“So Robert decided he didn’t want you, either?” Bayard asked icily, still staring above me at whatever pattern he saw in the stars. I followed his gaze to the zenith of the sky, where the two dragons danced around the Book of Gilean. Black clouds scudded rapidly past the stars. There was the promise of rain in the smell of the air.
Things were strange and forbidding, and I had a reluctant Knight on my hands.
“It’s more complicated than that, Bayard,” I began.
“Yes, it’s a complicated situation, Galen,” he snapped, eyes breaking from contemplation of the heavens to fix totally, bleakly on my face. “But I’ve solved the puzzle. The solution is that, despite all their father’s good intention, the sons of Andrew Pathwarden are like crabs in a jar: one scrambles over another until he reaches the lip of the vessel, then the one below him reaches and claws him down. Except for the middle son, who clings to some kind of basic goodness.”
He nodded at Brithelm as he said this. Then he stood and wrapped the blanket tightly around him against the rising wind and the smell of approaching rain. He stalked away from me, the silence and the long strides daring me to try to catch up, until we stood about a hundred feet apart.
Huge drops of rain spattered on the ground around us. Thunder rolled out of the south. I had to shout above the natural noise and drama.
“Benedict di Caela has returned.”
Lightning turned the sky white over the field. For a moment Bayard was clearly outlined, clearly visible. In the thunder that followed, I could not hear him, but I clearly saw him mouth the word What. As the lightning flashed and the thunder followed again, the rain began to sweep over the ground between us. I sprinted to join my protector, splashing through the new and sudden mud on the road as I ran toward him. Water soaked into my blankets. I felt cold and wet and aching all the way into my bones. I must have passed out. It was Bayard’s shout that dragged me back onto the rainy road to the Castle di Caela. He was standing beside me. He had me by the shoulders and was shaking me like a schoolmaster shakes a troublesome student.
“What’s wrong with you? Galen? What’s . . .” Then pause—then shaking me again, but more gently this time.
“Let’s get you out of the ram.”
Lifting his blanket above the both of us, he ushered me toward a grove up the road toward the castle. It was evergreen mostly, so the leaves remained on many of the trees, and the branches of those vallenwoods scattered among the cedars and junipers were thick enough to shelter a party much larger than ours from the downpour. There we sat, Bayard draping the blanket over two low hanging branches above us, forming a crude lean-to that kept out the weather.
I lay down beneath the blanket, breathing in the old smells of wool and dust and faint rain and sweat and horses. Bayard crouched over me.
“What is it, Bayard?”
“‘Sir Bayard.’ Like it or not, you’re back in my employ. There’s not a dry stick or twig in the whole damn grove. Looks like we’ll sit this one out without a fire.”
A look of concern crossed Bayard’s face. He leaned over, placed his hand on my forehead.
“You’re burning up, boy.”
Come to think of it, I was a little stifled, but I had fancied it was only being under blankets and all wrapped against the cold in the first place. I started to beg Bayard to take me back toward the fires of the encampment, where I could warm my feet and where I could mend, but then that didn’t make any sense because my problem was being too hot in the first place and . . .
I remember Bayard asking, “Now what’s this about Benedict di Caela?”
Then I remember nothing else.
Chapter Fifteen
Light washed over my face, and for a moment I thought I was being blinded. I willed myself not to see the light, to suffer the brightness, but then in a blur I saw clouds above me darting in and out of my vision. At first I thought they were moving, those clouds, until I felt hard wood tilting and rocking below me, and I heard the clatter of hooves and the breathing of horses.
I was traveling somewhere under a daylit sky, shadowed by clouds and by birds flying overhead. Brithelm’s face was above me, too. I heard him speak, and heard Bayard’s voice behind him somewhere, almost indistinguishable from the creaking of wheels and the song of a lark.
I tried to speak, to ask the obvious questions: Where am I?, What happened to me?, and Why all the hushed concern and the fuss?. But Brithelm was saying something to me about resting, relaxing, and his hand on my forehead was as cool and soothing as the night air. Behind him I heard the voices of women, one of which sounded like Enid—that sweet, high music of birds.
I hoped devoutly it was Enid, for the voice brought back the sight of her in my memory and imagining. But the cart passed again into shadow, which in turn passed into great and abiding darkness.
I was in a room somewhere, remotely familiar. A tapestry hung on the far wall, blurred in my adjusting eyes and in candlelight. A face appeared over me, another blur of shadow and color. Strands of wild hair, disheveled and as red as the red robe.
“He’s waking, Dannelle. Go get the Knights.”
The sound of a door closing softly. I tried to sit up. It was too tiring, and when I tried, the light in the room spun like stars.
“Rest, little brother,” said Brithelm’s voice, cool and soothing. “If you wrestle the fever, it will throw you.
“And besides, it’s a hard task you have coming. I’ve tried to soften it some, explained the whole thing and how sorry you are, to Sir Bayard Brightblade. Argued with Sir Robert and that gentleman in black—”
Gentleman in black!
“—to postpone this . . . talk, but they would hear none of it. They insisted that we settle the matter now, and the three of them are on their way to these chambers, where they will hear your story.
“Rest now,” Brithelm continued. “You are among friends.”
I closed my eyes and resolved to appear as pathetic as I felt.
I must have dozed, as several voices mingled in the room, changing in pitch and tone and in the shapes of words every time I rose far enough out of sleep to hear them. At last there was movement by my bed and I opened my eyes slowly, pathetically, as though I were being called then and there from the borders of the afterlife.
Bayard stood at my bedside.
“Brithelm says you’re better.”
I nodded as weakly as I could, tried to appear brave but on the wane.
“You have other guests. I have urged them to wait for your recovery, as has your brother Brithelm, but Sir Gabriel insists that the wedding go on as planned. Nonetheless, Sir Robert di Caela wants to talk to you. And he’s brought with him Sir Gabriel, who insists that he’s never seen you before in his life. Much less transacted with you.
“You know, Galen, that I haven’t the faintest idea whether you know something, or you’re lying, or you’ve dreamed all of this up out of fever and wine and guilt.
“Let’s just say I have to trust you now.”
He laid his hand on his sword.
“And you can trust me, Galen Pathwarden. If what you speak is the truth, and what you say angers this Gabriel Androctus or Benedict di Caela or whatever infernal name he goes by or chooses next, rest assured that while Bayard Brightblade breathes, the man will not harm you.”
“That’s reassuring, sir. As long as you breathe.”
Bayard laughed softly, then called over his shoulder.
“Let the guests in, Brithelm.”
They stood around me as though they were on vigil. Somber, silent, they heard the story from its inception in the moat house through the swamp and the mountains and my surprising discovery here at Castle di Caela. Androctus was disturbingly calm, hearing my accusations as though they were imagined out of delirium or had to do with someone else. He even looked touched when I talked about what happened to Agion in the mountains and couldn’t go on for a minute. So I wondered until Gabriel Androctus spoke. For it was that nightmare voice that had haunted me since the moat house—all sweet and smooth and ruinous.