Chapter VI

There is no telling when Bayard made his next decision, nor his state of mind when he made it.

I gathered that the surgeons broke the news to him shortly after we left. Owing to his broken leg, travel was out of the question, at least for the next several months. Horseback riding would be impossibly painful; the rocky foothills of the Vingaards were naturally hostile to any travelers aside from dwarves or mountain goats.

I figured that our adventure was postponed of necessity and because my able benefactor would not fully trust me out of his sight.

There had been times, back in my weaselly and misspent youth, when this knowledge would have brought with it waves of relief, a murmured prayer of thanks to the gods of dry castles, warm beds, and especially to whatever deity fancied broken legs. Those times had passed, evidently.

Restlessly I stirred the fire in my quarters, thinking of Brithelm in the mountains, of the visions and threats I had seen in the opals, of what Bayard's injury meant to our plans.

Of how in the world I would get to the Vingaards alone.

It was almost a relief when Raphael came to my quarters that evening, bearing orders from Sir Bayard Brightblade that Sir Galen Pathwarden-Brightblade was to attend him at once. But that relief vanished when I entered Sir Bayard's chambers.

Given the shocks and tumbles of the past two days, I was not surprised to find Ramiro and Brandon seated by Bayard's bedside. It was, however, alarming to see both of them looking so glum and downtrodden and inconvenienced, like two old alchemists testing an ineffective laxative. My first guess was that they had just been appointed Brithelm's rescuers.

The conversation stopped when I entered the room. The three Knights stared at me intently, Bayard strangely curious and proud, the others blank and unreadable. Raphael, striding ahead of me, busied himself at once with some obscure and no doubt needless task.

"Sir Galen Pathwarden-Brightblade of Castle di Caela, gentlemen," Bayard announced, and I could tell he had rested, had slept perhaps, and was now quite sober.

His companions kept silent.

"Good evening, Weasel," Ramiro rumbled at last. I chose to ignore him out of both courtesy and caution, nodding politely to all present and taking a seat at the foot of my protector's bed.

Outside, evening was passing into night. I heard a pair of doves settle into the trees near the window, rustling and thrumming as they prepared for the rising storm.

"Galen, I'm afraid my news is hard," Bayard announced, raising himself in bed and grimacing. Ramiro took the flask of Thorbardin Eagle from the bedside table and offered it, but Bayard waved it away, his eyes remote and terribly melancholy.

"The surgeons have consulted, Galen," he continued, "and debated the fine points, on which they all disagree. But they have come to a general truth: that my travel by horse is impossible during the next six months, inadvisable at best for six months after that."

"But six months will be too late, sir!" I protested, standing up and knocking the chair out from under me. By instinct, Ramiro's hand went to his sword. Brandon, however, regarded me calmly from his seat by the fire.

"Too late?" Bayard asked. "Why 'too late?"

The possibilities made me reel: Brithelm, ravaged by fire, injured in the earthquake, or lost in some underground darkness, at the cruel whim of a bunch of pallid Plainsmen. Whatever the situation, my brother was alone, at the knife's edge, and unschooled in survival.

"Who said anything about postponing the journey, Galen?" Bayard snapped, and my thoughts skittered and plunged.

What else could those words and this assemblage mean but that Bayard had decided to send out a party of Knights to the Vingaards, fully intending to leave me behind in Castle di Caela along with the disabled, the women, and the old men?

I would not have it.

"'Too late,'" I announced coldly, "because I have had a vision that tells me 'too late,' damn it! And I know you've changed your mind, Bayard, and no doubt you will be sending Ramiro and whoever else has volunteered since your accident-anyone as long as it isn't the shifty, irresponsible Weasel! You've no idea how mistaken and foolish that is, for the opals have told me-"

"I beg your pardon?" Ramiro interrupted. "The opals told you?"

Now there was no turning back. My task was the simple and dreadful one of telling my brothers in the knighthood what had come to pass in the depth of the opals. I told it briefly, without ornament (I really have changed), told it all to an immense silence, to four pairs of widening eyes.

"So that is why I must go to the Vingaards, Bayard," I concluded. "Despite your good intentions of raising this party in my absence, it's an insult to me and to your belief in me and…"

Ramiro glanced at Bayard skeptically. Bayard winced as pain coursed up his damaged leg. For a moment, my heart went out to him-a man in the prime of his considerable powers, now bedfast and idle. Then I thought of what he was doing-shipping off virtual strangers to the Vingaards on a search for my brother, when I was the only one who knew of the danger. It was plain he did not trust me-had never trusted me-not as a squire and certainly not as a Knight.

At that moment, I devoutly wished the same condition for his other leg.

"I am sorry, Ramiro, that you, too, discount my visions," I said.

"No more, I am afraid, than I discount other things about you, Weasel. Still, you did show passable mettle in the mountains at Chaktamir, back when the Scorpion's Nest was crashing all about us…"

"I thank you for that memory, sir," I said, and stared ironically at Bayard. In the silence that followed, it struck me how shrill and peevish I sounded, like a schoolmaster badgering a whispering student to "share your secret with the other scholars."

It was what they wanted, evidently. Each one of them, looking at Sir Galen, no doubt saw only the Weasel in ill-fitting armor.

"Hold your tongue, Galen," Bayard said softly. "You would do your brother Brithelm a service to befriend these men assembled here, especially Ramiro, rather than doing your best to stir up discord and foolishness. Indeed, you would do yourself a service.

"Galen, your responsibility is a hard one to shoulder- greater than my own, than that of the men you see before you, greater even than the formidable duties of Sir Ramiro of the Maw, who will act as your second and confidante in the coming days."

"My second!"

Ramiro and I both gaped wildly, as though another earthquake had come, opening the floor beneath us and dropping us halfway into the center of the planet.

Bayard nodded, a strange half-smile on his face.

"Your second, Sir Galen. For in my absence, you are appointed to lead this expedition."

Even as Bayard spoke those words, the rain began, driving in thick sheets through the open window, which Raphael rushed to close, leaving the room in darkness.

It was as though the world wept at my leadership. For hours it poured, and where the Cataclysm had come before in fire and explosion, eruption and ruin, it threatened to come now as flood, as a deluge that would drown us all, given time and enough water in the heavens.

Behind the closed shutters of the infirmary, at a candlelit conference of Solamnic Knights, I learned what everyone thought of an expedition with Galen Pathwarden at the helm.

Ramiro belabored my failings at length. Brandon continued in tandem with him for about an hour, and soon I found myself nodding agreement to even the worst things they had to say about me, for after a while listening to such talk, you tend to believe the talkers and forget the specifics.

That the talk is about you, for instance.