The Oath and the Measure

Dauntless Jeoffrey got thrown from his horse when this little yellow lizard fell out of the branches of a vallenwood onto the poor creature's nose. The other Jeoffrey twin-Master Balthazar, is it?'

'Beaumont, Reza,' Sturm corrected, setting his foot to the stirrup. The saddle shifted somewhat, and he stepped back with a frown.

'Master Beaumont… rides through a spiderweb and startles himself, and it gets worse when the spider that built the thing is the size of a thumb and bites him.'

Sturm grinned in appreciation.

'So this Master Beaumont turns his filly about and gallops away, and nobody sees him until three days later, and we all think the forest has swallowed him, too. He came back nigh impossible to recognize, what with his face all swollen from the spider bites.'

Reza tightened the cinch of the saddle and stepped back to admire his handiwork.

'But what about Lord Stephan, Reza?' Sturm asked.

'There's what happened to Master Derek,' Reza urged slyly, winking at Sturm.

'Very well. You know I can't resist. What happened to Derek?'

'Ran into a tree.'

'A tree?'

'Thorn tree. Master Derek says it sprung up before he could stop his horse. A low branch caught him in the chin, and the next thing he knows, he's in the Tower infirmary and it's two days later.'

Sturm stifled a laugh. It almost lifted the sadness of defeat and leaving.

'But, Reza,' he insisted, sobering, loading his belongings onto Luin's back. 'What of Lord Stephan? It grieves me that I cannot say good-bye.'

'The oddest thing, it was,' the servant said, staggering under the weight of the breastplate until Sturm lifted it from him and hoisted it onto the mare. 'For in the midst of all of this, there was music playing.'

'Music!' Sturm exclaimed in alarm.

'We all heard it, but none of us knew where it came from.'

Sturm frowned, started to speak, then remained silent as old Reza prattled on.

'It was all around us. Sound of the flute, it was, and the branches all swaying with the melody, and the birds all chiming in. It weren't but a moment until Lord Stephan answers the notes with that battered old bugle of his, and for the first time, it sounds like a musical instrument, and the birds answer the bugle notes in turn.

'Then a green path opens in the woods. I saw it. It started up not a yard from my feet. Winds between the trees, it does, like a carpet leading up to the dais at a coronation. Lord Stephan starts laughing like the red moon has struck 'im. Then 'At last!' says he. 'At long last, something!' and off down the path he rides, laughing like a madman.'

'Did nobody try-' Sturm began, but the old servant was bent on finishing the story.

'He rides off at a gallop, his armor sprouting greenery as he's riding, and he's laughing, his old laugh booming amongst the birdsong and the flutes. Lord Alfred galloped after him, would have cut him off and reined in the horse, too, but Lord Stephan brushes him aside and says 'No,' he says. 'No, I have been about this for years,' and he laughs and goads the horse toward this thick stand of oak, and it was like a stand of trees in front of him opens up to let him in and then closes behind him real nice and quiet, so the forest looks like it always did before we come there. We searched for Lord Stephan until late afternoon, halooing and sending out the dogs, but those of us the woods hadn't swallowed nor run off were a mite skittish about the business, as you might imagine…'

Sturm nodded absently, his thoughts on Lord Stephan. It was a strange tale, but like so many strange tales he had heard, it had a whiff of the familiar to it. He would not mourn the vanishing of Lord Stephan Peres, nor was he even inclined to go look for the old man. There was something sudden and wise in his disappearance, as though Lord Stephan had looked around and discovered he had outlived the Order.

Reza went on for a few minutes more-some involved story about how everyone blamed everyone else for the mishaps in the deer park. He stood back as Sturm climbed into the saddle.

'There's more than a few of us, Master Sturm,' the old man said, patting Luin's flank reassuringly, 'that look forward to our own eighty-fifth year and what it brings.'

'I hope my own is like that of Lord Stephan Peres,' Sturm replied, and he turned Luin's head toward the gate.

Sturm was two days traveling back to Solace, passing through the Virkhus Hills and onto the Solamnic Plains, following the same path he had taken two weeks, a season, a lifetime ago. His only company was a growing sense of loss-of something irrecoverable that lingered at the edge of his thoughts like a half-remembered melody.

Now the Hart's Forest had meaning to him as he passed south of it. It shimmered green and orderly at the edge of his sight, and for a brief moment, Sturm thought of venturing north, of combing its measured recesses in search of the vanished Lord Stephan.

He decided against it. Had not Stephan waved the lot of them away, plunging into green thought and green shade with a willing heart?

To each his own, Sturm thought sourly, but he knew that did not sum it up.

Down through the plains he rode, keeping the river safely to his east. The double towers of Castle di Caela loomed for a while in a foggy eastern distance, but Sturm had no desire to return there. On he galloped, past Thelgaard Keep and over the border to Southlund, where a day's ride brought him to Caergoth and the sea. All the while, he waited expectantly for a music that did not return.

He kept the armor hidden safely away, wrapped in canvas and secrecy, until he was on the Straits of Schallsea. It was as Raistlin had said: The North could eat you alive. Solamnia was dangerous country for Solamnics, more dangerous still for the grim and embattled Order.

He did not look back as he crossed.

After he set foot on dry land at the northernmost reach of Abanasinia, the travel was easy, the familiar sights rising like fog or music upon a distant plain. There were the mountains-the rounded Eastwalls and the imposing Kharolis Range behind them-and once he caught sight of a tribe of Plainsmen loping soundlessly on the western horizon, framed by sunset and distance and their dark magic.

'Home,' he whispered, and he tried to feel something of home: a wistfulness, a burning in the depths of his heart. He felt none of those bookish sentiments. Indeed, he felt nothing at all but a sense of recognition-that these were places he had seen before, and from this point on, he would not be lost on the road.

Nothing was home, he decided. Not Solamnia. Not here.

Homecoming did mean pleasant reunions. Sturm rode into Solace to find Caramon busy with hammer and peg in the village square, putting the finishing touches on a curious scaffolding and stage.

Caramon's greeting was brisk, enthusiastic. Smarting from the big man's bear hug, Sturm rubbed his shoulder and examined the handiwork before him.

'It's for Raist,' Caramon maintained proudly, seating himself unceremoniously on the grass and reaching for a jug of water. 'To raise us some traveling money.'

The big man winked and rubbed his fingers together in an innocent imitation of a worldly merchant.

'How exciting,' Sturm said, regarding his old friend soberly. 'And where will your travels take you, Caramon?'

'To the Tower of High Sorcery,' Caramon whispered, beckoning Sturm closer. 'In Wayreth Forest. To the first big test of my brother's magic.'

'Don't you… have to be invited, Caramon?'

'That's just it, Sturm,' the big man replied. 'Raistlin has been invited. He has been tested early and long, and they have found him worthy!'

Caramon beamed and nodded toward the far end of the green. There, in a dazzle of sunlight, a slight red- robed figure pivoted and murmured, dark birds dancing in his hands and at the hem of his garment.

Tested and found worthy? Sturm thought as he watched the young mage at practice. Sleight of hand, I suppose, and perhaps an array of mirrors and smokes. It's not that easy when you venture forth, because the whole green world itself is deceptive and pipes mysteries at you from places beyond your knowing.

It's a music that just about killed me. But despite it all, I still have the Measure and the Oath.

Sturm frowned. The thought did not seem consoling.

But I could have had other things, had I chosen. There are choices out there, Raistlin. And the best part of