Quickly he rummaged through the discarded runes. Blank… blank… blank. The smooth face of each stone stared at him mockingly.
That night, in the rubble below the cavern, Verminaard danced beneath the full red moon, his tattered black robes brilliant in a bloody light.
The effect of the drus would not wear off until the next morning, and so the young man had set aside the runes and offered worship to the shapes of the dark gods in the stars overhead. He held up the mace to the tilting constellations, and he called for the old powers to course through the weapon and into his willing blood.
Let the covenant be renewed, he told himself, as it was in the cave of the Lady, when I took this mace. Then tomorrow night I shall return to Nidus. Aglaca and I have business to contract. For Lunitari is full, and he will be my general. Or I shall take the girl and destroy them both.
Verminaard blinked drunkenly and watched the stars pass over.
Hiddukel the Scales tilted angrily overhead, a memory of the old injustices, of the betrayals that had brought him to Nidus in infancy and his cold, neglected boyhood. Chemosh of the Yellow Robes brought the dead from the plains and the mountains, and Verminaard exulted at the battered ogres who trooped before his sight, at the knights, clad still in their dented and bloodied armor, who stared at him with milky, vacant eyes.
He laughed as well at the Hood of Morgion, the great mask of disease and decay, for he knew firsthand the deception of masks, and the eyes of his brother Abelaard were blind and vacant as well.
He exulted in the terrible red condor, Sargonnas of the Fires, and he remembered the fires in the forest and on the plains south of Nidus.
But finally the queen emerged in the black sky-the Lady of the Dragons, She of the Many Faces. He knelt and adored her, the black mace quivering in his hand, pulsing and burning. And in her presence, Verminaard of Nidus rose and began to dance.
Or perhaps Nightbringer drew him to his feet and turned him in a quickening spiral, there amid the black rubble and the burned country and the mouth of the grotto. He did not know whether his thoughts or those of the weapon ruled his body and heart.
But in the swirling moonlight, there on the hills that someday men would call the Dragon's Overlook, the Voice spoke again to him out of the heart of the mace.
Dance, my love, it urged him. Dance, my Lord Verminaard, ruler of armies… my love.
Chapter 19
From the top of the tower, he could see the faces of thec gods.
Daeghrefn knew that they all were watching-twenty sets of eyes in the blackness of the firmament, all eternally fixed upon this castle, this tower, this circle of candle and torch.
How foolish he had been not to believe in them!
For they sang in the stars and rustled in the stones of the tower. And none of them forgave him, for Verminaard had told them terrible things.
Daeghrefn had coveredthe mirror in his chambers, draping the polished glass with black cloth, as though the castle were in mourning. It was a precaution, he told himself. He had set the mirror by the window years a" go, to illumine the bare interiors of his bedroom with reflected moonlight, but his invention had now turned dangerous. Now the gods could watch him in it, mark his reflection always in the mirror as he passed by, and his presence anywhere in the deep interiors of the tower.
Daeghrefn shivered and looked over the pass at Eira Goch, west into the black face of the Khalkists. Estwilde was miles away, on the other side of the range-or so his men insisted. But Daeghrefn knew otherwise. At night, when the black moon shone on the slopes of the mountains, the entire country crept eastward, its boundaries swelling over Jelek, over the forgotten ruins of Gods-home…
The dry steppes of Estwilde were moving at night, and Laca was at the head of the armies-pale-eyed Laca, traitor for these twenty years.
Laca was not content to steal sons. He would steal Abe-laard's inheritance as well.
Daeghrefn leaned against the tower walls, turning south now toward the fire-blackened forest. Holding aloft a sputtering torch, he peered into the shadowy, moonlit wasteland. There would be no aid from that direction, nor from beyond. What help could he expect from a band of Nerakans he had fought for nine years? Their leader-a cutthroat named Hugin-had vowed to "skewer the Stormcrow on a pike and carry him like a flapping standard through his own gates."
He had overheard that vow in a dream. So it had to be true. And Verminaard planned to join with the bandits.
Daeghrefn covered his ears. The incessant whine from the mountains-shrill and maddening, like a choir of gnats-had begun again. The gods were mocking him, he was sure. Soon Nidus would be alone on the plains of Neraka, crushed between two armies and sapped from within by an ungrateful boy.
There was no escape to the north, where Gargath lay, sacred to the dwarves and gnomes. He would find no refuge among the worshipers of Reorx, for none of the gods forgave him.
But there was always the east. The high peaks of Berkanth and Minith Luc, and beyond a high green plain, no doubt untouched by the ogres' fire, where a man could lose himself for years, could vanish until the gods themselves could not find him. He looked hopefully toward the eastern foothills, where Solinari was on the rise in the autumn sky.
Someone was dancing on the rocky cliffs above the castle, framed by the silver light of the moon. He held something aloft-something glittering and black.
Daeghrefn leaned over the parapet, craning for a better look. For a moment, he thought it was Kiri-Jolith himself, the ancient god of battles, or perhaps black Nuitari rising out of the silver heart of his sister.
Then he saw that the figure held up a mace, and he knew who it was, dancing alone in the eastern mountains. "Verminaard!" he spat. "May the Dark Seven devour you!"
Frightened, fascinated, Daeghrefn leaned out even farther, until the bailey seemed to spin below him. He strained beyond the torchlight into the chilling dark, and he watched as the shadow rose to cover the moon, to block out the light with its black, leathery wings…
Then he remembered the druidess's prophecy: This child will eclipse your own darkness.
And the moon was engulfed in Verminaard's shadow. Alone on the parapet, awash in the thin light of torches and candles, the Lord of Nidus shrank against the stone walls, his hands shaking. In the firelight, he cast no shadow, and it occurred to him that his shadow would not return, that he had no substance left to summon it.
I am becoming transparent, he thought, a wild laugh rising to his lips. Transparent, like madfall beetles in the cavern depths. He held up his hands, examining them closely. They were blue and cadaverous, blanching as he watched.
Daeghrefn staggered into his chambers, crying aloud as he jostled the mirror. He wheeled, tore the cloth from the glass, and glared at his own reflection.
His hair was straw-pale, and his eyes were light blue- the color of vacant skies.
"It is my pleasure to come at the bidding of the Lord of Nidus," Judyth began formally, and" the haunted eyes pivoted toward her. "And to offer him tonic and balm for his malady."
"Then Verminaard sent you? And you treat with him? For he is the Lord of Nidus. Or so they are all saying."
Judyth did not answer. Nervously she fingered the pendant at her throat.
Daeghrefn cleared his throat and rose painfully from his chair. He was hooded, and he shied away from the light as he spoke. Judyth felt as if she were talking to a wraith, to a walking dead man.
"You're with Verminaard often," Daeghrefn said. "You were there at his birth."
"Sir?" Judyth asked, immediately confused. But she answered cautiously, "I see him little of late."
That much was true. Twice she had seen Verminaard from the window of Aglaca's quarters as he paced over the battlements in the moonlight-a cloaked shadow gripping that black, infernal mace. He kept his distance now, Aglaca said-from the castle garrison, from the soldiers, from all his old companions-and Judyth had begun to wonder if the hew Lord of Nidus wasn't as mad as the old one who stood before her, muttering of fire and snow and conspiracy.