I seated myself in the upper darkness and watched the banquet begin.
Not long after I parted the curtains, the musicians struck up an air, something basso and Solamnic and serious. I sneezed once into the thick velvet, then settled back to watch as, gradually, the residents of Castle di Caela and their guests filed into the dining room in stately order.
Ladies came first. Enid—all blond hair and flowers and incredible blue linen—led the procession. Doubtless she would look even more beautiful come Sunday, when she led the procession in a full-dress Solamnic wedding, but from my seat I could see a worried look on her face tonight. Something was troubling those beautiful brown eyes.
Dannelle followed her, hands folded in front of her like a bridesmaid’s, still indignant at the situation and her cousin’s impending marriage, I could tell. She leaned forward and whispered something to Enid, and despite the ceremony, the cousins’ shoulders began to shake with silent laughter.
After these two came several other ladies of the court, dim in comparison to di Caelas, followed by Knights, some of whom had attended the tournament, evidently. Most prominent among them were a tall man with a whorled sea-shell of a helmet and a four hundred pound enormity in gaudy ceremonial armor. Sir Ledyard and Sir Ramiro, I was later to find out.
Sir Robert di Caela brought up the rear of the procession and sat at the head of a huge mahogany table in the center of the room. I watched the rest of the Knights stand by their chairs until the old man was seated, the high-backed chair at his right still empty—reserved for the groom, obviously.
Had these Knights been rivals to the groom, jousting and paying court to the Lady Enid? They seemed a little old for such foolishness.
Younger men followed, many of them carrying their first “tournament badge,” as Father used to call it—a bruise or a sprain or even a break that marked the bearer’s first entry into the lists. The arms of several sported slings and splints, and one of the men, his ankle obviously broken and set, came in on the shoulders of two others.
Alfric and Brithelm walked in among these fellows, both looking a little out of place amidst all this Solamnic style and glitter. Alfric looked like a buffoon, as usual, but it was reassuring to see Brithelm—all red-robed and unkempt, but healthy and intact and not about to put on airs regardless of the company. I suddenly found myself surprisingly glad that he had come, and that he had hauled my eldest brother out of the mire. Despite all these young blades gathered together, despite the usual good spirits that arose on the night before a wedding, especially at a banquet where the music and wine promised to flow freely, the feel of the place was somber, even cheerless.
Cheerless it remained until the Knights had almost all been seated. Then the music softened, and at the orders of Sir Robert, who was apparently an old sentimentalist himself, servants scurried throughout the room, extinguishing nearly half of the candles, half the lamps, and a few of the lights in the chandelier that hung from the ceiling in the center of the room. Now the light subsided to a deep amber. Illumined by the wavering light of the candles as it glittered on his polished breastplate, the bridegroom entered the room to a stirring military song played by the cellos and a little silver cornet that also glittered in the hands of the musician on the far side of the room.
In the height and darkness I couldn’t see him clearly. His stride was purposeful and long, and I noticed that even some of the more formidable-looking Knights stepped aside timidly at his approach. At a gesture from Sir Robert, those who were already seated stood up respectfully, each Knight lifting his wine glass to the approaching, dark-robed figure. The torchlight shimmered on the crystal, on the tilted red of the wine.
Before Sir Robert’s table, Sir Gabriel stopped and stood at attention, his gloved hands clenched behind his back. I caught a glimpse of his face in the elusive light of the great hall of di Caela: his was a pale countenance, with a dark brow, and he was certainly handsome enough. Nor did he seem too old for a nuptial tournament, unlike some of the others in the hall who, if they had fought in the lists over the last several days, should have been ashamed at acting half their age.
Sir Gabriel also seemed to know what he was doing, gliding through the ceremonial movements of the banquet as though he were a dancing master born to pomp and ritual.
He was handsome, young, and stylish. Able to take care of himself, too, if winning this tournament proved anything.
Sir Robert stood before him, glass raised.
“Good health and long life to Gabriel Androctus, Solamnic Knight of the Sword,” he began. “To whom, on the afternoon that follows this gaudy, ceremonious night, we shall give the greatest of our jewels.”
“Good health and long life to Sir Robert di Caela, Lord of the House of di Caela,” began the response of Sir Gabriel Androctus, but I confess I heard no more of it, stunned as I was by the familiar mellifluous poison of that voice. The voice I recognized immediately, that I had heard in moat house and swamp. The bridegroom was the Scorpion.
Chapter Fourteen
I was back ;in my bed before Sir Robert sent for me. There under the covers I feigned fever, moaned a little pathetically to the guards who had come to get me, then sent them back to Sir Robert with my regrets. Now came the hard part. Though the halls were mapped in the back of my mind, I had no earthly notion as to what lay behind most of the doors. Behind one of them was the Scorpion’s room, of course, wherein might lie some clue as to who he was and what he really wanted.
The curse was overdue at Castle di Caela, and from Bayard’s story back in the mountains, I was sure that old Benedict—the Scorpion himself—was at it again.
I waited and fiddled inconclusively with the Calantina. I ran through my options. Outside the window, the darkness began to settle on the courtyard, the walls and towers, and the far-flung holdings of Castle di Caela. Somewhere above me—perhaps at the very top of this tower, where the di Caela banner fluttered red and blue and white in the last hour before some steeplejack of a servant clambered up to lower it for the evening—a nightingale began its dark serenade of stars and moons.
There were only three candles in the room, and I lit them all against the approaching night. Then I walked to the chamber window and looked down.
Already the bailey below me was in shadows, and within it the shadowy servants moved, each with a horse prepared for a departing Knight. Soon the banquet would be over: indeed, I heard uproarious singing from somewhere toward the great hall, a sure sign that the celebration had passed from venison to brandy. Still no strategy. The weasel stuck in his tunnel. I stewed, tried the dice again. Sign of the Dragon? Something I recalled from the verses—something about “destruction a mask for innocence.” I could remember no more of it, so I let it go for the time being, walked back to the bed and sat down, looking toward the hearth and the glowing fire one of my brothers must have started before I arrived at the castle.
It was low, now, the fire was, and as it guttered even further it let the dark into the room. I was reaching for a candle when I heard the noises at the window—the scratching and the heartbeat sound of wing and beak against the thick glass.
I walked to the window and opened it wide, full knowing—as you know something by insight or by instinct—what awaited me outside.
I still ask myself why I let the raven into the room. I knew where it had come from, and I knew about the one who sent it—had sent it or had transformed himself into it or had entered it like water into a pitcher. I never figured out the mechanics. Though all I knew of the Scorpion was brutal and often bloody, I opened the window. Every possible fear arose in front of me as I walked to the window. I thought of the threats at the moat house and in Warden Swamp, of the goats mysteriously transformed and Agion dead in the Vingaard Mountains, the sharp tines of a trident mournfully deep in his chest. In fact, I had thought about it so much on that short walk from bedpost to shutter that when the living, breathing raven flew into the room, for a second I was relieved and even a little disappointed, having worked myself up for a monster.