Oath and the Measure (5 page)

Lord Alfred listened in a fuming silence as the pair mumbled through their story. He scarcely looked at them as he dismissed them, his eyes on a tumbled stack of books that lay tilted and open on a lectern in the corner of the room. The door closed behind the sentries, and an enormous mutual sigh faded with their footsteps into the distant clamor of the hall.

“So he’s as powerful as they say, this Vertumnus,” Alfred said quietly in the restored silence of the room. “That is all the more troubling, especially when I consider what lies
ahead for the boy.”

All eyes returned to Sturm. He wished he could have joined the sentries in their retreat, but he held his breath and fought down the fear.

“I believe,” the High Justice began, “that you have been singled out for a purpose.”

“What kind of purpose?” Sturm asked.

“If you’ve been listening, lad, you’ve probably gathered that we’re no closer to answering that than you are,” Stephan explained with a smile. “All we know is that something in the music and the mockery and the flyting was such that it fell to you to bear sword against Lord Wilderness and to defeat him in combat, only to find that he is the victor while the game is not over. It’s a riddle, to be certain.”

“And the answer?” prompted Sturm.

“I believe he gave you the answer,” Lord Alfred replied. “That on the first day of spring you—and you alone—are to meet him in his stronghold amid the Southern Darkwoods. There apparently the two of you shall settle this issue, as the Green Man said, ‘sword to sword, knight to knight, man to man.’ ’Tis written full clear that the Measure of the Sword lies ‘in accepting the challenge of combat for the honor of the Knighthood.’ ”

Sturm swallowed hard and slipped his cold hands under his robe. The Knights regarded him grimly, uncertain whether a death warrant lay in Lord Alfred’s pronouncements.

“One thing is certain, lad,” Boniface said. “You’ve been called to a challenge.”

“And I accept, Lord Boniface,” Sturm said bravely. He stood, but his legs wobbled. Swiftly Lord Gunthar moved to steady him with a strong hand.

“But you are not a Knight, Sturm,” Lord Stephan said. “Not yet, that is. And though the Oath and Measure run in your blood, perhaps you are not bound to them.”

“And yet,” Lord Boniface insisted softly, “you
are
a Brightblade.” He leaned toward Sturm, his blue eyes searching
and raking at the heart of the boy.

Sturm sat again, this time clumsily. He covered his face with his hands. Again the strange banquet played through his recollection, and the edges of his memory were blurred, uncertain. Vertumnus’s face was vague when he tried to recall it, as were the melodies, the alien tunes that only an hour ago Sturm thought he would never forget.

What was certain in this? He remembered only the challenge clearly. That challenge was certain—as certain as the Oath and Measure, by which a Knight was bound to accept such challenges.

“Lord Stephan is right when he says I am not yet part of the Order,” Sturm began, his eyes fixed on the library shelves beyond the Knights. The books seemed to dance in the dim light, green bound and mocking. “And yet I am tied to the Oath by heritage. It’s … it’s almost as if it
does
run in my blood. And if that’s the case—if it’s something that connects me to my father, like Vertumnus said, or I thought I heard him say—then I want to follow it.”

Alfred nodded, the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Gunthar and Stephan were silent and grave, while Lord Boniface Crownguard looked away.

Sturm cleared his throat. “I suppose things like rules and oaths are … even stronger when you can do otherwise but you choose to follow them because … because …”

He wasn’t really sure why. He stood again, and then Lord Alfred slipped from the room, returning at once with the great sword Gabbatha, said once to grace the belt of Vinas Solamnus. It was the sword of justice, a shimmering, two-edged broadsword, its hilt carefully carved in the likeness of a kingfisher, the golden wings spread to form the cross-piece. So there, before the most powerful Knights of the Order, Sturm set his hand to Gabbatha and swore a binding oath that he would take up the challenge of Lord Vertumnus, the druid or wizard or renegade knight.

When the words were said and the oath was sealed, Lord Stephan, now abstract and pensive, stalked from the room
at once, muttering something about impossible odds. As the old Knight opened the door, the room outside echoed with the sound of axe against wood.

Sturm shifted from foot to foot, looking up at the older men, awaiting advice, instruction, orders.

“Very well,” Lord Alfred breathed. “Very … well.” It was as if he had lost something.

“Go within a fortnight, Sturm,” Lord Boniface urged. “Prompt departure will give you … time to travel unfamiliar country. If we are to believe Lord Wilderness, time is of the essence in this challenge.”

“I remember,” Sturm said bleakly. “ ‘Appointed place and appointed time.’ ”

“But you should prepare yourself first, Sturm,” Gunthar urged indecisively.

“That is true,” Alfred agreed eagerly. “Choose a horse from the liveries—that is, a horse
within reason
. You are, after all, a son of the Order, and we shall do our utmost to equip you and train you and ready you for the spring and the Southern Darkwoods.”

Sturm nodded. The evening had dwindled to halfhearted promises. It was as though the Knights knew it, and knew that a still darker issue lurked beneath the promises.

The boy had been wounded, after all. Or so he maintained, and sharp-eyed old Stephan Peres confirmed it. And in spring, Lord Wilderness had threatened, the wound would come due.

It was all chaotic, this business before them, all grim and unforeseeable in its mystery.

Gunthar sidled to a shelf and thumbed through a book while Alfred recited the equipment Sturm would need, where it was available, and in what quantity or quality the Order was willing to provide it. Sturm continued to nod and thank the High Justice, but his eyes were distant and his thoughts elsewhere.

So they left him, still nodding and quietly thinking, standing in the midst of the library, all of Solamnic history
surrounding him, leaning in on him from atop the dusty and indifferent shelves. Lord Boniface was the last out the door—Angriff’s good friend, his rival in swordsmanship.

“I’m proud of you, lad,” he said, and turned swiftly away, his face masked by the shadows of the dimly lit room.

“Thank you,” Sturm breathed again, and the door closed behind all of them, leaving him alone with his fear and musing.

“How do you fight a mystery?” Sturm asked aloud. “How do you even
follow
one?” He turned and faced the darkened stained glass window.

Beyond the glass lay only the faintest of lights—the sunrise oblique in the east, scarcely visible because of the baffling mountains, the vaulting walls, and the simple fact that the window faced west. Behind the yellow of the harp and the white sphere of Solinari in the corner of the window, the lad could see sharp, wavering shadows. It was a sprig of holly, grown up against the wall outside, trembling in the breeze of the winter morning.

The twins had warned him, that autumn night at the
Inn of the Last Home, in the week before he saddled Luin and rode away from Solace into the forbidden north.

It was a last night of reunions and farewells as the three of them sat over cold tea and guttering candles at the long table by the trunk of the enormous vallenwood tree that rose through the floor of the inn. Otik the innkeeper, solicitous as ever, cleared the last of the glass and crockery while the three companions drank absently, staring across the table at each other over the dodging lights.

Sturm felt ill-suited in his mourning gray cape and robes, especially among his old friends. He wondered if that was part of bereavement—that after the six months of gray and fasting and confinement, you were supposed to weary of it
all, to yearn for setting aside the robes and moving to other things. Times were when he still missed his mother grievously, but already the face of Ilys Brightblade was blurred in his memory, and he had to tell himself the color of her eyes.

But the story she had told him was fresh in remembering, down to the smallest details. Recounted on her deathbed, before the fever gave way to delusions and unconsciousness, it was a tale that would send him from Solace.

Sturm shook his head, startled from memory by a loud, low voice. The dark imaginings of the clerical incense, of his mother’s unnaturally pale face, vanished into light, and once again he was at the Inn of the Last Home, Caramon leaning across the table, questioning him above the glowing candles.

“Were you listening, Sturm? Here we are on the last night before you leave, your saddlebags packed full of provisions and letters and souvenirs. I wish you weren’t so set on Solamnia and this banquet and staying there for good.…”

“I never said I would not return!” Sturm interrupted, rolling his eyes. “I’ve told you both before, Caramon. It’s … it’s a
pilgrimage
of sorts, and when I’ve learned a few things in the north and settled a few others, I’ll be back.”

Caramon clutched the sides of the table with his red, thick-fingered hands and smiled apologetically at his prim and serious friend. Raistlin, meanwhile, remained silent, his dark, attentive face turned toward the hearth and the last of the dwindling firelight.

“But all this questing and searching, Sturm,” Caramon explained. “It
could
take you away forever. It does that with the
real
Solamnic Knights.”

Sturm winced at the
real
.

“And if it did, we’d be none the wiser as to why you went in the first place.”

“That, too, I’ve told you again and again, Caramon,” Sturm repeated calmly, his voiced strained and brittle. “ ’Tis the Oath and the Measure, and it is the Oath that binds the
Solamnic brotherhood.
That’s
why I have to go north—into Solamnia … the Vingaard Mountains … the High Clerist’s Tower.”

“The Code again,” Raistlin observed, quietly breaking the silence.

The two larger youths turned at once to their scrawny, dark comrade. Leaning back in a darkened nook in the vallenwood trunk, the young adept was half lost in shadows, almost as insubstantial as his own sleights and illusions.

Out of the gray flickering gloom, Raistlin spoke again, his voice melodious and thin, like the high notes of a viola. “The Code and the Measure,” he said scornfully. “All of that smug behavior that the Solamnic Order swears by. And the thirty-five volumes of your Measure—”

“Thirty-seven,” Sturm corrected. “There are thirty-seven volumes to the Measure.”

Raistlin shrugged, wrapping his tattered red robe more closely around his shoulders. Quickly, with a birdlike grace, he leaned forward, stretching his thin hands toward the fading glow of the fire.

“Thirty-five or thirty-seven,” he mused, his pale lips tightening to a smile, “or three thousand. All the same to me, in its foolishness and legalism. You aren’t bound to obey a page of it, Sturm Brightblade. Your father, not you, was the Solamnic Knight.”

“We’ve disagreed on this before, Raistlin,” Sturm scolded. He stopped himself and leaned uncomfortably back in his chair. He sounded like a reproving old schoolmaster, and he knew it.

Raistlin nodded and swirled his tea in the cup, staring into the bottom as though he were reading omens in the cool dregs.

“There have been other years, Sturm,” he whispered. “Other Yules.”

Sturm cleared his throat.

“It’s … it’s because Mother’s gone now, Raistlin,” he replied tentatively, looking thoughtfully at the glittering pool
of wax in the dark ceramic candle holder. The wick floated on the shimmering surface. Soon the candle would go out entirely.

“The Order is my last remaining family. There’s nowhere else to go but north. But mostly it’s because of what Mother told me … about what happened the night my father vanished.”

The twins leaned forward, stunned by this sudden news.

“Then there was something more?” Raistlin asked. “More that your mother hadn’t told you?”

“She … she was waiting for the proper time,” Sturm replied, his hands unsteady on the table boards. “It was just that … the plague … then there was no other time …”

“Then when she told you was the proper time,” Caramon soothed, resting his huge hand on Sturm’s shoulder. “Tell us, in turn. Tell us of that night.”

Sturm looked into the eager brown eyes of his young companion. “Very well, Caramon. Tonight I shall tell you that story. Remember that it is not easy in the telling.”

And with the twins leaning toward him expectantly, the autumn night uneasy with the high wind and the rattle of leaves across the roof of the inn, Sturm began the story.