"It's frightening. I've been thinking it's like one of Gileandos's proverbs coming alive, where 'the liar gets trapped in his own stitchery' or some such self-righteous nonsense. Somehow it got us free, though. Got us all out of Firebrand's clutches and here, back on the road to Castle di Caela and home."
Brithelm nodded. "And why are you telling me this?" he asked.
"Oh… I'm not sure. Perhaps I've decided never to lie again."
"I do not think you have decided that," Brithelm replied.
Then solemnly he looked back out over Solamnia.
"I am afraid I have a confession, too," he whispered. "You know when I dawdled the time with Firebrand asking him all those questions about tenebrals? You heard the story from the Que-Tana."
"I remember, Brother. What did you learn about tenebrals?"
"Nothing," Brithelm replied. "Can't say as I care, either. Filthy little animals, tenebrals are. Never liked them to begin with."
I stifled a laugh. "Don't tell me you were lying, too?"
"Not lying as much as… being a good guest, Galen," Brithelm replied soberly, his finger still tracing luminous circles by his feet.
"A good guest?"
I said nothing, hid my smile in the blanket.
"But I feel… well, guilty now," Brithelm said, head bowed. "As if I guided poor Firebrand to misfortune and doom simply by feigning an interest in his surroundings."
"Nonsense, brother," I remarked. "Look at the simple mathematics of the situation. Firebrand had wrestled you down there, was more than willing to put an end to you once he had the opals, and brought me to the caverns of the Que-Tana with all kinds of lies and subterfuge. It all adds up, Brithelm, and your little courtesy does not compare to his malice and weakness and greed."
I discovered I was good at this. Having spent nigh on twenty years in explaining away my own misdeeds, I could explain for others with the skill of a surgeon.
Brithelm relaxed beside me, rose to his feet. All the lights that were to shine in western Solamnia that evening were shining by now.
Five days it took us to get back to Castle di Caela. For the most part, Ramiro served as our guide, the only one among us who had any idea as to the way back.
He had practiced his leadership until it had become almost glamorous. After all, he had guided forth the hundreds of squinting, cowering Que-Tana, many of whom were seeing the moons and the stars for the first time in their benighted lives, into that shadowy grove in the foothills, where they stayed until Longwalker joined them late that evening. There, as the campfires of the Que-Tana glowed warmly, Ramiro, Brithelm, and I took to the plains, leaving behind us a wandering family reunited, a rudderless people brought to a strong and kindly guidance.
A guidance not only Longwalker's. For Shardos had stayed with the Que-Tana, for reasons we did not yet understand. Brithelm wept openly to say good-bye to the old juggler, and Ramiro and I, though trained to be starched, stone-faced models of Solamnic restraint, left with a catch in our throats as the old man sang a song at our parting, its melody cascading down the hillside after us. From Wayreth Forest it was supposed to have come, and Shardos claimed he had pieced it together from the song of the birds there. I do not remember it all, but I remember one part-"Here there is quiet," it went,
"Here there is quiet, where music turns in upon silence
Here at the world's imagined edge, where clarity
Completes the senses, at long last where we behold
Ripe fruit never falling, streams still and transparent
"Where the tears are dried from our faces, or settle,
Still as a stream in accomplished countries of peace,
And the traveler opens, permitting the voyage of light
As air, as the heart in repose this lasting day."
The very next afternoon we saw them, on a rise behind us, in the distance at the feet of the mountains.
The tall form that walked at the head of the column was no doubt Longwalker's. Silhouetted against the western sky, against the rapidly fading sunlight behind him, he waved at us, lonely and elegant on the horizon's edge.
There, after a moment, a short squat form joined him. Dressed in motley it was, and as it waved to us also, a series of bright lights dappled with all imaginable colors issued from its uplifted hands.
"Bottles!" Brithelm breathed beside me. "Incomparable, brightly colored bottles!"
And suddenly the Plainsmen were gone, vanished in the distance and the falling night.
As we neared home, we traveled further and further into the night, and on occasion, when he was on high ground and you were following below him, you could look up and see Sir Ramiro of the Maw blotting out half the stars on the eastern horizon with his sheer bulk and presence.
My dealings with the big Knight softened considerably on the road home. I guess, as usual, it took an earthquake for him to think kind thoughts about me, but if that was what it took, I would gladly accept it. After all, his guidance was somehow heartening in the highlands and onto the soggy plains, for I remembered trolls and raiding Que-Tana and even more horrible things from the years back.
Under Ramiro's care, the last leg of the journey passed rapidly, almost eventlessly. I learned the Solamnic countryside in better detail than I had ever imagined or hoped I would. Each day we walked as far as our leisure would take us-for after all, our guide Ramiro set the pace of the journey.
The first thing you see of home from the west is the banner that flies atop the Cat Tower.
It was welcome, that banner, even with my dread of how to break the news of Alfric to my father.
But those dreads were lost, or postponed awhile, in the excitement of reunions, for it seemed that Castle di Caela had news of its own to tell.
We rode through the western gate to the sound of trumpet and drum. Raphael had spotted us in the distance during a stroll on the walls, and with his general efficiency and good will had arranged a Solamnic welcome by the time we arrived at the castle.
Things seemed in disarray all over. The vending carts that usually milled in the bailey were scattered and broken, evidence that the quake we felt in the Vingaards had reached this far into Solamnia. Indeed, a most forgiving Raphael told me that the first quake had left an enormous fissure underneath the foundation of the castle-I was not to hear the adventure surrounding it until later-and that the second quake, arising from nowhere little more than a week ago, had closed it again altogether.
It seemed like farfetched geology to me, but I had seen stranger things to the west and was inclined to believe him.
Brandon Rus had been preparing to leave eastward on a pilgrimage to the Blood Sea of Istar. Indeed, he had packed for the next morning, but he postponed his departure another night and day so that he could hear the adventures that had befallen us. It was from his account that I began to piece together what had happened underneath the castle while we were away. I went to Enid and to Bayard later for the rest of the story, and got more than I bargained for.
You see, not only did they grace me with the account of the pendant and the cats and the dangerous dreams and Marigold's shipwrecked hair, but they had exciting news that surpassed even the joy of restoring the castle.