of juniper. Half hidden in the shadow of evergreens and in the dodging light of the moon, he turned his face heavenward, listening to the music with controlled focus.
Something about his bearing seemed familiar… familiar indeed…
But he was gone before Vertumnus could look more closely, vanished into the green roil of clouds about the moon. At his vanishing, Vertumnus lowered the flute, and suddenly, as though a levelling wind had passed across its surface, Solinari blazed forth with a silver light…
Then suddenly, inexplicably, it began to wane.
Vertumnus shook his head sadly, his long green locks dripping with dew. Now he would locate the lad again, before the moon was a crescent, a sliver, before it was gone entirely into newness and dark. He would find the one who would occupy his time until the first of spring. Briskly, amusingly, he played a simple eighth-mode jig, so simple that it was scarcely magic. The dryads, hearing the song from their bowers deep in the woods, stepped from the trees and approached him, trailing oak leaves and a strange silver light.
'There are other dancers far more promising, Vertumnus,' Diona urged.
'One of the Knights,' Evanthe suggested. 'Even a brace of dwarves would be more entertaining.'
Vertumnus played on as though he did not hear them. Indeed Sturm looked like a plodding prospect, a singularly unimaginative young man bound by custom and convention. What the nymphs did not know was how this Bright-blade concerned him-how the quarrel at Yule had warred with Vertumnus over the months. It was time for the lad to learn difficult instruction, about blood and forbearance and the shimmering fraud at the heart of his beloved Order. In the absence of a father, Vertumnus had taken it upon himself to provide the lessons.
Evanthe had been right before. Vertumnus could have killed Sturm Brightblade once, twice, perhaps many times. For the dark thing that followed the lad on the fog-littered plains, a thing that answered to no man and to few gods, danced to the music of Vertumnus. It had neared the boy, had almost overtaken him, but at the last moment, the Green Man had piped it northward toward Kalaman and the bay beyond.
It was too soon for dark things, too soon to test the boy so strongly. There would be perils enough and eventual death. But not now, for the dance was young. And spring was still a fortnight away.
Quickly, in mist and the swelling moon, Vertumnus searched for Brightblade. Over the plains the music swept like a wind, circling about Vingaard Keep, down the great river as far as Thelgaard Keep and still searching, searching all of Solamnia until…
With the last solemn notes of the tune, the fog dissolved before an ancient castle, ruinous and abandoned. Vertumnus's dark eyes widened.
The dryads exchanged unreadable glances.
'He is there, Evanthe,' Vertumnus whispered. The last of the fog fell away, and there sat Brightblade, unsteady on his lathered mare. Shaken by fog and fire and a breakneck ride, he seemed diminished, small inside that absurd Solamnic armor.
'It almost makes for pity,' Diona said, her dark hand resting on the Green Man's shoulder.
'Not mine,' Vertumnus replied, in his voice a last hint of winter. 'My branches are bare of pity.'
So he and the owl and the dryads watched as the lad rode through the dilapidated gates of Castle di Caela.
'A place that you know, Lord Wilderness?' Evanthe whispered teasingly, her lips at the Green Man's ear. Vertumnus smiled, but he did not answer.
Sturm dismounted and walked the mare across the moss-covered stones of the courtyard, past booths and buildings in disrepair to the mahogany gates of the castle keep, weathered but still intact. The lad tried the door, and with some wrestling managed to yank it open.
'He's a strong one, your dancer!' taunted Diona. Vertumnus raised a long green finger to her lips, pressing playfully until the dryad winced and turned away.
Now the boy stepped inside, and the midday light shone briefly, fitfully into the darkness of the keep.
'He is in the great anteroom now,' Vertumnus murmured, 'with its tapestries, and its golden birds, and its marble banisters.'
'Tell us about it,' Evanthe whispered. 'Tell us, Vertumnus.'
Lord Wilderness closed his eyes and raised the flute to his lips. Something serene, perhaps, in a more magical mode, or something piercing and light…
'Vertumnus! Look!' hissed Diona. He opened his eyes as a shadowy figure crossed the distant courtyard like an unwelcome specter in a dream. From shadow to shadow flitted the man, caped and hooded and low against the walls. To the great mahogany door of the keep he came, set hand to the door…
… and closed it, violently and suddenly, wedging it shut with a dagger. As quickly as it had come, the figure slipped away, and from inside the keep came the muffled sound of the lad beating frantically, helplessly against the jammed door.
Vertumnus lay back in his hammock, the flute silent as his fingers danced across it aimlessly.
'That one,' he mused. 'That…
With a delighted smile, he turned to Evanthe.
'I know him! I know him by his gait, his every movement.'
With a laugh, he rumpled the hair of the dryads, pushing them playfully from the hammock.
'Go to the lady, Evanthe! Diona! Tell her the dance has become more interesting by far!'
And as the nymphs rushed off through the thick evergreens, Vertumnus leapt from the hammock and shook the mist from his long green locks. He slipped the flute into his belt and scrambled from the tree. A long journey lay ahead of him, but it was short compared to the road he had traveled for six years.
'Boniface!' he breathed. 'By all the stars unfortunate and fortunate, Lord Boniface Crownguard of Foghaven! He's onto something. Now the music moves more quickly.'
Boniface turned from the door of the keep, shaking his head to banish the strange humming noise in his ears.
He was content now. Surpassingly content. For now, the inquisitive lad was locked within the fastness of the tower.
It had taken all his riding and knowledge of geography to arrive at the castle before Sturm Brightblade. He had dismounted in the dark of the stables and slipped across the bailey, having barely the time to secure all the doors from the keep so that once the lad entered, it would be impossible for him to leave. All along the ground floor of the thousand-year-old tower, the doors were wedged impossibly shut. The sheer drop from the upper window was further assurance.
Boniface sighed, leading Luin to a rain-filled trough, from which the little mare drank loudly, the noise drowning out the hammering and shouting at the thick door, the unnatural gnat song in the winter air.
It was not the most pleasant of tasks, this locking of boys in towers. Sturm would most likely starve, and even if great good fortune let him escape, he would be delayed long enough from his forest appointment that his honor would be…
What was the Green Man's phrase? 'Forever forfeit.'
It had to be done, though, Boniface told himself as he led Luin toward the shadowy stable. It had to be done, because in asking after his father, Sturm might uncover the truth about the siege of Castle Brightblade.
He was too young to understand that truth, or how Angriff had threatened the very life of the Order.
Boniface rested his forehead against the warm flank of the mare, remembering. He remembered how Angriff Brightblade had returned from Neraka with visions, with extraordinary danger in his soul. At once they all had noticed the change in the man, how his swordsmanship flowered, how he had become more skilled and reckless and inventive.
Somehow it was a little… disturbing. After all, Angriff was newly wed at the time, and his father, Lord Emelin, had only recently passed into Huma's breast, leaving Castle Brightblade to the care of his son. It just seemed that Angriff would have been more… conservative.
Boniface shrugged and leaned against the trough.
Angriff had been a puzzle. Always a puzzle. Like that time in the garden, shortly after he returned, when the two of them had walked a narrow path lined with flowers, Boniface a dozen steps behind him and the air loud with finches and sparrows.
