You have asked again why I sent you here. Well, I have fires for you to start, she said. And all the fires begin with those two.
"Verminaard and Aglaca?" Ember asked, his cloaked thoughts racing. "What would you have me do?"
Continue in your role as mage. Reveal to none that you are my cleric-not yet, at least. Continue to tutor Aglaca and Verminaard; nurture them. But become more than their teacher. Be now their confidant, the eyes that shape their world.
One will be your companion in the years to come, when we are stronger and more numerous in this hostile country.
One will be your companion.
Ember opened a golden eye, regarding the light at the ceiling of the chamber with curiosity and dread.
"Which one, Your Highness?" he asked, his rough voice laced with suspicion.
They will choose. Aglaca and Verminaard. In this world, there is room for only one of them.
And they might have already chosen. The larger is the more pliable, the smaller more spirited. Verminaard will be the easier won, Aglaca the prouder trophy. But they will choose. I shall provide the occasion.
"Why these two?" Ember asked, and in the long silence that followed, he heard the air buzz and crackle, like the sound in the sky at the beginning of lightning. He feared he had angered her, insulted her, and yet, after a long pause, she chose to tell him.
Laca. I've a long grudge against Laca. How better to pay him back, and the cursed Order…
"And if the other one is chosen," Ember added slyly, "what greater blow to the Order than to have your servant fathered by the great rebel Daeghrefn!"
Takhisis was silent. In the depths of the cavern, Ember heard his last words echoing, the echo circling and catching itself until echo flowed over echo and the dark recesses of the mountain bristled with tangling voices and words: other one… chosen .. .father…
I shall provide the occasion, Takhisis said, breaking the settling silence. First the girl. Then the other . . . circumstances.
"What girl?" Ember asked eagerly, his long, branched tongue flickering excitedly, hotly into the darkness. "You told me of no girl, m'Lady."
Why, the one that Paladine has chosen. The one he sends to the druidess-regarding the runes. Or so I believe.
"The runes?" Ember asked, closing his eyes, struggling for a note of idleness, of indifference. "I thought they were only a game. Indeed, I've kept Verminaard busy with them when his questions annoyed me."
And indeed they are but a game, Takhisis answered. Tor now, that is. Until the blank rune is sounded.
Ember opened the other double-lidded eye. In the slanted light of the chamber, his gaze was golden and scheming.
"The blank rune?" he asked. "So the old legend is true?"
Paladine has hidden it too long. Since the time of… Huma.
Ember masked a smile. The Lady still stumbled on the name of the Solamnic hero whose lance had driven her back into the Abyss.
He has hidden it so long, Takhisis continued, that they teach the mages that the blank stone is a substitute, a replacement in case another stone is lost or damaged.
"Indeed," Cerestes conceded. "So I have told Ver-minaard, who rummages in rune lore constantly."
So I have seen, Takhisis said. Perhaps the time will come when all the runes will lie before him, the blank rune adorned with its symbols….
"What then?" The dragon was eager, hungry for the forbidden knowledge. "What then, Lady?"
Then we shall wield the greatest of oracles, Takhisis purred. The augury that has lain silent and broken because the rune was blank, its symbol forgotten.
All of this time, it seems, L'Indasha Yman has kept the secret.
L'Indasha Yman? Of the druids? Ember thought. And she has not used this power? Takhisis is lying. Or she is holding something back.
The girl, Takhisis said, her deep voice lazing over the words. She's something to do with the runes . . . with the sounding. I know it.
Ember shifted uneasily in the cramped chamber, awaiting the connection between the girl and the runes that Takhisis seemed about to make.
When I… came here, there were things forbidden me. Things he hid from me in my banishment. Things I have forgotten as well. So you must continue to learn for me, to do for me .. .for now.
That ice in her voice, Ember thought. She knows more, and she is not telling. But with these runes …
The Nerakans have her now, Takhisis informed him. They intend her for my temple's first sacrifice, because of her lavender eyes. But they will not destroy her, nor will they keep, her forever.
"Suppose they find her secrets before . .. before we do, m'Lady? Nerakans have a way of gathering secrets."
The voice of the goddess rose softly after another long, uncomfortable silence. The Nerakans are my servants. They will not rebel. But if they do, and if they dare to sound the rune …
All of the gods will know it at once. And whom, my dear Cerestes, do the hundred clerics worship? Who controls armies in Sanction and Estwilde? All that the Nerakans would augur in the runes are their own deaths.
"This … quarrel with Laca," the dragon offered, shifting the ground of the talk.
Will cost him a son, Takhisis interrupted. Of that I am certain.
"But what of the other? This Verminaard-"
Is no less the son of Laca Dragonbane, fool! the Dark Queen announced sharply. The cavern walls seemed to recede, and the dragon began the slow transformation back to his human form, back to the dark mage Cerestes.
He should have known. The silence as to Verminaard's birth. Daeghrefn's cruelty and marked prejudice against the boy. The lack of physical resemblance between father and son.
Astonished at the Lady's tidings, Cerestes suddenly felt frail, baffled and cold, as a whole cloudy history of deceit and betrayals formed at the edge of his understanding, something he needed to know, needed to use.
/ will use one, Takhisis said and chuckled. The other is … dispensable. Lord Laca has left me an abundance of sons, and I shall need only one of them. For the blood ofHuma runs through Laca Dragonbane, and Huma's line is tied with the sounding of the rune. I need just one of Huma's line. He will be the last survivor.
"B-But how, Highness? How do the young ones fit?" Cerestes asked. But the goddess was not telling. The dark eye above him faded, and the exhausted mage lay at the center of the chamber, his black robes, tattered and split by the Change, scattered to the far corners of the cavern. Again the uncovered slant of light glowed silver and gray from the mouth of the cave, and the mage rose blearily and crouched at the edge of light, stitching his robes back together with spells.
/ shall win, Takhisis prophesied, her voice no more than a whisper of thought or memory, no matter what anyone chooses, I shall be triumphant. Go now and do my bidding, Cerestes….
Verminaard could not forget the girl.
At night, in the midst of his meditations, her hooded form and the black tattoo on her leg haunted him, as did his fleeting view of her as her horse turned on the far side of the stone bridge and she rode away, bound to the saddle and guarded by bandits. When Aglaca bent to his devotions, Verminaard would draw forth the Amarach runes, turning them intently in his hand as if some new symbol on the ancient stones would appear to give him a clue as to her name, her origins….
Why the bandits held her as captive.