"Indeed we could," Robert grumbled, eyeing him skeptically. He could have sworn he'd seen Verminaard earlier in the fray. Hobbling a bit from the basting he had suffered at the hands of the Nerakans, he limped past the young man back onto the mountain trail, headed toward the bridge and the rest of his companions.
"No matter," Aglaca quickly added, his voice cheerful and melodious. "No matter, because, as you see, there was no harm in your delay, no bruise in your waiting."
They found Daeghrefn not far from the bridge, gathering his men and reckoning his losses.
Of the forty retainers who had embarked on the morning's hunt with the Lord of Nidus, only two dozen remained. Osman, of course, had fallen in the encounter with the centicore. The Nerakan ambush had killed fifteen of Daeghrefn's finest troops.
When two of the retainers, rough farm boys from Kern, returned from the chase bearing two Nerakan heads on pikes, Daeghrefn turned away and said nothing, for he
shared their bitterness and anger. Aside from that pair of especially unfortunate bandits and the three slain by Aglaca and Robert, the skirmish had brought no recompense for Daeghrefn's forces. The Nerakans had vanished into the rocks, leaving dead men and disarray on the paths behind them.
And the girl, Verminaard thought, standing in the background while Robert told Daeghrefn how Aglaca had shown mettle and speed in the struggle with the bandits. Whoever she was . . . bound and captive and . . . and in deep distress, I know.
Daeghrefn nodded brusquely at Robert's speech. Aglaca might be Laca's son, but despite the ancient quarrel, the boy had conducted himself with exceptional gallantry. He glanced from the disheveled, amiable Solamnic youth to the other, the darker, larger, and decidedly unfa-tigued presence, who sat atop his horse now, lost in a labyrinth of thought.
Verminaard didn't notice that Daeghrefn had looked at him, for his mind was elsewhere, high on the far and sunlit side of the stone bridge.
Had I but the chance to prove it, she … she would…
He couldn't imagine what would happen.
Trapped in his own reflections, communing with the dark Voice that arose from his thoughts and from somewhere deeper than his thoughts, he rode back to Castle Nidus, trailing the column.
From the battlements of Castle Nidus, sentries watched the approach of Daeghrefn's beaten line of riders. Almost at once, the sharper-eyed among them began to count, and counted again, as two dozen men rode in from the waning light of the foothills, torches already lifted against
the oncoming evening.
Quickly, with rising apprehension, the sentries alerted the castle. Soon, with murmurings and rumor, everyone assembled in the bailey yard. There the kitchen sweep shifted from foot to foot next to the old astrologer from Estwilde, and the falconer leaned uneasily against the wall of the keep, exchanging hushed words with the cook. None had foreseen this grim news. Never had a routine hunt been so disastrous, and only twice before had the Nerakans attacked anyone this close to Nidus.
Aglaca turned over the day's unhappy events in his mind and knew that it would be a long time before he could go home to East Borders. Eight long years past… how many more to go until some sort of peace would release him from Nidus? His youth was being poured out in the gebo-naud, and by now he should have attained his knighthood. Or maybe even his most secret desire-to serve Paladine with all his being.
Perhaps Daeghrefn had been right about his needing a guard to keep him from answering the call of East Borders. Like the dead of the day, Aglaca had not chosen his fate nor his company.
Perched at the mouth of a high cave, almost a mile above the three lofty turrets of the castle, there was one who understood more clearly. Cerestes shielded his golden eyes against the red slant of sun and counted the approaching troops. Then his gaze narrowed and focused, and the birds around the mouth of the cavern hushed in a sort of fearful expectancy.
This time he could count the holes in the tattered foremost banner. Eagerly his sight raced down the column.
Good. Aglaca and Verminaard both were there.
Satisfied, he stalked into the growing darkness, into an enormous circular chamber, void of light and wind and silent except for the perpetual dripping of water somewhere even farther back in the cave.
It was the appointed spot. She had told him in a dream, when he had begged her again to reveal his purpose in this place. Though the years in Daeghrefn's service were not long as his kind measured time, she had kept him beyond his patience.
Softly at first, insinuating her voice with the slow, rhythmic music of the water, she came to him, the Dark Queen Takhisis, foremost in the evil pantheon, her voice as intimate as his own thoughts.
So this is how it is for them, Cerestes mused. For Aglaca and Verminaard, to whom she has spoken since childhood. How they hear her voice in their own imaginings.
This is no game, the goddess reminded him, her voice louder now, sweet and low-pitched like the distant murmur of bees, like the sound of the night over Godshome. What care you for their hearing, for the soft persuasions that bring them to me? Those are mine and theirs. Are they aught of your concern?
"Of course not," Cerestes replied, knowing her question was no question, but a grim reminder of his boundaries.
Deep in the recesses of the cavern, the sound of the water ceased. He was alone now, with his thoughts and her quiet and sinuous voice.
Become yourself, cleric, Takhisis urged. Reveal your true self before your queen.
Cerestes coughed and glanced nervously toward the faint sliver of light behind him.
Oh, we are alone, she soothed. Those below are far too concerned with ambush and accident, rapt in the counting of their little deaths. None have followed you here.
"Are you sure?" he asked, and regretted his words at once.
In the depths of the cavern, the darkness roiled and swirled.
This is no time for questions, the Lady said, and her darkness surged to surround Cerestes. The void tugged at him, molding him, drawing him from his body into an older, more familiar shape, forsaken for years. A green half-light sweated from the walls, and he saw the floor of the chamber, the rows of stalagmites like jagged teeth, the litter of broken bones and charcoal.
He saw his hands, as well, as they began the painful metamorphosis that the Lady commanded, as the red webbing sprouted between his fingers and the fingers themselves grew into long claws with a crackling of bone and tendon. Once he cried out, as always he did when the Change first swept over him, but the cry had already passed beyond human, into a terrible shriek, like the tearing of metal. The muscles of his legs bunched and doubled, his ribs buckled and tugged as wings burst forth from his back, and he was growing now, yes, Cerestes was growing, into what he had always been, would always be. The red of his scales blackened in the green light of the chamber, in the familiar blood and the burning that marked this metamorphosis. And the laughter of Takhisis rang so loudly in his mind that he covered his receded ears, imagining that the noise had burst out of his thoughts and rung the cavern walls.