Darkness and Light

Chapter 40

Mai-tat was as fleet as he was beautiful, and in a very short time the dark hump of Vingaard Keep sank below the southern horizon. With the stars to guide him,

Sturm bore northwest. A tributary of the Vingaard River lay due north and the Verkhas Hills to the west. In the fertile pocket of land between the two lay Castle Brightblade.

The white stallion's hooves drummed a solo song on the plain. Several times Sturm halted his headlong flight to lis ten for sounds of pursuit. Aside from the whirring of crick ets in the tall grass, the plain was silent.

A few hours before dawn, Sturm slowed Mai-tat as they closed upon a shadowy ruin. It was an old hut and a land marker, now demolished. The stump of the marker still bore the lower half of its carved name plaque. The lower petals of a rose showed, and beneath that a sun and a naked sword.

Bright Blade. Sturm had come to the southern limits of his ancestral holdings.

4/He clucked his tongue and urged the horse forward. The fields beyond the marker that he remembered as rich graz ing land and bountiful orchards were overgrown and wild.

The neat rows of apple and pear trees were little more than a thicket now. Vines had long since reclaimed the road. Sturm rode on, tight-lipped, ducking now and then to clear the sagging tree branches.

The orchard was split by a creek, he remembered, and so it was still. He steered Mai-tat into the shallow stream. The creek ran a mile or so to the very base of the walls of Castle

Brightblade. Mai-tat trotted through the cool water.

The east was brightening to amber when the gray walls appeared over the treetops. The profile of the battlements and towers brought a lump to his throat. But it was not the same as when he left; creepers scaled the walls in thick mats, blocks of stone had toppled, and the towers were naked to the sky, their roofs burned off years ago.

"Come on," Sturm said to the horse, tapping him gently with his heels. Mai-tat cantered through the creek, kicking up founts with every step. He climbed the bank on the west side and plowed through the hedges. On the castle's west face was the main gate. Sturm clattered up the grass spotted, cobblestone road to the entrance. Shaded from the rising sun, the walls looked black.

The narrow moat was little more than a muddy ditch now; without the dam to divert the creek, it would never keep water. Sturm slowed Mai-tat once they hit the bridge.

Belingen's cruel remarks about knights jumping into the moat echoed in Sturm's mind. The ditch was nothing but a dark, swampy morass.

The gate was gone. Only the blackened hinges remained, spiked to the stone walls with iron nails a foot long. The courtyard was thick with blown leaves and charred wood.

Sturm looked up at the donjon rising before him. The win dows gaped blankly, their sills displaying tongues of soot where fire had raged through. He wanted to call out, to yell,

Father, Father, I've come home!

But no one would hear. No one but ghosts.

The bailey had been used recently to house animals.

Sturm found the tracks of massed cattle, and realized that

Merinsaard's camp at Vingaard Keep was not the only site where the invaders were marshaling provisions. A deep anger welled in him at the thought of the low purpose for which the noble edifice of Castle Brightblade had been used.

He rounded the corner of the donjon and entered the north courtyard. There was the little postern gate that his mother and he had fled through that last time he had seen his father. He saw again his father embrace his mother for the last time, as snow fell around them. Lady Ilys Bright blade never recovered from the chill of that parting. To the end of her life, she was cold, rigid, and bitter.

Then he saw the body.

Sturm dismounted and led Mai-tat by the reins. He walked up to the body lying face down in the leaves and rolled it over. It was a man, and he'd not been dead long — a day perhaps, or two. He'd been neatly run through from behind. The corpse still clutched a cloth bag in his fist.

Sturm pried open the fingers and found that the bag held petty valuables — silver coins, crude jewelry, and some semi precious stones. Whoever had killed this man had not done so to rob him. In fact, by the dagger and picklock tucked in his belt, the dead man appeared to be a thief himself.

Sturm walked on. He discovered the remains of a camp fire and some bedding, all trampled and tangled. Under a blue horsehair blanket he found another body. This one had died by sword as well. The usual sort of camp items were scattered about. Copper pan, clay pots, waterskins — more silver coins and a bolt of fine silk. Had the thieves had a fall ing out over their spoils? If so, why hadn't the winner taken everything with him?

An empty doorway yawned nearby. To the kitchens,

Sturm mused. He used a broken tent pole for a stake and tied Mai-tat.

Sunlight streamed into the shattered donjon, but many halls were still pitch black. Sturm went back to the spoiled robber camp and made a torch with a stick and some rags.

As he worked, he heard a stirring in the doorway. He whirled, sword ready. There was nothing there.

The dead men had changed Sturm's perception of the cas tle. He'd been expecting a mournful tour of his old home, and a search for understanding to his father's fate. Now a more sinister air clung to the stones. No place was free of the probing fingers of evil, not even the former castle of a

Solamnic Knight.

The kitchens were picked clean, plundered long ago, even of their fire brick and andirons. Cobwebs clung to every beam and doorway. He came to the great hall, where his father had often dined with great lords, such as Gunthar Uth

Wistan, Dorman Hammerhand, and Drustan Sparfeld of

Garnet. The great oak table was gone. The brass candle holders on the walls were ripped out. The fireplace, with its carved symbols of the Order of the Rose, had been deliber ately defaced.

There was that noise again! Sturm was sure that it was footfalls. "Who are you? Come out and show yourself!" He waved the torch toward the vaulted ceiling. The stone arch es were cloaked in a tightly nestled layer of bats. Disgusted,

Sturm crossed the hall to the steps. One set led up to the pri vate rooms, while another led down to the cellars. Sturm put a foot on the lowest of the rising steps.

"Hello…" sighed a voice. Sturm froze. Under the hood his hair prickled.

"Who is there?" he called.

"This way…" The voice came from below. Sword in his right hand, torch in his left, Sturm descended the steps.

It was cold down there. The torch flickered in the breeze rising through the stairwell. The corridor curved away on either side, following the foundation of the very ancient cit adel that Castle Brightblade had been built on.

"Which way?" Sturm called boldly.

"This way…" whispered the voice. It seemed oddly familiar as it sighed down the hall like the last gasp of a dying man. Sturm followed it to his left.

He had not gone fifty yards when he stumbled upon a third dead man. This one was different; he was no robber.

He was older, his beard untrimmed and his face worn by wind and sun. The dead man sat slumped against the wall, a dagger buried in his ribs. Oddly, his right arm was bent and resting atop his head, a finger stiffly pointing down. Sturm studied the face. It was familiar — in a rush, he recognized the man as Bren, one of his father's old retainers. If he were here, could Sturm's father be far away?

"What are you pointing at, old fellow?" Sturm asked the dead man urgently. He opened the man's coat to see if Bren carried any clues to the fate of Sturm's father. When he did, the dead man's right arm slid out of position and came to rest pointing straight up, overhead. Sturm raised the torch.

There was nothing above him but an iron wall sconce -

— which was crooked. Sturm looked more closely and saw a light mark scored on the wall block. The bracket piv oted, scratching this mark. Sturm grasped the lower end of the sconce and pushed. It turned, following the scratched path in the wall.

The floor trembled, and a tremendous grinding sound filled the tunnel. A section of floor rose in front of Sturm, revealing a dark cavity below. In all his life in the castle, he'd never known of such a secret room.

"Go down… Go down…" rasped the phantom voice. Sturm felt for the first time a presence to go with the voice. He turned sharply and saw the apparition behind him. It was a dim red figure, dressed in what looked like furs. Sturm stepped forward with the torch. He couldn't make out the face, but he caught a glimpse of a dark, droop ing mustache. The man he'd seen in the thunderstorm!

"Come forward, you!" he shouted, and thrust the torch into the specter's face.

The face was his own. Sturm dropped the brand.

"Great Paladine!" he sputtered, backing away. His heel slipped off the top step into the secret vault. "What does this mean?"

"Go down…" repeated the phantom Sturm. Its lips did not move, but the voice was distinct. "Go…"

"Why are you here?" Sturm said. He reached for the torch with trembling hands. "Where did you come from?"

"Far away…"

Sturm's eyes widened. The phantom repeatedly urged him to descend into the secret chamber.

"I will," Sturm assured. "I will." With that, the red figure vanished.

Sturm turned to the steps, but could see nothing beyond the sphere of ruddy light cast by the torch. He took a deep breath and went down.

It was cold in the secret vault, and he was glad to be wear ing Merinsaard's thick tunic. At the bottom of the steps, some eight feet beneath the level of the corridor, he found two more corpses. They were unmarked, but their faces told too well how they had met their fate. The trap door had sealed them in, and in the ensuing hours the men had suffo cated.

Sturm turned from the dead robbers. As he did, his torch light gleamed on something metallic. He walked into the velvet darkness, his breath pluming out before him. The glow of the torch fell over a suit of armor.

Sturm swallowed hard, trying to force down the lump in his throat. With one shaking hand, he reached out to brush the dust from the etched steel. It was. It was his. Sturm had found his father's suit of armor. Breast- and backplate, greaves, schildrons, and helmet were all there. The superla tive war armor etched with the rose motif. The helmet had high horns on the forehead, making Sturm's old headgear, still dented from Rapaldo's axe, seem like a cheap imitation.

The armor was hung on a wooden frame. As Sturm ran his hands over the cherished suit, he felt the soft, cold links of a chain mail shirt under the breastplate. And hanging from the waist by a single thickness of scarlet ribbon was a slip of yellow parchment. Inscribed in Angriff Brightblade's forceful hand were the words, For My Son.

Sturm was filled with such joy at that moment, he could scarcely breathe. The mortal shell of a man could weaken and die, but the virtues that made him a leader among men, a Knight of Solamnia, were embodied in the imperishable metal. Sturm's life was half complete. All that remained was to know of his father's fate.

He threw off Merinsaard's clothes and, dusty or not, began to put on the armor. It fit well, almost perfectly. The shoulders were a bit roomy, but Sturm would grow into them. He finished tying the cops to his boots and lifted the breastplate off the crossbar. Beneath it, hanging from a sin gle peg, was the sword.

The hilt curved toward the point in a graceful are, the steel as clean and shiny as when it had come from the forge.

The long handle was wrapped in rough wire, to ensure a tight grip even when soaked with blood. The almond shaped pommel was hard brass, engraved with the symbol of the rose.

Sturm could bear it no longer. He felt the tears flow over his cheeks and made no move to wipe them away. He had not cried like this since the night he'd left his father behind, twelve years ago.

The sword came lightly off its peg. The balance was per fect, and the handle fit Sturm's hand as though it had been made for him. He drew Merinsaard's silver-handled weapon and tossed it, clanging, to the cold stone floor. Sturm slipped his father's sword into the black scabbard and hur riedly fit the breastplate and backplate over his head. He was still closing the buckles under his arms when he heard a strange humming.

Merinsaard's sword was glowing. The hum emanated from it. Sturm shoved the stand over on top of the glowing blade, and he watched, open-mouthed, as the sword rose into the air, flipping the heavy wooden crosstree over effort lessly. Merinsaard's sword drifted toward the stairs, and

Sturm hastily snatched up his father's helmet and followed.

The silver sword slanted upward, out of the vault.

The floating blade moved unerringly across the great hall to the despoiled kitchen and out the door. There stood Mai tat, unmoving, like a statue of alabaster. The nervous stal lion had never been so quiet. The sword came on, point first. The blade slowly circled the horse, its point barely touching Mai-tat's neck. The glow reached out to engulf the horse. The charger began to writhe and shrink within its white aura. He stepped forward, ready to cut the suffering animal down, but the fierce heat radiating from the sword stopped him. The glow intensified to searing level. There was a flash of blinding light and a great clap of thunder.

Sturm was hurled back against the wall, the breath driven from his body.

A deep-throated laugh filled the courtyard. The hair on

Sturm's neck prickled. He coughed and rubbed his eyes.

Where Mai-tat had been, there now was Merinsaard, fully armed and full of rage.

"So, Brightblade! This is the.treasure you traveled so far to find! Is it worth dying for?" he roared.

Sturm fell back a pace, his head throbbing from the shock of Merinsaard's appearance. Finding his voice, he replied,

"The relics of a noble past are always worth having. But I don't expect to die just yet."

Sturm brought the Brightblade sword on guard. Merin saard cut wide circles in the air with his own blade, but he didn't come forward to fence. He raised the silver sword high and declaimed, "Do you know what it was you so care lessly carried forth from my camp, impudent fool? This sword is the key to all the negative planes. It is Thresholder, the pathway to power! I allowed you to escape, worm; five seconds after you left me bound and gagged, I was free and plotting how best to follow you. Was it not convenient that you should impersonate me, and ride me in my equine form all the way here?"

An unnatural wind sprang up, blowing hot in Sturm's face. "It's a pity you did not stay a horse!" he said boldly. "In that form, at least you were a useful creature!"

A ball of silver fire flew out from Thresholder's tip. It spi raled up to the donjon's roof and burst there, shattering the tiles asunder. Sturm ducked inside the kitchen as broken rock rained down where he'd been standing.

Merinsaard laughed. "Flee, little man! Only now do you realize with whom you have trifled!" merinsaard smashed through the wall. He whipped his silver blade to and fro, leaving arcs of crackling-hot light behind. Sturm dodged into the great hall just ahead of a siz zling tongue of fire that scored molten ruts in the slate floor.

Merinsaard was toying with him. He could bring the whole castle down on Sturm if he desired.

Sturm wanted to stand and fight, but only on ground of his own choosing. There would be less debris to fling at him on the open battlements, so Sturm led the maniacal warlord to the second floor and down the narrow corridor where

Sturm's bedroom used to be. Sturm cleared the end of the corridor just as Merinsaard entered it. The warrior-wizard sent white fire blasting down the empty passage, opening a hole through a wall two feet thick. Sturm ran on, past the third and fourth floors, to the roof.

"Come back, young Brightblade! You can't hide forever!"

Merinsaard taunted him. A miasma of anger and evil settled over the entire castle. Sturm came to a section of wall where the wooden boarding had been burned away. He teetered along a charred beam, thinking the heavier Merinsaard could not follow, then crouched behind the rubble from a fallen tower and tried to plan an attack.

When he came to the burned area, Merinsaard folded his arms across his chest and muttered a spell in an ancient, gut tural tongue. Black clouds collected around the hoarding, and Merinsaard simply walked across on the vapor, chuck ling fiercely as he came. Sturm pushed over a section of bro ken wall in a desperate attempt to impede the wizard's approach. Thresholder swept back and forth, shattering the tumbling blocks into gravel.

"Where will you go next?" chortled Merinsaard. "You are running out of castle, Brightblade. What a disappointment you would have been to your father. He was a true warrior, ten times the man you'll ever be. My men pursued him for months after they sacked the castle. He survived them all, even the Trackers of Leereach."

"What was he to you?" Sturm shouted. "Why should you want his death?"

"He was a Knight and a battle lord. My mistress could not allow him to live if our plan for conquest was to go for ward." A blast from the silver sword shaved off the top of the battered tower. "What an irony it is that you will die wearing his armor. What a supreme moment for my Dark

Queen!"

He's right, Sturm thought. I've run out of castle, and I'm not the man my father was. A curved wall of the tower closed in behind him. Sturm looked up. There was no place to go — no place but down.

Tiny droplets of fire burst around Sturm's feet. He hopped aside, perilously close to the edge. "Jump, boy.

Cheat my revenge, why don't you? It will be easier than the death I have in mind for you," Merinsaard said, a scant five yards away. Sturm looked down. It was a long, long fall.

"Take the step. Jump. For you it can be over quickly," hissed the wizard.

There was no hope. This was the end. Sturm would never again see his friends or solve the mystery of his father. For him, there was only a choice of deaths. A single step, and oblivion. Didn't every man want an easy death when his time came? But you're not every man! his mind screamed.

You're the son and grandson of Solamnic Knights! his mind screamed. This knowledge helped melt the icy fear that gripped his heart.

He squared his shoulders and faced Merinsaard. The

Brightblade sword pointed at the warlord's heart. "I do not do your evil bidding," Sturm stated. "If you claim to be a warrior and a lord, let your blade test mine, and we will see who acquits himself with honor."

Merinsaard smiled, showing white teeth. The blinding glow faded from Thresholder, and Sturm assumed a fighting stance. The wizard extended his blade at Sturm, and with no warning at all, a blast of fire lashed out from the tip. It struck Sturm in the chest and slammed him into the tower wall.

"As you see," said Merinsaard. "I am not an honorable man." He raised Thresholder for the final, mortal strike, and his eyes got very wide and white. Sturm struggled to bring the tip of his father's sword waveringly into the air.

Suddenly, Merinsaard made a gagging sound and stag gered to the battlement. Sturm was astonished to see an arrow buried in his back. Some distance away, silhouetted against the morning sky, was a figure with a bow.

Sturm got to his feet. Merinsaard grasped the battlement with his mailed hands, but the iron links found no purchase, and the warrior-wizard toppled through a crenelation to the courtyard below. There was a scream, a heavy, ringing thud, and silence.

Sturm raced for the steps. The mysterious archer was nowhere in sight. He found Merinsaard dead, his sightless eyes staring into the mossy flagstones. Thresholder lay just beyond his lifeless fingers. As Sturm watched, the sword flared and vanished with a loud crack. Where it had lain, the stones were scorched.

Sturm wavered and braced himself against the donjon wall. As he tried to make sense of what had happened, another arrow struck the ground at his feet. The gray goose feather fletching on the long black arrow quivered from the impact.

Sturm jerked around and saw the unknown archer atop the outer wall. The bowman raised a hand in salute, then ducked into an empty watchtower and was gone.

He stooped to examine the arrow. Tied to the shaft just behind the head was a slip of paper. Sturm freed it and read:

Dear S

I knew you'd come here and here I find you in a losing fight with a wizard. My new friends don't choose to play fair but I decided to even the odds in memory of our past friendship. Next time you might not be so lucky!

K

PS: You were a sucker to let him point the magic blade at you.

"Kitiara!" Sturm called to the sky and stones. "Kitiara, where are you?" But he knew she was gone, lost to him for ever.