The Oath and the Measure

the skies opened up from the Clerist's Tower all the way to the Vingaard River, which tilted and boiled in the fierce downpour of rain.

Chapter 10

A Change in the Weather

In the Southern Darkwoods, kneeling above the clear green pool in the midst of the clearing, Vertumnus stirred the waters playfully. His fingers skimmed the surface of the pool, showering droplets over the image of Sturm and Mara trapped in a rainstorm miles away. Evanthe and Diona watched delightedly as the image shivered and dispersed and formed again.

'Drown them!' Evanthe hissed wickedly, her pale hands brushing a lock of hair from the Green Man's brow.

'Drench and douse them!' urged Diona.

'Only a rain,' Vertumnus laughed and stirred the waters again. 'The grass needs watering.'

'Only a rain?' Evanthe whispered. 'Only a rain, when you could do such marvels…'

'As the winds would rumor for ages,' Diona coaxed, finishing her sister's sentence. 'The things you could do, Lord Wilderness, had you the mind and the imaginings and… and the gumption!'

Vertumnus ignored the dryads, crouched, and breathed on the surface of the waters.

In the pool's misty reflection, seen from afar, as though they appeared in a crystal ball or a Dragonorb, the young man and the elf maiden huddled together, gray shapes in the driving rain. Suddenly, from the bundled shadows an arm lifted, pointing toward a hillside, a distant shelter. They hastened toward it, their shapes dwindling into the net of rain. Behind them, scuttling and gibbering to itself, a drenched spider followed tamely.

'Rain falls on the just,' Vertumnus murmured, and waved his hand over the pool, 'and the unjust.'

The mists parted on the surface of the water, revealing an encampment in a copse-a tattered web between two junipers, and a thatch-covered cabin only recently abandoned. The waters of the pool stilled and settled, and at the edge of the image, a hooded light bobbed from reflected tree to reflected tree-a lantern in the hand of a dark, caped figure.

'Ah,' sighed Lord Wilderness and leaned forward until his face nearly touched the surface of the water. Quietly he whistled something in the magical tenth mode, which the old bards used to look through rock and over distance and sometimes into the future.

The image shivered, and the dark man in the copse lifted the lantern to his own inscrutable face.

'Boniface!' Vertumnus exclaimed. 'Of course!'

Quietly, efficiently, the finest swordsman in Solamnia inspected the clearing and encampment. He stepped into the cabin and emerged, almost in one breath, frowning and looking about. Stroking his long, dark mustache, he stood beneath the broken web, apparently lost in thought, and then, as if he had known all along the direction in which his search would take him, wheeled about and vanished from the clearing, the blue evergreens closing behind him like the water's surface over a diver.

'Who is he?' Evanthe breathed.

'Yes,' Diona echoed. 'Who is he? And why does he follow them?'

'Just a shadow in the snow,' Vertumnus replied. 'But where is the mistress? For her path will cross with his.'

The dryads looked at one another in disappointment.

'That hag?' Diona asked scornfully. 'What would you with her, when the likes of us are here?'

'That old carrion bird,' Evanthe said. 'She smells of dark earth and death. No herbs in creation can cover those smells.'

'Where is she?' Vertumnus repeated.

And as he awaited her arrival, he stared at the settling surface of the pool and lifted the flute to his lips.

'This will make a lean-to of sorts,' Sturm sputtered as he spread his cloak between outstretched branches of oak and water maple. A makeshift tent, it was, but already the cloth sagged with the downpour.

'Of sorts, it will,' Mara said. 'But not a good one. The rock is limestone here. Cave country, I'll wager.'

'Then you have my blessing to search for caves,' Sturm said curtly. The long trek and the rain had worn away his patience. Silently he knotted the last corner of his cape to a maple limb, then stood back to admire his handiwork.

Eagerly, water beading and flickering on his bulbous black abdomen, Cyren scurried into the patchwork shelter. He crouched, obscured behind a thicket of his own legs, and rumbled contentedly as Mara, standing outside in the rain, turned impatiently to face her Solamnic companion.

'You're no woodsman, are you?' she asked, as the cape bellied with water and the branches leaned together.

Sturm watched glumly as his encampment collapsed, sending a sputtering, chittering Cyren out into the rain and halfway up a nearby oak. It was then that the music rose again, weaving through the rain and rising loudly above Cyren's scolding and the intermittent crashes of thunder. Mara looked at Sturm in astonishment.

In turn, he looked back at her, masking his own considerable surprise.

'We'll follow the sound,' he said. 'And if there are caves we are meant to find… well, we will find them.'

The elf opened her mouth to protest, but her odd escort with his serious demeanor and ill-fitting armor had turned away from her, plunging into the sheeted rain.

Mara couldn't see Sturm's smile of amusement, for this magical music might inveigle and distract him, might lead him astray or dump him in a swamp somewhere. But this one evening, Vertumnus had done him two favors: The music led him somewhere, at least. And it had stopped the infernal elven complaining.

* * * * *

The nearest cave was less than a mile from the copse. Cyren spotted it first from above. Rumbling excitedly, he motioned his companions toward the small, bramble-covered mouth of the cave. But his enthusiasm cooled when Sturm made it clear that Cyren should precede them into the darkness. The idea, of course, was that a giant spider made a more formidable entrance than young man or elf maiden, but Cyren moved cautiously, extending one leg, then another, then a third, as though he walked over coals. Clicking nervously and startling at his own echo, he poked his head into the cavern, then backed out again, staring at Sturm so dolefully that he might have been pathetic had he not been so ugly.

Sturm waved the spider back toward the cave once, twice, a third time-each time less patiently than the first. Finally, when Cyren balked again, the lad drew his sword and quietly but firmly waved once more.

Muttering, the creature entered the darkness and crouched in terror at the cavern entrance. Assured at last that the place was empty and safe, the transformed prince spun a web in its farthest corner and went to sleep contentedly, dreaming strange dreams in which elven towers and beautiful girls stood side by side with bats and swallows and flying squirrels-countless winged and succulent animals entangled in sticky thread. Luin entered next and stood, warm and dripping in the center of the cave, until Luin, too, fell asleep and dreamed the fathomless dreams of horses.

Mara and Sturm sat together by a smoldering fire near the mouth of the cave, too wet and miserable to sleep. Sturm had taken off his breastplate and set it by Cyren's web, giving the spider more than one cautious glance as he did so. Carefully, almost daintily, he had removed his boots, poured the water from them, and set them to dry by the fire. Mara was much less fastidious. Shivering in her sodden furs, her dark hair matted to her forehead, she seemed to be courting pneumonia.

She could have done the sensible, indeed the healthy thing, by drying herself and slipping out of the furs into a warm blanket. Indeed, Sturm's promise that he would look the other way gave her pause for a moment, until she