Michael Williams - Galen Beknighted

All eyes were on me now, all the guests facing me. I raised my borrowed sword, and like the older Knights had told me would happen, like none of the wise men-not even Gileandos — could ever explain, the blade of the sword shimmered with a thousand colors: through greens and yellows and reds into others I cannot name because I had never seen them until this night.

Through it all, the choir sang a ceremonial hymn as old as the Age of Light:

"Beyond the wild, impartial skies

Have you set your lodgings,

In cantonments of stars, where the sword aspires

In an arc of yearning, where we join in singing."

From the dark, color-spangled hall, a man's voice- Fernando's, I believe-joined in the chorus. Then Bayard took up the song, and Father, and the others.

"Grant to him a warrior's rest

Above our singing, above song itself.

May the ages of peace converge in a day;

May he dwell in the heart of Paladine.

"And set the last spark of his eyes

In a fixed and holy place,

Above words and the borrowed land too loved

As we recount the ages."

I tried to join in, but the words shifted in and out of my recollection. Instead of the images of the six ages of man, I remembered the scene at the heart of the stone: the Plainsmen, the pale hand, the knife at my brother's throat. The smell of old grasslands rose to meet me. That is the last thing I remember of the ceremonies.

It is only later I recall coming to, lying on the bed in my own quarters, my armor removed and arranged neatly on the table in front of me-no doubt the handiwork of young Raphael. There, surrounded by candles and silence, by my polished Solamnic trappings, I tried to sleep, and you would think it would be easy, having weathered a night and day of vigilance only to be assaulted hourly by spectral visitations.

You would think a lad would be too tired for thought.

And yet I lay wide-eyed until morning, and it was my brother and the Plainsmen who filled my dark imaginings.

The servants had gathered at a distance outside my quarters. As I opened the window to let in the muffled light, I saw them down below in the courtyard, huddled together, murmuring, exchanging something.

It was later I found that Raphael had listened at my door for a good while, ear pressed against the wood, overhearing my claim of visions. Quite naturally, he had gone to his friends among the servants, bearing this new intelligence.

So the something exchanged was money. It seemed that a sizable wager had grown about the subject of my sanity. "Climbing the Cat Tower" was the servants' term for it, for those unsettling moments in family history when one di Caela or another would burst free of sanity and provoke castle gossip for the next generation or so.

The Cat Tower in question had to do with Sir Robert's Aunt Mariel, who had locked herself away in the tall southeast tower of Castle di Caela, holding everything at remove-responsibility, nourishment, hygiene, and as it turned out, the care of her pets.

She was stalked and eaten by her own cats after all of them had stayed a month together in the topmost room of the tower.

It was rumored in the servant quarters that the Lady Mariel's obvious madness was hereditary. That I was family by adoption made only little difference to the speculators, who, I understand, carried on a running wager as to which of us-Sir Robert, Bayard, Enid, Dannelle, or myself- would first stray from orbit.

To many of them that morning, it must have looked like a time to call in bets. I stood by the window as the milling and murmuring subsided, and looking down upon those assembled, I mustered all the solemnity of my newfound knighthood, crossed my eyes, stuck a finger in each side of my mouth, pulled my lips wide, and throttled my tongue at them.

I stepped back into my chambers, satisfied that behind and below me, more silver was no doubt flashing, more wagers being struck.

I stood on the battlements looking westward, the long shadows of the castle walls diminishing slowly as the sun rose behind me. Below, the farmlands of Solamnia shone green and gold.

There was noise and altercation somewhere in the courtyard. Apparently Sir Robert di Caela had chosen to discipline his niece Dannelle, who in return had chosen not to be disciplined. What had started as a mild disagreement, the nature of which I could not overhear, had risen in volume until it was ending in a series of elaborate southern curses involving poison and mothers and goblins and the entire Solamnic pantheon.

Where I had come from, family disputes generally ended in fisticuffs or breakage or glasses of Brithelm's lemonade. It had taken me a while to grow accustomed to the Solamnic bickering, though I had a talent for it myself.

For now, there was more serious business ahead of me. The image of Brithelm I had seen in the frieze, the knife-wielding hand at his throat, was a disturbing one. Indeed, the only good thing about such a vision was its plainness: The image of one's brother in mortal peril is hard to twist by interpreting into anything other than that one's brother is in mortal peril.

From as early as I could remember, Brithelm had a talent for rumbling into places where trouble had set up residence, yet he always managed to walk away without damages. Though the situation would collapse around him, he would be left standing, no more dazed and no more the worse for wear than when he had first found himself backed to the edge of disaster.

At first, some weeks back, when sentries reported that the foothills were glowing, it did not concern me at all. Even when refugee dwarves passed through Solamnia and, soon after, farmers around Castle di Caela began to complain of bears and panthers who had wandered out of the mountains and into their livestock… even then I did not worry all that much, resting assured that the wind would change or die down altogether, or that somehow before the fire touched a tangled hair of my brother's, rains or snow or something capable of extinguishing it would begin.

After all, when it came right down to it, refugee dwarves and complaining farmers were both common fare in this place and these times.

Still the fires persisted. My disquiet grew as the flames rose higher. Given the nature of my brother's encampment-the half-dozen wooden houses, the tents, and the lean-tos-fire was certainly a dire threat.

The omen that had invaded the ceremony of my knighthood resolved matters for me. As soon as possible, I was going to the Vingaard Mountains in search of my middle brother. Of course, it was something I had to discuss with Bayard.

Which was what had brought me to the battlements this morning. Bayard, dressed in the armor he had worn to last night's occasion, leaned against the crenellated wall as I approached him.

He looked westward, toward the foothills of the misty Vingaards. From a distance, he looked like the same Bayard who had hired me on as a squire three years ago-the mustache a little longer, perhaps, and the brown hair flecked with its first gray.

It took a closer look to see the difference. There are some Knights who are not fit for settled circumstances, and there had been something restless, something almost pent up about my old friend in recent months, as though he lay under house arrest in a castle of women and old men.

"Looking for omens?" I joked as I joined him at his post.

"Oh, awaiting visions," he teased gently in return. "Awaiting those Plainsmen, who, I am told, inhabit mountains as easily as they do stones in a brooch."

I leaned against the wall beside him.

"You don't believe me, do you, Bayard?"

He turned toward me, his gray eyes direct and penetrating.