Galen Beknighted

The buildings became stone in Palanthas at the point where the great South Road narrowed northward into the city's heart. Oh, there were some brick, some wattle, and some simple wooden lean-tos back in the most forsaken alleys. But mostly it was stone there, and fourteen-year-old Bayard Brightblade, fresh from an overthrown castle and the sight of slaughtered parents and retainers, found a moment of peace in its craggy stillness.

Though to a lad from the countryside, the city streets were as strange as the face of a moon. As strange as the black moon nobody has ever seen, that legends and odes and metaphysics claim must be there for things to make sense.

So he had followed the road north, and the buildings crept closer to the curbside. North and ever north he had traveled, the smells of garbage and spice and sweat all fading into the distant breath of salt water as, ahead of him, the moonlight raced across the marble of public buildings and the flickering Bay of Branchala.

There had been a tower off to the west-whether he passed it or was passing or only approaching when it came into notice he did not remember now. Only that it was a tower, suddenly on fire, white flames coursing up its sides as if it had been doused with oil and ignited. Fresh from the devastation of grounds and manor, the boy stopped, marveled, awaited alarms, the smell of smoke.

The tower burned yet was not consumed. It burned briefly, then faded until he could barely see it, a black silhouette against a gray darkness.

Corposant, they had called it. Branchala's fire. But he did not know these things when he saw the light, the strange and wonderful incandescence in the western sky.

He thought instead that the sun had set in the tower.

He had taken this as a sign. Though he still did not know what was expected of him, he thought that something had been given to him. That Palanthas was the place where the tower burned made it extraordinary, different from the faceless plains and foothills and mountains he had passed through to get there. It was at least something. And though in the months to come he would question that 'something,' whether it meant anything at all, it must have had meaning in some mysterious way. For living in Palanthas, under carts and bridges and occasional lean-tos by night, by day in the network of tunnels that made up the Great Library of Palanthas, soon he discovered the book that revealed to him the curse of Castle di Caela and the part he would play in lifting it. All this from a pure accident of weather.

There is no telling what the others were thinking. What went through the mind of Sir Andrew, of Marigold, of the boy Raphael, was as mysterious as old writing. Within the hour, despite Enid's better judgment and the urgings of the older Knights, Bayard had led the party even farther below the foundations of Castle di Caela. Masonry had given way to earth and igneous rock. Even the taproots of vallenwoods did not go down this far, though the water was here, hissing about them and dripping from crevice and outcropping as though the whole earth was a sodden sponge.

Gileandos leaned against the cellar wall, which felt cool, mossy, uncomfortably moist. 'Indeed,' he asserted, eager to support the judgments of his employer. 'In my humble opinion as physicist and alchemist, I should have to insist that nothing I have seen or heard or otherwise observed here is necessarily the product of anything more than the altogether natural workings of the elements.'

Bayard, Robert, and Brandon stared at the tutor with contempt. Suddenly Gileandos's eyes wided. His thin, pale-fingered hand slid over the wall behind him and pulled away in disgust.

'What is it, pedant?' Sir Robert snapped. But the tutor was speechless, staggering to the center of the corridor.

Brandon steadied Bayard, moved quickly past the old man, and set his hand to the wall.

He felt a give, a wet leathery surface that pulsed under his fingers. His voice thin and wavering, he turned to the party, struggling for composure.

'It-it cannot be, Bayard,' he said, his words rising scarcely above a shaken whisper. 'The wall… the wall is alive!'

'And I am the Kingpriest of Istar!' Sir Robert snorted, stepping forward to rid the world of nonsense. But Bayard's hand stayed the old man, and slowly Bayard hobbled toward Brandon, removing his gloves as he approached.

The wall was pliable and moist. From a distance, it was indistinguishable from stone, and indeed at some time others had made the same mistake, for whatever the thing was that lay in front of the huddled Knights, it was covered with drawings and scratches and fabulous designs. Only at close quarters could one see the pores and the leathery contours of what appeared to be skin.

'Gileandos!' Bayard hissed. 'Quickly! What are the legends, the lore about great creatures under the earth?'

'Arrrh…' the tutor replied. Then 'Arrrh…' again as his wits and resources failed against the prospect of danger. Sir Andrew slapped him with a glove, but the old tutor continued to gargle and stammer.

'If I might be so bold, sir,' Sir Brandon Rus offered, peering intently at the rippling surface in front of him. Bayard turned to the young man and heard the others close ranks behind him.

'In several collections of lore,' Brandon began, 'I have seen mention of the daergryn, as the elves call it. The giant worm that bears the surface of Ansalon on its back. 'Tellus,' the creature was called in the times of Huma, and the dale worm is its name in the common speech.'

'You have heard of this, too, Gileandos?' Bayard asked.

The old man swallowed and nodded. 'Mythopoetic way that the less scientific times explained the rumblings and tremors of the earth. 'The dale worm stirring,' they were wont to say. Hence the expression 'the worm has turned' to denote great change and reversals.'

Emboldened by his knowledge, the scholar folded his arms triumphantly, then remembered that the worm in question was neither myth nor poetry and began to stammer again.

'Gileandos,' Bayard said, his great hand calming the scholar with a simple touch on the shoulder. 'I suppose we can all say that the worm has turned now. And I fear we're in for a turn or two more. It is time you all learned what I read in the papers of Castle di Caela. Perhaps, with luck and the favor of the gods, we can avert the promises and threats we have inherited.'

There, crouched by the side of the dale worm, Sir Bayard Brightblade revealed what he knew. That 'the rending of earth' was part of a dead man's plan, seized upon in vengeance four centuries ago. That somehow a device-some gnomish machinery, no doubt, or an ancient unfathomable mechanism-was set in motion by the anger and hatred of the very Scorpion destroyed by Bayard in the recent past. Now it was set to arouse this creature, to disrupt everything 'from the Vingaard Mountains to the Plains of Solamnia, even unto the foundations of this murderous house.'

What that meant, and how the arousing would take place, not even Bayard Brightblade knew.

Chapter XV

Seven stones were set in his crown. Seven godseyes: one brought from above, six mined in the dark recesses of the Vingaards.

For Firebrand, it was not enough.

Are there not places for thirteen stones?

Oh, the timid had warned against it, shaking their fingers and saying, 'The power over life and death belongs to no man, nor should any man try to take it. For what right has man to govern the plains and the caverns, the places that give birth to him and nurture him and receive his body when he is no more?'

A weakling's argument, in which a false mysticism hid one's fear. One might as well ask what right a man has to govern himself.

But it was more-indeed, much more. For recently Firebrand had felt it, as the visions grew sharper, more consuming, as the stories of those around him came to painful and vivid life in his thoughts. There were times when Firebrand thought he was becoming transparent, when torchlight shone through his extended hands, when he could