"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."
"Oh, very good, Solamnic." The mage leered. "I would have it no other way. And we will not wait long."
He pointed to the east, where Verminaard moved quickly from the moonlit foothills, trailing a swath of blackness behind him as he turned toward Castle Nidus.
"I have no dragonsight," Cerestes hissed. "You have taken that from me as well. But it can be restored by Verminaard. Here he comes, riding the crest of the absolute night, and I can see far enough to know him."
Chapter 20
The man stalked across the eastern plains, and the first of the winter winds swept up from the south, bearing with it the smell of ash and corruption.
It was Verminaard. That much was certain. Aglaca knew him at once by the broad shoulders, by the blond hair and the tattered black cloak. By the damned mace he still clutched tightly.
He moved swiftly, feverishly, as though something pursued him. And behind him the wave of darkness spread and settled, and the eastern hills vanished into a complete and abject night.
"Here he comes," Cerestes announced, pointing a long, bony finger at the approaching man. "Look behind him,
Aglaca, and tell me this: How can such darkness bode aught but ill for you and for your kind?"
Aglaca smiled. Toward the approaching figure he turned, and he began the second chant.
"The light in the eastern skies Is still and always morning, It alters the renewing air Into belief and yearning…"
With a bleating cry, Cerestes leapt toward the young Solamnic, who brushed him aside with a wave of a sinewy arm. The mage teetered at the edge of the ramparts, shrieked…
And clutched at the crenels, his legs skidding out over the bailey before he tugged himself back to safety and crouched, rasping and whimpering, on the stone walk. Aglaca rushed at him, pinning him against the battlements with one muscled arm.
Verminaard, approaching below, felt a great and ponderous weight lift from him. Suddenly, unexplainably, Nightbringer loosened in his hand. For a moment, thunderstruck, he gazed down at the weapon, then up to the battlements, where his eyes locked with Aglaca's, and he clutched the mace more tightly, more passionately.
Suddenly he remembered the vision-years ago on the Bridge of Dreed, when he had stood and awaited Aglaca's crossing. Again he saw the blond youth on a windy battlement, a lithe, blue-eyed image of himself. But not me, he thought again. My brother . . . my image. Not Abelaard, but my brother.
The young man gestured. His lips moved in a soundless incantation, and Verminaard felt weaker, felt his own power drain from him, then return as he found himself by the walls of Nidus. A dark force pushed him toward the battlements, and relentlessly, almost mechanically,
Verminaard began to climb.
Looking down into the transfigured face of his brother, Aglaca fumbled with the spell for a moment, the words slipping away in his astonishment. For Verminaard's countenance was sallow and gaunt, and a lost light flickered in the depths of his eyes. It seemed as though nothing lay beneath his skin except air and bone. And Verminaard's eyes …
For an instant, Aglaca recalled their first hunt, the turning of the great beast in the box canyon, the dull look in the monster's eye, and he wondered why he was remembering this, why his mind played lazily over the past when the present rushed at him, armed and deadly.
And his own vision, a decade ago on the bridge, returned to him . . . the pale, muscular young man, and the mace descending …
So it will be, unless you take this matter in your own hands, Aglaca Dragonbane, coaxed the Voice, again low and seductive, neither man nor woman.
" 'Even the night,' " Aglaca sputtered at last, closing his ears to the disembodied coaxing, his voice gaining confidence as he spoke the second verse of the chant:
"Even the night must fail, For light sleeps in the eyes And dark becomes dark on dark Until the darkness dies …"
Verminaard did not stop for an instant. Scrabbling up the wall like an enormous spider, buoyed by a dark, whirling cloud, he slung his leg over the merlon and hurdled onto the battlement, his fingers digging at the solid stone of the crenels as he clambered atop the walls and crouched, the mace clutched tightly in his hand.
"Stop him, Verminaard!" Cerestes cried, fumbling in his
sleeves and producing a long, narrow dagger. "Stop Aglaca before he enchants you with his Solamnic wizardry!" Aglaca slammed the mage into the wall. Dazed, Cerestes gasped for air.
Verminaard stared coldly at Aglaca, waving the mace nervously, like the switching tail of a lion.
Aglaca stood his ground, watching Cerestes out of the corner of his eye as the mage drew hesitantly nearer, the dagger rising and falling awkwardly in his delicate hand.
"Stop him!" Cerestes spat, "or the chant will kill you!"
Serenely Aglaca chanted the third of the four verses.
"Soon the eye resolves Complexities of night Into stillness, where the heart Falls into fabled light…"
Color returned to Verminaard's skin, and he took a long breath. Was that lilac in the air? His arms were heavy, and suddenly he was very hungry.
"What is your answer, my brother?" Verminaard asked. "Will you choose to be my captain, to serve me in the dignity and honor of our long acquaintance, our deepening friendship, or will you choose to leave the girl with me?"
"If you let me finish, I'll be your captain."
Uneasily Verminaard glanced down to the bailey, which seemed to pivot and rock below. For a moment, it seemed to rush up toward him with a blinding, insensible speed, and he thought he was falling.