The Oath and the Measure

settled ominously on the overhanging branches of an enormous vallenwood. As large as small dogs, they were, and they croaked their song dryly, as though reluctant to sing at all. Hollis lifted another herb, a gray lotus flower this time, to the lips of the lad, and he shivered at the touch and taste of it. For a moment, it seemed that a horned battle-axe hovered above Sturm, preparing to descend with indifference upon the guilty or innocent. In this menacing light, Sturm dreamed the second dream, caught in the ravens' music.

This time he was in the High Clerist's Tower, on the battlements overlooking the courtyard.

Sturm floated above the soldiers in the smoke of the campfires. For there were soldiers camped in the tower, huddled close behind the sheltering walls against winter and snow and something… something outside those walls, waiting.

It was all the sieges Sturm had ever imagined. He swallowed nervously and floated from fire to fire, borne on the rising smoke from the flames.

The soldiers were infantry, commoners. Some wore the badges of Uth Wistan, some of MarKenin, some of Crownguard, of all things. All wore the badges of a beaten army. They were soggy from the snow, and their eyes were dull and furtive. The Knights strode through them like herdsmen, and not a word passed between Knight and soldier.

'What is it?' Sturm called down to one of the Knights. 'What has… has Neraka…'

Unhearing, the Knight turned toward him and stared through him. It was Gunthar Uth Wistan, almost unrecognizable beneath gray hair and beard.

Whatever had come to pass, the battle must have aged him ten years. Suddenly the sound fled the courtyard, carrying away the murmur of armies, the crackle of fire, the clank and clatter of readying weapons, and a familiar voice rose beside him.

Vertumnus stood on the battlements-in Brightblade armor, of all things! He was wild and disheveled, almost a leafy version of Angriff Brightblade, and Sturm started at the resemblance. Lord Wilderness pointed to the courtyard and again began to recite, his voice soft and haunted.

As he spoke, a desolate column of troops mustered by the gates. A grizzled sergeant at the head of the column looked up to the battlements, his eyes meeting Sturm's as Vertumnus recited the bleak, inevitable story.

They looked diminished, frail in their armor and swords and pikes as they assembled, stamped the cold from their feet, and fell into line behind the mounted Knights. I could single out Breca in the foremost column, standing a head taller than those around him, and once, I believe, he glanced up to where I was standing, the flatness of his eyes apparent even from a distance, even despite the shadows of the wall and the dark air of the morning. And perhaps because of that darkness, there was no expression I could see on his face, but there is an expression I remember…

For if an expression could be featureless, void of fear and of dread and finally of hope, containing if anything only a sort of resignation and resolve, that was Breca's expression and those of his companions, saying 'This is not what I imagined but worse than I expected,' and nothing more than that when the doomed gates opened…

'Do not be afraid, Sturm,' Vertumnus whispered, his eyes wheeling like moons struck from orbit. 'I am with you. Do you understand, Sturm? Do you understand now?'

'I… I think so,' Sturm said to the glittering stare of Lord Wilderness. 'It is… that even the Oath and Measure can be betrayed by… by madness.'

'No,' Vertumnus said, his voice a whisper in Sturm's thoughts. 'That's not all of it.' He smiled again, this time more wickedly. 'You see… the Oath and Measure are the madness!'

Vertumnus seized Sturm by the shoulders and turned him to face the assembling army below him. 'Those are the ones the Measure kills,' he whispered insistently as the soldiers stirred uneasily, shifting their weights and weapons. 'That is the blood upon which your honor floats, those the bones upon which your Code is raised. This huge Solamnic game is always with us, as simple and poisonous as our own proud hearts!'

Spoken like a madman, Sturm thought, and he fell from the dream into an unsettling blackness. Sturm would never know how long he slept.

'Well enough,' the druidess announced.

The afternoon had passed into evening. In the distance, the forest was loud with the call and response of nocturnal animals, and above the clearing, the first stars were shining, green in the harp of Branchala, and red Sirrion floated like a burning galleon into the vault of the sky.

Hollis looked up at Vertumnus, her face even younger than when the healing had begun. 'He has survived the first two dreams. The third is easy, if he has the will and the stomach for it.'

'None of them is easy, Hollis,' Vertumnus replied with a curious smile. 'You are not Solamnic, so the Dream of Choosing seems simpler than the others. It is actually the most painful.'

In the distance, the lark lifted its voice. Hollis nodded serenely and touched Sturm's eyelids with a double- bloomed rose-one blossom red, the other as green as a leaf. Vertumnus began to play his flute, and as he did, silver Solinari drifted over the clearing, spangling the leaves of the vallenwood and of the oak, the holly in the hair of the druidess, and the green locks of Lord Wilderness.

Chapter 20

The Last of the Dreaming

The birdsong was shrill and insistent about him — jay and sparrow, the tilting sound of the robin, and loud above all the larksong that haunted his ears when he moved and the singing died.

Sturm sat up and looked around. He was where they had carted him, as best he could reconstruct from his fevered, fitful moments of waking. The pool was there, and the oak, and the grassy, sunstruck clearing, but Vertumnus and his party were all gone-no Jack Derry nor dryad nor druidess. Sturm lay alone at the foot of the oak, his armor and sword beside him, neatly arranged, so that it seemed like a husk or abandoned cocoon.

He reached over and touched the breastplate. The bronze kingfisher was unnaturally warm, green with verdigris and neglect, as though the armor had lain there for some time. Pensive, Sturm pulled the shield toward him, blinking at the dust-muted sun on its dented boss.

Suddenly someone coughed behind him. He started at the noise, spinning about.

Ragnell stood at the edge of the clearing, her dark eyes fixed on him.

'Y-You!' Sturm exclaimed, reaching for his sword. He checked himself at once. She was, after all, an old woman, and the Measure forbade-

'My intentions are peaceful,' Ragnell announced. 'Peaceful but instructive.'

'I… I must have been wounded,' Sturm explained as the light hurt his eyes and the clearing swam and rocked. 'I must have… must have been…'

Ragnell nodded. 'Seven nights,' she said. 'A week you have slumbered. And there were dreams, I trust. Momentous dreams of things to come, which you might call prophecy but I should call augury…'

Her words confused him, but her voice was slow and insinuating. It twined into Sturm's thoughts with the subtlety of weeds and overgrowth, until he wasn't sure whether he was thinking the words or she was saying them. He shook his head, trying to dislodge her voice, and when that failed, he tried to stand.

'I'm wounded still,' he said, his voice dry and breathless.

'Of course you are, Sturm Brightblade,' the druidess replied, her tanned and wrinkled face expressionless. 'The thorn is still with you, deep in your shoulder, next to your heart.' Ragnell watched him intently. 'Look at your hands,' she commanded.

Sturm did as she said, and he gasped at the sight. Green raced through his veins. His fingernails, too, were green. His hands were dark and leathery, like those of Lord Wilderness.