I learned about Denis di Caela, who had declared war against the rats in the cellar of the castle—an uphill work at its easiest in any castle, but in one this size (and at the time of the curse) impossible. I heard how, after ten years of losing battles, he had trapped a huge rat, then spent a year holding the animal hostage, thinking that the rats would surrender to regain the “freedom of their leader.”
Also of Simon di Caela, who thought he was an iguana, and spent his time basking in the sun on the roof of the low northeast tower, waiting for flies to alight. It was a sudden frost, the girls claimed merrily, that killed him.
Somehow, men such as these had held off the assaults of Benedict di Caela for over four hundred years. It was enough to give you courage, to give you confidence.
“What, if I might ask, Lady Enid, dampens your . . . enthusiasm for the bridegroom in question?”
“The prophecy, silly boy. The scrawled prophecy in the Book of Vinas Solamnus,” Enid said flatly.
“Then you do know of the prophecy?”
“Of course,” she replied. “Uncle Roderick made a special trip to Palanthas when a librarian found it in the margin of the text. It’s foolishness, no doubt, but when each generation suffers some mishap, the family looks into all possibilities.
“This one says something about a ‘Bright Blade,’ you know,” she continued, directing us left up another hall, then right down another, one wall of which was covered with a mural depicting the fall of Ergoth, the other blank except for a door the girls claimed led to a balcony that overlooked the dining hall. “And Father pounced upon that prophecy, taking it as a sign that we should marry into the Brightblades.”
“Of course, the text of the prophecy doesn’t really say that,” Dannelle added. “You could read it several ways—something about ‘the Bright Blade lifting the curse’, or some such obscurity Uncle Robert took to mean Enid had to marry one of them.
“That was the reason for the tournament. Uncle Robert figured that if there was a tournament to be had, Bayard Brightblade would figure into the arrangements. It was a way to draw him here, among other things.”
“Which did not work, of course,” Enid sighed, picking up the story. “Where was Sir Bayard—lost in the woods?”
If possible, I blushed even more deeply. Enid went on carelessly.
“Though I’ve seen him only once, he stands up well in comparison to this . . . Androctus.
“Whom I am obliged to marry.”
“But—” I began, and Dannelle interrupted.
“Uncle Robert claims that it’s nothing for Enid to worry over, that marriage to this Androctus—to any Knight, for that matter—will not change her life in any measurable way. He claims that anyone who marries a di Caela becomes a di Caela, actually, and that she can stay here in the castle and live pretty much as before.”
“Isn’t there some kind of gnome proverb,” I asked, “that goes ‘if you want to find out about someone, marry him into your family’?”
Both the girls laughed sadly and nodded.
“Whatever Gabriel Androctus is like,” Enid declared, “marrying him will be the last time I do anything which is not absolutely what I want to do.”
Which did not bode well for the champion’s marital bliss.
But I drew no joy from that.
There had to be a way that Bayard was right! Enid’s husband was supposed to be a Brightblade, not some outlander tricked up like a jackleg executioner.
The di Caela cousins continued to charm me and lead me around the second floor of the keep. Fattening me with beauty and attention until, inevitably, they would have to bring me to the slaughter in the dining room, where Sir Robert would start asking the questions I dreaded and uncover the details of my recent criminal fortnight as Bayard’s squire.
I slowed my steps, stifled a phony yawn.
“Please don’t take that yawn as a lack of interest, ladies. I find this business of di Caelas and Brightblades fascinating, but I fear that . . .”
I paused, relying on politeness and good breeding. In which I was not disappointed.
“Cousin Dannelle, here we are transporting the boy about the premises when he’d much rather rest before dinner!”
Enid exclaimed.
“It’s most rude of us, Cousin Enid! What must he think of the hospitality in Castle di Caela now?”
Dannelle reached out and straightened my hair. Again I warmed, reddened.
“Oh, I think no less of your hospitality, Lady Dannelle. But I am tired. If you would be so kind as to escort me back to my chambers where I might enjoy an hour’s nap before dining, I should be terribly grateful.”
Which they did without delay, fussing and apologizing as they went. With all the attention lavished upon me, it was all I could do to mark our path from hall to hall, past mural and statue and painting and stairway until, when we reached the doorway that was indeed my own, I still wasn’t quite sure if I had mastered the maze of the keep or not.
I sat alone in my room for a while, casting the red dice once and receiving the Sign of the Sea Horse. I cursed myself for having read only three of Gileandos’s commentaries on the Calantina, having left the volume on water signs “for later” because I didn’t recognize the animals it contained. Dice or no dice, once the footsteps had faded into the sound of cuckoos outside my door, once I had stepped into the hall again and looked first left, then right, seeing no beautiful Enid, no beautiful cousin, my curiosity led me back along my path of the last hour.
For I wanted to steal a look at Sir Gabriel Androctus.
It was an easy path to retrace. Past the paintings, past the enormous marble stairwell, left down the first hall off the landing, then turning right, down the hall lined with statuary. I heard someone calling for me in the recesses of the building behind me. I stopped and looked out the windows over the courtyard and the castle walls, into the western fields. There, at a distance, I recognized the yellow sun of Bayard’s pennant waving among those of several other Knights.
Where at least he had found shelter for the night.
I tiptoed past the marble di Caelas, who stared at me blankly, disapprovingly. Sure enough, old Gerald’s foundation was cracked.
Judging from Denis and Simon, and lately Mariel, it ran in the family.
Then I crept past Dannelle’s door.
I moved down the hall to the right, then left, then right again until I faced the hallway where, to my right, the siege of Ergoth raged silently and motionlessly, forever in paint upon the wall. The door opposite the mural opened into a rich and warm darkness, into the smell of expensive cloth underscored with the slightest odor of decay. Somewhere beyond the darkness I could hear noise—conversation, laughter, the clatter of metal and crockery. Cautiously I stepped toward the noise until my extended hand touched velvet.
I was behind a curtain. I fumbled up and down the cloth like a bad actor, looking for the opening. And found it after some difficulty, found that I was on a balcony that bellied out above a dining room that dwarfed the great hall of the moat house—as I had expected it would—but dwarfed it to a degree I never had imagined. For the dining hall of Castle di Caela was by itself the size of the moat house, and the cost to decorate that one great room alone would have drained entirely the Pathwarden treasuries. Torches and candles bathed the room in a steady light, white and yellow and amber and red, and those preparing the room for the feast looked almost toylike below me—musicians tuning the guitar and the elvish cello, in the center of the room a brace of tumblers practicing, and around the entertainers what must have been forty servants bustling about upon specific duties—spreading cloth over the tables, setting plates and crockery and glasses in front of each chair.