And all of this having something to do with my middle brother, standing serenely, left hand in the air, singing along with the music from the walls. The armor, now entirely assembled, stood shakily in the air, as though suspended in water. The music faded, and Brithelm laughed softly and sat down upon his mattress. I fell back into the closet, marveling. Sat there for a few minutes, marveling further. There was a soft rattle of metal in the room outside my door, then the sound of movement, of Brithelm walking across the room, then nothing but silence. Outside the window the song of a nightingale started up, much as it had on the night the intruder crept into Alfric’s quarters and started all this mess. The last song before departure. Beyond the sound of bird song rose the whicker of a horse. Bayard had sent the grooms to the stables and was readying things for our journey.
But I nearly forgot departure in the face of this revelation—this trick my middle brother could do with armor, which was probably not the only trick in his bag. Apparently, I had been duping the wrong sibling for years. If Brithelm could rearrange armor like that, imagine what he could have done with dice!
Which reminded me. The gloves, the Calantina dice, the dog whistle, and the purse lay out in the open, well within the view of even the most distracted of brothers.
I stepped into the room. The armor had settled, reassembled, in the corner by the door to the hallway, as though it had been donned by a ghost who, now tired of wearing it, had laid it carefully out of the way. Brithelm was carefully out of the way himself, lost in thought or meditation or revery, seated on the thin and obviously uncomfortable pallet in the center of the room. I called to him softly, called again, and then a third time, but there was no answer. He sat cross-legged, palms upward, eyes closed blissfully, like an icon in an old temple, the kind that you still chanced across if you traveled far enough into the swamps or high enough into the mountains, abandoned hundreds of years back.
It gave me the willies, that was for sure. And it was worse when Brithelm began to rise from the pallet himself, not standing, mind you, but hovering in the air like a hummingbird, while he still sat blissfully, sat with his eyes closed and his palms raised. Once more I tried to rouse him, but it was no use. Judging from the sound outside the window, Father was helping Bayard prepare the horses in the courtyard, giving him final advice as to how to care for me.
“I suppose, Sir Bayard,” his voice boomed, “that the time will come when you have to teach him a better horsemanship than he’s accustomed to, the teaching of which may involve beating some sense into the lad.”
“That it might, Sir Andrew. Tighten that cinch there, if you’d be so kind.”
“And he isn’t a lancer. I spent my time with Alfric in the lists, and he’s the best jouster of the three, but our best is none too good. The time will come when Wea—uh, Galen will have to sit the charger, the teaching of which may involve beating some sense into the lad.”
“Indeed, Sir Andrew. Is Valorous’s bit too tight?”
“I think not, Sir Bayard. And in swordsmanship . . .”
“I suppose I’ll beat him there, too. Are the stirrups high enough?”
And so on. Father could think of many things I lacked the sense to do, so he could be trusted to keep talking for an hour or so, after which Bayard’s politeness would be stretched to the absolute limit and he would ask where his squire and his armor had gotten to.
I glanced over at Brother Brithelm, who floated above his thin mattress of reeds. I reached under him, collected my belongings. Then I went to the door and started to hoist the armor, but turned suddenly. I set the whistle in Brithelm’s palm as a keepsake, as a mystery he might well ponder when he awakened to reality. This was no more than mischief, for I knew that addle-brained Brithelm would no doubt spend hours trying to decipher the meaning of the dog whistle that had materialized in his palm. I thought at first of giving him the opals, but considering the road and those upon it, I fancied I could use them more. How could I know that the dog whistle, in different hands and in different ways, would continue its history of disruption?
The horses resented their loss of sleep, too. The courtyard filled with their coughs, their snorts, their other, less polite sounds. About their legs scurried dogs, who barked hysterically at the cold and the surprisingly early movement of people and livestock. Steam rose from the horses’ bodies, steam also from Bayard’s breath and Father’s breath, clouded by the mysterious winter which had come early to our part of the country. With Bayard’s help I managed to sling the armor over the back of a pack mare, who stared at me over her shoulder with pure and absolute hatred. I covered the armor with a light canvas blanket, strapped on my own sword—a pitiful little weapon it seemed now—and Bayard helping me once again, I managed to rise to the back of another horse. To my embarrassment I was riding old Molasses, a horse we kept about so that visiting small children might be entertained with brief rides around the courtyard.
Father still had no respect for my horsemanship.
My last minutes at the moat house were occupied in receiving advice.
“You are to be a good squire to Bayard, boy. That means you don’t lie or steal, which I know is asking for profound change in your conduct, yet nonetheless, I ask—no, demand it.
“Do not let the armor get dirty. Keep the weapons in good condition—they may save your hide in some unforeseen circumstance.”
Some unforeseen circumstance. I liked that. The old man was waxing chivalric. But the whole ritual of advice and farewell was tiresome. I peeked into my saddlebags.
“Pay attention when I am addressing you! Carry the messages word for word. Curry the horses when Bayard tells you, and nose at their shoes for stones and bruises. Moss grows on the north side of trees—that in case you find yourself lost. When you encounter evil, face it bravely—as the Order says, ‘Without regard to personal suffering.’
“As life is a precious and most holy gift from Paladine, in whom we breathe, fight, and dream for the betterment of all, see that no life is ever taken or sacrificed in vain.”
A cold gust of wind swept over the walls and into the courtyard, and Molasses twitched and shivered.
“We should be on our way now, Sir Andrew,” Sir Bayard announced, rising into the saddle atop Valorous.
“But a moment, Sir Bayard. Never enter the water until an hour after you have eaten, and never enter the water with a storm brewing, for rivers and streams and ponds draw lightning, as do the blue branches of the aeterna tree.”
Bayard muttered something, flicked the reins of his horse. The big chestnut stallion began to move, the pack horse and Molasses following him by instinct. Father walked alongside me, not finished yet.
“Excess of drink before the age of twenty blinds a boy. As does gambling of any sort, or foul language.
“Most of the women you will meet carry knives.”
Despite my fear of what lay ahead of me, of the road that stretched uncertainly beyond the moat house and into the farthest regions of Krynn, where Bayard had some adventure brewing for the both of us—despite all of this, with the clamor and the confusion of dogs and directions, whatever lay waiting at the end of that road seemed less forbidding now. Seemed, you might say, a kind of relief.
A relief, but only until the moat house sank quietly in the darkness behind us, into the morning mists as though it burned, slowly and without flames, on an ocean at midnight. Just when the walls had almost become indistinguishable from the darkness of morning, the tiny form of a man appeared at the battlements. I watched for a moment, as he surely watched us dwindle away from him, from the moat house, from home. Father, perhaps?