Galen Beknighted h2-3

by Michael Williams

  When we were growing up, my father had prized and savored turnips, and because his father had put every nonpoisonous root in Coastlund on a supper plate, then, by the gods, like fare was good enough for his sons.

  Unfortunately, Brithelm had discovered at an early age that his innate love for nature did not extend to turnips. There were the long standoffs familiar to any family, when the child refuses to eat what the parent sets forth. However, Pathwardens are congenitally stubborn, and the struggles between Brithelm and Father took on proportions of terrible length and venom. Many mornings I found the two of them facedown in dinner plates, where they had waited out one another not from the previous night's supper, mind you, but from a confrontation two or even three nights old. The servants learned to work around them.

  I do not know why Alfric decided to keep the peace on this matter. It was out of character in a brother who delighted in setting the whole family against one another. Perhaps it was only that Alfric coveted the same turnips his brother would leave on a plate until the Cataclysm came again. Perhaps it was a glimmer of kindness.

  Indeed, as I thought about it there in the rising foothills, I could not recall clearly whether it was Alfric who scraped the turnips from Brithelm's plate and wolfed them down while Father was not looking. Other images came to my memory-perhaps a dog under the table, or a fold in the hem of Brithelm's robe that Father never checked for wandering tubers. I could not remember clearly for, after all, I had been scarcely three or four years old at the time, and not too concerned with those events that did not involve me.

  It was now, when it had become important, that my memory sputtered and failed me. I sat back in the saddle, telling myself it was of little consequence, these turnips and childhood struggles. Telling myself to put it out of mind.

  But out of mind it would not be put. And in the long, haunted noontide, as we climbed past greenery into the rubble-strewn pathways of the Vingaards, I thought of all my doings, how perhaps one deft stroke of the sword or more experienced command, one different path chosen or even one less vision in the stones, and I would have had my brother beside me with all of his flaws and outrages and promise.

  I used to say that you could see a miracle coming for miles if you just paid attention. But you can't when your mind is on other things. It is then that you get down and burrow in and follow your nose until something more reliable than attention or logic or common sense comes up to meet you.

  I met Shardos in a pass leading toward the site of Brithelm's old encampment. My friends had lagged behind me, giving me generous space to wrestle with thoughts of Alfric, so Lily and I were quite alone as the pathway narrowed through rubble and sheer walls streaked with pink granite. I turned a corner and lost sight of the party. Indeed, Ramiro's usual racket of trumpeting and bluster, louder through the morning as he tried to cheer me up, faded into a whisper behind me as Lily put distance between me and their faint consolations.

  It was a silence that bred suspicions.

  After all, the talk behind me had touched upon bandits. And wasn't it a fact that bandits preferred a narrow pass for their villainy, raining arrows and rocks and the skulls of their previous victims down upon the unwary?

  The first bowl fell, hurtling like a meteor from some concealed spot above me, splintering in the gravel and grit underhoof and sending shards flying in all directions. I yelped and drew sword, imagining an army of Nerakan cutthroats who had chosen this time and place to test their most ruthless and bloodthirsty plan of ambush.

  The pass was too narrow to turn the mare around. Lily snorted and drew the reins from my hand with a strong twist of her head. A growl descended from the rocks above me. Amid my imaginings of wild beasts and their even wilder masters, of bloodlust and dismemberment, the unassuming form of the juggler appeared on the rocks above me. A big dog crouched at his side, its hackles raised.

  "Be still, Birgis," he soothed. "'Tis only a lad, and no enemy of yours."

  The dog lay down at his feet, its growl receding. I breathed again and stood upright in the stirrups, trying my best to look knightly and offended.

  The man had been dressed by a whirlwind. Pieced together by rags, a coat of yellow and purple and black draped over his shoulders. The coat had a yawning hole at its left side, not torn as far as I could tell, but seeming to be an oversight or the fancy of a mad tailor.

  The tunic beneath this monstrosity was a lime green outrage that had once made a mockery of silk, no doubt, but its best years over, it had taken on a sort of magnificent ugliness. His shoes matched only in form. One was of black leather, the other of red.

  I hid a smile, fearing he might be insulted and send the dog to do the work it was obviously more than happy to do, curled at his feet and baring its hundreds of sharp teeth. But the man paid little attention to me, staring blankly above me.

  "I'm sorry, lad, that the bowl was so… proximate. Sometimes I lose them, even in a catch and carry I've done since before you were born. And my goodness, they do make a racket when they settle, don't they?"

  "Begging your pardon, sir," I began politely, eyeing the dog, whose fur had risen in a wiry, aggressive mane about its frighteningly strong neck. I listened anxiously for the sound of approaching horses.

  Ramiro, no doubt, had stopped out of earshot for a snack or a drink or a nap-for anything, in short, that would delay him.

  The motley man above me made no movement, no sign of fighting or of running away. No sign, even, that he noticed the sword I was brandishing.

  I waved my hand at him.

  No response. Perhaps it was a trick of light or shadows in this rocky region.

  I made the most hideous face I could imagine, flashed him the most obscene hand gesture I knew.

  Growls from the dog only.

  It was only then I noticed that the man held two other bowls.

  "Are you in the habit of juggling crockery?" I asked uneasily, brushing the folds of my cloak to remove any stray shards that might discomfort me hours from now when I dismounted or crouched by a fire.

  "Indeed I am, young sir," the man replied serenely. "The dog has learned to dodge bowls and to reconnoiter."

  It was then I was sure the juggler was blind.

  "So your companion, sir-"

  "Birgis."

  "So Birgis is… the eyes in your alliance?"

  A long pause filled the cool mountain air while the man awaited the obvious next question, while I debated whether I should give him the satisfaction of asking it. But I had to know.

  "Doesn't your… lack of sight pose a problem in juggling?"

  "Indeed it does, young sir," he replied, stroking the bristled back of the dog beside him, who growled once more and lay still, waiting no doubt for a sudden movement or loud noise on my part-anything that might justify his dragging me from my horse and disemboweling me.

  I heard the clopping of hooves on the trail behind me. Ramiro and Dannelle came into view, then Oliver close behind them, leading the riderless horses. My big, blustering companion tipped his traveling hat politely at the sight of the juggler.

  "Indeed, it is a long story. Times have been," the blind man went on heedlessly, "that I would have given my earthly goods for a set of eyes. But I shan't trouble you with a drawn-out and tedious tale."

  "Why, nonsense!" Ramiro boomed merrily, already halfway dismounted. "What better time for stories and lore than when you have stopped for the day, ready for a meal and rest and a whiling of hours?"

  "Ramiro…" I began, but there was no stopping it. The big man sat and motioned to Oliver, who sighed, retraced his steps to a notch among the rocks, and set about to build a fire.

  "You could stand with a bit of distraction yourself, Galen," Ramiro added, "and what good is a story if not to while away all heaviness and woe?"

  "What good indeed?" asked the juggler, stepping cautiously down the rock face, the dog scrambling nimbly onto his shoulders. Together they hopped lightly onto the surface of the trail, the story beginning before th
e blind man had crouched by the fire to warm his hands.

  "Mine were the sharpest of eyes," the juggler began, "in my early years, when I juggled torches and knives in a floating palace on the edge of the Blood Sea…"

  And on it went, through an hour of silliness and farfetched stories of some notorious performing career that spanned Ansalon from one end to the other. As he told his story, the juggler stood and produced three bottles from somewhere in those patchwork robes. It was like sleight of hand to begin with, and I caught myself watching for secrets, for distractions and misdirections as though he were intent on pocketing our coins rather than bedazzling us.

  Bedazzle us he did, for as his life unfolded, the bottles flashed brightly in the mountain air, first green, then red, then blue. Then as he tossed them more quickly, the colors combined, green and violet and yellow from somewhere unexpected, until I think I saw the entire spectrum, and the colors moved quickly into transparency as the blind man seemed to juggle ice and light over our marveling heads.

  The youngest son of a circus family, Shardos-for that was his name-had been bom in far-off Kothas beyond the Blood Sea, by the strait that easterners call the Pirate's Run. He said he had come west over its waters with his family "not long after the Cataclysm."

  I looked skeptically at Ramiro. If my history and reckoning were correct, the old man was claiming to be over two centuries old.

  Ramiro sat by the fire, as wide and complacent as a huge toad, rapt with interest as Shardos continued his story.

  Through the Death's Teeth Shardos's family had come, and once ashore, down to Ogrebond, where the audience had eaten his oldest brother and set afire the family tents.

  West through Neraka they had traveled over the span of several years, their tented wagons heavy with bottles of cure-alls, with potions and trained animals and fireworks. It sounded like the most wonderful boyhood life to me, for you could name the city-from North Keep all the way to Zeriak by the Ice Wall-and Shardos had been there. He had stories that went with the places, too: from the Cracklin Coast, where he was burned and blinded by a cruel duke who distracted him while he juggled torches, all the way west to the Gnome Kingdoms under Mount Nevermind, where his middle brother was dismantled by an explosion in a wagon full of rockets.

  More than that, he had collected the stories of the places themselves: He knew by heart seven versions of the Tale of Huma, and creation itself was different, it seemed, depending on your town or country or race. He knew the stories of Istar and the Cataclysm and more recent stories, too, such as that of the Battle at Chaktamir in which my father had fought.

  Shardos claimed to know the entirety of di Caela family history, and within it, the Scorpion's tale. He knew Bayard, and somehow was familiar with the bleak and desolate childhood of my protector.

  Solemnly the blind man told us that he knew the true story of Brandon Rus and the arrows, and that at some time, given greater leisure and our kindly attention, he would tell us why the young easterner let his brilliant gifts lie waste in memory and brooding.

  Shardos claimed to know two thousand stories, stories that had served him well as his hands slowed in later years. "For I have found," he claimed, "that jugglery and storytelling are cousins. It is the illusion you're after-the moment when the juggler and the teller fade from the sight of those who are looking on, when all you can see is the objects rising and falling and the story completing itself on its own." In puzzlement, I looked at Ramiro, who shrugged back at me in turn. As men of action, we were used to being left in the dark by comparisons.

  At any rate, Shardos had become a bit of a poor man's bard, fabling and gossiping supper from hovel to castle through a century of roads. Up until a time, that is, when seeking rest, he had chanced upon a small encampment in the Vingaard Mountains.

  "There I had fancied on staying," he claimed. "To be done with the travel and to think on my stories for a while. For they all must fit together somehow, wouldn't you think? At least, that is what my host in the mountains told me before he disappeared."

  In an instant, we were all alert, eyes so intent on the blind man in front of us that Birgis the dog became uneasy and growled menacingly at Ramiro.

  "And the name of your host?" I asked, my voice almost a whisper.

  "Why, Brother Brithelm, I heard them call him," the juggler replied.

  Briefly and urgently I told him that Brithelm was my brother,

  "I see," Shardos said, his tone a little more somber. "I can imagine what has brought you to the mountains, then."

  "Yes, I suppose you might guess why we are here," I conceded. "Brithelm's camp is but a day's ride away, as I remember it, and we were on our way to see if he has weathered the earthquake well."

  "Were on your way, you say?"

  "Yes, Master Shardos," I replied guardedly. "For though I surely intend to visit my brother in the days to come, this talk of disappearance has… given me pause as to where I should venture next. That and the Plainsmen. Pale fellows. Wearing beads and skins. Most of them armed. Perhaps you've seen-I mean, noticed them."

  "So that's what they look like. Their clothing rustled like buckskin and leather, but the skin color-I had no idea. They've made quite a commotion in the surrounding woods this evening."

  "Who are they? What are they?" Ramiro asked. "No idea there, either. But whatever they are, it's your brother Brithelm you're after, is it not? And well you should be, for he's been kidnapped."

  "Kidnapped?"

  "Whisked from the world as we know it, I'd wager. That camp of an abbey is as empty as the City of Lost Names northward. Scarcely a sign that Brithelm or any of his fellows have ever been there."

  "I… I can't believe that," I protested. "Who would want to kidnap Brithelm? So, Shardos. You are saying that my brother's abbey-"

  "Is deserted. Yes, Galen. When the quakes arose and the seasons shifted and the elements burst their bounds, the kidnappers came out of the earth…"'

  "Lead us there, Shardos," I stated before I thought, teased out of caution by bewilderment. I stared down the apprehensive look flashed at me by Ramiro and continued. "I have lost one brother too many in these mountains, and by the gods, the hills will open before I lose another."

  "'Tis simple enough," Shardos observed cheerily. "Birgis and I can find him for you. He is unharmed, I am sure, though no doubt distressed by his new surroundings."

  Chapter X

  "And this brother," the Namer said, waving his hand dramatically in the direction of a fire, low beneath the Sign of the Antelope-a whitened, antlered skull propped on a tall spear, "To what have they carried him, and what awaits him there? It is dark where he is going, but there is torchlight."

  He crouched before the fire, passed the strand of metal over it, and resumed the story,

  Soon, thought the man on the mottled throne. Soon the stones will be brought into my presence, brought from above like a sweet black rain cascading from the hand of a god.

  And why not? he mused, resting his head upon the cool moistness of a sheet of stalactites. Did not the hand of a god guide me here to begin with?

  Below him, in the great cavernous hall called the Porch of Memory, white-haired Plainsmen milled about their tasks under the torchlight. Some-stout men, as a rule, their shoulders knotted-pushed wheelbarrows sagging with rubble and sediment, to a place well lit beneath the torches, where folk more dextrous and nimble-young women and smaller men-sifted through the fragments for the opals that had eluded all of them, century by century.

  But soon, Firebrand thought, closing his one good eye and smiling blissfully, the rattling, chipping sounds of mining and sorting fading below him into faint sounds he imagined that he only remembered. Soon all this pushing and sifting and hoping will be… outdated. Yes, outdated when the Knight brings the stones to me from his tall castle.

  Then I can tell my people that I… found the opals. That a vision told me they would be… where they would be.

  For visions have spoken to me before, spoken une
rringly out of the silence and the light in these very stones.

  He held a silver crown in his right hand. Slowly, with a sort of mad elegance, he placed the circlet upon his head. Between the twining strands of silver, seven opals nested in an irregular, broken pattern.

  The crown was still hot from his burning touch.

  His eye opened wide as the chanting began beneath him, echoing off the walls of the Porch of Memory until the great room resounded with the voices of children. His eye was as deep and as black and as flickering as the opals above it, and brimming with tears as it focused on a far point and a far time. From beneath the diamond-shaped leather eye patch, tears trickled grotesquely, mixed with soot and the recollection of blood.

  The voices poured like dark rain down the walls.

  "You pass through these, unharmed, unchanging but now you see them

  strung on our words on your own conceiving as you pass from night to awareness of night

  to know that remorse is the calm of philosophers

  that its price is forever

  that it draws you through meteors

  through winter's transfixion

  through the blasted rose

  through the shark's water

  through the black compression of oceans

  through rock through magma

  to yourself to an abscess of nothing

  that you will recognize as nothing

  that you will know is coming again and again

  under the same rules."

  Whether he joined in or only listened, Firebrand often wept at this chanting. He shed soft tears on the tenebral necklace he wore, upon each little hooked claw, each little silvered tooth that stood for a vanished, long-dead year the Que-Tana had spent underground. For the Chant of Years was a map of sorrow, a chronicle of time forever wasted in a mission of darkness.

  Oh, the Chant of the Men was sorrowful enough, Firebrand could tell you, with its heavy alternation of names and of teeth and the claws of cave bears. And the Chant of the Women was a testament to the terrible ruin of innocence, as the people knelt and prayed, touching leopard tooth, leopard claw, as their hands raced along the necklace and the litany raced along the roll of names.