magic is that you can choose.
To the last of this and of anything, you can choose. I hope you will choose honorably.
Heedless to the arrival of his old friend, the young mage stretched his arms, shivered in the spring wind as a cloud passed over the sun, and climbed the steps of the newly finished scaffold. It looked like party games to Sturm, like a clever child's magic show, as bottles and birds and blue flames whisked through the air and vanished.
Soon a crowd began to gather, villagers from Solace, farmers from the outlying countryside, even a dwarf or two and a curious kender, of all things, standing at the back of the crowd, craning to see the events of the scaffold. Somewhere in the milling and murmuring of all these people, where the guttural remarks of the dwarves mingled with the broad accents of country folk and the melodious southern talk of Haven and Tarsis and far-off Zeriak, the faint sound of a flute arose and lingered, sowing the air with promise.
Epilogue
Once more the year turned, and after it another spring, cold and forbidding. And Lord Gunthar Uth Wistan passed through Solace.
His stay was brief. Sturm's solitary cottage was a bit cramped and humble for a prominent Solamnic Knight, and there was something in Lord Gunthar that balked at the idea of his good friend's son having settled beneath a thatched roof, sleeping on a hard dirt floor.
Gunthar left provisions behind him and enough silver to last the lad comfortably to midsummer. He also left a story, and at his departure, Sturm hastened to the Inn of the Last Home, bearing bread and tidings for his friends.
Raistlin warmed his hands by the fireside as Sturm entered the room. Caramon loomed at a southern window, looking out at a late light snow that fell on the branches of the enormous vallenwood that housed the rustic old inn.
It was as though the twins were lost in separate dreams. Raistlin wore a red robe now, in anticipation of his magian tests at the Tower of High Sorcery in Wayreth. Caramon's misgivings about the journey ahead of his brother had infected Sturm, too, until the sight of the robes made him uneasy and apprehensive.
Raistlin turned toward him, smiled faintly, and seated himself at a cluttered table.
'Something in you speaks of tidings, Sturm Brightblade,' he whispered, clearing away crockery and cutlery with a thin pale hand. 'That old urgency and Solamnic importance. Seat yourself.'
Caramon stayed by the window as Sturm sat and unwrapped the bread. Raistlin ate greedily, feverishly, as Otik moved silently to the table. Sturm handed the innkeeper a coin, and the burly man removed himself to kitchen fires and the teapot.
'I have brought news, Raistlin,' Sturm announced, frowning at his friend's incessant hunger. 'Lord Gunthar carried the news to me.'
Caramon turned from the window and shivered.
'Won't it ever be warm, Raist? The snow gets into your bones by this time, and it's like the first of spring is forever in coming.'
Raistlin waved away his brother's comments and smiled ironically, his dark eyes fixed on Sturm. 'Enough talk of the weather, Caramon. Our friend Sturm Brightblade has news of high intrigues in the Order, brought to him no doubt by his august visitor.'
Sturm shifted in the chair, his gaze bright and intent. 'This is the story they are telling in the High Clerist's Tower now. Vertumnus returned at the Yuletide, and what that means is that my long banishment is over.'
Caramon pulled up a chair, and Sturm began the marvelous, confusing tale.
'Now this is only one of many versions of that story, mind you. For each man there-Lord Gunthar, Lord Alfred, all of the MarThasals and Jeoffreys and Invernos-remembers it differently now, Lord Gunthar says.'
'As before they remembered the Yule and his first visit differently,' Caramon prompted.
Raistlin shot his brother an impatient look. 'I remember Sturm's account of the first visit, Caramon. Unlike the Knights involved, I need no one to refresh my memory.'
The room fell to an uncomfortable silence. Sturm cleared his throat.
'Well, be that as it may, none of them remember it quite the same. But on a few things, most of them agree.
'After I left the High Clerist's Tower and came back here, Gunthar and Alfred watched Boniface rather closely, to hear Lord Gunthar tell it. The issue was supposed to be over and buried, settled in trial by combat, but neither of the two justices could help but think that there was something… sour and disturbing about Lord Boniface, about how he had challenged and bullied and taunted me from side to side of the council hall. Nonetheless, they were bound by tradition to accept the outcome of the trial, and of course there were other things to attend to, with spring upon them and wider duties for the Order in the Solamnic countryside.'
'In other words,' Raistlin interrupted dryly, 'they forgot about you.'
'I don't mean it that way,' Sturm protested, hastily and a little strongly. 'It's just that… that… the Order has other business as well.'
The dark twin nodded as his gaze shifted back to the fireplace, to a long, half-dozing abstraction.
Otik bustled out of the kitchen, carrying a tray of steaming crockery. The last of his other guests, a kender and a dwarf Caramon claimed to know, had bundled themselves and waded slowly out the main door of the inn, leaving the common room hushed and virtually empty.
'By the time late spring passed into early summer,' Sturm continued as Otik set the tea in front of him, 'it seemed as if Boniface had forgotten the matter, too. Lord Gunthar said he ate better, he slept later, and eventually he lost entirely that haunted, beset look he had carried with him throughout the previous winter, and he was joking again with the squires, hunting with Adamant Jeoffrey, and even managing a lengthy summer trip west to his holdings in Foghaven.
'So the controversy was all over, or seemed to be. Even the approach of Yule failed to bother anyone or remind them of past hard feelings, for they were reasonably sure-from Lord Alfred down to the youngest Knight who remembered-that this holiday would be pleasant and quiet, like the Yules of a simpler time before the Green Man's trespass.
'Boniface, too, was merry enough as the banquet approached, and downright jubilant when it began, seated amid his regular faction of Crownguards and Jeoffreys, and this year with several highborn Jochanans to boot. The hall was brighter than any remembered, strung with new lanterns and abundant with torches, as though even the link-boys had caught the lightness of spirit. The music, Lord Gunthar said, was better than the year before-a kender trio from farthest Hylo, two penny whistles and a timbrel, frantic and bawdy and as loud as a nest of squirrels.'
'I'd love to have heard that music!' Caramon exclaimed.
'Hush!' Raistlin snapped, swatting his brother weakly as Sturm smiled and poured the tea.
'Boniface was jubilant, they say, informally propping his booted feet against a long oaken table as if he was at hunt or in the field, not at some formal banquet. Holding court, he was, in the midst of the younger Knights, talking swordsmanship and armor and horses, toasting the hunt and the birth of someone's son… a Jochanan, if I recall.'
'I am rapt for the particulars,' Raistlin observed ironically. 'Go on with the
Sturm sipped the tea. It tasted of apple and faint cinnamon-a winter tea, no doubt the last of Otik's stock.
'As the wine poured,' he said, 'the talk grew louder and louder, rising over the kender hornpipes until it distracted Lord Gunthar, and believe me, he is not iron when it comes to manners and protocol.'
Caramon nodded dimly. Raistlin coughed and lifted the cup in front of him.
'Gunthar said that the young Knights ignored him,' Sturm continued, 'and that they were only louder and more fierce as the banquet went on. The bluster turned to shouting and jostling, and Lord Gunthar said that it was
