Oath and the Measure by Michael Williams Page B

Caelas and those who consorted with them. It was a side of the family that was overgrown and wild: Sturm’s mother had cautioned against their inheritance, telling the lad he must continually marshall his best Brightblade demeanor or he would be like the whole lot of them, climbing towers and living with lizards and cats.
    Sturm drew his sword from its sheath as he ascended to the still brighter second floor, past servants’ markers where the great geysers of Two Thirty One had shot through the floors and drenched even the upper stories. Dozens of statues lined the room, stretching back to times before the Cataclysm itself, when both Brightblade and di Caela had walked in uncommon heroism, among the first Knights at the side of Vinas Solamnus. They were all here, forever valiant if somewhat dusty.
    Sturm moved by them, inspecting and exploring, his surprise and dismay growing. For here was a statue of Lucero di Caela, Wing Commander in the Great Ogre Wars, his sword drawn, stepping forth into battle. And there the statue of Bedal Brightblade, who singlehandedly fought the desert nomads, holding a pass into Solamnia until help came. There, indeed, was Roderick di Caela, who put down a hobgoblin invasion from Throt at the cost of his own life.
    And the last of the statues was of Bayard Brightblade, erected, no doubt, by the Lady Enid in memory of her vanished husband. He, too, was drawing his sword and stepping forth.
    Sturm rubbed at his eyes, not believing what he suddenlysaw. For what had seemed a fanciful mistake down in the great hall was unsettling and real here in the upper reaches of the keep.
    Each hero now had Sturm’s face, down to the boyhood scar upon the chin. From one to another he quickly moved, looking, looking again, looking away. This time there was no trick of light. Vertumnus again?
    For a while, he sat by the statue of Sir Robert di Caela, his thoughts wandering. It was some time before he came to himself, and at once he scrambled to his feet, intent that night not overtake him in an abandoned castle. Swiftly he ranged from room to room, chamber to chamber, the sunlight as low as his hopes. All of the windows overlooked sheer and no doubt lethal plunges onto the stone pavement of the bailey.
    Desperately looking for trellis or vine or mysterious stairwell, Sturm took the steps three at a time, finding himself in the solar on the topmost floor of the keep. The solar was the spacious chamber in which innumerable di Caela lords and ladies had slept away thousands of nights, and after them, two generations of Brightblades. Heir to much of that tradition, Sturm felt a little drowsy the moment he entered the room.
    If anything, things looked even more hopeless from here. Above the solar were the battlements, but the lone ladder leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling lay in pieces no larger than his forearm. True, there were windows aplenty—stained glass, for that matter, in rich and various greens—but they were set high in yet another clerestory, to which not even a squirrel could climb.
    Sturm seated himself dejectedly on the huge canopied bed, wrapping himself in what remained of the tattered curtains.
    “Tomorrow,” he told himself, his eyelids heavy, the curtains musty but warm. “There are cellars in this place, no doubt, out of which … I surely … can …”
    He ran out of words and wakefulness, there amid the evening’sgreen light and floating dust. Twice, maybe three times, he sneezed in his sleep, but he did not awaken.
    And so on his very first night on the road, Sturm Brightblade slept like a seedy lord in the ruins of the castle. He was trapped, with no prospect of escape, and a weariness so great that he slept undisturbed until the morning sun was visible through the trapdoor to the battlements.

    The new day, however, was no better. The locks to the cellar broke easily enough, but whatever passages or tunnels once led from the cellars were now blocked. The same earthquake that had