The Oath and the Measure

uncertainty, and he steeled himself for whatever surprises the ancient woman had in mind.

Druidism was only a rumor to most Solamnic Knights. Existing at the pale outskirts of the other religions, it seemed purposefully to go against them all, so that druids were called 'pagans' and 'heretics' by the Solamnic clergy. In some parts of Ansalon, they were said to worship trees; others practiced a strange and changeable magic, one that waxed and waned with the seasons rather than the mages' moons. There were darker things the lad had heard, but standing by the village bonfire, he pushed those frightening stories to the back of his mind.

He blinked nervously at the ugly old woman-hooknosed, a livid scar snaking down her right cheek. Only the gods knew where she had earned that badge of honor, and perhaps even they didn't know the customs of druids in Lemish.

This Lady Ragnell, wrinkled and scarred, was apparently the chief druidess, whatever that meant. The village folk and the guardsmen treated her with reverence and respect, much as the Knights would treat a noblewoman, but they also listened to her opinions and followed her decrees. Now Sturm had no choice but to listen. The old woman leaned forward on the throne, her black eyes aglitter.

'Solamnics are trespassers in these parts, lad. Or didn't you know?'

'I am bound on a journey to the woods beyond you,' Sturm declared in his best knightly manner. He strode forward and squared his shoulders, for the first time aware of the weeds and mud from the river fight. He wished he had the authority, the confidence of a Lord Alfred or Gunthar. His voice, new to challenge and proclamation, seemed frail and cracking in the midst of this rustic assembly.

Ragnell shrugged and folded her hands almost daintily in her lap. For a brief moment, more fleeting than a rising tongue of flame, Sturm imagined how she must have looked when she was young. She must have been striking then; perhaps she had even been beautiful. But a century had passed, and slowly she had receded into the wood around her, becoming gnarled and arboreal.

'Y'are bound nowhere, boy,' she replied. There was no unkindness in her voice, no menace. 'Y'are bound nowhere but here, until we figure on… your unriddling. Until that time, there's a place for you in the roundhouse, in a room we've prepared for your visit.'

'Perhaps there is better welcome for me,' Sturm suggested, 'at the house of Jack Derry.'

The druidess blinked. 'When Jack Derry left here,' she replied, 'the path brushed over with leaves and snow behind him. There's not a huntsman in Lemish could track him where he went, and none in my employ would want to.'

Sturm swallowed uncomfortably, averting his stare from the angular face of the druidess.

'Years have passed,' she maintained. 'No longer do I know of Jack Derry.'

Traitor! Sturm thought angrily, his face flushed and heated. He opened his mouth, but he could find no words.

'But I know your Order,' Ragnell continued, 'and I know history. And neither makes you a good introduction. Our country is still no friend of yours, our people no friend of the Order.'

'Which does not mean that I intend you harm,' Sturm replied.

'But it is more likely that you intend us harm than good,' the druidess answered, leaning back in the throne and looking off into the fire, as though she divined the future or gathered the past.

'It has always been so,' she continued quietly. 'Your Knights have ridden across this land like a plague of winds, scattering villages and hopes in the relentless pursuit of something you call lawful and good. But there was a time, only a few years ago, when the menace of your righteousness was swept back, almost swept away.'

'The Rebellion?' Sturm asked, remembering his flight through the snowy mountain pass in the care of Soren Vardis.

'The Outcrying, we call it,' Ragnell answered solemnly.

'When the peoples of Lemish and Southlund and Solamnia rose against a grim, self-righteous Order.'

She paused, revealing a crooked, gap-toothed smile.

'We just about broke the backs of your horsemen, too,' she proclaimed. 'I am Ragnell of the Sieges, you know.'

'I… I'm afraid our history does not… record that name,' Sturm replied, tactfully and haltingly. The old hag laughed and waved her knobby hand through the smoky air as though she brushed aside his history as well as his words.

'The Vingaard Keep fell to my forces, as did Castles Brightblade, di Caela, and Jochanan. But it's the fall of the Vingaard Keep that earned me my name.'

Dumbstruck, Sturm gaped at the cackling old woman. Instinctively he reached to his belt, but his shoulder wrenched and his hand groped the air aimlessly.

Little did it matter, Sturm thought bitterly as he gathered himself and locked gazes with the woman seated before him. For after all, his sword lay broken, wrapped in a blanket on Luin's saddle. He wished for a dagger, for garrote or poison-for anything to cut short the monstrous life that sat and gloated before him.

For this was the druidess of whom Lord Stephan Peres had spoken that day in the High Clerist's Tower when he had given Sturm the shield of Angriff Brightblade. This was the woman who had laid siege to Castle Brightblade- the woman who, if the darkest prospects were indeed true, had killed his father.

Through the dark, muddy back streets Mara wandered, the sounds of the gathering dropping away behind her, replaced by an odd, expectant silence-by the calls of nightingales and owls and, now and again, the faint and restless sound of a horse in a stable.

She followed the sound of the neighing to a barn at the edge of town. Luin was there, sure enough, and in the stall beside her was Acorn, tranquil with hay and home. For a moment, Mara hesitated before the animals, thoughts of escape seductive in her imaginings. Silvanost was an easy fortnight's ride from Dun Ringhill, and astride a healthy horse, she could be at the foot of the Tower of the Stars within ten days.

But there was Cyren to think of: Cyren, who had scurried away at the first sign of trouble and who no doubt roamed the nearby plains, building his web and mourning her capture and starting at noises in the night. Until she found him, she could not hope to leave.

Then there was Sturm Brightblade. He was clumsy, yes, and his fool's honor had cost her reunion and years and, back at the Vingaard River, almost her life. But a fool's honor is a kind of honor nonetheless. Whatever disaster Sturm had courted, he had done so with the best of intentions.

There in the hay-smelling stable, Mara leaned her face against the warm flank of Jack Derry's little mare. Acorn snorted drowsily, her thoughts no doubt on a well-earned sleep after a well-earned supper.

'I couldn't ride off and leave the simpleton, now, could I?' Mara asked nobody in particular, her chin resting on Acorn's back. 'Someone has to stay with him and protect him. The Lemish don't take kindly to his sort, and here he is in a hostile town, under guard and…'

She paused. Alertly she listened, her elven ears sharp and discerning, but it was only a mouse in the loft she heard.

'… and weaponless,' she whispered, completing her thought. 'But for that there is remedy at hand!'

Swiftly the elf maiden retrieved the broken sword, still wrapped in its blanket, and set out to find the smithy.

Weyland the smith was large even for his trade-large and ruddy, his forearms as big around as her waist. Though he was friendly enough and mild mannered, the mere physical presence of the man was enough to daunt her, and Mara lingered in the doorway of the smithy as the prodigious blacksmith seated himself on a bench and unwrapped the sword.

'This one, is it?' he asked, his voice like the rumble of rockslides in the mountains.

' 'This one'?' Mara asked. 'D'you mean you've seen it before?'

'Indeed I have, m'lady,' the smith replied, turning the gorgeous Solamnic hilt in his enormous, soot- blackened hand. 'I'm good at the remembering of an heirloom blade, on account of in Dun Ringhill, we seldom pass down anything more than poverty. This one I saw… oh, six weeks back or so. Middle of winter, it was, when Lunitari began her approach…'

'Into the same part of the sky as the white moon,' Mara said. She was surprised that the smith was a stargazer. 'The boy that brought it to you…'

'No boy, m'lady, but a full-grown bearded man,' the smith corrected, still examining the sword. 'From the