The Oath and the Measure tms-4

by Michael Williams

  The Oath and the Measure

  ( The Meetings Sextet - 4 )

  Michael Williams

  Michael Williams

  The Oath and the Measure

  Chapter 1

  A Surprising Banquet

  Lord Alfred MarKenin grew restless as he stood before his place at table. He shivered and rubbed his hands back to life and let his eyes wander through the council hall. Tonight it was a cold sea of banners.

  The standards of the great Solamnic houses hung ghostly and strange in the wavering torchlight. The old fabric, once brilliant and thick, now gossamer with age, lifted slightly and floated as the winter wind trickled through the drafty hall. The sign of MarKenin was there, of course, and the farfetched signs of Kar-thon and of MarThasal, interwoven designs of suns, kingfishers, and stars. Among them hung proudly the intertwined roses of Uth Wistan and the phoenix of House Peres. The lesser houses-Inverno and Crownguard and Ledyard and Jeoffrey-were also represented, and their colors fluttered dimly across one another as the banners settled. The first solemnities were observed, and three hundred Knights of Solamnia seated themselves to wait out the death of the year.

  For isn't this the beginning and end of the Yuletide? Lord Alfred asked himself as simple Jack, a transplanted gardener, awkwardly lit the candles on the table. The death of another year?

  The powerful Knight, High Justice of the Solamnic Order, shifted uncomfortably in the high-backed mahogany chair at the head of the longest table. He dreaded the unexplainable, and the unexplainable was no doubt approaching as the candlelight swelled and lengthened. He looked about, into the faces of his cohorts and lieutenants. They were numerous and as varied as gemstones, and in their eyes, he saw their reflections on this ceremonial night.

  Lord Gunthar Uth Wistan sat to his left, stocky and scarcely thirty, though his hair was already steely gray. After Lord Boniface Crownguard, whose honor was legendary, Gunthar was the most skillful swordsman at the banquet. Such men were always impatient with ceremonies like this, finding them somehow too settled and pretty. Lord Alfred sympathized and continued to watch his friend. Gunthar plainly wanted it over with-all of it, from meal to ritual to the grand disruptions. Uneasily he stared out across the vast armada of standards to where darkness swallowed the silk and linen and damask, to the place where Lord Boniface, his marginally friendly rival, also sat with an entourage of youthful admirers-squires who mimicked his attitude and envied the great man's swordsmanship.

  No doubt a similar impatience rose from those shadows. Though Gunthar claimed that Boniface wore the waiting more gracefully in his ardor for Oath and Measure, there was something else to the big Knight's restlessness and silence, thought Alfred. To Gunthar's way of thinking, ceremony was the delay between battles, but to Boniface, it was the battle proper.

  To Lord Alfred's right, Lord Stephan Peres, an ancient veteran on his last but extraordinarily durable legs, had seated himself with an audible creak and a quiet groan. Alfred leaned back, drumming his gloved fingers across the dark arms of the chair, then raised his right hand. At his signal, the music began. It was a ponderous march, slow and melancholy as befit the dirge for the year, the three hundred and forty-first since the Cataclysm.

  Beside the High Justice, old Lord Stephan smiled faintly in his forest of a beard. He was a tall man and lean, having parried gracefully that tendency of the older Knights to sink into heaviness and dreams. They said it was eccentricity that had kept him healthy-that and the gift of being amused at just about anything that came to pass in the Tower and the Order.

  Tonight, though, the old man's amusement was strained. The end of his eighty-fifth year approached, and with it, as always, this ceremony of memory where the halls were decked with banners. He was weary of it all: the pomp and the trumpetry, the abyss of winter, December's winds full bitter in the Vingaard Mountains.

  Lord Stephan raised his glass, and with lowered eyes, Jack filled it once more with amber Kharolian wine. Through its glistening gold, Stephan watched the squires' table nearest that of Lord Boniface, focusing on a solitary wavering candle in the ceremonial darkness.

  A young man sat by the flame, lost in thought. Sturm Brightblade, it was. A southerner from Solace, though his family was northern, ancient in the Order.

  The image of Angriff Brightblade, Lord Stephan thought. Of Angriff Brightblade and of Emelin before him, and of Bayard and Helmar and every Brightblade all the way back to Bertel, to the founding of the line in the Age of Might.

  Sturm would have been pleased with Stephan's thoughts, for after all, it was to find his place in that chain that he had returned to beleaguered Solamnia after six years of exile.

  Smuggled from Castle Brightblade one winter's night in his eleventh year, he remembered his father in images and episodes, as a series of events rather than a living person. From the beginning, Angriff Brightblade had concerned himself with Solamnic duties, leaving the lad to the care of his mother and the servants.

  Sturm, though, had fabled a father from scattered memories, from his mother's stories, and no doubt from sheer imagining. Angriff grew kinder and more courageous the longer the boy dreamed, and dreams became his refuge in Abanasinia, far away from the Solamnic courts, among indifferent southerners in a nondescript hamlet called Solace. There his mother, the Lady Ilys, raised him with more tutors than friends, schooling him in courtesy and lore and his heritage…

  And ruining him, Lord Stephan thought with a smile, for anything except Solamnic Knighthood.

  Ilys had died of the plague. They said the boy had dismissed his few friends and grieved alone, in silence and with the proper vigils. That fall, Lords Gunthar and Boniface, who had been Angriff Brightblade's closest friends, arranged to have Sturm brought back to Thelgaard Keep, where he could be trained further in the ways of the Order.

  Sturm hadn't taken to the North at first. He was smart, that was certain, and the years of genteel poverty had toughened him in ways that the northern boys secretly envied: He was knowledgeable in the woods and rode horseback like a seasoned Knight. But his southern ways and old Solamnic charm seemed like relics of the last generation to the urbane younger men, squires and Knights from prominent Solamnic families. They called him "Grandpa Sturm" and laughed at his accent, his storehouse of remembered poetry, his attempts to grow a mustache.

  They once laughed at his father, too, Stephan mused. Some laughed right up until the night of the siege.

  It was hard going at Sturm's table, this or any night.

  "Where is your banner, Brightblade?" Derek Crownguard hissed mockingly over the boards. He was nephew to the great swordsman and exceeding proud of his family ties, though he hadn't yet proved whether he shared more than blood and a name with his legendary uncle.

  Derek sneered, and his burly companions, all hangers-on to the Crownguards of Foghaven, stifled their laughter. Two of them looked nervously to the High Table, where the assembled lords sat lost in memory and ritual, from the oldest loremaster and counselor to the younger war leaders, such as Gunthar and Boniface. Assured that their masters' gazes rested elsewhere, the squires turned back like hyenas, grinning and eager to feast.

  "Be still, Derek!" Sturm Brightblade muttered, his brown eyes averted. It was a weak retort, the lad knew, and yet it was all he could summon against the vicious teasing of the other squires. Derek was the worst, all puffed and proud at being Lord Boniface's chosen squire, but all were difficult, all scornful and superior. His friends Caramon and Raistlin had warned Sturm in long conversations over firelight and ale that talk at the Tower of the High Clerist was quick and sharp and often political. When Sturm's fellows turned upon him with their edged words and jests about his missing father, h
e felt rural and awkward and disinherited.

  And in fact, was he not all those things?

  Sturm flushed angrily, clenching his whitened fists under the table. Derek snorted in triumph and turned to the center of the hall, where the ceremonies continued, as they had for a thousand years in this very room. The harpist, a silver-haired elf in a plain blue tunic, had stepped out from the swirl of banners, and there in the red tilt of light cast by the encircling torches, had begun to play the time-honored Song of Huma, that old contraption of myth and highblown heroics. "Out of the village," it began,

  … out of the thatched and clutching shires,

  Out of the grave and furrow, furrow and grave,

  Where his sword first tried the last cruel dances of childhood,

  And awoke to the shires forever retreating, his greatness a marshfire,

  The banked flight of the Kingfisher always above him…

  Quietly the Knights began to mouth the words, and slowly the song rose in the torchlit room-the tale of Huma's love and sacrifice and enshrinement. Sturm's anger subsided as he, like the rest of the young men who sat around him, entered the world of the story.

  Sturm knew the tradition. If the song were sung perfectly and in unison on a night of special auspice, a night such as Yuletide or Midsummer, Lord Huma himself would return and be seated among the singers. That was why the foremost place at the foremost table was always left empty. Slowly the lad joined in, breathing the words as the room filled with the sound of a soft wind, of one clear elven voice raised in song and three hundred others whispering. Only the youngest still held out hope that extraordinary things would happen at this or at any Yuletide.

  So they continued, chanting monotonously, until the outburst of the flute startled them all.

  From the rafters, the harsh tune tumbled, frenzied and playful, and with the music a rain of light, green and golden, dispersed the shadows in the great hall and dazzled the astonished Knights. At once the whispering faded into silence along with the song of the bard as the new, discordant music rose and quickened and the chamber swelled with its notes. It was like the trilling of birds, or the droning of bees, or the whine of wind through the high evergreen branches. All of the Knights remembered it differently later, and whatever their description, they knew the song eluded it, for it was shifting and large and ever-changing.

  Dumbstruck, Sturm braced himself heavily against the table. The wood shuddered beneath his stiffened hands, and the goblets chimed absurdly as they dropped to the stone floor and shattered. The sweet woodsmoke in the air turned suddenly to a sharp and watery perfume, the odor of spilt wine, then of fresh grapes and strawberries, then the sudden, pungent freshness of leaves. The torches around the tables extinguished, and suddenly, surprisingly, the great council hall was awash in moonlight, silver and red.

  "Great Solin and Luin!" Sturm exclaimed under his breath, exchanging shocked glances with Derek Crownguard.

  Then Lord Wilderness appeared in the rafters above them, bristling with music and green sparks.

  Sturm had never seen the likes of him. The man's armor glistened with the waxy, depthless green of holly. Embossed roses, red and green, intertwined on his breastplate, and leaves and scarlet berries cascaded from his gauntlets and greaves, trailing behind him like a rumor of spring in the lifeless midwinter hall. About his face, more leaves flared and clustered like green flame, like a glory of grassy light, at the center of which his wide black eyes darted and glittered and laughed. He was a huge green bird or a dryad's consort, and again he raised the flute to his lips and again the music burst forth limitless, out of the dusk and cedars and pines. He leapt to the floor with astonishing lightness.

  Slowly, their faces stern and forbidding, Lord Alfred, Lord Gunthar, and Lord Stephan rose to their feet, their hands riding lightly on the hilts of their swords. Sir Adamant Jeoffrey and Lord Boniface of Foghaven stepped from behind their tables, moving toward the center of the room, then suddenly stopped, their expressions uncharacteristically cautious. Servants scattered to the far corners of the hall as more crystal broke and silver jangled on the stone floor. The strange, leafy monstrosity ignored the commotion, crouching comically in the center of the hall as the elven minstrel picked up his harp and scrambled away in a flurry of oaths and twanging strings, his coat tangled in holly thorns.

  "Who are you?" Lord Alfred asked, his voice thunderous. "How dare you disturb this most solemn of nights?"

  The green man pivoted full circle, his flute vanishing somewhere in the jungle of leaf and armor that covered him. Faintly Sturm heard its music echoing up the stairwell, as echo doubled back upon echo until the melody finally traveled beyond his hearing.

  "I am Vertumnus," said the intruder, in a voice mild and low. "I am the seasons turning, and I am the home of the past years."

  "And the belfry for a thousand bats," Derek muttered, but an icy glance from Lord Gunthar silenced the young man.

  "And what," Lord Alfred asked, "does… m'lord Vertumnus want of us this Yuletide?" The High Justice was tense, ceremonious, his fingers playing across the gold pommel of his sword.

  "I wish to make a point near and dear to my heart," Vertumnus announced, seating himself unceremoniously on the floor.

  He removed his helmet, and green fire danced at his temples.

  Sturm frowned nervously. He knew that dark enchanters were wizards of merriment, urging their victims to be less somber, less gloomy. Finally less good. Then, when they had you lost in laughter and song, they would…

  What they would do, he did not know. But it would destroy you.

  "You Solamnics gather like owls in these halls in the dead of the year," Vertumnus said, "hooting of dark times and times past and how far the world has tumbled from ages of dream and might. Look around you-the Clerist's Tower is a hall of mirrors. You can see yourselves from all vantages and angles, preening and garnishing and admiring your own importance."

  "By your leave, Lord Alfred," Lord Gunthar interrupted, his sword half drawn from its sheath. "By your leave, I shall show this… this pasturage the door, and perhaps the shortest way down the mountain."

  Vertumnus smiled menacingly, his windburned face crinkling like the bark of an enormous vallenwood. The banners drifted in a warm, unseasonable breeze. "Never let it be said," he announced calmly, the faint rustle of his voice surprisingly audible even in the farthest corners of the enormous chamber, "that when there is sword or mace or lance available, Lord Gunthar will settle for words or wit or policy."

  "Mild words will not avail you, Vertumnus," Gunthar menaced, oblivious to the insult.

  Lord Wilderness only laughed. Rising with a creak of armor and a rustling of leaves, Vertumnus waggled his flute at the foremost table, at the empty chair. It was a clownish gesture, but unsettling, even obscene. The older Knights gasped, and several of the younger ones drew swords. Calm and unhurried, Vertumnus turned gracefully about, brandishing the flute like a saber. It whistled hauntingly as he waved it through the air, and Sturm watched him in fascination.

  "To my point: There is a seat where no one sits," Vertumnus observed. "Nor guest nor beggar nor orphan nor foreigner-none whom you have sworn by the Oath to guard and to champion. And the chair is empty this night and all others, a seat for the parrot and popinjay."

  Lord Alfred MarKenin glowered at Vertumnus, who continued serenely.

  "For the Oath you swore in this nest of oaths," Vertumnus claimed, his wild eyes riveted to the empty chair, "is dark and grim and wise in the depths of the night. But you have no joy in following it. Even this festival shows so."

  "Who are you, outlander, to tell us of our joys and our festivals?" Lord Alfred boomed. "A thing of leaf and patch and tatters, to speak of Huma's waiting chair?"

  Gunthar and Stephan turned suddenly toward the shadows, then back again, their faces unreadable in the shifting light. Suddenly Lord Alfred stepped from behind the table and, pointing at the Green Man, addressed him in a voice usually reserved for horses and und
erlings and untrained or untrainable squires.

  "Who are you to question our customs, the thousand year waiting of our dreams? You-you walking, tooting salad!"

  "Old man!" Vertumnus retorted and lurched, stopping mere inches from the High Justice. "You empty, gilded breastplate! You vacant helmet and flapping banner! You mask of laws and absence of justice! You tally sheet! You plodding ass with a snout for letters, foraging honor in a barren plain! If a prophetic breeze passed by you, you would mistake it for the flatulence of your brothers!"

  Sturm shook his head. The strange name-calling was too fanciful, almost silly, as though it were a duel of bards or, even worse, a quarrel of birds in the rafters. Lord Alfred MarKenin was the High Justice of the Solamnic Order, to be addressed in respect and deference and duty, but the Green Man rained words upon him, and, stunned and spellbound, the High Justice only staggered and fell silent.

  All about Sturm, his comrades fidgeted and coughed, their eyes on the windows and rafters. For a band of lads who delighted in banter and wrangling, they, too, were strangely quiet. Occasionally a nervous laugh burst out of the shadows, but no squire dared to look at another, and certainly none dared to speak.

  Now Lord Stephan stepped forth, his eyes bright with a sudden amusement. Sturm frowned apprehensively, for the old man was half wilderness himself, teasing the young knights from the strictest observance of the Oath and laughing at the far outreaches of the Measure, where grammar and table manners were set in stone for even the youngest Solamnics.

  It was a head wound sixty years back, suffered in some obscure Nerakan pass, that had rendered him oblique and irreverent. He seemed to be enjoying this shrill exchange, and Sturm realized, with rising embarrassment, that the old man was clearing his throat.

  "What, Lord Vertumnus, would you have us do?" the old man asked, his voice still loud and firm after eighty-five years. "What would you have of us, if we are hypocrites and masks of justice? I see no widows, no orphans with you. What have you done for the poor and the outcast and the unfortunate?"