Weasel's Luck

by Michael Williams

  “Then, of course, the men let them do whatever they want. Which by that time usually involves making life impossible for the men who have limited their options for years.

  “At any rate, around the time I was born, Aunt Mariel began to refuse food. Being the domineering sort she was—remember, she was making up for half a century without being allowed a decision, half a century of following without question di Caela family tradition—she refused food for her animals as well. Of course, she was devoured by her cats.

  “After a week of this fasting, the guards complained of Aunt Mariel’s silence. Complained that she no longer shouted instructions and commands underneath the huge door of the tower room.

  “Led by Father, the guards tried the door. Led by Uncle Roderick—who died not long after this, but that’s another story entirely—they tried to pick the lock. Eventually, of course, they were forced to break down the door. The rest …” she smiled bleakly, “you can guess.”

  “Was that part of the curse, too?”

  Instantly, of course, I regretted what I had said. But Enid showed no surprise.

  “Perhaps indirectly. I never thought of it. Of course, indirectly the curse gets blamed for just about everything that goes on here, Galen.”

  She tilted her head and smiled curiously at me.

  “You seem to know quite a bit about the di Caela curse. Especially considering you aren’t a di Caela.”

  I was too struck by the smile to respond.

  “Oh, never mind,” she said dismissively. “I suppose all the Solamnics get wind when old Benedict returns.”

  “So it’s the same person every generation?”

  “None of us has the foggiest idea. It sounds like a better curse if it is. But whether it’s old Benedict every time, or one of his descendants, or someone else entirely, this generation is supposed to be an important one. That’s why Father called the tournament. He wanted me married to a redoubtable Knight before the curse returned again.”

  I nodded knowingly, having absolutely no clue as to how the curse really worked. Or how Sir Robert imagined it working.

  We turned left down a hall running off the landing. The keep seemed larger and larger, almost a world in itself, the longer we walked.

  As we walked, my thoughts cascaded.

  “So it was this Gabriel Androctus who triumphed. Sir Gabriel Androctus, Knight of the Sword. A high-sounding title, but if you ask me, a Knight I find just a little bit wanting,” Enid continued. She pointed down another hallway to our right, lined with windows on one side, with full-sized marble statues on the other.

  “The first six fathers of the family di Caela,” she announced.

  “Which one is Benedict?”

  “Benedict di Caela tried to destroy this family. He may still be trying. Why would we raise him a statue, silly boy?”

  A door opened at the end of the hall, and another girl—about Enid’s age, I guessed—emerged and came up the hall towards us.

  “Cousin Dannelle,” Enid called. “Come here and meet Galen Pathwarden, eminent squire.” The girl slowed her steps and squinted down the hall to catch a glimpse of me.

  “He’s awfully small for an eminent squire,” Dannelle called out.

  “But charming nonetheless,” Enid responded. “Come and look.”

  I must admit I squirmed a little. I hate being fussed over, and I could see a fuss approaching. Dannelle glided down the hall—she had the di Caela family grace.

  But not its looks.

  Which is not to say she wasn’t beautiful, too. But instead of the blond hair, the brown eyes, the high cheekbones, her hair was red, her eyes green, her stature short and birdlike. She stared at me, and it felt as though I was looking into a mirror, only to see myself reflected as a lovely girl.

  In short, it was really disturbing.

  “There is a crack in old Gerald’s pedestal, Enid,” Dannelle stated quietly, eyeing me. “This boy looks more Pathwarden than human.”

  “Oh, Dannelle, stop it!” scolded Enid. “He can’t be held accountable for …

  Then both the girls laughed, and Enid put a hand on my shoulder, raising the heat and the blush I had felt on the stairs only a short while back.

  “Dannelle isn’t all that fond of your eldest brother, though for the life of me I can’t figure why, seeing as he has her coloring and all,” Enid explained. Dannelle hooted in mock outrage, turned and made as though she were leaving us, walking back up the hall.

  Enid called her back, and the two of them stared sullenly at one another for a moment or so before bursting into peals of laughter.

  It was then I noticed the strongest family resemblance. Both laughs filled the long halls of the keep with warm and appealing music.

  The three of us walked to the end of the hall of statues, lit by the afternoon sunlight. We turned right at Dannelle’s door, moving back toward the landing, I guessed. Along the way, each of the girls pointed out various relics of di Caela family history.

  I learned about Denis di Caela, who had declared war against the rats in the cellar of the castle—an uphill work at its easiest in any castle, but in one this size (and at the time of the curse) impossible. I heard how, after ten years of losing battles, he had trapped a huge rat, then spent a year holding the animal hostage, thinking that the rats would surrender to regain the “freedom of their leader.”

  Also of Simon di Caela, who thought he was an iguana, and spent his time basking in the sun on the roof of the low northeast tower, waiting for flies to alight. It was a sudden frost, the girls claimed merrily, that killed him.

  Somehow, men such as these had held off the assaults of Benedict di Caela for over four hundred years.

  It was enough to give you courage, to give you confidence.

  “What, if I might ask, Lady Enid, dampens your … enthusiasm for the bridegroom in question?”

  “The prophecy, silly boy. The scrawled prophecy in the Book of Vinos Solamnus,“ Enid said flatly.

  “Then you do know of the prophecy?”

  “Of course,” she replied. “Uncle Roderick made a special trip to Palanthas when a librarian found it in the margin of the text. It’s foolishness, no doubt, but when each generation suffers some mishap, the family looks into all possibilities.

  “This one says something about a ‘Bright Blade,’ you know,” she continued, directing us left up another hall, then right down another, one wall of which was covered with a mural depicting the fall of Ergoth, the other blank except for a door the girls claimed led to a balcony that overlooked the dining hall. “And Father pounced upon that prophecy, taking it as a sign that we should marry into the Brightblades.”

  “Of course, the text of the prophecy doesn’t really say that,” Dannelle added. “You could read it several ways—something about ‘the Bright Blade lifting the curse’, or some such obscurity Uncle Robert took to mean Enid had to marry one of them.

  “That was the reason for the tournament. Uncle Robert figured that if there was a tournament to be had, Bayard Brightblade would figure into the arrangements. It was a way to draw him here, among other things.”

  “Which did not work, of course,” Enid sighed, picking up the story. “Where was Sir Bayard—lost in the woods?”

  If possible, I blushed even more deeply. Enid went on carelessly.

  “Though I’ve seen him only once, he stands up well in comparison to this … Androctus.

  “Whom I am obliged to marry.”

  “But—” I began, and Dannelle interrupted.

  “Uncle Robert claims that it’s nothing for Enid to worry over, that marriage to this Androctus—to any Knight, for that matter—will not change her life in any measurable way. He claims that anyone who marries a di Caela becomes a di Caela, actually, and that she can stay here in the castle and live pretty much as before.”

  “Isn’t there some kind of gnome proverb,” I asked, “that goes ‘if you want to find out about someone, marry him into your family’?”

&nbs
p; Both the girls laughed sadly and nodded.

  “Whatever Gabriel Androctus is like,” Enid declared, “marrying him will be the last time I do anything which is not absolutely what I want to do.”

  Which did not bode well for the champion’s marital bliss.

  But I drew no joy from that.

  There had to be a way that Bayard was right! Enid’s husband was supposed to be a Brightblade, not some outlander tricked up like a jackleg executioner.

  The di Caela cousins continued to charm me and lead me around the second floor of the keep. Fattening me with beauty and attention until, inevitably, they would have to bring me to the slaughter in the dining room, where Sir Robert would start asking the questions I dreaded and uncover the details of my recent criminal fortnight as Bayard’s squire.

  I slowed my steps, stifled a phony yawn.

  “Please don’t take that yawn as a lack of interest, ladies. I find this business of di Caelas and Brightblades fascinating, but I fear that …”

  I paused, relying on politeness and good breeding. In which I was not disappointed.

  “Cousin Dannelle, here we are transporting the boy about the premises when he’d much rather rest before dinner!” Enid exclaimed.

  “It’s most rude of us, Cousin Enid! What must he think of the hospitality in Castle di Caela now?”

  Dannelle reached out and straightened my hair. Again I warmed, reddened.

  “Oh, I think no less of your hospitality, Lady Dannelle. But I am tired. If you would be so kind as to escort me back to my chambers where I might enjoy an hour’s nap before dining, I should be terribly grateful.”

  Which they did without delay, fussing and apologizing as they went. With all the attention lavished upon me, it was all I could do to mark our path from hall to hall, past mural and statue and painting and stairway until, when we reached the doorway that was indeed my own, I still wasn’t quite sure if I had mastered the maze of the keep or not.

  I sat alone in my room for a while, casting the red dice once and receiving the Sign of the Sea Horse. I cursed myself for having read only three of Gileandos’s commentaries on the Calantina, having left the volume on water signs “for later” because I didn’t recognize the animals it contained. Dice or no dice, once the footsteps had faded into the sound of cuckoos outside my door, once I had stepped into the hall again and looked first left, then right, seeing no beautiful Enid, no beautiful cousin, my curiosity led me back along my path of the last hour.

  For I wanted to steal a look at Sir Gabriel Androctus.

  It was an easy path to retrace. Past the paintings, past the enormous marble stairwell, left down the first hall off the landing, then turning right, down the hall lined with statuary. I heard someone calling for me in the recesses of the building behind me. I stopped and looked out the windows over the courtyard and the castle walls, into the western fields. There, at a distance, I recognized the yellow sun of Bayard’s pennant waving among those of several other Knights.

  Where at least he had found shelter for the night.

  I tiptoed past the marble di Caelas, who stared at me blankly, disapprovingly. Sure enough, old Gerald’s foundation was cracked.

  Judging from Denis and Simon, and lately Mariel, it ran in the family.

  Then I crept past Dannelle’s door.

  I moved down the hall to the right, then left, then right again until I faced the hallway where, to my right, the siege of Ergoth raged silently and motionlessly, forever in paint upon the wall.

  The door opposite the mural opened into a rich and warm darkness, into the smell of expensive cloth underscored with the slightest odor of decay. Somewhere beyond the darkness I could hear noise—conversation, laughter, the clatter of metal and crockery. Cautiously I stepped toward the noise until my extended hand touched velvet.

  I was behind a curtain. I fumbled up and down the cloth like a bad actor, looking for the opening.

  And found it after some difficulty, found that I was on a balcony that bellied out above a dining room that dwarfed the great hall of the moat house—as I had expected it would—but dwarfed it to a degree I never had imagined. For the dining hall of Castle di Caela was by itself the size of the moat house, and the cost to decorate that one great room alone would have drained entirely the Pathwarden treasuries.

  Torches and candles bathed the room in a steady light, white and yellow and amber and red, and those preparing the room for the feast looked almost toylike below me—musicians tuning the guitar and the elvish cello, in the center of the room a brace of tumblers practicing, and around the entertainers what must have been forty servants bustling about upon specific duties—spreading cloth over the tables, setting plates and crockery and glasses in front of each chair.

  I seated myself in the upper darkness and watched the banquet begin.

  Not long after I parted the curtains, the musicians struck up an air, something basso and Solamnic and serious. I sneezed once into the thick velvet, then settled back to watch as, gradually, the residents of Castle di Caela and their guests filed into the dining room in stately order.

  Ladies came first. Enid—all blond hair and flowers and incredible blue linen—led the procession. Doubtless she would look even more beautiful come Sunday, when she led the procession in a full-dress Solamnic wedding, but from my seat I could see a worried look on her face tonight. Something was troubling those beautiful brown eyes.

  Dannelle followed her, hands folded in front of her like a bridesmaid’s, still indignant at the situation and her cousin’s impending marriage, I could tell. She leaned forward and whispered something to Enid, and despite the ceremony, the cousins’ shoulders began to shake with silent laughter.

  After these two came several other ladies of the court, dim in comparison to di Caelas, followed by Knights, some of whom had attended the tournament, evidently. Most prominent among them were a tall man with a whorled sea-shell of a helmet and a four hundred pound enormity in gaudy ceremonial armor.

  Sir Ledyard and Sir Ramiro, I was later to find out.

  Sir Robert di Caela brought up the rear of the procession and sat at the head of a huge mahogany table in the center of the room. I watched the rest of the Knights stand by their chairs until the old man was seated, the high-backed chair at his right still empty—reserved for the groom, obviously.

  Had these Knights been rivals to the groom, jousting and paying court to the Lady Enid? They seemed a little old for such foolishness.

  Younger men followed, many of them carrying their first “tournament badge,” as Father used to call it—a bruise or a sprain or even a break that marked the bearer’s first entry into the lists. The arms of several sported slings and splints, and one of the men, his ankle obviously broken and set, came in on the shoulders of two others.

  Alfric and Brithelm walked in among these fellows, both looking a little out of place amidst all this Solamnic style and glitter. Alfric looked like a buffoon, as usual, but it was reassuring to see Brithelm—all red-robed and unkempt, but healthy and intact and not about to put on airs regardless of the company. I suddenly found myself surprisingly glad that he had come, and that he had hauled my eldest brother out of the mire.

  Despite all these young blades gathered together, despite the usual good spirits that arose on the night before a wedding, especially at a banquet where the music and wine promised to flow freely, the feel of the place was somber, even cheerless.

  Cheerless it remained until the Knights had almost all been seated. Then the music softened, and at the orders of Sir Robert, who was apparently an old sentimentalist himself, servants scurried throughout the room, extinguishing nearly half of the candles, half the lamps, and a few of the lights in the chandelier that hung from the ceiling in the center of the room. Now the light subsided to a deep amber. Illumined by the wavering light of the candles as it glittered on his polished breastplate, the bridegroom entered the room to a stirring military song played by the cellos and a little silver cornet that also glitt
ered in the hands of the musician on the far side of the room.

  In the height and darkness I couldn’t see him clearly. His stride was purposeful and long, and I noticed that even some of the more formidable-looking Knights stepped aside timidly at his approach.

  At a gesture from Sir Robert, those who were already seated stood up respectfully, each Knight lifting his wine glass to the approaching, dark-robed figure. The torchlight shimmered on the crystal, on the tilted red of the wine.

  Before Sir Robert’s table, Sir Gabriel stopped and stood at attention, his gloved hands clenched behind his back. I caught a glimpse of his face in the elusive light of the great hall of di Caela: his was a pale countenance, with a dark brow, and he was certainly handsome enough. Nor did he seem too old for a nuptial tournament, unlike some of the others in the hall who, if they had fought in the lists over the last several days, should have been ashamed at acting half their age.

  Sir Gabriel also seemed to know what he was doing, gliding through the ceremonial movements of the banquet as though he were a dancing master born to pomp and ritual.

  He was handsome, young, and stylish. Able to take care of himself, too, if winning this tournament proved anything.

  Sir Robert stood before him, glass raised.

  “Good health and long life to Gabriel Androctus, Solamnic Knight of the Sword,” he began. “To whom, on the afternoon that follows this gaudy, ceremonious night, we shall give the greatest of our jewels.”

  “Good health and long life to Sir Robert di Caela, Lord of the House of di Caela,” began the response of Sir Gabriel Androctus, but I confess I heard no more of it, stunned as I was by the familiar mellifluous poison of that voice. The voice I recognized immediately, that I had heard in moat house and swamp.

  The bridegroom was the Scorpion.

  CHAPTER 14

  I was back in my bed before Sir Robert sent for me. There under the covers I feigned fever, moaned a little pathetically to the guards who had come to get me, then sent them back to Sir Robert with my regrets.