Майкл Уильямс: Before the Mask

And out on the foothills, the approaching darkness took solid form—the broad shoulders … the fair hair. Verminaard was approaching, and a dark magic was ready to meet him.

Aglaca took a deep breath. Best to bind Cerestes now, while his thoughts were elsewhere and his energies linked to the dark and distant hill. Best do it quickly as well, for his own chant was a long one, one verse for each of the moons. He breathed a quick prayer to Paladine that the saying of these words would not consume him, for had not the old man spoken of their dangerous and volatile power?

He was no enchanter. But for this one time, the words were his to speak.

“ ‘By the lights of Paladine, ” he began,

Cerestes stood upright, his long meditation on the Lady—on the chants that would bind the returning Verminaard—brought to a sudden halt.

The tips of his fingers burned, as they always did when the Light Gods threatened, and Cerestes knew the disturbance for what it was.

Swiftly, urgently, he wheeled and sniffed the air, his heightened senses tasting the mustiness of the tower, the smoky, autumnal bailey, the sharp animal stench of the stables. Where was the chanter?

His keen ears gathered the whir of a cricket near the seneschal’s quarters, the call of an owl in the garden, something scuttling in the battlements of the western tower. Where? Where?

Already his senses were fading, binding to human limits, the keen draconic eyesight dwindling into blurs of distant shadow as the far walls seemed to vanish before his straining gaze. Then, from the wall below, at last he heard the voice. He heard the second verse begin.

Something moved in the shadow of the western wall.

Cerestes shielded his eyes and looked down, but the dark had encroached, and he could not see the chanter. His fingers burned horribly, and he rushed for the stairwell, cold panic propelling his steps onto the battlements.

Quickly. Before the third verse .

He teetered precariously on the narrow ramparts, stumbling and clutching the walls as he raced toward the chanter.

He was too late. The verse had already begun.

Cerestes breathed an old, evil incantation, and black fire settled in his hand. With a muted outcry, he hurled the fireball at the sound of the voice and staggered on when the chant continued … Aglaca felt the hot wind brush by his face, heard the wall shatter behind him. Still he continued, his memory holding the last words of the song, untouched by the heat and burning as a dark fire encircled him, rose, then suddenly began to fade.

The ramparts beneath him rumbled and shook. Aglaca leapt to the tower, clutching the mortared stone, scrambling up the face of the wall. The mage leaned over the battlement, and red fire flashed from his hands.

Aglaca clutched the base of a tower window, and with a somersault that the druidess taught him in the garden, vaulted gracefully onto the sill. The fire rushed by him, and he leapt into the open room, an unoccupied guest chamber, and raced up the stairs to the roof of the tower. Aglaca opened the oaken door to the roof, and the stars swelled, and the cold air rushed over him. At the battlements, the mage wheeled about, his eyes flaming with rage, his hands raised for yet another spell. Remember the last lines, Aglaca told himself, rolling out of the way of a black bolt of lightning that shattered the door behind him. By all the gods, remember!

And then the Voice came to him, one final time, soft and seductive and brimming with promises. It is all yours, Aglaca Dragonbane. Cease your chanting and release my servant, and it is all yours …. The walls seemed to fall away, though Aglaca knew it was a vision. Before him lay a continent waiting, from Kern in the farthermost east, to Estwilde and Throt, to Solamnia and Coastlund, then west to Ergoth and Sancrist, the island kingdoms….

It is all yours, Lord Aglaca. All this power I shall give you, and the glory of it …. Aglaca laughed. “I have heard it before,” he muttered, “and it did not move me then. You cannot stop me!” Rebuffed by his laughter, the dark insinuations fled from his thoughts. His voice strong with faith and assurance now, Aglaca pronounced the song’s end in the shrieking, pummeling darkness of Cerestes’ futile spellcraft.

Cerestes panted before him on the battlements. The mage looked smaller in the moonlight, his handsome features drawn and wearied, his once-golden eyes as depth-less and dull as firebrick.

“Do not gloat, Solamnic,” he threatened, his voice strangely high, thin, void of resonance. “The dragon is confined within me, but I have not been idle in my human form. A formidable mage stands before you, and a thousand magicks wait at my bidding.”

“Try one of them,” Aglaca urged. “Try your most powerful spell, Cerestes.” The mage lifted his hand, ready to cast a fireball, and breathed the old incantation. Nothing happened.

“You cannot do it,” Aglaca replied calmly. “It’s as simple as that. Your magic has left you, sorcerer, and we stand here man to man.”

“But the one who approaches has power, Solamnic,” Cerestes said. “You have not accounted for Verminaard, nor for the mace Nightbringer, which he holds like his own dark heart. You will lose, Aglaca. My spells may fail, my magic falter, but you will lose.”

“He will decide that,” Aglaca said. “Verminaard will choose.”

“Oh, very good, Solamnic.” The mage leered. “I would have it no other way. And we will not wait long.” He pointed to the east, where Verminaard moved quickly from the moonlit foothills, trailing a swath of blackness behind him as he turned toward Castle Nidus.

“I have no dragonsight,” Cerestes hissed. “You have taken that from me as well. But it can be restored by Verminaard. Here he comes, riding the crest of the absolute night, and I can see far enough to know him.”

The man stalked across the eastern plains, and the first of the winter winds swept up from the south, bearing with it the smell of ash and corruption.

It was Verminaard. That much was certain. Aglaca knew him at once by the broad shoulders, by the blond hair and the tattered black cloak. By the damned mace he still clutched tightly. He moved swiftly, feverishly, as though something pursued him. And behind him the wave of darkness spread and settled, and the eastern hills vanished into a complete and abject night.

“Here he comes,” Cerestes announced, pointing a long, bony finger at the approaching man. “Look behind him, Aglaca, and tell me this: How can such darkness bode aught but ill for you and for your kind?” Aglaca smiled. Toward the approaching figure he turned, and he began the second chant.

With a bleating cry, Cerestes leapt toward the young Solamnic, who brushed him aside with a wave of a sinewy arm. The mage teetered at the edge of the ramparts, shrieked…