Enid had seen the memoirs in question and could quote them in their entirety: "I was born in the house of my fathers," they went.
Meanwhile, the quills, ink, and papers, purchased in monumental volume six months before when the old man handed over control of the castle, were stacked head high on his desk, gathering webs and dust.
At least he was seldom embarrassing before sunset.
Rumor had it around the castle-and even Bayard had come to believe this-that the streak of "distraction" that ran in the di Caela family had run after Sir Robert and caught him brilliantly.
"Sooner or later, Enid," Bayard claimed of late, "your father will fancy he is some sort of reptile or amphibian. The next thing we know, we shall be calling him down from sunning on the battlements or murking around in the moat."
Enid replied that all her father was really missing was a sense of something to do-a place at the heart of the castle.
To which Bayard answered, "'Something to do' is not always there for the taking." He would sigh or grumble then and throw his supper to the very fat dogs.
Enid fingered the pendant at her throat. Once a thing of dangerous magic in the hands of the Scorpion, now an artifact of the old di Caela curse, it had been rescued from the collapsing Scorpion's Nest high in the Pass of Chaktamir. Rescued by her father, on the gods knew what kind of impulse-perhaps as a trophy, perhaps as an heirloom, perhaps to remind him how his days were once occupied.
Gold and large and pentagonal, it had a corner for each of the ancient elements: earth, air, fire, water, and memory. The elements that the learned now tell us are no more elemental than grass or light or the bulging dogs under the tables.
The pendant almost killed her once, which was another story. Now, drained of its magic, it was ornamental, ceremonial, bearing no power but the power of remembrance.
Already some were forgetting that it had been magic to begin with.
Some of the Knights Enid knew by reputation only. Sir Brandon Rus was a distant cousin, a young man of twenty-two or — three. He was traveling alone on his first quest, far from his mother's encampments in the Virkhus Hills. Throughout Solamnia, Brandon had won. a reputation as a hunter. If the stories were true, his arrows were said to have missed only twice in the last seven years. Once (or so it goes) the wild shot missed the deer at which the lad had aimed, only to pass neatly through an assassin lurking in the bushes behind the animal.
The other time was much earlier. Indeed, according to some stories, it never happened. Brandon himself maintained he had missed only once. Nonetheless, some stories said twice.
Looking at Sir Brandon, Enid conceded that, given her father and her distant cousin, she was hardly the one to accuse the Pathwardens of quirky family ties. Though there was nothing objectional about Sir Brandon, he seemed just a little too taken with lore. There was nothing all that wrong with insisting on "thees" and "thous" in the old forms of address, or on the complex series of salutes with which Solamnic Knights of old greeted one another. Nothing, that is, except that none of the other Knights saw the point in going through the whole entangled ritual, and most of the younger knights had quite forgotten when to bow, if they ever really knew in the first place.
Brandon, on the other hand, lived for the history and ceremony of the Order. In the first night of his stay at Castle di Caela, he had buried them all in amenities and protocols. The morning was not much better.
Indeed, the boy must have known every legend about every Knight, for he told Enid half of them over a long, mortally boring breakfast, droning on about Huma and Vinas Solamnus while Enid's cousin Dannelle stood behind him, poured tea, and made faces at her over his shoulder.
So he continued, bludgeoning the guests with his talk, until even Bayard was ducking into dark corridors to avoid him.
Sir Robert had finally quieted the boy by asking him if he were the new dance instructor.
It was good that her father had done this before the other guests arrived. Sir Andrew would have thrashed the boy for his simple "damned eastern prissiness."
Now Brandon sat subdued at the main table, sober and bleak despite his conversation and bright tunic and polished breastplate.
He was like a castle chaplain without religion.
He was removed as far as possible from Sir Robert di Caela (who, it was rumored, had whispered threats against the young man's life). Brandon amused himself in a long discussion of lore with Gileandos, the Pathwarden tutor- Gileandos, whom Sir Robert once called "the most thoroughly educated fool on the planet." Enid tried not to listen to what they were saying, but Gileandos had lost much of his hearing in an accident the year before, when an alembic in his room exploded too near his left ear. Both he and Brandon were rather loud. Their discussion was obscure, almost gnomish, ranging over the little-known achievements of great Solamnic Knights in the past, over the magical properties of the weapons they carried, the armor they wore, the orbs and staves and wands they found on their way.
Brandon, it seemed, had to reach back a thousand years to find a magic he believed in.
And yet the young Knight was all too ready to give credence to the fooleries of Gileandos, who had already made sizable progress with the carafe of wine placed at his right hand. Gileandos, it was said, had explained away the high winds out of the Vingaards as "a quite natural atmospheric inclemency, the release of heat into upper regions where, reacting against the icy air above the timber line, it produces the… urgencies that confront us now."
Enid had paid no attention to her own childhood science instruction, but she remembered enough about weather prediction-learned from the simple act of arranging her father's hunts-to know that Gileandos was an imbecile.
For it took an imbecile to try to pluck the heart from the mystery in the mountains, as though some kind of explanation, no matter how foolish it was, could shield us from un-explainable danger.
Enid knew the old story that magic is inherited-that a child is born with insight, with an ear for the language of plants or a touch that can boil water or draw down a bird from the air. She wondered if this inherited magic thinned out from one generation to the next. It would explain a lot, she thought, if each family were given a measure of enchantment that watered down or grew scarce as it passed on from father to son, uncle to nephew. Unto a time when it ceased, when it dried up, and the young no longer had visions.
Yet there was also the young man to be knighted this evening, and he promised much despite his turn toward waywardness and contrivance. There is vision now and then, though most of it occurs in unexpected places, sometimes among those whom the tradition-bound Solamnic Order thought it could better do without.
Of all the sober company spread about the hall, only one was not restless, only one not unraveled by time and idleness.
Or so Enid believed.
To the left of Sir Brandon sat Sir Ramiro of the Maw, Enid's beloved "Uncle" Ramiro, busy with port and pheasant and paying court to Enid's cousin Dannelle di Caela, who had other things on her mind, Enid was sure. For the young man whose knighthood commenced tonight had led Cousin Dannelle a terrible chase. Just when it appeared that she had his eye, his attention, his… fonder instincts… then the stories would arise again from downstairs. The scullery maid, the baker's daughter, every other female crying foul.
"Everyone" included that most distant cousin, Marigold Celeste. The youngest daughter of Sir Jarden of Kayolin, she had cut a wide and scandalous swath through her father's mountain holdings until the old man, beside himself with outrage and as generally unfit to father a daughter as any Solamnic Knight, had given her the choice of "instruction among the lowland brothers" or the swift edge of a sword.
Marigold was dissolute but not stupid. Her father's decree put her on the road to Castle di Caela at once, her bags stuffed with cosmetics and cheeses and her hair sculpted and lacquered in the form of a gable to keep off the rain. The sympathetic reception she received from the ladies of the court began to cool when she entangled hersel
f with the first available guardsman, then ranged heroically from guard to dueling instructor to seneschal, exhausting them one by one and finally settling on a lad sturdy enough to bear the full weight of her intentions-the very lad that stood to be knighted this evening.
She sat over there, at the farthest point in the hall from the Lady Dannelle. Her yellow hair, the various arrangements of which had made her notorious throughout Solamnia, was braided tightly, knotted in a surprisingly modest bun atop her head as though she were carrying bread to market. And there was something bucolic about Marigold-the heftiness, the shoulders as broad as a man's, and yet the strange allure she had for any hapless male who floated into her undertow.
Marigold smiled and batted her eyes foolishly. By now most of the castle knew the stories. If only one of them was true, Enid maintained, then the young man had a lot of answering to do-not to mention a lot of energy and stamina.
Meantime, her poor cousin Dannelle waited.
Undaunted by the difference in their ages and by Dannelle's most obvious lack of interest, Sir Ramiro leaned his three hundred pounds flirtatiously toward the trim redheaded girl, who smiled and nodded…
… and ignored him entirely, her eyes on the double doors across the room.
So all of them are assembled, Enid thought, leaning back in her chair, her brown eyes scanning the room wearily.
All except for Brithelm, Sir Andrew's second son, who was north and west somewhere, lost in the mountains and in meditation, no doubt.
Enid remembered his dazed countenance-the shock of mousy hair scattered as though he had been struck by lightning, the red robe often worn backward, sometimes inside out.
She hoped he was above the brush fires. And below the lightning.
He probably was, knowing Brithelm. For all the wrong reasons, and through no design of his own. Still, his absence was unfortunate. Some of his graciousness was needed here, his humor and kindness and even his foolishness.
In its idleness, the world was downright gloomy and worrisome.
Enid smiled as Bayard entered the room, as the other Knights stood in respect to the lord of Castle di Caela, as the trumpets joined the sad melody of the viola.
That is why the music and the standing and the gestures and the fine dress, she thought. To charm the world out of worry for a night.
To remind us of our purposes.
Her husband approached, sat to her right, and removed his left gauntlet to take her hand under the table. It was times like these in which she forgave the broken crockery, the dog runs in the Great Hall, the drunken dwarf she found asleep in her bathtub, his stubby arms wrapped around an enormous smoked ham.
She looked at Bayard, whose stumbling and rough manners and moments of swordplay in the midst of his visitors only proved he was right: "Something to do" is not always there for the taking.
But tonight there was something to do. It was time for the crown of the ceremony, for the boy's entrance. If all had gone according to plan and ritual, Galen Pathwarden Brightblade would be waiting outside the double doors for the sound of the drum. He would be standing there, on the threshold of manhood.
The drum began, and all heads turned to the doorway. The drum continued.
And continued.
Bayard cast a troubled look at his wife, who betrayed a hint of a smile and shook her head.
"Now where is he?" Bayard whispered.
"A lesson for both of us, dearest," Enid whispered back. "You cannot control the drought or the fires in the mountains. Galen is cut from the same stuff. A natural phenomenon. There is no plan or ceremony…"
"… can bring him to the right place at the right time," Bayard snapped, a little loudly.
Gileandos turned toward the head of the table, his face stern with disapproval until he saw that it was the lord of the manor snapping.
A sentry's head appeared in the doorway, frowned, and shook. Something rattled loudly in his helmet.
"Almost a Solamnic Knight, but at heart and at best still a damned weasel," Bayard muttered, setting down his cup. He rose to his feet, trying his best to look perturbed, but he smiled faintly as he walked toward the still double doors. All of which Enid noticed. She stifled a laugh and signaled to the page to begin a search through the castle.
She hoped Galen would be found soon. Not for the ceremony or the Order, necessarily. Certainly not so that one more posturing and privileged young man could bluster about in new armor.
But because Galen Pathwarden rode with the promise of unruliness. "Something to do" was always the strong suit of the Weasel.
Chapter II
"And now the lad," the Namer continued, turning the strand of glittering metal in his hand. "The young man on the edge of knighthood. Around him the whole story turns, and in him the shards and fragments of the other tales are brought together, reassembled, and made whole. Now I can hear him, saying…"
They didn't have to search all that far.
Bayard found me up in my chambers, the obvious and most sensible place to look. Tonight, after all, was the Night of Reflections: the final, solitary soul-searching that a Knight must undergo before they lay on the hands and give him the sword and gauntlets of the Order.
Just three years ago, I would have used this as a chance to escape all the rites and responsibilities. I would have tunneled from sight, become absent in the unfathomed dark of the castle before Bayard lit the torch to guide him down the corridor from the Great Hall.
That was three years ago, when I was the Weasel.
Now, by the gods, I was keen set on passing for Sir Galen Pathwarden, for joining the lot of them-Father, Bayard, Sir Robert di Caela, and the others. But it must have seemed as though my natural bent and the soft life of Castle di Caela had betrayed me at the last moment.
For Bayard found me sprawled on the chamber floor beside a damaged table, surrounded by my belongings. The wind, not as fierce as it had been the night before but stormy and strong nonetheless, dove under the shuttered window and raised tapestry, blanket, and cape around me in billows, until it must have looked as though I had set sail once more on the currents of cowardice.
I swear that was not the story at all. After all, there is a long history of even the bravest men swooning and fainting and losing their balance when the visions come upon them.
I must have cut a striking figure-a young man of almost twenty years, facedown on a shattered dressing table, basin and towels and accessories littering the floor around me. Dressed only in a green tunic and a Solamnic breastplate, I am sure that I looked like some awkward creature such as a sow bug or a grub-some crusty thing whose business lay deep underground.
I had embarked on the Night of Reflections in all good faith. That very morning I had hastened to the di Caela treasury-the room from which old Sir Robert still mismanaged the funds of estate and holdings-and there, accompanied by two stern old geezers seated at the counting table, who must have seen the Cataclysm firsthand, I willingly gave over my earthly valuables.
"Gladly I give for the good of the Order," I began, fighting
every impulse that my past could muster. "For the good of the Order, gladly I give."
I could imagine the Weasel-myself three short years ago-looking over my shoulder and gaping, his faculties lost at the prospect of surrendering all cash and all ornament.
But I was a new man, all genuine and Solamnic and noble. Three years of instruction under Bayard Brightblade had seen to that. For despite your better judgment, despite your firm convictions that your skin is there to be saved at all costs, the constant discipline of riding until you cannot sit at table, and swordsmanship until your forearms shiver when you pick up a ladle-not to mention reading nearly twenty ponderous volumes on the Solamnic Measure- tends to thin your discretion to the point that honor and duty sound good to you.
The thought occurred to me that I had passed beyond recall when I set my coins, my naming ring, and a dozen other items of value onto the table between the distinguished Sir Elaza
r and the equally distinguished Sir Fernando. The old knights looked at my offering skeptically. No doubt they were unaware that Bayard had been there before them, ordering me two years ago to give all but my essential belongings to the peasants in the surrounding holdings.
I was sure that Fernando, who kept almost all of his youthful bulk (though he kept it somewhat lower now), was prepared to turn me upside down and rattle me for whatever valuables I might have hidden on my person.
"This… this is all?" he asked, his gray, bushy eyebrows bunching together like mating squirrels.
"All indeed, sir, except for one trophy of squirehood and my armor," I answered. As it had for the last six months or so, the truth felt surpassingly good in my voice.
Evidently it was less comfortable in Fernando's ears.
"'Tis just as Sir Robert warned us," he said to Sir Elazar as the two old fellows launched into discussion, as unconcerned by my presence as if I were a footstool or a slight change in the outside weather. "The Weasel here would hold back whole estates from the Order, given a place to hide them and a nodding treasurer."
"I beg your pardon, sirs, but-"
"Nobody asked you to speak, lad," Sir Elazar interrupted, calmly but sternly, sifting through my belongings with a gloved hand. "And what, pray tell, is this 'squirehood trophy' of which you speak so… reluctantly?"
"I had not noticed my… reluctance, as you call it, sir. The trophy is a simple brooch, set with glain opals given to me by the Scorpion himself as payment for betraying Bayard Brightblade, lord of this castle and the Knight I have served with some dignity, I believe, in the past several years."
"If such is the case, Weas-Galen, why then do you choose to keep these stones?" Elazar probed, his blue eyes flickering as they scanned my face for lies.
I knew it well, that flicker and scan. At one time or another, I had seen it on every face from my father's to the lovely Dannelle's. On Bayard himself, many times I had seen the look of mistrust. It had come with the territory, and those who complained of my bad swordsmanship and my paltry skills with the lance tended to forget that every time I had taken up weapons in the last year, I had fought both my opponent in the lists and old Weasel-the boy I was three years ago, a mixture of deceit and cowardice, and just the fellow everyone expected to see at each stage of my squirehood.
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