Michael Williams - Galen Beknighted

We sat beneath the sign of the antelope, totem of the Que-Nara. Longwalker greeted us and with quiet ceremony draped the hides of antelopes over my shoulders and those of Brithelm. A third, smaller hide, well tanned and softened and white and gray like the peaks of the Vingaards, had been saved for the Lady Dannelle.

They smelled of the plains to the south, those hides-of the clean, unchangeable grasslands and the sudden, crisp, metallic smell in the air when winter snows approach. I nestled into the warmth of the fur and watched the smoke rise from the fire that practical Bradley built in an instant before us.

The smoke, caught up in a strong October breeze, eddied toward the southwest, over Coastlund and out to the New-sea beyond it. It curled and surged like a river, and it circled twice over the large central fire of the Telling before gathering itself into a larger, higher current of smoke and bending away over the horizon.

Longwalker sat down in front of me, and the Telling began.

Wanderer spoke first. His tales told of a country to the south, of a people nomadic and tireless, haunted by shifts in the weather and gaps in their memories. Mournfully the young Que-Shu Namer began one telling, then paused, then told another story he seemed to join in midstride, because at the heart of each story was the melancholy phrase, "And this we do not remember…"

He spoke through the first night, and we slept until noontime restlessly. Longwalker woke me when the sun was high, his voice encouraging, a strange gleam in his eyes.

"Take off the mantles of sorrow, Solamnic," he said, his eyes fixed on the central fire, "for tonight you will see the Telling brought out of the darkness. You will see the time redeemed."

And I confess that the smell in the air was lighter, that something arose in the midst of us promising joy and history, and the second night was rollicksome until the new Que-Nara Namer began to speak.

First, it was a night of reunion. Ramiro, it seemed, had made the long journey westward across Goodlund and Balifor and the green lands closer to home, a journey so long that I wondered if he had housed himself under his own roof for more than a night before setting off again. He reclined beneath the autumn sky, staring on high at the stars in the Harp of Branchala. A glass of Thorbardin Eagle rested atop his ample stomach, and his huge head, its long black curly locks spread like a fan, rested in the lap of a Plainswoman I had never seen before, all paint and nose rings and torrid attention.

He was in good hands, it seemed, though hands that might threaten his heart with their energies.

I had spoken to the big Knight and was returning to our campfire when the Que-Nara Namer took his place at the central fire and began his telling. The voice sounded familiar, and at once I stopped and squinted toward the great monumental blaze.

The Que-Nara Namer was a black man dressed in motley, and a long, barrel-chested dog squatted beside him.

"Shardos!" I whispered. Of course it was Shardos. It surprised me how I had missed it all along.

The juggler crouched before the fire as he told of the first days of our adventure. From his patchwork robe, he took some glittering tools and began to speak of Longwalker.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see the big Plainsman standing beside me.

"Here," he said, handing me a thin band of silver. "Take this to the central fire. The juggler has need of it."

At the moment I stepped into the light of the Namer's fire, Shardos's hand was extended. He smiled as I set the silver in his hand, and he began to tell my part of the story as all of the peoples-the Que-Shu, the Que-Kiri, the Que-Nara- listened exultantly.

As my old friend spoke, all the events were set in place, from the banishment of Firebrand in the centuries past down to the Night of Telling and the Namer who seated himself before us. The old man told the stories in the present tense, his hands busy over the fire, twisting yet another piece of silver, which Longwalker himself had brought forth, onto the one I had given him. The Plainsmen nodded around him, their eyes closed as the things he told happened for the first time in their brilliant imaginings.

Shardos brought something from his pockets, and for the first time, I knew fully of what had occurred beneath Castle di Caela, knew of the dark god's plotting and how the thirteenth stone in the crown had shut its wearer in the past, where no voice, human or divine, could reach him through the stones.

But the end of the tale was the best part, for Shardos stood, holding aloft a silver circlet-the restored Crown of the Namer, adorned with twelve opals. Around him, the Que-Tana, robed against the light of the moons and stars, began the Song of Firebrand, the words of which made sense now. For, no longer twisted by that villain beneath the mountain, they found their fitting and proper hero there at the heart of the Telling.

"In the country of the blind,

Where the one-eyed man is king

And the stones are eyes of gods

And pathways to remembering,

"There three centuries of gloom

Pass under rending, drought, and wars,

Until the Firebrand comes to us,

Upon his brow a dozen stars.

Out of his wound the stones will speak,

Will lead us from the groves of night

And with the power of life and death

Restore us to forgotten light."

As he stood amid his newfound and singing people, the juggler held aloft the thirteenth godseye, then handed it to Longwalker beside him, who passed it to Wanderer, who passed it to yet another Plainsman elder.

As the stone approached me from hand to hand, Shardos sang the names of the heroes, and the Plainsmen chanted back a refrain, as a thousand voices joined in committing those names to memory:

"First Bayard Brightblade I give you,

Who rules over Castle di Caela…"

"We remember Bayard Brightblade…"

"And Ramiro of the Maw,

Enormous in yearning and battle…"

"We remember Ramiro of the Maw… "

On he went, through Brithelm and Dannelle and Oliver and my own lost brother, but my eyes lost focus and my heart was peaceful as my own name was reconciled with a new and awaited meaning.

"And Sir Galen, keeper of the one stone,

Whose name in our language means 'healer'…"

"We remember Galen Pathwarden… "

I turned, looking around me as though the celebration would be joined by all my friends and acquaintances, as though they all would be staring straight at me with looks of wonderment and suddenly discovered respect. But all eyes were on the Namer Shardos, who slowly slipped the crown onto his head.

All eyes except for those of Bradley, the young engineer, who was trying his skills on the intricate harnesswork that clothed a young Plainswoman about his age.

There was reconciliation all around me that night.

It spread all over the campsite and lasted the week. I remember the third night, remember Dannelle calling to me as Brithelm replaced me on the watch in early morning. I went to her, expecting that she had remembered at last some other thing she needed to scold me for, but it was not the case at all.

Instead, hers were the suggestions I had pondered making myself those many nights before on the crest of the Vingaards, before we all descended to the dark and the Que-Tana and my captive brother.

Dannelle said she had found the best of spots to bed down, safe but out of sight of the celebrants. That the spot was warm indeed, and surprisingly spacious.

Room enough for two, as she had calculated.

I believed her calculations were correct.