Balifor and the green lands closer to home, a journey so long that I wondered if he had housed himself under his own roof for more than a night before setting off again. He reclined beneath the autumn sky, staring on high at the stars in the Harp of Branchala. A glass of Thorbardin Eagle rested atop his ample stomach, and his huge head, its long black curly locks spread like a fan, rested in the lap of a Plainswoman I had never seen before, all paint and nose rings and torrid attention.
He was in good hands, it seemed, though hands that might threaten his heart with their energies.
I had spoken to the big Knight and was returning to our campfire when the Que-Nara Namer took his place at the central fire and began his telling. The voice sounded familiar, and at once I stopped and squinted toward the great monumental blaze.
The Que-Nara Namer was a black man dressed in motley, and a long, barrel-chested dog squatted beside him.
'Shardos!' I whispered. Of course it was Shardos. It surprised me how I had missed it all along.
The juggler crouched before the fire as he told of the first days of our adventure. From his patchwork robe, he took some glittering tools and began to speak of Longwalker.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see the big Plainsman standing beside me.
'Here,' he said, handing me a thin band of silver. 'Take this to the central fire. The juggler has need of it.'
At the moment I stepped into the light of the Namer's fire, Shardos's hand was extended. He smiled as I set the silver in his hand, and he began to tell
As my old friend spoke, all the events were set in place, from the banishment of Firebrand in the centuries past down to the Night of Telling and the Namer who seated himself before us. The old man told the stories in the present tense, his hands busy over the fire, twisting yet another piece of silver, which Longwalker himself had brought forth, onto the one I had given him. The Plainsmen nodded around him, their eyes closed as the things he told happened for the first time in their brilliant imaginings.
Shardos brought something from his pockets, and for the first time, I knew fully of what had occurred beneath Castle di Caela, knew of the dark god's plotting and how the thirteenth stone in the crown had shut its wearer in the past, where no voice, human or divine, could reach him through the stones.
But the end of the tale was the best part, for Shardos stood, holding aloft a silver circlet-the restored Crown of the Namer, adorned with twelve opals. Around him, the Que-Tana, robed against the light of the moons and stars, began the Song of Firebrand, the words of which made sense now. For, no longer twisted by that villain beneath the mountain, they found their fitting and proper hero there at the heart of the Telling.
As he stood amid his newfound and singing people, the juggler held aloft the thirteenth godseye, then handed it to Longwalker beside him, who passed it to Wanderer, who passed it to yet another Plainsman elder.
As the stone approached me from hand to hand, Shardos sang the names of the heroes, and the Plainsmen chanted back a refrain, as a thousand voices joined in committing those names to memory:
On he went, through Brithelm and Dannelle and Oliver and my own lost brother, but my eyes lost focus and my heart was peaceful as my own name was reconciled with a new and awaited meaning.
I turned, looking around me as though the celebration would be joined by all my friends and acquaintances, as though they all would be staring straight at me with looks of wonderment and suddenly discovered respect. But all eyes were on the Namer Shardos, who slowly slipped the crown onto his head.
All eyes except for those of Bradley, the young engineer, who was trying his skills on the intricate harnesswork that clothed a young Plainswoman about his age.
There was reconciliation all around me that night.
It spread all over the campsite and lasted the week. I remember the third night, remember Dannelle calling to me as Brithelm replaced me on the watch in early morning. I went to her, expecting that she had remembered at last some other thing she needed to scold me for, but it was not the case at all.
Instead, hers were the suggestions I had pondered making myself those many nights before on the crest of the Vingaards, before we all descended to the dark and the Que-Tana and my captive brother.
Dannelle said she had found the best of spots to bed down, safe but out of sight of the celebrants. That the spot was warm indeed, and surprisingly spacious.
Room enough for two, as she had calculated.
I believed her calculations were correct.
As we joined hands and slipped between brush and high grass to the place and circumstances she had in mind, she whispered to me words that told me the deeds I had dreamt of were preparing to come to pass.
'If you breathe a word of this, to anyone, I'll kill you.'
My story ends back at the castle, on a winter night in my firelit chambers.
Tomorrow some of my companions head west, Brithelm back to the mountains, where he will search for his scattered followers-for meteorological old women and insomniac captains and the beautiful night visitors. Together they will raise his abbey yet again and lure down the birds for omens.
Of all things, Father will join his middle son in the life contemplative. The clerical robe seems ill-fitting, ridiculous upon him. But then, my armor looked so on me not a month ago.
Father seeks monastic life, having left the moathouse to Gileandos, of all people. It seems there was an oath that the old man uttered somewhere beneath the foundations of Castle di Caela-something about gladly giving up all his holdings to see Gileandos again. Whatever the circumstances, the old scholar departed two nights ago for the moathouse, intent on returning to his library and his alembic, both of which smell of juniper and must.
I hear he was having trouble sitting in the saddle.
Something, no doubt, that took place underground.
As for me, I shall stay here at Castle di Caela for a while. Bayard is still confined by his injuries, and the Lady Enid will soon be confined under more delicate circumstances. Brandon Rus is gone on his pilgrimage, strangely lighter of heart, and Ramiro is packing his belongings (and the energetic Plainswoman) for a trip back to his castle in the Maw.
Someone will have to run this place in all the absences.
Sir Robert and I have a plan, you see, regarding horse races in the huge bailey yard. There is room for dogs in the restored grounds, and the servants have been put to work gathering up mechanical birds from storage.
Given a couple of months in which nothing dire happens, we will have this place back in order-a proper place
