But where was the mage? And where was Verminaard?
A strange shadow over his shoulder caused the young man to turn toward the western tower. There, atop the battlements, a cloaked figure stepped into the moonlight. He recognized the strides at once-the broad shoulders and the hair as fair as his own.
Aglaca crouched at once, hiding in the shadows of the crenelations.
At the moment the moonbeam touched his robes, Verminaard began to shimmer with an eerie black light. The robes seemed to expand, to double in on one another, folding and boiling like a distant stormy ocean. For a moment, his face seemed to lengthen, his skin to dapple and scale.
Then, in a dizzying swirl of color and light, he became the mage Cerestes. He lifted his hands to the east, to the foothills above the castle, where the old copse of evergreens had risen before the fire.
Aglaca shook his head. He had been watching the change with fascination, as a small defenseless animal watches the hypnotic nod and weave of the neidr snake. So the man he had seen on the battlements was not Verminaard at all but the dark mage in disguise.
Then where was Verminaard?
Low in the eastern sky, a black shadow crossed over the face of Lunitari. "The hollow moon," Cerestes said, his voice carrying eerily in the night air. The mage began to chant, his hands weaving gracefully, gesturing toward the foothills, toward a patch of darkness gliding there in the moonlight, moving swiftly toward the castle.
Slipping along the shadows of the battlements, Aglaca drew nearer and nearer the black-clad mage. He stopped in astonishment at the tower walls as a new voice rose out of the chanting, low and feminine, familiar from the days of his childhood, when he had fought its soft insinuations.
It was the Voice in the cave, the taunting voice of the goddess. Cerestes mouthed the words, but it was the Voice who spoke through him.
And out on the foothills, the approaching darkness took solid form-the broad shoulders… the fair hair. Verminaard was approaching, and a dark magic was ready to meet him.
Aglaca took a deep breath. Best to bind Cerestes now, while his thoughts were elsewhere and his energies linked to the dark and distant hill. Best do it quickly as well, for his own chant was a long one, one verse for each of the moons. He breathed a quick prayer to Paladine that the saying of these words would not consume him, for had not the old man spoken of their dangerous and volatile power?
He was no enchanter. But for this one time, the words were his to speak.
" 'By the lights of Paladine/ " he began,
"And Solinari's silver glow,
Let the words unite and bind
Light above to light below;
Let candle, torch, and lantern shine.
By the lights of Paladine."
Cerestes stood upright, his long meditation on the Lady- on the chants that would bind the returning Verminaard- brought to a sudden halt.
The tips of his fingers burned, as they always did when the Light Gods threatened, and Cerestes knew the disturbance for what it was.
Swiftly, urgently, he wheeled and sniffed the air, his heightened senses tasting the mustiness of the tower, the smoky, autumnal bailey, the sharp animal stench of the stables.
Where was the chanter?
His keen ears gathered the whir of a cricket near the seneschal's quarters, the call of an owl in the garden, something scuttling in the battlements of the western tower. Where? Where?
Already his senses were fading, binding to human limits, the keen draconic eyesight dwindling into blurs of distant shadow as the far walls seemed to vanish before his straining gaze.
Then, from the wall below, at last he heard the voice. He heard the second verse begin.
"In Gilean's red and balanced light, Let light before match light behind,
And Lunitari charge the night With shadows human and confined. Let eyes define the edge of sight In Gilean's red and balanced light."
Something moved in the shadow of the western wall.
Cerestes shielded his eyes and looked down, but the dark had encroached, and he could not see the chanter. His fingers burned horribly, and he rushed for the stairwell, cold panic propelling his steps onto the battlements.
Quickly. Before the third verse.
He teetered precariously on the narrow ramparts, stumbling and clutching the walls as he raced toward the chanter.
He was too late. The verse had already begun.
"Back into Nuitari's gloom,
Let all rough magic now depart…"
Cerestes breathed an old, evil incantation, and black fire settled in his hand. With a muted outcry, he hurled the fireball at the sound of the voice and staggered on when the chant continued…
Aglaca felt the hot wind brush by his face, heard the wall shatter behind him. Still he continued, his memory holding the last words of the song, untouched by the heat and burning as a dark fire encircled him, rose, then suddenly began to fade.
"Let centuries of night entomb
The dark maneuverings of the heart…"
The ramparts beneath him rumbled and shook. Aglaca leapt to the tower, clutching the mortared stone, scrambling up the face of the wall. The mage leaned over the battlement, and red fire flashed from his hands.
Aglaca clutched the base of a tower window, and with a somersault that the druidess taught him in the garden, vaulted gracefully onto the sill. The fire rushed by him, and he leapt into the open room, an unoccupied guest chamber, and raced up the stairs to the roof of the tower.
Aglaca opened the oaken door to the roof, and the stars swelled, and the cold air rushed over him. At the battlements, the mage wheeled about, his eyes flaming with rage, his hands raised for yet another spell.
Remember the last lines, Aglaca told himself, rolling out of the way of a black bolt of lightning that shattered the door behind him. By all the gods, remember!
And then the Voice came to him, one final time, soft and seductive and brimming with promises.
It is all yours, Aglaca Dragonbane. Cease your chanting and release my servant, and it is all yours…
The walls seemed to fall away, though Aglaca knew it was a vision. Before him lay a continent waiting, from Kern in the farthermost east, to Estwilde and Throt, to Solamnia and Coastlund, then west to Ergoth and San-crist, the island kingdoms…
It is all yours, Lord Aglaca. All this power I shall give you, and the glory of it…
Aglaca laughed. "I have heard it before," he muttered, "and it did not move me then. You cannot stop me!" Rebuffed by his laughter, the dark insinuations fled from his thoughts. His voice strong with faith and assurance now, Aglaca pronounced the song's end in the shrieking, pummeling darkness of Cerestes' futile spellcraft.
"Let darkest magic flee, consumed By Nuitari's ravenous gloom."
Cerestes panted before him on the battlements. The mage looked smaller in the moonlight, his handsome features drawn and wearied, his once-golden eyes as depth-less and dull as firebrick.
"Do not gloat, Solamnic," he threatened, his voice strangely high, thin, void of resonance. "The dragon is confined within me, but I have not been idle in my human form. A formidable mage stands before you, and a thousand magicks wait at my bidding."
"Try one of them," Aglaca urged. "Try your most powerful spell, Cerestes."
The mage lifted his hajnd, ready to cast a fireball, and breathed the old incantation.
Nothing happened.
"You cannot do it," Aglaca replied calmly. "Us as simple as that. Your magic has left you, sorcerer, and we stand here man to man."
"But the one who approaches has power, Solamnic," Cerestes said. "You have not accounted for Verminaard, nor for the mace Nightbringer, which he holds like his own dark heart. You will lose, Aglaca. My spells may fail, my magic falter, but you will lose."
"He will decide that," Aglaca said. "Verminaard will choose."