Jo and Braddoc drew closer, the squire holding on to her sword. The dwarf set his gear on the green marble floor near his bedroom door. “What is it, Sir Graybow?” Jo asked. Braddoc merely grunted.
The castellan kept his eyes on Jo. “It’s about the dragon—Verdilith,” he said heavily.
Jo’s heart sank. He’s dead! she thought. And I—I mean Wyrmblight—didn’t strike the killing blow!
“What happened?” Braddoc asked. “Did your knights find the lair with the directions I gave them?”
“Directions?” Jo turned on Braddoc. “You gave directions to Verdilith’s lair? Why?” She turned back to the castellan. “Tell me whats going on here! Is Verdilith dead? Did you send out a party after the dragon without telling me?” Her fingers clenched on Wyrmblight. “I’ve sworn an oath to avenge Flinn’s death, and—”
“And you’re not skilled enough to complete that oath without the loss of someone’s life—” Sir Graybow interjected “—most likely vours.” He took a step closer to Jo, who fought the urge to back away. “Jo, I asked Braddoc for directions to the dragon’s lair. He gave them to me, and I swore him to secrecy.”
“Why?” Jo whispered, though she knew the answer. “Because you would have gone after them,” the castellan said coolly, “and you simply aren’t ready” He sighed. “I sent five knights and two mages to corner and slay the dragon. That’s my job. I couldn’t let Verdilith heal and plot while we waited for you to be ready for your vengeance.” “Flinn—” Jo began.
“Fain Flinn would have been the first to have agreed with me,” Sir Graybow reminded her, “ And you know that.” The castellan gestured with his hands. “Jo, others here—knights, not squires, mind you—are as eager to slay the wvrm as you. With eager hands and a wounded dragon, I had to proceed.”
Jo glanced at Braddoc, who pursed his lips and shrugged. The squire turned back to the older knight. “What—what happened with the party you sent?” she asked at last, trying to instill her voice with a knightly reserve.
“The knights found the lair, and the mages got them inside,” Sir Graybow replied. He turned away and began pacing. “Verdilith was there, all right. He slew one knight and then escaped—” Sir Graybow paused to draw a tight breath “—apparently with the aid of a wizard.”
Jo and Braddoc looked at each other, then said simultaneously, “Teryl Auroch!”
“Exactly,” the castellan replied. “My people recognized him immediately.” The knight resumed pacing. “They were obviously in the process of relocating Verdilith, for virtually all of the treasure had been removed. I doubt the wyrm will ever return to that cavern.”
Jo felt a surge of wicked joy fill her and was only slighdy chagrined by it. Yes, she thought, yes! I can still be the one to avenge Flinn’s death! Jo turned away from the others, embarrassed that she hadn’t shown—couldn’t show— the proper sorrow for the knight who had been slain, or suitable consternation over the dragon’s escape.
Braddoc spoke to the castellan. “If it’s all right with you, Sir Graybow, I’ll be leaving shortly.”
The castellan nodded as Jo turned nervously back to the dwarf. “You’re leaving?” she asked Braddoc. “You’re not leaving . . . because of me, are you?” Sir Graybow discreetly withdrew to the trestle table at the side of the living area and began arranging the books there.
The dwarf brought his hands together. He said to Jo, “I’m leaving for a few days—nothing special. No, I’m not leaving because of you, or because of what you’ve just found out, or because you’re happy that Verdilith s still out there for you to hunt down.” He paused, shaking his head in slow warning. “I’m going to check on my home, gather a few things, and then return.” He smiled when he saw Jos blushing, crestfallen face. “Don’t worry, Johauna. I’ll be back in time for the initiation ceremony. Have no fear.” Jo took a step toward the dwarf. “Why don’t I come with you, Braddoc?” she asked and then gestured at the castellan. “I’m sure Sir Graybow wouldn’t—”
“I’m afraid you’re wrong there, Jo,” Sir Graybow interrupted. Jo turned to the castellan, who pulled out a chair for her and motioned her toward it. The squire hesitated, then quietly took the proffered seat. “Thank you,” Sir Graybow said quietly, touching the table before her. “You have much left to learn during this last week before your initiation. There is no time to spare.”
Jo watched Braddoc retire to his room and heard him begin to pack a few belongings. She looked up at the kindly face of her mentor, and her brows knitted in perplexity. “But . . . Braddoc didn’t mention this trip to me until now,” she began.
“At my request,” responded Sir Graybow. He took a step toward the other end of the table. During their lessons he preferred to stand, and Jo had grown accustomed to the arrangement. “We didn’t want to distract you from your lessons, either with the sword or the quill.” “But he’s my friend—” Jo said, then gave voice to what really troubled her. “He’s my friend, and I’ll miss him—” The castellan nodded, his pale eyes filled with understanding. “I know, Jo, I know. You miss Karleah and Dayin, and now Braddoc’s leaving you, too. But he’ll be gone for only a little while.” The old knight hesitated, then Jo saw his eyes crinkle into what sometimes passed for a smile. He said firmly, “I’m your friend, too, Johauna. Don’t forget that.” He gestured toward the papers covering the table. “Come. It’s time to begin your lesson.”
Jo leaned Wyrmblight against the nearby wall and pulled her chair closer to the table. Sir Graybow had never questioned her desire to have the sword constantly near her. If he had, Jos only response would have been that she found the presence of the blade comforting. She lightly touched the four sigils, wishing Flinn would talk to her again through the blade. No matter how hard she pleaded with the Immortals and the sword itself, Jo had never again seen Flinn as she had in her wounded delirium.
Have faith, the blade whispered back.
Jo s fingers lingered on the third sigil, and for the first time she wondered why the sword never admonished her about the other points of the Quadrivial. Then the thought came to her: Without faith you cannot attain the others. Sir Graybow cleared his throat, and Jo turned to him, startled. The words had been so faint that she wondered if it had been her own mind or the sword speaking.
The squire looked at the castellan and said lightly, “I’m ready, Sir Graybow. What intricacy of courtly manner am I to learn today?” She smiled at the castellan to soften the teasing in her words. Her respect for the aging knight had grown with each new thing he taught her, and she wanted to convince him she was a fast and serious learner. Sir Graybow frowned as if lost in thought, then opened his mouth to speak.
Braddoc came out of his room then, a knapsack and a bedroll over his shoulder, as well as an iron box about a foot square. Jo recognized the unusual box Braddoc had taken from the dragon s lair, and she asked, “Have you had any luck yet getting that catch to open?”
The dwarf looked up distractedly, apparently surprised that anyone else had noticed his growing obsession with opening the box. His eye lingered for long moments on Jo before he shook his head and said, “No, none. I mentioned it to a mage named Keller, and he’s offered to have a look at it for me while I’m gone. Damnedest construction I’ve ever seen.” Braddoc shook his head again and glanced over his shoulder at the peculiar box. “Marvelous though, simply marvelous.” His eye, seemingly a bit watery now, turned toward the castellan and his student. “Well, I’ll take my leave now, Sir Graybow,” the dwarf said formally. He gave a slight bow to the castellan, then turned to Jo. “Take care, Johauna. I’ll be back soon.”
Impulsively, Jo stood and hugged her friend, who was too weighted down with gear to return the gesture. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away immediately. Braddoc would never appreciate my crying, she thought. She returned to her seat at the table and looked at the dwarf. “Please hurry, Braddoc,” she said simply.
A strange look came over Braddoc’s face, but Jo couldn’t fathom it. “Yo
u say the strangest things sometimes, Johauna Menhir,” Braddoc said. He shook his head, gathered the rest of his things, and quit the room without a backward glance.
Jo turned back to the castellan. She looked expectantly at him and asked, “You were about to say something, Sir Graybow?”
The older man looked quizzically at Jo, then suddenly shook his head. “No, nothing—-just an old memory,” he said lightly. He picked up one of the books on the table and began leafing through it. “Let’s begin the lesson today with the ceremony of the joust. . . .”
Curiosity got the better of Jo, and she asked hesitantly, “What . . . memory was that, Sir Graybow?” She had never asked the castellan a personal question before, and she wondered now if he would take affront at her prying.
The book snapped closed, and Sir Graybow abruptly looked at Jo. His watery blue eyes did not blink, and his face remained carefully blank. Jo could only stare back at her mentor and think how stupid she had been to commit such a foolish mistake. The castellan looked away as he rested the book on the trestle table.
“I . . . was thinking how much you reminded me of. . . my oldest niece,” Sir Graybow said, his voice distant and quiet. He turned his back to Jo and gazed out the window.
“Your . . . niece?” Jo asked neutrally. “I didn’t know you had a niece.”
The castellan slid the book back and forth across the table’s cherry surface. His brows drew together, and he said in an even more remote voice, “I had two, actually.”
A tiny silence followed, broken only when Jo finally asked softly, “Had—?”
The castellan nodded, his brows still knitted and his attention still on the book beneath his hand. “Yes, had,” he said in a flat voice, made emotional by its directness. “They . . . died . . . many years ago.”
Conventional manners dictated Jo murmur some platitude, but she found herself gripped by the desire to know more about Sir Graybow’s sorrow. The words, “How . . . did they die?” slipped out before she could catch them.
The castellan continued to methodically rub the book across the table, though Jo saw now that he was beginning to fray the book’s edges against the corner of the table. She didn’t dare point that out to him. His knuckles on the book were turning white beneath the aged skin.
“Elowyn was . . . fourteen and Fritha . . . twelve,” Sir Graybow said. His gruff voice was so gravelly that Jo barely understood him. His unblinking eyes remained locked on the book he held. Jo leaned closer to hear his words, for the man’s voice had become a whisper. “Their parents died of plague. Somehow they were spared and came to live with me. I was their only kin.
“It was early winter, and the old baron was holding a great hunt,” Sir Graybow continued slowly. Jo assumed he meant Baron Arturus Penhaligon, Arteris s father and the man to whom Flinn had been so devoted. She strained to hear Sir Graybow’s next words. “The girls were marvelous archers, both of them, and they pleaded with me to let them join the hunt.
“I couldn’t say no to them, and the baron couldn’t either.” For the first time the castellan lifted his hand from the book and looked about the room. Jo had the impression he was looking back into a distant time, when the castle had a very different lord. “They joined us on the hunt, and we spotted a giant boar almost immediately. It fled south of here, into the Moor, where apparently it made its lair.”
Jo drew her breath. She’d heard tales of how dangerous wild boars were, particularly if injured or cornered.
The castellan continued, “They were young, and they’d never been on a hunt before. They spotted the boar and immediately raced after it. We lost sight of them. Then the boar circled back and caught me and the rest of the party. Elowyn’s and Fritha’s arrows had bloodied it, but not seriously injured it. It was mad, furious for blood, and it turned on us. Three of my men died before we downed the beast.” Sir Graybow stopped speaking. Jo saw his extra chin quiver as he swallowed several times.
When a respectful silence had passed and the castellan still didn’t say anything, Jo said tentatively, as gently as she could, “What . . . happened to . . . Elowyn and Fritha?”
The castellan took a deep breath, and his eyes closed and sank into the folds of his face. He touched his forehead and then nervously brushed back his thinning hair. His hand shook.
“We followed their trail as best we could, though it grew dark fast that time of year,” he said huskily. “To make matters worse, the girls were hopelessly lost. They headed deeper into the swamp. Soon we were lost, too; no one knows the Moor well. But at least we had camped in the wilderness before and knew what to do. Then the rain began to fall.
“Some called it quits for the night and set up camp, but a few stout fellows stayed with me—Flinn was one such. One by one, though, they had to turn back; the last one made Flinn return with him, telling him the baron needed him. I couldn’t fault them for leaving. Elowyn and Fritha were my nieces, not theirs.”
Jo wasn’t surprised to hear Flinn’s part in the tale, and she knew he would have been torn by Graybow’s obvious need. Jo pictured Flinn standing before the castellan, winter rain freezing them. He would want to believe there was still hope for the two young girls lost in the great marsh in winter, but would know there couldn’t be. And he would also know that his allegiance lay first with the baron. In the end, he had no choice.
“I drove my horse onward. My lantern blew out a dozen times before my tinder grew too wet to light it. I didn’t need it anyway—the wind blew so much debris and rain that I couldn’t see even with light. But I’d hoped it would attract the girls, and I missed it for that reason.” Graybow’s voice had become a hushed, ghostly whisper, and his breath curled in gray wisps from his lips.
“I stayed to the high ground, praying my nieces would do the same. But the weather grew colder and nastier, the wind more chill and biting. The rain turned to sleet, then to snow. I pushed my horse to cross channels of water, forcing him to carry me on to the next patch of icy ground.” The castellans voice had grown gruff, and Jo could almost hear the frigid waters sluicing past the stallion s legs.
“I kept going. When my horse finally collapsed, I left him wallowing in a frozen morass of swampland. I stumbled, dazed, away, not even thinking to end his misery.” The castellan stopped and swallowed, then continued, “I began to walk through that swamp. The water came up to my waist in most parts, and over my head in others. The winds howled, and the snow whirled about me so fiercely I knew I was only walking in circles; I had no sense of direction.
“How I kept going, I don’t know. I only knew I couldn’t stop until I found my girls. I called. I walked and I called all through that night and on into the next morning. I called my nieces’ names until my throat was raw and my spittle red.” The castellan picked up the book and stroked the frayed edges. It was a long minute before he continued.
“I stumbled across their bodies late the next morning by accident. They were in the water, frozen; the water was no more than two feet deep. Ice covered the surface of their little pond—and their little faces.”
The castellan dropped the book abruptly. He looked at Jo, his eyes suddenly naked with emotion. “There’ll be no etiquette lesson today,” he said gruffly. With long, swift strides he made for the stairwell and hurried out the door.
Chapter VI
Sir Lile Graybow smiled his approval as Jo crossed the floor between them. She grinned back, then looked down at herself. She had polished her dark maroon boots until they shone, the silver clasps glistening against the heavy leather. Her new breeches, provided by the baroness for tonights ceremony, were midnight blue and made of a light, summery cloth.
Jo picked at the nape and said, “These aren’t likely to last long,” she said, somewhat scornfully.
The castellan laughed, and Jo shyly smiled at him. “Jo,” the man said, “these are pants to wear only on special occasions—perhaps even only this once.”
Jo frowned. “To wear only once?” she asked, perplexed. “Isn’t th
at awfully extravagant? Can the baroness afford breeches for everyone for every occasion?” she asked anxiously.
The castellan rubbed his heavy jowls. “What is the matter with you, my dear?” he asked kindly, though he tried to mask that by making his voice even more gruff. His pale blue eyes almost disappeared in the folds of his face.
Then realization touched his face. “Ah,” he said quietly. “Were you very poor?”
Jo blinked once or twice rapidly. Sir Graybow had a most disconcerting habit of asking astute questions. She walked toward one of the tower’s windows. She could see servants scurrying about below in preparation for the night’s festivities. She turned to face the castellan. “Yes,” she said simply, “I was very poor”
“Tell me about your parents,” Sir Graybow suggested. He sat down on one of the nearby settees. Jo leaned against the rough stuccoed wall and looked at the castellan, while Sir Graybow continued. “Flinn told me about them—how they never showed up at the port in Specularum as planned,” Graybow said gently. “What a terrible loss for a little girl.”
As always, Sir Graybow’s sensitivity undid her. Jo had never known anyone who was so habitually kind. Even Flinn had never been actually kind to her. Jo looked down at her hands, resting on her lap. Beneath her hands shone the golden yellow tunic of a squire. Midnight-blue threads created a swirling floral embroidery around the center of the tunic, and an intricate lacework about the tunic’s edges. Jo was proud to wear that tunic tonight, to be recognized before all the people of Penhaligon as worthy to wear it. She picked off a stray thread and then looked at Sir Graybow, who was sitting nearby and waiting patiently. Jo shrugged.
“Did you know I have a brother?” Jo asked quietly. “At least I think I have a brother. I remember my mother holding a crying baby and hugging him so fiercely he cried all the harder.”
“When was this?” Graybow asked gently. His face softened with concern.
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