The woods that cover the foothills of the Vingaards are surprisingly thick and baffling and vine-entangled. Certainly they are more passable than swamps I have seen and traveled, but when you keep looking over your shoulder for pursuers, the way can be tricky and even downright confounding.
So it was that Oliver seemed to shout on two sides of us, Ramiro on another. We kept moving, however-moving away from the last sound we had heard, and keeping the campfire to our backs as best as we could manage, given the rising night and the shifting shadows of the foliage. It was an hour of rapid traveling and foraging, probably in circles. My eyes were half on the ground in front of me, half searching for the firelight to which I fully intended to return when Ramiro's energies-and with them, the hunt-subsided.
It was this rushing about, this hysterical wandering, that brought us to a clearing I had not seen before. Suddenly the foliage around me dropped away, and I found myself standing on high ground. The grass beneath me was dry and wiry, bathed in red moonlight as was the whole clearing itself, and the wash of scarlet and deep green was broken only by the shadow that spread underneath the single small oak tree in its center.
It seemed like a good place to stop. My legs were tired from gripping the flanks of the horse, my face whipped and welted by vines and branches. But somewhere around us, Ramiro was plunging through marshy woodland in search of a dangerous quarry, following the fine tradition of Solamnic Knighthood: Serenely confident that you alone are in the right, you corner evil and do away with it, regardless of whatever or whomever else you injure.
It was a messy business, this breakneck pursuit. But Ramiro was my companion and, in a sense, my charge. I had no time for breath and speculation. I had to locate him before something vile happened to him at the hands of the troll.
Alone, bowed and cloaked against the soft rain, I waited for Dannelle and Alfric to reach the clearing. Together, the three of us waited as the faint halooing and the rustle and crack of branches told us Ramiro was headed our way.
The huge Knight splashed into the clearing shortly, dirty and bedraggled and cursing the cleverness of the troll. Oliver followed in the big man's wake, a dismal lump of mud on horseback.
Our party reassembled and stood together in the gloom, each one of us with his own sullen thoughts. The waters had risen over the hooves of the horses. If we tarried any longer, we would face not only the dangers of trolls by night but also slippery, unsteady blind footing.
"But there isn't a star to steer by," Ramiro complained.
Not that a galaxy would have availed a man with his lack of bearings. To Ramiro, all directions were the same, the trees identical, the ground of one level, and the paths wound in circles. Now, in the midst of nowhere, he gave over command gladly.
"Which way should we go, Galen?" he asked quietly and urgently, drawing his sword as though a weapon in his hand could guide him through the green, entangling labyrinth in which we found ourselves.
"First of all, I intend to lead us out of this marsh," I declared and, dismounting into ankle-deep water, turned toward the single oak at the center of the clearing.
"He can do it, too!" Alfric insisted. "I have seen him navigate swamps before! Swamps worse than this, with satyrs in them!"
I looked back at my brother, who nodded at me encouragingly. As I sloshed through the high grass and water, it struck me that in my concern that others see my changes, I had overlooked those in my brother-how in that heart of meanness something had turned, perhaps indetectably to those who did not know him, but turned nonetheless, surfacing fitfully until now and again, if you looked at Alfric in a certain slant of light and with your eyes squinted in just the right way, you could see promise of squirehood emerging.
There would be time to explore that later. Hoisting myself onto the lowest branch of the tree-a sturdy one, as thick as my waist-I braced myself to climb as high as the thing would allow me. Perhaps from a lofty lookout the woods would open for me and our way back to the road emerge from this maze of greenery.
Clutching the next branch before I set weight on it, I noticed a crack-perhaps a quarter of an inch wide-snaking up the bole of the tree beside me. It often happens when the ground is wet, when the roots lose purchase in a clay-heavy soil.
Or so I have heard. Where I had heard it, I forgot entirely, for I stood rapt upon the branch, marveling that, despite the twilight and the shade, I could see small things so clearly. It was then I noticed that the opal brooch, pinning the cape beneath my throat, had begun to shine with a warm amber light, bathing the tree with a faint, steady glow.
I clambered down at once, lost footing amid roots, and fell to my knees in the water. Scrambling up, I splashed across the clearing to my comrades, holding the brooch aloft, my cape discarded behind me.
"I was right! I was always right, Ramiro! Look! The opals are on fire!"
"This does not inspire confidence in me, Lady Dannelle," Ramiro replied. I followed his pitying gaze to the brooch in my hand, dark and lifeless now, its magical light gone.
"M-Maybe the fall into the water… extinguished it or something. Maybe…"
"Maybe you're tired, Galen," Dannelle soothed. "You've scarcely recovered from the Night of Reflections, and now there's trolls and all."
"But… but they were afire, damn it!" I insisted, turning and walking away from them in my anger.
The stones began to glimmer again. Cupping the brooch in my palm, I looked into the opals. They showed nothing but a faint, opaque glow at their heart.
Another two steps toward the tree, and the light was detectably brighter.
What had the figure in the vision said to me? In them is the map of my darkness.
That was how, following the light of the stones like a half-mad diviner follows his dowsing rod, I passed through the clearing, beyond the oak, as the light in my hands grew brighter and brighter still. I heard a movement at my side and looked up.
Alfric was standing there, holding his horse's reins and Lily's.
"They are!" he shouted. "By the gods, the Wea-Galen is right! There's a light in the stones!"
Slowly the rest of them dismounted and followed. And as the light in my hands brightened further, so did our hopes.
For a moment, I felt like a genuine Knight, even if I had botched entirely the fight with the troll and let Ramiro lead us on a bootless errand somewhere in the soggy lowlands. For I was off on a journey of rescue, wielding magic at the head of my stalwart little band.
A map of my darkness, the vision had foretold. Though far from their own terrain, in a country hostile to concealment and surprise, they were Plainsmen after all, the handful of warriors who waited for us. We did not see them until they were upon us.
To this day, I am not sure that their intentions were lethal, but Solamnic Knights do not go easily, no matter the terms or the plans. When I felt strong fingers clutch my throat, I turned and, seeing Plainsmen rushing from the trees and undergrowth around us, fell to the soggy ground, breaking the hold of my assailant.
Without hesitation, the man leapt upon me, fingers prying at my clenched fist. Clumsily I reached for my sword and found that, in my haste to follow Ramiro, I had left it somewhere in the clearing where we had fought with the troll. I pummeled the man with my fist once, twice, but the blows were like raindrops against his leathery, heavily muscled ribs.
I struck him again, and this time the blow must have registered. Quickly and with the lean efficiency of a man taught to waste nothing, not even movement, he struck me with the back of his hand. My head rattled against the ground, and for a moment, I was in my boyhood room at the moathouse in Coastlund, it was winter, and a broom was in my hands.