There was that noise again! Sturm was sure that it was footfalls. "Who are you? Come out and show yourself!" He waved the torch toward the vaulted ceiling. The stone arch- es were cloaked in a tightly nestled layer of bats. Disgusted, Sturm crossed the hall to the steps. One set led up to the pri- vate rooms, while another led down to the cellars. Sturm put a foot on the lowest of the rising steps.

"Hello...." sighed a voice. Sturm froze. Under the hood his hair prickled.

"Who is there?" he called.

"This way...." The voice came from below. Sword in his right hand, torch in his left, Sturm descended the steps.

It was cold down there. The torch flickered in the breeze rising through the stairwell. The corridor curved away on either side, following the foundation of the very ancient cit- adel that Castle Brightblade had been built on.

"Which way?" Sturm called boldly.

"This way...." whispered the voice. It seemed oddly familiar as it sighed down the hall like the last gasp of a dying man. Sturm followed it to his left.

He had not gone fifty yards when he stumbled upon a third dead man. This one was different; he was no robber.

He was older, his beard untrimmed and his face worn by wind and sun. The dead man sat slumped against the wall, a dagger buried in his ribs. Oddly, his right arm was bent and resting atop his head, a finger stiffly pointing down. Sturm studied the face. It was familiar - in a rush, he recognized the man as Bren, one of his father's old retainers. If he were here, could Sturm's father be far away?

"What are you pointing at, old fellow?" Sturm asked the dead man urgently. He opened the man's coat to see if Bren carried any clues to the fate of Sturm's father. When he did, the dead man's right arm slid out of position and came to rest pointing straight up, overhead. Sturm raised the torch.

There was nothing above him but an iron wall sconce - - which was crooked. Sturm looked more closely and saw a light mark scored on the wall block. The bracket piv- oted, scratching this mark. Sturm grasped the lower end of the sconce and pushed. It turned, following the scratched path in the wall.

The floor trembled, and a tremendous grinding sound filled the tunnel. A section of floor rose in front of Sturm, revealing a dark cavity below. In all his life in the castle, he'd never known of such a secret room.

"Go down.... Go down...." rasped the phantom voice. Sturm felt for the first time a presence to go with the voice. He turned sharply and saw the apparition behind him. It was a dim red figure, dressed in what looked like furs. Sturm stepped forward with the torch. He couldn't make out the face, but he caught a glimpse of a dark, droop- ing mustache. The man he'd seen in the thunderstorm!

"Come forward, you!" he shouted, and thrust the torch into the specter's face.

The face was his own. Sturm dropped the brand.

"Great Paladine!" he sputtered, backing away. His heel slipped off the top step into the secret vault. "What does this mean?"

"Go down...." repeated the phantom Sturm. Its lips did not move, but the voice was distinct. "Go...."

"Why are you here?" Sturm said. He reached for the torch with trembling hands. "Where did you come from?"

"Far away...."

Sturm's eyes widened. The phantom repeatedly urged him to descend into the secret chamber.

"I will," Sturm assured. "I will." With that, the red figure vanished.

Sturm turned to the steps, but could see nothing beyond the sphere of ruddy light cast by the torch. He took a deep breath and went down.

It was cold in the secret vault, and he was glad to be wear- ing Merinsaard's thick tunic. At the bottom of the steps, some eight feet beneath the level of the corridor, he found two more corpses. They were unmarked, but their faces told too well how they had met their fate. The trap door had sealed them in, and in the ensuing hours the men had suffo- cated.

Sturm turned from the dead robbers. As he did, his torch- light gleamed on something metallic. He walked into the velvet darkness, his breath pluming out before him. The glow of the torch fell over a suit of armor.

Sturm swallowed hard, trying to force down the lump in his throat. With one shaking hand, he reached out to brush the dust from the etched steel. It was. It was his. Sturm had found his father's suit of armor. Breast- and backplate, greaves, schildrons, and helmet were all there. The superla- tive war armor etched with the rose motif. The helmet had high horns on the forehead, making Sturm's old headgear, still dented from Rapaldo's axe, seem like a cheap imitation.

The armor was hung on a wooden frame. As Sturm ran his hands over the cherished suit, he felt the soft, cold links of a chain mail shirt under the breastplate. And hanging from the waist by a single thickness of scarlet ribbon was a slip of yellow parchment. Inscribed in Angriff Brightblade's forceful hand were the words, For My Son.

Sturm was filled with such joy at that moment, he could scarcely breathe. The mortal shell of a man could weaken and die, but the virtues that made him a leader among men, a Knight of Solamnia, were embodied in the imperishable metal. Sturm's life was half complete. All that remained was to know of his father's fate.

He threw off Merinsaard's clothes and, dusty or not, began to put on the armor. It fit well, almost perfectly. The shoulders were a bit roomy, but Sturm would grow into them. He finished tying the cops to his boots and lifted the breastplate off the crossbar. Beneath it, hanging from a sin- gle peg, was the sword.

The hilt curved toward the point in a graceful are, the steel as clean and shiny as when it had come from the forge.

The long handle was wrapped in rough wire, to ensure a tight grip even when soaked with blood. The almond- shaped pommel was hard brass, engraved with the symbol of the rose.

Sturm could bear it no longer. He felt the tears flow over his cheeks and made no move to wipe them away. He had not cried like this since the night he'd left his father behind, twelve years ago.

The sword came lightly off its peg. The balance was per- fect, and the handle fit Sturm's hand as though it had been made for him. He drew Merinsaard's silver-handled weapon and tossed it, clanging, to the cold stone floor. Sturm slipped his father's sword into the black scabbard and hur- riedly fit the breastplate and backplate over his head. He was still closing the buckles under his arms when he heard a strange humming.

Merinsaard's sword was glowing. The hum emanated from it. Sturm shoved the stand over on top of the glowing blade, and he watched, open-mouthed, as the sword rose into the air, flipping the heavy wooden crosstree over effort- lessly. Merinsaard's sword drifted toward the stairs, and Sturm hastily snatched up his father's helmet and followed.

The silver sword slanted upward, out of the vault.

The floating blade moved unerringly across the great hall to the despoiled kitchen and out the door. There stood Mai- tat, unmoving, like a statue of alabaster. The nervous stal- lion had never been so quiet. The sword came on, point first. The blade slowly circled the horse, its point barely touching Mai-tat's neck. The glow reached out to engulf the horse. The charger began to writhe and shrink within its white aura. He stepped forward, ready to cut the suffering animal down, but the fierce heat radiating from the sword stopped him. The glow intensified to searing level. There was a flash of blinding light and a great clap of thunder.

Sturm was hurled back against the wall, the breath driven from his body.

A deep-throated laugh filled the courtyard. The hair on Sturm's neck prickled. He coughed and rubbed his eyes.

Where Mai-tat had been, there now was Merinsaard, fully armed and full of rage.

"So, Brightblade! This is the.treasure you traveled so far to find! Is it worth dying for?" he roared.

Sturm fell back a pace, his head throbbing from the shock of Merinsaard's appearance. Finding his voice, he replied, "The relics of a noble past are always worth having. But I don't expect to die just yet."

Sturm brought the Brightblade sword on guard. Merin- saard cut wide circles in the air with his own blade, but he didn't come forward to fence. He raised the silver sword high and declaimed, "Do you know what it was you so care- lessly carried forth from my camp, impudent fool? This sword is the key to all the negative planes. It is Thresholder, the pathway to power! I allowed you to escape, worm; five seconds after you left me bound and gagged, I was free and plotting how best to follow you. Was it not convenient that you should impersonate me, and ride me in my equine form all the way here?"

An unnatural wind sprang up, blowing hot in Sturm's face. "It's a pity you did not stay a horse!" he said boldly. "In that form, at least you were a useful creature!"

A ball of silver fire flew out from Thresholder's tip. It spi- raled up to the donjon's roof and burst there, shattering the tiles asunder. Sturm ducked inside the kitchen as broken rock rained down where he'd been standing.

Merinsaard laughed. "Flee, little man! Only now do you realize with whom you have trifled!"

merinsaard smashed through the wall. He whipped his silver blade to and fro, leaving arcs of crackling-hot light behind. Sturm dodged into the great hall just ahead of a siz- zling tongue of fire that scored molten ruts in the slate floor.

Merinsaard was toying with him. He could bring the whole castle down on Sturm if he desired.

Sturm wanted to stand and fight, but only on ground of his own choosing. There would be less debris to fling at him on the open battlements, so Sturm led the maniacal warlord to the second floor and down the narrow corridor where Sturm's bedroom used to be. Sturm cleared the end of the corridor just as Merinsaard entered it. The warrior-wizard sent white fire blasting down the empty passage, opening a hole through a wall two feet thick. Sturm ran on, past the third and fourth floors, to the roof.

"Come back, young Brightblade! You can't hide forever!"

Merinsaard taunted him. A miasma of anger and evil settled over the entire castle. Sturm came to a section of wall where the wooden boarding had been burned away. He teetered along a charred beam, thinking the heavier Merinsaard could not follow, then crouched behind the rubble from a fallen tower and tried to plan an attack.

When he came to the burned area, Merinsaard folded his arms across his chest and muttered a spell in an ancient, gut- tural tongue. Black clouds collected around the hoarding, and Merinsaard simply walked across on the vapor, chuck- ling fiercely as he came. Sturm pushed over a section of bro- ken wall in a desperate attempt to impede the wizard's approach. Thresholder swept back and forth, shattering the tumbling blocks into gravel.

"Where will you go next?" chortled Merinsaard. "You are running out of castle, Brightblade. What a disappointment you would have been to your father. He was a true warrior, ten times the man you'll ever be. My men pursued him for months after they sacked the castle. He survived them all, even the Trackers of Leereach."

"What was he to you?" Sturm shouted. "Why should you want his death?"

"He was a Knight and a battle lord. My mistress could not allow him to live if our plan for conquest was to go for- ward." A blast from the silver sword shaved off the top of the battered tower. "What an irony it is that you will die wearing his armor. What a supreme moment for my Dark Queen!"

He's right, Sturm thought. I've run out of castle, and I'm not the man my father was. A curved wall of the tower closed in behind him. Sturm looked up. There was no place to go - no place but down.

Tiny droplets of fire burst around Sturm's feet. He hopped aside, perilously close to the edge. "Jump, boy.

Cheat my revenge, why don't you? It will be easier than the death I have in mind for you," Merinsaard said, a scant five yards away. Sturm looked down. It was a long, long fall.

"Take the step. Jump. For you it can be over quickly,"

hissed the wizard.

There was no hope. This was the end. Sturm would never again see his friends or solve the mystery of his father. For him, there was only a choice of deaths. A single step, and oblivion. Didn't every man want an easy death when his time came? But you're not every man! his mind screamed.

You're the son and grandson of Solamnic Knights! his mind screamed. This knowledge helped melt the icy fear that gripped his heart.

He squared his shoulders and faced Merinsaard. The Brightblade sword pointed at the warlord's heart. "I do not do your evil bidding," Sturm stated. "If you claim to be a warrior and a lord, let your blade test mine, and we will see who acquits himself with honor."

Merinsaard smiled, showing white teeth. The blinding glow faded from Thresholder, and Sturm assumed a fighting stance. The wizard extended his blade at Sturm, and with no warning at all, a blast of fire lashed out from the tip. It struck Sturm in the chest and slammed him into the tower wall.

"As you see," said Merinsaard. "I am not an honorable man." He raised Thresholder for the final, mortal strike, and his eyes got very wide and white. Sturm struggled to bring the tip of his father's sword waveringly into the air.

Suddenly, Merinsaard made a gagging sound and stag- gered to the battlement. Sturm was astonished to see an arrow buried in his back. Some distance away, silhouetted against the morning sky, was a figure with a bow.

Sturm got to his feet. Merinsaard grasped the battlement with his mailed hands, but the iron links found no purchase, and the warrior-wizard toppled through a crenelation to the courtyard below. There was a scream, a heavy, ringing thud, and silence.

Sturm raced for the steps. The mysterious archer was nowhere in sight. He found Merinsaard dead, his sightless eyes staring into the mossy flagstones. Thresholder lay just beyond his lifeless fingers. As Sturm watched, the sword flared and vanished with a loud crack. Where it had lain, the stones were scorched.

Sturm wavered and braced himself against the donjon wall. As he tried to make sense of what had happened, another arrow struck the ground at his feet. The gray goose- feather fletching on the long black arrow quivered from the impact.

Sturm jerked around and saw the unknown archer atop the outer wall. The bowman raised a hand in salute, then ducked into an empty watchtower and was gone.

He stooped to examine the arrow. Tied to the shaft just behind the head was a slip of paper. Sturm freed it and read: Dear S I knew you'd come here and here I find you in a losing fight with a wizard. My new friends don't choose to play fair but I decided to even the odds in memory of our past friendship. Next time you might not be so lucky!

K.

PS: You were a sucker to let him point the magic blade at you.

"Kitiara!" Sturm called to the sky and stones. "Kitiara, where are you?" But he knew she was gone, lost to him for- ever.

Chapter 41

Palanthas.

If took some time, but a message displayed by Sturm from Palanthas to Sancrist was answered. Stutts, inventor of the practical (well, mostly practical) flying ship, sent Sturm a reply that took up sixteen sheets of foolscap, front and back. It seems that he, Wingover, Sighter, and the rest made it back to Mt. Nevermind eventually, using the hull of the Cloudmaster as a conventional sailing ship. The massive report the gnomes submitted to the High Council of Gnomish Technology ran into thirty volumes.

"The irony is," Stutts wrote to Sturm, "in all the time we spent on Lunitari we didn't manage to bring back a single sample of soil, air, rock, or plant life. All our copious sam- ple collection was abandoned trying to lighten the ship for takeoff. With only our notes, the High Council rendered a verdict of 'Not Proved' about our expedition. Sighter was pretty mad, but I'm not too disturbed. As I write this, the hull of the Cloudmaster Mark II is taking shape on the slopes of Mt. Nevermind. It will have four sets of wings and two bags for ethereal air, and carry..."

Sturm flipped through the letter with a smile. All the rest of the pages were a catalog of the things the gnomes planned to take with them on their next voyage. Only the last lines were of interest: "If you and Mistress Kitiara would like to accompany us again, please make your way to Sancrist by ten days before the winter solstice. That's when we're taking off for Lunitari. Cutwood wants to go to Solinari, but he was overruled. We still have a lot to learn about the red moon. Plus, there is some hope we might find evidence of Bellcrank...." The letter was signed with several lines of Stutts's gnomish name.

Sturm set the pages aside. "Safe voyage," he said aloud.

The maid in the inn where he was staying in Palanthas heard him and came to his table.

"Something you require?" she asked. Her name was Zerla, and she was pretty, with curly blond hair and a warm smile. She reminded Sturm of Tika, were Tika about ten years older.

"No, thank you," he said.

"Been in Palanthas long?" she asked.

"A few weeks."

"Thinking of staying, are youl"

"Actually, I'm ready to leave now."

Zerla frowned attractively. "Not on my account, I hope!"

"Not at all. I have business in the south," said Sturm.

"A girl?"

Tervy came to mind, but Sturm's most pressing task was to get back on his father's trail. That meant going to High Clerist Tower. He'd come to Palanthas after his encounter with Merinsaard mainly to rest and get his mind calm and focused again. While there, Sturm heard gossip that some knights were gathering at High Clerist for a conclave. He was certain his father's trail would lead there.

Zerla was talking to him, and Sturm snapped out of his daydream. "The good-looking ones are usually taken," she was say- ing. Zerla wiped the table under his cup of sweet cider. "Are you married?"

"What? No, I'm not."

The maid brightened. "Where are you from?"

"Solamnia," he said.

"I thought so! I noticed your helmet and mustache. You're a knight, aren't you?" He admitted that he was. "My grand- father tells me stories of the old days, when the knights watched over the land and saw that justice was done. I wish I'd lived back then. I'd have liked to see the knights on their fine horses, armor all polished, doing good for people."

Zerla blushed. "I'm sorry. I'm talking too much."

"I don't mind," Sturm said. "What you said cheers me. I thought most folk had forgotten the Order, or hated it." He finished his cider and put down two Solacian silver pieces.

"The change is for you," he said.