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.
As the noise subsided, Cerestes slowly curled in the middle of the chamber. He began to enlarge, his dorsal bones scraping, pressing against the far wall of the cavern. Soon the light from the entrance was blocked out entirely by his huge, bulking body.
Sternly, as the pain settled in his wings, in his enormous haunches, in-the long tail that had burst from the base of his spine, the voice of the Lady echoed all around him. On the chamber ceiling, reflecting among legions of startled bats, amid the shimmering droop of stalactites, a single golden eye stared mercilessly down upon the coiled red dragon that was Cerestes.
You are no longer Cerestes, the Lady soothed, but you are once again Ember, and entirely my creature…
'Tis a painful Change, Majesty,' Ember protested, his voice dry and grating, speaking now in a draconic language of hisses and hard consonants. His voice was like the rattle of the bats' wings.
'Painful-' The voice of the Dragonqueen was icy, mocking. How painful do you think it was for Speratus, the Red Robe, when I arranged your… promotion to Daeghrefn's wizard? If you're squeamish when it comes to the pain, Ember, and the Change itself is painful, then perhaps you should never change again.
Ember squirmed uneasily. The form of Cerestes was his veil, his protective guise in a world in which the dragons could not yet force their presence. For eight years, he had walked in human form.
Oh, yes, Takhisis continued, smelling his thoughts as if they were a faint whiff of blood. Imagine being always yourself, coiled here like a giant serpent, like the dale worm of centuries past, unable to escape. Prey to your own hungers, perhaps, or to the lances of name-eager knights.
'Do with me what you will, m'Lady,' the dragon rumbled, shutting his thoughts to her with a brief, powerful spell of masking. He stirred on the chamber floor, his confined movements dislodging rocks and old guano, startling the bats, who launched into the darkness with piping cries, their leathery wings brushing against Ember in their whirling flight.
Very well. Keep your thoughts from me. Let it not be said that the Dark Queen… intrudes, Takhisis conceded ironically. I shall pry no further, though if I willed it so, that spell of yours would be thin as as… as…
'Gossamer?' Ember asked, with a dark, toothsome smile. It was good that she stopped at the masking spell. He could feel no encroachments, no attempts by her sharp, mysterious sight to pierce the veils of his own magic.
Perhaps she could not even do it. Not while she hovered in the abyss, awaiting a chance at entry to this plane.
Yes. Until they found the green gemstone, the goddess waited behind the portal, a poor version of what she was yet to be.
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.
