Delbridge's head reeled at the complex directions. "Tantallon seems peaceful enough. Why the elaborate defenses?"
"Tantallon is at peace because the castle is well fortified and we are always vigilant," the guard explained with obvious pride. "Lord Curston believes in being prepared. He employs many local tradesmen to continually improve the castle's defenses. His most recent addition, requiring the full-time services of thirty artisans, are the stone soldiers on the battlements, placed there to trick enemy scouts into thinking our numbers are even greater than they are."
The lord-knight's expenditures on defenses explained the town's prosperity, thought Delbridge. Let's hope the fellow believes in spreading the wealth.
"You'd better hurry, though," said the mustached guard. "There is quite a line ahead of you."
Delbridge thanked the guard abruptly as he passed him. Quickly crossing the outer courtyard, he went directly to the inner gatehouse as instructed, but no one was there as promised.
With a shrug, Delbridge let himself into the inner courtyard of the castle. In the courtyard, which was extraordinarily spacious, were hundreds of neatly kept merchants' stalls, many of them permanent structures of wood or wattle complete with thatched roofs and shuttered windows. They faced military barracks and parade grounds on the opposite side of the area. The cooking fires in the massive kitchens that serviced the keep filled the area with mouth-watering aromas. Mingled with smells from the stables and small food stalls, the ambience was unlike anything Delbridge had encountered before. Shaggy dogs and children romped freely among the carts in the cobbled inner area, scattering flapping chickens, who squawked their disapproval.
Delbridge tried to recall the guard's directions. If he remembered correctly, the entrance to the keep was next to the west chamber. He looked to his left, above the merchant stalls shutting their doors and windows in preparation for their noontime breaks. Squinting in the bright sun glaring off distant walls that circled the courtyard, he gave the large, rectangular keep his first real appraising glance.
At least five stories high, the keep was flanked on all four corners by round towers, one line of windows in each. Merlons and crenels encircled the roof, as they did on the outer walls, surrounding a jumble of chimneys. An occasional balcony jutted from slightly longer windows on the third floor, suggesting the locations of bedchambers or meeting rooms.
Delbridge stepped through the arched portico to the carved teakwood door and gave it a shove. Although twice as tall as he and perhaps five times as heavy, it swung open easily on well-oiled black iron hinges.
Delbridge was instantly enveloped by a familiar scent he had not smelled since leaving Thelgaard Keep, a fragrance of wealth and someone else's sweat: it was lemon-oil wax, commonly used to polish the great quantities of expensive wood found in wealthy homes. Delbridge had spent hours rubbing the slick, pungent paste into the banisters at Thelgaard during his demeaning time spent as third assistant steward. Toward the end of his tenure, he could no longer even smell the beeswax polish.
When his eyes adjusted to the dim torchlight, he discovered that he stood in an antechamber two stories high. The base of the walls was lined with stands of polished armor of every description, from leather to chain mail to full suits of plate mail. Filling the walls up to the two-story ceiling were weapons, hung so closely together they almost touched (and did in the case of several rosettes formed by swords). Long swords, short swords, maces, spears, halberds, axes, bows, crossbows, daggers, flails, and a host of other weapons Delbridge didn't even recognize decorated the entire hall. Every one appeared made of steel and that alone, if true, meant that this knight held a fortune in precious metal. Not to mention that he could equip a sizable army with quality weapons from this room. Delbridge's envy of the man was growing.
Suddenly a wrinkled old face beneath grizzled hair popped through the gold brocade curtain opposite Delbridge's position. Delbridge could see by the crest on the man's shoulder that he wore the livery of a Curston family retainer, though it hung limply on his shrunken frame. Looking past Delbridge, he snapped, his voice old and irascible, "You alone? If you're here for audience day, come along, come along. They're waiting for you. Say," he added, looking over Delbridge's attire with a frown, "you wouldn't be that fortune-teller we've been hearing about?" Delbridge bowed deeply. "Well, come on then."
Unaccustomed to wearing a formal robe, Delbridge dashed through the curtain and followed the bobbing, bent form down a long, polished marble hallway. The ceiling was two stories high here as well, making the hall a gallery of sorts. A very narrow balcony ran the length of the hall on both sides of the second floor, supported by two rows of delicate pillars on the ground floor. Beyond the pillars on each side were three arched doorways, evenly spaced, with exquisite, expensive tapestries hanging between them.
Several dozen people, presumably those awaiting their audience with the knight, stood in various poses of respect along the walls.
The stoop-shouldered old man scuttled right past those waiting in the hall and passed through a curtain at the far end of the hallway. He held its gold-corded edge back for Delbridge, tapping his foot with ill-concealed impatience.
"Well, come along."
Delbridge could not contain a haughty smile as he trooped past the assemblage, who stared after him curiously. The robed seer burst into a large, carpeted room, empty except for the three irritable-looking men seated at a long table at the far end, at least sixty feet from where Delbridge stood at the entrance.
"Your Lordship," announced the old man, "Omardicar the Omnipotent, the seer from the tavern."
Delbridge bent close to the old man and whispered, "Who are the other two?"
The retainer rolled his eyes at the bother. "Seated behind the table on the velvet corner chair is Lord Curston.
Next to him is his son, Squire Rostrevor. The fellow there-" The retainer pointed to a tall human with a bald pate, a red cape over his muscular frame, standing to the right of the Lord's chair-"he's Balcombe, Lord Curston's mage and chief adviser."
With this minimal bit of information, Delbridge strode forward confidently to stand before the table. He did not wait for introductions or an invitation to speak.
"Lord Curston, I have an offer most valuable to a knight of such obvious power and wealth as yourself." Delbridge heard his words echo in the nearly empty chamber.
The knight, who was obviously once a fit man now gone soft, wore a silk tunic, a cap upon his graying head, and a look of boredom on his lined and weathered face. His son, an almost pretty, tow-headed lad in his late teens, stood to the left of the seated knight, his hand on his hip in an insolent pose. A thin blond mustache revealed his knightly ambition. He seemed more amused than the others by the sight of the oddly dressed, obese man before them.
Up close, the most riveting of the three, to Delbridge's mind, was the wizard. Delbridge had not noticed from the door, but the man had a hideous scar across the side of his face where his right eye should have been. The lid was sealed shut by scar tissue, but Delbridge could tell by its sunken look that no eye remained in the socket. The left one stared with dark intent, devoid of warmth or even interest. His head was not bald, but shaved. Short, colorless stubble cast a gray shadow over the visible blue veins. The only hair of any length was a black mustache and goatee that completely encircled his thick liver-red lips.