Oath and the Measure

by Michael Williams

  Alfred nodded, and Lord Gunthar stepped forward as Alfred gracefully took the younger man’s place beside Stephan.

  Behind him, the sawing and hacking died. Only the servants continued with their tasks—old Reza and the boy, Jack, sweeping up the last of the shattered crystal. The young men of the Order, reluctant to do a servant’s work in the first place, had stopped to listen to the drama unfolding beside Huma’s throne, delighting in the discomfort and possibly the punishment of one almost their age. For despite its devotion to the various honors of the Measure, the Clerist’s Tower was home to gossip and to rivalry that was not always friendly.

  Lord Stephan was a veteran of these wars, too. He stepped toward Sturm and, clutching the lad’s arm in his gloved hand, led him past the craning necks and the sidelong glances, straight through the western door into the hush of the chapel. Lords Gunthar and Alfred followed closely behind, and behind them, the renowned Lord Boniface. Those left in the council hall returned to their business, no doubt imagining great mysteries and chastisements unfolding in the tinted light of the locked room.

  There Lord Stephan seated the lad none too softly on an oaken bench by the window. Sturm clutched his shoulder and shivered as the wind crept through the old stone tracery behind him. But he shivered also at the ancient patterns in the stained glass: the rose, the horns of the bison, the yellow harp and the white sphere, the blue helix, all within the silver triangle of the great god Paladine, who contains all things and yet transcends them. All were symbols of the old pantheon, which the Order still honored, despite dark times and the dangers of Ansalon.

  The shelves sagged with thick, leather-bound volumes of mathematics, physics, architecture—studies the young man had shunned in the sparse days with his mother in Solace. “Sturm,” she had warned him then, “it is the books for you now. Sword and Order and father have failed you. A scholar may not be a wealthy man, but a scholar eats, his house safe from fire and his head from the axe.” Sturm frowned and shook his head: The Lady Ilys had called out these things from the centermost room of the cottage, a chamber away from the light and windows. He had pretended to listen, then set aside the books and scrambled to the thatched roof of the house. There, above his mothers admonishments, he fixed his eyes to the north, over the Plains of Abanasinia, where the horizon was nothing but light and plains, but a boy could imagine the turbulent Straits of Schallsea and north of that the southernmost coasts of Solamnia.

  Now it seemed to Sturm that the chapel’s books mocked him and his wasted years among thatch and squirrels and birds. He had traveled far from Solace, only to be brought to another dark room and these same books, on what he now realized to be most somber business.

  “The fault is not entirely yours, lad,” Lord Stephan began mildly, and yet Sturm heard a strange confusion in his voice as the old man paced before the altar, his eyes downcast. “Not entirely yours. This Vertumnus, it seemed, unsettled and surprised the lot of us.”

  “How did that happen, Lord Gunthar?” Boniface asked mockingly. “I assumed that the guardianship of the hall was under your … capable command, as is always the case on a banquet night.”

  Gunthar snorted angrily and leaned against the chapel door. There was no love lost between the two superlative swordsmen, the result of a generation’s fierce rivalry.

  “ ’Tis being seen to, Boniface! No need for your damned gloating and delight!” he rumbled, his gray brows smoldering.

  “Well …” Lord Stephan interrupted, his dry voice melodious and soothing. “Whatever the circumstance, we have no doubt finally met the fabled Lord Wilderness, and he’s every bit as curious as the stories say.”

  “The stories!” Sturm exclaimed, half rising from his chair. “Do you mean to say you knew of this monstrosity, and … and …”

  “We knew indeed,” Alfred replied. “Lord Wilderness is the companion to a hundred rumors, and deaf is the Solamnic Knight who hasn’t heard one of them. We knew of him but had never seen him. How could we have expected his visit? This chorus and burgeoning of vines?”

  Gunthar glanced at Boniface angrily, and the four Knights settled into their private thoughts.

  “The hour is late,” Alfred replied after a long pause, “and our thoughts border on fancy. Perhaps we should address this in the morning, when sunlight shines on what has come to pass, rather than the curious double light of the moon.”

  “I agree with Lord Alfred,” chimed in Lord Boniface, and Lord Gunthar nodded also.

  “But wait. Who is Vertumnus?” Sturm asked.

  Nervously the Knights exchanged glances.

  “I have heard,” Lord Alfred began, “that he is a renegade Knight whose path entangled with elves and all kinds of woodland foolishness. I have heard that he captains a band of Nerakan bandits down in his Southern Darkwoods.”

  “I have heard Vertumnus is a druid,” Lord Gunthar declared. “A great pagan priest whose heart is as hard and knotted as oak. His sanctuary in the Darkwoods is a forbidden place, where birds whisper the last words of criminals and the dead hang like fruit from the limbs of trees.”

  Sturm frowned. That seemed even more fanciful than the renegade Knight.

  “And I have heard,” chimed in Lord Stephan, stirring up dust, “that the blood of the man is pure wizardry, that his dark eyes are fashioned from stone from the black moon Nuitari. I have heard that the Southern Darkwoods are all an illusion, born of the black moon and the sorcerer’s dreams.”

  “And yet he visits us in the Yuletide?” Sturm asked. “And wizard or druid or bandit Knight, he gains our most listening ears? How … how did this happen? And why?”

  “I expect,” Lord Boniface observed dryly, “that Lord Gunthar will see to that answer shortly. How a single man could weave through vedettes of Solamnia’s finest young men, leading that great boar after him …

  “Great boar?” the four others exclaimed, turning in unison to Lord Boniface. The famous Knight frowned, and Alfred laid an uneasy hand on his shoulder.

  “We … we saw no boar, Lord Boniface,” the High Justice explained. “Perhaps the night’s confusion … or the wine …”

  “I tell you, ’twas a boar I saw!” Boniface insisted angrily. “And if I saw it, ’twas there, by Paladine and Majere and whatever good god you could name!”

  “Be that as it may, we saw no boar,” Alfred repeated patiently. “Only the flock of ravens in the rafters …”

  He paused as the other Knights stared at him in puzzlement.

  “You … you saw no ravens,” he concluded bleakly. “None of you did.”

  “I did not look above me,” Stephan soothed. “Though by Paladine and all the assembled gods, I remember the shrill and insulting dryads the Green Man brought with him.”

  It was his turn to be the curiosity. The Knights gazed at him in perplexity.

  “Something also of corn and murmuring bees, it was,” Stephan muttered, “and a great bear, not a boar, danced in our midst.”

  “No, no,” Gunthar corrected. “It was Vertumnus alone. I’m positive.”

  “A hall of mirrors, this business,” Stephan muttered.

  “But the shedding of blood?” Sturm asked. “The sap flowing from a wound?”

  “Sap?” Lord Boniface asked incredulously. Four pairs of Solamnic eyes turned toward the lad, as though he had suddenly announced that the moons had fallen.

  Stephan chuckled, and then suddenly grew somber, his eyes on the shivering lad who sat uncomfortably on the bench before him. “The problem is, Sturm, that whatever we saw, we agree that you were wounded, that in rage you dropped Lord Wilderness, and we all heard the challenge afterward.”

  “The boy was wounded?” Gunthar asked in alarm. He stepped toward Sturm and extended his hand. “Where did he cut you, Sturm?”

  “At my shoulder,” the lad replied, pointing to the wound …

  … which had vanished entirely. The pure white fabric of his ceremonial tunic, unstained and untorn, covered the spot where the wound throbbed
faintly. In silent bafflement, Gunthar and Alfred examined Sturm’s shoulder.

  “Whatever you’re feeling,” Alfred pronounced quietly, “I see no wound. And yet a wound would make sense. Without it, the last threats of that green monstrosity would be ridiculous.”

  He looked at the other Knights, who nodded gravely.

  “Whether you be wounded or whole, Sturm Brightblade,” Lord Alfred continued, raising his index finger pontifically, like a scholar or lawyer, “there remains the problem at hand. Whatever we remember, this thing—this swordplay and killing and rising from death and … and dripping sap, for the gods’ sake!—’tis more important than dryad or boar, or your wound, for that matter. For Vertumnus addressed you, and it was to you that his challenge descended.”

  “Indeed,” Lord Boniface said, firmly but not unkindly. “And now we must decide what this means.”

  Sturm looked from face to face in the dimly lit library. Already the shadows in the room had shifted from the deepest blackness to a sort of foggy gray. Perhaps that, too, was a power of Vertumnus’s music—to collapse a long night into a brief conversation. Or perhaps the time had passed so rapidly, like the years in Solace, merely because Sturm had not kept track of it.

  Sturm was almost relieved when a soft rapping at the door signalled the entrance of the Tower sentries, or at least two of the company, whose honor or misfortune it was to speak for the threescore men assigned to guard the stronghold and the ceremonies therein. Shamefaced and shuffling, red to the ears and downcast of shoulder and eye, they stood in the doorway.

  The sixty sentries were crack foot soldiers, gathered from all over Solamnia, schooled by the Order, and blooded in the Nerakan Wars. They were not the kind of men accustomed to nodding at their posts.

  But out of their number, fifty had heard a soft, plaintive music rising out of the winter night. Some swore it was a folk song from northern Coastlund they heard on the brisk December wind; others thought it was something more refined and classical, the likes of which they had heard in the vaulted courts of Palanthas.

  Some claimed it was a lullaby. But whatever the tune that reached the sentries who manned the walls from the Knight’s Spur to the Wings of Habbakuk, it acted as a lullaby indeed, for they awoke hours later, tied to their stations by entanglements of vine and root, their comrades tugging frantically at the undergrowth that imprisoned them.

  Lord Alfred listened in a fuming silence as the pair mumbled through their story. He scarcely looked at them as he dismissed them, his eyes on a tumbled stack of books that lay tilted and open on a lectern in the corner of the room. The door closed behind the sentries, and an enormous mutual sigh faded with their footsteps into the distant clamor of the hall.

  “So he’s as powerful as they say, this Vertumnus,” Alfred said quietly in the restored silence of the room. “That is all the more troubling, especially when I consider what lies ahead for the boy.”

  All eyes returned to Sturm. He wished he could have joined the sentries in their retreat, but he held his breath and fought down the fear.

  “I believe,” the High Justice began, “that you have been singled out for a purpose.”

  “What kind of purpose?” Sturm asked.

  “If you’ve been listening, lad, you’ve probably gathered that we’re no closer to answering that than you are,” Stephan explained with a smile. “All we know is that something in the music and the mockery and the flyting was such that it fell to you to bear sword against Lord Wilderness and to defeat him in combat, only to find that he is the victor while the game is not over. It’s a riddle, to be certain.”

  “And the answer?” prompted Sturm.

  “I believe he gave you the answer,” Lord Alfred replied. “That on the first day of spring you—and you alone—are to meet him in his stronghold amid the Southern Darkwoods. There apparently the two of you shall settle this issue, as the Green Man said, ‘sword to sword, knight to knight, man to man.’ ’Tis written full clear that the Measure of the Sword lies ‘in accepting the challenge of combat for the honor of the Knighthood.’ ”

  Sturm swallowed hard and slipped his cold hands under his robe. The Knights regarded him grimly, uncertain whether a death warrant lay in Lord Alfred’s pronouncements.

  “One thing is certain, lad,” Boniface said. “You’ve been called to a challenge.”

  “And I accept, Lord Boniface,” Sturm said bravely. He stood, but his legs wobbled. Swiftly Lord Gunthar moved to steady him with a strong hand.

  “But you are not a Knight, Sturm,” Lord Stephan said. “Not yet, that is. And though the Oath and Measure run in your blood, perhaps you are not bound to them.”

  “And yet,” Lord Boniface insisted softly, “you are a Brightblade.” He leaned toward Sturm, his blue eyes searching and raking at the heart of the boy.

  Sturm sat again, this time clumsily. He covered his face with his hands. Again the strange banquet played through his recollection, and the edges of his memory were blurred, uncertain. Vertumnus’s face was vague when he tried to recall it, as were the melodies, the alien tunes that only an hour ago Sturm thought he would never forget.

  What was certain in this? He remembered only the challenge clearly. That challenge was certain—as certain as the Oath and Measure, by which a Knight was bound to accept such challenges.

  “Lord Stephan is right when he says I am not yet part of the Order,” Sturm began, his eyes fixed on the library shelves beyond the Knights. The books seemed to dance in the dim light, green bound and mocking. “And yet I am tied to the Oath by heritage. It’s … it’s almost as if it does run in my blood. And if that’s the case—if it’s something that connects me to my father, like Vertumnus said, or I thought I heard him say—then I want to follow it.”

  Alfred nodded, the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Gunthar and Stephan were silent and grave, while Lord Boniface Crownguard looked away.

  Sturm cleared his throat. “I suppose things like rules and oaths are … even stronger when you can do otherwise but you choose to follow them because … because …”

  He wasn’t really sure why. He stood again, and then Lord Alfred slipped from the room, returning at once with the great sword Gabbatha, said once to grace the belt of Vinas Solamnus. It was the sword of justice, a shimmering, two-edged broadsword, its hilt carefully carved in the likeness of a kingfisher, the golden wings spread to form the cross-piece. So there, before the most powerful Knights of the Order, Sturm set his hand to Gabbatha and swore a binding oath that he would take up the challenge of Lord Vertumnus, the druid or wizard or renegade knight.

  When the words were said and the oath was sealed, Lord Stephan, now abstract and pensive, stalked from the room at once, muttering something about impossible odds. As the old Knight opened the door, the room outside echoed with the sound of axe against wood.

  Sturm shifted from foot to foot, looking up at the older men, awaiting advice, instruction, orders.

  “Very well,” Lord Alfred breathed. “Very … well.” It was as if he had lost something.

  “Go within a fortnight, Sturm,” Lord Boniface urged. “Prompt departure will give you … time to travel unfamiliar country. If we are to believe Lord Wilderness, time is of the essence in this challenge.”

  “I remember,” Sturm said bleakly. “ ‘Appointed place and appointed time.’ ”

  “But you should prepare yourself first, Sturm,” Gunthar urged indecisively.

  “That is true,” Alfred agreed eagerly. “Choose a horse from the liveries—that is, a horse within reason. You are, after all, a son of the Order, and we shall do our utmost to equip you and train you and ready you for the spring and the Southern Darkwoods.”

  Sturm nodded. The evening had dwindled to halfhearted promises. It was as though the Knights knew it, and knew that a still darker issue lurked beneath the promises.

  The boy had been wounded, after all. Or so he maintained, and sharp-eyed old Stephan Peres confirmed it. And in spring, Lord Wilderness
had threatened, the wound would come due.

  It was all chaotic, this business before them, all grim and unforeseeable in its mystery.

  Gunthar sidled to a shelf and thumbed through a book while Alfred recited the equipment Sturm would need, where it was available, and in what quantity or quality the Order was willing to provide it. Sturm continued to nod and thank the High Justice, but his eyes were distant and his thoughts elsewhere.

  So they left him, still nodding and quietly thinking, standing in the midst of the library, all of Solamnic history surrounding him, leaning in on him from atop the dusty and indifferent shelves. Lord Boniface was the last out the door—Angriff’s good friend, his rival in swordsmanship.

  “I’m proud of you, lad,” he said, and turned swiftly away, his face masked by the shadows of the dimly lit room.

  “Thank you,” Sturm breathed again, and the door closed behind all of them, leaving him alone with his fear and musing.

  “How do you fight a mystery?” Sturm asked aloud. “How do you even follow one?” He turned and faced the darkened stained glass window.

  Beyond the glass lay only the faintest of lights—the sunrise oblique in the east, scarcely visible because of the baffling mountains, the vaulting walls, and the simple fact that the window faced west. Behind the yellow of the harp and the white sphere of Solinari in the corner of the window, the lad could see sharp, wavering shadows. It was a sprig of holly, grown up against the wall outside, trembling in the breeze of the winter morning.

  Chapter 3

  Inns and Remembrances

  ———

  The twins had warned him, that autumn night at the Inn of the Last Home, in the week before he saddled Luin and rode away from Solace into the forbidden north.

  It was a last night of reunions and farewells as the three of them sat over cold tea and guttering candles at the long table by the trunk of the enormous vallenwood tree that rose through the floor of the inn. Otik the innkeeper, solicitous as ever, cleared the last of the glass and crockery while the three companions drank absently, staring across the table at each other over the dodging lights.