“When I reached for him,” Bayard concluded, his voice shaking from loss of breath, from struggle and something more deep and disturbing and sorrowful, “he drew his arm away. Drew his arm away, Galen, shouting that we should save ourselves, that he would right himself downstream.”
From somewhere around Bayard I heard the sound of weeping. Brithelm, no doubt, though I could not see through the water and the memories of the water now covering my face.
“Sir Robert? Sir Ramiro?” I asked.
“They have gone to follow the path of the river, hoping for a sand bar, a downed tree, anything to which our friends might cling.
“We have no hope, Galen. By now they are deep into the plains of Solamnia. In the country of the brave and the innocent. May Sir Ledyard find the seas at last.”
“Receive them all to Huma’s breast,” rose a familiar voice behind Bayard. Alfric stood beside my protector.
“This blanket stayed dry, Weasel,” he muttered, tossing a rough wool coverlet over me.
I do not mind saying that I wept a little while after Sir Robert came heavily back from downstream and from a luckless search. The Drift had swelled, had knocked a full dozen of us, mounts and armor and weapons and all, tumbling into its dark and rushing midst. It was a tangle of limbs and blankets and outcry, Sir Ramiro told me, when he returned from the search covered with mud and river weed. Squires and Knights had tumbled southward until they were lost from sight in the strong tow of the river.
Bayard was right. We had no hope of finding them.
I wept for Ledyard, whom I would never really know, for the dozen or so drowned with him, and for the gap-toothed blond squire upon whom I had wished outrage too easily and too unluckily.
I began to wonder if this, too, was the Scorpion’s doing, if his hand was at the reins of the river, guiding the rise of the Drift at the worst possible of times.
The way ahead of us was cloudy, what awaited us at Chaktamir, dark and obscure.
Sir Robert sat wearily beside me, armor tolling metal on metal, the hour of sadness.
“It’s terribly early, I know,” he began. “All of us mourn, all of us are still … taken aback at the events of this morning.
“But another life depends on our quickness, our determination, our knowledge of the roads. Remember that Enid may be somewhere ahead of us. We must take up pursuit before something terrible happens to her in the eastlands.
“So take courage. Where do we go from here?”
His eyes were intent upon the east, the rushing sound of the river behind us and ahead of us the plains of eastern Solamnia as they rose and roughened into the tough little country of Throt—a thicket of roads and not-roads, paths and waterways, any of which the Scorpion might have taken with his priceless spoils.
We chose one path among all of these—straight to the pass of Chaktamir. Bayard rose in the saddle, shielded his eyes, and made out a copse of vallenwood on the eastern horizon that seemed to be a landmark of sorts.
Heavily and wearily we traveled east.
With the copse directly ahead of us, Bayard turned in the saddle and called back to the rest of the party.
“We go southwest from here, crossing two roads and a wheat field. Then we come to another road, which we take due east, keeping the Throtyl road to our left, the mountains to our right.”
“And soon we will reach Chaktamir?” Sir Robert called back.
It seemed that Sir Robert knew little of the lands east of his holdings. Bayard rode back to us frowning, shaking his head.
He explained, politely but briskly, leaning across Valorous’s neck.
“I’m afraid that the pass is still five days’ hard ride from here, Sir Robert. On the day after tomorrow we should pass through the Throtyl Gap into Estwilde, then two days more until the road forks, the southerly branch leading to Godshome and Neraka beyond, the easterly toward the pass itself.
“Eventually we will reach the foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, and following this same road, we will climb steadily, almost a day’s journey, until we come to Chaktamir, seated high in the land that once belonged to the men of Neraka and now is no creature’s.
“It is there, Sir Robert, that the Scorpion will wait for us. And there your daughter will rest—unharmed, I pray—awaiting us also.”
Their heads moved closer together, and the two men exchanged words in private.
Alfric leaned far over his saddle to try and catch what was being said. He heard nothing, evidently, and tried to right himself in the saddle.
But midway back to the upright position the weight of his armor took over, and he dropped from the saddle, face first onto the rocky ground. Brithelm helped my red-faced brother to his feet, while Alfric fired questions at Bayard.
“How do you know this?”
“I’ve been to Chaktamir before. Ten years ago …”
“So he has been to Chaktamir before!” Alfric exclaimed triumphantly. “You heard him say that, Sir Robert! Now I ask you: why in the name of Paladine should we let ourselves be guided by somebody who is suspiciously familiar with the places that the Scorpion goes to?”
Ramiro leaned his ampleness back on his long-suffering horse and laughed.
“Young Pathwarden, I’ve been to Chaktamir twice myself. Perhaps there’s a conspiracy afoot you haven’t noticed!”
“What’s your problem, Alfric?” Bayard asked calmly, idly stroking Valorous’s mane, clearing it of mud and stray brambles.
“Ever since we left the castle,” Alfric whined, “it’s been ‘Bayard, do this,’ and ‘Bayard, lead us here’! When we get to Enid, of course she’s going to want to marry you, on account of you’re the only one Sir Robert lets do anything!”
“Is that what is bothering you, Alfric?” Bayard asked slowly, dangerously, and I huddled deeply into the wool blanket I had been given, for I could tell by the flatness in his gray eyes that Alfric had just passed into the eye of a great and powerful storm.
“That is what bothers you, when we have lost fourteen to the current behind us?
“There will be plenty for you to do, Alfric,” Bayard declared coldly. “And sooner than you’d like, I’d wager.
“For our enemy is already watching.”
Bayard pointed to a spot not far ahead of us, where a bare-branched, dying vallenwood drooped heavily on the gray and rain-soaked plains.
In its topmost branches a raven perched.
Two days later, we passed through the Throtyl Gap. It is a country as rocky and forbidding as eastern Coastlund—plains, to be sure, but plains steeply rolling, rising gradually out of the fertile river lands to the west until the country around the traveler is parched and cracked, like the face of a moon through astronomer’s glasses, or like a landscape ravaged by fire.
Through this desolate region of dark, volcanic rock we were led by Bayard, at a slower pace than before because of the terrain and also because the accident at the river had left many of our horses and mules bruised and skittish. They balked, bit, kicked, and brayed through the lengthened hours of the journey.
They were not alone in their weariness, their discontent. Each of us had suffered a pounding fording the Vingaard.
Bayard and I led the way, Bayard following a worn path through the glittering rocks, occasionally calling back something to Sir Robert, who followed us. Ramiro and Alfric followed Sir Robert. Alfric crouched uncomfortably in the saddle as though he expected a hail of arrows at any time, and Sir Ramiro grew less and less amused with my brother’s cowardice and bluster as the miles wore on. Brithelm brought up the rear, and several times, to Sir Robert’s great impatience, we had to stop and send Ramiro back for him. Once the big Knight found Brithelm bird-watching, once lifting a rock to inspect more closely the hardy insect life of Throtyl Gap.
A third time Ramiro found Brithelm dazed and sitting in the middle of the trail, felled by a low-hanging branch he had not noticed while riding along rapt in meditation.
Bayard occasionally lent a hand at
guiding the pack mare, but more often he was examining the rocks for the trail, mounting and dismounting as our path was lost and recovered in the hard, volcanic terrain.
Ahead of us and above us, the only birds were predators and scavengers, the only trees were pine, spruce, and a ragged strain of vallenwood which could not sink its roots deep in the rocky soil and, as a result, grew stunted and bent in the dreary landscape.
“The country of hawks,” Bayard muttered once, skillfully reining Valorous around me in order to herd the pack mare back onto the road. “The hardiest animals venture up here, and kill one another simply because there’s nothing else to prey on.”
“Sounds like growing up in the Pathwarden moat house,” I ventured, and he laughed harshly, drawing beside me as the road widened and a cold wind struck our faces from out of the south.
“Or on the streets of Palanthas,” he countered, smiling. Then he grew serious.
“Something’s come over you, Galen, and in ways I could not have foreseen back in the moat house when you first pleaded your case in front of me. You’re …”
“Less of a vermin?”
Bayard flushed.
“I’d have said ‘more cooperative,’ ” he ventured, eyes on the road ahead of him. “Were it not for your size, and …”
He looked at me, smiled, and turned away.
“… and for the absolute refusal to cooperate of that moustache you’re trying to grow, I’d take you for the oldest Pathwarden among us.
“What I’m trying to say, Galen, is that there’s Knighthood peeking out through your seams.”
I had no time to bask in the compliment. For the road was rockier, and steeply ascending, and ahead of us the hawks were turning.
By noon of the next day, it was more than hawks ahead of us. On occasion the eastern horizon shimmered with that brilliant, metallic mist that is the hand of mirage, that makes you think you are looking through water at the country ahead of you.
The mirage itself was inhabited. Strange things walked upright through the blurred landscape. Nor could we make out their form all that clearly—it was, after all, a mirage into which we looked. But dark red and brown they were, and hairless, and ever running from one fading, dissolving rock to the next one.
Sometimes the mirage would vanish, only to appear again several winding miles east of where we last saw it. Each time it was peopled by dark, scurrying forms.
The horses grew skittish at something in the air.
“W-what are they, Bayard?” I asked uneasily.
“I am not sure. I do know we have crossed into Estwilde, and if the Scorpion knows we are coming, they may be his scouts. Or his first wave of illusions.”
Sir Robert reached into his robe, drew something out, and cast it by the roadside. Sir Ramiro followed suit, and when he did I heard the faint tinkle of breaking glass.
“What’s going on, Bayard?” I asked, but my protector had not been watching. His horse had moved slightly ahead of mine, and he rode with his eyes fixed to the road ahead of us.
“Beg your pardon?”
“Sir Robert and Sir Ramiro each reached into his robe, drew something out, and threw it away. I haven’t the least idea what Robert discarded, but Ramiro’s was glass, I am sure.”
Bayard chuckled softly, murmured, “The old school.”
“I don’t understand.”
“An old Solamnic custom. When a Knight rides into battle, there is always the possibility he’ll be killed.”
“Of course.”
“If something were to happen to you, chances are there’s something on your person—something small, perhaps, but there nonetheless—that you’d rather your people not find when your body returns to them.”
“I see. And then what I saw …”
“Was our two older Knights discarding their vexations. I have no idea what Sir Robert cast aside, but Sir Ramiro’s was dwarf spirits.
“It always is.”
Deftly, quickly, Bayard’s hand flashed out from under his robe. Something small and glittering sailed through the air and into the rocks above the trail. I heard a metallic ring as something fell from rock to rock and finally settled and became still.
To this day I do not know what it was.
As we rode farther, the purple of the Khalkist Mountains rose gradually, mistily out of the eastern margins. Somewhere within those mountains lay Chaktamir, lay the pass, and when I first made them out on the horizon I thought again on the custom, of the prospect of my returning on a shield.
Yes, I had thought of it before, but always as some grand, dramatic scene out of the romances, in which everyone tore hair and wailed and apologized to my lifeless form for the injuries done me. My final return would be high theater, suitable punishment to Father for the lack of attention I received or perceived from my days in the moat house.
Now I thought of what I should discard—what it would be best if he never saw. It was between the gloves and the Calantina dice: the gloves ill-gotten, the dice smacking of eastern superstition, incantation, incense, and the sacrifice of birds.
It was a close call. For a moment I thought of discarding both, but I figured that would be excessive. Especially since I had absolutely no intention of returning to Coastlund, alive or dead.
I wondered what Enric Stormhold had cast away.
My aim had improved since the nightmarish time in the Vingaard Mountains. The dice skittered between the rocks, tumbling to rest somewhere in the high weeds that lined the path we followed.
It’s anyone’s guess what that final cast read.
CHAPTER 18
As we approached the Khalkist Mountains the grim signs of the Scorpion were everywhere. The rising ground was burned ahead of us—deliberately, not as if by wildfire or something natural and blind. Wide swaths of blackened earth lay in front of us, then land relatively untouched where the only sign of violation was the occasional dark, unrecognizable symbol freshly burned into the rocks rising from the borders of our trail.
It began to snow as we ascended the western inclines of the Khalkists. But even the snow would not settle on the scars of the foothill fires, as though the spots were still warm. As we reached the mountains proper, the mists descended and the snow receded behind us.
It was there that we saw the first of the pikes. They leaned on the eastern horizon like dark standards or banners, but something in the way they drooped—like thin branches laden with heavy fruit—caused us to rein in our horses, to come to a stop on the narrow road.
Bayard squinted eastward, shielding his eyes with a gloved hand. He turned to me, his face pale.
“I cannot see what they are,” he said, “but I have my suspicions.”
Before I could ask, he started toward the dark, slanting needles ahead of us. The severed heads on the ends of the pikes had been dead some time. It was the horses who knew them first, snorting and rearing. The mules sat on the trail and refused to budge; only a strong Sir Ramiro and a firm riding crop got them going again.
I can’t say that I blamed them. The dried and withered faces had sunken in upon the skulls. From the designs of the helmets—the kingfishers, the roses—I could tell that they once sat atop Solamnic shoulders.
“An old Nerakan strategy,” Ramiro explained, guiding his skittish animal around the first of the pikes. “A sign to your enemies to come no farther.”
“Have they been set here long?” Alfric asked apprehensively.
Ramiro did not answer as we filed along the path, winding between the grim warnings. But when his hand moved to the hilt of his sword, it was sign enough.
Perhaps the mist around us was thicker than we had thought. Perhaps knowing we had crossed into the mouth of the old Chaktamir Pass, scene of bloody history both noble and best forgotten, had set our thoughts to wandering. But none of these reasons could explain the castle and its sudden appearance.
It was as though the mist solidified, that at one moment the fog began to take on the substance of stone.
&
nbsp; Startled, Alfric brought his horse to a sudden stop, sliding in the frost and gravel. My mare and Brithelm’s mule piled into the horse from behind, and Bayard had to move Valorous deftly aside to avoid the tangle of horse, mare, mule, and Pathwarden, all limbs and eyes, looking up to the heights of the castle.
“This looks familiar,” Alfric ventured.
“Perhaps that’s because it’s drawn to the plans of Castle di Caela, boy,” Sir Robert snapped.
So it was.
It stood, a big gray castle, a huge tower at each corner of its large, rectangular courtyard. As the last reddening light of the sun struck the flag on the tall southwest tower, our eyes were drawn by the play of red and black in the castle standard.
Sable scorpion statant on a field gules.
A black scorpion on a red flag. Simple and bloody and daunting.
“The Scorpion’s Nest,” Sir Robert breathed. “We’re nearing the end of this.”
Sir Ramiro and Sir Robert reined in their horses beside us.
“It is. As I live and breathe, it is. Castle di Caela, stone for stone!” Robert exclaimed.
“ ‘Somehow those illusions have delivered him a castle,’ ” Bayard breathed, quoting something I should have remembered but could not. “How predictable of old Benedict, if Benedict it is, to model his castle, down to the very crenelations and to the mortar itself, upon the one castle he knows intimately, has known for over four hundred years.”
“It is an outrage,” Sir Robert stated.
“It is also not real, and therefore nothing to trouble yourself over, Robert,” soothed old Ramiro.
“And easy to find our way around,” Brithelm insisted. Everyone turned and looked at him.
He stood calmly amid the rocks, looking up at the castle as if he were a general taking stock of his siegecraft. He took his eyes from the castle and rested them on Sir Robert.
“Benedict’s had his eye on Castle di Caela for centuries. He knows it intimately. It’s no challenge for him to slip undetected through the halls of the keep, but we know Castle di Caela, too, and if the Scorpion’s copy resembles it more than outwardly, that resemblance is to our advantage. That is, when we’re inside.”
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