[Meetings 04] - The Oath and the Measure

by Michael Williams - (ebook by Undead)

  She paused. Alertly she listened, her elven ears sharp and discerning, but it was only a mouse in the loft she heard.

  " . . . and weaponless," she whispered, completing her thought. "But for that there is remedy at hand!"

  Swiftly the elf maiden retrieved the broken sword, still wrapped in its blanket, and set out to find the smithy.

  * * * * *

  Weyland the smith was large even for his trade—large and ruddy, his forearms as big around as her waist. Though he was friendly enough and mild mannered, the mere physical presence of the man was enough to daunt her, and Mara lingered in the doorway of the smithy as the prodigious blacksmith seated himself on a bench and unwrapped the sword.

  "This one, is it?" he asked, his voice like the rumble of rockslides in the mountains.

  " 'This one'?" Mara asked. "D'you mean you've seen it before?"

  "Indeed I have, m'lady," the smith replied, turning the gorgeous Solamnic hilt in his enormous, soot-blackened hand. "I'm good at the remembering of an heirloom blade, on account of in Dun Ringhill, we seldom pass down anything more than poverty. This one I saw . . . oh, six weeks back or so. Middle of winter, it was, when Lunitari began her approach. . . ."

  "Into the same part of the sky as the white moon," Mara said. She was surprised that the smith was a stargazer. "The boy that brought it to you . . ."

  "No boy, m'lady, but a full-grown bearded man," the smith corrected, still examining the sword. "From the north, he was, by the sound of him, but I'm not the kind to ask 'em their origins."

  He laid the broken sword—first the blade and then the severed hilt—on the bench in front of him, a look of shrewd speculation on his face. His finger traced awkwardly over the runes that lined the blood gutter of the sword.

  "Should have asked him, though," Weyland observed, "seeing as his request was so odd and all. For he wanted me to flaw this sword."

  "Haw it?" Mara asked.

  "A hairline crack. A stress point in the metal," the smith replied. He raised one huge hand and gestured. He could have gone on and on, listing numerous ways he was able to render a blade defective.

  Able, it seemed, but not willing. A disgusted sneer touched the corner of his lip, and he spat unceremoniously into the furnace. "Don't do that kind of work, though," he explained. "Scoundrel's work, to mar a weapon."

  He looked at the blade lovingly and picked it up once more. "Barbarian's work," he said, "to mar a blade such as this. But the man was a gentleman, on a fine black horse with a mounted servant and all, so you'd think he was on procession through the country. Wanted me to ruin the sword, and flaw it so's it would break beyond reforging—shatter like porcelain into a score of pieces that never quite fit together again."

  Mara nodded. "His name?" she asked.

  "Oh, I couldn't tell you that, m'lady. He never gave it, nor were we even on speaking terms after I refused his business. Just rode out of town in a huff, saying he could find the man who would do the job better. I wondered then why he'd come so far south for a smith if he could find as good a one in his own parts."

  Weyland squinted and examined the sword's edge.

  "Don't think he did, though. My master might have done it—leastwise he, of all the smiths I know, had the skills to do so."

  "Your master?" Mara asked. The confidence and assurance of the big man in front of her hinted at no master. She couldn't imagine Weyland's apprenticeship.

  "Oh, yes, indeed," Weyland agreed. "Solamnic, he was, and he heard voices in the metal. But treachery was no more his practice than it is mine, and he's the only other smith I know could cause or mend what you see before you."

  Mara gazed at him wonderingly, and Weyland nodded.

  "Yes," he said. "I can fix this sword, m'lady, and would gladly do so."

  "Thank you," Mara said quietly. Now she had to figure how to get the blade to the prisoner. With a quick bow, she backed from the room, turned and raced back toward the stable. Among the contents of her bundle, wrapped and placed upon Sturm's back for most of their journey, she had hidden a bow and arrows.

  The pack lay open over two bales of hay. For the life of her, Mara could have sworn that it had been tightly bound and gathered when she had taken the sword from the stable. But the building was dark, and her duties had been rushed and urgent. No doubt she remembered cloudily, if she really remembered at all.

  Whatever the case, it was open now. Spilling into the faint moonlight were her belongings: a bronze harp and three penny whistles, two robes and a pouch wherein lay her childhood collection of shells, Cyren's brooch, his ring with the green dragon seal of Family Calamon . . .

  The bow was nowhere to be found. She knelt above the blanket, above her treasures and the baled hay, a rising uneasiness plaguing her thoughts.

  "Is this what you're looking for, m'lady?" a rough voice asked from behind her.

  Mara wheeled about. Captain Duir stood over her, holding her bow and the quiver of arrows. Beside the captain stood the enormous Guardsman Oron, a dim look of disappointment on his face.

  "Oh, we are sorry to have found this arsenal," the captain proclaimed with a crooked smile. "And we are even more sorry that, bearing the trust and goodwill of the Druidess Ragnell, you have come back to retrieve your weapons. I suppose that your next intention was . . . to depart?"

  "No," Mara replied, and the captain's eyes narrowed.

  "Well . . . if you intended to bear arms in our gentle village, then to what purpose?"

  "I . . . I . . ." Mara began, but she knew that Duir had trapped her.

  "I see no choice," the captain said slowly, as Oron walked toward her, his big hand extended, "but to prepare your quarters as well in the roundhouse. The freedom of Dun Ringhill was a privilege gladly granted by herself, but you have shown to be more Solamnic than Kagonesti."

  They escorted her by the smithy. Weyland filled the doorway, blocking the light of the forge behind him. He watched them take her back toward the green, toward the roundhouse and the cell beside that of the captured Solamnic.

  Weyland shook his head, his thoughts opaque and distant. Then he turned to the forge, closing the door behind him, but not before he picked up the long blade lying on his bench, shining silver and red by the light of the fire.

  Had he not been working the bellows, he might have heard yet another party pass as the night turned and the village folk retired to their circular huts and beds of straw. For outside the smithy, something scurried by, stepping lightly and carefully through a nearby alley, whirring softly like a cricket. Yet somewhere within its strange, inhuman language lay human words and human fears and mourning.

  Chapter 15

  What the Druidess Knew

  For three days, Sturm sat alone in his vaulted cell.

  The cubicle in which they placed him was little more than a windowless stall. Its side walls were flush with the ceiling, which sloped to the back of the room, where an old straw mattress lay. The front wall was a dozen feet high, over which he could see only ceiling and the gaping hole above the building's central fire. By night, an occasional star shone through the opening, and very early one morning, Sturm thought he saw the silver edge of Solinari at its border. For the most part, the opening was featureless, though, like the walls that surrounded him, gated and guarded by a pair of burly militiamen.

  The soldiers spoke only Lemish and regarded their Solamnic captive with suspicion. Twice daily one of them would stick his head in the door, shove a dirty clay bowl at Sturm, then shut the door rapidly, leaving him alone with his porridge and his thoughts.

  The whole Jack Derry business troubled him no end. It seemed passing strange that none of the village folk, from the druidess herself down to the cell guards, knew aught of the gardener.

  More urgent than this was the question of Mara. Sturm assumed she was safe, but at night, once or twice, he thought he heard her voice from somewhere nearby. On the second night, he could have sworn he heard a thin, plaintive flute song rising from the room adjoining h
is.

  On the third night of his captivity, he heard once more the sound of the flute. Then, as once before on the plains, he heard the old elven hymn, and clearly and mournfully the words filled the air of the lodge, riding the smoke out into the spangled night.

  "The wind

  dives through the days.

  By season, by moon,

  great kingdoms arise.

  "The breath

  of firefly, or bird,

  of trees, of mankind,

  fades in a word.

  "Now Sleep,

  our oldest friend,

  lulls in the trees

  and calls us in.

  "The Age,

  the thousand lives

  of men and their stories,

  go to their graves.

  "But we,

  the people long

  in poem and glory,

  fade from the song."

  Sturm closed his eyes and listened deeply, his thoughts and senses free from all distraction. Mara had spoken of the song concealed in the silences, of the magic wrought by the white mode hidden from most ears. Could some message lie beneath the words she was singing?

  He listened long and hard to the sounds and the silences and to the rests between verses. But he could uncover nothing in the quiet. "Nothing," he murmured, and he turned on his mattress of straw. "Only wishful thinking and elven poetry."

  As the night progressed, the melody slipped to the back of his thoughts. A third time, in the small hours of the morning when he hovered in that strange, expectant state between sleep and waking, he heard Mara begin the song again.

  And on the third time, he heard something: wishful thinking, perhaps, or poetry, but something nonetheless that crept into the last verses of the song.

  "The Age,

  no fear no fear

  the thousand lives

  of men and their stories

  go to their graves.

  I am here past the edge of despair.

  "But we,

  hear o hear

  the people long

  in poem and glory

  fade from the song.

  The magic is free in the air."

  In the music of those silences was sweetness and safety and an assuring sense that the dark was not bottomless.

  Sturm's eyes filled with tears, and the melodies, both heard and unheard, died into the smoky night air. He sat upright on the bed. In the real silence that followed the end of the song, he strained to hear words, to gather direction or advice or encouragement. But nothing was there except the snoring of a distant guard and the crackle of the central fire.

  Intent and wide awake now, he settled back on the mattress and willed himself to sleep, but it was hours before he closed his eyes. When he did, he slipped suddenly from waking to slumber as though he had fallen atop a steep and sheer battlement.

  * * * * *

  On the fourth morning, the door opened as usual. Sturm sat up, a little hungrier than usual after a restless night, hoping that the porridge might somehow taste better this morning. It wasn't breakfast that greeted him, though, but the Druidess Ragnell.

  The old woman walked through the door, escorted by Guardsman Oron. With a swift wave of her hand, she dismissed the big man, who looked after her reluctantly as he closed the door behind her.

  "You realize that you will be here for a long time," she said.

  Sturm did not speak. How could he address his father's murderess? Angrily he lay back on the mattress, turning his face to the back wall.

  Behind him, he heard the druidess shuffle and cough. It was hard to imagine her at the head of an army.

  "And this is your greeting?" she asked. 'This is that fabled Solamnic politeness?"

  Sturm rolled over, regarding her from across the room with a withering stare of hatred.

  "I thank you, m'lady," he replied, his politeness wintry, "but I would prefer my porridge to your presence."

  The druidess smiled, and with a creaking of her ancient bones, she seated herself in front of him. From the folds of her robe, she drew a branch—of willow, perhaps, though Sturm's botany was weak, and he could scarcely tell. With a practiced, assured gesture, she traced a circle in the dirt on the floor.

  "Your trespass is a deep one, child," she observed. "A deep one and dire."

  "Trespass? To be brought into your presence under armed guard?"

  The druidess ignored him, her eyes on the swirl of dust in the circle she had drawn. Soon, in spite of himself, Sturm found his eyes following the rapid, switching movements of the stick in her hand.

  "It is trespass," she explained, "because the people of Lemish fear the Solamnic legions, their bright swords and their horses and their righteous eyes."

  "Perhaps their fear is their own doing, Lady Ragnell!" Sturm shot back. "Perhaps some crime of Lemish cries out for justice! Perhaps there are abandoned castles north of here that can attest—"

  "Attest to what?" the druidess interrupted, her voice calm and unwavering. Deep in her eyes, Sturm saw a flicker. Rage? Amusement? He could not tell.

  "Perhaps there is one reason, Sturm Brightblade," soothed the Lady Ragnell. "Young people say so, which is why we ask them to take up the sword."

  Sturm barely heard her, his eyes affixed once more to the circle of dust that was widening now, widening like the ripples on the surface of a placid pond when something is dropped in the water.

  "But I am not here for policy, young man," Ragnell said.

  She was chanting now, the dust rising around her. "Nor for solemnities of country or court, neither to praise nor punish, but to show only . . ."

  Her voice was rising steadily into singing. Sturm heard the notes of one of the ancient modes and struggled to place it. Then, deep in the pause of the notes and the breathing, deep in the space between words, he thought he heard another melody, a song below words and thought.

  "I shall show you a handful of dust," Ragnell chanted, the stick moving more and more swiftly, "A handful of dust I shall show you. . . ."

  * * * * *

  A snowy country, level and treeless, stretched before him, so real that he shivered to look upon it.

  Throt. Something told him that these were the steppes of Throt before him. He was looking back into winter, back over months to thick ice and the turn of the year.

  Once upon a time, a voice began ironically, the words insinuating into the cold wind he heard and felt. Startled, Sturm shook his head. He couldn't tell if this voice was Mara's doing or rose from the chant of the druidess.

  About the time of Yule, in the goblin country, the voice went on. Now there was a village in the vision, a dozen squat huts half-buried in the snow. Smoke curled from a large central fire, and short, stocky shapes, bent and fur-clad, moved in and out of the shadows.

  A squalid place, isolated in the winter desert of Throt. Sturm bristled at the mere sight of it, remembering stories of goblin raids, the hordes as swift and merciless as wolves.

  When the Solamnic host rode out of the snow, as swift as a storm over the winter desert, Sturm was exhilarated, breathless. There were twenty Knights, perhaps twenty-five, cloaked and armored, their swords already drawn and thick, dark hides draped across the faces of their shields.

  It was the sign of no quarter, the dark shields—when the evil against them was too great, too unrepentant.

  "Why are you showing me this, Ragnell?" he asked. "Are my people going to lose the struggle?"

  Wait, the wind said in his ears. Wait and attend.

  At the head of the column, a tall horseman raised his hand. Behind him, the Knights spurred their horses to a gallop, and the war cry burst from them in unison.

  "Est Mithas oth Sularis!"

  Like unstoppable wildfire, they rushed through the goblin encampment. The tall commander brought his sword crashing through the nearest of the snow-covered yurts, and the air exploded with the sound of fracturing wood, of tearing hides, of the shrieks of the surprised inhabitants.

 
At once the encampment was a shambles. Blades flickered like the wings of swarming bees, and the air was loud with the crash of metal against metal, metal against stone and bone. The goblin spears rattled harmlessly against the shields of the Knights, whose swords struck home with wild efficiency. Horses reared and plunged, and the goblins fell in waves before the onslaught.

  Sturm shook his head. His hands were sweaty and clenched, and he knelt on all fours above the vision's swirling dust, his breath short and his long hair matted and dripping. For a moment, he saw only dirt and planking. He heard only the chanting of Ragnell in the vast silences of the Dun Ringhill lodge.

  Then the scene returned, in sharp and brutal detail. A large, rough-looking man—Sturm recognized him as Lord Joseph Uth Matar, head of the vanished family—emerged from a yurt, two goblin younglings in tow. Filthy little creatures, they were, biting and scratching and fouling themselves in their anger and fear.

  Without word or expression, Lord Joseph shoved the yammering little creatures to their knees. He spoke with them shortly, softly, laughing at their threats and curses. The audience over, a young Knight—Sturm guessed it was one of the numerous Jeoffreys—wrestled manfully with the squirming, spitting little monsters. Though his face emerged from the struggle a bit worse for wear after the scoring of their sharp nails, he managed to loop a tight new rope around their wrists and waists.

  The huts burned like kindling, like dried grass. Soon the site was ablaze, the black smoke billowing in the subsiding snow. Lord Joseph stood over the goblin younglings, while his lieutenants drew what shabby salvage they could from the tents before setting them to torch.

  In the middle of a dozen bonfires, three Knights gathered together over the shrieking little monsters. Lord Joseph squinted, as if he were trying to see beyond the rising smoke. In all directions he turned, now shielding his eyes, as if he were looking for something remote or irretrievably lost.