Galen Beknighted

In front of us was the troll from the rain-soaked highlands. In its eyes was a terrible, surpassing weariness, as if it had been called from something more than sleep or labor. From something we could not know yet.

Firebrand folded his hands ceremoniously. As he began, I started for him, stone in hand, but Brithelm grabbed me by the shoulders.

'Whatever it is, it is over, Galen,' Brithelm explained. 'He called this troll to life hours ago.'

'You are right, Brother Brithelm,' Firebrand whispered. 'Go to your death knowing you could have shared in this glory.'

Firebrand chanted yet again, something in an old and corrupt version of the Plainsman tongue, and a hot wind passed through the room, carrying on its waves the sound of an ancient wailing.

The troll came toward us, its yellowed teeth bared.

'He's conjured this up, Brithelm,' I whispered urgently. 'All you have to do in circumstances such as this is not put faith in the vision.'

'The eyes can be deceptive, Brother,' Brithelm agreed uneasily. 'And yet I do not believe-'

'You taught me this long ago in Warden Swamp,' I declared confidently. 'You taught me that the way to deal with illusions is simply to disbelieve them, simply to go about your business and let them break like waters around you.'

Brithelm cleared his throat, but I was halfway to the throne and Firebrand before he could speak. Swiftly the troll stepped between me and the Namer, but I looked beyond the formidable image and kept walking straight into the glaring, leering product of my enemy's imagination. And bumped into tough leathery skin, into muscle and gristle and claw.

'Galen!' Brithelm called out as I tumbled through the air into the rocks some twenty feet from my enormous and tangible foe. Dazed, I recovered my faculties just in time to see Firebrand climb a rope ladder into a tunnel halfway up the far wall, then pull the ladder up after him.

Just in time to see the troll turn and lurch toward me, finger-long claws switching and lashing in the dead air of the chamber.

Chapter XXII

I came to as Brithelm crouched over me in the Namer's chambers, as Firebrand vanished in the dark of the tunnel above us. It was still possible to get to the villain-my years of pastry and idleness at Castle di Caela had not yet slowed me to the point that I could not catch a one-eyed man in the dark.

There was, however, the matter of the troll in front of us.

'I thought you said that thing was an illusion,' I whined, rising painfully to my feet.

Brithelm smiled and shrugged. 'You have it mixed up with all those satyrs back in 'Warden Swamp,' he said and backed away as the troll approached, smacking his lips, breaking a long stalagmite from the chamber floor, then waving it above his head like a baton.

I looked about me. Suddenly the rocks I could gather and throw seemed much too small, my brother much too weak an ally, and all that vaunted Solamnic training was like Dannelle's riding instruction-well and good in the thinking about it, but dangerous in the face of the real thing.

The troll rushed between us, striking the stone floor a shivering blow. The chamber shook, and for a moment, I thought the troll had shaken it. But it shook again, and the monster lost its footing, stringing slobber through the air as it staggered and turned.

Serenely Brithelm picked up a rock and bounced it harmlessly off the troll's leathery nose. The monster's eyes crossed in consternation, and it looked up in search of its assailant.

'Over here!' Brithelm warbled. And then 'Over here!' echoed in the cavernous chamber from somewhere behind the troll. Stupidly the monster turned toward the sound of the echo.

Brithelm winked and called out again.

'Oh, yoo-hoo!'

The troll pivoted left in a complete circle and staggered a little.

I crouched and picked up a couple of stones. Then I saw that my brother was spinning the creature again and again, in slow circles, toward the rockface and the tunnel.

Brithelm sat down, crowed, and flashed green flame from his waving hands, and the troll, who had crouched for a better whack at its target, paused for a moment, dizzy and uncertain at the prospect of this fire.

In a split second, I understood Brithelm's tactic.

The troll crouched, and its gray, knotty back formed an incline of sorts, its shoulders no more than a good athletic leap from the mouth of the corridor above us. Before I could consider further, I was running, building up speed across the floor of the cavern, and the monster had only started to turn when I vaulted onto its backside like a kender acrobat, my legs still churning and arms windmilling, the sheer momentum carrying me up the steep incline of the back onto its shoulders and, in a leap sparked more by fear than by strength or dexterity, headfirst into the mouth of the tunnel.

Firebrand's putting on the crown had done more than muster trolls from the masonry. I have heard that down the hall from us, where Shardos and Ramiro were failing against impossible numbers of Que-Tana, the skirmish stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Blearily, the Plainsmen gaped at one another, thoroughly lost and distracted by a wave of darkness that passed through their hearts. All around the echoing library, staff and sling and spear toppled to the floor as the Que-Tana fighters struggled to recover their bearings.

Ramiro, of course, was battle-hardened enough to know an advantage when he saw one. Despite fatigue and bruises, at once he grabbed Shardos's wrist and lurched in the direction Brithelm and I had gone, intending to cut a path through the Plainsmen around him on his way to rejoining us.

Shardos, however, was having none of it. To everyone's surprise, but especially Ramiro's, the old juggler braced himself on the stony floor of the chamber. Ramiro stopped, puffed angrily, turned to berate the blind man… and discovered a chamberful of wide dark eyes, staring at the two of them expectantly.

The caverns began to tilt then, to shake and rumble ominously.

'The one-eye,' one of the Plainsman said tentatively, looking about him uneasily as dust and gravel tumbled from the dome of the chamber. 'The one-eye. The Namer. He is not…'

The lean, pale Que-Tana paused, his brow wrinkled.

'I do not remember a Namer. What is he supposed to be?'

'Look around you,' Shardos said confidently. 'Where is the one-eye when the world shakes?'

'But he is the Namer!' a young woman protested. 'He keeps… keeps…' A look of profound uncertainty passed over her face.

'Keeps what?' Shardos pressed eagerly, freeing his gnarled arm from Ramiro's grasp.

'I… I do not remember, except the Namer knows,' the woman replied. 'He also knows the way to the Bright Lands.'

Several of the Que-Tana looked nervously toward the roof of the chamber again.

'If one…' Shardos began cautiously, ignoring the impatient tugging of Ramiro at his sleeve and the shudder of the earth at his feet, 'If one were to show your people the way to the Bright Lands… and know the things that the Namer keeps…'

All eyes turned to the juggler eagerly.

'He would be the Namer,' a small child piped.

It was exactly what Shardos wanted to hear.

'I am not sure such a conclusion follows, my dear,' Shardos said with a deep breath. 'What I am sure of is that there is more than one version of every story and more than one way out of every cavern. Sometimes even more than two ways, two versions. These caverns are old, worn smooth by water. I know many ways out of them.'

'Shardos!' Ramiro hissed. 'What-'

'Would you like me to show you one of those ways?' Shardos asked, his blank stare still leveled on the Que-