It stared at me straight on, like a man or a horse would stare, instead of turning its head to the side and catching me with one glittering eye, like a natural bird would do. And the voice was not natural at all, yet frighteningly familiar.
“It is the Weasel again. Your foolish brothers were gossiping your arrival throughout the great hall tonight, and you’ve certainly aroused the curiosity of old di Caela. He has many questions for you.”
“Me? I’m just a lowly squire. Ex-squire actually,” I said, my mind racing.
“Well,” the raven hissed, “he can’t help feeling a little . . . sad for Bayard—coming all that way with a prophecy in hand only to be cast aside by plain bad luck and delay.” The raven chuckled here, I swear. “Only you and I know you were the luck, my little friend. You caused the delay. Sir Robert suspects as much, but only you and I know.”
“And yet. . .” I was trying to put together a strategy. “I do feel sorry for Bayard,” I replied, trying my best to sound casual, light-hearted. “Just because he could not win the hand of Enid di Caela shouldn’t mean that he goes away entirely bereft. Surely you, in all your good fortune, have a glimmer of compassion for him.”
“My good fortune?” the voice began in outrage and in anger, rising to a shriek in the frail throat of the bird as the raven fluttered from mantle to bedpost in an increasingly frantic circle around the room. “You call four hundred years of fruitless striving, of fruitless planning ‘good fortune’?”
The raven fluttered to the windowsill, motioning with its yellowed claw toward the heavens above the high tower of the castle. Beyond the conical roof, the flagpole now bare, above the thin strands of cloud, I could see where the warring constellations met, where the jaw of Paladine snapped at the tail of Takhisis there in the easternmost notch of the sky. Around that immortal, perpetual conflict, the lesser stars glimmered like thousands of inlaid jewels.
“No, my little friend,” the voice continued, the raven raising a yellowed and bony claw from the folds of his feathers, his eyes glittering red, then orange, then yellow.
“Bayard rushes to fulfill prophecies written centuries ago. Prophecies assuring the downfall of Benedict di Caela and of his descendants.”
I nodded stupidly, like a boy agreeing with the schoolmaster even when the lesson has lost him entirely.
“Prophecies recorded by men who received . . . a vision, perhaps. A vision received in a blinding moment of light and of insight. But afterwards, when the vision had passed and they were asked to make sense of it—of its chaos of words and names and reported events that had not happened but were to come—who is to say that they understood what they recorded?
“Who is to say Bayard has understood? For let me tell you, there is more than one way to read that prophecy of his.”
The bird perched on the windowsill, regarded me brightly, cruelly. It was then I first noticed that its feathers were matted and dull, the down on its head thinning, as though the creature were in the grip of some strange and lingering disease.
I heard a soft spattering against the glass of the window. I turned to this new sound, keeping my eyes cautiously on the bird.
Snow was falling in the courtyard. A snow of early autumn—unnatural and weird, and as the snow fell, the raven spoke.
“You know the story of Enric Stormhold?”
I did not know the tale and mutely shook my head.
“Enric Stormhold—once a Knight of the Sword such as Bayard Brightblade, then a Knight of the Crown. Seeking to be a Knight of the Rose he was, and seeking that Knighthood not as much for the good he might perform through the offices of that order, oh, no, but for the trappings of honor and of glory that order might bring.
“Oh, yes, I know that a Knight can strive for both, can desire equally and richly the glory of Knighthood and the common good. I know that nothing is wrong with such a balance of desires.
“Nothing . . . necessarily.
“It was Enric Stormhold who led the Knights against the men of Neraka, down in the passes where your ancestor”—he gestured at me—“distinguished himself for bravery, if you can imagine, won the family name that you have rubbed into the dirt and stomped upon in the last few miserable months . . .”
“At your insistence!” I cried, and the raven laughed.
“That’s neither here nor there, little Weasel. But back to Enric Stormhold. The story goes that he consulted a Calantine. Perhaps you have heard of them. They are the priests of the false god Gilean, or at least the false version of that false worship as found in Estwilde. They read the red dice and recite verses about animals. And call it prophecy.”
His little black eyes glittered with malice. They were alert, the cold eyes of a viper.
“I know of the Calantina. But what of Enric?”
“Well, upon Enric’s shoulders was the defense of Solamnia itself. Though he was a brave and worthy Knight, the burden was a heavy one. He was none too sure of the wisdom of his strategies or the strength of his heart, so he asked the Calantine the fate of the campaign. Had he not asked, had he relied on the prompting of his large spirit and trusted in the ways and will of the gods, would we not trust him and believe in him more?”
“The Calantine, sir. The prophecy.”
“The Calantine cast the two and the ten,” the bird proclaimed, then threw back its head and laughed harshly. Two and Ten. Sign of the Raven.
“The oracle itself was right, of course. The Sign of the Raven is that of illusion, of false assurance in a dangerous country. Is that not right, Galen Pathwarden?”
I stammered for a moment.
“That’s one interpretation, sir.”
“Spoken like a Calantine,” the Raven chuckled dreadfully.
“Of course the Calantines who read the dice for Enric nodded and nodded and said, ‘The oracle tells us, sir, that your defense of Solamnia against the forces of Neraka will be the last defense you will make, that afterward peace will come to you and to Solamnia again.’
“And Enric rejoiced at the oracle, at its promise of success to him and to his armies. In one interpretation.
“But other things came to pass—things unimagined by Enric and unspoken by the Calantines who may or may not have foreseen them—what, after all, does it matter? The peace that came to Solamnia was indeed the peace that comes from a victorious campaign, engineered by Enric Stormhold, who left a handful of men in the pass at Chaktamir, where they held off the Nerakan army from sunrise to sundown, buying valuable time for the Solamnics at a staggering cost.
“Two hundred Knights, it is said, defended that pass. Fifteen lived to tell of that heroism.
“Your father was among them, Galen.”
“Nor does he talk of it all that much. But what of Enric?”
“Enric. Peace came to him, too, just as the Calantine said it would. While the brave men held Chaktamir, Enric led his host to another passage, little known and not surprisingly open. They circled south around the Nerakans and came in behind them, bringing death from the east. Of the thousand Nerakans who filled the pass, not a man was left.
“But the peace that came to Enric was the sleep of death, brought about by a Nerakan arrow in the last hour of the battle. As he raised the victorious flag of the Solamnic armies, a wounded archer, lying as though dead in the center of the pass, scrambled quickly to his feet and fired a black arrow into Enric Stormhold’s throat.”
“A black arrow?”
“Raven feathers, Galen Pathwarden. So the Calantines were right, and the Sign of the Raven flourished in a manner that no man—not even the Calantines themselves—had foreseen.”