"Sir?"

"What treasure, damn it! You've combed the premises from battlements to cellar. What am I hiding?"

"Nothing, sir." The lad was weary of interrogation. He was hungry and tired.

"Then what is left?" Sir Robert prodded.

"Sir?"

"What else do we ghosts do?"

Sturm stood in silence. Sir Robert approached him, green and yellow and red.

"We answer questions. I have returned to answer a question. No, I shall answer two questions."

Arms outstretched, the ghost of Sir Robert di Caela hovered scarcely an arm's length from Sturm's chair. Hunger racing through him like fever, Sturm peered at the ghost intently.

"I had always thought," the young knight ventured, "there was something magical and right in the answering of three questions."

"Don't bargain with me, boy!" Sir Robert snapped. "It will be two questions or none. We stand on no foolish traditions here. Two questions."

A thousand questions flashed through Sturm's mind as he stared at the ghost, questions historical, metaphysical, theological…

But which questions?

"Why you, of all the ghosts that might visit me?"

"That is your first question?"

"It is." Sturm regarded the ghost cautiously. Sir Robert hovered a good three feet off the ground, as though he were floating in water.

"Why me?"

"'Tis what I ask," Sturm replied.

"Damned if I know," Robert replied. "Next question."

"That was your answer?" Sturm exclaimed.

"Is that your second question?" Sir Robert asked.

"What? Well… no…" Sturm muttered. He fell silent, and the green light in the great hall shifted and deepened. Now the shadows of bench, throne, and rubble lengthened along the dusty stone floor until it seemed that the furnishings themselves had grown beyond human proportion.

"I… I'm not sure what to ask," Sturm said finally. His mind lodged against the ancient stories of captured mages, bound to grant wishes-how they tricked their captors into asking for a sausage breakfast rather than immortality or infinite wisdom. Whatever the nature and design of the ghost before him, he was not about to let it trick him.

"I think that the question is evident," Sir Robert said with a curious smile.

Sturm gaped at the ghost and settled back into the chair. Sir Robert stood above him now, thin arms folded over his ethereal breastplate, eyes fixed on a ghostly distance. Slowly he lowered his gaze to the high-backed throne and to the young man, baffled and trembling, who sat upon it.

"The question is evident," Sir Robert repeated. "I think you need to ask how to get out of here."

"Very well. How do I get out?" Sturm asked.

"I thought you'd never ask," Sir Robert replied with a chuckle.

He should have known all along, Sturm told himself, for the ghost turned suddenly in stagnant air. Behind him, watery pools of light dripped from his locks and clothing, green and iridescent, as he made a path from the center of the hall, out the doors, and into the anteroom. Sword drawn and at the ready, Sturm rose from the chair and followed.

The footsteps led, to his surprise, back to the cellars of Castle di Caela, where Sir Robert, floating ethereally ahead of him, rushed back beneath the stairway.

"Bradley the engineer's work," he muttered. "So we could get the wine out after the worm tore up the cellars."

The ghost flitted past a capsized wine barrel, headlong into the far wall, where he vanished entirely, leaving the stone surface shimmering with green light.

"Follow!" a voice urged from the other side of the wall, and when Sturm set hand to the glowing stones, they pivoted suddenly, and he was bathed with fresh air and moonlight. He stepped from the cellar into the castle bailey, bright in the silver glow of Solinari.

Sturm looked behind him. Surely enough, Sir Robert had vanished. Again he wondered why this ghost, of all possible ghosts in a castle long abandoned and no doubt richly haunted.

Luin trotted across the courtyard from the stables, apparently no worse for her time left alone. She looked cared for, even well fed, though she was still saddled and bridled as he had left her when he thought his stay in the castle would be a matter of minutes.

Sturm rifled through his packs, coming up with some jerky, some quith-pa, and some stale bread, all of which he wolfed down with no regard for manners or health. As he ate, Luin nuzzled his shoulder contentedly, and after a while, Sturm stroked her long nose and spoke to her, ashamed that she had been so long from his thoughts.

"And how, old girl, did you keep yourself so well over these days? How did-"

It was then he looked around and saw that the castle gardens were green, that grass sprouted up thickly between the stones of the courtyard. The grazing had been plentiful. Bright green the foliage was, not the pale of new leaf.

He had been in the castle for a week. He was sure of it. The first day of spring had no doubt come, or was at best a day or two away. Sturm thought back to the Yule banquet, to the Green Man's stern warning that he keep the time of their appointment, and his thoughts spun with the dire possibilities.

He would miss the time. And the tidings of his father, promised by Lord Wilderness, would go unheard, would remain unlearned… perhaps forever.

At the thought of forever, a dull pain coursed through the lad's shoulder, and with it a sudden panic. For had not Vertumnus promised even more deadly things if Sturm did not keep the appointment?

"The wound would blossom, and its bloom would be deadly."

With no more thought of his comfort or of Luin's, Sturm Brightblade leapt into the saddle. Through the courtyard he clattered, reining and coaxing the horse beneath him, and out into the Solamnic countryside, where the moon tricked the landscape and the guideposts for travelers were confusing.

Over his shoulder, he cast one last look at Castle di Caela, the maternal house of his ancestry. Somehow it seemed insubstantial, a part of the mist that had brought him to its gates. As he rode farther, he could see the two large turrets. The largest one had housed the keep and the hall and the ghost of Sir Robert di Caela-about that one he was no longer curious. But behind that tower lay the other, the Cat Tower, in which his great-grandmother's family had housed their eccentrics-sometimes their truly insane.

A light burned in the topmost window of the Cat Tower, and holding the torch was a pale and elderly man, clad in ceremonial armor. Even at this distance, Sturm could make out the arms that adorned his breastplate.

Red flower of light on a white cloud on a blue field.

Boniface was not far behind him. Sturm's escape from the keep had taken him by surprise as he nodded atop the southwestern bartizan, his pale eyes fixed idly upon the pale moon. He cursed softly, then cursed himself for cursing, as the lad climbed into the saddle and galloped off through the northern gate before he could descend from the walls and get to the stable himself.

He hadn't expected the resourcefulness of the lad, who must indeed bear Brightblade ingenuity, for how else could he have escaped a castle so tightly locked and sealed?

Lord Boniface Crownguard smiled to himself, leading his horse from the stables and into the bailey. Gracefully he mounted, with the thoughtless skill of a cavalry officer, and blazed out after Sturm and Luin, the stallion beneath him dark and fluid on the moonlit plain.

Soon, however, he slowed his horse to a canter. It was only a matter of time. After all, he had seen to the contingencies. From here to the Southern Darkwoods, it was a gauntlet of traps and snares. In fact, the next surprise was fast approaching.