The Oath and the Measure

Chapter 19

Sturm slipped in and out of sleep as the wagon moved deeper into the forest. He opened his eyes to a dark green canopy and imagined it was night, that he had slept away the day in travel.

But travel to where? And from where? He could remember the events of that morning only vaguely-something about a moving tree, an armed adversary. Vertumnus was in his memory as well, and despite himself, Sturm kept returning to a recollection, cloudy and fevered, of Jack Derry driving a wicker chariot into a clearing.

Covered by green and fever and clouds, he dozed, his sleep interrupted by snatches of song from somewhere, a distant song without echoes, muted as though it rose from the heart of a lamp or a bottle.

Closing his eyes, he listened for the briefest of whiles. Fitfully, the shape of a copper spider passed over the inside of his eyelid like an afterimage following a flood of light. He thought of Cyren, then of Mara, but the thoughts tunneled back into darkness and sleep, and the afternoon passed in dreams he would never recall.

Suddenly the chariot bed flooded with light. Sturm blinked and gasped, tried to sit up, then tumbled back into a feverish stupor. Strong hands were moving him, of that much he was certain, and the light quickened above him, dodging through leaves and needles, and the air was immediately fresh and pine-scented.

He thought he saw Jack Derry once standing over him, but the brightness of the air was so green and excruciating that he couldn't tell for sure. Twice he overheard parts of a conversation he guessed to be between the dryads, for the voices that spoke were high and pure and musical, like the sound of crystal wind chimes.

"Dying?" one of them asked, and "Not so" the other answered.

Then he started, trying in vain to move. For leaning above him was the Druidess Ragnell, smelling of herb and peat moss, her wrinkled face a mask of riddles.

They have taken me back to Dun Ringhill, Sturm thought, fear and anger rising with the fever. But above him, the face blurred and wavered, as though he saw it reflected in disturbed waters, and when it reappeared, it was beautiful and dark and green-eyed, the face of a woman no older than forty, her black hair crowned with a waxy wreath of holly.

Sturm saw the Lady Ilys in the back of her eyes, but it was not Ilys. Though fevered, he was sure of that. "Let it begin," she whispered, and behind her, a choir of birds burst into song.

The tranquil pool before Sturm shivered with the slightest breeze, and the sides of the tree opened around him, forming a rustic chair of sorts in which he rested, his sleep impenetrable and calm.

Muttering, lifting their thin skirts above their knees, the nymphs danced away into the forest, leaving the wounded Solamnic with the other three. The success or failure of the Lady Hollis's doctoring was of no concern to them, the great theater of battle between Knight and treant having reached its loud and spectacular conclusion.

And they despised the Lady Hollis, the gnarled old druidess who went by the name of Ragnell back at Dun Ringhill and who had become a minor celebrity for her assaults on Solamnic castles some six years earlier. For some unexplainable reason, Lord Wilderness had taken her to bride.

Diona, never quite believing the folly of men, turned back once before they lost Vertumnus entirely behind a thick stand of blue aeterna. Setting her hand to the short evergreen, she parted the branches and peered toward the clearing. For a moment, distressingly, she thought that the druidess looked ever so much younger, that her hair was dark and her back lithe and straight.

Evanthe called for her, and the smaller nymph turned elegantly and raced into the forest, the branches of aeterna she had touched erupting in white and golden blossoms.

Of course, neither Vertumnus nor Jack Derry, who stood in the clearing above the ministering druidess, saw the ancientness of the woman in front of them. Hollis knelt gracefully over the wounded lad, her flawless features knit with concern.

"Can you save him, Mother?" Jack Derry asked, and the woman lifted her eyes.

"You've done well to bring him to me this quickly," she observed. "You have done your part well, Son. Now is your father's part, and my own."

"You have found peace from the lightning, then?" Jack asked, his voice thick with concern.

"There are times," replied the druidess, "when the law bows down to the spirit and the heart. The treant will mend and the law survive."

She smiled at Jack and returned to the lad. Over Sturm she hovered, spreading out her arms so that her cloak encircled him. "Bring forth the owl first," she whispered.

The bird blinked and hopped comically from Vertumnus's shoulder, and spreading its wings, it glided silently through the clearing to a perch in the branches above the unconscious youth.

"Now," Hollis breathed, and Vertumnus lifted the flute to his lips. Carefully at first, then more and more playfully and recklessly, he followed the song of the owl with a tune of his own, his fingers flickering over the stops of the instrument. Hollis lifted a yellow, spongy mass of lichen to the nose of the sleeping lad, and in the air above Vertumnus, a strange swirl of mist and light resolved itself into a blue sign of infinity as the first of the three dreams passed over Sturm, and the healing began.

He dreamt that he lay in the mist-covered branches of an oak.

Sturm breathed deeply and frowned. He looked around for Vertumnus, for Ragnell or Mara or Jack Derry. But he was alone, and even from this lofty vantage point, a good forty feet from the floor of the forest, he could see nothing but green and mist.

Dressed in green, he was, in a tunic woven of leaves and grass.

Something told him this was not the Darkwoods.

"Even more," he whispered, "something tells me I have not wakened."

Quickly he said the Eleventh and Twelfth Devotions, those that guarded the sayer against ambush in the country of dreams, and descended the tree cautiously, his eyes on the shifting ground below. Halfway down, at a safe but uncomfortable height, he dangled from a thick, sturdy branch, then let himself go, trusting in the odd physical safety of dreams.

He was right. Buoyed by a warm wind, he floated onto dried grass and aeterna needles as though he had descended through water. To his astonishment, he was dressed once more in his hereditary armor, carrying his shield and sword.

"What is the lesson in this?" he asked aloud. For the ancient philosophers said that dreams answered questions. Quickly Sturm looked for omens-for the kingfisher that presages a rise to the Order, for the Sword or the Crown.

"Green," he concluded, sitting heavily at the foot of the oak tree. "Naught but green and green upon green."

He propped his chin in his hands, and suddenly a horse whickered from behind a thick stand of juniper. Instantly alert, his sword drawn against monster and adversary, against all stealers of dreams, Sturm moved like a wind toward the sound… and the branches moved past him and through him, and he did not feel them pass.

He stood at the edge of a clearing dominated by a pair of tall hewn rock towers. The walls around the daunting black stone structures formed an equilateral triangle, at each corner of which a small tower sprouted like a menacing black hive.

"Wayreth!" Sturm whispered hoarsely. "The Towers of High Sorcery!" To which, it was written, one could come only if invited.

"But why?" Sturm asked. "Why am I set in this country of wizards?"

He heard the voices then, saw Caramon and Raistlin ride out of the trees and stop unsteadily before the towers, their roan horses dancing skittishly. They were at a distance, and it was impossible to hear them, or to see the looks on their faces, for that matter. But a low, soft voice murmured in Sturm's ear, as though it read from a high romance, from a saga or ancient tale.

He whirled about and faced Lord Wilderness, who pointed back to the Tower, the twins, and continued the story.

"The fabled Towers of High Sorcery," Raistlin said in awe.

The tall stone towers resembled skeletal fingers, clawing out of the grave.

Cautiously, reluctantly, Sturm turned back to the dream scene unfolding to Vertumnus's narration. When Lord Wilderness spoke, Sturm saw Caramon and Raistlin move their mouths to the words of the Green Man.

"We could turn back now," Caramon croaked, his voice breaking.

Raistlin looked at his brother with astonishment.

Raistlin turned to Caramon. Sturm shook his head violently, struggling to clear it of cobwebs and dreams and dark, insinuating words.

For the first time since he could remember, Vertumnus continued, Raistlin saw fear in Caramon. The young conjurer felt an unusual sensation, a warmth spreading over him. He reached out and put a steady hand on his brother's trembling arm. "Do not be afraid, Caramon," Raistlin said. "I am with you."

Caramon looked at Raistlin, then laughed nervously to himself. He urged his horse forward.

Mechanically, as though guided by the words, Caramon and Raistlin turned, spoke, and then, as Vertumnus told the rest of the story, Raistlin stepped inside and vanished, leaving a shivering Caramon behind at the tower gates.

Sturm's heart went out to Caramon, alone at the edge of the mystery. In his twin's absence, half of the big warrior lay buried in shadow, and there was something unsubstantial about those broad shoulders and thick arms.

"He's… he's like a worn banner!" Sturm whispered, and beside him, Vertumnus resumed the story. Eventually Raistlin walked from the tower into the dreamlight, and Caramon rose to greet him. It was no longer Raistlin, but a young man twisted and submerged and broken who raised his hands, pointed his thumbs toward his approaching brother… and…

Magic coursed through his body and flamed from his hands. He watched the fire flare, billow, and engulf Caramon.

Sturm cried out and shielded his eyes. It couldn't be! Nor could it be prophecy! Raistlin and Caramon were in Solace. Nothing would send them to Wayreth, if Wayreth would even have them.

And Raistlin. Raistlin would never…

Vertumnus's hand rested on his shoulder.

"Do not be afraid, Sturm," Vertumnus whispered, clutching Sturm's arm. "I am with you. Do not hide from me."

Sturm pulled away from Lord Wilderness, whose grip became more insistent, more painful.

"Do you understand, Sturm?" Vertumnus whispered, and his breath smelled of cedar. "Do you understand now?"

Then Sturm felt himself rising. The branches parted at his ascent, and suddenly he was borne on a cool, fresh breeze into the autumn sky, where the blue sign of infinity twinkled above him, and he fell into bright, dreamless slumber.

"Now we send him the second dream," Hollis urged, brushing her dark hair from her dark face. "For the boy will live now. Of that I am assured. He has risen from the thickets of death, and he will live now. The ravens will decide how he does so."

The ravens had circled overhead throughout the first song and infusion, boding softly. Now the three birds settled ominously on the overhanging branches of an enormous vallenwood. As large as small dogs, they were, and they croaked their song dryly, as though reluctant to sing at all. Hollis lifted another herb, a gray lotus flower this time, to the lips of the lad, and he shivered at the touch and taste of it. For a moment, it seemed that a horned battle-axe hovered above Sturm, preparing to descend with indifference upon the guilty or innocent. In this menacing light, Sturm dreamed the second dream, caught in the ravens' music.

This time he was in the High Clerist's Tower, on the battlements overlooking the courtyard.

Sturm floated above the soldiers in the smoke of the campfires. For there were soldiers camped in the tower, huddled close behind the sheltering walls against winter and snow and something… something outside those walls, waiting.

It was all the sieges Sturm had ever imagined. He swallowed nervously and floated from fire to fire, borne on the rising smoke from the flames.

The soldiers were infantry, commoners. Some wore the badges of Uth Wistan, some of MarKenin, some of Crownguard, of all things. All wore the badges of a beaten army. They were soggy from the snow, and their eyes were dull and furtive. The Knights strode through them like herdsmen, and not a word passed between Knight and soldier.

"What is it?" Sturm called down to one of the Knights. "What has… has Neraka…"

Unhearing, the Knight turned toward him and stared through him. It was Gunthar Uth Wistan, almost unrecognizable beneath gray hair and beard.

Whatever had come to pass, the battle must have aged him ten years. Suddenly the sound fled the courtyard, carrying away the murmur of armies, the crackle of fire, the clank and clatter of readying weapons, and a familiar voice rose beside him.

Vertumnus stood on the battlements-in Brightblade armor, of all things! He was wild and disheveled, almost a leafy version of Angriff Brightblade, and Sturm started at the resemblance. Lord Wilderness pointed to the courtyard and again began to recite, his voice soft and haunted.

As he spoke, a desolate column of troops mustered by the gates. A grizzled sergeant at the head of the column looked up to the battlements, his eyes meeting Sturm's as Vertumnus recited the bleak, inevitable story.

They looked diminished, frail in their armor and swords and pikes as they assembled, stamped the cold from their feet, and fell into line behind the mounted Knights. I could single out Breca in the foremost column, standing a head taller than those around him, and once, I believe, he glanced up to where I was standing, the flatness of his eyes apparent even from a distance, even despite the shadows of the wall and the dark air of the morning. And perhaps because of that darkness, there was no expression I could see on his face, but there is an expression I remember…

For if an expression could be featureless, void of fear and of dread and finally of hope, containing if anything only a sort of resignation and resolve, that was Breca's expression and those of his companions, saying 'This is not what I imagined but worse than I expected,' and nothing more than that when the doomed gates opened…

"Do not be afraid, Sturm," Vertumnus whispered, his eyes wheeling like moons struck from orbit. "I am with you. Do you understand, Sturm? Do you understand now?"

"I… I think so," Sturm said to the glittering stare of Lord Wilderness. "It is… that even the Oath and Measure can be betrayed by… by madness."

"No," Vertumnus said, his voice a whisper in Sturm's thoughts. "That's not all of it." He smiled again, this time more wickedly. "You see… the Oath and Measure are the madness!"

Vertumnus seized Sturm by the shoulders and turned him to face the assembling army below him. "Those are the ones the Measure kills," he whispered insistently as the soldiers stirred uneasily, shifting their weights and weapons. "That is the blood upon which your honor floats, those the bones upon which your Code is raised. This huge Solamnic game is always with us, as simple and poisonous as our own proud hearts!"

Spoken like a madman, Sturm thought, and he fell from the dream into an unsettling blackness. Sturm would never know how long he slept.

"Well enough," the druidess announced.

The afternoon had passed into evening. In the distance, the forest was loud with the call and response of nocturnal animals, and above the clearing, the first stars were shining, green in the harp of Branchala, and red Sirrion floated like a burning galleon into the vault of the sky.

Hollis looked up at Vertumnus, her face even younger than when the healing had begun. "He has survived the first two dreams. The third is easy, if he has the will and the stomach for it."

"None of them is easy, Hollis," Vertumnus replied with a curious smile. "You are not Solamnic, so the Dream of Choosing seems simpler than the others. It is actually the most painful."

In the distance, the lark lifted its voice. Hollis nodded serenely and touched Sturm's eyelids with a double-bloomed rose-one blossom red, the other as green as a leaf. Vertumnus began to play his flute, and as he did, silver Solinari drifted over the clearing, spangling the leaves of the vallenwood and of the oak, the holly in the hair of the druidess, and the green locks of Lord Wilderness.