed and redoubled back.

“… and you have all but killed her! The child was not ready. It is turned about wrong and cannot come forth!”

He startled. It was L’Indasha Yman shouting in his ear. How long had she been there railing at him—some gibberish about the woman, about the child she was bearing? Daeghrefn closed his ears to the wailing, to the druidess’s words. He turned toward the mouth of the cave, put his back to his son and the two women, and reckoned out an old impartial calendar.

Too soon. The wretch had said too soon. Yes, it was. He had found her out much too soon. She had thought to fool him, but—

“I need your help!” the druidess shouted, penetrating his icy wall of silence, her voice colder still.

“Ask your gods,” Daeghrefn insisted, his back to her.

The druidess sighed. Daeghrefn seated himself at the cave’s entrance. Silent, unmoved by her incessant pleas for help in the lifting and pushing, by the rustle and clamor of Abelaard’s clumsy assistance, the knight drew his sword and stared into the wheeling snow. The moonlight broke fitfully through the mountainous clouds, silver on red, and for a moment, he thought he saw the strange black magelight of Nuitari.

An hour passed, or more.

Finally the cry of the infant broke in the stormy air. It was muted, desperate, as though the newborn child had fallen into the depths of the cave.

“You have a son,” the haggard druidess announced coldly, holding a swaddled thing toward the fire for warmth.

“I have a son?” Daeghrefn replied sardonically. “That is no news. He followed me to this cavern. He served you bravely, where even a midwife would have faltered.”

There was a long silence.

“What will you name this child?” the druidess asked.

Daeghrefn stared more deeply, more intently, into the storm. Name the child? He turned the sword over in his palm. Why should he even keep it, let alone name it?

Triumphant, exhausted, Abelaard took the baby from L’Indasha and presented it to Daeghrefn. “He’s beautiful, don’t you think, Father? What will you call him?”

When he heard the boy’s voice, Daeghrefn sheathed the sword. Abelaard was here. He could not kill the baby. But he would find a way to leave it with this sorceress—good payment for her trouble, he mused. So now was the time for omens, for auguries of his own, for the naming was Daeghrefn’s by the Measure, no matter who was the child’s father. Its mother was, still and all, his wife. And, more importantly, Abelaard’s mother. Daeghrefn set down the sword and steepled his hands, still stiff and red from the cold. Yes, now was the time for names. A time to answer his wife in kind for her cruelty and betrayals. He thought of ice, of loneliness, of forbidding passage….

Winterheart? Hiddukel?

He smiled spitefully at the second of the names. God of injustice. The broken balance. But, no. There was a certain evil grandeur to the names of the dark gods. He would confer no grandeur on this child.

As if it had been summoned, a large tomcat, lean and ragged, slinked out of the inclement darkness, snow spangling its half-frozen fur. Daeghrefn regarded the creature in horrified fascination. This is the omen, he thought. The name is about to come to me. The cat carried something large and limp in its mouth—a dripping entanglement of matted fur and dirt and torn flesh.

A winter kill. A rat or a mole, perhaps. Something tunneling blindly beneath the snow, scratched from the hard earth, chittering and scrabbling in its dark nest.

Daeghrefn closed his eyes, warmed by his bloody imaginings. “Verminaard,” he announced proudly. “The child’s name is Verminaard. For he is vermin, dwelling in darkness and filth like his damned father.” L’Indasha’s eyes widened in amazement. Quietly she moved to Abelaard’s side. A shriek from Daeghrefn’s wife pierced through the hush, through the knight’s pronouncements and curses.

“Ah, no!” The druidess turned sharply, a new trouble in her voice. Daeghrefn sat silently, his eyes closed. From the commotion, from the druidess’s whispered instructions to the lad, the knight imagined the scene unfolding behind him.

The druidess knelt above the woman, her ministrations frantic and swift. But soon, inevitably, she sighed, her hands slowing, her touch more benediction than healing. Sorrowfully she pushed the boy and the baby away, gesturing toward a straw mattress in a candlelit alcove off the main cavern. Abelaard lingered above his dying mother for a moment, his eyes dull and unreadable. A well-schooled Solamnic youth, he did as he was told, his emotions veiled behind the stern tutelage of his masters. And yet he was only a child, and for a moment, he bent low, his stubby fingers cradling the head of his newborn brother, and reached down to touch his mother’s whitened cheek with the back of his hand. Then, with a soft and nonsensical whisper, he carried the baby to the alcove and settled onto the straw, wrapping a thin wool blanket about the both of them. Soon the infant nestled against his brother and slept deeply and silently.