Galen Beknighted

'I thank the twenty-one gods that I am alive,' he pronounced solemnly and returned to his reading.

'History!' he exclaimed delightedly. 'My favorite!'

A young woman, her patience stretched beyond restraint, snatched the paper from his hand.

'Does it just go on and on about architecture?' Brithelm asked her disappointedly. 'When I read history, I do love a good sword fight!'

'Well, then,' Firebrand broke in, his fingers twitching with impatience. 'About the deal we struck. As I recall, you have something to hand over to me, Sir Galen.' He leaned forward, his dark hair spreading over his face, covering dark brow and leather eye patch and burning solitary eye.

I stood my ground. We had come to a place where neither fear nor courage made any difference. Firebrand had us- my brother, Ramiro, and me-and he would do whatever he wanted, regardless of my cowardice or bravado.

'As I understand,' I replied, 'you have waited centuries for what I bring you. Wait but a while longer, while I greet my brother.'

I had no time for further words: Brithelm was on me, glad-handing me, thumping my back, and saying over and over again how happy he was that I had 'dropped in for a visit.'

His happiness, of course, made it clear that he had not heard about Alfric. But this was hardly the time for telling him. The way I had it figured, he stood to lose another brother in the coming hours.

'Actually, Galen,' Brithelm said into the fresh silence as the Que-Tana drew near us and listened, 'there's little else to do down here besides read and answer Firebrand's many questions.'

'Many… questions?' I asked, looking over my brother's shoulder into the menacing eye of our captor.

'I trust, Sir Galen, that the… amenities have ended,' he said coldly, an edge of anger in his voice. He extended his hand, palm up, and the air about us was charged, incandescent.

Slowly, reluctantly, I handed him the brooch. He trembled briefly and sighed when it lay in his hand. His Que-Tana bodyguards closed in a tight circle around him, their black eyes fierce and expectant. Ramiro, reclining all this time on a cot, rose to his feet and stood by me, looming.

'Now,' I said as Firebrand lifted the brooch to the light, examining it ecstatically, 'there is the matter of our leaving…'

'You have seen one another again, have you not?' he asked gruffly, his eye never leaving the glittering opals. 'That is all I promised, if I remember correctly.'

'Why, you mountebank of a…' Ramiro began, but the presence of a dozen glaring bodyguards rendered him discrete and silent.

Lowering the brooch and pinning it delicately to the shoulder of his robe, as smoothly and effortlessly as a woman prepares her jewelry for a banquet, Firebrand fixed his eye on me, regarding me directly. An ironic smile flickered across his face.

'You would make none too good a lawyer… Weasel, isn't it?' he asked playfully. 'Oh, yes, I know all of that business, for the stones in my crown allowed me to watch you finagle your way about that little backwater castle as you came into knighthood. You were better as a weasel, lad, with your slyness and gutter smarts. If you had left Brithelm where he was, had backed off from your foolhardy venture while you had the chance, you'd still have another brother in the Bright Lands. Indeed, you'd still have years ahead of you.'

He paused, rolling the staff in his dark hand.

'As it is, the years compress into minutes, and the Pathwardens themselves dwindle rapidly. I expect that your father back in Solamnia will think little of that honor of yours when he measures it against the lives of three sons and the death of his name.'

I started to answer him, but the words fled down a dark corridor, leaving me alone and speechless and downright miserable, knowing that beneath all Solamnic show and glitter, my father's heart would agree with this villain, that through the years remaining for the old man, a part of him would hate me for my high-minded stupidity, for the chivalry that cost him all his heirs. Firebrand stared at me and nodded, assured that his words had drawn the deepest blood.

'I'll take him for you, lad, entourage or not!' Ramiro whispered at my shoulder.

I shook my head disconsolately as the captor's words continued to sink and settle.

'Hardly the talk of a philosopher-king, Master Namer!' another familiar voice called out heartily behind me. I turned to see Shardos, his hands tied, escorted by two Plainsmen into the swimming light of the library.

'What would you know of philosophy, sirrah?' Firebrand growled, gripping the staff tightly.

'Oh… not that much,' Shardos replied, stepping away from his guards and walking cautiously across the chamber. He came to the very lectern against which Brithelm had stumbled and stepped around it deftly. 'Not that much. Only that it keeps a man from twitching after visions.'

'Is that so?' Firebrand asked, the anger rising in his voice. Then suddenly the anger rushed from him. His shoulders slumped and his eye softened, and he stared at the old juggler with a look of surprise and fascination.

'Attend to the gentleman!' he snapped at the guards. 'Can't you see that he is blind?'

Gruffly brushing aside the pale helping hands, Shardos seated himself atop a library table, his large hands gripping the yellowed wood. His blank eyes scanned the room.

I coughed loudly, intentionally. His gaze uncannily fastened on me.

'Sir Galen,' he said quietly, a strange half-smile on his face. 'It appears that we are all together again.'

'Except…' Ramiro began absently and caught himself. His meaty faced flushed with embarrassment at the prospect of almost having betrayed Dannelle's escape to the Que-Tana.

But Shardos caught the words and juggled them gracefully. 'Of course,' he said quickly. 'Except for my dog, whom I shall miss sorely.'

'Who is this man, Galen?' Firebrand asked, walking slowly toward the old man.

'Shardos is my name,' the juggler replied. 'Traveler, jongleur, purveyor of history and lore, and juggler to the courts of seven kings.'

'I see,' Firebrand said, a note of suspicion creeping into his voice. 'A juggler, you say?'

The Que-Tana Namer stood his ground now, a good knife's throw from the table and from Shardos. It was as though a wall of light lay between them, transparent but impenetrable. Firebrand circled Shardos, staring at him from every side, and it occured to me that our captor was afraid.

Afraid, no doubt, because he had not seen this man in his vaunted visions.

'A juggler? But-'

'It is every man's question,' Shardos interrupted. 'And there is no answer but in the juggling itself.'

The Plainsmen guards moved toward the blind man, but Firebrand raised his hand, waved them away.

'Juggler and… purveyor of lore?'

'Balance and sleight of hand are more common than they used to be, sir,' Shardos replied merrily. 'Nowadays a man has to branch out-to sing and tell stories while the bottles tumble butt over neck in the air. Mere jugglery is a poor man's trade, but you can eat when you throw in song and tale amidst the fruit and crockery.'

'Shall we escort him somewhere, Namer?' one of the guards asked.

'Song and tale?' Firebrand asked, ignoring his underling. Absently he walked to the obstructing lectern, his back to the juggler.

Almost as absently, Shardos began to sing:

'In the country of the blind, Where the one-eyed man is king And the stones are eyes of gods And pathways to remembering…'

'Enough!' Firebrand shouted, clutching the sides of the lectern. The silver circlet he wore on his head flickered with a dark light, and smoke blossomed from beneath his grasping fingers, singeing the wood.

Ramiro and I glanced sidelong at each other, and my big companion emitted a low whistle.

'Not fully mounted, this one,' he whispered to me as Firebrand spun toward Shardos with a rattle of bead and bone and a creaking of leather.

'So a snatch of old song comes back to you, juggler?' Firebrand asked, and what little civility was left in his voice he had banished entirely. 'But your primary talent… is legerdemain, is it not?'

Shardos said nothing, his gaze fixed somewhere far beyond his adversary. With a quick, powerful lunge,