Майкл Уильямс: Before the Mask

“She’s dead,” L’Indasha announced scarcely an hour later. ” ‘Gone to Huma’s breast,’ as your Order says. What will you do now?”

Daeghrefn sniffed disgustedly, his eyes fixed on the wintry landscape beyond the cave entrance. The storm was swelling, the wind rising. The red moon Lunitari peeked from behind the racing clouds, flooding the snow with a staining crimson light.

The knight turned slowly, the side of his face bathed in the hovering torchlight. For a moment, he looked like a skeletal wraith, like the Death Knight of the old legends, through whose hands had slipped the power to turn back the Cataclysm.

“And who are you to question me, idolater?” he murmured, his voice low and menacing, like the humming of distant bees or the high whirring sound of the rocks over Godshome. “You have no claim on me or on my son.” He gestured vaguely toward Abelaard, his sword waving grotesquely in the mingling light of the fire and the spinning moons. “You have no claim on any of us. Not even that dead harlot’s get,” he concluded venomously and stepped suddenly toward the fire, brushing the snow from his mantle.

L’Indasha inwardly shrank from the knight. Instinct told her to fly, to scatter elusive magic and escape in the confusion, to burrow into the sheltering dark…. But she squarely faced the knight and fought back with words calculated to wound.

“This child will eclipse your own darkness,” she proclaimed, holding the baby above the firelight, holding him out to Daeghrefn. Her voice rang in the ancient inflections of druidic prophecy and sheer rage. “And his hand will strike your name. But I will not tell you the rest.”

Daeghrefn laughed harshly. It was ridiculous druidic babble. Then her blazing eye caught his. Her anger was real.

Daeghrefn held her gaze. Dire things passed briefly through his mind, and for a moment, the sword turned in his hand, the melted snow beading ominously on the sheath’s carved raven. He would make her retract it. He would bury the blade in …

No. He would send Robert back here to … clean out this cave.

“So?” he said, shaking his head slowly, distractedly, his eye passing over the new child’s fair hair and creamy skin. He beckoned for Abelaard. The boy approached him, stopping only to take the baby from the druidess and hold him cautiously in his shivering, thin arms.

“Druidic nonsense,” the knight whispered. Then louder, his voice cold and assured, he added, “Put on your cloak, Abelaard, and leave the child.” He stared balefully at the druidess. “We must be off for Nidus while there’s aught of the night to travel. It’s still a good walk home, by my reckoning.” The boy put on his garment, but he would not give the baby back to the druidess. “I’ve looked forward to a brother for so long, Father. Please. We must take care of him.”

Daeghrefn could refuse Abelaard nothing short of this request. Nothing short, but not this.

“No,” he replied.

The druidess stepped forward and placed her hand on Abelaard’s shoulder, an idea forming as she spoke.

“No, Daeghrefn,” she began, a dry warning in her voice. “You’ll keep this child and keep him well. If you leave him—or worse—all those in your command will know of your cuckolding. And who would follow such a man? You cannot be undone before them, can you?”

Daeghrefn’s dark eyes locked onto L’Indasha’s, and she knew she had won his undying hatred. And the baby’s life.

“Nidus is ten miles from here,” she urged, calmly holding his vacant stare. “You have seen our weather. You have challenged the storm enough for tonight.”

Daeghrefn broke his gaze and removed his boots. For a moment, L’Indasha’s hopes rose, until she realized he was only drying them by the fire, preparing for the long trek through the mountains.

“You have heard the stories,” she began quietly, “about these mountains in the winter.”

“I’ve no time for lore,” Daeghrefn objected.

L’Indasha persisted. She told Daeghrefn about the frozen horses, the dozens of travelers irrecoverably lost. She told him of the bandits, sealed in ice like insects in a million years of amber. All the while her touch was light on the shoulder of the boy. Daeghrefn did not listen, but Abelaard did.

As she knew he would.

And it was enough. When Daeghrefn drew on his boots and walked to the mouth of the cave, Abelaard remained by the fire. “Father?” he asked, his voice thin and uncertain. Daeghrefn turned to him warily.

“Can’t we just wait out the night here?” Abelaard pleaded. “We left Laca’s castle ten days ago. We’re away from the bad place now. Tomorrow we can all go home. The baby, too. Please, Father.” As he looked into Abelaard’s hollow eyes, something in the knight seemed to turn and soften. It was sudden and unforeseen, as a line of troops will break in the midst of a pitched battle. Daeghrefn’s shoulders slumped, and slowly he removed his sodden gloves.

“I suppose,” he began, “that a night’s stay could not altogether harm us, Abelaard. But just one night, mind you. We’ll be home at Nidus on the morrow, regardless of storm or cold.”

“One night is all you will need,” the druidess said, for the lad’s encouragement more than Daeghrefn’s information. “Storms blow over quickly here, and there will be sun and a clear path come morning.”

“We’re off to Nidus regardless,” the knight insisted, staring into the fire.

L’Indasha buried the dead woman at the far end of a side cavern, deep in the soft clay floor, while Daeghrefn huddled in blankets around the fire and Abelaard fed the newborn something the druidess had mixed and warmed for him.

When she finished singing the funeral prayers, they all slept. Twice in the night L’Indasha stirred—once at the roar of wind across the high plateau, carrying the cry of a dozen lost travelers beyond her help in the hills of Estwilde, and once when the baby awoke and whimpered. It was the baby’s cry that brought her to full waking. It began softly and rose steadily until she heard Abelaard’s voice join with it awkwardly, singing a Solamnic lullaby. The child’s voice was small and fragile amid the roar of wind tumbling through the surrounding hills.

May. your gods keep you, L’Indasha thought, a modest spell shielding her ears against the plaintive sounds of the children in the center of the cave. If your gods can do anything, may they keep you in the days to come.

The Bridge of Dreed arched narrowly over the canyon, a dark, knobby spine against the bright autumn sunset. It was the northernmost of three bridges across the gorge. The southern two were made of vallenwood and were old as the Cataclysm. But this structure was far older, a narrow stone footpath, one man’s width, that had spanned the great chasm for as long as the histories recalled and the legends remembered. At its very top, a level, slightly wider area had provided this ceremony a perfect platform. Barely twelve years old, Verminaard shifted nervously in the saddle. Of course, he had heard much about this place. Indeed, he had seen the Bridge of Dreed once before, from a distance, when he and his brother had been goat hunting in the high reaches above Daeghrefn’s castle. It had seemed menacing even then—a black, crooked bow spanning the gorge from east to west. Abelaard had pointed it out to him, then steered him to lower ground as the younger lad glanced back at the ancient structure, his thoughts filled with legends of how the world was made. The finger of Reorx, the forge god. A handle for the mountains he had raised in the Age of Dreams, as the stories told.

Two years after that hunt, and much closer now, the bridge looked no less grand and precarious. It arched from one side of the gorge to the other, and, below, there was a breathtaking drop of three hundred feet to the ragged igneous rocks on the chasm floor. The stones were littered with brush, dead wood, and old bones.