Weasel's Luck Read online

  He was seated, listening to the words of my brother.

  “I seen Galen at the door of Sir Bayard’s chambers, and being as I intend to be a squire all protectful of my master’s interests …”

  “Yes, yes, Alfric,” Bayard pressed. “You opened the door for your brother …”

  “Who said there was a suspicious sort lurking on the grounds outside. Things become kind of hazy from that point on, sir. I don’t reckon I saw what hit me. Could of been that felon there.

  “Far as I know, could of been Galen.”

  He smiled blamelessly, his treacherous heart fulfilled at last.

  There was muttering among the servants and peasants—this, in fact, was great entertainment for the likes of them. Father reddened to the brink of apoplexy and sat back in his chair, gripping its arms until I could hear them creaking and expected the wood to splinter. Brithelm leaned over Father’s right shoulder, his sorrowful face so pale and compassionate that I began to wonder if he, too, was hiding mischief. Bayard sat back, squinted at me, and looked pained.

  “Next thing I knowed,” Alfric continued serenely, “I was being dragged out of the closet by yourself, regaining my wits at the tail end of that little weasel’s alibis.”

  I began to blubber and whine.

  “Father, this is absolutely unfair.”

  That was good. I choked, looked to the floor, then walked quickly toward one of the corners where a gutted torch smoked in a sconce.

  “… and you, Sir Bayard, whose trust I fear my brother’s unkind words have taken and twisted and broken like so many snap beans …”

  A bad comparison, but homespun, and sure to get the sympathy of the servants and the peasants, which I could use at the moment. I stared wide-eyed at the sputtering torch, allowing the smoke to pass over my face, make my eyes burn and water.

  Nearest thing to weeping one can get. I turned back to my audience, tears streaming. The prisoner smiled faintly, reached into the folds of his cloak. Bayard noticed the movement and stepped quietly away from the fireplace, on his guard, staring intently at the disheveled man in black.

  “Oh, you fine gentleman, my negligence has left me a disgrace to my Father and his glorious past …”

  I bowed my head. Brithelm stepped forward and took my arm gently.

  “… a disgrace to the family Pathwarden five generations back. Five generations hence.”

  “Galen. Galen.” My brother Brithelm rose to his consoling best. “Surely nothing you have done …” I tore my arm from his comforting grasp, buried my face in my hands, and continued.

  “Would that it were so! But my negligence is shameful. I shirked and nodded as well as my older brother …”

  “Did more than nod, Galen Pathwarden,” the prisoner brayed triumphantly. “More than nod, for you embraced the business with greed.”

  To my astonishment, from his cloak the bony prisoner drew my naming ring, the token that he—or someone who had stolen the armor that fateful night—had taken from me, taken to assure my silence.

  A torch in the far corner of the hall went out, but the servants were too enthralled by the drama to move and the light went untended. I stammered, fumbled for a story.

  And came up empty. All I could manage were stammers and squeals, a feeble, “How did he get my naming ring? It can’t be mine! It must be a forgery! Oh, to compound burglary with counterfeit goods …”

  Father was on his feet, the huge chair rocking as he leaped from it. Dogs scattered, whimpering.

  “Silence, Galen!” the old man thundered. “How did he know your name? How could he copy your naming ring, when only one exists in the world for the copying?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Perhaps he … wrested it from my unconscious hand the night he stole the armor?”

  Father wasn’t buying.

  “Show me your hand!” Father commanded in a tone that brooked no quibbling.

  I had no choice but to comply. My bare, quivering hand caused a ripple of murmurs and I told you sos among the attentive servants. Father’s face turned a dark shade.

  “But … but—”

  “And why,” asked Father in an ominously hushed voice, “have we not heard about the disappearance of your naming ring until this very moment?”

  I was hard put to come up with a quick lie for that one. The silence was deadly.

  “Galen, I am sorely wounded,” Father said after an interminable lull, his voice low and dispirited. “When I consider this armor thief, when I consider you and your brother and what all of you have done, collectively and separately, I’m sore tempted to execute the thief and thrash the both of you until you long for execution. But I suppose that’s against Solamnic code, no matter how it conforms with good sense. I’ll leave all judgments, all sentencing to Sir Bayard Brightblade.”

  With that I was escorted from the room, as roughly as my brother but fortunately not back to the same cell. Alfric was allowed the run of the house, still under punishment for his oversight but I was temporarily confined to Gileandos’s library. We saved the real cell, for we only had one, for the man in black.

  There among lecterns and desks, books and scrolls, bones and specimens and alchemical alembics and tubings, I cast the Calantina once more, receiving the nine and eleven, tunnel on stone, the Sign of the Rat. I consulted the books, the commentary, and again was baffled by my fate.

  I waited for hours, the only sounds the tolling of the bell in the tower tolling three, four, then five. Some time in the late afternoon the faint shrill of a jay outside the library window, and twice the unmistakable sniffing and heavy breathing of my brother poking about outside in the corridor.

  Once he tested the door. To his disappointment and my relief, it was locked, and after the events of a fortnight past, he was no longer keeper of the keys. Nonetheless, I hid the bag of opals deep in the pocket of my tunic, then passed time until evening.

  I read a book on dwarf lore and another on explosives. I tried on several of Gileandos’s robes, hung fastidiously in the alcove of the library, and played awhile with the elixirs and powders he kept by the alchemical machinery. Finally, I climbed upon a table and slept amid papers and manuscripts, until I awoke to a darkness outside and the disturbing feeling you have when you wake in a room and know you are not alone.

  “Wh—who’s there?”

  No answer, but eventually the sound resolved itself into a brief, erratic fluttering noise over by the window. Evidently something else was trapped in here besides a youngest son.

  I lit a candle, held my breath, moved toward the sound.

  It was only a bird perched on the sill—a huge, ungainly raven who battered the dark panes of the window with its darker wings. I reached over the bird and opened the window, whispering, “How did you get in here, little bird?”

  The creature stood on the sill, regarding me listlessly. For a moment it seemed like a stuffed bird sitting there, and I wondered had I dreamed the movement, the noise.

  Then it cocked its head slowly, almost mechanically, and spoke in a dry voice out of nowhere.

  “In much the same fashion as you, little boy. I meddled with those more powerful than I.”

  “What?” The candle slipped from my hand. I snatched at it by reflex, fumbling it and burning my hand on the hot tallow as the wick went out.

  We were in darkness again, but a darkness broken by moonlight through the now-open window. The raven backed along the sill, bathed in the red light of Lunitari. He cocked his head again and leaped sluggishly into the air, landing atop the lectern with scarcely a flap of his wings.

  “Did you think I would abandon those who … obeyed me? That I would throw you to the Solamnic wolves?”

  The voice was flat and without music in the throat of the raven, but instantly I recognized its rhythm, its soothing phrases covering iron and poison. The air in the library grew colder.

  “I … trusted you would come back, sir,” I lied, shivering.

  “You’re lying.” The bird hopped onc
e nervously. “But nonetheless I am back.

  “I have further need of you,” the voice of the Scorpion said.

  “It is an absolute delight to be of service to you, sir, and let me add that …”

  “Silence!” The voice seemed too large for the bird, too large for the room itself. I backed into a chair, which tumbled over into an array of tubing and retorts and glassware containing the gods knew what elixirs.

  “You still have much to do for me, Galen Pathwarden. Much to do to save that skin of yours.”

  All of this struck me as slightly less ominous coming from a bird.

  “What now? Haven’t I tangled myself in enough webbing for your satisfaction?” I scrambled to my feet, knocking over still another beaker in the process.

  “Hardly.” The raven regarded me with a brief, dull-eyed stare. “You see, I make friends for life, and, after all, you didn’t expect a half dozen opals for what little you’ve done, did you?

  I wrapped one of Gileandos’s robes about me; it was genuinely cold in here by now.

  “Do you think I am trapped in this shape? That I could not become an adder, a leopard, your coiled friend with the sting in his tail from a few nights back—you remember the night?”

  I nodded stupidly, forgetting it was dark.

  “A few nights back, you ran up your debt, little boy. And you have only begun to pay it.”

  “Would you like the opals back? We could call it even.”

  “But ‘even’ it is not, Galen. For I lose my valuable servant in the bargain—the man confined to your cellar dungeon, who can no longer serve me because I chose to play by the rules.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “So I must be returned a servant, little Galen, to make up for the one I have lost. I suppose it is needless to add that you are that servant.”

  I was thunderstruck, gaping for words.

  “So it is you who will do what I say. You will accompany this Sir Bayard on his trip into southern Solamnia, on the road to the tournament he desires so fiercely to win. You will attend to his weaponry, his wardrobe, his livery—all things a squire attends to.

  “And during your journey with Sir Bayard, you will provide me with intelligence on occasion—little things as to his whereabouts, his state of mind, what he intends to do next.

  “Above all, you will take your time getting to the tournament. You will see to it that Bayard Brightblade takes his.”

  What strange new twisting and turning was this? Why was I so unlucky to be the chosen one?

  “You’ll have to okay this with my father, sir,” I replied in relief. “For I’m to be confined here for a while—awaiting punishment. Remember, you saw to it that Father saw my naming ring in the hands of the man in black, and connected me with this whole unsavory business. No, I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t see how I can be of any help. You’ll have to look elsewhere for a qualified cohort, although it grieves me to disappoint you in this fashion.”

  “Ah, but I cannot be disappointed, little man. Oh, no, for I carry your freedom in the crook of my claw.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The naming ring. Since we are in the business of returning things desired to one another.” The bird took wing, sailing straight at me. I flinched, covered my face, then felt the soft prickling of claws on my shoulder. I lowered my hand and stared directly into its dull eyes.

  “Look to my feet, idiot,” the raven croaked.

  “My naming ring! You have it around your ankle! How’d you—”

  “Never left my possession,” the bird declared smugly. “You were sent up the river by spurious goods.”

  “And I suppose I just tell Father that and he releases me on the spot?” I walked to the window, raven perched on my shoulder.

  “Of course not. But when he sees this ring and compares it with the one already in his possession, he will realize how close he came to losing a son to forgery.”

  The bird tucked its head under its wing as the light of the red moon passed over us once more.

  “Which is why,” it continued, lifting its head once more, “that it is Bayard who will show him the ring. Bayard will find the ring in his quarters this very night, and in addition to seeking your release will also seek to make amends.”

  “How will he make amends?”

  The raven spread its wings and crouched. “Oh, you will see. And when he does, you will know what to do.”

  With that it lifted off into the night air, gliding over the courtyard until it turned sharply and was lost from sight somewhere in the back of the moat house.

  I slept fitfully once more, my dreams filled with scorpions and the terrible sounds of beating wings. And I awoke to the same unsettling feeling—that once again I was not alone.

  I looked about cautiously and saw a candle bobbing at the library entrance, behind it a tall figure.

  I reached to my belt in a desperate search for my knife, which I now recalled had been taken from me at the outset of my stay in the dungeon.

  “Who is it?” This time a little more steadiness in my voice. I tried for menace and failed.

  The candle raised, and the one lamp in the library began to glow.

  Sir Bayard Brightblade stood beneath it, outlined in the red and yellow and gold of the lamp flame, that now-familiar look of puzzlement and amusement on his face.

  “This room is rather sparsely lit for a library,” he observed, turning to face me across a wide vellum-littered table.

  “Gileandos’s doing …” I started to explain, but the Knight was off and running.

  “My business with you is brief or long, Galen, depending on your choice.”

  Sir Bayard paused, looked down at the table in front of him, thumbed the page of a manuscript, and read for a moment. His shadow was long, magnified by the slanting light, stretching the length of the table and losing itself in the dark.

  “It seems that you are reprieved,” he said softly, and opened his hand.

  My naming ring glittered in his palm. I could recognize the engraving from where I stood.

  It was sensible to be silent now, to hear what he had to say.

  “I found it on the mantle in my chambers not an hour ago. Placed there perhaps by someone who knew the thief’s ring to be a forgery and had pity on you, was my first guess. A servant, perhaps?

  “Whoever it was did you a good turn. This ring is almost identical to the one in the thief’s possession—I compared them in your father’s chambers—almost identical except that the one in the thief’s possession is now demonstrated to be a fake.”

  “Then someone returned the original to show … that I hadn’t given it to the thief! I was innocent all along!”

  “It appears thusly,” Sir Bayard brooded. “Although it leaves the questions of how your ring was copied by the thief, or where it has been concealed all this time, unanswered. Troubling questions, I should say.”

  My heart sank. “Magical means? Or Alfric, perhaps?” I prompted innocently.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps,” Bayard replied distractedly, his face impassive. He coughed impressively. “Be that as it may, you are in the clear and I am no closer to filling the position of squire and keeping my appointment in the southlands. Which is why …” He paused here and cleared his throat again, nervously, it seemed to me. “I am offering that position to you.”

  “But Alfric …”

  “Had a responsibility, and didn’t do all that well with it. Alfric is still under a cloud here and Sir Andrew will not hear of it. I’ve thought long and hard in the last hour, Galen. You could have lied your way out of the thief’s accusations—made up some story about being intimidated into giving him the ring, or having it taken from you in a struggle. But you did not. You kept the silence, willing to suffer false accusation rather than lie to save yourself.”

  I liked his version of the facts.

  “That’s the kind of squire a Knight looks for.”

  “B-but …”

  “And if I’m w
rong, Galen, time and the road will show it. I’m in need of a squire now, and of all those available you seem most suitable.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Being a squire was no glamorous thing, I discovered. There are only so many times a boy can see his face reflected in a polished breastplate and pride himself in how well that breastplate has been polished. My particular limit was once.

  I quickly grew to despise this Sir Bayard Brightblade more than any brother or teacher or servant, especially when he set me to buffing his armor.

  They had moved me out of the library and into Brithelm’s quarters, chosen because the room had no windows by which I could escape, no standing furniture from which I could fashion weapons. It was barren and bleak in there. The only comfort was a rug and a straw mattress on the floor, the only conveniences a walk-in closet, a fireplace, and a single lamp. I had little to distract me, and armor aplenty to buff and polish.

  On a dark, chilly morning, several days hence, we made final preparations to set off on whatever harebrained quest Bayard had planned. The weather inclined toward rain—promising the kind of morning I would usually avoid altogether, sleeping in until afternoon. But I was readying to embark in the rain and the early cold, with only four hours of sleep, bound for the gods knew where.

  “What’s the difference?” I began, talking to myself, perhaps a little loudly. “I would like to know what’s the difference, thank you, since my new employer is downstairs with Father and Brithelm, sitting at a farewell breakfast in the great hall while I am upstairs with the polish and the rags?

  “For the life of me,” I whined, setting my cloth to the intricate visor of the helmet, “I can’t see much difference between this and cleaning Alfric’s chambers. Who is this Bayard Brightblade, after all, but another taskmaster? Only this one is set to cart me off to southern Solamnia where he bashes the heads of other Knights and wins the heart of the damsel while I get to polish armor and tend to the horses and run little errands. I’m already tired of being some damn southern hotshot’s factotum!”