Oath and the Measure

by Michael Williams

  “And how, old girl, did you keep yourself so well over these days? How did—”

  It was then he looked around and saw that the castle gardens were green, that grass sprouted up thickly between the stones of the courtyard. The grazing had been plentiful. Bright green the foliage was, not the pale of new leaf.

  He had been in the castle for a week. He was sure of it. The first day of spring had no doubt come, or was at best a day or two away. Sturm thought back to the Yule banquet, to the Green Man’s stern warning that he keep the time of their appointment, and his thoughts spun with the dire possibilities.

  He would miss the time. And the tidings of his father, promised by Lord Wilderness, would go unheard, would remain unlearned … perhaps forever.

  At the thought of forever, a dull pain coursed through the lad’s shoulder, and with it a sudden panic. For had not Vertumnus promised even more deadly things if Sturm did not keep the appointment?

  “The wound would blossom, and its bloom would be deadly.”

  With no more thought of his comfort or of Luin’s, Sturm Brightblade leapt into the saddle. Through the courtyard he clattered, reining and coaxing the horse beneath him, and out into the Solamnic countryside, where the moon tricked the landscape and the guideposts for travelers were confusing.

  Over his shoulder, he cast one last look at Castle di Caela, the maternal house of his ancestry. Somehow it seemed insubstantial, a part of the mist that had brought him to its gates. As he rode farther, he could see the two large turrets. The largest one had housed the keep and the hall and the ghost of Sir Robert di Caela—about that one he was no longer curious. But behind that tower lay the other, the Cat Tower, in which his great-grandmother’s family had housed their eccentrics—sometimes their truly insane.

  A light burned in the topmost window of the Cat Tower, and holding the torch was a pale and elderly man, clad in ceremonial armor. Even at this distance, Sturm could make out the arms that adorned his breastplate.

  Red flower of light on a white cloud on a blue field.

  Boniface was not far behind him. Sturm’s escape from the keep had taken him by surprise as he nodded atop the southwestern bartizan, his pale eyes fixed idly upon the pale moon. He cursed softly, then cursed himself for cursing, as the lad climbed into the saddle and galloped off through the northern gate before he could descend from the walls and get to the stable himself.

  He hadn’t expected the resourcefulness of the lad, who must indeed bear Brightblade ingenuity, for how else could he have escaped a castle so tightly locked and sealed?

  Lord Boniface Crownguard smiled to himself, leading his horse from the stables and into the bailey. Gracefully he mounted, with the thoughtless skill of a cavalry officer, and blazed out after Sturm and Luin, the stallion beneath him dark and fluid on the moonlit plain.

  Soon, however, he slowed his horse to a canter. It was only a matter of time. After all, he had seen to the contingencies. From here to the Southern Darkwoods, it was a gauntlet of traps and snares. In fact, the next surprise was fast approaching.

  At a full gallop, Sturm and Luin charged north and east—or what Sturm thought was north and east—across the Solamnic Plains. The lad’s hopes sank further with every swell and irregularity on the horizon: Who would have thought Solamnia was so wide, so incomprehensibly vast?

  Sturm closed his eyes as the wind rushed by him. He would never belong to the Order now.

  Downcast, his panic at last subsiding, he slowed Luin to a canter. It was then a breeze passed over them from his left, carrying upon it the faint, muddy smell of the river.

  Encountering the castle had spun about his sense of direction. He had been traveling south, away from the ford and the road to Lemish. The edged green of the Solamnic grasslands had swallowed the green of Vertumnus’s road, and the lad had galloped for an hour, directionless across a directionless plain.

  Quickly Sturm reined Luin to a stop, stood up in the stirrups, and looked despairingly across the landscape ahead of him, bleak and featureless in all directions, save for a copse of evergreen here, a solitary vallenwood there.

  He thought of how, in this desolate spot, his failure and delay—perhaps even his death—would disappoint the Lords Gunthar and Boniface. He thought of Derek Crownguard’s gloating and mean joy. The other pages and squires would squawk and crow like a flock of ravens.…

  Where are the birds? That was it! Where are the birds?

  Sturm whirled and looked about him, his bafflement turning to a strange, rising hope. For this Solamnic spring, despite its warmth and greenery, was empty of birdsong. The plains were silent—as quiet as the death of winter.

  Sturm rose once more in the stirrups. At the edge of his sight, eastward toward the smell of the river, he saw more winter, and strangely more promise. For the green of the plains turned suddenly brown, and the mist hanging over the land was a winter’s mist that sunlight could not disperse.

  “It’s … it’s still winter!” Sturm exclaimed, slipping back into the saddle. Suddenly the music rose in front of him, brisk and alluring and drawing him on across the wintry plains. Jubilant, he spurred the mare beneath him, and off they went, barreling eastward at a full gallop.

  He smiled to himself. The adventure was only beginning.

  Luin surged beneath him, hurdling an ancient downed fence as they galloped through farmlands, through fallow pastures. Always the music lay before them, coaxing them onward, and behind them, the greens of spring returned suddenly to winter’s brown and ice-crusted landscape.

  Sturm laughed. It was easy from here. And so he was thinking when he felt the horse dip and stagger beneath him.

  They were lucky not to be injured, even killed. It was some alertness in Sturm that caused him to rein in quickly, with such authority that the mare slowed to a walk at once, then stopped. He scrambled down to her right rear hoof and examined the damage.

  It had been no accident. Experienced beyond his years at horsemanship, he could tell at once that someone had loosened a nail, perhaps more, so that any sustained gallop could throw the shoe.

  “Why not earlier?” he asked aloud as he walked the mare toward a copse of evergreen, looking for shelter from a wind that once again had become fierce and wintry. “We raced through fog together, away from … from whatever it was. Over far rougher ground than this. Why didn’t you throw the shoe then, Luin?”

  Unless …

  The lad shook his head. Someone had loosened the shoe at Castle di Caela. The same someone who had locked him in. Someone who was following him and trying to make him late.

  Sturm walked away the afternoon, grasping at possibilities, traveling vaguely eastward. Luin stepped gingerly behind him on a long tether, stopping occasionally to browse the dried grass. Just how the two of them would get to the Southern Darkwoods remained to be seen.

  The music that evening was almost a relief, rising from the emerald gloom of the copse ahead of them. Leading the mare at a walk behind him, Sturm drew his sword and trudged toward the stand of juniper and aeterna, his mind fixed on the solid and possible.

  It was not Vertumnus who played, as Sturm had hoped. Nevertheless, the girl who held the flute seemed almost as wild and gifted. Her almond eyes and slanted ears marked her as clearly elven, and the painted designs on her body were those of the Kagonesti.

  It was all Sturm knew of that elusive woodland people. For of all elves, the Kagonesti were the most secretive, and nowadays the most rare. Less organized, with a much less complex civilization than their Silvanesti and Qualinesti cousins, the Wild Elves lived in small bands or traveled alone through the forests and glades of Krynn. Sturm was surprised to see that one of them had settled herself long enough to play. He lowered his sword, crouched behind an aeterna bush, and watched her in wonder.

  The elf maiden sat in a clearing in the middle of the copse, cross-legged on the thatched roof of a little cabin, her dark hair awash in moonlight. She was wrapped in fur against the wind and the cold, but one leg st
retched forth, bare of white fox or ermine, painted with green swirls and helixes, brown and provocative. A silver flute was lifted to her lips, and she played a slow, stately melody.

  Hypnotized by green on brown, by the centripetal swirl of the paint, Sturm felt himself grow short of breath.

  Above the girl, the branches of evergreens swayed in the wind, then bent away gracefully, as though allowing the moonlight to shine on her for some mysterious, intricate purpose.

  Soon enough, as though she had called it there with her song, the moon appeared in the gap between the trees, shining directly down on her—or two moons, rather, for white Solinari in its radiant fullness sat overhead, awaiting Lunitari, its red sister, to join it at the sky’s absolute zenith. Slowly the red moon sailed into view as the girl played and the music filled the grove.

  Sturm found himself strangely touched in spite of the day’s hardship and accidents. There was a fathomless peace to this scene, as though all good things—beauty and health and virtue and purity—danced for a moment to the flute’s measure. There was something sad about it, too. Though he had only chanced upon the moment, Sturm knew that it would pass too suddenly and too soon, and that somehow he was not meant to be a part of it in the first place.

  Indeed, he was leaving, putting away his sword and turning back to the road ahead of him, when he saw the spiderweb.

  The strands were finger-thick and twenty feet long, its hub the size of Sturm’s shield, spoke and spiral stretching from tree to tree like an enormous fishnet draped over the clearing. Sturm lifted his sword. The spider who could spin such a thing must be dog-sized … man-sized … horse-sized. His shield high and ready, Sturm spun about, looking for the monster, but the web was empty except for dried leaves and the skeletal remains of ravens and squirrels. Crouching, the lad moved toward the clearing, bent on warning the girl.

  He was almost too late. There was the spider, bulbous and huge and mottled gray and white, its front legs arched above the heedless elf-maiden, who continued to play, her eyes closed, her dark hair swaying. Sturm cried out and sprang into the clearing.

  The music stopped at once. The girl looked at him with alarm. The spider leapt back, scuttling down the side of the cabin, its movements abrupt and blindingly quick. In an instant, it stood between Sturm and the girl, its forelegs raised as though ready to pounce, its long black fangs flashing and clacking.

  The thing was at least seven feet tall. Sturm didn’t tarry to measure. Deftly the lad rolled out of the way, crashing into a blue aeterna bush and losing his shield in the process. The spider leapt vainly behind him, its wicked fangs slashing at empty air.

  Behind the monster, the elf maiden leapt from the roof of the cottage and, scrambling and scuttling like a spider herself, vanished into the shadowy door of the hut.

  Bursting through to the other side of the bush, Sturm lifted his sword over his head, then slashed at the hurtling spider. The creature chittered wildly and sprang out of the way, grappling up a bare vallenwood to crouch in the low branches above the dodging boy. Down the spider leapt, and Sturm would have been crushed immediately had he not plunged forward, somersaulted into the side of the vallenwood trunk and, dazed and breathless, scrambled to his feet to paw the underbrush for his dropped sword. The spider approached, rocked back on its hind legs, and pounced forward viciously. But its fangs closed upon Angriff Brightblade’s breastplate, clashing harmlessly against the ornate bronze.

  With a cry, Sturm broke free of the spider’s grasp and, looking about him, noticed his sword lying only ten feet or so away. He raced for the sword, scooped it up in a swift, acrobatic movement, and rolled over the ground, springing at last to his feet with the blade leveled, pointed toward the spider …

  … who was no longer where he pointed. For in the midst of Sturm’s gymnastics, the spider had moved, clambered to a higher branch of the vallenwood, then hurtled out toward a leaning juniper, which it grasped, apelike, in its front two legs, then darted along a thick, extended branch, and dropped unceremoniously back on the roof of the cabin.

  With a cry, Sturm raced toward the cottage, slipping on undergrowth, stumbling over root and bush and bramble. The spider leapt over his head, landing lightly behind him, a thick viscid spiral raveling from its spinnerets. The lad was quick enough this time, stepping from the path of the silk and lunging toward the creature, sword extended.

  But again the spider was no longer there. Sturm looked about stupidly, then above, barely in time to dodge the monster as it dropped twenty feet in a murderous pounce. Running toward the juniper, the great net of the spider shimmering above him, Sturm raised his sword and slashed once, twice, a third time into the thick ropes of the web until a long strand fell, smooth and tough, into his gloved hand.

  “Now,” he muttered, turning to face the charging creature, “since sword and strength will not help me …”

  He turned and dove among the twitching legs of the spider, dragging the webbing with him. The fangs clacked over his head, and then he was out beyond the creature, two of its legs entangled in Sturm’s weaving. Immediately the lad drew the cord taut around a tree and turned again, scrambling beneath the monster once more. A fang brushed his back harmlessly, and he rolled clear of the spider, tugging the web strand taut behind him.

  Five of its legs mired and tied now, the spider toppled onto the forest floor, scattering dust and leaves as it thrashed angrily. Its cry was like the whir of cicadas, deafening and shrill. Sturm slipped out of his glove, leaving it stuck to the filament, raised his sword, and marched over to the snared beast. Triumphantly he raised the blade …

  … and the elf maiden poked her head out of the door of the cottage and shrieked in horror.

  “No!” she shouted. “Stay your hand, human!”

  Dumbstruck, Sturm stepped back from the creature, lowering the sword. In fury, the girl slipped from the hut and rushed across the clearing, her dark almond eyes ablaze.

  “Untie the poor thing, you scoundrel!”

  Sturm couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Untie him, I said! Or by Branchala …”

  She drew her knife. Instinctively Sturm raised his shield, but she was by him in a breath, kneeling by the monster, whittling frantically at the web strands that bound it.

  “I … I don’t …” Sturm began, but the elf flashed him a look of such withering rage and hatred that he stopped trying to explain. He stood above her awkwardly, watching her hack and saw at the web. Finally, reluctantly, he knelt beside her, setting the blade of his broadsword against the coarse and stringy cords.

  After a minute or so, the spider was free. Wobbily it stood, as though just awakening or just being born. Sturm watched it cautiously, sword low and shield raised, but the thing staggered, gibbered, and raced off into the copse, a strange, gulping sound in its cry, almost as if it were weeping. Completely confused, Sturm watched as the creature vanished into the cedars and pines and laricks, trailing one damaged leg.

  “What—” he began, but he never finished the sentence. The elf maiden’s slap caught him utterly, completely off guard.

  “How dare you burst into my clearing with sword and mayhem!” she exclaimed, then raised her hand to strike the lad again. Sturm staggered back from her.

  “I thought you were in danger,” he explained, flinching as again the girl moved suddenly. This time, however, she merely brushed back her dark hair, and sorrow vied with anger in her face.

  “You fool of a boy,” she said quietly. “You had no idea what you were doing, did you?”

  Sturm said nothing. With a weak, melancholy smile, the elf maiden pointed to the heavens.

  “Look above you,” she said. “What do you see?”

  “A gap in the trees,” Sturm replied uncertainly. “The night sky. The two moons …”

  His head reeled as she slapped him again.

  “ ‘The two moons’ is right, you dolt! You rash, callow, dwarf-brained excuse for a swordsman!”

  The elf reeled
, clutching against the bark of a vallenwood for support.

  “Two moons,” she said more calmly, “who join in the winter sky under the sign of Mishakal … how often, would you say?”

  “I am no astronomer, lady,” Sturm confessed. “I know not how often.”

  “Oh, only every five years or so,” the girl said, her teeth clenched and her glittering eyes fixed on the lad in scarcely controllable anger. “Every five years, at which time a specific tune, in the ninth mode of Branchalan harmonies, played by a musician three years in the learning of its intricacies, may be used to undo the magic of druids and wizards.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sturm said, backing away as the girl took one aggressive stride toward him.

  “You don’t understand,” she repeated coldly, flipping the knife in her hand, blade to hilt to blade. “The song undoes enchantment, lifts curses, restores the transmogrified.”

  “Transmogrified?”

  “Those who have been changed into spiders!” the girl bellowed and launched the knife past Sturm’s ear. He stood confounded, motionless, the dagger trembling in a bare oak some twenty feet behind him. Strands of hair, neatly sliced from below his ear, settled on his shoulder.

  “At the one worst moment in five years,” the elf said, “you came upon this clearing. And in doing so, you have assured that Cyren of the House Royal in Silvanost, descendant of kings and lord of my heart, shall scramble alone in webs, eight-legged and six-eyed, eating vermin and offal for the next half a decade until white Solinari and red Lunitari, each on its separate path, sail through the whole forsaken sky, past fixed and movable stars, and converge again!”

  “I’m … I’m …” Sturm began, but the words had fled to the treetops.

  “No apologies,” the girl said, her smile glittering and crooked as Solinari drifted behind the swaying junipers and the clearing was left in the red, ominous light of Lunitari. “No apologies, please, for I’ve still half a mind to kill you.”