Michael Williams - Galen Beknighted

Do not fear, it consoled, though the consolation was brittle, hiding beneath it a dark, icy current of menace. Do not fear, young man, for your brother is free of harm. He is simply a way I have discovered to… gain your attention.

"Forgive me if I find that hard to believe, having seen him last with a knife at his throat," I retorted. For all my attempts at bravery, my voice sounded thin, almost frail in the enormous, shifting vault of the room in which I felt I was sitting now- felt I was sitting, though for the life of me, I could not have told you how I had moved from my cramped little chambers into some monstrous, dark rotunda.

Your energy is most welcome, the voice explained. For in energy is the beginning of commerce.

I gripped the arms of the chair even tighter. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

Slowly the patch lifted, and the empty socket glowed with the dead light of phosfire-the pale green light that illumines nothing but the source of the light itself. It began to change shape, taking on a head, four arms, a tail, until a salamander glimmered and writhed on the black floor of the room. Turning quickly and more quickly in a rapidly tightening circle, the creature took its own tail between its jaws and, swirling yet more rapidly, became a spinning blur of light that suddenly became the face again, this time bright with sharp aquiline features.

His hair was dark, beaded, and disheveled. His unhooded eye was like a black opal, in the center of which lay a column of fire, wherein lay the same face. It seemed that the image in front of me repeated itself forever, each time smaller and smaller, like reflections in reflections, born of facing mirror to mirror.

It means it is time for commerce, Sir… . The voice paused expectantly.

"No names. At least not yet," I whispered.

Except that of Brithelm, perhaps? taunted the echoing voice.

I leaned forward, cupping the brooch in both hands. The room reeled, then steadied.

"Just… just what is the nature of this commerce?" I asked.

Simple, the face responded, now moving its thin lips in accord with the words I heard around me. My commerce is a simple purchase - your opals, if you wish to see your brother again.

"I see. As ransom."

The face in front of me wavered, turned in the half-light. Behind it, if only for a second, I caught a glimpse of glistening rock in the darkness, of a pale cascade of stalactites or stalagmites-I never could remember which one was which.

"Ransom" is not our word for it. We prefer "reunion."

"I see." I fell silent and tried to avert my eyes from the stones. It was as though the face was everywhere I looked, reflected upon the dense and billowing darkness around me.

"Well, then, the opals are yours, obviously. I shall be glad to restore them. They are here, in my hands. Yours for the taking."

I am not fool enough to ascend among you, the voice scolded. Instead, I would have you bring them to me.

"But where in the world are you? Or where under the world, I might ask?"

For a moment, the face dimmed in the brooch. The room fell silent, and I could feel the closeness of the walls about me, as if I had been restored to my own chambers.

A clever one, you are. All brave and Solamnic and ever so bright.

"And altogether willing to hand over a mess of opals for my brother. Providing, that is, that I know where to hand them over."

You would like that, wouldn't you? To converge on a spot with dozens of your kind and to muscle your brother away from us.

Even the criminal, it seemed, mistrusted me.

"Yes, I would like that. But there are not dozens of 'my kind,' whatever that is. Nor would I wish that on the world. Look, this is something more basic than tactics, more basic than your deals and your transactions. Quite simply, I want my brother safe, and I have the opals that will assure his safety. You have my word for that."

The opals themselves will tell you what you need to know, the voice replied mysteriously and ominously. In them lies the map of my darkness. In them lies the path to your brother. Follow the stone beneath the stone, and you will come to all of us soon enough.

Suddenly the gems dulled, the fire in the center of the brooch extinguished, and the room was flooded in candlelight. I stood up, breathed deeply, and looked around me. The room was as I remembered it, but the window was ajar, and a faint hint of a chill had crept into my chambers.

Again I looked at the brooch, which a moment before had flickered and boded in my hand. Now it seemed harmless, quite lovely but useless for anything more than clasping a cape about the neck of a young and unsettled Knight.

"I am right on the edge of adventure," I told myself. "Or of disaster. Or maybe I am only talking to rocks."

There is no telling when Bayard made his next decision, nor his state of mind when he made it.

I gathered that the surgeons broke the news to him shortly after we left. Owing to his broken leg, travel was out of the question, at least for the next several months. Horseback riding would be impossibly painful; the rocky foothills of the Vingaards were naturally hostile to any travelers aside from dwarves or mountain goats.

I figured that our adventure was postponed of necessity and because my able benefactor would not fully trust me out of his sight.

There had been times, back in my weaselly and misspent youth, when this knowledge would have brought with it waves of relief, a murmured prayer of thanks to the gods of dry castles, warm beds, and especially to whatever deity fancied broken legs. Those times had passed, evidently.

Restlessly I stirred the fire in my quarters, thinking of Brithelm in the mountains, of the visions and threats I had seen in the opals, of what Bayard's injury meant to our plans.

Of how in the world I would get to the Vingaards alone.

It was almost a relief when Raphael came to my quarters that evening, bearing orders from Sir Bayard Brightblade that Sir Galen Pathwarden-Brightblade was to attend him at once. But that relief vanished when I entered Sir Bayard's chambers.

Given the shocks and tumbles of the past two days, I was not surprised to find Ramiro and Brandon seated by Bayard's bedside. It was, however, alarming to see both of them looking so glum and downtrodden and inconvenienced, like two old alchemists testing an ineffective laxative. My first guess was that they had just been appointed Brithelm's rescuers.

The conversation stopped when I entered the room. The three Knights stared at me intently, Bayard strangely curious and proud, the others blank and unreadable. Raphael, striding ahead of me, busied himself at once with some obscure and no doubt needless task.

"Sir Galen Pathwarden-Brightblade of Castle di Caela, gentlemen," Bayard announced, and I could tell he had rested, had slept perhaps, and was now quite sober.

His companions kept silent.

"Good evening, Weasel," Ramiro rumbled at last. I chose to ignore him out of both courtesy and caution, nodding politely to all present and taking a seat at the foot of my protector's bed.

Outside, evening was passing into night. I heard a pair of doves settle into the trees near the window, rustling and thrumming as they prepared for the rising storm.

"Galen, I'm afraid my news is hard," Bayard announced, raising himself in bed and grimacing. Ramiro took the flask of Thorbardin Eagle from the bedside table and offered it, but Bayard waved it away, his eyes remote and terribly melancholy.

"The surgeons have consulted, Galen," he continued, "and debated the fine points, on which they all disagree. But they have come to a general truth: that my travel by horse is impossible during the next six months, inadvisable at best for six months after that."