"Are you taking your brother's part?" the girl snapped, and the couple fumed in the shadows as an owl soared over the walls with the faintest whisper of wings.
Judyth almost told Aglaca then-almost told him of the orders that had urged her to leave the safety of her home two years ago, the command that had led her wandering over the plains of Solamnia into the dangerous East, through Throt and Estwilde until she reached the foothills of the Khalkists, where the bandits…
She rubbed at the hated tattoo on her leg. They had not been gentle.
She almost told him, but she wasn't sure he would understand. It sounded foolish, she admitted: that his father, her commander, would send a lone girl traveling through bandit and goblin country, armed with only a dagger and led…
Led by old intelligence. By the ancient rules of Solamnic espionage. But led by more, as well, in ways that Laca hadn't reckoned. By instinct. By intuition and dream.
How else could she explain consenting to a dangerous and reckless undertaking-going forth with few guide-posts beyond her bookish knowledge of the mountains and a strange, secret sense that whatever it was she pursued was still just ahead of her, or passing somewhere nearby, in the cloaked and mysterious night?
It sounded too flighty and foolish for words. But by indirection, she had come to the place she was sent, to the duties with which she had been charged years back by Aglaca's father.
Sound the situation at Nidus, Laca Dragonbane had charged her. And send me word of my son. But something had sent her long before the Solamnic orders, and when he had commanded, she had sensed then and there that her journey east was the beginning of what she had lived to do.
It was all too veiled and mysterious. She was relieved beyond measure when Aglaca finally spoke.
"Judyth, we shouldn't argue," he said, touching her shoulder softly. "We shouldn't begin to argue, with the castle around us filled with conspiracy and scheme."
Slipping her arm about his neck, the girl nodded. "You have your honor, I suppose. And whatever mystery you've discovered. And I… well, I believe that I am bound for something important and good and needful. It's… it's only Castle Nidus that makes those things seem foolish."
"You're right, Judyth," Aglaca conceded. "Which is why I shall have to find a way to get us free of this dilemma. Verminaard is not in control of himself. I'll wager my life on it. And of late, I have found something that may help in the wager."
"Something?" her forehead rested against the back of his neck. He felt her skin, cool and soft against his skin.
"Another choice," he replied softly. "Another pass through the mountains. For instead of following one of Verminaard's proffered choices and betraying you, my father, and even him in the process, I shall choose a third path."
"A third path?"
"I shall turn him from this romance with Nightbringer, this marriage to darkness. But there are forces against me-forces at work in this castle, Judyth, that seek to bind him to a bitter pact. He has taken instruction from the worst of teachers."
"The mage!" Judyth exclaimed. "All along I've known! There's something at the core of Cerestes that is bleak and inhumane."
"And inhuman as well," Aglaca added. "For human is not his natural form. Though it may be hard to believe, Cerestes the mage-"
"Is the dragon!" Judyth hissed, grabbing Aglaca's arm.. "Oh, Aglaca, the night of the fire, when those dark wings passed over the face of the moon, I knew that the dragons had returned, that the legends and rumors were true. But what hope do we have against a dragon?"
Aglaca smiled. "There is a passage through those mountains as well. And I've been given the password."
Leaning close to Judyth, he told her of the old man in the garden and the songs he had learned from him-magical songs of binding and loosening, composed years ago in the Age of Light to unravel the cords of spellcraft. The first would bind Cerestes in a human form, restraining him from his draconic powers, and the second would loosen Nightbringer's power over Verminaard, if he wished it to be loosened.
"'Tis a tall order, that wish," Judyth observed, looking long into Aglaca's eyes.
"And a greater risk as well," Aglaca replied. "I can use the songs but once. The breath of Paladine will pass through me, and my lips will shape the words. I must remember them all, must sing them in their proper rhythm and tone, just as the old man sang them to me. And that still is not enough. After the singing, I must trust that something of light and good remains in Verminaard, and that, released from the powers of mage and mace, he will turn from the darkness."
He smiled at Judyth, and a great foreboding rose in her heart.
"Verminaard told me once that he trusted me," Aglaca said, "and I must show him my trust so that he might act on his."
Robert crouched silently in the midst of the evergreens as the young couple stood, kissed softly, and parted. Then he rose and walked into the heart of the garden, into concentric circles of taxus and aeterna, the maze of cedar and juniper and sleeping fruit trees. On the soft earth, his steps were muffled, and the only other sound was the high silver song of one unseasonably late nightingale.
It changed everything, Robert thought, this meeting, this romance. He had seen the pendant in the girl's hand, and he knew it was the one L'Indasha had lost, that it had returned by fortune and circumstance-perhaps even by destiny-to the woman who had been sent to help her. For a moment, when the light of Solinari glinted on the pendant's silver flower, he had almost risen from his hiding place, almost called to the both of them, explained his mission, and taken the girl then and there.
She would be safe in the mountains, far from the corrupting hand of Verminaard.
And yet he knew how this Judyth must feel, knew that the ties that bound her to the Solamnic lad were stronger than duty-stronger, perhaps, than any destiny that oracle or prophecy might imagine. He knew what it was like, knew how the boy felt as well, how his difficult tangle of honor and duty would seem impossible without Judyth nearby to strengthen him.
"May the gods and L'Indasha forgive me," he whispered quietly, "but she should stay the course until her own choosing." He slipped from the garden into the shadows along the west wall of Nidus, where the nightingale sang a final note before it flew north on the morrownorth to safer, more clement weather.
Chapter 17
On the third night following Verminaard's meeting with Aglca, the noises began from the top of the keep. Strange shouts and calls tumbled to the bailey onto the dumbstruck sentries, who glanced nervously at one another from their posts. Daeghrefn called out "betrayal" and "murder," "abandoned" and "fire," and "Laca" and "dark dark wings," and throughout the long wail into the morning watch, the shouted name of "Abelaard" tolled the hours regularly, like a ship's bell.
Verminaard stirred on his cot in the seneschal's quarters, unable to sleep in the shrill, pathetic din. Finally, just before dawn, he arose and stepped into the bailey, wrapping Cerestes' black cloak about his shoulders against the crisp autumn morning. The grass crackled with frost as he walked to the foot of the keep and glanced up into the vaulted darkness, the cloudy night sky where Solinari had waned to a sliver.
On the battlements, Daeghrefn had lit a single candle. It glowed bravely, forlornly in the windless morning. It seemed as though the fire itself were calling as the flame waved and beckoned, as Daeghrefn's wail slipped suddenly beneath words and was now a simple, terrifying bleating.
On the next night, a second candle stood by the first, like a pair of glowing eyes, and one of the younger sentries, a boy from Estwilde named Phillip, had begged off duty, maintaining that the tower had come alive and was watching him.