The halls were lined with statuary and rusting mechanical birds.

Sturm had heard of the cuckoos of Castle di Caela-that his great-great-grandfather, Sir Robert, had collected all manner of chiming and whirring machinery, none of which worked, at least as it was intended to work, and all of which annoyed and menaced the visitors. Great-grandmother Enid had stored all of these novelties in the Cat Tower, the smaller of the two castle turrets, but Sir Robert and Sir Galen Pathwarden, an erratic friend of great-grandfather Bayard's, had restored the aviary in all of its irritating glory, sure that the whistling "would soothe baby Emelin."

They were gone now, the lot of them. Robert had drowned when his wheeled contraption of gnomish make, designed to render the horse obsolete, had careened off the drawbridge into the brimming di Caela moat. Great-grandmother Enid had passed away peacefully, quietly, at the age of one hundred and twelve, having lived long enough to see the infant Sturm in his cradle. As for Sir Bayard and Sir Galen, nobody knew. Some time before the century turned, when both men were white-haired and a bit gone in the faculties and were happy grandfathers of their respective broods, the eccentric pair took off on yet another quest, bound for Karthay in the farthest regions of the Courrain Ocean. They were accompanied only by Sir Galen's brother, a mad hermit who talked with birds and vegetables, and none of them had returned.

Sturm fingered the brass bill of one of the comical birds. The bronze head came off in his hand, chirping one last, demented time.

So much for the di Caelas and those who consorted with them. It was a side of the family that was overgrown and wild: Sturm's mother had cautioned against their inheritance, telling the lad he must continually marshall his best Brightblade demeanor or he would be like the whole lot of them, climbing towers and living with lizards and cats.

Sturm drew his sword from its sheath as he ascended to the still brighter second floor, past servants' markers where the great geysers of Two Thirty One had shot through the floors and drenched even the upper stories. Dozens of statues lined the room, stretching back to times before the Cataclysm itself, when both Brightblade and di Caela had walked in uncommon heroism, among the first Knights at the side of Vinas Solamnus. They were all here, forever valiant if somewhat dusty.

Sturm moved by them, inspecting and exploring, his surprise and dismay growing. For here was a statue of Lucero di Caela, Wing Commander in the Great Ogre Wars, his sword drawn, stepping forth into battle. And there the statue of Bedal Brightblade, who singlehandedly fought the desert nomads, holding a pass into Solamnia until help came. There, indeed, was Roderick di Caela, who put down a hobgoblin invasion from Throt at the cost of his own life.

And the last of the statues was of Bayard Brightblade, erected, no doubt, by the Lady Enid in memory of her vanished husband. He, too, was drawing his sword and stepping forth.

Sturm rubbed at his eyes, not believing what he suddenly saw. For what had seemed a fanciful mistake down in the great hall was unsettling and real here in the upper reaches of the keep.

Each hero now had Sturm's face, down to the boyhood scar upon the chin. From one to another he quickly moved, looking, looking again, looking away. This time there was no trick of light. Vertumnus again?

For a while, he sat by the statue of Sir Robert di Caela, his thoughts wandering. It was some time before he came to himself, and at once he scrambled to his feet, intent that night not overtake him in an abandoned castle. Swiftly he ranged from room to room, chamber to chamber, the sunlight as low as his hopes. All of the windows overlooked sheer and no doubt lethal plunges onto the stone pavement of the bailey.

Desperately looking for trellis or vine or mysterious stairwell, Sturm took the steps three at a time, finding himself in the solar on the topmost floor of the keep. The solar was the spacious chamber in which innumerable di Caela lords and ladies had slept away thousands of nights, and after them, two generations of Brightblades. Heir to much of that tradition, Sturm felt a little drowsy the moment he entered the room.

If anything, things looked even more hopeless from here. Above the solar were the battlements, but the lone ladder leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling lay in pieces no larger than his forearm. True, there were windows aplenty-stained glass, for that matter, in rich and various greens-but they were set high in yet another clerestory, to which not even a squirrel could climb.

Sturm seated himself dejectedly on the huge canopied bed, wrapping himself in what remained of the tattered curtains.

"Tomorrow," he told himself, his eyelids heavy, the curtains musty but warm. "There are cellars in this place, no doubt, out of which… I surely… can…"

He ran out of words and wakefulness, there amid the evening's green light and floating dust. Twice, maybe three times, he sneezed in his sleep, but he did not awaken.

And so on his very first night on the road, Sturm Bright-blade slept like a seedy lord in the ruins of the castle. He was trapped, with no prospect of escape, and a weariness so great that he slept undisturbed until the morning sun was visible through the trapdoor to the battlements.

The new day, however, was no better. The locks to the cellar broke easily enough, but whatever passages or tunnels once led from the cellars were now blocked. The same earthquake that had unleashed the water on the upper regions of the house had sealed off its lower regions, Sturm concluded. Sadly he rummaged amid empty barrels, bottles, and wine racks, looking for secret doors, hidden corridors, and anything edible. He leaned against the moist wall, flushed with exertion and anger.

"If I ever find Lord Wilderness, or whoever locked me in this place," he swore, beating his fists against the hard-packed earth of the cellar floor, "I shall make him pay dearly! I shall… I shall… well, I shall do something, and it will be terrible!"

He closed his eyes and seethed. He felt silly and helpless, unworthy of his knightly inheritance. Before dire vengeance could be visited, before he cornered the scoundrel and exacted fierce, Solamnic justice, he would have to find his way out of his father's father's house.

It looked no better by afternoon. Sturm wandered the halls of the castle, growing more and more familiar with each turn and alcove.

Slowly his anger gave way to rising hunger and fear. The well in the keep and the cistern in the solar provided a trickle of water, but one could starve as easily in a castle, it seemed, as in the wilderness or the desert. That night hunger kept him awake, and he slept fitfully, awakening no more rested than when he had first closed his eyes.

Sluggish and weary, he found himself in midmorning back in the statuary room, drawn to the place and its history. He paced from one end of the hall to the other, passing from one marbled generation to the next with an increasing grogginess, until he reached the statue of Robert di Caela, fixed in the same martial pose as his ancestors and descendants, head strangely askew, as though the long-dead sculptor had sought to preserve his subject's eccentricity through an oddness in the carving.

With a sigh, the lad settled back against the dusty marble of the statue, only to slip from the pedestal onto the floor. In the statuary room, where a score of his ancestors stood enshrined, Sturm Brightblade sat and laughed alone-laughed at his own clumsiness, his unreadiness for all that lay ahead of him. Whimsically he stood, leapt onto the pedestal, and twisted the statue's head in his hands, seeking to right Sir Robert for once in the old man's spotty history.