Oath and the Measure

by Michael Williams

  Evanthe called for her, and the smaller nymph turned elegantly and raced into the forest, the branches of aeterna she had touched erupting in white and golden blossoms.

  Of course, neither Vertumnus nor Jack Derry, who stood in the clearing above the ministering druidess, saw the ancientness of the woman in front of them. Hollis knelt gracefully over the wounded lad, her flawless features knit with concern.

  “Can you save him, Mother?” Jack Derry asked, and the woman lifted her eyes.

  “You’ve done well to bring him to me this quickly,” she observed. “You have done your part well, Son. Now is your father’s part, and my own.”

  “You have found peace from the lightning, then?” Jack asked, his voice thick with concern.

  “There are times,” replied the druidess, “when the law bows down to the spirit and the heart. The treant will mend and the law survive.”

  She smiled at Jack and returned to the lad. Over Sturm she hovered, spreading out her arms so that her cloak encircled him. “Bring forth the owl first,” she whispered.

  The bird blinked and hopped comically from Vertumnus’s shoulder, and spreading its wings, it glided silently through the clearing to a perch in the branches above the unconscious youth.

  “Now,” Hollis breathed, and Vertumnus lifted the flute to his lips. Carefully at first, then more and more playfully and recklessly, he followed the song of the owl with a tune of his own, his fingers flickering over the stops of the instrument. Hollis lifted a yellow, spongy mass of lichen to the nose of the sleeping lad, and in the air above Vertumnus, a strange swirl of mist and light resolved itself into a blue sign of infinity as the first of the three dreams passed over Sturm, and the healing began.

  He dreamt that he lay in the mist-covered branches of an oak.

  Sturm breathed deeply and frowned. He looked around for Vertumnus, for Ragnell or Mara or Jack Derry. But he was alone, and even from this lofty vantage point, a good forty feet from the floor of the forest, he could see nothing but green and mist.

  Dressed in green, he was, in a tunic woven of leaves and grass.

  Something told him this was not the Darkwoods.

  “Even more,” he whispered, “something tells me I have not wakened.”

  Quickly he said the Eleventh and Twelfth Devotions, those that guarded the sayer against ambush in the country of dreams, and descended the tree cautiously, his eyes on the shifting ground below. Halfway down, at a safe but uncomfortable height, he dangled from a thick, sturdy branch, then let himself go, trusting in the odd physical safety of dreams.

  He was right. Buoyed by a warm wind, he floated onto dried grass and aeterna needles as though he had descended through water. To his astonishment, he was dressed once more in his hereditary armor, carrying his shield and sword.

  “What is the lesson in this?” he asked aloud. For the ancient philosophers said that dreams answered questions. Quickly Sturm looked for omens—for the kingfisher that presages a rise to the Order, for the Sword or the Crown.

  “Green,” he concluded, sitting heavily at the foot of the oak tree. “Naught but green and green upon green.”

  He propped his chin in his hands, and suddenly a horse whickered from behind a thick stand of juniper. Instantly alert, his sword drawn against monster and adversary, against all stealers of dreams, Sturm moved like a wind toward the sound … and the branches moved past him and through him, and he did not feel them pass.

  He stood at the edge of a clearing dominated by a pair of tall hewn rock towers. The walls around the daunting black stone structures formed an equilateral triangle, at each corner of which a small tower sprouted like a menacing black hive.

  “Wayreth!” Sturm whispered hoarsely. “The Towers of High Sorcery!” To which, it was written, one could come only if invited.

  “But why?” Sturm asked. “Why am I set in this country of wizards?”

  He heard the voices then, saw Caramon and Raistlin ride out of the trees and stop unsteadily before the towers, their roan horses dancing skittishly. They were at a distance, and it was impossible to hear them, or to see the looks on their faces, for that matter. But a low, soft voice murmured in Sturm’s ear, as though it read from a high romance, from a saga or ancient tale.

  He whirled about and faced Lord Wilderness, who pointed back to the Tower, the twins, and continued the story.

  “The fabled Towers of High Sorcery,” Raistlin said in awe.

  The tall stone towers resembled skeletal fingers, clawing out of the grave.

  Cautiously, reluctantly, Sturm turned back to the dream scene unfolding to Vertumnus’s narration. When Lord Wilderness spoke, Sturm saw Caramon and Raistlin move their mouths to the words of the Green Man.

  “We could turn back now,” Caramon croaked, his voice breaking.

  Raistlin looked at his brother with astonishment.

  Raistlin turned to Caramon. Sturm shook his head violently, struggling to clear it of cobwebs and dreams and dark, insinuating words.

  For the first time since he could remember, Vertumnus continued, Raistlin saw fear in Caramon. The young conjurer felt an unusual sensation, a warmth spreading over him. He reached out and put a steady hand on his brother’s trembling arm. “Do not be afraid, Caramon,” Raistlin said. “I am with you.”

  Caramon looked at Raistlin, then laughed nervously to himself. He urged his horse forward.

  Mechanically, as though guided by the words, Caramon and Raistlin turned, spoke, and then, as Vertumnus told the rest of the story, Raistlin stepped inside and vanished, leaving a shivering Caramon behind at the tower gates.

  Sturm’s heart went out to Caramon, alone at the edge of the mystery. In his twin’s absence, half of the big warrior lay buried in shadow, and there was something unsubstantial about those broad shoulders and thick arms.

  “He’s … he’s like a worn banner!” Sturm whispered, and beside him, Vertumnus resumed the story. Eventually Raistlin walked from the tower into the dreamlight, and Caramon rose to greet him. It was no longer Raistlin, but a young man twisted and submerged and broken who raised his hands, pointed his thumbs toward his approaching brother … and …

  Magic coursed through his body and flamed from his hands. He watched the fire flare, billow, and engulf Caramon.

  Sturm cried out and shielded his eyes. It couldn’t be! Nor could it be prophecy! Raistlin and Caramon were in Solace. Nothing would send them to Wayreth, if Wayreth would even have them.

  And Raistlin. Raistlin would never …

  Vertumnus’s hand rested on his shoulder.

  “Do not be afraid, Sturm,” Vertumnus whispered, clutching Sturm’s arm. “I am with you. Do not hide from me.”

  Sturm pulled away from Lord Wilderness, whose grip became more insistent, more painful.

  “Do you understand, Sturm?” Vertumnus whispered, and his breath smelled of cedar. “Do you understand now?”

  Then Sturm felt himself rising. The branches parted at his ascent, and suddenly he was borne on a cool, fresh breeze into the autumn sky, where the blue sign of infinity twinkled above him, and he fell into bright, dreamless slumber.

  “Now we send him the second dream,” Hollis urged, brushing her dark hair from her dark face. “For the boy will live now. Of that I am assured. He has risen from the thickets of death, and he will live now. The ravens will decide how he does so.”

  The ravens had circled overhead throughout the first song and infusion, boding softly. Now the three birds settled ominously on the overhanging branches of an enormous vallenwood. As large as small dogs, they were, and they croaked their song dryly, as though reluctant to sing at all. Hollis lifted another herb, a gray lotus flower this time, to the lips of the lad, and he shivered at the touch and taste of it. For a moment, it seemed that a horned battle-axe hovered above Sturm, preparing to descend with indifference upon the guilty or innocent. In this menacing light, Sturm dreamed the second dream, caught in the ravens’ music.

  This time he was in the High
Clerist’s Tower, on the battlements overlooking the courtyard.

  Sturm floated above the soldiers in the smoke of the campfires. For there were soldiers camped in the tower, huddled close behind the sheltering walls against winter and snow and something … something outside those walls, waiting.

  It was all the sieges Sturm had ever imagined. He swallowed nervously and floated from fire to fire, borne on the rising smoke from the flames.

  The soldiers were infantry, commoners. Some wore the badges of Uth Wistan, some of MarKenin, some of Crownguard, of all things. All wore the badges of a beaten army. They were soggy from the snow, and their eyes were dull and furtive. The Knights strode through them like herdsmen, and not a word passed between Knight and soldier.

  “What is it?” Sturm called down to one of the Knights. “What has … has Neraka …”

  Unhearing, the Knight turned toward him and stared through him. It was Gunthar Uth Wistan, almost unrecognizable beneath gray hair and beard.

  Whatever had come to pass, the battle must have aged him ten years. Suddenly the sound fled the courtyard, carrying away the murmur of armies, the crackle of fire, the clank and clatter of readying weapons, and a familiar voice rose beside him.

  Vertumnus stood on the battlements—in Brightblade armor, of all things! He was wild and disheveled, almost a leafy version of Angriff Brightblade, and Sturm started at the resemblance. Lord Wilderness pointed to the courtyard and again began to recite, his voice soft and haunted.

  As he spoke, a desolate column of troops mustered by the gates. A grizzled sergeant at the head of the column looked up to the battlements, his eyes meeting Sturm’s as Vertumnus recited the bleak, inevitable story.

  They looked diminished, frail in their armor and swords and pikes as they assembled, stamped the cold from their feet, and fell into line behind the mounted Knights. I could single out Breca in the foremost column, standing a head taller than those around him, and once, I believe, he glanced up to where I was standing, the flatness of his eyes apparent even from a distance, even despite the shadows of the wall and the dark air of the morning. And perhaps because of that darkness, there was no expression I could see on his face, but there is an expression I remember …

  For if an expression could be featureless, void of fear and of dread and finally of hope, containing if anything only a sort of resignation and resolve, that was Breca’s expression and those of his companions, saying ‘This is not what I imagined but worse than I expected,’ and nothing more than that when the doomed gates opened.…

  “Do not be afraid, Sturm,” Vertumnus whispered, his eyes wheeling like moons struck from orbit. “I am with you. Do you understand, Sturm? Do you understand now?”

  “I … I think so,” Sturm said to the glittering stare of Lord Wilderness. “It is … that even the Oath and Measure can be betrayed by … by madness.”

  “No,” Vertumnus said, his voice a whisper in Sturm’s thoughts. “That’s not all of it.” He smiled again, this time more wickedly. “You see … the Oath and Measure are the madness!”

  Vertumnus seized Sturm by the shoulders and turned him to face the assembling army below him. “Those are the ones the Measure kills,” he whispered insistently as the soldiers stirred uneasily, shifting their weights and weapons. “That is the blood upon which your honor floats, those the bones upon which your Code is raised. This huge Solamnic game is always with us, as simple and poisonous as our own proud hearts!”

  Spoken like a madman, Sturm thought, and he fell from the dream into an unsettling blackness. Sturm would never know how long he slept.

  “Well enough,” the druidess announced.

  The afternoon had passed into evening. In the distance, the forest was loud with the call and response of nocturnal animals, and above the clearing, the first stars were shining, green in the harp of Branchala, and red Sirrion floated like a burning galleon into the vault of the sky.

  Hollis looked up at Vertumnus, her face even younger than when the healing had begun. “He has survived the first two dreams. The third is easy, if he has the will and the stomach for it.”

  “None of them is easy, Hollis,” Vertumnus replied with a curious smile. “You are not Solamnic, so the Dream of Choosing seems simpler than the others. It is actually the most painful.”

  In the distance, the lark lifted its voice. Hollis nodded serenely and touched Sturm’s eyelids with a double-bloomed rose—one blossom red, the other as green as a leaf. Vertumnus began to play his flute, and as he did, silver Solinari drifted over the clearing, spangling the leaves of the vallenwood and of the oak, the holly in the hair of the druidess, and the green locks of Lord Wilderness.

  Chapter 20

  The Last of the Dreaming

  ———

  The birdsong was shrill and insistent about him—jay and sparrow, the tilting sound of the robin, and loud above all the larksong that haunted his ears when he moved and the singing died.

  Sturm sat up and looked around. He was where they had carted him, as best he could reconstruct from his fevered, fitful moments of waking. The pool was there, and the oak, and the grassy, sunstruck clearing, but Vertumnus and his party were all gone—no Jack Derry nor dryad nor druidess. Sturm lay alone at the foot of the oak, his armor and sword beside him, neatly arranged, so that it seemed like a husk or abandoned cocoon.

  He reached over and touched the breastplate. The bronze kingfisher was unnaturally warm, green with verdigris and neglect, as though the armor had lain there for some time. Pensive, Sturm pulled the shield toward him, blinking at the dust-muted sun on its dented boss.

  Suddenly someone coughed behind him. He started at the noise, spinning about.

  Ragnell stood at the edge of the clearing, her dark eyes fixed on him.

  “Y-You!” Sturm exclaimed, reaching for his sword. He checked himself at once. She was, after all, an old woman, and the Measure forbade—

  “My intentions are peaceful,” Ragnell announced. “Peaceful but instructive.”

  “I … I must have been wounded,” Sturm explained as the light hurt his eyes and the clearing swam and rocked. “I must have … must have been …”

  Ragnell nodded. “Seven nights,” she said. “A week you have slumbered. And there were dreams, I trust. Momentous dreams of things to come, which you might call prophecy but I should call augury …”

  Her words confused him, but her voice was slow and insinuating. It twined into Sturm’s thoughts with the subtlety of weeds and overgrowth, until he wasn’t sure whether he was thinking the words or she was saying them. He shook his head, trying to dislodge her voice, and when that failed, he tried to stand.

  “I’m wounded still,” he said, his voice dry and breathless.

  “Of course you are, Sturm Brightblade,” the druidess replied, her tanned and wrinkled face expressionless. “The thorn is still with you, deep in your shoulder, next to your heart.” Ragnell watched him intently. “Look at your hands,” she commanded.

  Sturm did as she said, and he gasped at the sight. Green raced through his veins. His fingernails, too, were green. His hands were dark and leathery, like those of Lord Wilderness.

  “What …” he began, but Ragnell’s voice rose irresistibly from the back of his head, spreading over his thoughts like thick, entangling vines.

  “He awoke …” the voice began, and the clearing dissolved in mist, leaving nothing but the woman and the shimmering water and the night. Suddenly the white moon rose behind her, its light a thin corona about her green, billowing robes, reflecting like fox fire over the surface of the pool. Sturm reeled in dismay, knowing at last that he still dreamt.

  The wound in his shoulder stained his tunic green, then violet, then a deep and abiding black as the sap streamed and settled. Speechless, he looked at his hands. Instead of paling with the loss of blood or sap or whatever flowed from his shoulder, they now burned with a bright green that passed into iridescence.

  Ragnell’s countenance changed as she approached h
im steadily. From a wizened old woman, villainous and sly, she became a creature of great beauty—dark hair and dark skin and dark eyes in a dazzlement of darkness, and she smiled with such gentleness that his heart was touched. He fell to his knees, yearning to be with her, whether to be loved as a child or a man he was not sure.

  This is a temptation, he thought, looking at the soft lines of her breasts through the green robes. Sent from the Green Man, it is. A trap. I am supposed to … to …

  I do not know what I am supposed to do, except deny her.

  The air smelled of cedar, and somewhere beyond the night and moonlight and reflections, there returned the sound of the flute.

  Perhaps this is the last allurement, Sturm thought. Perhaps Vertumnus waits beyond this dream, and at last the search will be over.

  The woman stopped and drew back her hand. She folded her arms upon her breasts and her lips moved, mouthing words that passed through Sturm’s thoughts and imaginings. But he couldn’t say that he heard them, nor was it Ragnell’s voice that spoke them, but a deeper voice now, a voice familiar and yet just beyond the grasp of his memory.

  A man’s voice, it was, and it conjured something to do with snow and midnight and urgent departures.

  Sturm opened his tunic and looked at the wound in his shoulder. The thorn had worked its way near his breastbone, deep and barbed and ugly. He saw with a start that it was moving even further. It would soon sink beyond sight and retrieval into his darkest interior, where it would do its last, irreparable damage.

  Ragnell leaned forward and touched the gash. Sturm cried out and pushed her hand away.

  “No!” he cried out. “This forest has wounded me enough! You have done great damage—to me, to the Order, and to my father in the siege of Castle Brightblade!”

  The druidess shook her head slowly and smiled. “Many were the Knights of Solamnia who fell in that … ‘rebellion,’ as you call it. But your father was a decent man and not one of the ones I killed.”