Galen Beknighted

as part of some huge and fatal design established in the cloudy past of the Age of Dreams.

That was why he was not surprised when his sleeves burst into flame in the corridor and, shouting and spinning like an enormous fireworks display, he pinwheeled up the corridor, straight into a geyser rising from the artesian well, which whirled him about and extinguished him.

And yet, in that blaze of glory, an obscure tutor had saved a shimmering array of Solamnic knighthood and nobility, for the sharp eye of Bradley the engineer caught a glimpse of light wavering down the corridor-the left one, it was, to the young man's great delight-and, pointing out the glimmer to the head engineer and the Lady Dannelle, he proceeded to guide the expedition to its source in the smoldering, smarting tutor.

From there, it was a matter of pickax and shovel against rock, a task taking less than an hour.

Far below the clamor of metal and stone, below the rescue party and below those they had set out to rescue, below the great dale worm Tellus, who stirred uneasily in his hundred thousand years of sleep, the caverns dropped away into nothing, and nothing dropped away into the Abyss. Where Sargonnas waited, watching events unfold.

The dark god frowned. There was a whining at his ear, thin and incessant, like the choiring of mosquitoes.

Something was wrong.

He had plotted so carefully all that had come to pass: hundreds of years ago, setting a dark passage in front of the Scorpion and even darker thoughts in his heart, and at almost the same time finding the Namer through the depths of the opals…

It was all so elaborate and beautiful.

And yet, Sargonnas thought now, turning uncomfortably in the black vacuum of the Abyss, and yet there are too many of them. Wherever 1 look are unforeseen people: the sharp-eyed, mournful Knight and the merry blind juggler, the girl and the priest and the dog…

And since he put on the crown, I have not heard from the Namer anymore. Too variable these mortals were, and something was about to happen that was beyond contingencies.

He stirred, anxiously scanning the Vingaards and the plains and the subterranean cavern beneath both.

He could not figure it. Too many and variable they were.

'Something the Scorpion said in the parchment…' Bayard began thoughtfully, scrambling urgently for answers as the fissure brimmed over and the chamber around his party began to fill with water. 'Some clue to that damnable distant machinery…'

His companions paused expectantly, their gazes moving from the dark mechanism faintly seen by some, only imagined by others, until every eye was on Bayard, who frowned, shifted himself on Enid's shoulder, and turned to Brandon Rus.

'Though you may uncover my devices, the note said, you will never strike the mark nor hit the target. It's easy and direct, and wouldn't that be the Scorpion's greatest joke, that for all his machineries, the key is not subtle at all but is in fact the simple head of an arrow? That spot in the center of the device, Brandon,' he urged as the fissure before them spilled water over their feet and the ceilings rained. 'The dark spot, like the pupil of the eye. Can you shoot it with a bow?'

'I don't… Well, it's a terrible long shot from here through cascading water.'

'And yet it seems what we must do,' Bayard pressed, his gray-eyed stare intent on the younger Knight.

Still Brandon Rus hesitated, looked to the shadowy distance.

'Then step out to knee-deep and hold your breath, damn it!' Sir Robert roared. 'You heard Sir Bayard, boy!'

Brandon leapt at the old man's order. In a moment, he was at the edge of the fissure, drawing the powerful bow.

'I'll have to figure weight, and distance, and differences in height, and who knows how thick that mist is across there.'

'Brandon!' Enid urged. 'I saw you hit a target through a second-story window in the middle of a rainstorm! Is this talent of yours good for anything besides tricks?'

Brandon stepped back, wounded. 'There was the one time, though…'

'Damn the one time!' Enid screamed, reaching out and grabbing the young Knight by the sleeve. 'Either make the shot or give me the bow and I'll do it.'

Brandon Rus paused for a moment, then sprang toward action, his feet in the water before he thought too much about it. One step out, then two steps.

Then his submerged foot felt nothing beneath it.

How can I shoot through this obscurity? he thought, his strong hand trembling as he raised the bow.

The light behind him shifted over the gray mist like the light over a desolate sea. It flickered on the far wall before him, and the wall seemed to recede, to brighten and dim.

Brandon raised the bow, aimed at the turbulence, and was seized again by doubt. What if he missed?

Enid called out something unintelligible from behind him. She leaned over his shoulder and sighted along the shaft of the arrow as the young man aimed at the dark center of the thing at the far end of the chamber.

The lad took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Silently, with the archer's accuracy and skill that made him legendary, he shifted his aim, and the arrow rocketed into the head of the carved circling scorpion that adorned its border.

For a moment, Enid and Raphael cried out in dismay as the others squinted for a sight of the target across the dark distance. Brandon turned away, bowed his head.

'No, Brandon!' Enid shouted. 'By the gods, try again!'

'What-' Sir Andrew began.

'Wait!' Bayard said, standing knee-deep in the water, oddly supported by its buoyancy. 'The device… I am the device!'

'I beg your pardon?' Sir Robert asked, and Bayard Brightblade began to laugh in relief.

'Brandon Rus,' he explained softly, the water rising to midthigh, 'has still never missed. For the device was no gnomish machinery, but the Scorpion's firm conviction that there was never a Solamnic Knight who could leave well enough alone.'

'I beg your pardon?' Sir Andrew interrupted.

'Raphael,' Bayard ordered, 'look at the target and tell me what you see.'

The lad squinted as he looked out over the waters.

'The same as before, sir. It is still shifting. Almost looks alive.'

'It is alive indeed,' Bayard replied, wading back toward his comrades, the water to his waist.

'I beg your pardon?' Enid and Raphael asked in unison, and the lord of Castle di Caela laughed again, this time more heartily.

'The fabled 'device,' ' he explained, 'was no mechanism, but a simple plot. The Scorpion knew that if we found the eye of the worm, which for all the world, I gather, resembles an archer's target, we would do our Solamnic best to strike its center, thereby waking the monster with furious and maddening pain. The only machinery planted on the castle grounds was the parchment geared to draw me to this very spot.'

'This rapidly submerging spot,' Brandon Rus said somewhat urgently, offering his hand to Bayard Brightblade, who breasted the water in front of him.

'But what of the dale worm?' Sirs Robert and Andrew shouted simultaneously.

'It'll die and make you a hero, Robert,' Bayard announced. 'Looks to me like you've drowned the damned thing!'

'And us in the bargain,' Enid added, 'unless we get out of here-now!'

Sputtering, coughing water like a beached swimmer, Bayard climbed out of the brimming pool, sidestepping the jetting warm streams from the great well. Again Brandon lifted the older Knight to his shoulder, and as swiftly as his youth could enable and his burden allow, he waded up the corridor, water rising in the tunnel behind him. He stumbled, his strength failing, and called out to those following. And all of them-Enid, Andrew, Robert, and Raphael, gasping at the steam and sliding rock-hauled Bayard and his rescuer back up the corridor. When they reached