Oath and the Measure (26 page)

Able, it seemed, but not willing. A disgusted sneer touched the corner of his lip, and he spat unceremoniously
into the furnace. “Don’t do that kind of work, though,” he explained. “Scoundrel’s work, to mar a weapon.”

He looked at the blade lovingly and picked it up once more. “Barbarian’s work,” he said, “to mar a blade such as this. But the man was a gentleman, on a fine black horse with a mounted servant and all, so you’d think he was on procession through the country. Wanted me to ruin the sword, and flaw it so’s it would break beyond reforging—shatter like porcelain into a score of pieces that never quite fit together again.”

Mara nodded. “His name?” she asked.

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you that, m’lady. He never gave it, nor were we even on speaking terms after I refused his business. Just rode out of town in a huff, saying he could find the man who would do the job better. I wondered then why he’d come so far south for a smith if he could find as good a one in his own parts.”

Wey land squinted and examined the sword’s edge.

“Don’t think he did, though. My master might have done it—leastwise he, of all the smiths I know, had the skills to do so.”

“Your master?” Mara asked. The confidence and assurance of the big man in front of her hinted at no master. She couldn’t imagine Weyland’s apprenticeship.

“Oh, yes, indeed,” Weyland agreed. “Solamnic, he was, and he heard voices in the metal. But treachery was no more his practice than it is mine, and he’s the only other smith I know could cause or mend what you see before you.”

Mara gazed at him wonderingly, and Weyland nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I can fix this sword, m’lady, and would gladly do so.”

“Thank you,” Mara said quietly. Now she had to figure how to get the blade to the prisoner. With a quick bow, she backed from the room, turned and raced back toward the stable. Among the contents of her bundle, wrapped and placed upon Sturm’s back for most of their journey, she had
hidden a bow and arrows.

The pack lay open over two bales of hay. For the life of her, Mara could have sworn that it had been tightly bound and gathered when she had taken the sword from the stable. But the building was dark, and her duties had been rushed and urgent. No doubt she remembered cloudily, if she really remembered at all.

Whatever the case, it was open now. Spilling into the faint moonlight were her belongings: a bronze harp and three penny whistles, two robes and a pouch wherein lay her childhood collection of shells, Cyren’s brooch, his ring with the green dragon seal of Family Calamon …

The bow was nowhere to be found. She knelt above the blanket, above her treasures and the baled hay, a rising uneasiness plaguing her thoughts.

“Is this what you’re looking for, m’lady?” a rough voice asked from behind her.

Mara wheeled about. Captain Duir stood over her, holding her bow and the quiver of arrows. Beside the captain stood the enormous Guardsman Oron, a dim look of disappointment on his face.

“Oh, we are sorry to have found this arsenal,” the captain proclaimed with a crooked smile. “And we are even more sorry that, bearing the trust and goodwill of the Druidess Ragnell, you have come back to retrieve your weapons. I suppose that your next intention was … to depart?”

“No,” Mara replied, and the captain’s eyes narrowed.

“Well … if you intended to bear arms in our gentle village, then to what purpose?”

“I … I …” Mara began, but she knew that Duir had trapped her.

“I see no choice,” the captain said slowly, as Oron walked toward her, his big hand extended, “but to prepare your quarters as well in the roundhouse. The freedom of Dun Ringhill was a privilege gladly granted by herself, but you have shown to be more Solamnic than Kagonesti.”

They escorted her by the smithy. Weyland filled the doorway,
blocking the light of the forge behind him. He watched them take her back toward the green, toward the roundhouse and the cell beside that of the captured Solamnic.

Weyland shook his head, his thoughts opaque and distant. Then he turned to the forge, closing the door behind him, but not before he picked up the long blade lying on his bench, shining silver and red by the light of the fire.

Had he not been working the bellows, he might have heard yet another party pass as the night turned and the village folk retired to their circular huts and beds of straw. For outside the smithy, something scurried by, stepping lightly and carefully through a nearby alley, whirring softly like a cricket. Yet somewhere within its strange, inhuman language lay human words and human fears and mourning.

For three days, Sturm sat alone in his vaulted cell.

The cubicle in which they placed him was little more than a windowless stall. Its side walls were flush with the ceiling, which sloped to the back of the room, where an old straw mattress lay. The front wall was a dozen feet high, over which he could see only ceiling and the gaping hole above the building’s central fire. By night, an occasional star shone through the opening, and very early one morning, Sturm thought he saw the silver edge of Solinari at its border. For the most part, the opening was featureless, though, like the walls that surrounded him, gated and guarded by a pair of burly militiamen.

The soldiers spoke only Lemish and regarded their Solamnic captive with suspicion. Twice daily one of them
would stick his head in the door, shove a dirty clay bowl at Sturm, then shut the door rapidly, leaving him alone with his porridge and his thoughts.

The whole Jack Derry business troubled him no end. It seemed passing strange that none of the village folk, from the druidess herself down to the cell guards, knew aught of the gardener.

More urgent than this was the question of Mara. Sturm assumed she was safe, but at night, once or twice, he thought he heard her voice from somewhere nearby. On the second night, he could have sworn he heard a thin, plaintive flute song rising from the room adjoining his.

On the third night of his captivity, he heard once more the sound of the flute. Then, as once before on the plains, he heard the old elven hymn, and clearly and mournfully the words filled the air of the lodge, riding the smoke out into the spangled night.

Sturm closed his eyes and listened deeply, his thoughts and senses free from all distraction. Mara had spoken of the song concealed in the silences, of the magic wrought by the white mode hidden from most ears. Could some message lie beneath the words she was singing?

He listened long and hard to the sounds and the silences and to the rests between verses. But he could uncover nothing in the quiet. “Nothing,” he murmured, and he turned on his mattress of straw. “Only wishful thinking and elven poetry.”

As the night progressed, the melody slipped to the back of his thoughts. A third time, in the small hours of the morning when he hovered in that strange, expectant state between sleep and waking, he heard Mara begin the song again.

And on the third time, he heard something: wishful thinking, perhaps, or poetry, but
something
nonetheless that crept into the last verses of the song.

In the music of those silences was sweetness and safety and an assuring sense that the dark was not bottomless.

Sturm’s eyes filled with tears, and the melodies, both heard and unheard, died into the smoky night air. He sat upright on the bed. In the real silence that followed the end of the song, he strained to hear words, to gather direction or advice or encouragement. But nothing was there except the snoring of a distant guard and the crackle of the central fire.

Intent and wide awake now, he settled back on the mattress and willed himself to sleep, but it was hours before he closed his eyes. When he did, he slipped suddenly from waking to slumber as though he had fallen atop a steep and sheer battlement.

On the fourth morning, the door opened as usual. Sturm sat up, a little hungrier than usual after a restless night, hoping that the porridge might somehow taste better this morning. It wasn’t breakfast that greeted him, though, but the Druidess Ragnell.

The old woman walked through the door, escorted by Guardsman Oron. With a swift wave of her hand, she dismissed the big man, who looked after her reluctantly as he closed the door behind her.

“You realize that you will be here for a long time,” she said.

Sturm did not speak. How could he address his father’s murderess? Angrily he lay back on the mattress, turning his face to the back wall.

Behind him, he heard the druidess shuffle and cough. It was hard to imagine her at the head of an army.

“And this is your greeting?” she asked. “This is that fabled
Solamnic politeness?”

Sturm rolled over, regarding her from across the room with a withering stare of hatred.

“I thank you, m’lady,” he replied, his politeness wintry, “but I would prefer my porridge to your presence.”

The druidess smiled, and with a creaking of her ancient bones, she seated herself in front of him. From the folds of her robe, she drew a branch—of willow, perhaps, though Sturm’s botany was weak, and he could scarcely tell. With a practiced, assured gesture, she traced a circle in the dirt on the floor.

“Your trespass is a deep one, child,” she observed. “A deep one and dire.”

“Trespass? To be brought into your presence under armed guard?”

The druidess ignored him, her eyes on the swirl of dust in the circle she had drawn. Soon, in spite of himself, Sturm found his eyes following the rapid, switching movements of the stick in her hand.

“It is trespass,” she explained, “because the people of Lemish fear the Solamnic legions, their bright swords and their horses and their righteous eyes.”

“Perhaps their fear is their own doing, Lady Ragnell!” Sturm shot back. “Perhaps some crime of Lemish cries out for justice! Perhaps there are abandoned castles north of here that can attest—”

“Attest to what?” the druidess interrupted, her voice calm and unwavering. Deep in her eyes, Sturm saw a flicker. Rage? Amusement? He could not tell.

“Perhaps there is one reason, Sturm Brightblade,” soothed the Lady Ragnell. “Young people say so, which is why we ask them to take up the sword.”

Sturm barely heard her, his eyes affixed once more to the circle of dust that was widening now, widening like the ripples on the surface of a placid pond when something is dropped in the water.

“But I am not here for policy, young man,” Ragnell said.
She was chanting now, the dust rising around her. “Nor for solemnities of country or court, neither to praise nor punish, but to show only …”

Her voice was rising steadily into singing. Sturm heard the notes of one of the ancient modes and struggled to place it. Then, deep in the pause of the notes and the breathing, deep in the space between words, he thought he heard another melody, a song below words and thought.