Bayard was right about our past, that often it showed us only enough to get us in trouble.
“So there were Brightblades at the outset of this story of di Caelas,” I began when the warmth had settled on my skin and the hardtack—almost the last of the traveling food we had brought with us from the moat house—had settled in my stomach. “But what are the Brightblades doing in the story now?”
Bayard stirred the fire.
“What is the Brightblade doing. You see, Galen, I am the last of the line, and therein lies the end of the story.
“For the history of the Brightblades touches that of the di Caelas twice—at the beginning of the family and at its end. Indeed, it is a Brightblade who is supposed to lift the di Caela curse.
“Don’t tell me I’ve forgotten to mention the prophecy that ties our stories together,”
He gave me a look of innocent concern.
“Yes, Bayard, I am afraid you ‘forgot to mention’ it. After dragging me through some swamp that nearly swallowed me whole, then past some behemoth of an ogre that nearly chopped up all of us, then into the coldest weather I’ve ever seen, where even my extremities give up on me, I can understand why you might ‘forget to mention’ that there is a genuine reason for all of this, and that we are supposed to do something about this curse.”
“Calm yourself, Galen,” Bayard urged, rising from the fire and moving slowly toward me. “Hear the rest of my story.
“It is the beginning of the end for the line of Benedict di Caela, or for Benedict di Caela himself, if he is, as some legends claim, four hundred years old and forever returning. It is the beginning of the end for him, or he wins and wins finally.
“For I remembered the prophecy, word for word, the first time I saw it in the Great Library of Palanthas, when there was little to do except read and wait and hope to gain wisdom. I found the book by accident, as such things are often found. I turned to the third chapter at random and read it only idly at first, my interest maintained when the Brightblade name occurred in the text, and I skimmed hundreds of pages to find that name again. It was there at the end of the chapter, in a scrawl in the margin that obviously had bearing on me.
“Lots of verbal hocus pocus if you ask me,” I commented. We had listened in silence to the night wind outside our shelter as it whipped across the plateau. “The first part is pretty clear, and di Caela’s inheritance descends to a woman for the . . . first time?”
Bayard nodded. “In four hundred years.”
“What’s more, I must allow that ‘Bright Blade’ is doubtless no coincidence. But the last part is too gnarled and obscure and badly rhymed. Have you figured out any other way to read it?”
“Not for the life of me, Galen. Each time I read it, the meaning comes out the same. Which is, I allow, unusual for prophecy.”
The wind raised its voice, and Bayard moved closer to the fire, regarding me calmly over the wavering flame.
“It also seems to me that when one finds himself written into the chronicles to come, whether in Sath’s prophetic poems, or the History of Astinus of Palanthas, or a more humble work such as the one I found in the Great Library, when one knows he has a part to play in the unfolding of that history, one plays that part and trusts that his role, because he intends only good, will be for the good.”
“But, Master Bayard, what if, despite the goodness of heart and goodness of intention, your role is a disastrous one?” Agion asked, draping a cloak about my shoulders.
The centaur was turning into quite the philosopher.
“Or what if, sir, your role is a good one, yet you destroy two equally well-intentioned companions in the process of finding your place in history?”
Bayard rested his head against stacks of granite and limestone. He closed his eyes, and the wind sang its desolate song all around our campsite. Outside this circle of fire and stone, the night was fit for nothing. It was much like I pictured the landscape of the white moon Solinari, claimed by the myths to shed good influence over the planet, but cold and extreme and forbidding on its surface.
“Don’t you think I have considered these things?” Bayard asked finally, and like the wind over the plateau, a terrible, desolate look passed over his face. He seemed twice his thirty years for a moment, and it alarmed me.
“But after all,” he continued, and the pained look softened, “it does no good considering these things so long before they happen and,” he gestured about him, “in such a mournful place.
“Rest assured,” he said softly, urgently, “that I put you at risk for no personal gain, for no ambition of my own.”
Agion nodded and drew nearer the fire.
I was less convinced.
“What does Sir Robert di Caela make of all this business?”
“Sir Robert di Caela,” Bayard answered hesitantly, “may not know of this business, as you call it.”
“May not know of some prophecy affecting his family?”
“Some obscure prophecy, Galen,” Bayard corrected. “Made not even by a historian, but by someone writing in the margin of an old history—in a different hand and a different ink.”
“Whatever. You mean to tell me that you’re the only one familiar with this . . . this oracle, sir?”
“That may be. It was shelved deep in the Great Library. I came upon it by accident—or rather, not by accident, but by curious design, as I like to think. The manuscript was in a wavering, disordered hand that even the young sharp eyes I was blessed with at the time had trouble reading—I suspect it was the original, and that it had never been copied by the scribes. And yet the hand that wrote the prophecy was bold, flowing.”
“But I could write a book of prophecies, sir, and spin the future out of my most prized imaginings, or use these dice I wrestle with to predict a future you would say was a bogus one. Who’s to say your sage is a genuine seer? That he isn’t some mountebank selling trinkets, peddling at outrageous prices those oils he claims will restore eyesight if you place them on the ailing brow? But in fact the trinkets are glass, the oil is watered patchouli. And what’s in that book may belong on the same shelf of shabby wonders.”
Bayard nodded gravely.
“I’ve thought of that, Galen,” he maintained, knitting his eyebrows.
“All I have to say,” he continued, drawing his hands away from the fire, cupping them, and blowing into them, “is there is a coincidence that is not coincidence, that underlies everything we do that goes into making up history. It was chance that I should find the Book of Vinas Solamnus, but it was not blind chance. It was a chance that took place in a larger order I failed to recognize at the time.”
“Like the roll of two red dice,” I maintained flatly, and Bayard stared at me a long time, started to speak, then grew silent once again. The pack mare pawed the hard earth behind us and Valorous whickered, as though someone was laughing and dancing beyond the warmth of our fire.
“As for now,” Bayard concluded, wrapping himself in the blanket, his breath steaming though he stood only ten feet or so from the heart of the fire, “as for now, it’s best not to worry about such things. Best to sleep.”
The ogre returned as it neared midnight, as Bayard had predicted he would. The brute was no worse for the previous scuffle and, as far as I could see, was spoiling again for contact.