As the morning warms toward noon and the Knights assemble, the elaborate preliminaries that mark a Solamnic tournament take place one by one: first, the prayers, led by the white-robed clerics, to the Great Dragon, to Kiri-Jolith, and to Mishakal—for honor and for skill in the lists and for no wounds mortal. Then the blessings of the bards, with songs to Huma and to Vinas Solamnus and to Gerald di Caela who fathered the family in whose name this tournament is given.
By the time of the blessings, nearly all of the Knights are there—more than fifty assembled. Four of the most prominent are late.
Sir Prosper Inverno does not arrive until the white-robed clerics of Mishakal are singing the praises of Kiri-Jolith, lord of battle. The large man passes on foot through the ranks of the Knights, his mysterious translucent armor glittering. A murmur arises when the Knights are aware just who it is who walks among them. Sir Robert smiles at the entrance: he has heard southerners have a gift for the dramatic. Easterners, on the other hand, are at the mercy of less premeditated impulses. Or at least one easterner, for Sir Ramiro of the Maw arrives as the prayers to Mishakal are ending, too late to receive the healthful benedictions of her priests. Apologetically he nods to Sir Robert, who can tell from his eyes that the wine was flowing freely in his encampment last night and has left him drained, aching, and tardy this morning. No doubt his indulgence has ruined his slim chance for victory, as Sir Robert knows it has done in other tournaments at other times. Later still is Sir Gabriel Androctus, conspicuously absent through the prayers, through the bardic songs, through the arming of the contestants. He only appears at the last possible moment, when the trumpets sound and the Knights step forth as the herald reads their names from the scroll. It is then, as the reading begins, that Robert di Caela sees Sir Gabriel, already armed and mounted, already with lance in hand, riding his horse at a walk through the milling contestants.
It is no surprise that his armor is black. Again Sir Robert feels the uneasiness he did last night on the stairway and wonders why he signed on this man so amiably.
Must’ve still been half asleep, he thinks. But surely Orban or Prosper . , .
Surely their lances will do the work before it comes to . . .
He gazes, this time with dwindling patience and a rising anger, toward the foot of the mountains to the west. So much for Brightblade and destiny, he thinks. So much for prophecy.
Though Sir Robert would never arrange the drawing of the lots so as to provide a disturbing Knight—say, Gabriel Androctus—with a formidable opponent—say, the Blue Knight of Balifor—he breathes more easily when those are the lots drawn. When their lots fall from the silver ceremonial helmet, the number “3” falls in kind from the gold, signaling that they would be the third joust of the day.
Good. It will be over with soon.
Sir Robert muses through the first two lists—contests which are over almost as quickly as they begin. Sir Ledyard and Sir Orban dispose of two young, ungainly Knights from Lemish. Ledyard’s effortless victory, in fact, gives rise to a quip from Ramiro that “if Sir Ledyard is the flower of Southlund, is his opponent the blemish of Lemish?”
Sir Robert would usually laugh long and loudly at such foolishness, especially when phrased in Ramiro’s peculiar eastern accent. So too would he usually laugh at the dancing bear and the jesters who clown in front of the viewing stands while all wait for the next contest. But now he is silent, attentive to the next contest on the day’s card, as the tourney marshals set about the lengthy business of positioning the next two Knights—the Blue Knight of Balifor and the mysterious, black-garbed Gabriel Androctus.
Finally, the herald’s trumpet sounds, and the jester act breaks off to a scattered applause from the servants and the less attentive Knights and ladies. Those who know the jousts have already turned their attention to the contestants, each at a far end of the grounds, half concealed by the rising, churning dust. The Knights hold the lances “in arrest,” as they say—in upright position, so that they tower like flagpoles or obelisks nearly twenty feet into the warm afternoon air.
Androctus is lefthanded, Sir Robert notices with concern. It will make it more confusing for the Blue Knight. But he has faced more daunting problems before, judging from the stories.
At the trumpeted signal from the herald, both men are to close their visors and proffer lances—a sign of preparedness to each other, a sign that the contest should begin.
But here we have a problem. The visors of both Knights have been closed since they appeared this morning, each preferring the drama of his anonymity.
A drama Sir Robert rapidly resents.
“Gentlemen, raise your visors!” he calls out in his most official, most theatrical voice. As he expects and maliciously enjoys, there is hesitation from both parties.
Then, to his surprise, the black-armored Knight raises his visor. It is a pale face—one that women might call handsome, but men would certainly call dangerous. Sir Robert wishes his daughter Enid were beside him, keen judge of faces that she is. But she is not in attendance, having chosen to remain in her quarters and having dismissed the entire event as “so much well-dressed hooliganry.” So he is left to his own resources. But the face in the helmet is as inscrutable as that of an icon or a dead man. It is the face of a man who looks somewhere between twenty and sixty years old—Sir Robert can determine no more closely than that. The eyes are green—a pale, almost yellowish green, and the eyelids unnaturally red, as though painted clumsily or unaccustomed to light.
It is a terribly familiar face, for all its eeriness.
Sir Robert scarcely even looks at the Blue Knight. He is never sure whether Sir Gabriel’s opponent raises and lowers his visor. For the Hooded Knight closes his helmet with an echoing snap, leans back in the saddle, and proffers his heavy lance in his right hand—taking no unseemly advantage.
It takes horses of this size—the huge bay destriers of Abanasinia—a few moments to get moving. The large legs and thighs, the barrel chest of the horse are heavy weights, not to mention the armored knight on its back, and to attain anything close to jousting speed takes time, takes muscle. But once such a horse is moving, it is virtually unstoppable, like an avalanche or the cascading flow of a river out of the mountains. Straight on at the approaching black Knight, the Blue Knight of Balifor spurs his horse, and for a moment the big animal under him shies and whickers, sensing perhaps some unexpected turn in the contest. But soon both men, mounted and armed and lances at the ready, rush toward the center of the grounds, where two pennants—one solid sky-blue, the other black as the eye of the raven—flutter from lofty flagstaffs. In an instant they collide and their lances splinter. In an instant the Blue Knight topples from his horse to a clatter of armor, leaving one iron-blue boot in the stirrup as the frightened animal gallops off dustily, pursued by the marshal on horseback and by grooms on foot. At the site of the collision, the Blue Knight lies virtually still. For a moment his helmeted head rises slowly, as though he is trying to get to his feet. Then the head sinks down, and the body writhes in pain.
Sir Robert is to his feet at once, thinking of fraud, of some tricky and marginally legal pass with the lance. But everything had seemed clean—scrupulously so—and as the Blue Knight’s squire and other attendants rush to the side of their master, Sir Robert looks once more at the victor.
Sir Gabriel seems indifferent to the suffering of his opponent, having made no gesture to ask chivalrously after the well-being of a fallen adversary, as did Orban and even the eccentric, sea-changed Sir Ledyard. Instead, the black Knight sits his horse at the edge of the grounds, broken lance in arrest. Slowly he walks the big destrier toward the viewing stands, and when he is directly in front of Sir Robert, he raises the visor once more. The look is ironic, the smile as cold as the mountain wastes. It is a smile that stays with Sir Robert through the long first afternoon of the tournament, the sounds of lances breaking and of cheering fading in his ears until they become trivial background noise to his troubled musings, noises like those the mechanical cuckoos make that night in the halls of Castle di Caela, as Sir Robert, having dismissed his servants for the evening, paces hectically in his unkempt chambers.