Galen Beknighted

and shadows.

'Well, now, Bayard,' Sir Andrew said, 'before Gileandos sacrifices us all to the great god of panic, we should have an idea of where you are taking us.'

'To be honest, Sir Andrew,' Bayard said, leaning against the weeping wall of the tunnel and smiling winningly, 'I have never really considered it.'

All of his companions-even Brandon Rus-looked at one another in astonishment.

It was Enid's turn to smile. One would think she approved of such a shot in the dark.

'You mean,' Sir Andrew finally ventured, 'that we've been shanghaied into the bowels of the planet on some sort of whim?'

'On some sort of adventure, Andrew. It's not by accident when the world beneath you opens.'

'It's a curse,' Sir Robert pronounced.

'It is clearly tectonics,' said Gileandos.

'How strange,' Sir Andrew observed. 'It seems like accident to me. Or the will of the gods, which sometimes looks like accident. Sir Brandon, what is your philosophy?'

'My philosophy is that the dark is for philosophers,' Brandon said curtly, his eyes on the descending spiral in front of him. 'I agree with Bayard because we are already down here.'

It seemed that Brandon Rus had hit the mark once more. His companions nodded, puffed, grunted, and shouldered their weapons and burdens for the descent. Here where the runnel corkscrewed down into the blackness, there was time for reflection and for long thought. The stone of the corridor curved leftward, beetling over the Knights as they descended, blocking their view of each other.

We are below the Southeast Tower by now, Sir Robert thought. He never called it the Cat Tower.

He thought of Mariel, his mad aunt. Thought of the smothered laughter her story brought to his visitors-the laughter that even the family shared now, the years having spiraled old Mariel into a faint, small form at the edges of memory, someone remembered because of this story only.

But Robert remembered the door opening onto the room in the top of the tower. Mariel's red door, the silver fleur-de-lis fast in its center. He remembered how they waited outside the door for a moment, how his brother Roderick set booted foot to the door.

It had been like flies swarming.

The cats boiled across his aunt's body, covered with dust, cobwebbing, and wet, hot-smelling things that he could not name if he dared. They were feeding hysterically, their tails whipping through the air as if a hostile wind was moving them.

Years later, when he saw the scorpions settle on Benedict di Caela, there in the Pass at Chaktamir, Robert had remembered his aunt, had felt nausea rise and had told no one.

Again the image arose, banishing the dark and the torchlight ahead of him, banishing the curve of the rock, the downward incline of the muddy tunnel floor. For a moment, Robert di Caela thought he was climbing steps. He shook his head, saw rock, darkness, and torchlight. Saw the descending tunnel ahead of him, Bayard and Brandon huddled together, moving from shadow to light to shadow. His daughter following them, at her side the young page, Raphael.

'I am getting old,' Sir Robert said to himself and resumed the descent.

The tunnel curved once again, and Robert lost the Knights ahead of him behind another wall of rock. Moving forward resolutely, with that alert, discouraging feeling that one gets when walking alone at night in an unfamiliar house, Robert turned the corner cautiously.

The corridor, empty of his companions, ended not five feet in front of him in a red door, a silver fleur-di-lis planted firmly in its center.

Brandon had seen no door. Indeed, he had passed farther down the corridor, he and Bayard. He heard Sir Robert stop behind him but thought little of it because the old men had stopped repeatedly since they had entered the darkness. Instead, Sir Brandon Rus thought of the sea.

How the tunnel was like the whirls in a seashell. For a moment, Brandon stopped. He listened for the sound of breakers in the corridor below him.

Once he had seen the sea as a boy; his mother set her bright blue tents by the waters. It was a story that Brandon did not tell.

The Solamnics and landholders from here to the Virkhus Hills had heard the stories about his gift for archery. It was said that he missed but once, and in missing, hit the target at which he should have been aiming all along. But they had not heard this story.

The sea was devouring, terribly strange. The Blood Sea of Istar, they called it, though his tutors had told him that its waters are red only at midocean. Still, there was an unfamiliar cast to the waves-a blue that bordered on a deep violet, a disturbing warmth to the tide.

Nonetheless, his sister Almia chose to swim. Far on the horizon, he could see her, her light hair rising and falling on the violet waves.

Brandon shook his head. Was there something in this tunnel-some gas, some closeness in the air-that was stealing his wakefulness? Bayard coughed again at his shoulder. Why these thoughts of the sea?

Yet…

Yet there, as the sun dropped low on the water, its light settled on his sister's hair, spangling it gold and silver and red and violet. She was out a perilous distance, near the Road of the Dolphins, where the ships catch the strong northern current and sweep up the eastern coast like iceboats.

Brandon sat on the shore, lulled by sun and the regular sounds of the tide, the ugly and wonderful smell of kelp. Nearby, he watched a pelican hunt, watched the huge bird sail awkwardly over the purple crest of the waves and then, its quarry spotted, wheel over to stall and plunge headfirst into the water, suddenly, limply, as though the bird had been dropped by Brandon's crossbow.

He looked up then and saw his sister gliding across the face of the water. At first it seemed she was caught in the Road of the Dolphins, drawn northward by the powerful surge of the current, her long hair golden in the wake of her passage.

Already there was an outcry on the beach. Mother's retainers were stripping off their armor. One, a large man named Venator, was already knee-deep in the water, striding out to sea as though something would lift him onto the surface and he could stride out over the waves to rescue Almia.

Brandon fumbled with his bow. For some reason, whether youth or fear or the whim of the gods, the arrow was too large for the bow, then too small for his clumsy fingers.

It was then that Almia went under. Where she had been, the huge red back of the creature twisted angrily above the water for a moment. Finally Brandon fired the weapon, watching in horror as the arrow skipped harmlessly over the purple waters.

And into the breast of his sister.

Then the thing dove, its man-sized flukes turning once, high in the air above the Road of the Dolphins, and the sea was smooth once more.

He had run away then, in rage and sorrow and hatred for himself, marveling at his stupidity and its result. When they found him later, they had tried to console him-the viziers, his mother, the old Knight, Venator.

It had been too late, they said. There was nothing he could have done to save the girl. The creature had destroyed his sister and then taken her form in the water.

He had done what any archer, any brother would do, they claimed. The creature would not kill again. To this day Brandon Rus did not believe them.

By now the pain in Bayard's leg was consuming his thoughts and his strength. Weaving on Sir Brandon's shoulder, he stood hollow-eyed at the front of the party, his stare fixed on nothing in particular as Brandon guided him through the toothed and silent landscape of the cavern.

Something drove Bayard Brightblade that he could not put words around. It was a journey by night, he thought, with the road marked uncertainly, the signposts old and weathered and wordless.

It was like the streets of Old Palanthas, where as a boy he wandered, orphaned and cast away.