Michael Williams - Galen Beknighted

There, after a moment, a short squat form joined him. Dressed in motley it was, and as it waved to us also, a series of bright lights dappled with all imaginable colors issued from its uplifted hands.

"Bottles!" Brithelm breathed beside me. "Incomparable, brightly colored bottles!"

And suddenly the Plainsmen were gone, vanished in the distance and the falling night.

As we neared home, we traveled further and further into the night, and on occasion, when he was on high ground and you were following below him, you could look up and see Sir Ramiro of the Maw blotting out half the stars on the eastern horizon with his sheer bulk and presence.

My dealings with the big Knight softened considerably on the road home. I guess, as usual, it took an earthquake for him to think kind thoughts about me, but if that was what it took, I would gladly accept it. After all, his guidance was somehow heartening in the highlands and onto the soggy plains, for I remembered trolls and raiding Que-Tana and even more horrible things from the years back.

Under Ramiro's care, the last leg of the journey passed rapidly, almost eventlessly. I learned the Solamnic countryside in better detail than I had ever imagined or hoped I would. Each day we walked as far as our leisure would take us-for after all, our guide Ramiro set the pace of the journey.

The first thing you see of home from the west is the banner that flies atop the Cat Tower.

It was welcome, that banner, even with my dread of how to break the news of Alfric to my father.

But those dreads were lost, or postponed awhile, in the excitement of reunions, for it seemed that Castle di Caela had news of its own to tell.

We rode through the western gate to the sound of trumpet and drum. Raphael had spotted us in the distance during a stroll on the walls, and with his general efficiency and good will had arranged a Solamnic welcome by the time we arrived at the castle.

Things seemed in disarray all over. The vending carts that usually milled in the bailey were scattered and broken, evidence that the quake we felt in the Vingaards had reached this far into Solamnia. Indeed, a most forgiving Raphael told me that the first quake had left an enormous fissure underneath the foundation of the castle-I was not to hear the adventure surrounding it until later-and that the second quake, arising from nowhere little more than a week ago, had closed it again altogether.

It seemed like farfetched geology to me, but I had seen stranger things to the west and was inclined to believe him.

Brandon Rus had been preparing to leave eastward on a pilgrimage to the Blood Sea of Istar. Indeed, he had packed for the next morning, but he postponed his departure another night and day so that he could hear the adventures that had befallen us. It was from his account that I began to piece together what had happened underneath the castle while we were away. I went to Enid and to Bayard later for the rest of the story, and got more than I bargained for.

You see, not only did they grace me with the account of the pendant and the cats and the dangerous dreams and Marigold's shipwrecked hair, but they had exciting news that surpassed even the joy of restoring the castle.

For it seems that on one of those evenings a month or so before I was made Knight in the Great Hall of Castle di Caela, things more quiet and far more momentous were taking place in the upstairs chambers.

It seems as though I was disinherited, or at least pushed a ways down the line of succession.

For the heir of both branches, di Caela and Brightblade, would be welcomed to the world sometime in the early spring. Enid was not altogether as radiant as the mythology surrounding expectant mothers said that she should be. She was sick of a morning and craved pastry all through the day, but to Bayard she was the splendid bright creature he saw from the battlements years ago, and she was more now, here at the start of their greatest adventure together.

Speaking of pastry, Marigold remained a nocturnal factor in the chambers of Castle di Caela. At night, it seemed, her specter haunted the quarters of Sir Robert di Caela, who, having flooded the caverns below the foundation and thereby saved the castle and, by chance, the surrounding continent, was all prepared to dine on the story for years until the ghost took his appetite away. He looked… haunted now, and he jumped at the chance to sleep in the open air again when a band of us gathered to accept Longwalker's invitation to attend the Plainsman Night of Telling in the early fall.

But before the larger and more joyous Telling, there was a telling of my own to go through.

It was the evening after we arrived when I told Father about Alfric.

Of course he knew already. After all, Alfric hadn't returned with us, and when the tale of attack and ambush and underground cave-in unfolded, Sir Andrew concluded the worst. He was resigned when Brithelm and I came to him.

Resigned and expectant.

"I shall save you boys the reliving of this," he said as we entered his chamber, pushing himself away from the desk where, by lamplight, he had been crouched, quill in hand, over a large piece of parchment.

"The simple questions, according to the Measure, will suffice."

Brithelm and I looked at one another.

How like the old man to fall into the arms of the Order when he could not put word or thought around his grief. For there he sat in front of us, eyes brimming. I had never seen my father weep, but come to think of it, I had never seen him with a pen in hand, either.

It was the depths that the armor covered.

"One," he began, his old back rigid. He started to stand, steadying his right leg, injured in a long-past boar hunt. "One. Where did the boy fall?"

"In the heart of the Vingaard Mountains, sir. Into the breast of Huma," I replied, hoping I had the formula right.

"And when did he fall?"

"Elev-ten nights passing, sir. Into the breast of Huma."

And we said it together-that prayer I have heard on solemn occasions, before and since, over old Knights who passed on peacefully in their sleep and over young ones killed by adventure or accident. Over a centaur friend of mine, once in the mountains. And over my brother, who lay beneath those mountains, asleep in the heart of the planet.

"Receive this one to Huma's breast Beyond the wild, impartial skies; Grant to him a warrior's rest And set the last spark of his eyes Free from the smothering clouds of wars Upon the torches of the stars.

"Let the last surge of his breath Take refuge in the cradling air Above the dreams of ravens, where Only the hawk remembers death. Then let his shade to Huma rise Beyond the wild, impartial skies"

The prayer over, the tears shed, the old man looked up at me.

"And tell me one more thing, Galen," he began.

"He fell most bravely, Father," I said. "His last thoughts were heroic."

Brithelm looked at me briefly, but he added nothing, of course. And he always claimed, quite truthfully, that he did not see his eldest brother fall.

But our story must not end without a week in middle autumn, when briskness rode on the wind and the horses' breath misted the air for the first time that season.

We rode together, Brithelm and Danelle and I, along with a mess of Knights and retainers-from Raphael and Bradley all the way to the dog, Birgis-out from Castle di Caela and south, past the Thelgaard Keep and, keeping the Garnet Mountains to our left, into the sacred Telling Ground that Longwalker and Wanderer, the Namer of the Que-Shu, had marked off for the ceremonies at hand.

I would imagine there were ten thousand Plainsmen camped around us, the air filled with smoke and chanting and the smell of leather and grain and memory.

Memory was the richest of those smells. On the first night, we seated ourselves in the immense mile-wide circle that linked tribe to tribe. The ceremonial spears stood anchored in the ground, atop them the tribal totems-the pelts of leopard and bear and fox, the feathers of eagles, and the antlers of the springbok.