Moments passed slowly, agonizingly, while Squire Madcomb walked the long hall to the dais. The audience responded with a round of cheers and clapping when the young man reached the council members. Jo felt faint.
Then the words Jo longed to hear rang out. “Johauna Menhir, from Specularum in the Estate of Marilenev. We bid you welcome to Penhaligon,” came Sir Graybow’s strong, gruff voice. For a moment Jo couldn’t move. Then she caught sight of the page hurrying toward her, and the motion spurred Jo forward. She stepped onto the velvet walkway.
As she walked the long aisle, Jo was too overwhelmed to even think of looking for Braddoc. To each side of the aisle, people sat in neat rows on the floor and peered expectantly up at her. She swallowed convulsively; Sir Graybow was speaking.
“—formerly to the Mighty Flinn, the order’s most renowned knight, who recently died in battle against the vile wyrm Verdilith. Johauna Menhir has accepted the position as squire to the Castellan of Penhaligon,” Sir Graybow was saying. Jo flushed at the proud tone in his voice. Her eyes were bright as she continued down the walkway. To each side of the aisle, people twisted and shifted to get a look at the young woman. Jo was almost halfway to the dais.
Sir Graybow continued, “Squire Menhir has also graciously agreed to become my ward—”
His words were cut off by a sudden screeching noise, as of metal twisting and groaning under pressure. Jo stopped and looked around, trying to locate the sound. The protesting metal screeched louder, a piercing wail echoing off the stone walls of the hall. Some in the audience rose to their feet in confusion; they began to murmur, their cries mixing with the grating noise. The screech came again, though this time more muted. Jo looked up.
There, four stories above her head, a huge, wrought-iron chandelier pitched precariously back and forth. Its magic sconces cast swirling, ghostly shadows across the ribbed vault, and a green-gray mist seemed to hover about the chandelier’s iron mounting. Jo gasped, raising her arm up over her head, squinting at the brilliant, hypnotic lights. Suddenly, the chandelier began to flicker, as did all the other magical lanterns inside the great hall. Women and children screamed and cried out in panic, and the sounds masked the screeching of rending metal above Jo. In the next instant, the floor filled with running people, shouting, fleeing from the hovering doom.
It seemed like Verdilith’s first attack on the great hall.
The lights flickered into blackness. Abruptly, someone slammed into Jo and flung her forward through the racing dark. As she hurtled heavily to the ground, panic swept over her, then crunching pain. Jo struggled to break loose of her assailant, tugging helplessly at the sheathed and tangled great sword harnessed to her.
With a rumble more felt than heard in the chaotic din and darkness, the chandelier’s mounting tore free of the stone ceiling. A horrible and sudden silence in the crowd answered the rumble, and in that shocked hush, the gentle clink of iron chains filled the hall. Jo stiffened in fear, knowing the chandelier was directly overhead. Whoever had knocked her aside clutched her collar in tight fists and dragged her, rasping, across the mosaic floor.
Jo’s feet tangled with her assailant’s, and the two of them fell heavily to the stone floor. With a deafening thunder, the iron chandelier crashed to the floor, its massive metal frame less than a sword’s length from Jo. The lights flickered once, and Jo saw the grimly terrified look of Braddoc Briarblood holding her.
Then all was blackness.
The crowd panicked, running toward the entry doors, trampling any who had remained sitting or had fallen to the ground. Children cried. Jo heard prayers being spoken, and curses as well.
Sir Graybow’s voice rang out stentorianly, “Stay calm! Stay calm and sit down! The lights have failed—that’s all! We are not under attack. Please remain calm; we will have light soon.” Several knights entered the hall carrying lanterns, which they began passing out to the other knights, squires, and pages.
“Braddoc! Braddoc!” Jo said shakily, sitting up next to the dwarf. “Are you all right?” she asked, her breaths coming in labored wheezes.
“I was about to ask the same of you,” the dwarf noted huskily.
“You made it to the ceremony,” Jo mumbled, and the moment the words had left her lips she realized how stupid they sounded.
“You have a gift: for understatement, Johauna,” Braddoc said, rising to his feet and coughing.
“Yes,” Jo said absently as she tried to dust the powdered stone from her clothing. Lantern light flickered by the pair, now and then casting strange and eerie shadows onto the hall’s walls. The audience was still confused, and pages and squires hurried about trying to calm frightened men and women and comfort crying children. Groping in the darkness, Jo’s shaking hand found Braddoc’s shoulder and she blurted, “How … how did you know? About the chandelier, I mean. How did you get here in time to save me?”
“A little gift of mine, you might say.” Braddoc held out his hand. The light was so dim that it took Jo a moment to make out the curved form of the blink-dog’s tail. “Or a little gift of yours, more truthfully.”
Jo took the bristly tail and ran her fingers over the beaded handle. “How—? Where—?” she began, unable to continue.
The dwarf shrugged. “I … stopped to pay my respects to Flinn. I thought I’d look around while I was there and see if I could find it. Dwarves can be notoriously tenacious when we want to be, you know.” He took the tail and flipped it over, then handed it back. “I’d thought some animal would have eaten it by now, but there must be enough magic left in it to make it distasteful.”
Jo looked at her friend. “How did you figure out how to use it? I taught Flinn the particular bark command to trigger the teleportation, but . .
Braddoc rubbed his elbow and said, “Oh, I heard you use it once or twice.” The dwarf smiled ruefully and shook his head. Then he sobered. He fixed Jo with his good eye. “I almost didn’t make it, Johauna. I couldn’t get the right tone. If I hadn’t—” The lines around his eye creased in worry.
Jo touched his hand and bit her lip.
A page ran up to Jo and Braddoc and asked, “Squire Menhir, you’re wanted up front by the castellan. Immediately. Do you need any help?”
“No, thank you,” Jo said automatically. She stood and Braddoc did the same. Together they began pressing forward through the crowd. The audience was beginning to settle now that more light had entered the hall. Most were sitting on the floor, huddling in small groups. The flush of fear had given way to curiosity, and the screams and moans had given way to muttered speculation.
Trumpeters blared the peal for silence once more. Jo and Braddoc hurried forward. Baroness Penhaligon stepped to the end of the dais and raised her hand.
“People of Penhaligon,” Arteris said loudly, “I pray you calm yourselves. Our mages inform me that the chandelier’s mountings were slowly corroding in the ceiling. As it began to work its way loose, it broke the incantations that lit this hall.”
Jo and Braddoc reached the dais, and Sir Graybow gestured for them to join him. They did so with alacrity.
“The ceremony will commence immediately, for we are all too proud of the friends and family we admit this night into the Order of the Three Suns to cease the ceremony here,” Arteris continued. “Heaven help us if the pride of Penhaligon should be brought to its knees by faulty lamps! We’ll celebrate as we did in days of old!” The baroness’s uncharacteristically impassioned speech brought a ragged cheer from the crowd.
“The good castellan will check on getting us additional light, and so I am turning his part of the ceremony over to Madam Astwood. She will announce the remaining squires and introduce you to the new knights in our order.” The crowd, pleased that the ceremonies wouldn’t be canceled, answered with a heavy round of applause. Smiling tightly, Arteris finished, “I pray you enjoy yourselves, good people of Penhaligon. And I enjoin you to remain after the ceremony to partake of the fine wine and food the pages will dispense. I must take leave of you for a few minutes, but I shall return shortly. Madam Astwood, pray continue with the initiation.” Arteris bowed slightly and turned toward the knight, who strode forward as Arteris retreated.