Before The Mask by Michael Williams

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.
    He had no idea why she drew him so, but he thought of her all his waking hours, and
     especially when he was sup-

Dragonlance - Villains 1 - Before the Mask
    Chapter 6
    posed to be at his studies.
    Not long after the hunt, through Cerestes' suggestive power, Daeghrefn appointed the mage
     official tutor to the boys. It was an acknowledgement rather than a promotion, but now
     Cerestes began their instruction in earnest, with rigorous classes in higher astronomy,
     mathematics, and ceremony. As Verminaard scratched on parchment the phases of the black
     moon and learned more powerful dark spells, Cerestes quarreled with Aglaca, who was now
     forced to attend the lectures but sat stubbornly in the corner, still refusing to give
     himself to the new mysteries.
    In the midst of this new academic pressure, Verminaard found his mind wandering,
     wool-gathering in long, adventurous fantasies in which he rescued the girl from dragons,
     from ogres, from other dangers.
    The mage would rap the table, and Verminaard's thoughts would return grudgingly to the
     castle's solar, to the sunlit classroom made suddenly strange by his own imagination and
     consuming dreams. Aglaca, poring over his botanicals rather than the books of spellcraft,
     would regard him with concern, and Cerestes would scowl and point to the text. Verminaard
     would renew his attention with energy, with promises....
    And in a matter of minutes, he would be lost once more in thoughts of the girl.
    Once, in high summer, when the images of her were still unmanageably strong, he boasted to
     Aglaca all he had imagined.
    It was late evening, one of those summer nights when the darkness itself delays and the
     world seems to hover in a half-light until nigh onto midnight, an evening when
     nightingales keep awake the restless. After a few minutes of practicing a slow, graceful
     fighting kick, Aglaca had stretched against the battlement and asked him unsettling
     questions.
    Had he seen her eyes? The expression on her face? What color was her hair? He smiled at
     Verminaard's stammer, his dodging answers. “I suppose you could draw her portrait, then?”
     Verminaard retorted coldly.
    Not ten yards away, three ravens settled ominously on the crenels, and Aglaca shivered and
     turned away. “I saw little more than you, Verminaard, though I'd wager I could pick her
     out by the way she sits a horse.”
    He looked out over the battlements toward the reddening west as the sun settled on the
     Solamnic foothills.
    “'Tis summer again, Verminaard,” he continued, his voice distant and softer still,
     scarcely audible over the boding and rustling of