Galen Beknighted h2-3

by Michael Williams

  Instead, I saw only the light and the hand and the dagger, and finally, beyond these a faintly glimmering visage-the pale face of a Plainsman, marred by a diamond-shaped patch over his right eye. Then a voice rose on all sides of me, whispering back and forth in the stunned darkness of the room.

  Do not fear, it consoled, though the consolation was brittle, hiding beneath it a dark, icy current of menace. Do not fear, young man, for your brother is free of harm. He is simply a way I have discovered to… gain your attention.

  "Forgive me if I find that hard to believe, having seen him last with a knife at his throat," I retorted. For all my attempts at bravery, my voice sounded thin, almost frail in the enormous, shifting vault of the room in which I felt I was sitting now-felt I was sitting, though for the life of me, I could not have told you how I had moved from my cramped little chambers into some monstrous, dark rotunda.

  Your energy is most welcome, the voice explained. For in energy is the beginning of commerce.

  I gripped the arms of the chair even tighter. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

  Slowly the patch lifted, and the empty socket glowed with the dead light of phosfire-the pale green light that illumines nothing but the source of the light itself. It began to change shape, taking on a head, four arms, a tail, until a salamander glimmered and writhed on the black floor of the room. Turning quickly and more quickly in a rapidly tightening circle, the creature took its own tail between its jaws and, swirling yet more rapidly, became a spinning blur of light that suddenly became the face again, this time bright with sharp aquiline features.

  His hair was dark, beaded, and disheveled. His unhooded eye was like a black opal, in the center of which lay a column of fire, wherein lay the same face. It seemed that the image in front of me repeated itself forever, each time smaller and smaller, like reflections in reflections, born of facing mirror to mirror.

  It means it is time for commerce, Sir…. The voice paused expectantly.

  "No names. At least not yet," I whispered.

  Except that of Brithelm, perhaps? taunted the echoing voice.

  I leaned forward, cupping the brooch in both hands. The room reeled, then steadied.

  "Just… just what is the nature of this commerce?" I asked.

  Simple, the face responded, now moving its thin lips in accord with the words I heard around me. My commerce is a simple purchase-your opals, if you wish to see your brother again.

  "I see. As ransom."

  The face in front of me wavered, turned in the half-light. Behind it, if only for a second, I caught a glimpse of glistening rock in the darkness, of a pale cascade of stalactites or stalagmites-I never could remember which one was which.

  "Ransom" is not our word for it. We prefer "reunion."

  "I see." I fell silent and tried to avert my eyes from the stones. It was as though the face was everywhere I looked, reflected upon the dense and billowing darkness around me.

  "Well, then, the opals are yours, obviously. I shall be glad to restore them. They are here, in my hands. Yours for the taking."

  I am not fool enough to ascend among you, the voice scolded. Instead, I would have you bring them to me.

  "But where in the world are you? Or where under the world, I might ask?"

  For a moment, the face dimmed in the brooch. The room fell silent, and I could feel the closeness of the walls about me, as if I had been restored to my own chambers.

  A clever one, you are. All brave and Solamnic and ever so bright.

  "And altogether willing to hand over a mess of opals for my brother. Providing, that is, that I know where to hand them over."

  You would like that, wouldn't you? To converge on a spot with dozens of your kind and to muscle your brother away from us.

  Even the criminal, it seemed, mistrusted me.

  "Yes, I would like that. But there are not dozens of 'my kind,' whatever that is. Nor would I wish that on the world. Look, this is something more basic than tactics, more basic than your deals and your transactions. Quite simply, I want my brother safe, and I have the opals that will assure his safety. You have my word for that."

  The opals themselves will tell you what you need to know, the voice replied mysteriously and ominously. In them lies the map of my darkness. In them lies the path to your brother. Follow the stone beneath the stone, and you will come to all of us soon enough.

  Suddenly the gems dulled, the fire in the center of the brooch extinguished, and the room was flooded in candlelight. I stood up, breathed deeply, and looked around me. The room was as I remembered it, but the window was ajar, and a faint hint of a chill had crept into my chambers.

  Again I looked at the brooch, which a moment before had flickered and boded in my hand. Now it seemed harmless, quite lovely but useless for anything more than clasping a cape about the neck of a young and unsettled Knight.

  "I am right on the edge of adventure," I told myself. "Or of disaster. Or maybe I am only talking to rocks."

  Chapter VI

  There is no telling when Bayard made his next decision, nor his state of mind when he made it.

  I gathered that the surgeons broke the news to him shortly after we left. Owing to his broken leg, travel was out of the question, at least for the next several months. Horseback riding would be impossibly painful; the rocky foothills of the Vingaards were naturally hostile to any travelers aside from dwarves or mountain goats.

  I figured that our adventure was postponed of necessity and because my able benefactor would not fully trust me out of his sight.

  There had been times, back in my weaselly and misspent youth, when this knowledge would have brought with it waves of relief, a murmured prayer of thanks to the gods of dry castles, warm beds, and especially to whatever deity fancied broken legs. Those times had passed, evidently.

  Restlessly I stirred the fire in my quarters, thinking of Brithelm in the mountains, of the visions and threats I had seen in the opals, of what Bayard's injury meant to our plans.

  Of how in the world I would get to the Vingaards alone.

  It was almost a relief when Raphael came to my quarters that evening, bearing orders from Sir Bayard Brightblade that Sir Galen Pathwarden-Brightblade was to attend him at once. But that relief vanished when I entered Sir Bayard's chambers.

  Given the shocks and tumbles of the past two days, I was not surprised to find Ramiro and Brandon seated by Bayard's bedside. It was, however, alarming to see both of them looking so glum and downtrodden and inconvenienced, like two old alchemists testing an ineffective laxative. My first guess was that they had just been appointed Brithelm's rescuers.

  The conversation stopped when I entered the room. The three Knights stared at me intently, Bayard strangely curious and proud, the others blank and unreadable. Raphael, striding ahead of me, busied himself at once with some obscure and no doubt needless task.

  "Sir Galen Pathwarden-Brightblade of Castle di Caela, gentlemen," Bayard announced, and I could tell he had rested, had slept perhaps, and was now quite sober.

  His companions kept silent.

  "Good evening, Weasel," Ramiro rumbled at last. I chose to ignore him out of both courtesy and caution, nodding politely to all present and taking a seat at the foot of my protector's bed.

  Outside, evening was passing into night. I heard a pair of doves settle into the trees near the window, rustling and thrumming as they prepared for the rising storm.

  "Galen, I'm afraid my news is hard," Bayard announced, raising himself in bed and grimacing. Ramiro took the flask of Thorbardin Eagle from the bedside table and offered it, but Bayard waved it away, his eyes remote and terribly melancholy.

  "The surgeons have consulted, Galen," he continued, "and debated the fine points, on which they all disagree. But they have come to a general truth: that my travel by horse is impossible during the next six months, inadvisable at best for six months after that."

  "But six months will be too late, sir!" I protested, standing up and knocking the chair
out from under me. By instinct, Ramiro's hand went to his sword. Brandon, however, regarded me calmly from his seat by the fire.

  "Too late?" Bayard asked. "Why 'too late?"

  The possibilities made me reel: Brithelm, ravaged by fire, injured in the earthquake, or lost in some underground darkness, at the cruel whim of a bunch of pallid Plainsmen. Whatever the situation, my brother was alone, at the knife's edge, and unschooled in survival.

  "Who said anything about postponing the journey, Galen?" Bayard snapped, and my thoughts skittered and plunged.

  What else could those words and this assemblage mean but that Bayard had decided to send out a party of Knights to the Vingaards, fully intending to leave me behind in Castle di Caela along with the disabled, the women, and the old men?

  I would not have it.

  "'Too late,'" I announced coldly, "because I have had a vision that tells me 'too late,' damn it! And I know you've changed your mind, Bayard, and no doubt you will be sending Ramiro and whoever else has volunteered since your accident-anyone as long as it isn't the shifty, irresponsible Weasel! You've no idea how mistaken and foolish that is, for the opals have told me-"

  "I beg your pardon?" Ramiro interrupted. "The opals told you?"

  Now there was no turning back. My task was the simple and dreadful one of telling my brothers in the knighthood what had come to pass in the depth of the opals. I told it briefly, without ornament (I really have changed), told it all to an immense silence, to four pairs of widening eyes.

  "So that is why I must go to the Vingaards, Bayard," I concluded. "Despite your good intentions of raising this party in my absence, it's an insult to me and to your belief in me and…"

  Ramiro glanced at Bayard skeptically. Bayard winced as pain coursed up his damaged leg. For a moment, my heart went out to him-a man in the prime of his considerable powers, now bedfast and idle. Then I thought of what he was doing-shipping off virtual strangers to the Vingaards on a search for my brother, when I was the only one who knew of the danger. It was plain he did not trust me-had never trusted me-not as a squire and certainly not as a Knight.

  At that moment, I devoutly wished the same condition for his other leg.

  "I am sorry, Ramiro, that you, too, discount my visions," I said.

  "No more, I am afraid, than I discount other things about you, Weasel. Still, you did show passable mettle in the mountains at Chaktamir, back when the Scorpion's Nest was crashing all about us…"

  "I thank you for that memory, sir," I said, and stared ironically at Bayard. In the silence that followed, it struck me how shrill and peevish I sounded, like a schoolmaster badgering a whispering student to "share your secret with the other scholars."

  It was what they wanted, evidently. Each one of them, looking at Sir Galen, no doubt saw only the Weasel in ill-fitting armor.

  "Hold your tongue, Galen," Bayard said softly. "You would do your brother Brithelm a service to befriend these men assembled here, especially Ramiro, rather than doing your best to stir up discord and foolishness. Indeed, you would do yourself a service.

  "Galen, your responsibility is a hard one to shoulder- greater than my own, than that of the men you see before you, greater even than the formidable duties of Sir Ramiro of the Maw, who will act as your second and confidante in the coming days."

  "My second!"

  Ramiro and I both gaped wildly, as though another earthquake had come, opening the floor beneath us and dropping us halfway into the center of the planet.

  Bayard nodded, a strange half-smile on his face.

  "Your second, Sir Galen. For in my absence, you are appointed to lead this expedition."

  Even as Bayard spoke those words, the rain began, driving in thick sheets through the open window, which Raphael rushed to close, leaving the room in darkness.

  It was as though the world wept at my leadership. For hours it poured, and where the Cataclysm had come before in fire and explosion, eruption and ruin, it threatened to come now as flood, as a deluge that would drown us all, given time and enough water in the heavens.

  Behind the closed shutters of the infirmary, at a candlelit conference of Solamnic Knights, I learned what everyone thought of an expedition with Galen Pathwarden at the helm.

  Ramiro belabored my failings at length. Brandon continued in tandem with him for about an hour, and soon I found myself nodding agreement to even the worst things they had to say about me, for after a while listening to such talk, you tend to believe the talkers and forget the specifics.

  That the talk is about you, for instance.

  There in the presence of bickering Solamnics, I unraveled a string from my tunic and settled down for another philosophers' duel, made only a little more interesting by the fact that I was the central subject in it all. The rain beat in waves against the shutters, and you could even hear it spatter the stone walls of the infirmary, it came down so hard.

  Bayard was in full voice now, I discovered when I listened now and then, and the talk was of honor and obligation and staying the course. Of how much I could learn from this as regards responsibility and command, even though the chances were that Brithelm was untouched by the strange disturbances to our west. As the rain came down, so rose my sense of hope, for it became dimly possible that Bayard was winning them over, that by the time he was finished with them, Ramiro would follow me into the gaping maw of the Cataclysm or neck deep into the Blood Sea, for the pure and simple reason that he had promised Bayard some days back that he would follow someone somewhere.

  In the midst of my musings, I saw Ramiro stand, saw that the big fellow was speaking.

  Something about preparations.

  "… tomorrow. We shall take the Plains Road due west, then ford the Vingaard and ride due north, keeping the mountains to our left. That way, if I recall, we can make steady progress without tiring… anyone unduly."

  He glanced tellingly at me.

  "Of course," he added, "this all depends on how… our leader figures it. I mean, if he has some little path of his own that he is all that bent on following…"

  I could see I was completely accepted by my subordinates.

  "Of course not. Sir Ramiro," I replied smoothly, also standing. "Indeed, I consider you an expert in terrain and travel, and it is a foolish leader who discounts the advice of his experts, now, isn't it?"

  I was shameless, I know.

  "And what is more, Sir Ramiro, if a lad must lead his first expedition as a Knight, must pass into unknown lands at the head of a party who become, tragically, his heavy responsibility, then I thank the gods that it is my lot to be thrown in with the most daring, resourceful, and formidable Knight Solamnia has to offer, in this time or any other."

  Bayard blushed, and Raphael after him. The air in the room felt so laden with oil that I feared the candles would ignite us all. And yet I continued, crafting in the most indecent recesses of my imagination a way to compare my two companions favorably with Huma, while at the same time not comparing either favorably to the other.

  But Ramiro raised his hands and cut short my groveling.

  "Never mind, lad, never mind. It seems to me, Bayard, that the boy's intentions are good, and that perhaps his judgment… promises a likely future."

  Bayard looked at me in disbelief.

  "Thank you, Sir Ramiro," I replied. 'Tour kind words are an honor second only to my knighthood."

  My protector winced as if I had broken his other leg, as Ramiro basked in my flattery like a walrus in warm water.

  "Very well, lad," he huffed. "Very well. Now… ah, see to it that you're prepared for the road by tomorrow morning.

  "That is," he corrected himself quickly, "if it suits you, being our commander and all."

  It suited me, and I told him so.

  It is a task to prepare for a journey, to see to the armor and horses and provisions not only for yourself but for those in your party.

  It is a double task-a monumental one-when your squire is no help whatsoever.

 
Not long after the quake hit the castle, Alfric crawled out from under the rubble, none the worse for wear, but no longer quite as ardent for squirehood. In one moment, it seemed, he had discovered that peril was on all sides of him, full likely to rise from the earth itself. It could meet any of us unannounced and unexpected on the road from the stable to our bedroom or from our bedroom to the privy.

  "There is just no need to go looking for things," Alfric maintained with high drama as he walked into the outhouse, hands filled with planks and hammer and nails, and proceeded to board himself inside.

  It was a delaying tactic at best. Father, of course, was not buying it. Surely Alfric knew that, once he signed on as my squire, the old man would throttle him before he let him sign off.

  While Alfric's hours were spent in the outhouse with the old man hovering angrily outside, I was left to my own resources, which seemed a loss only when I went down to the livery, intent on attending to last-minute details, and discovered that, thanks to the inattention of my squire, I had to start from the beginning-to arm and equip and supply myself, not to mention saddling all the horses. Cleaning the greaves alone took far too much time, and as the hours progressed into morning, I thought about the other duties that should occur to a Knight at the time of his departure-when he set out into unknown danger…

  Perhaps never to return…

  His second a man who mistrusted not only his leadership but his good sense in general…

  And his squire an incompetent elder brother who was spending the day and the night in cowardly dodges…

  I sat roughly on the tannery floor, the greaves heavy in my lap. It had been a while since I was constrained to think about the odds against me, about the prospects of not returning from anywhere, and the prospect gave me ominous notions. I saw myself waylaid by bandits, turning on a spit over one of those mountain fires with a family of ogres gathered around me in expectation.