How after weeks of wandering, the young Namer was not sure whether the voice in his ear was that of a god or a stone or a crown, or perhaps the softer voice of his own prophetic gifts, and how he praised himself for his "insight and foreknowledge." How the wanderings would take him by the way he knew as the Que-Nara Namer-the secret way unto the rest of the tribe, buried deep under the ground.
"Almost at the moment he reached them," Longwalker said, his dark eyes bleak and ominous, "the Rending raced along the spine of the world and the earth burst open, and nothing has ever been the same…"
"You don't believe," I insisted, "that this Namer, this-"
"Firebrand, he calls himself."
"Did this… Firebrand… have anything to do with the Rending?"
Longwalker shook his head. "I cannot say. It also puzzles me how he has lived through the lives of six chieftains."
It puzzled me, too, but there was a whiff of mystery and murk about anything to do with the Plainsmen.
"How… how do you know he is with them? I mean, with the Que-Nara beneath the ground?"
"In the last few weeks, I have seen him, spoken to him," Longwalker said, with a quick motion drawing a warding sign in the dust by the fire. "He laughs at us and says that his wounded eye has stared down our weapons."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"That the people below took him in despite his wounded eye. That his eye must have deceived them, then his words, for now they follow him without question, and that the time will come when his crown is complete-complete beyond the twelve, he says, for it is his plan to set the thirteenth stone and bring forth the power of life and death."
"And I am walking right into his hands, bringing him the very thing he seeks?" I asked apprehensively.
"The very thing he seeks may be his undoing,"
Longwalker mused. "You see, Firebrand is right, for I am powerless against him. His taken eye is my undoing, in a way. For even if I knew the way beneath the mountains into his dark kingdom-which was a way lost to us when Firebrand took the knowledge with him-I could not harm him, tor the blade that marked him has stayed my hand."
I crouched in a puzzled silence. Beside me, Shardos cleared his throat uncomfortably and stirred the fire with a stick.
"Do you mean you cannot lay hands on Firebrand? Not even to save your people?"
"Not even if he harms my people. For he will harm them by stealing their memory, and if I lay hands on him, I am saying that memory is not worth the stealing.
"But," he continued, green mischief deep in his eyes like fire in the opals, "that is not to say I cannot sit back and let someone else-someone not of the People-lay hands on him. Nor that I would not be pleased to do so. For the hands that destroy Firebrand will carry history. They will bind wounds and unite a sundered nation. Perhaps it is my task only to watch them at their business. Sometimes the doing is the waiting."
Moths sailed through the baffled attic between my ears.
"I'm sorry, Longwalker," I said finally, "but I don't really have the stuff of history and all. I'm afraid that all I'm after is my brother Brithelm, and once I have him, my quarrel with this Firebrand is more than likely over. I am no hero."
As if to prove my point, I told the Plainsman the whole unsavory story of my opals: how the stones came to me long ago from the coffers of an evil illusionist, as a bribe to betray Bayard Brightblade, not to mention my family. I dragged the gems through the whole adventure with the Scorpion-from the dusty rooms of my castle to the illusory rooms of his, and despite their time in my possession, I knew little more about them than I did when I first grasped them in my money-hungry clutches.
"I survived, of course, Longwalker," I concluded, squinting into the darkness of the tall shape now standing just outside the firelight's edge. "But it took all my ingenuity and soft words and courage, finally, to pry me out of the Scorpion's clutches. I fear I am just about spent of all those virtues."
"But you survived, of course. And that in itself is something. The night is long," he added abruptly, "and ahead of you a longer journey. By now you must know we have no intent to harm you. Trusting that, you should sleep calmly in your camp tonight."
He smiled his ragged, broken smile and said, "We heard about these stones, that Firebrand awaited their coming. It is our nature to be concerned when such things take place. So we wanted to find them, to see that the hands into which they have fallen are… gentle hands that may guard that stillness well."
"I know of these things, too, Longwalker," I said. "I have seen the fires from a distance, in the mountains and in the gems. A brother of mine is somewhere beneath those mountains, and another…" I choked.
It was still too soon to talk of Alfric. Longwalker rose from the fire and moved slowly and graciously toward the edge of the light, leaving me with my thoughts for a moment.
"Longwalker?" I said at last, having gathered myself together again. "What have you heard from my brother-the one Firebrand has taken?"
"Only what you have told me now, Solamnic," he replied, moving back into the light.
He looked down on me almost gently, and I stood, helping Shardos to his feet. The three of us walked toward the edge of the camp. Between two tall rocks far to our west, a faint fire was glowing, and from that region I heard the sound of Ramiro's laughter, carrying over miles and no doubt fueled by a flask of Thorbardin Eagle.
"I believe you now, Solamnic," Longwalker said quietly. "You will care for the stones and for my people wisely."
"But why? Why should you believe in me? I wish your people and their history well, but it is my brother and only my brother I am after. And I shall do anything to win his freedom."
"That in itself is something," the Plainsman said bluntly. "I believe that the gods always send my people something. You seem to be the one tree on the plain."
'That is not encouraging, Longwalker."
Then you have more of encouragement to learn," Longwalker said mysteriously, leading me to the horses.
It was a lonely trip back to our campsite. Lily plodded, worn down, no doubt, by her fear of the Plainsmen's clothing. I led Shardos's horse, puffing and snorting, through the rising rocks, the old man snoring in the saddle.
I labored under my own burden. The stones weighed heavily in my speculation, for at heart I have always hated responsibilities that offer me no chance to order about those around me. And the whole murky business of this Firebrand and his crown and visions made me doubly uneasy.
Waiting may be doing, but to me, that night, it seemed too much like doing nothing.
There in the darkness, as the path we were on began to ascend more steeply toward the faint light of our campfire, I thought about planting the stones on Shardos.
But the old man's moon of a face smiled in serene sleep behind me, and I knew that my thoughts were idle-that I was not going to take the coward's way out. But damned if I knew what way I would take instead.
Chapter XIII
"What about the others?" a small child asked, crouched over several little piles of stones and sticks he moved along with the Namer's story. "What of those who stayed at the castle and those in the Namer's caves?"
The Namer nodded and smiled. Slowly he twined the two strands of metal together over the fire, bending them gracefully in his gloved hands.
Here is the story as the Lady Enid told it to me, as I gathered from what others said, what servants said, from what Sir Bayard let fall in moments unguarded. It is the tale of what took place in our absence.
At first, Bayard was his old self, handling in his customary and courteous manner the wave of hysteria that passed through Castle di Caela when Dannelle was discovered missing.
All of this ruling in justice and wisdom is well and good, but Bayard was quickly restless, having dispatched all the daily duties he could notice, foresee, or even imagine by the end of the first day after our departure. That is not to say there wasn't much left to do around Castle di Caela. It is just that Bayard, by tempera
ment an adventuring Knight, had neither the patience nor the skills to attend the details of castle maintenance and government.
It is then that the real story begins.
Only three nights passed, it seems, until Bayard was climbing the Cat Tower. The whisper went from servant to servant as the Knight lay in the infirmary, attended by Enid, who was beyond herself with managing a restless husband and an even more restless estate. The three surgeons stood constantly and irritatingly over the injured Knight, rubbing his leg with their textral stones. The stones steamed and emitted sweet odors, but they lost their early fascination for Bayard and were now part of the boring daily landscape.
On the other hand, Bayard found young Brandon Rus the only bright spot in the bleak hours. It was Brandon who talked to him about hawking and horses, who knew more about those cherished subjects than half a dozen Knights twice his age. However, Brandon knew such things because he was at them constantly, and so he spent most of his day in the castle forest beyond the east wall, restlessly riding and hunting.
Sometimes in the morning, when the wind lifted, Bayard could hear his horn echoing over the grounds of the estate. It was then that he turned uncomfortably, filled with a most un-Solamnic jealousy, and shouted at the surgeons.
Still, Sir Brandon was always welcome. Bayard looked forward to his conversation as a cherished relief from the mournful Sirs Elazar and Fernando, the gloomy Solamnics whose talk was only about violation of rules and missing opals. Nonetheless, when the surgeons left at night, when the hard-pressed Enid napped in her brief rest from entertabling and attending to her husband, Bayard was left alone with his discomfort, with his loneliness and his boredom, with the distant metallic sounds of the one cuckoo clock Enid had not dismantled in her campaign to redecorate the palace old Sir Robert had defaced years ago by absentmindedness and bad taste. Bayard longed for even Elazar's company then, in those bird-haunted and lonely hours, though he knew he would regret it in a matter of minutes.
So the hours passed until the third day, when Sir Bayard Brightblade decided to do something picturesque with his surroundings. He began with an archery range set up through the infirmary window.
After Enid had opened the shutters and moved away from the half-light of noon, drenched by the continuing downpour, and after the three surgeons left dripping with sweat and rain, having carried Bayard, bed and all, to a towering view of the courtyard, an equally soaked servant gloomily set up two targets in the center of the bailey. Then Brandon Rus, perhaps the only dry person in that wing of the castle, pulled up a chair at Bayard's bedside and brought forth a crossbow.
"You have to allow for the height and the distance and the rain, Sir Bayard," he explained politely as he and Raphael nocked the arrow and drew the string, tilting the bow ever so slightly. Calmly he loosed the shaft, and it flew out into the downpour.
Raphael's shout rose above the steady rushing sound of the rain. Sir Brandon's arrow struck the bull's-eye.
Brandon smiled faintly and handed the bow to Bayard.
Sullenly he handed the crossbow back to Brandon.
"'Tis an impossible device to load from a sickbed, sir," the young man explained as they reloaded for the embarrassed Knight.
"'Tis also my damned leg that's ailing, lad, not my arms!" Bayard snapped. After which there was an uncomfortable silence, a stillness in both men. Then Brandon handed the bow back to the recumbent Bayard.
Who missed and missed and missed, the first arrow sailing long, passing over the targets and into an awning of the paddock. The canvas, already sagging with rainwater, burst open and spewed water onto an unfortunate groom currying a mare beneath it. The mare galloped off, leaving the boy behind her, soaked and still clutching a comb.
The second arrow fell closer to its mark, but not close enough, the arrow shivering in the very spot where only a second before a sentry was standing sullenly.
The third arrow hit the top of the windowsill and darted back into the sickroom, ricocheting between Raphael's legs and pinning Bayard's blanket to the wall.
Bayard looked at Sir Brandon, who scooted his chair away from the bedside. Archery, it seemed, was over for the day.
It was time, instead, to bring on the dwarves and the dogs.
For on the third day of Sir Bayard's living in, a party of rive dwarves, making the long trek from Thorbardin north into Palanthas with five barrels of Thorbardin Eagle to barter, trade, or sell at impossible prices, was waylaid by the heavy rains and forced to seek shelter at the first roof, which happened to be that of Castle di Caela. According to Solamnic custom, Enid saw to the quarters of the five from Thorbardin. According to custom, she was also supposed to be responsible for their entertainment.
A duty that Bayard took eagerly out of her hands.
The rooms in the infirmary underwent a bizarre transformation. Doors were opened, in some cases removed. Tables were stacked and ordered, as were the linen cabinets. The result of all these arrangements was a wide, circular path that passed through four of the sickrooms, having its beginning and ending directly in front of Bayard's bed, which was moved, again by the gasping and perspiring surgeons, back to its original site.
A wide, circular path. Makeshift, but good enough for a dog track when money and dwarf spirits circulate.
And circulate they did, the second night of the dwarves' stay, as the races began. Bayard bought one of the barrels of Thorbardin Eagle at a price Sir Robert denounced as "banditry"-at least until his third drink, when the "bandit" became a sober-faced bloodhound who sat down at the final turn of the dog track, allowing a beagle and a pug to pass him, and forfeiting the large amount of money Sir Robert had placed on his promised speed and endurance.
Sir Robert asked Brandon for his bow, preparing to shoot the animal in a fit of gambler's rage. Brandon and Bayard exchanged glances; by now they were the only two sober folk in the room, and their sobriety told them that it would be a real game of chance to determine where Robert di Caela's arrow would lodge, and that the stakes in such a game would be terribly high.
Robert was escorted to bed by Sir Brandon, who gave up escorting after a few steps and hoisted the old man to his shoulders when the two of them reached the stairwell leading to the fourth floor and Sir Robert's quarters.
This left Bayard downstairs, alone in his sobriety, but not without company. Sir Andrew was there, as was Gileandos. Elazar was snoring under the three-legged table that completed the first turn of the dog track, while Fernando, dressed in the ornamental armor worn by old Simon di Caela before he decided he was an iguana, tried in vain to order around anyone-dwarf, guard, page, or dog.
Enid entered the room as the second race began and was faced with this sorry sight. Fernando turned to her. In a booming voice, he proclaimed that she should return to where she belonged.
The whole room dropped into silence and every eye, drunk or sober, snapped around to Fernando. Enid turned icily, haughtily toward the litigious old fool, who had just crossed a boundary that nobody-Knight, dwarf, servant, or dog-could cross without dire peril. For Enid Pathwarden was Pathwarden only through marriage and love for her husband. By blood and by a thousand years of heritage, she was all di Caela.
She was, indeed, the di Caela.
And the dog races were declared over. Memories are blurred as to how Fernando managed to ride twenty-five miles south toward his holdings near the Garnet Mountains that very night. What is more, he was wrapped in yards of linen and was terribly bruised about his head and shoulders. The bruises somehow matched exactly the carving on the missing leg of the table at the first turn of the dog track.
Sir Elazar, though still at the castle, was also badly bruised, having been found by Raphael the next morning, a victim of collapsing furniture.
The dwarves were gone by noon on the next day, Elazar was packing, and the dogs were kenneled once again, their night of celebrity passed into di Caela history. And so, deprived of sport and diversion, the master of the castle again lay splinted and confined
to the infirmary.
It was enough to drive Bayard Brightblade to the di Caela family papers.
For two years, he had promised his wife that, "given the time and the leisure," he would gather together the volumes from the library-the ledgers and histories, the journals and logs and lists and registers in which the di Caelas of old kept all kinds of records. Enid hoped that the whereabouts of the missing well cap would come up after desperate page-turning, and the danger of flood could be averted. But she also delighted in her husband's newfound interest in the daily business of the estate and the balance of credit and debit.
Within an hour, the poor man was overwhelmed. Numbers hurtled by him like hostile arrows, and he soon decided that the single most happy advantage of wandering knighthood is its freedom from budgetry and arithmetic.
"Mathematics is for gnomes, anyway," he muttered, setting aside the account books and moving to the wills. Wills, of course, make for better reading, having been principal weapons in di Caela family combat for centuries.
It was here that Bayard Brightblade read of family feuds and disputes that had passed down through the generations, as each di Caela, on his or her deathbed, seems to have reserved a posthumous slap for one or more descendants. Most clerical older sons inherited the father's favorite prostitute, while fastidious nieces inherited their uncle's privy.
Some bequests were not as jolly: Evana di Caela received only a side of beef from her mother, which, the old woman said, "should serve as a reminder of what happens to heavy, bovine creatures"; Laurantio di Caela received from his uncle a single dagger with the murky instructions to "do what needs to be done."
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