Galen Beknighted

I was not sure, but I admitted that the Measure would call for something drastic, something with a taste of high drama, no doubt.

'As I thought,' Longwalker replied with satisfaction, and he told me the rest of the story: how the outcast left the Que-Nara, but not without stealing the crown and one of the opals. How he wandered for months, guided alone over the desolate landscape by hints and suggestions from the voice that had taken up residence in the cold silver of the crown on his head, which spoke to him somehow through the single, unnaturally glimmering opal.

How after weeks of wandering, the young Namer was not sure whether the voice in his ear was that of a god or a stone or a crown, or perhaps the softer voice of his own prophetic gifts, and how he praised himself for his 'insight and foreknowledge.' How the wanderings would take him by the way he knew as the Que-Nara Namer-the secret way unto the rest of the tribe, buried deep under the ground.

'Almost at the moment he reached them,' Longwalker said, his dark eyes bleak and ominous, 'the Rending raced along the spine of the world and the earth burst open, and nothing has ever been the same…'

'You don't believe,' I insisted, 'that this Namer, this-'

'Firebrand, he calls himself.'

'Did this… Firebrand… have anything to do with the Rending?'

Longwalker shook his head. 'I cannot say. It also puzzles me how he has lived through the lives of six chieftains.'

It puzzled me, too, but there was a whiff of mystery and murk about anything to do with the Plainsmen.

'How… how do you know he is with them? I mean, with the Que-Nara beneath the ground?'

'In the last few weeks, I have seen him, spoken to him,' Longwalker said, with a quick motion drawing a warding sign in the dust by the fire. 'He laughs at us and says that his wounded eye has stared down our weapons.'

'What does that mean?' I asked.

'That the people below took him in despite his wounded eye. That his eye must have deceived them, then his words, for now they follow him without question, and that the time will come when his crown is complete-complete beyond the twelve, he says, for it is his plan to set the thirteenth stone and bring forth the power of life and death.'

'And I am walking right into his hands, bringing him the very thing he seeks?' I asked apprehensively.

'The very thing he seeks may be his undoing,'

Longwalker mused. 'You see, Firebrand is right, for I am powerless against him. His taken eye is my undoing, in a way. For even if I knew the way beneath the mountains into his dark kingdom-which was a way lost to us when Firebrand took the knowledge with him-I could not harm him, tor the blade that marked him has stayed my hand.'

I crouched in a puzzled silence. Beside me, Shardos cleared his throat uncomfortably and stirred the fire with a stick.

'Do you mean you cannot lay hands on Firebrand? Not even to save your people?'

'Not even if he harms my people. For he will harm them by stealing their memory, and if I lay hands on him, I am saying that memory is not worth the stealing.

'But,' he continued, green mischief deep in his eyes like fire in the opals, 'that is not to say I cannot sit back and let someone else-someone not of the People-lay hands on him. Nor that I would not be pleased to do so. For the hands that destroy Firebrand will carry history. They will bind wounds and unite a sundered nation. Perhaps it is my task only to watch them at their business. Sometimes the doing is the waiting.'

Moths sailed through the baffled attic between my ears.

'I'm sorry, Longwalker,' I said finally, 'but I don't really have the stuff of history and all. I'm afraid that all I'm after is my brother Brithelm, and once I have him, my quarrel with this Firebrand is more than likely over. I am no hero.'

As if to prove my point, I told the Plainsman the whole unsavory story of my opals: how the stones came to me long ago from the coffers of an evil illusionist, as a bribe to betray Bayard Brightblade, not to mention my family. I dragged the gems through the whole adventure with the Scorpion-from the dusty rooms of my castle to the illusory rooms of his, and despite their time in my possession, I knew little more about them than I did when I first grasped them in my money-hungry clutches.

'I survived, of course, Longwalker,' I concluded, squinting into the darkness of the tall shape now standing just outside the firelight's edge. 'But it took all my ingenuity and soft words and courage, finally, to pry me out of the Scorpion's clutches. I fear I am just about spent of all those virtues.'

'But you survived, of course. And that in itself is something. The night is long,' he added abruptly, 'and ahead of you a longer journey. By now you must know we have no intent to harm you. Trusting that, you should sleep calmly in your camp tonight.'

He smiled his ragged, broken smile and said, 'We heard about these stones, that Firebrand awaited their coming. It is our nature to be concerned when such things take place. So we wanted to find them, to see that the hands into which they have fallen are… gentle hands that may guard that stillness well.'

'I know of these things, too, Longwalker,' I said. 'I have seen the fires from a distance, in the mountains and in the gems. A brother of mine is somewhere beneath those mountains, and another…' I choked.

It was still too soon to talk of Alfric. Longwalker rose from the fire and moved slowly and graciously toward the edge of the light, leaving me with my thoughts for a moment.

'Longwalker?' I said at last, having gathered myself together again. 'What have you heard from my brother- the one Firebrand has taken?'

'Only what you have told me now, Solamnic,' he replied, moving back into the light.

He looked down on me almost gently, and I stood, helping Shardos to his feet. The three of us walked toward the edge of the camp. Between two tall rocks far to our west, a faint fire was glowing, and from that region I heard the sound of Ramiro's laughter, carrying over miles and no doubt fueled by a flask of Thorbardin Eagle.

'I believe you now, Solamnic,' Longwalker said quietly. 'You will care for the stones and for my people wisely.'

'But why? Why should you believe in me? I wish your people and their history well, but it is my brother and only my brother I am after. And I shall do anything to win his freedom.'

'That in itself is something,' the Plainsman said bluntly. 'I believe that the gods always send my people something. You seem to be the one tree on the plain.'

'That is not encouraging, Longwalker.'

Then you have more of encouragement to learn,' Longwalker said mysteriously, leading me to the horses.

It was a lonely trip back to our campsite. Lily plodded, worn down, no doubt, by her fear of the Plainsmen's clothing. I led Shardos's horse, puffing and snorting, through the rising rocks, the old man snoring in the saddle.

I labored under my own burden. The stones weighed heavily in my speculation, for at heart I have always hated responsibilities that offer me no chance to order about those around me. And the whole murky business of this Firebrand and his crown and visions made me doubly uneasy.

Waiting may be doing, but to me, that night, it seemed too much like doing nothing.

There in the darkness, as the path we were on began to ascend more steeply toward the faint light of our campfire, I thought about planting the stones on Shardos.

But the old man's moon of a face smiled in serene sleep behind me, and I knew that my thoughts were idle- that I was not going to take the coward's way out. But damned if I knew what way I would take instead.

Chapter XIII

'What about the others?' a small child asked, crouched over several little piles of stones and sticks he moved along with the Namer's story. 'What of those who stayed at the castle and those in the Namer's