It was an evening of torches and gems in Castle di Caela.
Outside, the sentries bundled against the night wind. They stood at the walls, looking north and west toward the Vingaard Mountains, where the brush fires had started in the foothills again, as they had last night and the night before.
The fires were burning brightly, like signals of a deep unrest.
The sentries clutched the top of the walls tightly in their vigils, for the wind was rising. The maples at the foot of the walls turned silver, then dark green, then silver again as the wind rushed through them, capsizing their leaves.
But it was no ordinary summer wind, blowing balmy and warm in the sunlight, rising cool at dusk, and settling for good as the night drew on. For the day before, in the dark of the morning, a powerful storm rushed down and east from the foothills, billowing dust and dried grass and the faint smell of night in its path, gathering speed until it reached the castle, where it lifted a guardsman neatly from his post on the battlements and hurled him into the courtyard below.
A castle charwoman, by chance looking up to the battlements, had seen the man tumble, his cloak rippling through the air like an enormous black streamer. She said that for a moment when he passed overhead, he blocked out the moonlight, and she believed that her eyes had deceived her-that he was a passing cloud and nothing more.
They found him sprawled in the red light of the moon, his open eyes as vacant as the sky above him.
None of the men there, not even the oldest, had ever seen the likes of it.
So the sentries on the battlements clutched the crenels, carried stones for ballast in the lacings of their armor, tied themselves one to another, like rock climbers.
Behind and below them, sheltered by the walls, the courtyard and the Great Hall of di Caela glittered with a safer light. Pennants and canopies rippled softly, wagons and booths lay empty until the next morning, when trade would begin again on the grounds of the bailey. Tonight was set aside for ceremony, and from the heart of the light, the music of horn and drum was rising. The closest of the sentries, at the safest posts in the shadowy courtyard of the castle, no doubt caught the sweet attar of roses on the wind as it mingled with summer spices and the deep, inviting scent of wood smoke.
All of this-spice and attar, music and light-was unusual in Castle di Caela. The new master, Sir Bayard Bright-blade, Solamnic Knight of the Sword, was strict to the Measure and a former knight-errant, used to the hardships of the road. He had little love of luxury.
Nonetheless, this evening was bright, festive, and ornate, despite the dangers of the morning, the high winds, and the austere lord of the castle.
Bayard permitted these ceremonies, because not often did a new Knight join the Order.
A cause for celebration. Expensive though it may be, Sir Bayard Brightblade thought, as he descended by candlelight from the master chambers of the castle. Around him, a hundred metal birds sat silently on their metal perches as if they awaited a signal-an outcry, perhaps, or a change of weather-to arise into the air and migrate.
Bayard scarcely noticed them, scarcely noticed where he stepped. The young page, Raphael Juventus, a lad of singular promise and talent, slipped gracefully in front of the master, scooting aside a chair that threatened to entangle him. Bayard's mind was on the ceremony about to begin.
From below, a trumpet swelled. Bayard leaned against the marble banister, stirring dust with his gloved hand. Raphael sneezed, and a dog lying asleep on the landing below started awake at the sound. It rumbled, the fur on its back rising, and slinked back into the dusty darkness of a doorway off the landing.
Distracting, this ceremony, Bayard thought. More home foolishness, when there's mayhem abroad. There's no telling what those fires bode up in the Vingaards, much less this terrible wind. Enough of wind and fire-it's rain we need now, more than music and spices.
Drought in the second year of my governance, he thought, fitting the ceremonial gauntlets on his large hands. He resumed his descent, passing still another silenced mechanical bird, staring stupidly at him from its perch on the landing, a spring dangling from beneath its left wing.
Now Bayard stood for a moment on the white marble platform overlooking the corridor, where the last of the knights straggled into the loud and fragrant room. Raphael, elegant despite his allergies, leaned against an empty bronze perch, sniffling from his vigilance against obstacles.
Unrest on top of the drought, Bayard mused, these fires and winds at sunset. And now a change of squires. I suppose that's what I get for saving the damsel and lifting the curse.
This and nothing to do.
He continued toward the doorway, smiling. The sentries at the great double doors noticed him on the stairway and snapped to attention. One of them lost a helmet in the process. It clattered to the floor, and from its crown toppled a pair of twelve-sided Calantine dice that fell to the floor and rolled to 'King's Ransom,' the charmed double nines that were the winning toss in the palace's most popular game of chance.
The guard stooped, dropped his pike, and picked up the dice. Then, reaching for his weapon, he dropped the dice again.
King's Ransom once more.
The other guard, the one with the helmet and scruples, eyed his fumbling companion suspiciously as Bayard and Raphael passed.
The doors to the dining room opened. Bayard saw the glimmer of candles on the dark mahogany in the great hall. An elvish cello began an intricate southern melody, laced with ice and elegance and mourning.
Nonetheless, Sir Bayard whispered, almost aloud, it is a gaudy night. No matter the wind or the fire, the danger or the rumors of chaos in the mountains. No matter the dust and disorder and the loaded dice of sentries. Whatever happens, this night is set aside. The Lady Enid will see to the festivity.
Despite the rising wind at sunset and the cold wet air that rustled through the windows into the Great Hall, lifting tapestries and occasionally gutting candles, the ceremonies began as Bayard knew they would: without incident, delay, or error.
It was the better judgment of the Lady Enid, seated at the head of the table, that despite the fire and the grumbling in the countryside, there should be a time to celebrate traditions.
As her husband Bayard fretted over things he could not control, stewed over far-flung mysteries and nearby little chaoses, Enid had arranged the banquet at hand and its invitations, arranged the comfort of guests, the lighting of rooms, the polishing of the mahogany tables in the Great Hall.
Finally she had arranged herself, her long blonde hair tumbling onto her shoulders, her great-grandmother's century-old gown shimmering with unimaginable jewels-a gown the Lady Enid thought was far too showy for everyday use and, to be honest, even for ceremonial nights.
Great-Grandmother Evania's taste, she reflected, had always been atrocious.
Nonetheless, Enid was expected to wear the dress.
And the pendant. Always the pendant, because people wanted to see it.
Pleasing the people who wanted to see her finery had not come easily to Enid. Nor, for that matter, had her delight in hospitality. Bayard, unaccustomed to his role as lord of the castle, continued to behave like a knight- errant. He surrounded himself with the exotic and slightly notorious characters he had met in his traveling years. Already Enid had played hostess to three bands of dwarves, a flock of kender, who departed merrily with the di Caela family silver, and close-mouthed Que-Shu Plainsmen, who sat on the floor instead of in the chairs.
She had even hosted a centaur or two-a gray-bearded character named Archala who drank too much, somehow found his way upstairs, and, owing to a hangover and the structure of his knees, could not descend the steps in the morning. They had to lower him from the landing by ropes and pulleys, or, she feared, he might have been there forever.
Then again, even the boy to be knighted this very evening had been no model of good manners, Enid thought. Despite his somber front and his protests, his 'by the gods, Bayard, I'll do better,' the lad's past behavior flirted with felony, and Lady Enid believed that the straight face she saw in the halls of Castle di Caela knew far more than it was telling.
The boy's guest list was a checkered one-interesting, to be sure, but not entirely respectable. Some of them
