Майкл Уильямс: Before the Mask

“You are absolutely certain?” Paladine asked softly. “You will be mortal again. You will die as others die.”

“And I will live as others live.”, said L’Indasha. “Yes. I have chosen.”

Paladine laid his hands on them and spoke the words of forgetting to L’Indasha, of remembrance to Judyth, and the exchange was complete. Judyth wore the flower pendant with the blue-purple stone. Now it was truly hers—chosen with full knowledge.

As Robert and the druidess made their way down the mountainside, L’Indasha stopped short and crowed with delight. “Look! My daylilies! They were all burned in the fire except this patch, and it was so small and I planted it so quickly—well, just look!”

Before her spread an enormous clump of bright green fans, each one with several scapes rising into the night sky. Beside it lay the signs of warding. Logr and Yr. Water and Yew bow. Journey and Protection.

“Mort. Of course,” L’Indasha breathed. ” ‘Thank you for the gift,’ he said. Bless him.” Judyth heard the last of the druidess’s laughter floating up on the mountain breeze. She turned to bid Paladine and Mort good-bye, but they were already gone. She started down the mountain herself and came quickly upon the clump of daylilies. One blossom remained open in the advancing night. In its center, behind a blue-purple eye area, a risted rune-staef, now visible to her in the vein-ing of the flower, spelled the blank rune’s symbol. It was now her turn to guard this key to augury against enemy eyes—for a thousand years, if need be—until the coming storms were calmed.

Sothonsien , the rune-staef read, in the old language: The True Face. Revealed Knowledge. Judyth thought of Aglaca, and then of a ruined face. She wept as she understood. The rune’s reverse—its opposite—was Heregrima: The Mask.