"Take heed now to your helper's fate. For her protection, she has no idea of my purpose and her calling. I want Robert to bring her to you, and for you all to meet me here again when that is done."
Chapter 15
In the weeks that followed the Minding, tbe struggle for Castle Nidus grew treacherous and tangled. From the moment when Daeghrefn entered the chamber to sullen looks and shaken allegiances, Nidus had been a vast and intricate web, with Verminaard the spider at its center.
Cerestes lurked in the background of all the intrigues. Immediately after he had returned from the grotto, the mage had breathed the first of the incantations-the one the Queen of Darkness had designed to draw the loyalty of the garrison from Daeghrefn to Verminaard.
The mage was surprised that he knew the spell. After all, he had never heard it spoken, never read it. The words felt alien in his mouth as he chanted them, and it was only
after the spell was spoken that Cerestes knew that his voice was no longer his own, that Takhisis herself spoke his words for him.
That his breath was the breath of the goddess.
He leaned against the battlements, shaking with confusion and anger. Slowly he calmed himself, staring at the tilted stars of Hiddukel, the bright scales in the southern sky.
It was just as well. His thoughts and words were no longer his own, but the end of the journey would have its rewards. Takhisis had promised. She had promised him Verminaard to govern and control.
Staring silently into the darkening night, Cerestes wondered for a moment if the prize was worth what the Lady took in return.
He would think on that matter deeply when the time was right. When the moon is hollow, she had told him.
Wait until the moon is hollow.
Having lamely sidestepped the open rebellion he saw brewing in the eyes of his garrison, Daeghrefn roamed the strangely deserted castle halls, accompanied only by the ever-present Cerestes, who urged him to calm all misgivings, to return to business as usual. There were the fire-damaged castle grounds to mend and preparations to be made in case of Nerakan attack. The enemy would know, Cerestes urged, that defenses here would be meager.
It seemed like good advice, and Daeghrefn plunged into the work of regrouping and repair. Then he saw that the mead hall insurrection was not over, that his orders were followed sullenly, halfheartedly, or, on most occasions, ignored altogether.
But the men jumped at even the smallest requests of
Verminaard, sat by him at table, and vied for his attentions. And the young man listened to them, laughed at their jests, and lent a hand himself in lifting rocks and raising scaffolding, his broad shoulders rippling under twice the weight the others lifted.
Here is a man that soldiers follow, Daeghrefn told himself.
And not only soldiers.
For perched on the battlements of the east wall was the mage Cerestes, his black robes billowing like enormous wings. He looked down upon Verminaard and laughed and cheered as well, joining the chorus of soldiers and workers as this strange young man gathered his admirers.
Here is a man they all will follow. And what do I command, then? Daeghrefn wondered. Where are my troops? My retainers? My holdings? He will have them all, and soon. Why have I suffered him? Why did I let him live when he was but a new trouble in the world?
And the words of the druidess-so long ago, on that blindingly cold night on the way home from the treacherous Laca's castle-came back to Daeghrefn in a memory as cloudy and cracked as ice.
77ns child will eclipse your own darkness. And his hand will strike your name.
At long last, Daeghrefn believed her.
Daeghrefn couldn't remember how he heard about the rebellion.
He knew he should recall it clearly, that the moment should be engraved in all his waking hours-the first news of the first betrayals. But he could not remember. At night, he would stand in the balcony window, ransacking his thoughts for the names of forgotten constellations, and
on the fourth evening after the Minding, preoccupied with the aloofness of his men, he had forgotten entirely the way back to his quarters and wandered the halls in aimless embarrassment for an hour until he had gathered himself enough to collar a wayward page and have the boy "help carry this torch to my chambers."
It had been desperate and no doubt obvious, but the lad had been taught not to question. Daeghrefn had followed the nodding light down the corridor, and when the child had opened the door and handed him the torch, Daeghrefn had dismissed the lad abruptly and sat on the bed, the burning torch in his hands filling the room with a fitful, evasive light.
He had forgotten the way to his own chambers.
That was not important now. All that mattered was the rising rebellion. Why couldn't he remember its source? Its birth?
Perhaps it had been a slipped word between the guards at the gate that night he crept along the battlements, cloaked and masked and listening to the conversations of sentries, the passing words of soldiers and servants. Perhaps it was something in the comings and goings from Verminaard's new quarters in Robert's old rooms at the edge of the bailey.
Perhaps he had even dreamt it. Before the fires and the Minding, he had never remembered his dreams. But they came to him regularly nowadays, filling his thoughts in the morning with images vivid and violent.
By whatever means the knowledge of rebellion had reached him, he was sure the news was true.
So sure was Daeghrefn that he summoned three of the veteran soldiers-Sergeant Graaf, Tangaard, and the archer Gundling-and spent a long afternoon in the vaulted council hall, interrogating and menacing and bullying as the autumn sun sank over the spine of the Doom Range. The garrison waited for supper in the hall outside
the bolted doors, the muffled shouts of Lord Daeghrefn reaching them even through the thick oak.
The three men had listened politely, impassively to a string of bizarre tirades. When Daeghrefn had threatened them with a dozen deaths and a score of tortures, the Lord of Nidus ran out of breath and imagination and glowered at them from his seat by the fireside. The soldiers nodded politely, turned, and filed out the doorway, out of the keep, and across the bailey, directly to young Verminaard.
"Since he knows of it, your Lordship," Graaf proposed, leaning against a narrow fireplace, once Robert's, as a dozen soldiers gathered around their newly chosen commander, "and since there's no need for secrecy, seein' as not one man sides with him, why not now? Why don't we move you into the lord's chamber and set the old storm-crow to flight?"
His companions murmured in agreement, each offering more elaborate, more gruesome suggestions of what to do with the deposed lord. Verminaard raised his hand, enjoining their silence.