"Nightbringer?"
Verminaard nodded. "'Tis the name that comes to me. Therefore, 'tis the name of the mace. But you heard the Voice. You know that I've been chosen." He paused, glared at Aglaca. "I'd like it if you sat down."
Reluctantly Aglaca seated himself on a bare stool. "It's treason you're talking, Verminaard. You know that the Nerakans have been our foes for-"
"Nine years. It's why you're here, Aglaca, in case you've forgotten. But I shall sue for peace in Neraka, and Hugin and his lot will march with me."
"March?" Aglaca shifted uncomfortably. "Where?"
"Why, west, of course," Verminaard replied, his sound hand stroking the mace head lazily. "Which brings me to more delicate matters. I have canceled the gebo-naud. The Nerakans are no longer a threat to Nidus. You are free."
Aglaca stared at the floor, his thoughts racing. "Free to go home, then?"
"Aglaca, it hurts me that you still do not consider Nidus your home. I think of this castle as your home as well as mine. I think of you as a brother."
Aglaca glanced at him curiously. How much did Verminaard know? "But my father is in East Borders, Verminaard," he said.
Verminaard snorted and waved his left hand as though brushing away a fly. His right hand clutched the mace more tightly, his scarred knuckles white against the black stone.
"Why serve at a small holding when you could be my captain?"
Aglaca frowned. "I don't understand."
Verminaard rose from the table. "When Hugin's troops join my own, there will need to be one man beneath me to yoke my unlikely forces together and be answerable for the lot of them. I'll need someone I can trust. You're my only true friend-the only soul in whom I can confide, because we are so alike in honor and loneliness and… in other things."
"But my home is East Borders, Verminaard. That was the idea long ago. That's why I am here and… and your brother far away."
Verminaard nodded, his eyes fixed on the heart of the mace. "I want you to be my captain."
"I'm not sure I was clear, Verminaard, but-"
"It's quite simple." Verminaard stood over him now, the broad shoulders blocking the firelight so that Aglaca looked up into a thick, impermeable darkness. "If you are my captain, you may keep the girl. To do with as you wish."
"I may keep the girl?" Aglaca asked incredulously. "And what… what do you have in mind if…"
"If you refuse, Judyth is mine-to do with as I wish." He paused to let the enormity of the possibility build in Aglaca. "You cannot hide her in your quarters forever. If I demand the girl, she is mine. And I will demand her when the red moon is full. Until then, neither of you is free to leave the castle. But you, Aglaca, are free to choose. And there's no hard feelings, whatever you decide. After all, what's a slip of a purple-eyed girl between brothers?"
"Your brother is at East Borders, Verminaard," Aglaca insisted, "where I should be now instead."
"My brother is with me now as well, Aglaca," Verminaard hissed. "You know it as well as I do. But perhaps you haven't imagined the particulars. Let me tell you of a night long ago, when a traveling knight named Daeghrefn stopped in East Borders to lodge with… a friend."
Aglaca went to the garden as the shadow of the western walls lengthened over the taxus and the blue aeterna. Politely, the soldier assigned to guard him stayed at the garden gate, allowing the youth to wander in the midst of the rich evergreens where he had sought refuge as a small child. Then he had been uprooted by an alliance he did not understand. It was much the same now, Aglaca thought-the green smell and the dense, wiry foliage soothing but finally comfortless, more a place to hide than a place to recover.
Aglaca traced over that evening in the former seneschal's cottage-the grotesque offers, the badgering, and the threats. He looked in horror at Verminaard now, at the ris ing evil and the fierce obsession with fire and violence. He remembered the horror on the plains, with Nightbringer rising and falling in the smoky moonlight, its obsidian head slick with the blood of ogres.
And now this offer. To be his second in such outrage.
He is my brother, Aglaca thought. He has changed beyond belief or desire, but Verminaard is still my brother.
He stared bleakly at the red sliver of Lunitari as the moon began its slow passage toward the appointed time.
Daeghrefn sat and stared into the fire, an uncorked bottle of wine on the table beside him. He was gaunt, pale, almost cadaverous-a far cry from the robust man who had stood on the Bridge of Dreed nine years ago awaiting the arrival of his Solamnic hostage. His eyes red-rimmed and his hair matted, he stared wretchedly into the fire, turning a stemmed glass slowly in his hand.
The door to the hall opened abruptly, and it was a moment before Daeghrefn heard the footsteps approaching, loud and heedless, over the ancient stone floor.
"You wanted to see me, Father?" Verminaard asked icily, and the Lord of Nidus turned to face him. "Very well. I'll grant you audience. After all, these chambers are mine. You are here through my generosity only."
A wide and witless grin spread over Daeghrefn's face. Vainly he tried to stand, then weaved over the chair and thought better of it. Seated once more, addled by the wine and breathing roughly, raspily, he glared at the monstrous young man who stood above him, blocking the torchlight.
"Audience?" Daeghrefn asked. "Did you say…" His voice dwindled into the vaulted hall. "Well. We can talk of that later, Verminaard. As for now, my mind is on another thing."
He rose, braced himself against the back of the chair, and balanced before the reeling fireplace. Verminaard's face seemed veiled from him in the deceptive firelight. Clearing his throat, Daeghrefn continued.
"I am thinking that I do not know you all that well. That I haven't been… good to you. And now… well, now you intend to take all Nidus away from me." Daeghrefn sighed. "I expect your bitterness and anger are justified and that I have no choice but to make a good end of it."
The Lord of Nidus poured wine into a glittering metal cup and offered it to Verminaard. The young man took it and stared into the ambered bowl of the vessel while Daeghrefn talked on idly.
"This has been a long estrangement, and little has been your doing. If you would agree to a way that we might coexist, I'd…"
Verminaard ignored the prattle, his senses drawn by the strange fragrance of the wine. As he lifted the cup toward his lips, the new scars on his hand began to twitch and tingle.
He had come to know this as a warning.
Warily Verminaard peered over the rim of the cup, then handed the wine to Daeghrefn. "If we are to make accord, Father," he said with a sneer, "we should drink from the same cup."
Slowly, his hand shaking, Daeghrefn lifted the vessel. Verminaard stared at him frostily as the firelight seemed to tilt and shudder. Quietly, with a scarcely detectable movement of his fingers, the Lord of Nidus let the cup drop clattering to the floor, spilling its contents in a steaming, corrosive mist over the stones.
Verminaard seized the older man, hurling him against the stones of the fireplace. Then, lifting him by the front of his tunic, he pinned Daeghrefn against the wall and snarled at him.
"You adder!" he shouted. "Your fangs are devious and veiled, even when the venom is dry! At last I have you where I have wanted you for twenty years-backed against a wall, your power and poison useless!" He raised Nightbringer, its black handle quivering and droning in his hand.
"I let you live," Daeghrefn gasped. "I let you live, when I could have killed you merely by walking away!"
The grip about his neck slackened.
"You're mad!" Verminaard muttered. "You let me live? And what was that in the cup? I owe you nothing, old man-not even the chance to bargain]"
Daeghrefn watched in terror as the mace wheeled over the young man's head, then lowered slowly, quietly to his side.