As midwinter stormed toward the first blustery week of February, and windswept snow dusted the dark inclines of the Vingaard Mountains, Sturm spent the time in training, schooled by Gunthar in riding and swordsmanship, by Lord Adamant in the lessons of forest survival, and by all most Solamnically in vigil and prayers and deep dread. In the evening, after his instruction, he paced the battlements of the Knight's Spur, squinting southward where the Wings of Habbakuk sloped down to the Virkhus Hills, then even farther down onto the Solamnic Plains. When the weather was clear and windless, the lad imagined he saw a ridge of green at the southernmost edge of sight. The Southern Darkwoods, he thought, and his shoulder ached. And Vertumnus. Late winter, and I am far from ready.
What he had in place of Raistlin's cryptic comments were questions more immediate. He asked them of himself nightly, setting his lantern on the crenellated wall.
'Why did the Green Man come to the Tower? And why was this Yule different from any other? Why was I chosen, and what does he want of me? What awaits me in the Southern Darkwoods?
And regardless of sword and horse and instruction, how can I prepare for a man of shadows and magic?
Lord Stephan Peres would watch from his offices with rising concern. Out his window, he could see the solitary wavering lantern in the morning darkness. He had watched Sturm train and prepare for departure, and though the lad was a quick study, he had started green and clumsy and would end not too far from where he started.
It was a clumsiness that might prove to be Sturm's undoing, the old Knight thought darkly.
There was the matter of the peasantry, for one thing. The common folk of the Solamnic countryside had never forgiven the Knights for their supposed role in the Cataclysm-the disastrous rending of the world by quake and fire over three centuries ago. Grudges endured among the peasants, and though hostility and rebellion would submerge for a long while-perhaps ten, twelve years on occasion-trouble would resurface sporadically, as it had in the uprising five years back.
As it had again, evidently, in the cold weeks following the Yule banquet.
The Wings of Habbakuk, those broad, muddy foothills that lay due south of the High Clerist's Tower and provided the easiest road into the mountains, had recently become a quagmire of snares and pits and crudely designed traps. Experienced Knights had no trouble recognizing the signs-a thickness of fallen vallenwood leaves over a well-traveled path, an unaccustomed play of shadow and light in the thickets that dotted the sloping plains. They were used to peasant trickery, as was even the greenest squire who had grown up within sight of the Tower.
But Stephan was worried about young Brightblade, who three times had narrowly averted disaster while roaming the Wings with his comrades. On the last occasion, the lad's sly old mare, Luin, had shown more wisdom than her skillful but incautious rider, hurdling a pit that would have killed the both of them while tossing Sturm from the saddle in the sudden leap. The lad's game shoulder had ached for days, but that troubled Lord Stephan less than the curious circumstances.
It was almost as though the traps had been set for Sturm alone.
Lord Stephan rested his weight on the stone sill of the window and mused over the fading events of the Yule banquet-the arrival of Vertumnus, the fight, and the mysterious challenge. They were all dim, fading in an old man's memory. Stephan thought of birds in autumn, how each morning there were two, or three, or four less on the battlements. Memory was like that, and you would look up at the first frost, and only the hardiest birds would remain.
Spring was a more puzzling matter. Throughout winter, the moons had shifted in the sky, appearing first in the west, then the northwest, then altogether low in the east as they were supposed to at midsummer. Red Lunitari and white Solinari changed places and phases, and the astronomers claimed that black Nuitari did so, too. At first it was alarming, for the same astronomers, the scientists and the scholars maintained that the shifting moons could signal a greater disruption to come. Perhaps the Cataclysm would return, bringing with it the rending of earth, the shifting of continents, and absolute destruction. Perhaps it was something even worse.
Soon, though, these fears had subsided. The moons weaved about the sky for several nights, and no crevasses opened in the ground beneath them. Greatly relieved, the folks in the Tower settled back into daily routine, and the foot soldiers even began to make bets as to where the moons would appear each evening. Finally even the most nocturnal inhabitants of the High Clerist's Tower-the astronomers, the sentries, and the ever-vigilant Sturm-ceased to pay attention to the uncertain show in the heavens.
Then the more subtle problems became apparent. Birds, accustomed to migrating by moonlight and using the position of the moons as a guide, became lost and confused. The robins and larks arrived early in the region, only to shiver amid the eaves and crenels as the winds and the snows returned.
One morning Lord Stephan had been surprised by three gulls at his chamber windows. Tricked by the dodging moons, they had wandered very far from any sea. Their feathers were ruffled, and the tips of their wings were iced.
Subject to the unsteady pull of Solinari, the Vingaard River first swelled, then receded, then swelled again, dangerously close to topping the old floodwalls built over a century ago by Sturm's Brightblade and di Caela ancestors. The plants accustomed to growing by moonlight, moon-flower and aeterna, burgeoned wildly in the Tower gardens and topiaries, and out in the farmlands, asparagus and rhubarb and the sharp-tasting winter oleracea broke through the ground early, to the surprise of most gardeners and the dismay of most of their children.
The most disruption, however, came in more speculative realms. For magic, of course, revolved around the phases of the moons, and the strange, erratic alignments in the heavens disrupted the local spellcraft so that all but the most powerful divinations failed, the winds and the weather were as changeable as the moons, and wavering lights dotted the Wings of Habbakuk. Several enchanters appeared before Lord Stephan with sausages or lanterns or shoes attached to their faces or more hidden parts of their anatomies, since the constant feuding among wizards was as liable to twist and backfire as it was to succeed.
Lord Stephan had frowned at the complaining mages, doing his best to put on a face of outrage and sympathy, though he could hardly keep from laughing aloud. Finally, in the presence of one red-robed wizard from whose ears grapevines continued to grow noisily, he suggested that, if nothing else, by autumn the whine would turn into wine.
Still, the changes in young Sturm were less amusing. With his grimness and walks on the battlements, he taxed the patience of even the most Measured and diligent Knights. His long afternoons in the Chamber of Paladine raised all kinds of speculation.
'Praying, no doubt, for the Cataclysm to come again,' Lord Alfred had muttered gruffly to Lord Stephan that morning on the stairs. 'If the world would open up and swallow him, it would be just as he wishes. And the swallowing world is welcome to him.'
'Now, Alfred,' cautioned the older knight, his soothing tones unconvincing. 'If you cannot find forbearance for the sake of the lad's lost father, then surely remember the burden. It is time to set aside thoughts bitter and hard, and help the boy in his final preparations.'
Spring drew nigh in the Vingaard Mountains, despite the wanderings of the moons and the confusion of plant, bird, and mage. The days marched on, and though the calendar was the only reliable measurement that time was passing, indeed the time approached for the boy's departure.
Sturm was alone in his chambers, the early evening upon him. He had spent a long morning in the central courtyard, Lord Gunthar instructing him roughly in the particulars of swordsmanship. Still panting from the exertion, his shoulder swollen and heated, Sturm removed the heavy vain-braces from his arms, wincing as the metal and padding rubbed over bruises due to the fall he had taken riding the Wings, but also those from more recent outrages, born of training in combat and his teacher Lord Gunthar's enthusiasm. It had been
Sturm groaned and tossed the vambraces to the floor. Leaning back on his hard bed, he stared at the ceiling, his face flushed with exertion and embarrassment. Exertion, because Lord Gunthar had worked him over. Embarrassment, because the older man had done it easily, almost effortlessly, in a calm voice lacing the rout with instructions.
'Raise your shield, Sturm!' Gunthar had railed. 'You're shuffling and puffing like Lord Raphael!'
