Michael Williams - Galen Beknighted

"This is the One Stone," he said quietly. "Always present in its absence."

He handed the One Stone to the man seated beside him, who in turn handed it to another. And as the stone passed from Plainsman to Plainsman, the Namer brought the story full circle.

There was no doubting that the surface was near, for now the air smelled fresher, greener in the part of the passage around me. Upward I moved, the borrowed sword in my right hand, my left hand grappling for purchase amid loose and tumbling rock.

The deciding was over.

In a rush, I took off up the corridor toward the light. All around me the vast network of tunnel and chamber was crumbling, shaking. It seemed that everything momentous that had ever happened to me centered around an earthquake, and I recalled thinking, If this is the last thing, then there is something just and fitting in it. Then, with an unsettling lurch, the ground I had just crossed split open not ten yards behind me.

I passed through one cloud of red dust, then a corridor branching to my right, which collapsed with a rolling crash that doubled my speed, if doubling was possible. The air was growing thick and powdery, difficult to breathe.

I pulled my cloak up over my mouth and rose. It was a time for opals, that was certain.

A trio of tenebrals rushed by me, chittering. I followed, and I heard someone or something cry out in front of me the instant before I turned a corner.

My momentum propelling me, I turned nonetheless and saw Firebrand ahead, out of reach and practically past recall, scrambling into a gray steady light as the dust passed in waves behind him.

I heard the shriek and the popping as the tenebrals fluttered into the sunlight. With a prayer to whatever god looked after headstrong fools, I rushed to the surface, too, sword at the ready, toward the sunlight and the sound of Firebrand's chanting.

I burst into the Bright Lands with a gasp, with relief, for whatever awaited me, however dangerous, was a change from the gloom and the damp and the stagnant corridors.

I did not know that standing there in confusing light, armed with a long dagger and a shield, my greatest adversary awaited, who made the dark magic of the Scorpion and of Firebrand look like child's play.

It was Galen Pathwarden, the Weasel, oily and mean, crouched on an outcropping of granite. He looked years younger than I remembered myself, and decades younger than I felt.

I remembered his face when it was my face, years and adventures ago, when I had stared at myself hatefully in the one looking glass Father kept in the moathouse. The beady brown eyes, the matted red hair, the rodent's twitch and squint.

What was it Firebrand had said? Those that your memory summons in a night of bad dreams. And the choices you make, as always, will be wrong.

Firebrand stood apart from us, laughing wickedly beneath the drooping branches of a vallenwood. The opals glittered in his silver crown, and his eye blazed like the darkest and most powerful stone of all.

"Here's the deal," Weasel whined, slipping behind his shield until he was scarcely visible. "We've come so far together, you and I, to where our differences are just about to bring us to grief…"

I turned my sword in my hand. I could not figure out what to do about this. Somewhere in the corner of my vision, I saw Firebrand move, heard his laughter. Beneath me, the ground rumbled in reply, as though it, too, was laughing.

"So I suggest we just… call things off," Weasel urged. "We depart, whether separately or together, leaving this Firebrand fellow to his own sorry devices."

He raised his head from behind the shield and gave me a knowing wink.

It was the moment I had been waiting for.

Three strides carried me across the clearing. Weasel dropped the shield and backed away, cringing and groveling like some shifty, disgusting vermin. I gripped my sword tightly, took one last step toward Weasel, and drove the blade halfway into his chest.

He looked into my eyes and shrieked.

I looked away, unable to return his gaze. A pain wrenched hot in my chest. And the choices you make, as always, will be wrong, I heard once again. I saw Firebrand gliding through the shade of the trees at the edge of the clearing, circling me like a large, scavenging bird.

I felt Weasel climbing up the sword, pulling himself toward me, driving the blade deeper and deeper into his chest as he moved. Finally he clutched my sword hand in his thin, leathery grasp and pulled me toward him.

"The deal is this is this is this," he chattered, his fingers groping for my throat. I felt heavy, leaden and slow, as though I, not he, was the one who was conjured from stone.

Behind me, the sound of footsteps approached.

"You're a liar, Firebrand!" I shouted and hung on.

I remember thinking, swiftly and in some recess where words could not reach, as I wrestled myself in the clearing. Thinking that Firebrand could summon figure after figure from my brief but disreputable past. However, he could not make me heed them.

And no doubt Weasel was the worst he could do.

I heaved, straddled my slithering opponent.

There was something of a game in this. And despite my discomfort when the past came to call, I could weasel a game with the best of them, matching trivial strategy with trivial strategy until my opponent collapsed with exhaustion.

I recall smiling at the prospect. My laughter, too, rose out of that tangle of limbs, out of the bright clearing where the villains walked, and when he heard it, Firebrand hushed and the air about us became suddenly tense and sober. Beneath me, the earth stilled.

Then the Weasel in my clutches began to change shape.

Into a snake, its notched head waving above me like the tail of a scorpion…

Which he became next, the snake head narrowing into the poised spike of a verminous tail, and the tail descending, descending…

But never wounding me, never striking home.

I took courage from this and held tighter as the scorpion beneath me grew and branched and bristled, its chitinous back sprouting white leathery wings and coarse, matted fur…

And beneath me twisted a vespertile, perhaps the same one who had folded itself over poor little Oliver…

And still I held on, something in the holding becoming adventure, a challenge, a game…

Until the great earth roiled and shook beneath me, and to my right, in the grove, I heard the dry, ripping sound of a vallenwood uprooting.

And it was Tellus the dale worm I was riding, and through all this I kept telling myself, It is approaching, approaching; soon the bastards will run out of changing shapes and we shall see what happens then…

And Weasel was water, was light on a sword, was tunnel on tunnel, was nothing…

And my grip did not relax, and I was laughing more loudly than ever, thinking, "This is the worst you can do? This is all, Firebrand?"

And the landscape tilted one disastrous last tilt and waver, and there was a boy beneath me with beady brown eyes, matted red hair, a rodent's twitch and squint.

But a boy who was afraid. Who was only a boy, his bluster and weaseling all he knew of courage in a country prone to shift and explosion, where brothers bludgeoned and tutors ignited, and the whole world rankled at the whim of a self-righteous Order.

He looked away from me and shivered. I felt the sword pass though my heart, too. The wrestle became an embrace as I wrapped my arms around the poor little fellow.

Where before there was a wound, there was now peace.

And as suddenly as he had appeared, Weasel was gone. I lay on the ground for a long, forgetful moment, savoring the peace and the stillness and the air and the light.

Then the ground beneath me murmured again, and somewhere behind and above me Firebrand cursed and fell silent. I rose slowly and turned to face him, the sword in my hand light and familiar.