Bayard whistled, and Valorous, true to his name, came galloping out of a notch in the rocks, followed by the other horses. The big stallion was calm, obedient, but those who followed him were balanced at the edge of panic, frothing and snorting and rolling their eyes. When the ground had begun to shake and the rocks to fall, they reverted to instinct and followed the herd master—the lead stallion who, thankfully, had remained impressively composed. Only one horse and the mules, willful to the end, were left to the earthquake. Into that turning earth the dead men walked or tumbled. Back to the quiet they went, into the peace that each of them, Nerakan or Solamnic, had earned for himself at dreadful cost a generation before. The land closed over them and continued to churn and boil as my companions did what they could to calm their horses, mount, and begin to ride.
“Bayard!” I shouted as he swept Enid up onto Valorous. The lady safe beside him, he was arranging the safety of the others. No room, then, on Valorous.
My brothers were doubled up on Brithelm’s horse, Alfric’s mule having vanished somewhere. With a flick of his glove to the horse’s rump, Bayard set the two older Pathwardens west at a full gallop, over the shifting gravel and rock toward safety, followed closely by Sir Ramiro, burden enough for my little pack mare, which was bearing up beneath him.
“Jump, boy!” Sir Robert called up to me, rising in his stirrups atop a skittish Estrella, as the balcony from which I dangled like a crystal in a pendulum began to sway, snap, and teeter dangerously.
“Not too close, Sir Robert!” shouted Bayard. “It’s likely to fall at any moment! Swing out on the curtain, Galen! Swing out to Sir Robert!” The tough old Knight opened his arms and nodded urgently. I began to swing on the curtain, going higher and higher as the balcony above me began to weave. Back and forth, back and forth I flew, until at the sound of something falling behind me, I let go and tumbled through the air, a flying weasel on an aerial route to Sir Robert di Caela, whom I trusted to catch me and carry me out of the chaos, safely into the lowlands.
I had not figured on Estrella, who, spooked by yet another tremor beneath her hooves, skipped nervously forward at the worst of all possible moments. Sir Robert reached back desperately, but his mare had moved too far.
The ground surged rockily up to meet me. So did the darkness.
Epilogue
Head injuries are strange things, as Bayard could have told me from his time in the Vingaard Mountains. So my memories are spotty as to what happened after the fall of the Scorpion’s Nest. Indeed, by the time my memory became certain, we were back in Castle di Caela and preparations were underway for the betrothal banquet.
But here is what happened, as best I can put it together from Bayard’s accounts, from what Alfric told me grudgingly, from what is reliable in Brithelm’s account, and from my scattered memories. When the Scorpion fell to the floor of the hall and was covered by his mindlessly stinging creatures, when the castle began to collapse, we rushed to do what we had set out to do back at Castle di Caela—to escape the destruction of the Scorpion and return to safety the girl on whom all prophecy hinged. The rocks of Chaktamir tumbled into the gap, covering Scorpion and scorpions, the Nest, and all of the dead—Nerakans and Solamnics, all at peace again. It was there that we rested, and Sir Robert, who had tucked me under his arm like a rolled-up carpet, lowered me, unconscious, into the waiting arms of Brithelm and Enid. Enid. I would have blushed in embarrassed delight had I been conscious to do so. But Enid dropped me all of a sudden, with a little cry of dismay that was the first thing I heard when the fall awakened me. Sir Ramiro was thrashing Alfric within an inch of his life, there in the peaceful foothills of Estwilde. Though they had agreed upon Bayard’s heroism in the taking of the Scorpion’s Nest, their argument as to who might receive second laurels had passed apparently from merely ill-spirited to downright aggressive. Both were puffing from exhaustion and rage, and they were red from embarrassment, when Enid herself pulled them apart.
There followed a long round of revivals, of reconciliations. And soon, Alfric and Sir Robert were to their feet. Or so I am told. I still wobbled and fell to the ground, babbling about centaurs and the customs of drowning, and asking for my dice.
We were out of the mountains before I recalled leaving the little red prophets somewhere in the rough country around me. No doubt they are buried to this day amid rubble and rock, somewhere in the foothills of Estwilde.
I asked Bayard to pause and help me look for the Calantina dice, but he would have nothing to do with “such foolishness,” saying I had outgrown playthings and false prophecy.
I was inclined to agree. I have no particular need of the future, though my hands still itch for the red dice and the wooden verses that, even if they did not explain the things that came to pass, provided an explanation into which you could fit those things and feel better.
I have put prophecy aside and, for the moment, scheming.
The sparks that we all expected would fly between Bayard and Enid finally began on the long road back to Castle di Caela. Sparks were also flying between Sir Ramiro and Alfric. My brother’s bluster and boasting had not worn well on the old Knight after so many miles. Indeed, Sir Robert’s diplomacy was called upon at the very gates of Castle di Caela, when Sir Ramiro pushed Alfric from his horse and into the moat for the sole reason that my eldest brother had “a face that deserved pushing into a moat.”
He went on to maintain that Alfric’s face would look better perched on a pike atop the battlements. Alfric scarcely survived being fished from the water, and as soon as his armor had dried, he was on his way back to Coastlund, dreaming, I am sure, of the view from a pike. He whimpered a bit at the prospect of returning to Father bearing the now-battered armor and weaponry he had filched from the moat house, no doubt having caused the old man to comb the countryside and drag the swamp in his eldest son’s absence, fearing that abduction, drowning, or just plain foolishness had lost him an heir.
The reception would not be warm.
My relief at Alfric’s going was mixed with sadness, for Brithelm went with him, and I lost the companionship of my favored brother as well. Brithelm was to ride with Alfric as far as the Coastlund Swamp, where he intended to stop and set up the hermitage he had longed for during the dangerous times in which we hunted down the Scorpion.
But when my brothers had crossed the mountains and descended onto the plains of my home country, they found out—to nobody’s real surprise, actually—that the Coastlund Swamp had vanished. Centaurs and peasants agreed on the account: that gradually, tree by tree and vine by tendril, the swamp had shrunk and shrunk until all that was left was a curious house on stilts, miles from anywhere and still stinking of goat and decay and something, the centaurs claimed, a little more unsettling than even those disagreeable smells. So Brithelm escorted his elder brother all the way back to the moat house, where he spent a few days smoothing the path with Father, who, as I had suspected, was none too pleased with Alfric. That mission done, Brithelm headed east once more, where he settled amid the huge stone structures in the Vingaard Mountains where Bayard, Agion, and I had passed the night and I had first heard of the prophecy in the Book of Vinas Solamnus.
Though, for the life of me, I have never been able to find my way to the spot where Brithelm has set up his hermitage, and though Bayard has sworn never to give directions to that spot, I am confident that my brother is safe and in good hands—a little abstract and foolish, perhaps, but safe and reliable should times of trouble come again.