Aglaca started to speak, but the old man stared him to silence.
"Yes, Aglaca. The very runes your brother Verminaard employs in a silly fortune-telling game. The Amarach is not silly, though, just incomplete. He's one stone away from immeasurable power."
The illusionist stood and paced around the clearing, the branches in his wake sparkling with a strange, silver light. "And the Dragon Queen is looking for the secret of that stone now. To sound the runes. To find the key to enter the world, to seize power before the forces arrayed against her are strong enough to stop her."
He paused. The clearing was completely silent.
"But once again," the illusionist continued, "Huma's blood stands against her. The two of you are needed- Verminaard and Aglaca-dark strength and bright wisdom. Your compassion balances his force, his judgment your mercy.
"You two are the opposite sides of the rune, Aglaca. When the symbol of the stone is revealed to you, and that time will be soon, then the two of you can use the power of the rune-"
"To stop her before she comes into the world!" Aglaca cried.
A larkenvale fluttered in the branches of the glowing vallenwood. The garden settled again into silence as the young man took in the gravity of what had been entrusted him.
"How-how do we use it?" he asked meekly. "How do we use the rune?"
"You will know when the symbol is revealed," the old gentleman told him. "Each of you carries half the story in his heart."
"Verminaard's heart is changed," Aglaca argued. "But I will stay by him. I will seek to help him change it back. But I cannot do it alone."
The illusionist nodded. "I know. I have something that will be quite useful. It is dangerous, and for you, more dangerous still after you use it. For then you must trust in Verminaard's decision, and the choice will be his, finally. Your choice comes now, Aglaca. You can risk your life, or the life of the world."
Aglaca took a deep breath. "Then the choice is simple.
For the sake of all I hold dear-for the sake of everything- I'll stay in Nidus. I'll use whatever you want me to use. Verminaard will change. I know he will."
With a kindly smile, the old man beckoned Aglaca closer. "Then these may help you. I will tell you things about Cerestes, and things about binding and loosing. Volatile words, these are," he cautioned, "and you may use them but once. Then you will forget them-forget them forever-and your chance to help Verminaard will be over."
Aglaca took a deep breath. "I am ready to hear."
And there in the garden, the old man whispered them in the young man's waiting ear.
Aglaca didn't know when the gardener left. He was staring into the old man's kindly eyes, his mind filled with the verses of the two powerful songs he had just learned, then suddenly the ancient was gone. In his wake shone a last shimmer of light in the lowest branch of the vallenwood.
"Thank you," Aglaca breathed. "My thanks for the words and the wind and the birdsong. And for revealing the hidden passage in the mountains, dangerous though it may be."
Robert stood at the edge of the garden, watching the boy babble and gesture.
It was the oddest thing, with young Aglaca standing in the midst of the evergreens, holding forth on something or other to the airy nothing of the garden. Robert always reckoned that when a man talked to himself, it was time for the surgeons.
And yet this one had saved his life not two years ago. Aglaca was a cool and level lad, not one for fancy or lunacy.
Perhaps he was the lunatic for coming back to the traitor's castle, simply because the druidess had asked him to help search for the girl. A victim of brown eyes and auburn hair, he was, his soldier's resolution melting before the wishes of L'Indasha Yman.
He had passed easily through the south gates, where the sentries, two lads he himself had trained, had squinted suspiciously as the swirling leaves skittered under the arch and into the castle, borne aloft by a brisk wind. For a moment, the leaf storm seemed to take the shape of a man, but when the sentries blinked, the image had vanished, as L'Indasha had told Robert it would. When he had reached the garden, he had taken his own shape again and, hidden behind living leaves in a decidedly unmagical fashion, had set up a watch on Castle Nidus.
Daeghrefn would be enraged to find him here, Robert thought gleefully. But he was not here for revenge. He was here to find the druidess's helper and take her back to the mountains.
Now, at least, he had found Aglaca. He figured the girl was not far away. After all, L'Indasha had seen her with the wiry Solamnic lad.
And yet, standing in the garden, talking to the taxus, Aglaca seemed to have lost a little of his graceful balance in the last month or so.
Robert rubbed at his eyes and peered through the bushes. Perhaps it was best that L'Indasha wanted him to bring back the girl. Perhaps it was a rescue of sorts.
The crack of a dried twig sent him burrowing deep in the aeterna. Cautiously, as if he were scouting an enemy camp, he parted the blue branches.
The girl. He had not needed to wait long.
"We can't leave," Aglaca maintained. "Even if we could elude the guards, I will not leave." Judyth regarded him skeptically. "It's odd to keep honor with Daeghrefn and Ver-minaard, since neither knows the word," she declared fiercely, and Aglaca started at the heat of her reply.
The two of them sat quietly in the garden as the evening stars emerged in the autumn sky. His head in Judyth's lap, Aglaca looked up into the turning constellations and watched Solinari rising in the eastern sky.
The silver moon was in High Sanction, in the phase of fullness and power. Whatever magic rode upon the night was good now, was auspicious.
"It's not Daeghrefn and Verminaard. It's… something else," Aglaca said. "Something I learned this afternoon." But he remained silent about what he had learned. "I see," Judyth said after a long silence, resting her hand on Aglaca's shoulder. "But brother or friend or… whatever, I think it would be foolhardy to believe that Verminaard will protect you. He's going to join with the Nerakans, Aglaca. Do you think his other treaties will fare any better? When the bargains are his alone to strike or break?"
"Yes. Hmmm. I don't know."
Judyth leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. "He's come to find me. He's trying to court me,
Aglaca.". "To court you?" Aglaca shot to his feet.
"For a week now," Judyth explained. "At first it was confusing. He stood at the door to your quarters and boasted of his deeds against the ogres, as if I hadn't the eyes nor the sense to know that for the lie it was. The number of monsters he had killed multiplied with each telling, and each time he stepped farther into the room."
"'Farther into the room'? You let him in?" Aglaca asked icily, jumping up from the bench.
"No farther when I told him to stop," Judyth replied hastily, her eyes averted. "And then it was gifts. Always jewelry: bracelets, a ring, cloisonne-"
"What's a cloisonne?"
Ignoring his question, Judyth reached for something around her neck. "And then it was this."
"Bring it to the light, Judyth. I can't see it."
She stepped away from the shadows and, standing in the cool light of Solinari, displayed the jewel. The moonlight shone on a single triangular lavender-blue stone, fixed in the heart of six silver flower petals.
"What is it?" Aglaca asked. "And why-"
"I had to take it," Judyth explained. "It wasn't his to give."
"How do you know?"
"I don't," she confessed, hiding away the pendant. "At least, I'm not sure how I do. But the moment I saw it… well, something told me I must take it, must return it to its proper owner."
"And now he thinks you've received gifts from him," Aglaca said. "And he'll take that to mean… That's why he thinks…" He caught himself, averting his gaze from Judyth's.