Sturm laughed and tugged at the marble head, laughed and tugged again, his laughter ringing through the cavernous hall and the sunlight swimming around him. So dizzy he was, so faint and famished, that he never even noticed as the statue tilted, reeled, and tumbled on top of him. His head hit the floor and his breath escaped him.

Sturm awoke to music-the plaintive, solitary sound of the flute and a curious, elusive light among the statues. At first he thought it was a reflection in one of the numerous di Caela mirrors, a flash of moonlight from the window, his own movement caught in burnished bronze. But there was the music he could not explain, and it lent to the light a further, compelling mystery.

He followed the light from the room into the corridor, and the music accompanied him, echoing in the dusty corridors. Standing absolutely still on the landing of the stairwell leading down to the anteroom, Sturm saw the light shift and alter, drifting like mist toward the double doors of the lower great hall. Slowly, his sword drawn, he followed as the light drifted to the center of the large vaulted hall and vanished.

Unnerved, sure that what he had just seen was the first madness of starvation, Sturm seated himself in the high-backed mahogany chair from which he had first observed this forsaken room. Weaker now, his forehead and temples throbbing, he was no longer sure whether he could rise from it again.

"So this is the end of the Brightblade line," he announced ironically, wearily. "Starved to death in the feast hall of a castle!"

"If it is the end, then the line has descended to fools and schoolmasters!" a voice, gruff and barely substantial, proclaimed from somewhere in the rafters above the lad.

Startled, Sturm tried to rise, stumbling in weakness and fright.

"Which is not to say that didn't show up before in the bloodline," the voice continued. Sturm squinted toward the shadowy rafters.

"Who are you?" he asked nervously, "and… and… where are you?"

"In the balcony," the voice replied tersely. "With the rest of the commemorated."

Then slowly a strange yellow-green light spread from the balcony across the gloomy expanse, and the astonished Sturm marked that the light rose from a helmeted, armored figure astraddle the balcony railing, a pale old man, his face unbearably bright, his features blurred and distant, as though seen through the globe of a lantern.

"Who… who are you?" the lad stammered.

The man was silent, leaning over the balcony like a burning masthead or fox fire, that green, gaseous light in the midst of the marshes. His clothing was dancing with firelight, dripping with an incandescent dew that tumbled to the floor into glittering pools like molten gold. Sturm held his breath at the man's strange menace and beauty.

"Are you the one who… imprisoned me here?" he asked, this time more softly.

"No," the man answered finally. His voice was resonant and deep and polished like old wood, and the dark mahogany paneling of the hall glowed greenly as he spoke. "No, I am no jailer. And you are the first to call this palace a prison."

"Who are you?" Sturm asked again. The man stood motionless, a pillar of fire above him.

"Look into your shield, lad, and tell me what you see."

"I see burnished bronze," Sturm said, "and my face in the reflection."

"Hold it up toward me, you fool! Then look at the reflection! Great Paladine's Beard! You Brightblades were never quick on the uptake! If Brightblade you are, as your shield and your self-pity tell me."

As the man glowed and blustered, Sturm raised the shield, tilting it so that the bright reflection seemed to rest in the boss. With the green light gone, the man looked more pale, positively ancient, and Sturm could make out his features, his mustache, the coat of arms on his breastplate.

Red flower of light on a white cloud on a blue field. The sign of di Caela, of a vanished name in a vanished house.

"Old grandfather," Sturm proclaimed, kneeling on the rubble-strewn floor of the hall, "or grandfather of grandfathers, whoever you may be. Or whatever-whether apparition or saint or memory, I salute you as di Caela and ancestor!"

Bravely, ceremonially, the lad extended his sword. Now the man in the balcony moved for the first time, his thin arm waving dismissively.

"Get to your feet, boy, or whatever it is that we used to say when the Measure was measured and I had to put up with legions of your kind. This is a dining hall, not a shrine, and I'm Robert di Caela, not Huma or Vinas Solamnus or whoever else you're proffering swords to in this day and time."

Robert di Caela sank through the stone balcony as if through dark water. First his glowing boots appeared on the underside of the platform, then his green leggings and sun-struck breastplate. Luminous and colorful as a great tropical bird, he floated gently to the floor of the hall. The oaken doors, Sturm's sole escape from the room, lay behind Robert, open and visible through the wavering transparency of his body. Phosphorescent weeds and mosses dripped from him as he approached, spangling the dark floor behind him.

Instinctually Sturm backed away.

"A simple back-country knight, I am," Sir Robert said. "Made even more simple by the fact I am no longer living. Though you've stirred the dust and rustled the curtains around here, I mean you no harm, boy-only curious to see you, to find out what brings a Brightblade back after all these years."

Sturm backed into the chair and sat down with a thump. He knew his family tree well enough not to be surprised that a Di Caela lord was hungry for gossip and news.

Sure enough, the ghost leaned forward, white face framed in a well-kept, elegant white beard. Robert's countenance was a pantomime mask, the dark mahogany paneling visible in the vacant sockets of the eyes.

"A quest, Lord Robert-" the unnerved boy stammered.

"Sir Robert," the ghost corrected. "Time was when we didn't priss and petticoat with conflated titles. 'Sir' was good enough for the likes of your great-granddad and for the likes of men every bit his equal."

Sir Robert seated himself on a rickety bench, passing somewhat through it as he spoke, and settling with a puff of dust.

" 'Twas a time when a quest was a great thing, lad! We went after enchanters! After lost civilizations and worms encircling the continent itself!"

The ghost closed his eyes, as though he dreamt of those days as he spoke.

"And what," Sir Robert asked bluntly, as his pale eyes flew open, "is the quest on which you're bound, little Brightblade?"

As though he were charmed, enchanted, or starved past lie or even concealment, Sturm told the ghost the whole story, from the night at the banquet through his own foggy wanderings and his time of entrapment here in Castle di Caela. It struck him as he told it-how long and venturesome it had seemed in the doing, and yet how weak and simple and even foolish to recount.

At the beginning of the story, Sir Robert listened intently, but his ardor didn't last long. His expression changed from intent to politely attentive, then abstracted and drowsy, then nodding on the edge of sleep.

"Is that all?" he asked. "You've set out to meet an opponent no doubt your superior in strength and craft, and you've managed to get yourself locked into my estate before you're even halfway there?"

Sturm flushed and nodded as Sir Robert laughed, a low thin chuckle.

"Well?" the ghost asked, standing and hovering not twenty feet from the lad.

"Sir?"

"Look to your ghost lore, boy! What revenge have I asked for?"

"None, sir."

"And what unfinished business have I asked you to complete?"

"Indeed, none."

"Absolutely. As I see it, you've enough unfinished business for a lifetime of your own. What treasure do I have?"