The Oath and the Measure tms-4

by Michael Williams

  The druidess nodded, intent on steeping a yarrow tea which Mara's years as a maidservant in Silvanost told her was a cure for melancholia. "Indeed it has," Lady Hollis maintained.

  'Then I expect from the look about Lord Wilderness," Mara said, "that young Sturm has bested him."

  Hollis looked above, where Lord Wilderness leaned forward in a silent stateliness, his dark eyes troubled.

  "I expect from the look about him," the druidess replied, "that young Sturm has bested himself."

  It was hours before Vertumnus spoke. The day had passed into late afternoon, and the larks were already nested. All about the company, the forest was alive with the quarrels of squirrels and the high, skidding sounds of brown doves returning south to roost in the branches of elm and maple.

  "He has departed now," Vertumnus announced. Instantly two hundred pairs of eyes fixed on the limb of the vallenwood where he sat, the yellow leaves falling sadly from his beard and tunic. "Back toward the Vingaard, and no doubt on toward the Tower and the rest of his ponderous Order."

  "Where you might have gone yourself," Hollis observed, "were it not for the good fortune of a winter's night."

  Vertumnus smiled down at her. "And the kindness of the forces who besieged Lord Angriff's castle."

  Hollis smiled, handing a steaming cup of yarrow tea up to her perched and leafy husband.

  Vertumnus looked fondly at Jack Derry below him, still marveling at the rapid maturing of his and the Lady Hollis's sapling son. After all, to be but five years old and grown to maturity, with a fighter's arm and a ranger's eye and…

  And an interest in a certain recently bereaved elf maiden.

  Vertumnus smiled, then frowned. There were other things to see to, and some of them were pressing close at hand.

  "I understand," Lord Wilderness announced, "that Mara the elf is skilled in the knowledge of the flute and some of the ancient modes."

  Mara blushed, but Hollis laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

  "I–I have learned a few tunes in my time, Lord Wilderness," she said, her eyes on the leaf-strewn floor of the forest.

  "Well and good," Vertumnus said. "And I understand it was love and invention that led you to them."

  "I was greatly deceived when I learned them," Mara said bitterly, lifting her face to the Green Man.

  "Deceived, perhaps," he agreed, "but not greatly. Love and invention outlast the best of our dreams."

  Mara frowned. She had passed, it seemed, from incomprehensible Solamnic rules into this world of leaf and shadow and parable. There was no telling what would come next.

  "What do you ask of me? Of my playing?" she questioned.

  "Accompaniment," Vertumnus replied, and from the branches of a nearby maple came a vicious, rousing hiss. The dryads poked their heads from behind a cluster of leaves, their little eyes glittering with anger.

  "It's not enough," Diona said, "to hitch your wagon to this hag of a druid!"

  "You're taking in elves now!" accused Evanthe. 'Tor what sinister purpose, the gods only know."

  "Begone with the both of you!" Vertumnus laughed, tossing the teacup at them. He sprang from the vallenwood branch and landed lightly on the ground, scattering a flock of doves. "Else I'll shut you back in the trees where I found you!"

  "We don't scare easily!" spat Evanthe, dripping with the lukewarm dregs of the yarrow tea. "You showed your softness when you wouldn't kill that Solamnic or… or… ensorcel him!"

  "But you know of no softness in me," Mollis declared flatly. She folded her arms and smiled fiercely at the dryads. "I am the sacker of villages, the razer of castles. And I can ensorcel as well as any."

  The dryads cried out as the maple limb upon which they sat burst forth with thick sweet sap. Chagrined and syruped, they made their escape, leaping from branch to branch, leaf and dirt adhering to their sticky garments as they rushed off into the depth of the woods. A wave of laughter followed their departure.

  "Would that I had the magic that young Sturm needed," Hollis said, a little more soberly.

  "He could choose whether or not to let the thorn be changed to music, and change him in turn," Vertumnus said. "He chose instead to have you remove it, to stay as he was. He chose his sword arm and the Order."

  "But the wound will always be with him," Ragnell insisted. "Though the time will come when he does not remember it, the wound will always be there."

  "To the last of this and anything," Vertumnus said, drawing forth his flute, "the lad could and can choose. But there is one thing remaining that demands my hand, my ensorceling …"

  Vertumnus scowled, and Jack Derry laughed at his father's dramatics.

  "My love and invention," the Green Man concluded quietly, his eyes on Mara. "For there is an ambush prepared at the Vingaard Ford. I must protect the lad from an old blood feud, from the burden of his father's quarrel on the shoulders of the son. And for this, I need the accompaniment of another flute, another music."

  Mara bowed nervously. "It would be my honor to assist you, sir. And my honor," she added quickly, "to assist Sturm Brightblade."

  Vertumnus nodded happily. It was the best of answers. And briefly he instructed the elf in the strange duet. She would play an old Qualinesti winter song, bracing it with the silent music of the tenth mode, the Matherian-the music of meditation and thought, for only a mind resolved and intent could bring about what Lord Wilderness had planned.

  He, in turn, would play a song from the Icewall sung by the barbarous Thanoi, and behind it he would place the intricate dazzlements of the fourteenth and highest mode-the mode of Paladine and changes. And then, when four melodies were rising from the two flutes and the two players, well…

  Then the changes would come, and winter would return to the Solamnic Plain.

  Vertumnus smiled. He would see what he would see.

  Chapter 22

  At the Ford of the Vingaard

  There were eleven of them now, where at first there had only been three. Crouched by a fire at the banks of the Vingaard they waited, assured by the Solamnics that the lad would soon pass.

  There was always safety in numbers. Sturm would be alone.

  Tivok, the leader of the band, bundled himself against the brisk spring night. The other eight had joined them without warning, their scales blue and their tails twitching slowly in winter lethargy. He had prepared to undertake the murder with only two henchmen and had devised a clever plan that would see to it that the henchmen did the fighting.

  Then the eight surprised him, walking into the campsite after a three-day journey from southern climes, and suddenly the plans had changed.

  But that was the way in these times: there were more of his kind-the draconians, born of dragon eggs perverted by a dark and unnamed power-more than Tivok had ever imagined there would be, and he had heard talk that even greater numbers-some of them wielders of magic, some shape-shifters-were traveling north from the hatcheries of the Icewall.

  Let that be as it is, the chief assassin thought, turning his lidless eyes to the cloudy sky. None of them need know the amount of gold that the Solamnics placed in my hand. Ten swords will do the work with certainty, where two would have been… more risky. I shall stay on this hill overlooking the ford until the tenth night after the first of spring, like the Solamnic said.

  And I shall oversee. Yes, I shall oversee.

  And the bounty, if the lad comes? I will keep my half, and divide the rest ten ways instead of two.

  He laughed to himself at the shrewd economics, his laughter the sound of wind over dry leaves. If only this infernal cold would pass, if spring would come beyond the signs of the stars and calendars…

  The Solamnics had said that the quarry would come, if he came at all, within the ten days following the equinox. He would be equipped with ancient Solamnic armor, more ornamental than functional. His breastplate would be adorned with an ancient family crest: red sword against the yellow sun.

  The lad would be tired, they had said. Perhaps d
efeated, certainly vulnerable.

  The assassins had killed three travelers already, unfortunates who had fit the description, or part of it, or were just ill-fated and alone at the edge of the Vingaard Ford. They had rushed from a thick stand of juniper and pulled the first one from his horse. The weather had been warmer then, and the task was easy.

  He was nondescript, that first doomed wayfarer, a thin, gap-toothed boy from the southeast who spoke his last words in Lemish when the barbed swords entered him.

  The second had been older, though from a distance, his posture and movements were crisp and forceful and altogether young. Tivok had given the signal to the four upriver, waiting at the makeshift dam, on the off chance that the traveler would elude the first ambush.

  It took all six of his remaining henchmen to overcome the old rascal, who fought and kicked until the end, wounding two of them in the process. Ever the tactician, Tivok moved the wounded to posts by the dam, replacing them with fresh fighters.

  From Tivok's vantage point, he couldn't tell the third traveler was female, especially since she was bundled against the rapidly falling temperature. She, too, had fought bravely, and she had the advantage of the weather. Indeed, one of the assassins fell to a deft thrust of her sword, but the blade had lodged in him when his body turned to stone, as his kind always did, and her tight grip on the weapon had unhorsed her.

  The other five milled over her like enormous brazen flies, their dark wings flickering.

  "How long will we waste our time in bad weather?" one of them asked Tivok as they buried the girl's body in a shallow grave by the riverbank.

  "Yet a while," Tivok hissed, brushing back his hood to reveal his sloped and crested forehead, his copper scales. "Yet a while still." Setting his shoulder to his slain comrade, he pushed over the hulking stone figure so that to those approaching, the dead assassin would look like a boulder, an innocent brown outcropping of rock.

  "Count it as… practice, Nashif," Tivok suggested to the questioner, a hint of warning in his voice. "Count it as maneuvers."

  Nashif had no answer. Silently the five assassins slipped into the shadows among the evergreens, two of them stopping to lick their blades.

  Sturm was scarcely two miles from the ford as they were burying the girl. He rode atop a rested and strangely unsettled Luin, his cloak wrapped tightly about him against the surprising return of winter.

  Already he was forgetting his last encounter with Lord Wilderness.

  His final time in Dun Ringhill had been brief. He had wandered the overgrown ruins, looking for more signs of Ragnell, of Mara or Jack Derry, or even of Vertumnus, but the place was desolate, the foliage so thick that he could have sworn it had been abandoned seventy years instead of seven days.

  The loss of Mara troubled him the most. Somehow it seemed against the Measure to leave without knowing what had happened to her. And yet in the course of his strange and healing dreams, he thought he had seen her face, seen her move among the throng of villagers that he glimpsed in his fevered and wakeful moments.

  Something assured him that Mara was safe, was cared for, though he wondered if he would have felt that assurance had he not been weary and inclined to leave.

  By the afternoon, he had given up. Saddling Luin, he rode out of the village and onto the plains of Lemish. By late afternoon, he forded the southeastern branch of the Vingaard River at the very spot where he, Jack, and Mara had been ambushed by the bandits. Emerging from the water onto the opposite bank, he felt unburdened, as though something mysterious and demanding had been lifted from him.

  He slept fitfully not far from the sound of the river, and his dreams were of Boniface and snow and knives.

  Early the next morning, he was riding again, north and west as his memory took him. Steering by the planets was no use, for while he had been in the Darkwoods, the sky had changed. Chislev, Sirrion, and Reorx had returned to their old provinces of the sky, and you would think it was winter if you reckoned by the planets rather than the calendar.

  Indeed, the weather itself had turned brisk, and the springlike prospects of Sturm's first day on the road homeward had bogged down in an icy rain by evening of the next day. He stopped in a copse of oak and alder, this time constructing a lean-to deftly, skillfully, with a breath of thanks to the elf maiden Mara.

  It was midmorning on the third day when Sturm Bright-blade reached the northernmost stretch of the Vingaard River. The cold had swept out of the east overnight, and he had awakened to a hint of frost on the oak leaves, to the steam of his breath in the air. Two hours' ride had brought him to the famous ford; beyond it, a chill mist lay on the riverbanks, and to the north, the Vingaard Keep was lost in oppressive, icy fog.

  Sturm reined in his horse beside a large brown boulder and stood in the saddle, rubbing his hands to warm them. The waters were unnaturally shallow for early spring, when the river usually swelled and overflowed its banks. It seemed a stroke of good fortune. With an easy crossing and a long brisk ride over the Solamnic Plains, he could camp in relatively safe country-maybe even the Virkhus Hills-and be at the Tower by noon tomorrow.

  Then would come the explaining, the answers to Gunthar and Alfred and Stephan.

  And the meeting with Boniface. He would have to think on that. Think on it, and watch for poison and for daggers in the dark.

  Angrily he brushed back his hood. Why Boniface was after him was a mystery still. Something his father had done, no doubt, but how the son figured in was beyond his green fathoming. But the Order was his family, and the Tower was home, despite the dangers that lay therein. He would return quietly, and when the time was right…

  He would uncover vipers in the midst of the gardens. He would avenge his father.

  Nonetheless, he wished he had stayed in the Darkwoods. His wish grew even stronger when, out of the mist in front of him, five squat and shaggy figures approached slowly, their swords drawn and their tails thrashing ponderously.

  He had never seen draconians before. Indeed, he had never heard them named except in a kender legend he had heard, ridiculed, and dismissed in the leisurely month before this last momentous Yule. But the first look was enough to judge by, and he drew his sword from its newly forged scabbard.

  As he did, the snow began to fall. Lightly it scattered across Luin's sturdy red shoulders and across the bare blade of the weapon. For a moment, Sturm thought he heard music, distant and merry and wild, but he pushed it from his thoughts.

  The draconians approached even more slowly, lifting their barbed swords even though they were still a good twenty yards away. Sturm offered a brisk Solamnic salute, and three of them stopped approaching altogether. Crouching, hopping like ravens, they turned to one another and began to whisper, waving their weap6ns excitedly.

  At once, Sturm spurred Luin forward, sword flashing over his head. With the ancient Solamnic cry on his lips-"Est Sularus oth Mithas!" he rode toward the two nearest draconians.

  He was by the first two before they could raise their shields, sword crashing into the head of one. With a lightning turn in the saddle, Sturm brought the blade down on the other, and then, more quickly than thought, reined Luin toward the next three, who shrieked and moved sluggishly toward the shallow river.

  They appeared to be already moving in waist-deep water.

  Sturm rode between them and wheeled Luin about at the banks of the Vingaard. Sword upraised dramatically, he faced them with another loud, piercing cry. Terrified, the draconians dropped their weapons and plodded in different directions, their rasping shrieks lost in the music and the rising wind.

  Leaning forward hard in the saddle, Sturm watched them scatter. It would be simple to follow them, to hunt each of them down. But into his memory came the vision Ragnell had shown him that night in the great lodge of Dun Ringhill-the wintry landscape of Throt, the ransacking of the goblin village, the cruel swordplay over the wretched, spitting creatures.

  "No," he whispered. There might come a time for hunting them down, but not
now. Nor was he the man. He watched until they vanished behind rocks and bushes and brambles, then turned to the ford and the crossing.

  The water tumbled slowly around him, licking tamely at the hocks of his mare. Over the steady sound of the river, Sturm thought again that he heard the music. He remembered the sound of Mara's flute, and something deep in his memory and imaginings told him that she was safe.

  From his vantage point on the knoll above the west bank of the Vingaard, Tivok watched the lad rein his horse into the shallow water. The draconian wrapped himself against the icy east wind and waved to his comrades camped upriver. It was the second squadron. The four of them-little baaz draconians stationed by the makeshift dam-would be watching. They would scatter rock and felled branches until the waters surged through with an unleashed swiftness and power, racing south and swelling the banks of the river. If they timed it right, the first waves would strike the shallows when the rider came to midstream.

  Tivok chuckled. We would see how this stripling handled a horse.

  He was sure this was the one. He had heard the Solamnic oath ringing in the brisk air and seen the sword rise and flash overhead like heat lightning in a distant sky.

  Nashif would be punished for letting this one pass.

  Tivok signaled again to be certain, then licked his sword to poison the blade.

  The snow was falling heavily now, and the banks upriver were crazed with a thin film of ice.

  Hawode, second-in-command to Captain Tivok, shifted uncomfortably on a clutter of rock and wood. It was downright tiresome watching that little rise for a sign from the commander. Wasn't there an old saying about a watched pot?

  His head hurt. He was drowsy. Draconians weren't made for this season and its weather, their cold blood lulling them when the temperature dropped. Already he had wakened one of the wounded ones, pummeling her with the butt of his sword and promising her more dire punishments if she slept again.