“I followed the rules. I murdered no one.”
“Most people follow that rule, sir. In Coastlund it’s considered a matter of course to pass the day without murdering someone. But what about the Knights at the tournament?”
“Slain under the fair and mutually accepted rules of Solamnic combat. Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy seeing Orban of Kern fall shattered or the blade of my sword find its home in Sir Prosper Inverno.”
“And Jaffa? What of the peasant?”
“He came at me with a sword, Weasel. What would you have me do? And yet I loved watching him fall, knowing that Bayard Brightblade would suffer the blame.”
I paused and took a breath before I asked:
“What about Agion?”
“Agion?” The bird stirred on my shoulder. Again I caught the smell of rottenness beneath the cologne.
“The centaur, damn it! Your marks were all over that ogre business in the Vingaard Mountains, and you can’t tell me that—”
“That the fight between Bayard and the ogre was not fair? Of course I can tell you that. The battle was Knight against foe, and was not this . . . Agion warned that to intrude in a conflict of Knight versus foe would somehow be . . . dishonorable? The death of the centaur is regrettable, but you cannot deny that he received due payment for his little transgression.”
I said nothing.
But in silence I made a vow to myself and to Agion that I would do whatever it took to undo this monster at my shoulder.
“But why? What earthly use do you have for the di Caela inheritance?”
“None.” The wing of the bird brushed against me, and the smell of old decay passed over me once more.
“None anymore. On this side of the darkness the lands pale, the gems and gold shine like rotten wood, no longer with their accustomed light. Even the daughters . . . pale as I cease to remember them.
“No, I do this because the di Caelas would have these things, would pass them on into the warm, living hands of descendants.
“I do this for ruin, Weasel. Simple and straightfoward ruin. And for me, ruin has become enough.
“So I follow the rules and marry the Lady Enid di Caela. Then, beautiful bright thing though she may be, and as much as I may regret the loss of such beauty and brightness, I shall have to kill her. With a ‘bright blade’ of my own devising. For the rules are over then, little Galen. My inheritance is mine once more. I am the di Caela, and my word is law.”
I tried to move, to throw the loathsome thing from my shoulder, but I felt stunned, paralyzed. It was as though I were one of those creatures that the scorpion stings before dragging it into a remote and dark place where it skitters over the helpless, dying prey and feasts.
“Do not breathe a word of this, Weasel,” whispered the raven. “Oh, no, not a word. For Sir Bayard is already poisoned against you and Sir Robert is heavy with grievance. Of course, I am . . . eternally grateful for your assistance. But that would not stop me from gouging out your eyes and feasting upon them, from—what was it I said back at your moat house?—dancing in your skin! Or something worse, oh, so much worse, I assure you, if you ever betray my confidence.
“Apart from which, young mister Galen, we are bound together in sworn partnership, are we not? And I may yet have further call for your services.”
There was no telling what the Scorpion had planned for me at that moment, in what dark recess he saw my role in the days that followed. Certainly he had told me more than it was wise to tell, if he intended only to marry the girl and leave me alone.
Brithelm came into the room then, carrying a tray of food on his head, and the bird took wing, battering itself against the thick glass of the chamber window and dropping to the sill, where it lay motionless and dark in the slanting light of the red moon.
For once I was glad Brithelm never bothered to knock.
“Supper, Galen!” my spritual brother sang out merrily, craning his neck to balance the laden tray. “The guardsmen say you’re under the weather, that your feathers are drooping!”
I felt movement rush through my arms. I felt my legs weaken, knock together with relief and remembered fright.
“Why, what are you doing standing up? Bed rest for what ails you, Galen, and soup. And wine, though I think you’re under age. Why, once you’re fortified, I’ll bet that—”
“Brithelm!”
My brother fell silent and stopped in the middle of the room, tray rocking on the thicket of his red hair.
“Brithelm, I am not well.”
As my brother wrapped me in blankets and fed me hot soup and mulled wine, he told his story.
“Alfric, too, faced the satyrs we faced in the depths of the swamp,” Brithelm explained innocently. “He told me so. Nor did he know at the time that they were illusions only. He killed several of the satyrs, discovered—as we discovered—that they were goats, and filled with a noble rage . . .”
“‘A noble rage,’ Brithelm? Were those Alfric’s words?”
“Yes, but I think they are fitting, don’t you? For filled with a noble rage at the fact that innocent animals were being used for the most wicked of designs, he sought the encampment of the illusionist, and finding the villain not far from the site where he found the satyrs, put the entire group to flight.
“Perhaps that’s why we had so little trouble in driving the villain from the swamp when we confronted him later.”
“I suppose that is Alfric’s theory, at any rate.”
“Indeed. He suggested to me that it was his strategy that cleared the way for the heroics of Sir Bayard Brightblade. Although Alfric quite humbly denies that credit for driving the evil from the swamp should fall to him alone.”
“Quite humbly,” I agreed.
I felt even worse. The sickness I had invented for the guards seemed real now, rushing over me in dizzying waves. I coughed, sneezed once. I wrapped the blankets more tightly about me, protruding my hand only so that I could pick up the bowl of mulled wine and drink from it. I looked to the window, where the small dark form lay still.
Brithelm babbled on about Alfric’s bravery, about how he had rescued Alfric from the quagmire, and about how they had left together the morning after we had parted. How they had passed over the plains of Coastlund eventlessly, riding horses Alfric had received as gifts of gratitude from the centaur chief Archala for having helped drive the satyrs from the swamp.
It seemed that even the centaurs had bought Alfric’s harebrained story.
Brithelm went on and on. He spoke of how the time had passed quickly on the road, and pleasantly except for the rising fear in both of them that they would not find Bayard’s pass, would have to turn north and go nearly to Palanthas in order to negotiate the mountains, and that the delay would cause Alfric to miss the tournament. And Brithelm went on, as to how “something” told him to follow a flight of the ravens, that soon in their journey the ravens began to perch in the branches around them, croaking forebodingly, and when Alfric screamed or turned to flee, the birds took wing toward the east and Solamnia.
I sipped more wine, looked again to the window, and shivered.
Brithelm said that, by following the ravens, he and Alfric found the pass. They crossed the mountains in the dead of night.
I remembered the voices that had awakened me.
Discovering the pass, the quick, unimpeded journey through it: it was all amazing to Brithelm, the ease a sure sign that Fate’s hand was guiding the fortunes of his elder brother. And yet, when they arrived at Castle di Caela, to his great surprise—and apparently Alfric’s, too—the tournament was over. Sir Robert di Caela was polite, but distraught and abstracted, installing them in quarters at the keep and praising both of them mightily for their perseverance over rough and dangerous roads.
“For some reason, though, Sir Robert is less than pleased with Bayard Brightblade,” Brithelm concluded, and stared at me curiously. It was as though his eyes bored through me.