[Meetings 04] - The Oath and the Measure

by Michael Williams - (ebook by Undead)

  For the draconian's word could well have been slander, simply conjured out of an overheard name and a spiteful heart . . .

  . . . and as for Jack Derry . . .

  Well, in the past fortnight, dream and imagining had blended so thoroughly with fact and reason that . . .

  He shook his head. Boniface was guilty, regardless of Oath and Measure. He knew it in far deeper places than ritual touched. And yet Sturm's own weakness with the sword had assured the freedom of his assailant. The trial was over. Regardless of what he or Alfred or Gunthar thought about the matter, Boniface had been found innocent, acquitted by his sword hand and the ancient Solamnic machinery of statute and tradition.

  Hoisting armor to his shoulder, Sturm followed the elaborate maze of corridors from his quarters to the courtyard. It was like the day he had departed for the Southern Darkwoods, shorn of farewells and encouragements and even kindly glances. Everyone hastened to avoid him, to find himself elsewhere when Sturm crossed to the Tower stables.

  Gunthar had spoken to him the night before and urged him halfheartedly to stay on at the Clerist's Tower. He was relieved when Sturm insisted on going and said his goodbyes awkwardly, with fumbling words and a brusque handshake.

  Nor would he tell the lad anything about Lord Stephan Peres.

  Lord Stephan would have seen me off in better style, Sturm thought as he inspected old Reza's feeble and distracted efforts at saddling Luin. There would have been jests and windy words from the battlements, and even perhaps some wisdom, though the gods know what wisdom one can find amid all this misdirection and folly. . . .

  But Lord Stephan was . . . away. Reza had come to the matter at last, as he fretted with the saddle, and the bizarre story of the old Knight's departure came to slow and scarcely coherent light.

  It seems that the very night after Sturm left the Tower for the Darkwoods, Lord Alfred MarKenin had dredged up a band of unlikely hunters for a jaunt after deer in the Wings of Habbakuk. Lord Adamant Jeoffrey's younger twin brothers had volunteered at once, eager to curry favor with the High Justice, and Derek Crownguard, too, when Lord Boniface's sudden duties at Thelgaard Keep had left him unattended. Given such a triad of young lions, Alfred had invited Lord Gunthar as "a steadying influence." Gunthar begged off, seeing no prospects in the group for either hunting or good fellowship, but Lord Stephan overheard the offer and imposed himself on the party at once.

  "Where did they hunt, Reza?" Sturm asked. "And what does this have to do with Stephan's leave-taking?"

  "In due time," Reza said, leaning in the doorway as Sturm gathered his clothes and stuffed them in a saddlebag, his thoughts intent on the Knight's story. "Meanwhile, here's the rest of it: They were a mixed lot, were Lord Alfred's hunting party, and when they decided to take me along as a lyamer of sorts . . . well, they weren't the best at what they were fixin' to do. Lord Alfred decided we would go to the Hart's Forest, on account of that's forest enough for the likes of the Jeoffreys."

  Sturm smiled. The Hart's Forest was a forty-acre deer park not far from where the Wings tapered into the Virkhus Hills. Once he had admired the place and loved to hunt there, but after his journey to the Southern Darkwoods, it seemed rather tame and arranged—a well-planned garden of trees and wildlife.

  "Well, we get there about sunup," Reza continued, "and we thrashed around for near three hours, flushing squirrels and gnats and starlings, with nary a trace of deer. It bothered Lord Alfred, I'd wager—them clumsy Jeoffreys, Derek Crownguard's loud voice, Lord Stephan blowing on a beaten-up hunting bugle and tangling his armor in vines. So finally Lord Alfred called off the hunt, and it wasn't even noon yet. We turned about and started out of the park."

  Reza leaned forward, hushed and amused.

  "And it was then that the woods began to change. Trees sprouted leaves and blossomed, roots burst from the ground, and fruit fell out of the treetops."

  "Fruit?" Sturm asked incredulously.

  "Oh, the seasons have been in a fix for quite some time, Master Sturm," Reza explained. "No doubt you seen some of it yourself. Anyways, it was like the woods decided to become a forest, a Silvanost or . . . or a Darkwoods, Master Sturm. And it turned against the lot of us—scared the daylights out of the young ones, it did. Young Master Dauntless Jeoffrey got thrown from his horse when this little yellow lizard fell out of the branches of a vallenwood onto the poor creature's nose. The other Jeoffrey twin—Master Balthazar, is it?"

  "Beaumont, Reza," Sturm corrected, setting his foot to the stirrup. The saddle shifted somewhat, and he stepped back with a frown.

  "Master Beaumont . . . rides through a spiderweb and startles himself, and it gets worse when the spider that built the thing is the size of a thumb and bites him."

  Sturm grinned in appreciation.

  "So this Master Beaumont turns his filly about and gallops away, and nobody sees him until three days later, and we all think the forest has swallowed him, too. He came back nigh impossible to recognize, what with his face all swollen from the spider bites."

  Reza tightened the cinch of the saddle and stepped back to admire his handiwork.

  "But what about Lord Stephan, Reza?" Sturm asked.

  "There's what happened to Master Derek," Reza urged slyly, winking at Sturm.

  "Very well. You know I can't resist. What happened to Derek?"

  "Ran into a tree."

  "A tree?"

  "Thorn tree. Master Derek says it sprung up before he could stop his horse. A low branch caught him in the chin, and the next thing he knows, he's in the Tower infirmary and it's two days later."

  Sturm stifled a laugh. It almost lifted the sadness of defeat and leaving.

  "But, Reza," he insisted, sobering, loading his belongings onto Luin's back. "What of Lord Stephan? It grieves me that I cannot say good-bye."

  "The oddest thing, it was," the servant said, staggering under the weight of the breastplate until Sturm lifted it from him and hoisted it onto the mare. "For in the midst of all of this, there was music playing."

  "Music!" Sturm exclaimed in alarm.

  "We all heard it, but none of us knew where it came from."

  Sturm frowned, started to speak, then remained silent as old Reza prattled on.

  "It was all around us. Sound of the flute, it was, and the branches all swaying with the melody, and the birds all chiming in. It weren't but a moment until Lord Stephan answers the notes with that battered old bugle of his, and for the first time, it sounds like a musical instrument, and the birds answer the bugle notes in turn.

  "Then a green path opens in the woods. I saw it. It started up not a yard from my feet. Winds between the trees, it does, like a carpet leading up to the dais at a coronation. Lord Stephan starts laughing like the red moon has struck 'im. Then 'At last!" says he. 'At long last, something!' and off down the path he rides, laughing like a madman."

  "Did nobody try—" Sturm began, but the old servant was bent on finishing the story.

  "He rides off at a gallop, his armor sprouting greenery as he's riding, and he's laughing, his old laugh booming amongst the birdsong and the flutes. Lord Alfred galloped after him, would have cut him off and reined in the horse, too, but Lord Stephan brushes him aside and says 'No,' he says. 'No, I have been about this for years,' and he laughs and goads the horse toward this thick stand of oak, and it was like a stand of trees in front of him opens up to let him in and then closes behind him real nice and quiet, so the forest looks like it always did before we come there. We searched for Lord Stephan until late afternoon, halooing and sending out the dogs, but those of us the woods hadn't swallowed nor run off were a mite skittish about the business, as you might imagine. . . ."

  Sturm nodded absently, his thoughts on Lord Stephan. It was a strange tale, but like so many strange tales he had heard, it had a whiff of the familiar to it. He would not mourn the vanishing of Lord Stephan Peres, nor was he even inclined to go look for the old man. There was something sudden and wise in his disappearance, as though Lord Stephan
had looked around and discovered he had outlived the Order.

  Reza went on for a few minutes more—some involved story about how everyone blamed everyone else for the mishaps in the deer park. He stood back as Sturm climbed into the saddle.

  "There's more than a few of us, Master Sturm," the old man said, patting Luin's flank reassuringly, "that look forward to our own eighty-fifth year and what it brings."

  "I hope my own is like that of Lord Stephan Peres," Sturm replied, and he turned Luin's head toward the gate.

  * * * * *

  Sturm was two days traveling back to Solace, passing through the Virkhus Hills and onto the Solamnic Plains, following the same path he had taken two weeks, a season, a lifetime ago. His only company was a growing sense of loss—of something irrecoverable that lingered at the edge of his thoughts like a half-remembered melody.

  Now the Hart's Forest had meaning to him as he passed south of it. It shimmered green and orderly at the edge of his sight, and for a brief moment, Sturm thought of venturing north, of combing its measured recesses in search of the vanished Lord Stephan.

  He decided against it. Had not Stephan waved the lot of them away, plunging into green thought and green shade with a willing heart?

  To each his own, Sturm thought sourly, but he knew that did not sum it up.

  Down through the plains he rode, keeping the river safely to his east. The double towers of Castle di Caela loomed for a while in a foggy eastern distance, but Sturm had no desire to return there. On he galloped, past Thelgaard Keep and over the border to Southlund, where a day's ride brought him to Caergoth and the sea. All the while, he waited expectantly for a music that did not return.

  He kept the armor hidden safely away, wrapped in canvas and secrecy, until he was on the Straits of Schallsea. It was as Raistlin had said: The North could eat you alive. Solamnia was dangerous country for Solamnics, more dangerous still for the grim and embattled Order.

  He did not look back as he crossed.

  After he set foot on dry land at the northernmost reach of Abanasinia, the travel was easy, the familiar sights rising like fog or music upon a distant plain. There were the mountains—the rounded Eastwalls and the imposing Kharolis Range behind them—and once he caught sight of a tribe of Plainsmen loping soundlessly on the western horizon, framed by sunset and distance and their dark magic.

  "Home," he whispered, and he tried to feel something of home: a wistfulness, a burning in the depths of his heart. He felt none of those bookish sentiments. Indeed, he felt nothing at all but a sense of recognition—that these were places he had seen before, and from this point on, he would not be lost on the road.

  Nothing was home, he decided. Not Solamnia. Not here.

  Homecoming did mean pleasant reunions. Sturm rode into Solace to find Caramon busy with hammer and peg in the village square, putting the finishing touches on a curious scaffolding and stage.

  Caramon's greeting was brisk, enthusiastic. Smarting from the big man's bear hug, Sturm rubbed his shoulder and examined the handiwork before him.

  "It's for Raist," Caramon maintained proudly, seating himself unceremoniously on the grass and reaching for a jug of water. "To raise us some traveling money."

  The big man winked and rubbed his fingers together in an innocent imitation of a worldly merchant.

  "How exciting," Sturm said, regarding his old friend soberly. "And where will your travels take you, Caramon?"

  "To the Tower of High Sorcery," Caramon whispered, beckoning Sturm closer. "In Wayreth Forest. To the first big test of my brother's magic."

  "Don't you . . . have to be invited, Caramon?"

  "That's just it, Sturm," the big man replied. "Raistlin has been invited. He has been tested early and long, and they have found him worthy!"

  Caramon beamed and nodded toward the far end of the green. There, in a dazzle of sunlight, a slight red-robed figure pivoted and murmured, dark birds dancing in his hands and at the hem of his garment.

  Tested and found worthy? Sturm thought as he watched the young mage at practice. Sleight of hand, I suppose, and perhaps an array of mirrors and smokes. It's not that easy when you venture forth, because the whole green world itself is deceptive and pipes mysteries at you from places beyond your knowing.

  It's a music that just about killed me. But despite it all, I still have the Measure and the Oath.

  Sturm frowned. The thought did not seem consoling.

  But I could have had other things, had I chosen. There are choices out there, Raistlin. And the best part of magic is that you can choose.

  To the last of this and of anything, you can choose. I hope you will choose honorably.

  Heedless to the arrival of his old friend, the young mage stretched his arms, shivered in the spring wind as a cloud passed over the sun, and climbed the steps of the newly finished scaffold. It looked like party games to Sturm, like a clever child's magic show, as bottles and birds and blue flames whisked through the air and vanished.

  Soon a crowd began to gather, villagers from Solace, farmers from the outlying countryside, even a dwarf or two and a curious kender, of all things, standing at the back of the crowd, craning to see the events of the scaffold. Somewhere in the milling and murmuring of all these people, where the guttural remarks of the dwarves mingled with the broad accents of country folk and the melodious southern talk of Haven and Tarsis and far-off Zeriak, the faint sound of a flute arose and lingered, sowing the air with promise.

  Epilogue

  Of Remembrances and Inns

  Once more the year turned, and after it another spring, cold and forbidding. And Lord Gunthar Uth Wistan passed through Solace.

  His stay was brief. Sturm's solitary cottage was a bit cramped and humble for a prominent Solamnic Knight, and there was something in Lord Gunthar that balked at the idea of his good friend's son having settled beneath a thatched roof, sleeping on a hard dirt floor.

  Gunthar left provisions behind him and enough silver to last the lad comfortably to midsummer. He also left a story, and at his departure, Sturm hastened to the Inn of the Last Home, bearing bread and tidings for his friends.

  Raistlin warmed his hands by the fireside as Sturm entered the room. Caramon loomed at a southern window, looking out at a late light snow that fell on the branches of the enormous vallenwood that housed the rustic old inn.

  It was as though the twins were lost in separate dreams. Raistlin wore a red robe now, in anticipation of his magian tests at the Tower of High Sorcery in Wayreth. Caramon's misgivings about the journey ahead of his brother had infected Sturm, too, until the sight of the robes made him uneasy and apprehensive.

  Raistlin turned toward him, smiled faintly, and seated himself at a cluttered table.

  "Something in you speaks of tidings, Sturm Brightblade," he whispered, clearing away crockery and cutlery with a thin pale hand. "That old urgency and Solamnic importance. Seat yourself."

  Caramon stayed by the window as Sturm sat and unwrapped the bread. Raistlin ate greedily, feverishly, as Otik moved silently to the table. Sturm handed the innkeeper a coin, and the burly man removed himself to kitchen fires and the teapot.

  "I have brought news, Raistlin," Sturm announced, frowning at his friend's incessant hunger. "Lord Gunthar carried the news to me."

  Caramon turned from the window and shivered.

  "Won't it ever be warm, Raist? The snow gets into your bones by this time, and it's like the first of spring is forever in coming."

  Raistlin waved away his brother's comments and smiled ironically, his dark eyes fixed on Sturm. "Enough talk of the weather, Caramon. Our friend Sturm Brightblade has news of high intrigues in the Order, brought to him no doubt by his august visitor."

  Sturm shifted in the chair, his gaze bright and intent. "This is the story they are telling in the High Clerist's Tower now. Vertumnus returned at the Yuletide, and what that means is that my long banishment is over."

  Caramon pulled up a chair, and Sturm began the marvelous, confu
sing tale.

  "Now this is only one of many versions of that story, mind you. For each man there—Lord Gunthar, Lord Alfred, all of the MarThasals and Jeoffreys and Invernos—remembers it differently now, Lord Gunthar says."

  "As before they remembered the Yule and his first visit differently," Caramon prompted.

  Raistlin shot his brother an impatient look. "I remember Sturm's account of the first visit, Caramon. Unlike the Knights involved, I need no one to refresh my memory."

  The room fell to an uncomfortable silence. Sturm cleared his throat.

  "Well, be that as it may, none of them remember it quite the same. But on a few things, most of them agree.

  "After I left the High Clerist's Tower and came back here, Gunthar and Alfred watched Boniface rather closely, to hear Lord Gunthar tell it. The issue was supposed to be over and buried, settled in trial by combat, but neither of the two justices could help but think that there was something . . . sour and disturbing about Lord Boniface, about how he had challenged and bullied and taunted me from side to side of the council hall. Nonetheless, they were bound by tradition to accept the outcome of the trial, and of course there were other things to attend to, with spring upon them and wider duties for the Order in the Solamnic countryside."

  "In other words," Raistlin interrupted dryly, "they forgot about you."

  "I don't mean it that way," Sturm protested, hastily and a little strongly. "It's just that . . . that . . . the Order has other business as well."

  The dark twin nodded as his gaze shifted back to the fireplace, to a long, half-dozing abstraction.

  Otik bustled out of the kitchen, carrying a tray of steaming crockery. The last of his other guests, a kender and a dwarf Caramon claimed to know, had bundled themselves and waded slowly out the main door of the inn, leaving the common room hushed and virtually empty.

  "By the time late spring passed into early summer," Sturm continued as Otik set the tea in front of him, "it seemed as if Boniface had forgotten the matter, too. Lord Gunthar said he ate better, he slept later, and eventually he lost entirely that haunted, beset look he had carried with him throughout the previous winter, and he was joking again with the squires, hunting with Adamant Jeoffrey, and even managing a lengthy summer trip west to his holdings in Foghaven.