Oath and the Measure (14 page)

Sturm stood in silence. Sir Robert approached him, green and yellow and red.

“We answer questions. I have returned to answer a question. No, I shall answer
two
questions.”

Arms outstretched, the ghost of Sir Robert di Caela hovered scarcely an arm’s length from Sturm’s chair. Hunger racing through him like fever, Sturm peered at the ghost intently.

“I had always thought,” the young knight ventured, “there was something magical and right in the answering of
three
questions.”

“Don’t bargain with me, boy!” Sir Robert snapped. “It will be two questions or none. We stand on no foolish traditions here. Two questions.”

A thousand questions flashed through Sturm’s mind as he stared at the ghost, questions historical, metaphysical, theological …

But
which
questions?

“Why you, of all the ghosts that might visit me?”

“That is your first question?”

“It is.” Sturm regarded the ghost cautiously. Sir Robert hovered a good three feet off the ground, as though he were floating in water.

“Why me?”

“ ’Tis what I ask,” Sturm replied.

“Damned if I know,” Robert replied. “Next question.”

“
That
was your answer?” Sturm exclaimed.

“Is that your second question?” Sir Robert asked.

“What? Well … no …” Sturm muttered. He fell silent, and the green light in the great hall shifted and deepened. Now the shadows of bench, throne, and rubble lengthened along the dusty stone floor until it seemed that the furnishings themselves had grown beyond human proportion.

“I … I’m not sure what to ask,” Sturm said finally. His mind lodged against the ancient stories of captured mages, bound to grant wishes—how they tricked their captors into asking for a sausage breakfast rather than immortality or infinite wisdom. Whatever the nature and design of the ghost before him, he was not about to let it trick him.

“I think that the question is evident,” Sir Robert said with a curious smile.

Sturm gaped at the ghost and settled back into the chair. Sir Robert stood above him now, thin arms folded over his ethereal breastplate, eyes fixed on a ghostly distance. Slowly he lowered his gaze to the high-backed throne and to the young man, baffled and trembling, who sat upon it.

“The question is evident,” Sir Robert repeated. “I think you need to ask how to get out of here.”

“Very well. How do I get out?” Sturm asked
.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Sir Robert replied with a chuckle.

He should have known all along, Sturm told himself, for the ghost turned suddenly in stagnant air. Behind him, watery pools of light dripped from his locks and clothing, green and iridescent, as he made a path from the center of the hall, out the doors, and into the anteroom. Sword drawn and at the ready, Sturm rose from the chair and followed.

The footsteps led, to his surprise, back to the cellars of Castle di Caela, where Sir Robert, floating ethereally ahead of him, rushed back beneath the stairway.

“Bradley the engineer’s work,” he muttered. “So we could
get the wine out after the worm tore up the cellars.”

The ghost flitted past a capsized wine barrel, headlong into the far wall, where he vanished entirely, leaving the stone surface shimmering with green light.

“Follow!” a voice urged from the other side of the wall, and when Sturm set hand to the glowing stones, they pivoted suddenly, and he was bathed with fresh air and moonlight. He stepped from the cellar into the castle bailey, bright in the silver glow of Solinari.

Sturm looked behind him. Surely enough, Sir Robert had vanished. Again he wondered why
this
ghost, of all possible ghosts in a castle long abandoned and no doubt richly haunted.

Luin trotted across the courtyard from the stables, apparently no worse for her time left alone. She looked cared for, even well fed, though she was still saddled and bridled as he had left her when he thought his stay in the castle would be a matter of minutes.

Sturm rifled through his packs, coming up with some jerky, some quith-pa, and some stale bread, all of which he wolfed down with no regard for manners or health. As he ate, Luin nuzzled his shoulder contentedly, and after a while, Sturm stroked her long nose and spoke to her, ashamed that she had been so long from his thoughts.

“And how, old girl, did you keep yourself so well over these days? How did—”

It was then he looked around and saw that the castle gardens were green, that grass sprouted up thickly between the stones of the courtyard. The grazing had been plentiful. Bright green the foliage was, not the pale of new leaf.

He had been in the castle for a week. He was sure of it. The first day of spring had no doubt come, or was at best a day or two away. Sturm thought back to the Yule banquet, to the Green Man’s stern warning that he keep the time of their appointment, and his thoughts spun with the dire possibilities.

He would miss the time. And the tidings of his father,
promised by Lord Wilderness, would go unheard, would remain unlearned … perhaps forever.

At the thought of forever, a dull pain coursed through the lad’s shoulder, and with it a sudden panic. For had not Vertumnus promised even more deadly things if Sturm did not keep the appointment?

“The wound would blossom, and its bloom would be deadly.”

With no more thought of his comfort or of Luin’s, Sturm Brightblade leapt into the saddle. Through the courtyard he clattered, reining and coaxing the horse beneath him, and out into the Solamnic countryside, where the moon tricked the landscape and the guideposts for travelers were confusing.

Over his shoulder, he cast one last look at Castle di Caela, the maternal house of his ancestry. Somehow it seemed insubstantial, a part of the mist that had brought him to its gates. As he rode farther, he could see the two large turrets. The largest one had housed the keep and the hall and the ghost of Sir Robert di Caela—about that one he was no longer curious. But behind that tower lay the other, the Cat Tower, in which his great-grandmother’s family had housed their eccentrics—sometimes their truly insane.

A light burned in the topmost window of the Cat Tower, and holding the torch was a pale and elderly man, clad in ceremonial armor. Even at this distance, Sturm could make out the arms that adorned his breastplate.

Red flower of light on a white cloud on a blue field.

Boniface was not far behind him. Sturm’s escape from the keep had taken him by surprise as he nodded atop the southwestern bartizan, his pale eyes fixed idly upon the pale moon. He cursed softly, then cursed himself for cursing, as the lad climbed into the saddle and galloped off through the northern gate before he could descend from the
walls and get to the stable himself.

He hadn’t expected the resourcefulness of the lad, who must indeed bear Brightblade ingenuity, for how else could he have escaped a castle so tightly locked and sealed?

Lord Boniface Crownguard smiled to himself, leading his horse from the stables and into the bailey. Gracefully he mounted, with the thoughtless skill of a cavalry officer, and blazed out after Sturm and Luin, the stallion beneath him dark and fluid on the moonlit plain.

Soon, however, he slowed his horse to a canter. It was only a matter of time. After all, he had seen to the contingencies. From here to the Southern Darkwoods, it was a gauntlet of traps and snares. In fact, the next surprise was fast approaching.

At a full gallop, Sturm and Luin charged north and east—or what Sturm thought was north and east—across the Solamnic Plains. The lad’s hopes sank further with every swell and irregularity on the horizon: Who would have thought Solamnia was so wide, so incomprehensibly vast?

Sturm closed his eyes as the wind rushed by him. He would never belong to the Order now.

Downcast, his panic at last subsiding, he slowed Luin to a canter. It was then a breeze passed over them from his left, carrying upon it the faint, muddy smell of the river.

Encountering the castle had spun about his sense of direction. He had been traveling south, away from the ford and the road to Lemish. The edged green of the Solamnic grasslands had swallowed the green of Vertumnus’s road, and the lad had galloped for an hour, directionless across a directionless plain.

Quickly Sturm reined Luin to a stop, stood up in the stirrups, and looked despairingly across the landscape ahead of him, bleak and featureless in all directions, save for a copse of evergreen here, a solitary vallenwood there.

He thought of how, in this desolate spot, his failure and delay—perhaps even his death—would disappoint the Lords Gunthar and Boniface. He thought of Derek Crownguard’s gloating and mean joy. The other pages and squires would squawk and crow like a flock of ravens.…

Where are the birds? That was it! Where are the birds?

Sturm whirled and looked about him, his bafflement turning to a strange, rising hope. For
this
Solamnic spring, despite its warmth and greenery, was empty of birdsong. The plains were silent—as quiet as the death of winter.

Sturm rose once more in the stirrups. At the edge of his sight, eastward toward the smell of the river, he saw more winter, and strangely more promise. For the green of the plains turned suddenly brown, and the mist hanging over the land was a winter’s mist that sunlight could not disperse.

“It’s … it’s still
winter!
” Sturm exclaimed, slipping back into the saddle. Suddenly the music rose in front of him, brisk and alluring and drawing him on across the wintry plains. Jubilant, he spurred the mare beneath him, and off they went, barreling eastward at a full gallop.

He smiled to himself. The adventure was only beginning.

Luin surged beneath him, hurdling an ancient downed fence as they galloped through farmlands, through fallow pastures. Always the music lay before them, coaxing them onward, and behind them, the greens of spring returned suddenly to winter’s brown and ice-crusted landscape.

Sturm laughed. It was easy from here. And so he was thinking when he felt the horse dip and stagger beneath him.