Galen Beknighted

Chapter IX

It was midmorning the next I knew. I lay beneath the oak tree in the clearing, its branches drooping heavy with last night's rain. The woods around me were charged in a strange half-light, the unsettled gray of dawn.

I looked at the brooch, clutched tightly in my hand, as though all power of memory lay in the dark gems. It is a hard thing when you try to save one brother and lose the other one in the bargain.

I had reached Alfric's side as the Plainsman broke from his grasp and ran off through the trees. Carefully I groped through the shadows and the standing water, finding my brother wet and ruined amidst broken branches and torn cloth and leather.

"Galen, I was not running away. Not this time."

"I know that. Rest now, Alfric. Rest."

The sound of the conflict faded. Ramiro, I found out later, had gained balance and advantage against our attackers. The retreating Plainsmen were no doubt lucky that their pursuer was so large and ungainly, else they would have had too much to answer for there in the night-dappled woods.

"Rest now, Alfric! Ramiro and Dannelle will be over here directly, and so will Oliver with the horses, and then we'll see to patching you up and-"

"This is dreadful, Galen. Dreadful."

"I know," I whispered. The brooch glittered on the wet ground by Alfric's body, saved from the Plainsmen by his reckless heroism. As I spoke to my brother, the light went out of the gems.

"Rest now," I said. "Rest now."

Which is what they tell me I was saying over him when they joined us. Ramiro covered him up in those last moments, so he did not die cold, and Dannelle cradled me like an infant, she said, though she said it with no ridicule but with a deep and brokenhearted pity for me and for Alfric and for this whole botched trip into twilight. She knelt beside me, helping Ramiro, who poured something strong down me from a little flask, something I could not or would not taste, but only felt its warmth passing into me as the tears left me and I slept for a long while, clutching the stones won and made more valuable by my brother's blood.

The sky cleared just as we reached the foothills of the Vingaard Mountains.

The downpour had been so long and so terribly intense that it had virtually drowned the highlands. Shrubbery and small trees lay bent over, and the grass was matted and brown.

I hated to think how things looked down on the plains.

The air that was left behind when the rain lifted was not fresh and cleansed, like you find after a sudden, brief summer thunderstorm that washes away all dust and dirt. Instead, what was left was a cold and dead landscape smelling of rotten vegetation and small drowned things.

It was as though a week of rain had passed us from high summer to the borders of winter.

We climbed, and I looked down and behind me at the road we were leaving. Looked behind me in remorse, for my brother lay somewhere in that rain-washed country, in the makeshift grave we had made for him, under a cairn of stones and under the kind words of Sir Ramiro of the Maw and the singing of Dannelle and of Oliver, whose voice was young and yet to change. Unfathomably, my brother lay in the wet soil, untouched by light or air or the best of my intentions. He had followed my command, my leadership and visions, which had brought him to that last place below me. Somehow the death of Alfric, which often I had thought would not affect me one way or the other, which sometimes I had thought I would even welcome, had left me nothing but this long ride, these shadows, and a trail that narrowed and narrowed ahead of us as we passed from the highlands into the sparse country of the foothills. It was indeed dreadful.

Dannelle and Ramiro tried, I think, but they were little consolation. My thoughts were not on them or on the journey ahead of us, but on how death had caught Alfric just short of changing. Had he been given one more month, even another week, who knew but that the strange turn of intentions I had seen-those moments of honesty and loyalty so fleeting and faint that I feared I imagined them-might well have amounted to something like knighthood or brotherhood.

As it was, not even my memories of Alfric could fashion him lovely: His blackmails at the moathouse and on the walls of Castle di Caela, the times he had manhandled me in the cellars of my father, strangled me in swamp and topiary garden, strung me up in the dark rooms of Castle di Caela, and nearly drowned me in the moat. How he had broken oaths and fine glassware, started brawls then run from them, lied to Father and Bayard and me and Robert di Caela, tried to seduce Dannelle and Enid and threatened them when his charms had failed. All in all, it was a shadowy history of abusing horse and servant and younger brothers, betraying the trust of comrades and superiors. Still, I found myself searching through memory for something remarkable, something that distinguished and redeemed this brother. I came up with Brithelm's turnips.

When we were growing up, my father had prized and savored turnips, and because his father had put every nonpoisonous root in Coastlund on a supper plate, then, by the gods, like fare was good enough for his sons.

Unfortunately, Brithelm had discovered at an early age that his innate love for nature did not extend to turnips. There were the long standoffs familiar to any family, when the child refuses to eat what the parent sets forth. However, Pathwardens are congenitally stubborn, and the struggles between Brithelm and Father took on proportions of terrible length and venom. Many mornings I found the two of them facedown in dinner plates, where they had waited out one another not from the previous night's supper, mind you, but from a confrontation two or even three nights old. The servants learned to work around them.

I do not know why Alfric decided to keep the peace on this matter. It was out of character in a brother who delighted in setting the whole family against one another. Perhaps it was only that Alfric coveted the same turnips his brother would leave on a plate until the Cataclysm came again. Perhaps it was a glimmer of kindness.

Indeed, as I thought about it there in the rising foothills, I could not recall clearly whether it was Alfric who scraped the turnips from Brithelm's plate and wolfed them down while Father was not looking. Other images came to my memory-perhaps a dog under the table, or a fold in the hem of Brithelm's robe that Father never checked for wandering tubers. I could not remember clearly for, after all, I had been scarcely three or four years old at the time, and not too concerned with those events that did not involve me.

It was now, when it had become important, that my memory sputtered and failed me. I sat back in the saddle, telling myself it was of little consequence, these turnips and childhood struggles. Telling myself to put it out of mind.

But out of mind it would not be put. And in the long, haunted noontide, as we climbed past greenery into the rubble-strewn pathways of the Vingaards, I thought of all my doings, how perhaps one deft stroke of the sword or more experienced command, one different path chosen or even one less vision in the stones, and I would have had my brother beside me with all of his flaws and outrages and promise.

I used to say that you could see a miracle coming for miles if you just paid attention. But you can't when your mind is on other things. It is then that you get down and burrow in and follow your nose until something more reliable than attention or logic or common sense comes up to meet you.

I met Shardos in a pass leading toward the site of Brithelm's old encampment. My friends had lagged behind me, giving me generous space to wrestle with thoughts of Alfric, so Lily and I were quite alone as the pathway narrowed through rubble and sheer walls streaked with pink granite. I turned a corner and lost sight of the party. Indeed, Ramiro's usual racket of trumpeting and bluster, louder through the morning as he tried to cheer me up, faded into a whisper behind me as Lily put distance between me and their faint consolations.

It was a silence that bred suspicions.

After all, the talk behind me had touched upon bandits. And wasn't it a fact that bandits preferred a narrow pass for their villainy, raining arrows and rocks and the skulls of their previous victims down upon the unwary?

The first bowl fell, hurtling like a meteor from some concealed spot above me, splintering in the gravel and grit underhoof and sending shards flying in all directions. I yelped and drew sword, imagining an army of Nerakan cutthroats who had chosen this time and place to test their most ruthless and bloodthirsty plan of ambush.

The pass was too narrow to turn the mare around. Lily snorted and drew the reins from my hand with a strong twist of her head. A growl descended from the rocks above me. Amid my imaginings of wild beasts and their even wilder masters, of bloodlust and dismemberment, the unassuming form of the juggler appeared on the rocks above me. A big dog crouched at his side, its hackles raised.

"Be still, Birgis," he soothed. "'Tis only a lad, and no enemy of yours."

The dog lay down at his feet, its growl receding. I breathed again and stood upright in the stirrups, trying my best to look knightly and offended.

The man had been dressed by a whirlwind. Pieced together by rags, a coat of yellow and purple and black draped over his shoulders. The coat had a yawning hole at its left side, not torn as far as I could tell, but seeming to be an oversight or the fancy of a mad tailor.

The tunic beneath this monstrosity was a lime green outrage that had once made a mockery of silk, no doubt, but its best years over, it had taken on a sort of magnificent ugliness. His shoes matched only in form. One was of black leather, the other of red.

I hid a smile, fearing he might be insulted and send the dog to do the work it was obviously more than happy to do, curled at his feet and baring its hundreds of sharp teeth. But the man paid little attention to me, staring blankly above me.

"I'm sorry, lad, that the bowl was so… proximate. Sometimes I lose them, even in a catch and carry I've done since before you were born. And my goodness, they do make a racket when they settle, don't they?"

"Begging your pardon, sir," I began politely, eyeing the dog, whose fur had risen in a wiry, aggressive mane about its frighteningly strong neck. I listened anxiously for the sound of approaching horses.

Ramiro, no doubt, had stopped out of earshot for a snack or a drink or a nap-for anything, in short, that would delay him.

The motley man above me made no movement, no sign of fighting or of running away. No sign, even, that he noticed the sword I was brandishing.

I waved my hand at him.

No response. Perhaps it was a trick of light or shadows in this rocky region.

I made the most hideous face I could imagine, flashed him the most obscene hand gesture I knew.

Growls from the dog only.

It was only then I noticed that the man held two other bowls.

"Are you in the habit of juggling crockery?" I asked uneasily, brushing the folds of my cloak to remove any stray shards that might discomfort me hours from now when I dismounted or crouched by a fire.

"Indeed I am, young sir," the man replied serenely. "The dog has learned to dodge bowls and to reconnoiter."

It was then I was sure the juggler was blind.

"So your companion, sir-"

"Birgis."

"So Birgis is… the eyes in your alliance?"

A long pause filled the cool mountain air while the man awaited the obvious next question, while I debated whether I should give him the satisfaction of asking it. But I had to know.

"Doesn't your… lack of sight pose a problem in juggling?"

"Indeed it does, young sir," he replied, stroking the bristled back of the dog beside him, who growled once more and lay still, waiting no doubt for a sudden movement or loud noise on my part-anything that might justify his dragging me from my horse and disemboweling me.

I heard the clopping of hooves on the trail behind me. Ramiro and Dannelle came into view, then Oliver close behind them, leading the riderless horses. My big, blustering companion tipped his traveling hat politely at the sight of the juggler.

"Indeed, it is a long story. Times have been," the blind man went on heedlessly, "that I would have given my earthly goods for a set of eyes. But I shan't trouble you with a drawn-out and tedious tale."

"Why, nonsense!" Ramiro boomed merrily, already halfway dismounted. "What better time for stories and lore than when you have stopped for the day, ready for a meal and rest and a whiling of hours?"

"Ramiro…" I began, but there was no stopping it. The big man sat and motioned to Oliver, who sighed, retraced his steps to a notch among the rocks, and set about to build a fire.

"You could stand with a bit of distraction yourself, Galen," Ramiro added, "and what good is a story if not to while away all heaviness and woe?"

"What good indeed?" asked the juggler, stepping cautiously down the rock face, the dog scrambling nimbly onto his shoulders. Together they hopped lightly onto the surface of the trail, the story beginning before the blind man had crouched by the fire to warm his hands.

"Mine were the sharpest of eyes," the juggler began, "in my early years, when I juggled torches and knives in a floating palace on the edge of the Blood Sea…"

And on it went, through an hour of silliness and farfetched stories of some notorious performing career that spanned Ansalon from one end to the other. As he told his story, the juggler stood and produced three bottles from somewhere in those patchwork robes. It was like sleight of hand to begin with, and I caught myself watching for secrets, for distractions and misdirections as though he were intent on pocketing our coins rather than bedazzling us.

Bedazzle us he did, for as his life unfolded, the bottles flashed brightly in the mountain air, first green, then red, then blue. Then as he tossed them more quickly, the colors combined, green and violet and yellow from somewhere unexpected, until I think I saw the entire spectrum, and the colors moved quickly into transparency as the blind man seemed to juggle ice and light over our marveling heads.

The youngest son of a circus family, Shardos-for that was his name-had been bom in far-off Kothas beyond the Blood Sea, by the strait that easterners call the Pirate's Run. He said he had come west over its waters with his family "not long after the Cataclysm."

I looked skeptically at Ramiro. If my history and reckoning were correct, the old man was claiming to be over two centuries old.

Ramiro sat by the fire, as wide and complacent as a huge toad, rapt with interest as Shardos continued his story.

Through the Death's Teeth Shardos's family had come, and once ashore, down to Ogrebond, where the audience had eaten his oldest brother and set afire the family tents.

West through Neraka they had traveled over the span of several years, their tented wagons heavy with bottles of cure-alls, with potions and trained animals and fireworks. It sounded like the most wonderful boyhood life to me, for you could name the city-from North Keep all the way to Zeriak by the Ice Wall-and Shardos had been there. He had stories that went with the places, too: from the Cracklin Coast, where he was burned and blinded by a cruel duke who distracted him while he juggled torches, all the way west to the Gnome Kingdoms under Mount Nevermind, where his middle brother was dismantled by an explosion in a wagon full of rockets.

More than that, he had collected the stories of the places themselves: He knew by heart seven versions of the Tale of Huma, and creation itself was different, it seemed, depending on your town or country or race. He knew the stories of Istar and the Cataclysm and more recent stories, too, such as that of the Battle at Chaktamir in which my father had fought.

Shardos claimed to know the entirety of di Caela family history, and within it, the Scorpion's tale. He knew Bayard, and somehow was familiar with the bleak and desolate childhood of my protector.

Solemnly the blind man told us that he knew the true story of Brandon Rus and the arrows, and that at some time, given greater leisure and our kindly attention, he would tell us why the young easterner let his brilliant gifts lie waste in memory and brooding.

Shardos claimed to know two thousand stories, stories that had served him well as his hands slowed in later years. "For I have found," he claimed, "that jugglery and storytelling are cousins. It is the illusion you're after-the moment when the juggler and the teller fade from the sight of those who are looking on, when all you can see is the objects rising and falling and the story completing itself on its own." In puzzlement, I looked at Ramiro, who shrugged back at me in turn. As men of action, we were used to being left in the dark by comparisons.

At any rate, Shardos had become a bit of a poor man's bard, fabling and gossiping supper from hovel to castle through a century of roads. Up until a time, that is, when seeking rest, he had chanced upon a small encampment in the Vingaard Mountains.

"There I had fancied on staying," he claimed. "To be done with the travel and to think on my stories for a while. For they all must fit together somehow, wouldn't you think? At least, that is what my host in the mountains told me before he disappeared."

In an instant, we were all alert, eyes so intent on the blind man in front of us that Birgis the dog became uneasy and growled menacingly at Ramiro.

"And the name of your host?" I asked, my voice almost a whisper.

"Why, Brother Brithelm, I heard them call him," the juggler replied.

Briefly and urgently I told him that Brithelm was my brother,

"I see," Shardos said, his tone a little more somber. "I can imagine what has brought you to the mountains, then."

"Yes, I suppose you might guess why we are here," I conceded. "Brithelm's camp is but a day's ride away, as I remember it, and we were on our way to see if he has weathered the earthquake well."

"Were on your way, you say?"

"Yes, Master Shardos," I replied guardedly. "For though I surely intend to visit my brother in the days to come, this talk of disappearance has… given me pause as to where I should venture next. That and the Plainsmen. Pale fellows. Wearing beads and skins. Most of them armed. Perhaps you've seen-I mean, noticed them."

"So that's what they look like. Their clothing rustled like buckskin and leather, but the skin color-I had no idea. They've made quite a commotion in the surrounding woods this evening."

"Who are they? What are they?" Ramiro asked. "No idea there, either. But whatever they are, it's your brother Brithelm you're after, is it not? And well you should be, for he's been kidnapped."

"Kidnapped?"

"Whisked from the world as we know it, I'd wager. That camp of an abbey is as empty as the City of Lost Names northward. Scarcely a sign that Brithelm or any of his fellows have ever been there."

"I… I can't believe that," I protested. "Who would want to kidnap Brithelm? So, Shardos. You are saying that my brother's abbey-"

"Is deserted. Yes, Galen. When the quakes arose and the seasons shifted and the elements burst their bounds, the kidnappers came out of the earth…"'

"Lead us there, Shardos," I stated before I thought, teased out of caution by bewilderment. I stared down the apprehensive look flashed at me by Ramiro and continued. "I have lost one brother too many in these mountains, and by the gods, the hills will open before I lose another."

"'Tis simple enough," Shardos observed cheerily. "Birgis and I can find him for you. He is unharmed, I am sure, though no doubt distressed by his new surroundings."