Michael Williams: Galen Beknighted

The problem was that once adventuring was over and daily instruction begun, Bayard was dismayed to discover that most of my resources came out under sudden stress. It seemed that I had no talent for all those things a squire was supposed to do.

How often I remember that nightmare year of training…

"Don't hold your sword like a feather duster, Galen…"

"That is a shield at your arm, not a tent, Galen…"

"Here is what happened in the rest of the tournament, Galen, after you fell from your horse and were knocked unconscious…"

So it had progressed, through a series of mishaps and head injuries, until, scarcely a month ago, Bayard had taken me aside, grasped me firmly by the shoulders, and expressed his confidence that at last I would attain the knighthood 1 had so devoutly come to pursue.

"I don't know what to do with you, Galen," he said. "The Order of the Sword is beyond you, as you prove every time you take up arms or sit a horse. And the Order of the Rose, with its dedication to wisdom and justice, well…"

I nodded, wise enough at least to understand what Bayard was too polite to say.

"But there is the Order of the Crown," he pronounced, "whose primary duties are those of loyalty and obedience. Obedience is… the hardest thing for you. But by the gods, you are loyal to me and to the Lady Enid, to your own family, and to the idea of becoming a Knight, which has put you through embarrassments and humiliations the likes of which no lad should undergo."

I tried to smile bravely and cheerily. Bayard stared at me for a long, reflective moment, then shook me vigorously until my dented, oversized helmet dropped smartly on the bridge of my nose.

"Loyal you are, Weasel, and three years ago I'd not have thought you capable of it. And if someday you achieve half of what I think you're incapable of, you'll be an excellent Knight."

I blinked at the compliment.

"So keep quiet and do nothing" Bayard concluded, "even if you think it will improve your chances for knighthood, for the odds are that whatever you do will misfire. Leave the rest to me, and afterward to your own loyalty."

So I had done, and now it was the Night of Reflections. Setting the sword aside, I had picked up my helmet. Dented and pockmarked it was, but the best I had under the circumstances. It was not the appearance that bothered me now; it was how I might marshal the tactics to adorn it.

Setting a helmet is a tricky thing, you see, especially among the Solamnic Orders, caught up as they are with chivalry and pomp and show and kindness to women. On ceremonious occasions, a Knight is expected to wear a favor on his helmet-an item of his lady's clothing, whether it be glove or scarf or, in some absurd cases, a slipper. This is meant to signify a special attachment between said Knight and said lady-a sentiment in keeping with courtliness and romance and general goodwill.

I practically had to pry a glove from Dannelle di Caela's clenched fist-I had developed an uncomfortable and delightful interest in her of late. On my knees yesterday at the foot of the great marble staircase, the hall around me loud with arriving Knights and the rustle of nosy servants and the occasional shrill of a mechanical cuckoo, brashly I dared her to embarrass me before all present, to refuse me the token in public because I knew she would in private.

Flushed, a little angry, she had stopped at the top of the stairs. I had shouted my request full voice in the corridor, and Father and Alfric, awaiting me by the entrance to the Great Hall, gaped up at the lovely red-haired girl who stared daggers down at me. Everyone was breathless at my breach of etiquette.

"I… I have heard tales about you, Master Galen," Dannelle replied in a rigid, formal voice that let me know I had already won.

"It would please me were you not to repeat ill-founded rumors in front of my esteemed father," I shouted merrily, gesturing at the old fart by the entrance, "so as not to spoil his enjoyment of seeing a dear son knighted in the twilight of his life."

Dannelle glared angrily at me, caught in the strictures of decorum. She spun about, the hem of her gray dress rising like a cyclone, and stomped away toward her quarters upstairs, stopping only for the briefest of moments to hurl a glove suitorward.

A knot of silk and sequins, it struck the step above me with a commanding thwack. I took it as a sign of her increasing interest.

Dannelle's, however, was not the only token available. On the table in front of me also lay an item of more intimate apparel, supplied by one Marigold Celeste, one of the Lady Enid's distant cousins and a formidable sort to reckon with.

I vowed, as I had vowed often before, not to think of Marigold. I turned my thoughts from that black lace item, not even speculating as to how or why in the world one would wear such a thing.

Slowly, pensively, I had picked up my glain opal brooch from where it lay amidst other, less marketable things-a dog whistle and a pair of old sun-hardened leather gloves. In its humble surroundings, the brooch stood out like the opals against the silver circle in which they were set.

Long ago the stones had fallen into my possession, a bribe from a treacherous enemy. Now, set in a silver circle, they seemed more respectable-almost tamed, as though their shadowy beginning had nothing to do with this time and with the lad who held them.

Uneasily, I held the piece of jewelry up to candlelight. It had been scarcely a week since I had taken the stones from the old leather pouch, in which they had resided since they were given to me, and sent them to the local jeweler to have them set in a brooch. It had cost a pretty sum, but it seemed worth it: At night of late, when the high wind raced down from the hills unto the castle, whipping about the battlements and through the window, my belongings would shake on their perches and shelves and places of storage. On those nights, I could swear I heard the opals click together in the darkness, as though they were trying to speak.

As though on cue, again the wind rose suddenly. The candle sputtered and went out.

"I have heard of drafty castles," I muttered, "but this…"

I could not complete the feeble sentiment, for a cold mist followed in the wake of the wind, smelling of old water and ice and cavernous gloom. Somehow it carried upon it a terrible loneliness and sadness, so that as the mist passed over me, I wanted to cry out, to moan and blubber for no reason I could name or understand.

The whole chamber tensed, as though it awaited some monstrous change.

It was then that the shapes appeared. They took form out of the heart of the opals and the smoke from the extinguished candle. At first it seemed like a trick of reflected light-that a vapor had fallen from the night air, out of the confusion of wind and weather, and rested in the centermost opal. But the darkness hung all about the brooch, a greater dark inside of the dark, turning and boiling and adopting a solid shape.

Then the stones seemed to open in front of me, and Plainsmen appeared in the jeweled blackness. They moved silently, smoothly, with a motion born in the grasslands, where they ran with the deer and the leopard. Still too surprised to be frightened, I squinted to see them more clearly in the tricky light.

There were six figures, gaunt and dusty and tall, wrapped in furs and wearing old ornaments of beads and claws and leather thongs. Beneath the folds of mist-or was it fur? — draped over them, I could see their skin, weathered and tough, as though a century of winds and rain had descended upon them.

Their leader was the oldest, the tallest. On his head he wore the skull of an antelope, his graying forelocks streaming through its vacant eyes, its tall, thin rack of antlers lending him height and a fearsome otherworldliness, as though he were no Plainsman at all, but a thing out of nature or beyond it.