Sturm found the tracks of massed cattle, and realized that
Merinsaard's camp at Vingaard Keep was not the only site where the invaders were marshaling provisions. A deep anger welled in him at the thought of the low purpose for which the noble edifice of Castle Brightblade had been used.
He rounded the corner of the donjon and entered the north courtyard. There was the little postern gate that his mother and he had fled through that last time he had seen his father. He saw again his father embrace his mother for the last time, as snow fell around them. Lady Ilys Bright blade never recovered from the chill of that parting. To the end of her life, she was cold, rigid, and bitter.
Then he saw the body.
Sturm dismounted and led Mai-tat by the reins. He walked up to the body lying face down in the leaves and rolled it over. It was a man, and he'd not been dead long — a day perhaps, or two. He'd been neatly run through from behind. The corpse still clutched a cloth bag in his fist.
Sturm pried open the fingers and found that the bag held petty valuables — silver coins, crude jewelry, and some semi precious stones. Whoever had killed this man had not done so to rob him. In fact, by the dagger and picklock tucked in his belt, the dead man appeared to be a thief himself.
Sturm walked on. He discovered the remains of a camp fire and some bedding, all trampled and tangled. Under a blue horsehair blanket he found another body. This one had died by sword as well. The usual sort of camp items were scattered about. Copper pan, clay pots, waterskins — more silver coins and a bolt of fine silk. Had the thieves had a fall ing out over their spoils? If so, why hadn't the winner taken everything with him?
An empty doorway yawned nearby. To the kitchens,
Sturm mused. He used a broken tent pole for a stake and tied Mai-tat.
Sunlight streamed into the shattered donjon, but many halls were still pitch black. Sturm went back to the spoiled robber camp and made a torch with a stick and some rags.
As he worked, he heard a stirring in the doorway. He whirled, sword ready. There was nothing there.
The dead men had changed Sturm's perception of the cas tle. He'd been expecting a mournful tour of his old home, and a search for understanding to his father's fate. Now a more sinister air clung to the stones. No place was free of the probing fingers of evil, not even the former castle of a
Solamnic Knight.
The kitchens were picked clean, plundered long ago, even of their fire brick and andirons. Cobwebs clung to every beam and doorway. He came to the great hall, where his father had often dined with great lords, such as Gunthar Uth
Wistan, Dorman Hammerhand, and Drustan Sparfeld of
Garnet. The great oak table was gone. The brass candle holders on the walls were ripped out. The fireplace, with its carved symbols of the Order of the Rose, had been deliber ately defaced.
There was that noise again! Sturm was sure that it was footfalls. "Who are you? Come out and show yourself!" He waved the torch toward the vaulted ceiling. The stone arch es were cloaked in a tightly nestled layer of bats. Disgusted,
Sturm crossed the hall to the steps. One set led up to the pri vate rooms, while another led down to the cellars. Sturm put a foot on the lowest of the rising steps.
"Hello…" sighed a voice. Sturm froze. Under the hood his hair prickled.
"Who is there?" he called.
"This way…" The voice came from below. Sword in his right hand, torch in his left, Sturm descended the steps.
It was cold down there. The torch flickered in the breeze rising through the stairwell. The corridor curved away on either side, following the foundation of the very ancient cit adel that Castle Brightblade had been built on.
"Which way?" Sturm called boldly.
"This way…" whispered the voice. It seemed oddly familiar as it sighed down the hall like the last gasp of a dying man. Sturm followed it to his left.
He had not gone fifty yards when he stumbled upon a third dead man. This one was different; he was no robber.
He was older, his beard untrimmed and his face worn by wind and sun. The dead man sat slumped against the wall, a dagger buried in his ribs. Oddly, his right arm was bent and resting atop his head, a finger stiffly pointing down. Sturm studied the face. It was familiar — in a rush, he recognized the man as Bren, one of his father's old retainers. If he were here, could Sturm's father be far away?
"What are you pointing at, old fellow?" Sturm asked the dead man urgently. He opened the man's coat to see if Bren carried any clues to the fate of Sturm's father. When he did, the dead man's right arm slid out of position and came to rest pointing straight up, overhead. Sturm raised the torch.
There was nothing above him but an iron wall sconce -
— which was crooked. Sturm looked more closely and saw a light mark scored on the wall block. The bracket piv oted, scratching this mark. Sturm grasped the lower end of the sconce and pushed. It turned, following the scratched path in the wall.
The floor trembled, and a tremendous grinding sound filled the tunnel. A section of floor rose in front of Sturm, revealing a dark cavity below. In all his life in the castle, he'd never known of such a secret room.
"Go down… Go down…" rasped the phantom voice. Sturm felt for the first time a presence to go with the voice. He turned sharply and saw the apparition behind him. It was a dim red figure, dressed in what looked like furs. Sturm stepped forward with the torch. He couldn't make out the face, but he caught a glimpse of a dark, droop ing mustache. The man he'd seen in the thunderstorm!
"Come forward, you!" he shouted, and thrust the torch into the specter's face.
The face was his own. Sturm dropped the brand.
"Great Paladine!" he sputtered, backing away. His heel slipped off the top step into the secret vault. "What does this mean?"
"Go down…" repeated the phantom Sturm. Its lips did not move, but the voice was distinct. "Go…"
"Why are you here?" Sturm said. He reached for the torch with trembling hands. "Where did you come from?"
"Far away…"
Sturm's eyes widened. The phantom repeatedly urged him to descend into the secret chamber.
"I will," Sturm assured. "I will." With that, the red figure vanished.
Sturm turned to the steps, but could see nothing beyond the sphere of ruddy light cast by the torch. He took a deep breath and went down.
It was cold in the secret vault, and he was glad to be wear ing Merinsaard's thick tunic. At the bottom of the steps, some eight feet beneath the level of the corridor, he found two more corpses. They were unmarked, but their faces told too well how they had met their fate. The trap door had sealed them in, and in the ensuing hours the men had suffo cated.
Sturm turned from the dead robbers. As he did, his torch light gleamed on something metallic. He walked into the velvet darkness, his breath pluming out before him. The glow of the torch fell over a suit of armor.
Sturm swallowed hard, trying to force down the lump in his throat. With one shaking hand, he reached out to brush the dust from the etched steel. It was. It was his. Sturm had found his father's suit of armor. Breast- and backplate, greaves, schildrons, and helmet were all there. The superla tive war armor etched with the rose motif. The helmet had high horns on the forehead, making Sturm's old headgear, still dented from Rapaldo's axe, seem like a cheap imitation.
The armor was hung on a wooden frame. As Sturm ran his hands over the cherished suit, he felt the soft, cold links of a chain mail shirt under the breastplate. And hanging from the waist by a single thickness of scarlet ribbon was a slip of yellow parchment. Inscribed in Angriff Brightblade's forceful hand were the words, For My Son.
Sturm was filled with such joy at that moment, he could scarcely breathe. The mortal shell of a man could weaken and die, but the virtues that made him a leader among men, a Knight of Solamnia, were embodied in the imperishable metal. Sturm's life was half complete. All that remained was to know of his father's fate.