Standing by the antique dresser, as far away as possible from where Dannelle lay, I listened to the distraught story. I felt ashamed at the point where Dannelle rushed to her cousin’s aid, remembering how I had drawn back into the shrubbery when the shadow descended the wall.
As Dannelle told what had happened, Robert di Caela and Bayard sat attentive—and worried, obviously—in straight-backed chairs by the bedside. Brithelm stood at the notorious window with Sir Ramiro of the Maw and Sir Ledyard.
Alfric was somewhere slinking.
When the story was over, the men stared at one another—stared long and hard. Emotions rushed to Robert di Caela’s face. Fears and angers raced over that noble countenance like scorpions over a white throne, or like a dark cloud over the moonlit wall of a keep. But the time for flocking emotions passed quickly. He was the first to speak.
“So my daughter has been taken Huma knows where. Then the problem that lies before us is a simple one: how do we recover her?”
Brithelm turned from the window. Bayard leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. Neither of them spoke at first, both a little nervous in the presence of the di Caela patriarch. I was no better, watching them from my position of safety behind the mantle.
“Would that it had not come to this,” Sir Robert began, “especially in a time when we are so uncertain.
“Scarcely a month ago I received the news that Bayard Brightblade would attend this tournament. I received that news with joy, certain he was the prophecy’s choice for my heir, and glad of it.
“And now the claims of that heir have been challenged by one whose claim to these holdings has . . . authority. One who wins the tournament, whose prize is my daughter Enid and all the di Caela holdings, and yet who turns out to bear a name that also figures in the fate of my family, though in ways more dark and terrible than I would wish or even imagine.”
Bayard sat back, sighed, and waited for Sir Robert to finish.
“At least this poor girl has not been harmed,” I interrupted weakly, gesturing at Dannelle. She smiled, though wanly.
“Thank you, Galen Pathwarden,” she breathed. “You’re very . . . chivalrous. I shall not forget,” the Lady Dannelle went on disarmingly, “that you were the first to my side in my distress.”
I’d surprised myself on that one, too.
“My pleasure,” I muttered, and Sir Ramiro snickered by the window. I shot him a glance of white-hot hatred. Sensing my discomfort, Bayard spoke.
“Still, gentlemen, there is so much to piece together in this story. Perhaps we could convene elsewhere, where time and quiet are our allies and where we can think clearly about the situation in front of us, having left in the capable hands of maids and surgeons the welfare of those dear to us. Let us convene and reason together, gentlemen We have tactics to ponder.”
And ponder they did, in the main hall of the keep, where we had arrived after wandering down half a dozen corridors; across a huge stone bridge that spanned an indoor garden where Sir Robert kept exotic plants that smelled much too sweet for my liking; through familiar territory, where the di Caela statues and the sound of mechanical birds lay ahead of us; and eventually down the stairs to the main floor and the great hall itself. It was here we debated where the Scorpion could have taken Enid. We stood there among the tables which had glittered with candlelight and polished armor only a few nights ago, and it seemed as though every place imaginable on the wide surface of Krynn was mentioned in the hour we talked. No suggestion was encouraging, and I found it hard to be attentive to what the Knights were saying.
Because all the while, something kept telling me that I should remember something about the raven in my quarters the night before . . .
Sir Ledyard suggested we might well find the Scorpion and his captive somewhere upon the Sirrion Sea to the southwest. Nobody paid any attention to him; everyone had known his answer would have something to do with the sea, and besides, the Sirrion was much too far away.
Sir Robert was all for looking in Estwilde because of the glain opals he had seen earlier that afternoon. After he made this pronouncement, he considered the matter settled.
Sir Ramiro thought that solution was too obvious, that someone as subtle as the Scorpion would not betray his hand so readily. He suggested we search first in the Garnet Mountains south of the castle, if for no other reason than it was cold and high and thin-aired—the most unpleasant place around and therefore, according to Sir Ramiro’s reasoning, the ideal haunt for the Scorpion. The two old men began to bicker, and I wouldn’t doubt they’d have come to blows had not Bayard stepped between them.
Bayard argued for the Vingaard Mountains. He felt he had seen the Scorpion’s power at its strongest there, and wasn’t there something about magic’s being stronger the closer one got to its source?
None of the Knights were experts on the subject of magic. All eyes turned to Brithelm, who smiled inanely and shrugged.
“I don’t know enough about the Scorpion’s kind of magic, gentlemen,” he explained apologetically. “After all, clouds and talking birds are beyond my powers.”
“So what do we do?” Sir Ramiro asked impatiently. “Spread out and comb the whole continent? It would take years.”
“And the Scorpion, as you call him, doesn’t strike me as all that patient,” Sir Ledyard agreed, his broad eastern accent ringing in the great hall.
Had things continued in that fashion, we might never have stumbled across the answer. The Knights would have blustered and pronounced until all hours, and I would have sat there trying to remember what it was I should remember—what the Scorpion had disclosed the night before, in the darkness before Brithelm had walked into the room.
But immediately after Sir Ledyard had spoken, we heard a tearing sound and a cry above us. The Knights turned, drawing their swords, and I, sure it was the Scorpion come back, was under the chair like a whippet in Father’s great hall.
Alfric was dangling by a curtain from the balcony, cursing loudly and windmilling his stubby Pathwarden legs.
Evidently I had not been the only one to discover that particular hiding place and its advantages. Alfric, it turned out, had been up there while routes were suggested and questions were asked, and while leaning forward to hear just what was being said and how it might pertain to him, he stepped onto what he thought was a narrow extension of the balcony, a catwalk beyond its carved railing, but which was in fact nothing at all but thin air, a catwalk not even a cat could walk.
So there he was, suspended by a curtain he had managed to grasp when his fall began, beneath him several formidable Knights who were not overly concerned with his plight at the moment, and a brother who was whispering “drop him on his neck, please, Paladine!” Not an enviable place to be. As the curtain gave way and slowly lowered my brother to the floor of the hall, you could see him frantically scan the room for exits. Sir Robert had Alfric by the arm and had thrown him into a table before my eldest brother’s churning feet had touched the ground or Bayard could intervene.
“A fine array of guests I’ve entertained these last several days! One steals my daughter and another spies on me from my own balcony! I shall trust old Benedict before I offer hospitality again!”
Alfric cowered among the shattered plates, tangled in a fine linen tablecloth. Bayard stepped between Sir Robert and my cornered brother, who turned to me accusingly.
“Once again there is a council of the valiant, and everyone invited but old Alfric. You told them to leave me out, Weasel, so’s I wouldn’t have no chance to rescue Enid and win her hand in marriage.”
“For Huma’s sake, lad,” Sir Robert began, “shelve your courtship for a while!”
It was just like Alfric to throw a fit of persecution and blame me for somehow organizing a conclave of Knights whose specific purpose on this planet was to exclude him from any adventure. I thought back to his strange, almost psychotic version of what had gone on in the moat house as we were growing up—of the kind older brother he imagined himself, continually beleaguered by intolerable younger brothers.