"But look at you. You're already dead," Verminaard observed, his voice thick with scorn. "A mere husk of a man, the skin of a locust in a blighted year. You haven't even the decency to lie down."
Daeghrefn quivered and whimpered. He closed his eyes, and when he looked again, Verminaard was halfway across the room, headed for the doors to the chamber.
"I could have killed you once," he whispered. "In the snow… in a lost time… before… before all of this-"
The words were lost in the crackle of the fire, the slam of the oaken doors.
Chapter 16
Safely in the garden, hidden amid the evergreens and the bare fruit trees, Aglaca knelt and began the Seven Prayers of Conscience, calling upon the gods to aid him in the approaching hard decisions. They were long prayers, and the young man struggled to remember them, for he was shaken by Verminaard's news and by a choice in which both options were impossible.
He had been told long ago that the Prayers of Conscience were always answered, that if he placed a question before Paladine and his glittering family, the answer would rise in the words of the prayer itself, or on the wind or in the harmonies of birdsong. Or perhaps it would come as a quiet, still voice in the hollow of his heart, when the words and the wind and the music had died away.
So faithfully he began the prayers, asking Kiri-Jolith for courage, Mishakal for compassion, Habbakuk for justice, Majere for insight, Branchala for faith, Solinari for grace, and Paladine for wisdom. The words rose readily from his lips, as though they had been planted for years, awaiting the chance to blossom.
He sang the hymn that marked the end of the ritual, the old Solamnic song of benediction. At the end of the hymn, the garden lay hush. The autumn birds-the jays and the lingering dove-were silent, almost as though they were startled by the song. Aglaca breathed deeply and started to rise from his knees.
The gray branches of a young vallenwood, scarcely ten feet away from him, shone with a strange silver light, which moved from branch to branch like a white flame.
Suddenly the light fractured into a million reflactant shards, spangling the trees at the edge of the grove until all of them-taxus and juniper and blue aeterna, bare oak and vallenwood-shimmered like a forest after an ice storm, and music rose out of the wind in the branches.
Aglaca bowed his head reverently. He closed his eyes and waited until a voice, high and thin and immoderately ancient, ended the silence.
"Well, don't just sit there. You've said the Seven Prayers, and you sang the hymn. I expect there's a question in this as well."
The old man clambered from the branches of the vallenwood, brushing the light like dust from his shoulders. With a crack and creak of aged bone and tendon, he scurried from the bole of the tree toward Aglaca like some ruined, white-haired spider, his thin robes bunched and knotted above his knees.
The old man dusted the bark and moss from his threadbare clothes, sat unceremoniously on the ground before Aglaca, and, removing his hat, batted it against his knee as a servant would beat a rug. The garden filled with floating dust as the two of them-the young Solamnic and his surprising visitor-appraised one another amid a flurry of sneezes.
"Who are you?" Aglaca asked.
The old man waved his long, bony fingers. "Only the gardener. You were praying for something?"
Aglaca remembered that the real gardener, an ingenious and honest man named Mort, had left Nidus long ago, in exasperation at the constant intrigues of the castle after Daeghrefn's wife had died. Suddenly Aglaca's eye found the silver triangle pinned to the old man's hat. "Wisdom," he murmured reverently. "The right decision. That light when you were in the tree-"
"Just a bit of pageantry for an entrance," the old fellow announced proudly. "Works wonders with the pharus plants. One flash and they blossom on overcast days-at night, too, for that matter." He coughed. "Looks like the dust is clearing at last."
Aglaca regarded the intruder. A graybeard, gangling and thin, stooped at the shoulders like a benign praying mantis. "You are no gardener," he said, a half-smile on his lips.
"But I am," the old man said suddenly. "Appointed to tend this spot since before you were born. You didn't think the taxus trimmed itself, now, did you?"
Aglaca started. The old fellow could read his thoughts. Despite himself, the young man warmed to the bearded, stooped oddity seated before him. He extended a hand and helped the ancient intruder to his feet.
"It's a hard decision I'm after, sir," Aglaca began, astounded at his own rashness. "The lord of this castle- not the old lord, mind you, but the young man who rules in everything but name-wants me to become his captain. Time was when I would have done so gladly, but Ver-minaard has changed. He has undergone a dealing with darkness in the caverns south of this castle, and what he has become… I am not sure. I suspect the worst."
The old fellow regarded him seriously, listening and nodding. "No hard decision. Seems like you'd refuse such an offer, then."
Aglaca cleared his throat. "If that was the lot of it, deciding would be simple enough. But Verminaard has been my companion for many years at Nidus, as close to a friend as I figure I've had. It's been lonely here, sir, when all the talents you have-every interest and delight and gift you would bring to a household or a family or a friendship-are the things that they never cared about. Not that Verminaard was much better. But then there's also this-he's my half-brother as well."
"Verminaard is your brother." The old man nodded. "And what he asks of you is treasonous, against both your country and your spirit. Then either of the choices-"
"And it doesn't stop there, sir," Aglaca interrupted, his politeness giving way to a troubled eagerness. "Verminaard has threatened me. If I refuse his offer, he'll seize my friend Judyth."
The old man leaned against the gray trunk of a vallen-wood. A strange silver radiance danced over his shaggy hair, and the triangle on the crown of his hat caught the light and glinted. "Judyth," he repeated. "I see. I almost forgot that when young men tug and wrangle, there's generally a young woman to tug and wrangle over."
Aglaca shrugged. "That, sir, is the long and short of it. It's wrong to choose for Verminaard, and it's disaster to choose against him. I suspect it's a test of sorts, imposed to try my spirit and wisdom."
He looked intently at the old man.
"I see." The old gentleman smiled. "I, on the other hand, suspect that you are making this a test. You just haven't yet found the other choice."
"The other choice? I don't understand, Old One."
The gray fellow shook his head. "It must be there someplace. There's never only one pass through the mountains. With every confrontation, there comes an escape route, so that you may be able to bear all temptations."
"Where is my other choice, sir?"
"Somewhere… between the two of you," the old man replied mysteriously.
"Between?"
"Ages ago, the power behind the mace, behind the Voice, walked the face of the earth."
"What does that have to do-" Aglaca began, but the gray fellow waved his hand for silence.
"I listened to you for a spell, Aglaca Dragonbane. Now it's your turn."
Chastened, the young man nodded politely, and the old illusionist continued.
"In the Age of Light, the dark dragons ruled the sky, and their queen-whose name I shall not say, even though I am safe from her power-claimed all Ansalon as her own."
"Huma Dragonbane defeated her," Aglaca said. "Drove her away."
The old man regarded him with a thin smile.
"He was my ancestor," Aglaca muttered, and sank into embarrassed silence.
"I know that well," the illusionist replied, "which is why you figure into this elaborate mess. At the time Huma banished the Dragon Queen, banished as well was the secret of the Amarach runes."