Pompous little bumpkin, Lord Stephan thought with gentle amusement. Rattling about in that coffin of a breastplate. We'll see how well 'the Brightblade' and his legacy weather the coming news.

"The gods know where, indeed, Sturm Brightblade," Stephan announced aloud as the great oaken gates of the Clerist's Tower opened behind him. "But your first destination is no doubt the Southern Darkwoods, and the way to that place Lord Vertumnus… insists on showing you, it seems."

Sturm's eyes widened as he looked over Stephan's shoulder. Inexplicably, vines had grown from the cobblestones at the foot of the Southern Gates, spreading over the huge passageway like an enormous green web. And out on the wings of Habbakuk, tumbling south and east into the rocky foothills, a narrow swath of grass had risen from nowhere. Overnight it had spread from the gates of the castle down onto the Solamnic Plains. As bright as green fire it was, and as flawless as a ribbon or a dignitary's carpet.

"A good host he is, this Vertumnus," Sturm jested weakly, rubbing his shoulder, which all of a sudden had begun to throb. "A good host indeed, to guide me from the Tower to his hold." His words felt thin in the misted air.

"I trust the venture is not as dark as your friend Crown-guard makes it," Lord Stephan insisted. "Nonetheless, I cannot lie and say the path will be easy. But may the Dragon and the Mantis guide you also, and may the Gray Book open and show you its wisdom."

Waxing pompous myself, Lord Stephan thought. Must be the hour and the greenery. For it had taken the Knights by surprise, too-Vertumnus's magic leading up to the very gates of the stronghold. A narrow swath of green it was, but powerful. Lord Gunthar had stepped from the gates and touched it, first with his sword, and then with his bare hand. Stephan had followed suit, and the spring grass felt warm and pliant between his fingers, and with the touch had come a strange, undefinable yearning for the depths of the wilderness, for the fastness and green of the forest.

"May the Dragon and the Mantis guide you," he whispered again as Sturm led his horse gingerly through the maze of greenery out onto Vertumnus's magical path. Boniface and Gunthar watched from the walls, too, and to all three of the Knights, the lad seemed frail, forever unprepared. Again Lord Stephan regretted that Oath and Measure prevented the lot of them from taking up arms and following.

Brightblade the lad might be-indeed, Lord Angriff's son he was, in image and spirit. But what lay ahead…

Boniface dragged his sputtering squire to a secluded spot off the gardens. It was near a shed, where the gardeners' tools lay amid broken statuary and the wreckage of a gnomish irrigation system that had never worked in the first place.

Boniface looked about him and quickly set upon his hapless nephew.

"Is everything in place, Derek?"

"Ev-everything?" the boy stammered nervously.

"Everything, you pampered little fool! The trap at the ford, the mare's malady, the ambush, the surprise at the village, the-"

"Unc-Lord Boniface, please!" Derek urged in a whisper, nodding frantically in the direction of Jack, who was serenely dumping the manure on the pile at the foot of the garden. The gardener wiped his hands and shuffled carefully through a maze of flowers, where he knelt and examined the green bud of a green rose.

"Never mind him!" the Knight ordered, his voice low and menacing. "Only a servant and simpleton he is, but perhaps even he would have done better in preparing the surprises for that fool of a Brightblade."

"You may rest assured, sir," Derek replied coldly, his anger and dignity rising. "By Paladine and all the gods of good, you may know that everything you planned for Sturm Brightblade is in place and awaits only his… his honorable presence."

At those words, the great Solamnic swordsman relaxed and loosened his grip on the squire. With a curious smile, he regarded the lad in front of him.

'Those are strange gods for your oath, Derek Crownguard. Strange gods indeed."

Sturm marveled at how the green strand followed the route he had chosen and planned.

Down through the Wings of Habbakuk it fared, skirting the Hart's Forest, that small thicket that housed, among evergreens and maples, the only vallenwoods in the Vingaard foothills. Southward it glittered, fading from sight in the morning mists but undeniably leading toward the river, toward the provinces of Lemish beyond, and toward the heart of that troubled country where the Southern Darkwoods lay.

It was almost as though his journey had been mapped for him. Yet even though the Green Man had charted his way, the Plains of Solamnia no longer permitted a safe and simple passage, for the times had changed since the great heroic ages of Vinas Solamnus, Bedal Brightblade, and Huma Dragonbane-ages when the country was righteous and just, defended from its enemies by strong lance and stronger beliefs.

Now it was nearly impossible to imagine those ancient times. The countryside had turned in violence and anger against the Knights. Peasants rebelled, Nerakan bandits raided the eastern borders, and darker things still were rumored to have settled in the heartlands-gibbering, scaled things, reptilian and sly, that snatched babies and slaughtered livestock, things that passed through the villages of a night like a cold wind, fingering thatch and masonry, rattling doors…

Sturm shuddered. Before him, the plains stretched to the edge of sight, mist-covered and flecked with the rust of dead heather, over which the green swath stretched like a glittering sash. It was a faceless landscape and harsh, where the country could lose him for days if the path failed or he wandered unwarily. The place had a peculiar silence to it, as if the wind had no voice here.

Beneath him, Luin whickered serenely and stopped to graze on Vertumnus's bright pathway. Sturm turned in the saddle and looked back into the Vingaard Mountains, where the great spire of the High Clerist's Tower glistened in the midmorning sunlight. Though the road back was scarcely a three-hour journey, the tower seemed remote, as though it sat firmly in the heart of another age.

He turned once again to the green way. It stretched ahead of him, over an imagined route that seemed suddenly hostile. Over the swiftly flowing Vingaard River, down into the hobgoblin strongholds of Throt-and all of this only a prelude to the Darkwoods themselves and to whatever Vertumnus had in mind.

"Why, the getting there alone could kill me," Sturm whispered uneasily.

Indeed the getting there for some had been perilous. Stories of danger on the Solamnic roads were plentiful and grim. There was the caravan from Caergoth, missing for days, whose wagons were found still rolling along the road to Thelgaard Keep, the horses still in the traces, though their drivers and passengers had vanished entirely. There were also the dozen pilgrims from Kaolyn, bound for the shrines at Palanthus, whose bodies, noosed and dangling from the low limbs of vallenwoods, were scarcely more than husks by the time Lord Gunthar's search party discovered them.

Sturm rubbed his eyes and wrapped his cloak more tightly about his shoulders. Twice he had imagined someone was following him, but when he looked behind him, he saw only pale sunlight, only wind through the high grass.

The dwarves told even darker stories, he knew, his imagination still racing. How in order to lure kindhearted victims into a lonely and treacherous spot, hobgoblins had learned to mimic the cry of a human infant, so that in the thick recesses of a fog…