Michael Williams: Galen Beknighted

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.

"And now the lad," the Namer continued, turning the strand of glittering metal in his hand. "The young man on the edge of knighthood. Around him the whole story turns, and in him the shards and fragments of the other tales are brought together, reassembled, and made whole. Now I can hear him, saying…"

They didn't have to search all that far.

Bayard found me up in my chambers, the obvious and most sensible place to look. Tonight, after all, was the Night of Reflections: the final, solitary soul-searching that a Knight must undergo before they lay on the hands and give him the sword and gauntlets of the Order.