Galen Beknighted

Chapter I

It was an evening of torches and gems in Castle di Caela.

Outside, the sentries bundled against the night wind. They stood at the walls, looking north and west toward the Vingaard Mountains, where the brush fires had started in the foothills again, as they had last night and the night before.

The fires were burning brightly, like signals of a deep unrest.

The sentries clutched the top of the walls tightly in their vigils, for the wind was rising. The maples at the foot of the walls turned silver, then dark green, then silver again as the wind rushed through them, capsizing their leaves.

But it was no ordinary summer wind, blowing balmy and warm in the sunlight, rising cool at dusk, and settling for good as the night drew on. For the day before, in the dark of the morning, a powerful storm rushed down and east from the foothills, billowing dust and dried grass and the faint smell of night in its path, gathering speed until it reached the castle, where it lifted a guardsman neatly from his post on the battlements and hurled him into the courtyard below.

A castle charwoman, by chance looking up to the battlements, had seen the man tumble, his cloak rippling through the air like an enormous black streamer. She said that for a moment when he passed overhead, he blocked out the moonlight, and she believed that her eyes had deceived her-that he was a passing cloud and nothing more.

They found him sprawled in the red light of the moon, his open eyes as vacant as the sky above him.

None of the men there, not even the oldest, had ever seen the likes of it.

So the sentries on the battlements clutched the crenels, carried stones for ballast in the lacings of their armor, tied themselves one to another, like rock climbers.

Behind and below them, sheltered by the walls, the courtyard and the Great Hall of di Caela glittered with a safer light. Pennants and canopies rippled softly, wagons and booths lay empty until the next morning, when trade would begin again on the grounds of the bailey. Tonight was set aside for ceremony, and from the heart of the light, the music of horn and drum was rising. The closest of the sentries, at the safest posts in the shadowy courtyard of the castle, no doubt caught the sweet attar of roses on the wind as it mingled with summer spices and the deep, inviting scent of wood smoke.

All of this-spice and attar, music and light-was unusual in Castle di Caela. The new master, Sir Bayard Bright-blade, Solamnic Knight of the Sword, was strict to the Measure and a former knight-errant, used to the hardships of the road. He had little love of luxury.

Nonetheless, this evening was bright, festive, and ornate, despite the dangers of the morning, the high winds, and the austere lord of the castle.

Bayard permitted these ceremonies, because not often did a new Knight join the Order.

A cause for celebration. Expensive though it may be, Sir Bayard Brightblade thought, as he descended by candlelight from the master chambers of the castle. Around him, a hundred metal birds sat silently on their metal perches as if they awaited a signal-an outcry, perhaps, or a change of weather-to arise into the air and migrate.

Bayard scarcely noticed them, scarcely noticed where he stepped. The young page, Raphael Juventus, a lad of singular promise and talent, slipped gracefully in front of the master, scooting aside a chair that threatened to entangle him. Bayard's mind was on the ceremony about to begin.

From below, a trumpet swelled. Bayard leaned against the marble banister, stirring dust with his gloved hand. Raphael sneezed, and a dog lying asleep on the landing below started awake at the sound. It rumbled, the fur on its back rising, and slinked back into the dusty darkness of a doorway off the landing.

Distracting, this ceremony, Bayard thought. More home foolishness, when there's mayhem abroad. There's no telling what those fires bode up in the Vingaards, much less this terrible wind. Enough of wind and fire-it's rain we need now, more than music and spices.

Drought in the second year of my governance, he thought, fitting the ceremonial gauntlets on his large hands. He resumed his descent, passing still another silenced mechanical bird, staring stupidly at him from its perch on the landing, a spring dangling from beneath its left wing.

Now Bayard stood for a moment on the white marble platform overlooking the corridor, where the last of the knights straggled into the loud and fragrant room. Raphael, elegant despite his allergies, leaned against an empty bronze perch, sniffling from his vigilance against obstacles.

Unrest on top of the drought, Bayard mused, these fires and winds at sunset. And now a change of squires. I suppose that's what I get for saving the damsel and lifting the curse.

This and nothing to do.

He continued toward the doorway, smiling. The sentries at the great double doors noticed him on the stairway and snapped to attention. One of them lost a helmet in the process. It clattered to the floor, and from its crown toppled a pair of twelve-sided Calantine dice that fell to the floor and rolled to "King's Ransom," the charmed double nines that were the winning toss in the palace's most popular game of chance.

The guard stooped, dropped his pike, and picked up the dice. Then, reaching for his weapon, he dropped the dice again.

King's Ransom once more.

The other guard, the one with the helmet and scruples, eyed his fumbling companion suspiciously as Bayard and Raphael passed.

The doors to the dining room opened. Bayard saw the glimmer of candles on the dark mahogany in the great hall. An elvish cello began an intricate southern melody, laced with ice and elegance and mourning.

Nonetheless, Sir Bayard whispered, almost aloud, it is a gaudy night. No matter the wind or the fire, the danger or the rumors of chaos in the mountains. No matter the dust and disorder and the loaded dice of sentries. Whatever happens, this night is set aside. The Lady Enid will see to the festivity.

Despite the rising wind at sunset and the cold wet air that rustled through the windows into the Great Hall, lifting tapestries and occasionally gutting candles, the ceremonies began as Bayard knew they would: without incident, delay, or error.

It was the better judgment of the Lady Enid, seated at the head of the table, that despite the fire and the grumbling in the countryside, there should be a time to celebrate traditions.

As her husband Bayard fretted over things he could not control, stewed over far-flung mysteries and nearby little chaoses, Enid had arranged the banquet at hand and its invitations, arranged the comfort of guests, the lighting of rooms, the polishing of the mahogany tables in the Great Hall.

Finally she had arranged herself, her long blonde hair tumbling onto her shoulders, her great-grandmother's century-old gown shimmering with unimaginable jewels-a gown the Lady Enid thought was far too showy for everyday use and, to be honest, even for ceremonial nights.

Great-Grandmother Evania's taste, she reflected, had always been atrocious.

Nonetheless, Enid was expected to wear the dress.

And the pendant. Always the pendant, because people wanted to see it.

Pleasing the people who wanted to see her finery had not come easily to Enid. Nor, for that matter, had her delight in hospitality. Bayard, unaccustomed to his role as lord of the castle, continued to behave like a knight-errant. He surrounded himself with the exotic and slightly notorious characters he had met in his traveling years. Already Enid had played hostess to three bands of dwarves, a flock of kender, who departed merrily with the di Caela family silver, and close-mouthed Que-Shu Plainsmen, who sat on the floor instead of in the chairs.

She had even hosted a centaur or two-a gray-bearded character named Archala who drank too much, somehow found his way upstairs, and, owing to a hangover and the structure of his knees, could not descend the steps in the morning. They had to lower him from the landing by ropes and pulleys, or, she feared, he might have been there forever.

Then again, even the boy to be knighted this very evening had been no model of good manners, Enid thought. Despite his somber front and his protests, his "by the gods, Bayard, I'll do better," the lad's past behavior flirted with felony, and Lady Enid believed that the straight face she saw in the halls of Castle di Caela knew far more than it was telling.

The boy's guest list was a checkered one-interesting, to be sure, but not entirely respectable. Some of them Enid knew only by legend. Most, however, she knew firsthand and well. In some cases, all too well.

There was Sir Andrew Pathwarden, the boy's father, for starters, drowsing over there at the table, long red beard spread like a fan across the mahogany. The old fellow was fatigued and well wined after his long ride from Coastlund, still in his muddy traveling armor. A mastiff curled and snored at his feet, and though Enid did not believe that such loud and canine presence was necessary, she said nothing, unsure of how etiquette up in Coastlund might be disposed to dogs. She believed, however, that the old man, though famous for his courage, was not all that used to delicate behavior.

Alfric Pathwarden, Sir Andrew's eldest son, slouched in an equally muddy heap beside his father, red and lumpish in the candlelight. The boy scowled and rubbed his sleeve. Though by now he should be well into a knighthood of his own, Alfric had only this month become his father's squire.

It was a situation, Enid noted, very much like having your brother escort you to a dance for the simple reason that nobody else has asked you.

How old was Alfric now? Twenty-four? Twenty-five? She could not remember, but it was far beyond graceful age for squirehood. To look at the way he kept his father's armor, it would yet be a while before someone arranged a ceremony like this for the oldest Pathwarden boy.

All the more reason to send a page to Sir Andrew's quarters. Best make sure the old man was comfortable, since he had been left to his eldest son's sorry devices.

Enid's own father, Sir Robert di Caela, sat to her left. Impeccably dressed, placed tactfully away from the other guests, he swirled his wine idly in the bottom of his pewter cup. Since he had handed the governance of Castle di Caela to his son-in-law in order to "free himself for the manly pursuits" of hunting and writing his memoirs, Sir Robert no longer paid attention to much of anything that went on about him. His mornings were slept away, his afternoons were taken with grooming himself, insulting the guests, and the practice of falconry. Of an evening, most embarrassingly, he ranged forth in full dress armor, pursuing the younger and prettier of the castle maids until he would drop over from exhaustion in the hall and be carried to bed by stout courtiers who had lost at the evening's gaming.

Enid had seen the memoirs in question and could quote them in their entirety: "I was born in the house of my fathers," they went.

Meanwhile, the quills, ink, and papers, purchased in monumental volume six months before when the old man handed over control of the castle, were stacked head high on his desk, gathering webs and dust.

At least he was seldom embarrassing before sunset.

Rumor had it around the castle-and even Bayard had come to believe this-that the streak of "distraction" that ran in the di Caela family had run after Sir Robert and caught him brilliantly.

"Sooner or later, Enid," Bayard claimed of late, "your father will fancy he is some sort of reptile or amphibian. The next thing we know, we shall be calling him down from sunning on the battlements or murking around in the moat."

Enid replied that all her father was really missing was a sense of something to do-a place at the heart of the castle.

To which Bayard answered, "'Something to do' is not always there for the taking." He would sigh or grumble then and throw his supper to the very fat dogs.

Enid fingered the pendant at her throat. Once a thing of dangerous magic in the hands of the Scorpion, now an artifact of the old di Caela curse, it had been rescued from the collapsing Scorpion's Nest high in the Pass of Chaktamir. Rescued by her father, on the gods knew what kind of impulse-perhaps as a trophy, perhaps as an heirloom, perhaps to remind him how his days were once occupied.

Gold and large and pentagonal, it had a corner for each of the ancient elements: earth, air, fire, water, and memory. The elements that the learned now tell us are no more elemental than grass or light or the bulging dogs under the tables.

The pendant almost killed her once, which was another story. Now, drained of its magic, it was ornamental, ceremonial, bearing no power but the power of remembrance.

Already some were forgetting that it had been magic to begin with.

Some of the Knights Enid knew by reputation only. Sir Brandon Rus was a distant cousin, a young man of twenty-two or — three. He was traveling alone on his first quest, far from his mother's encampments in the Virkhus Hills. Throughout Solamnia, Brandon had won. a reputation as a hunter. If the stories were true, his arrows were said to have missed only twice in the last seven years. Once (or so it goes) the wild shot missed the deer at which the lad had aimed, only to pass neatly through an assassin lurking in the bushes behind the animal.

The other time was much earlier. Indeed, according to some stories, it never happened. Brandon himself maintained he had missed only once. Nonetheless, some stories said twice.

Looking at Sir Brandon, Enid conceded that, given her father and her distant cousin, she was hardly the one to accuse the Pathwardens of quirky family ties. Though there was nothing objectional about Sir Brandon, he seemed just a little too taken with lore. There was nothing all that wrong with insisting on "thees" and "thous" in the old forms of address, or on the complex series of salutes with which Solamnic Knights of old greeted one another. Nothing, that is, except that none of the other Knights saw the point in going through the whole entangled ritual, and most of the younger knights had quite forgotten when to bow, if they ever really knew in the first place.

Brandon, on the other hand, lived for the history and ceremony of the Order. In the first night of his stay at Castle di Caela, he had buried them all in amenities and protocols. The morning was not much better.

Indeed, the boy must have known every legend about every Knight, for he told Enid half of them over a long, mortally boring breakfast, droning on about Huma and Vinas Solamnus while Enid's cousin Dannelle stood behind him, poured tea, and made faces at her over his shoulder.

So he continued, bludgeoning the guests with his talk, until even Bayard was ducking into dark corridors to avoid him.

Sir Robert had finally quieted the boy by asking him if he were the new dance instructor.

It was good that her father had done this before the other guests arrived. Sir Andrew would have thrashed the boy for his simple "damned eastern prissiness."

Now Brandon sat subdued at the main table, sober and bleak despite his conversation and bright tunic and polished breastplate.

He was like a castle chaplain without religion.

He was removed as far as possible from Sir Robert di Caela (who, it was rumored, had whispered threats against the young man's life). Brandon amused himself in a long discussion of lore with Gileandos, the Pathwarden tutor- Gileandos, whom Sir Robert once called "the most thoroughly educated fool on the planet." Enid tried not to listen to what they were saying, but Gileandos had lost much of his hearing in an accident the year before, when an alembic in his room exploded too near his left ear. Both he and Brandon were rather loud. Their discussion was obscure, almost gnomish, ranging over the little-known achievements of great Solamnic Knights in the past, over the magical properties of the weapons they carried, the armor they wore, the orbs and staves and wands they found on their way.

Brandon, it seemed, had to reach back a thousand years to find a magic he believed in.

And yet the young Knight was all too ready to give credence to the fooleries of Gileandos, who had already made sizable progress with the carafe of wine placed at his right hand. Gileandos, it was said, had explained away the high winds out of the Vingaards as "a quite natural atmospheric inclemency, the release of heat into upper regions where, reacting against the icy air above the timber line, it produces the… urgencies that confront us now."

Enid had paid no attention to her own childhood science instruction, but she remembered enough about weather prediction-learned from the simple act of arranging her father's hunts-to know that Gileandos was an imbecile.

For it took an imbecile to try to pluck the heart from the mystery in the mountains, as though some kind of explanation, no matter how foolish it was, could shield us from un-explainable danger.

Enid knew the old story that magic is inherited-that a child is born with insight, with an ear for the language of plants or a touch that can boil water or draw down a bird from the air. She wondered if this inherited magic thinned out from one generation to the next. It would explain a lot, she thought, if each family were given a measure of enchantment that watered down or grew scarce as it passed on from father to son, uncle to nephew. Unto a time when it ceased, when it dried up, and the young no longer had visions.

Yet there was also the young man to be knighted this evening, and he promised much despite his turn toward waywardness and contrivance. There is vision now and then, though most of it occurs in unexpected places, sometimes among those whom the tradition-bound Solamnic Order thought it could better do without.

Of all the sober company spread about the hall, only one was not restless, only one not unraveled by time and idleness.

Or so Enid believed.

To the left of Sir Brandon sat Sir Ramiro of the Maw, Enid's beloved "Uncle" Ramiro, busy with port and pheasant and paying court to Enid's cousin Dannelle di Caela, who had other things on her mind, Enid was sure. For the young man whose knighthood commenced tonight had led Cousin Dannelle a terrible chase. Just when it appeared that she had his eye, his attention, his… fonder instincts… then the stories would arise again from downstairs. The scullery maid, the baker's daughter, every other female crying foul.

"Everyone" included that most distant cousin, Marigold Celeste. The youngest daughter of Sir Jarden of Kayolin, she had cut a wide and scandalous swath through her father's mountain holdings until the old man, beside himself with outrage and as generally unfit to father a daughter as any Solamnic Knight, had given her the choice of "instruction among the lowland brothers" or the swift edge of a sword.

Marigold was dissolute but not stupid. Her father's decree put her on the road to Castle di Caela at once, her bags stuffed with cosmetics and cheeses and her hair sculpted and lacquered in the form of a gable to keep off the rain. The sympathetic reception she received from the ladies of the court began to cool when she entangled herself with the first available guardsman, then ranged heroically from guard to dueling instructor to seneschal, exhausting them one by one and finally settling on a lad sturdy enough to bear the full weight of her intentions-the very lad that stood to be knighted this evening.

She sat over there, at the farthest point in the hall from the Lady Dannelle. Her yellow hair, the various arrangements of which had made her notorious throughout Solamnia, was braided tightly, knotted in a surprisingly modest bun atop her head as though she were carrying bread to market. And there was something bucolic about Marigold-the heftiness, the shoulders as broad as a man's, and yet the strange allure she had for any hapless male who floated into her undertow.

Marigold smiled and batted her eyes foolishly. By now most of the castle knew the stories. If only one of them was true, Enid maintained, then the young man had a lot of answering to do-not to mention a lot of energy and stamina.

Meantime, her poor cousin Dannelle waited.

Undaunted by the difference in their ages and by Dannelle's most obvious lack of interest, Sir Ramiro leaned his three hundred pounds flirtatiously toward the trim redheaded girl, who smiled and nodded…

… and ignored him entirely, her eyes on the double doors across the room.

So all of them are assembled, Enid thought, leaning back in her chair, her brown eyes scanning the room wearily.

All except for Brithelm, Sir Andrew's second son, who was north and west somewhere, lost in the mountains and in meditation, no doubt.

Enid remembered his dazed countenance-the shock of mousy hair scattered as though he had been struck by lightning, the red robe often worn backward, sometimes inside out.

She hoped he was above the brush fires. And below the lightning.

He probably was, knowing Brithelm. For all the wrong reasons, and through no design of his own. Still, his absence was unfortunate. Some of his graciousness was needed here, his humor and kindness and even his foolishness.

In its idleness, the world was downright gloomy and worrisome.

Enid smiled as Bayard entered the room, as the other Knights stood in respect to the lord of Castle di Caela, as the trumpets joined the sad melody of the viola.

That is why the music and the standing and the gestures and the fine dress, she thought. To charm the world out of worry for a night.

To remind us of our purposes.

Her husband approached, sat to her right, and removed his left gauntlet to take her hand under the table. It was times like these in which she forgave the broken crockery, the dog runs in the Great Hall, the drunken dwarf she found asleep in her bathtub, his stubby arms wrapped around an enormous smoked ham.

She looked at Bayard, whose stumbling and rough manners and moments of swordplay in the midst of his visitors only proved he was right: "Something to do" is not always there for the taking.

But tonight there was something to do. It was time for the crown of the ceremony, for the boy's entrance. If all had gone according to plan and ritual, Galen Pathwarden Brightblade would be waiting outside the double doors for the sound of the drum. He would be standing there, on the threshold of manhood.

The drum began, and all heads turned to the doorway. The drum continued.

And continued.

Bayard cast a troubled look at his wife, who betrayed a hint of a smile and shook her head.

"Now where is he?" Bayard whispered.

"A lesson for both of us, dearest," Enid whispered back. "You cannot control the drought or the fires in the mountains. Galen is cut from the same stuff. A natural phenomenon. There is no plan or ceremony…"

"… can bring him to the right place at the right time," Bayard snapped, a little loudly.

Gileandos turned toward the head of the table, his face stern with disapproval until he saw that it was the lord of the manor snapping.

A sentry's head appeared in the doorway, frowned, and shook. Something rattled loudly in his helmet.

"Almost a Solamnic Knight, but at heart and at best still a damned weasel," Bayard muttered, setting down his cup. He rose to his feet, trying his best to look perturbed, but he smiled faintly as he walked toward the still double doors. All of which Enid noticed. She stifled a laugh and signaled to the page to begin a search through the castle.

She hoped Galen would be found soon. Not for the ceremony or the Order, necessarily. Certainly not so that one more posturing and privileged young man could bluster about in new armor.

But because Galen Pathwarden rode with the promise of unruliness. "Something to do" was always the strong suit of the Weasel.