Chapter 40

The Secret of Brightblade Castle

Mai-tat was as fleet as he was beautiful, and in a very short time the dark hump of Vingaard Keep sank below the southern horizon. With the stars to guide him,

Sturm bore northwest. A tributary of the Vingaard River lay due north and the Verkhas Hills to the west. In the fertile pocket of land between the two lay Castle Brightblade.

The white stallion's hooves drummed a solo song on the plain. Several times Sturm halted his headlong flight to lis ten for sounds of pursuit. Aside from the whirring of crick ets in the tall grass, the plain was silent.

A few hours before dawn, Sturm slowed Mai-tat as they closed upon a shadowy ruin. It was an old hut and a land marker, now demolished. The stump of the marker still bore the lower half of its carved name plaque. The lower petals of a rose showed, and beneath that a sun and a naked sword.

Bright Blade. Sturm had come to the southern limits of his ancestral holdings.

4/He clucked his tongue and urged the horse forward. The fields beyond the marker that he remembered as rich graz ing land and bountiful orchards were overgrown and wild.

The neat rows of apple and pear trees were little more than a thicket now. Vines had long since reclaimed the road. Sturm rode on, tight-lipped, ducking now and then to clear the sagging tree branches.

The orchard was split by a creek, he remembered, and so it was still. He steered Mai-tat into the shallow stream. The creek ran a mile or so to the very base of the walls of Castle

Brightblade. Mai-tat trotted through the cool water.

The east was brightening to amber when the gray walls appeared over the treetops. The profile of the battlements and towers brought a lump to his throat. But it was not the same as when he left; creepers scaled the walls in thick mats, blocks of stone had toppled, and the towers were naked to the sky, their roofs burned off years ago.

"Come on," Sturm said to the horse, tapping him gently with his heels. Mai-tat cantered through the creek, kicking up founts with every step. He climbed the bank on the west side and plowed through the hedges. On the castle's west face was the main gate. Sturm clattered up the grass spotted, cobblestone road to the entrance. Shaded from the rising sun, the walls looked black.

The narrow moat was little more than a muddy ditch now; without the dam to divert the creek, it would never keep water. Sturm slowed Mai-tat once they hit the bridge.

Belingen's cruel remarks about knights jumping into the moat echoed in Sturm's mind. The ditch was nothing but a dark, swampy morass.

The gate was gone. Only the blackened hinges remained, spiked to the stone walls with iron nails a foot long. The courtyard was thick with blown leaves and charred wood.

Sturm looked up at the donjon rising before him. The win dows gaped blankly, their sills displaying tongues of soot where fire had raged through. He wanted to call out, to yell,

Father, Father, I've come home!

But no one would hear. No one but ghosts.

The bailey had been used recently to house animals.

Sturm found the tracks of massed cattle, and realized that

Merinsaard's camp at Vingaard Keep was not the only site where the invaders were marshaling provisions. A deep anger welled in him at the thought of the low purpose for which the noble edifice of Castle Brightblade had been used.

He rounded the corner of the donjon and entered the north courtyard. There was the little postern gate that his mother and he had fled through that last time he had seen his father. He saw again his father embrace his mother for the last time, as snow fell around them. Lady Ilys Bright blade never recovered from the chill of that parting. To the end of her life, she was cold, rigid, and bitter.

Then he saw the body.

Sturm dismounted and led Mai-tat by the reins. He walked up to the body lying face down in the leaves and rolled it over. It was a man, and he'd not been dead long – a day perhaps, or two. He'd been neatly run through from behind. The corpse still clutched a cloth bag in his fist.

Sturm pried open the fingers and found that the bag held petty valuables – silver coins, crude jewelry, and some semi precious stones. Whoever had killed this man had not done so to rob him. In fact, by the dagger and picklock tucked in his belt, the dead man appeared to be a thief himself.

Sturm walked on. He discovered the remains of a camp fire and some bedding, all trampled and tangled. Under a blue horsehair blanket he found another body. This one had died by sword as well. The usual sort of camp items were scattered about. Copper pan, clay pots, waterskins – more silver coins and a bolt of fine silk. Had the thieves had a fall ing out over their spoils? If so, why hadn't the winner taken everything with him?

An empty doorway yawned nearby. To the kitchens,

Sturm mused. He used a broken tent pole for a stake and tied Mai-tat.

Sunlight streamed into the shattered donjon, but many halls were still pitch black. Sturm went back to the spoiled robber camp and made a torch with a stick and some rags.

As he worked, he heard a stirring in the doorway. He whirled, sword ready. There was nothing there.

The dead men had changed Sturm's perception of the cas tle. He'd been expecting a mournful tour of his old home, and a search for understanding to his father's fate. Now a more sinister air clung to the stones. No place was free of the probing fingers of evil, not even the former castle of a

Solamnic Knight.

The kitchens were picked clean, plundered long ago, even of their fire brick and andirons. Cobwebs clung to every beam and doorway. He came to the great hall, where his father had often dined with great lords, such as Gunthar Uth

Wistan, Dorman Hammerhand, and Drustan Sparfeld of

Garnet. The great oak table was gone. The brass candle holders on the walls were ripped out. The fireplace, with its carved symbols of the Order of the Rose, had been deliber ately defaced.

There was that noise again! Sturm was sure that it was footfalls. "Who are you? Come out and show yourself!" He waved the torch toward the vaulted ceiling. The stone arch es were cloaked in a tightly nestled layer of bats. Disgusted,

Sturm crossed the hall to the steps. One set led up to the pri vate rooms, while another led down to the cellars. Sturm put a foot on the lowest of the rising steps.

"Hello…" sighed a voice. Sturm froze. Under the hood his hair prickled.

"Who is there?" he called.

"This way…" The voice came from below. Sword in his right hand, torch in his left, Sturm descended the steps.

It was cold down there. The torch flickered in the breeze rising through the stairwell. The corridor curved away on either side, following the foundation of the very ancient cit adel that Castle Brightblade had been built on.

"Which way?" Sturm called boldly.

"This way…" whispered the voice. It seemed oddly familiar as it sighed down the hall like the last gasp of a dying man. Sturm followed it to his left.

He had not gone fifty yards when he stumbled upon a third dead man. This one was different; he was no robber.

He was older, his beard untrimmed and his face worn by wind and sun. The dead man sat slumped against the wall, a dagger buried in his ribs. Oddly, his right arm was bent and resting atop his head, a finger stiffly pointing down. Sturm studied the face. It was familiar – in a rush, he recognized the man as Bren, one of his father's old retainers. If he were here, could Sturm's father be far away?

"What are you pointing at, old fellow?" Sturm asked the dead man urgently. He opened the man's coat to see if Bren carried any clues to the fate of Sturm's father. When he did, the dead man's right arm slid out of position and came to rest pointing straight up, overhead. Sturm raised the torch.