Sturm dropped his cooking kit at that remark. The clay pot banged him smartly on the toe. "Where in the world did you get an idea like that?" he asked, flabbergasted.

"We've always heard how human men and women fight and yell at each other, but always end up married and, you know -" Fitter blushed. "Having babies."

Sturm picked up the spilled contents of his kit. "It will take a man with more riches and power than I'll ever have to claim her hand." He hung the kit bag around his neck. "The man who wins Kitiara Uth Matar had better have the patience of Paladine and the wisdom of Majere to keep her."

The gnomes gathered around him as he adjusted the last of his equipment. "Where will you go?" asked Wingover.

"Solamnia, as before. There are things I must investigate.

The visions I had on the red moon have faded from my memory, but I know my father's trail begins at my ancestral home, Castle Brightblade. That is my destination."

Small hands patted him on the back. "We wish you every bit of luck, Master Brightblade," said Cutwood. 'You're very smart, for a human."

"That means a lot, coming from you," Sturm answered wryly.

"W-we would offer to fly you on t-to Solamnia," Stutts said, "but we are on f-foot now ourselves."

That hadn't occurred to him. Sturm said, "Would you like me to escort you home to Sancrist?" It seemed the least he could do.

"No, no, we've delayed you long enough," said Sighter.

"We'll get to Gwynned, all right. There'll be ships there for Sancrist."

"I shall miss you," said Rainspot fondly. He held out his small hand. With great solemnity, Sturm shook Rainspot's hand and each of the other gnomes' hands in succession.

Then he hitched up his gear and started out.

Funny, he thought; to have traveled so far and walked so little. His feet were more tender now than before he went to Lunitari. Walking will be good penance, he decided. He could shed some of the stain of magic by walking and con- templating his transgression. Perhaps he could also come to grips with the difficult choices he faced as he tried to live by the Code and the Measure.

"Good-bye! Good-bye!" called the gnomes. Sturm snapped out of his reverie and waved to them. They were good fellows indeed. He hoped they would not have any more trouble, but, being gnomes, they probably would.

He entered the humid forest and plunged through thicket after thicket of dense greenery. It cheered him to see vines and bushes with honest green leaves, plants that didn't bleed or cry when he tramped over them. Lunitari was such an unnatural world.

Two miles of woods later, he found a clear creek and filled his bottle. The water was cold, and had a mineral taste. It was a welcome change after weeks of drinking soft rain water. Sturm paralleled the creek bank for four miles, until he came to an arched stone bridge. He climbed the bank to the road that wended away north and south. A road marker was fixed to the corner of the bridge. On its south face, it read, 'Caergoth - 20 Leagues', and on its east face, 'Garnet - 6 Leagues'.

Sturm laughed until tears came. The gnomes had landed in Solamnia, not twenty miles from where they'd left in the first place! And he laughed for other reasons. To be home again, not merely on Krynn (though that was good), but in Solamnia. He felt light and free, without the gnomes to wor- ry about, without the constant apprehension of what strange things might be around the next corner - and free of his curious relationship with Kitiara. Their separation was like the pulling of an aching tooth; a definite feeling of relief, yet tinged with an underlying sense of loss, of a void in him- self.

Sturm took the road for Garnet. The roads in this prov- ince converged on the city, so it was the best way to get to the northern plains. He set himself a good pace. With his light burden and no dependents to herd, he ought to make Garnet by the next morning, he thought. As he marched, he took in the sights and sounds and smells of his native land.

The scrub pastures and rolling hills. Peasants ranging through the dales, chasing cattle and driving them with sticks to tumble-down pens made of fieldstone. Once the Brightblade family had owned a vast herd of cattle, but those had been quickly lost in the upheavals that toppled the great, knightly estates throughout the country. Who knew but that the scrawny, ill-tended beasts that Sturm now saw shuffling over the hills were offspring of the prime Brightblade herd?

It wasn't cattle or land that bothered Sturm about the fall of the Solamnic Knights. Such things were not the true mea- sure of a knight's worth. It was the injustice of it. The com- mon folk blamed the Cataclysm and the troubles that followed on the arrogant pride of the knights, as if the Knights of Solamnia could turn the whole world on its ear and split the land asunder!

Sturm stopped in his tracks. His hands were clenched into fists so tight that his knuckles were blanched white. He let go of his anger and slowly opened his fists. Patience, he admonished himself. A knight must have self-control, or he is no better than a barbarian berserker.

From the time Sturm gained the road at the stone bridge to late afternoon of the following day, he met no other trav- elers. This struck him as ominous, especially as he got near- er to Garnet. Drovers and merchant caravans always moved from town to town, timing their arrivals to the local market day. An empty road indicated that something, or someone, was keeping the travelers at home. The road began to rise and wind as the hills of Garnet grew out of the plain. Here he found signs of traffic: hoof prints, wheel tracks, and marks of bare and booted feet.

The prints multiplied until it seemed a small army had marched through not long before.

Sturm saw smoke rising from around a bend. He shifted the pommel of his sword forward to be convenient to his hand.

He could smell the smoke now. Slowly the scene came into view. Several heavy wagons were overturned and burning in the road. From the extent of the damage already done, the fire must have started hours before.

Crows and other carrion birds stirred at his approach.

Between two gutted wagons, Sturm found bodies. One, thick-waisted and richly dressed, obviously was a successful merchant. He had two arrows in his chest. Beside him was a younger man with the stump of a broken mace still clutched in his hand.

A groan brought Sturm running. A few yards away, a big, well-muscled man sat with his back against a scrub pine. He was a warrior. His body bled from a dozen wounds and arrayed at the warrior's feet were six dead goblins.

"Water," moaned the fighter. Sturm put a hand behind the warrior's head and raised his bottle to the man's parched lips.

"What happened here?" asked Sturm.

"Bandits. Attacked wagons. We fought -" The big man coughed. "Too many."

Sturm examined the fighter's wounds. He didn't have to be a healer to know the warrior was doomed, and because the man was a warrior, Sturm told him so.

"Thank you," he said. Sturm asked if he could do any- thing to make the man more comfortable. "No, but Pala- dine bless you for your mercy."

Something rustled behind the pine. Sturm reached for his sword, then saw the broad brown muzzle of a horse poke through the branches. The dying warrior called the animal by name. "Brumbar," he said. "Good fellow." The horse pushed through the scrub. He was an enormous animal, as black as coal. Brumbar dropped his nose to nuzzle his mas- ter's face.

"I see that you are a man of arms," rasped the warrior to Sturm. "I beg you, take Brumbar as your mount when I am dead."

"I will," Sturm said gently. "Is there anyone in Garnet I can tell about your fated?"

The man slowly closed his eyes. "No one. But do not go to Garnet, if you value your life." His chin fell to his chest.

"But why?" Sturm asked. "Why shouldn't I go to the city?"

"Loosen my breastplate..."

Sturm undid the sraps and pulled the steel cuirass aside.

Beneath the armor, the man wore a quilted shirt. Embroi- dered over his heart was a small red rose. Sturm stared. The dying man was a knight of the Order's highest rank, the Order of the Rose! Only Solamnic Knights of noble lineage could enter that exalted brotherhood.

"The forces that destroyed the knights control Garnet," the man said. His breath came in ragged gasps. "I know you are one of us. It would not be safe for you there... assassins... "

"Who are you? What is your name?" Sturm asked franti- cally, but the Knight of the Rose would never again speak.

Sturm gave the brave fighter an honorable burial. It was well after sundown when he finished. He collected Brumbar and went through the saddlebags thrown across the horse's rump. There were dried rations in one bag, and in the other, surprisingly, were hundreds of coins, all of them small cop- per pieces. Sturm understood. The dead knight was living incognito because of the widespread hatred of the Order.

He'd adopted the guise of a guard for hire, and took his wages in copper. No one would ever expect a Knight of the Rose to live so humbly.

Sturm left the Garnet road. He chose another trail through the highlands, one not frequented by traders, or (he hoped) bandits. Garnet he passed in the night. He saw the glow of its street lamps in the distance. Reining in Brumbar, he listened. Wind whirled around the mountain passes. A wolf gave voice, far away.

Chapter 36.

Solamnia.

His new horse was a steady plodding beast. Brum- bar, in Old Dwarvish, meant 'Black Bear.' Black he was, and bearishly stolid. Sturm didn't mind. The kind of traveling he was doing now was better suited to a steady animal, rath- er than some excitable, fragile charger. Brumbar had a back so broad that Sturm imagined he could put his feet up on the animal's nodding neck and take a nap. Festooned with Sturm's pack and other belongings, Brumbar kept a jingling pace all day long.

The Lemish forest thinned out to a few spindly pines, growing weakly amid the grassy undergrowth. It was hot on the plain, and very dry. Sturm began to ration his water when the streams and springs started getting fewer and far- ther between.

Being off the road, he saw few people. This southernmost finger of the Solamnic Plain, thrust between the Garnet Mountains and the Lemish forest, was too dry for cattle and farming. There were no robbers here, either; there was nothing to steal.

Alone, Sturm took time to reflect on things. Since he and Kitiara had left Solace so many weeks ago, he'd come to realize that there was danger on the horizon everywhere.

The strange lizardlike mercenaries he had heard called dra- conians had been seen in port cities. Caches of weapons being moved about. Large numbers of brigands infesting the roads of the northern countries. Dark magic at work. Gob- lins led by a human magician. What was the common thread in all this? he wondered.

War. Invasion. Evil magic.

Sturm gave Brumbar a kick, and the big horse shuffled into a trot. A welter of vague impressions and shrouded memories surfaced in his mind. The visions he'd had on Lunitari were lost to him in detail, but shadows of them remained, dimly. The strongest of these was that his father was alive somewhere. There was something about the old castle, too, and death that was somehow linked to lingering impressions of Kitiara's.

Oh, Kit. Where are you now?

The day's shimmering heat built towers of black clouds in the sky. Lightning danced far away, and peals of thunder crossed the grassland long after the flashes of lightning were gone. The smell of rain pulled Brumbar toward the storm, and Sturm let him go. He was thirsty, too.

The storm seemed to retreat from them even as they rode to meet it. Brumbar splashed through gullies running fast with rainwater, The air was wet, oppressive, yet the edge of the rain receded from Sturm's approach. The lightning played about a stand of pines to the east. Sturm reined away from the dangerous display, but Brumbar had other ideas.

Puffing hard through his dry throat, the horse headed straight for the trees.

Light, steamy drops of rain began to hit them. Brumbar cantered heavily through the widely spaced trees. The rain fell harder. Ahead, Sturm saw a dark shape flit between the pines. He blotted water from his eyes and looked again.

A rider in a flowing cape was weaving among the trees.

Now and then, the pale oval of a face turned back, as if the rider were peering over his shoulder at Sturm. He seemed to have a long mustache much like Sturm's own.

Brumbar slowed by a shallow pool of water, but Sturm spurred him on; he was curious about the other rider and wanted to catch up to him.

"Hello!" called Sturm. "Could I talk to you?"

A bolt from the churning sky struck the ground a score of yards away, leaving a smoking crater in the grass. The rider didn't respond to Sturm's call, but continued to weave around the pines. Sturm slapped the reins across his horse's neck, and Brumbar launched into a jarring gallop. They were closing on the stranger.

The rider's dark hair was slicked down by the driving rain. He did indeed have a long mustache, symbol of the Knights of Solamnia.

The stranger's horse was light and agile, but it must have been running hard too long. Brumbar closed rapidly. Only the passing of a tree between them kept Sturm from reach- ing out to grab the other man's lashing cape.

"Wait!" Sturm shouted. "Stop, I want to talk to you!"

The stranger's horse went hard to the left, circling around Sturm. The man drew up and stopped thirty yards away.

Brumbar shuddered to a halt. The wind was up and blowing rain into Sturm's face, so he turned his horse around. The stranger was waiting for him.

"I didn't mean to chase you," Sturm called out, "but -"

He never heard the stroke of lightning that hit the ground between him and the stranger. Nor did he feel it. In one instant, he was talking and in the next, he was lying on the muddy grass with rain pattering on his face. His arms and legs were leaden and weak.

A dark form loomed over him. For a second, he was afraid. Lying there, helpless, Sturm was easy prey for a thief or assassin.

The stranger, still horsed, towered over him. Against the gray sky, with the rain in his eyes, all Sturm could see of him was dark hair, high forehead and drooping mustache. The cape was close about the man's shoulders, which were wide and powerful.

The stranger sat in the saddle, looking down at Sturm and saying nothing. Sturm managed to gasp, "Who are you?"

The man parted the cape, revealing the hilt of a large sword. Sturm made out the shape of the pommel and some of the filigree work. With a start, he realized that he knew that sword. It was his father's.

"Beware of Merinsaard," said the man, in a voice Sturm didn't recognize.

With tremendous effort, Sturm got to his knees. "Who are you?" He reached out a muddy hand to the stranger.

Where he should have touched the leg of the man's horse, he met nothing. Horse and rider vanished, silently and com- pletely.

Sturm staggered to his feet. The rain was over. Already the sun was poking through the tattered clouds. Brumbar was several yards away, drinking from a puddle. Nearby, a pine tree had been blasted to smoking splinters by lightning.

Sturm put his face in his hands. Had he seen what he thought he'd seen? Who was the phantom rider? And what was Merinsaard? A person, a place?

Wearily he mounted Brumbar. The big horse shifted under Sturm's weight, and his broad hooves squelched in the mud. Sturm looked around. There were no other hoof prints in sight besides Brumbar's.

Though described as a plain, the country of Solamnia was not perfectly flat, as were, say, the Plains of Dust. There were ridges and gullies, dry creek beds and small stands of trees that grew like islands in the midst of the grassy steppe land. Sturm rode north at an easy pace, eating wild pears off the trees and filling his water bottle from the herders' wells.

He soon found himself moving among small herds of cat- tle, tended and guarded by hard-looking peasants with mauls and bows. They watched him closely as he rode by.

Raiders were common, and in their eyes he might have been a scout for a larger band of rustlers. Also, Sturm wore the mustache and horned helmet of a Solamnic Knight - items not calculated to make him popular among the people who had overthrown the Order. Sturm didn't care. He rode proudly, sword turned out to show that he was ready for trouble. At night, he took special care with polishing his hel- met, boots, and sword, to make them shine.

He decided to avoid the city of Solanthus. After the over- throw, Solanthus had proclaimed itself a free city, not sub- ordinate to anyone but its own Guildmasters. Sturm had heard of several knights, friends and compatriots of his father, who had been imprisoned and executed in Solan- thus. While he was willing to proclaim his heritage in open country, he saw no reason to walk into the city and put his head into a noose.

The country beyond Solanthus sloped gently down to the Vingaard River. It was rich land. The clods turned up by Brumbar's iron-shod hooves were black and fertile. The herds were thicker the closer to the river he got. He spent an entire day guiding Brumbar through ranks of rusty brown cows and calves. The heat and dust were so bad that he traded his helmet for a cloth bandanna, like the herd riders wore.

The herds converged on the Ford of Kerdu, an artificial shallows created centuries before by the Solamnic Knights (another benefit that the common folk had forgotten).

Thousands of small stones were dumped into the Vingaard River to make a fording place. As the river slowly scoured the stones away, each new generation on the river banks had to renew the ford with its own gathering of stones. A sort of winter festival had developed around the collecting and dumping of rocks in the river.

It soon became too congested for Sturm to ride, so he got off Brumbar and led the horse by his bridle. Here, by the river, the day's heat rapidly dispersed after sunset. Sturm walked down to the river bank where a hundred campfires blazed. The herders were settling for the night.

A half-dozen sun-browned faces turned up as Sturm approached the nearest camp.He raised his palm and said, "My hands are open," the traditional herders' greeting.

"Sit," said the herd leader, identified by the carved steer horn that he wore on a thong around his neck, Sturm tied Brumbar to a small tree and joined the men.

"Sturm," he said, sitting.