Divided Allegiance

23

Paks’s first experience as a paladin candidate was a familiar one—moving into new quarters. These were south of the main complex, in an annex to the Paladin’s Hall. She was surprised to find that she would still have a room to herself, but Amberion explained.

“You will spend time in solitary exercises; you will need the privacy. Later, you will learn the skills of meditation even when surrounded by noise and upheaval, but for novices it’s easier to learn in solitude.”

Paks nodded silently. She was still shy of her paladin sponsor; it was hard to believe that he and Cami were in the same order. He seemed more sombre, far less approachable. She unpacked her things quickly, wondering a little at the requirement that her sponsor must see everything she owned. But for that, too, he had a reason. Paladins must be willing to go anywhere, anytime—able to endure hardship, not just discipline. Those who clung to treasured possessions, favorite foods, even friends, might make fine Marshals or knights, but not paladins. So in the early days of training, they must do without accustomed possessions. Those who withdrew would have theirs restored, but those continuing had to face the possible loss of items deemed too luxurious. Paks understood the reasoning, but could not imagine anyone preferring fancy clothes or jewelry to being a paladin. She said so, and Amberion grinned at her.

“I’ve seen it myself. And there is always something hard to give up. If not material things, habits and ways of thought. This may be a trivial test for you, but there are others. No one passes through this training without struggle.” He looked over her gear as he spoke, and told her to keep Saben’s red horse and Canna’s medallion. Aris’s gift, her weapons, the shining mail the elfane taig had given her—all these went into storage. Then he said, “What about money? Do you have any gold or silver?”

Paks handed over the heavy leather sack she’d brought from Brewersbridge. “This, and some on account with the Guild in Tsaia.”

His eyebrows went up. “Did Marshal Cedfer know how much gold you had?”

“I don’t know.” Paks thought back to Brewersbridge, already distant to her mind. “I told him the elfane taig had gifted me; he saw the jewel I gave the grange, and knew I had money for food, lodging, and clothes.”

Amberion frowned, and Paks wondered what she’d done wrong. “Did you know that most orders of knights charge a fee for their training, which is waived for poor applicants?” he asked. Paks shook her head. She had assumed that the training company was maintained by the Fellowship of Gird, through contributions from the granges. “Perhaps Cedfer expected you’d become a Girdsman, as you have, and didn’t bother to mention it,” Amberion went on. “As a paladin, you may not hold wealth. We are bound to keep this for you, and restore it if you fail, but if you are called as a paladin . . . well . . .”

“You mean I owe the Training College?” asked Paks.

“Not precisely owe. Cedfer sponsored you here, at first, and you accepted this chance freely, as a gift. It would be ill grace on our part to ask alms of you now. On the other hand, while we would ask nothing of a farmer’s daughter who had nothing, we would ordinarily ask a fee of someone who could pay. And that gold, that fee, would not be returned, whatever happened.” He shifted the bag from hand to hand. “What had you planned with this?”

“Well—” Paks had trouble remembering the clutter of plans and dreams with which she’d ridden from Brewersbridge. “I had sent money to my family, to repay my dowry, but I’d planned to send more if I became a knight, for then I could always earn my own way. And I’d thought of a new saddle for Socks—my black horse.”

He nodded slowly. “You thought of warriors’ needs ahead, and your family. Are they poor, Paksenarrion?”

“Not really poor, like some I’ve seen. We had food enough, if not too much; we always had clothes and fire in winter. But there’s no money, most times. It took me years to save up the copper bits I left home with. And all the other children to be raised and wed—” Paks shook her head suddenly. “But now I’m here—and if I’m a paladin, I won’t need a saddle, will I? Someone else will take Socks. And I won’t be looking for work. Tell me what the fee is, sir, and I can send the rest to them and be done with it.”

Amberion smiled at her with real warmth. “You choose well. Would you agree to give this bagful to the Fellowship, and send whatever is on account to your family?”

“There’s more on account,” said Paks.

“No matter. We are not here to fatten ourselves at the expense of farmers. Now—what’s this—?” He pushed at the little bundle of scuffed and tattered old scrolls left in her saddlebags. “I thought you weren’t a scholar.”

“I don’t know,” said Paks. “I found them in my things after the elfane taig. I was going to ask Ambros about them, but that’s when the caravan was attacked, and after that I forgot. I couldn’t read them then—maybe now—” She started to unroll one of them; the parchment crackled.

“Here—wait—” Amberion took it from her. “These are old, Paksenarrion—we must be careful with them, or they’ll go to pieces.” He peered at the faded script. “Gird’s arm, I can’t—what do you think that is?” He pushed it back to Paks, who leaned close.

“I’m not sure. ‘For on this day—something—Gird came to this village where was the—the—’ is that word knight?”

“I think so,” said Amberion. “I think it’s ‘knight of the prince’s cohort, and there they—’ something where that’s rubbed out, and then ‘and as he said to me, that he did, and called the High Lord’s blessing on it’—” Amberion looked up at her for a moment “Where did you say you found these?”

“I didn’t find them, exactly,” said Paks. “After the fight underground, the elfane taig got me back to the surface—somehow—and then had me pack up a whole load of things. I was too sick to notice much, but the elfane taig insisted. A day or so later, when I looked through the packs, the scrolls were there. I tried to read them, but—” Paks flushed. “I didn’t read that well—and the script is odd.”

“Yes—it is.” Amberion seemed abstracted. “Paks—this has nothing to do with your training, but I believe these scrolls may be valuable. They’re old—very old—and I’ve read something like this in the archives. Would you let the Archivist see them?”

“Of course,” said Paks. “I’d be glad to know what they are and why the elfane taig gave them. I almost threw them away, but—”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” said Amberion. “If they’re really an old copy of Luap’s writings—”

“Luap? Is that Gird’s friend?”

“Yes. Most of what we know about Gird comes from the Chronicles of Luap. This—” he nodded toward the scroll he held, “seems to be part of that—it’s talking, I think, about the battle at Seameadow.” He put the scroll down and looked around the room. “That’s all, then? Good. Now about your horse—what do you call him?”

Paks felt herself blushing again. “Socks,” she mumbled. She had had enough comments to know that it should have been something grander. But Amberion did not laugh.

“Better, to my mind, than some long name you can’t shout at need. You know that if you pass the trials you’ll have a mount?” She nodded. She had heard more than once of the paladins’ mounts that appeared after their Trials, waiting fully equipped in the courtyard outside the High Lord’s Hall. No one knew whence they came; no one saw them come. “But in the meantime you can use Socks for training. Doggal says he’s good enough. In fact, the Training Order would take him when you pass the trials, unless you want to sell him elsewhere.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take the things you won’t need back to the steward, and then come back here; you’ll meet the other paladins and candidates.”

For some days after that, Paks heard nothing more about the scrolls. Her schedule kept her too busy to ask. It was unlike any training she’d had before. Instead of weapons drill or military theory, she found herself immersed in history and geography: which men had come to which area, and when, and why. She learned of their laws and their beliefs; she had to memorize article after article of the Code of Gird. Gradually she built in her mind a picture of the whole land about, and the beliefs of the people. She could see, as in a drawing, her father’s family perched on the side of a moor north of most trade routes. They had believed in the High Lord, and the Lady of Peace, but also in the horse nomad deity Guthlac, and the Windsteed. Their boundary stones, and the rituals for keeping them, came from Aarenis; the well-sprite for whom she had plucked flowers every spring was called the same—Piri—from Brewersbridge to Three Firs, and south to Valdaire. But in Aarenis proper, the well-spirits were multiple, and called caoulin: they had no personal names.

She learned that elves claimed no lands: the elvenhome kingdoms cannot be reached by unguided humans anyway. In Lyonya, where elves and humans ruled together a mortal kingdom, human land-rights were held provisionally, and any change of use had to be approved by the crown. Dwarves claimed daskgeft, a stonemass, but cared little who traveled the surface. Gnomes held all property by intricate law, and to step one foot-length on gnomish land without legal right could bring the whole kingdom down on the criminal. Even in human lands, the laws of property differed. In Tsaia, where land was granted by the crown in return for military service, those who actually farmed rarely owned the land they worked—but in Fintha nearly all farms were owned by the farmer.

High Marshal Garris taught them the lore of the gods—all that was known of the great powers of good and evil. Paks learned that Achrya, the Webmistress, had not been known in Aare—proof, according to Marshal Garris, that Achrya was a minor god, for the great gods had power everywhere in the known world. Liart, on the other hand, had been known in old Aare, but not to the northern nomads or the Seafolk until they met the men from Aarenis. She learned that her fear of the Kuakkganni came from mistaking them for kuaknom, a race related to elves but devoted to evil; the Kuakkganni, Garris insisted, were never wholly evil, and often good. Of the greatest evils, Marshal Garris taught only their names and general attacks: Nayda, the Unnamer, who threatened forgetfulness, and Gitres, the Unmaker.

“They are one in destruction,” he said firmly. “They try to enforce despair, and convince you that nothing matters, for they will wipe out all. Never believe it. The elves call them A-Iynisi, the Unsinger who unravels the Song of the Singer, but they know as well as we that the Singer lives, and living must create.”

“But are they really one, or two?” asked Harbin, the yeoman-marshal sponsored by Cami.

High Marshal Garris shrugged. “No man knows, Harbin; no man needs to know. I think—but it is only my thought—that it is only one, but one who appears in the guise you most fear. One fears the loss of fame, of being unknown and forgotten, and another fears having all his works unmade. All mortals have some form of this fear, and in search of immortality among men may do great evil without intention. It is hard to trust that the High Lord’s court will remember and reward a good life, hard to risk fame or lifework when those are at stake.”

Along with this, all the candidates were encouraged to learn languages. Paks had already found, in her travels, that she was quick to pick up new phrases. Since she had made friends among the elves and dwarves in Fin Panir, Amberion urged her to spend her evenings with them, speaking elven and dwarvish in turn. At first this went quickly: she could ask for food and drink, and greet her friends politely, after only a few lessons. But the more she wanted to say, the harder it got. A simple question, like “where are you from?” would bring on a flurry of discussion. Paks found the dwarves more willing to explain than the elves, but she could not follow their explanations.

“It is simple,” said Balkon one night, the third time of trying to explain dwarf clan rankings. “Let us begin with the Goldenaxe.” They had begun with the Goldenaxe before, but Paks nodded. “The Goldenaxe has two sons and a daughter.”

“Yes, but—” Paks knew that something difficult was coming.

“Wait. The Goldenaxe that was, before this, had a sister who had a son, and so this Goldenaxe is the sister-son of the Goldenaxe that was.”

“His nephew?” ventured Paks.

Balkon scowled. “No—not. In Common that is son of either brother or sister, yes? And this is only for sister-son. Brother-son is mother’s clan.”

Paks started to ask why, and thought better of it.

“Now—this Goldenaxe has no sister, only brother, and brother has no sons. But a daughter. It is clear?”

Paks nodded. She still had a thread to follow. The current Goldenaxe had a brother, with a daughter, and two sons and a daughter of his own.

“So will inherit to the title either the son of his brother’s daughter, or his oldest son, or the son of his daughter.”

“But why not just his son?” asked Paks.

“Because that is not his blood,” said Balkon. “His son’s son is not his clan, you see that—only his daughter’s son—”

“Then why not his daughter?” asked Paks again.

“What? She be the Goldenaxe? No—that would rive the rock indeed. No dwarfmaid wields coldmetal—”

“They don’t fight?”

“I did not say that. They wield not the coldmetal, the weaponsteel, once it is forged. You, lady, would not stand long against a dwarven warrior-maid in her own hall.”

Paks went back to asking the names of common objects after that. With elves the trouble was different but equally impenetrable. Some questions were simply ignored, others answered in a spate of elven that drowned her mind in lovely sound. Ardhiel gladly taught her songs, and encouraged her to learn the elaborate elven courtesies, but as for learning more about elves themselves, it was “Lady, the trees learn water by drinking rain, and stars learn night by shining.” Paks found individual words easy to speak and remember, but her best efforts at stringing them together sounded nothing like Ardhiel’s speech, though he praised her.

She had also much to learn of paladins, as did the other candidates. Most of them had thought, like Paks, that being Gird’s holy warrior meant gaining vast arcane powers—they would be nearly invincible against any foe. Their paladin sponsors quickly set them straight. Although paladins must be skilled at fighting, that, their sponsors insisted, was the least of their abilities. A quest might involve no fighting at all, or a battle against beings no steel could pierce.

“Paladins show that courage is possible,” Cami said to them one day. “It is easy enough to find reasons to give in to evil. War is ugly, as Paks knows well,” she nodded toward Paks, who suddenly remembered the worst of Aarenis, the dead baby in Rotengre, the murdered farmfolk, Ferrault dying, Alured’s tortures. “We do not argue that war is better than peace; we are not so stupid as that. But it is not peace when cruelty reigns, when stronger men steal from farmers and craftworkers, when the child can be enslaved or the old thrown out to starve, and no one lifts a hand. That is not peace: that is conquest, and evil. We start no quarrels in peaceful lands; we never display our weaponskills to earn applause. But we are Gird’s cudgel, defending the helpless, and teaching by our example that one person can dare greater force to break evil’s grasp on the innocent. Sometimes we can do that without fighting, without killing, and that’s best.”

“But we’re warriors first,” said Paks before she thought. She wished she’d kept still. She had already noticed that the others, with their years in the Fellowship and service in the granges, had different views. Now they all looked at her, and she fixed her gaze on Cami.

“Yes,” said Cami slowly. “Some evils need that direct attack, and we must be able to do it, and to lead others in battle. Did you ever wonder why paladins are so likeable?” It seemed an odd remark, and threw Paks off-balance. Apparently others were confused as well, by the stirring in the room. “It’s important,” said Cami, now with that grin that pulled them all together. “We come to a town, perhaps, where nothing has gone right for a dozen years. Perhaps there’s a grange of Gird, perhaps not. But the people are frightened, and they’ve lost trust in each other, in themselves. We may lead them into danger; some will be killed or wounded. Why should they trust us?” No one answered, and she went on. “Because we are likeable, and other people will follow us willingly. And that’s why we are more likely to choose a popular yeoman-marshal as a candidate than the best fighter in the grange.”

Paks dared a sideways glance. From the thoughtful and even puzzled faces around her, the others had never considered this. She herself, remembering the paladin in Aarenis, realized that she had trusted him at once, without reservation, although the Marshal with him had annoyed her.

“But you see how dangerous that could be, if someone wanted to do evil,” said Cami, breaking into her thoughts. “We choose from those with a gift for leadership, those people will follow happily. Therefore we must be sure that you will never use that gift wrongly. Another thing: because we come and go, we make demands on those we help for only a short time. It’s easier for them to follow us quickly, and then go home. Never scorn Marshals: when we have left, they must maintain their yeomen’s faith. Perhaps we showed them what was possible—but we left them with years of work.”

As for the powers legend had grafted onto paladins, in reality there were four.

“We all have powers, but not all of us have them equally,” said Amberion one day. “Any paladin can call light—” A glow lit the end of his finger. “It is not fire, which gives light by burning, but true light, the essence of seeing. There are greater lights—” At his nod, Cami suddenly seemed to catch fire, wreathed in a white radiance too bright to watch. Then it was gone; all the candidates blinked. “More than that,” Amberion went on, “some paladins—but not all—can call light that will spread across a whole battlefield.” Paks remembered the light in Sibili. “It is the duty and power of a paladin,” said Amberion, “to show the truth of good and evil—to make clear—and that is what our light is for. It is a tool. Sometimes we use it to prove our call, but it must never be used for the paladin’s own convenience or pride.”

“But how do you make the light?” asked Clevis, one of the other candidates.

“We do not make it. We call it—ask it, in Gird’s name. Later in your training we will graft this power onto you, for awhile, so that you can learn to use it—but it will not be your power until you are invested as a paladin, in the Trials, and the gods give or withhold your gifts.”

“You mean we won’t know until then?” asked Harbin.

“You knew that, surely?”

“Well, yes, but—” He shook his head. “It seems a long time wasted, if we don’t become paladins. Can’t you tell earlier?”

“We can tell if you are doing badly,” said Amberion. “But we have no power over the gods’ decisions, Harbin. We prepare the best candidates we can find as well as we can, and then present them. Then they choose—why, we do not know. That’s one reason the failing candidates are honored: it does not mean they are not worthy; they are the best we could find. Even those who withdraw from training are honored for having been chosen to attempt it. Any one of you—” he looked around the small group. “Any one of you would make a fine knight in any order. Most of you would make a fine Marshal—one or two, perhaps, are too independent of mind—but you would all do. But to be a paladin requires more than weaponskills, a gift for leadership, the willingness to risk all for good, the deep love of good and hatred of evil. Many good men and women share these with you. Beyond that, you must have the High Lord’s blessing on that way for you, as shown by the gifts you receive in the Trials.” They thought that over for some minutes in silence.

Saer, a black-haired woman with merry blue eyes, explained the gift of healing, second of the paladin’s special abilities. This too was a gift, to be prayed for; the gift might be withheld at times. As well, it required knowledge of wounds and illness, the structure of the body and its functions. Paks would like to have asked her about Canna’s wound—had she healed it, and was that any proof of Gird’s favor?—but she was shy in front of the others. After a short discussion, in which she took no part, they passed on to other matters.

Sarek, who reminded Paks of Cracolnya in the Duke’s Company, with his stocky body and slightly bowed legs, explained about the detection of good and evil. “A paladin can sense good and evil directly,” he began. “Now you might think that makes everything simple: on one side are the bad people, and you kill them, and over here are the good people, and they cheer for you.” Everyone laughed, including the other paladins. “It would be nice,” he went on, “but that’s not how it works. Normally you will experience people much as you do now—liking some, and not liking others. Most people—and that includes us, candidates—are mixtures, neither wholly evil nor wholly good. But if you are close to someone intent on evil—an assassin, Achrya’s agent, whatever—you will know that evil is near and be able to locate it.

“That’s not the same as doing anything about it,” he said, again waiting for the laughter that followed. “You must learn to think. Suppose you are trying to decide whom to trust in a troubled town. An evil person may lie, but he might tell the truth, if truth serves his plan. A good person may lead you wrong, being good and stupid. You, young candidates, are supposed to be good—and smart.” Again they laughed. “But more of this later. Only realize that like any gift, it is a tool—and you must learn to use it carefully, or it can slip in your hand.” He gave them a final grin, and waved Cami up.

“Most important of the gifts,” said Cami, now more serious than Paks had ever seen her, “is the High Lord’s protection from evil attack. Of course you can be killed—we are human, after all. But as long as you are Gird’s paladin, your soul cannot be forced into evil by any power whatever. All magical spells that assault the heart and mind directly will fail. No fear or disgust, no despair, can prevent you from following the High Lord’s call if you want to follow it. Moreover, you can protect those with you from such attacks. This is one reason our training is so long and so intense—for this, of course, we cannot test in training. We must be sure you do want this with a whole heart, that you are indeed under that protection, before you go out to battle the dark powers of the Earth.”

For that reason, they were told, their every act and word would be scrutinized; even small faults could reveal flaws too dangerous to be granted such power.

“But would the High Lord grant the powers to someone unfit to bear them?” asked one of the candidates.

“No. But evil powers might grant a semblance of such. It is hard to explain—though you will understand if you succeed—but during your training you are more open to evil influence than before. We must so harrow your minds, and as in a harrowed field both sun and frost strike deeper, so in your minds both good and evil can strike a firmer root. That is why you are kept apart from the others, once you begin the final training, and why you are always in the company of your sponsor, who can sense any threat and protect you from it.”

“But we’re supposed to be more resistant anyway,” grumbled Harbin. Paks agreed, but said nothing. It almost sounded as if they were weaklings.

“You are—you were—and you will be,” said Cami. “But right now, and for the time of your training, we are looking for weakness—searching for any crevice through which evil can assail your hearts. And we will find things, for none of us is perfect, or utterly invincible, except in the High Lord’s protection.” Paks wondered uneasily what weakness they would find in her, and what they would do about it.

“And,” added Sarek, closing that session with a laugh, “remember that while a demon can’t eat your soul, once you’re a paladin, any village idiot can crack your skull with a rock. By accident.”

Other such discussions followed. They learned that paladins never married unless—and this was rare—they retired from that service to another. Yet although celibate on quest—Paks saw someone frown, across the room, and wondered if he would drop out—they might have lovers in Fin Panir or elsewhere, as time allowed. “But those you love most are in the most danger,” pointed out Amberion. “Choose your loves from those who can defend themselves, should Achrya’s agents be seeking a weapon against you. We are here to defend the children of others—not to protect our own. And if we had children, and were good parents, we would have no time for Gird’s work.”

Soon Paks knew the paladins as people. She knew the room would bubble with excitement when Cami arrived, that Saer brought with her an intensity and mysticism almost eerie to experience, that Sarek’s jokes always had a lasting sting of sense, that Amberion was the group’s steady anchor. She, like the others, opened up under Kevis’s warm and loving regard; and like the others she found her determination hardened by Teriam’s stern logic. Garin, last of the seven, left on quest shortly after his sponsored candidate withdrew—the first of their group to fail. Paks had not known Amis well, and did not know why he had left. She knew less of the candidates than she’d expected, for when not in classes together, they were each with a sponsor or learning to meditate alone.

But even so she was conscious of a difference between these young Girdsmen, long committed to their patron, and herself. Matters that she thought trivial were cause for hours of discussion, and the simple solution she always thought she saw never satisfied them. They picked away at the motives they claimed lay behind all acts, creating, Paks thought, an incredible tangle of unlikely possibilities. She had imagined herself committed to the defense of good . . . but was good this complicated? If so, why was Gird the patron of soldiers? No one had time to think of definitions and logic in the midst of a battle. The way Sarek had said it first made the most sense to her: here are the bad people, and you kill them; there are the good ones, and they cheer for you. Surely it was only a matter of learning to recognize all the evil. She prayed, as Amberion was teaching her to do, and said nothing. She was there to learn, and in time she might understand that other way of thinking. She had time.

Busy as she was, Paks had almost forgotten the mysterious scrolls when she received a summons to the Master Archivist, Marshal Kory. She found him at a broad table set before a window, with the scrolls all open before him.

“Paksenarrion—come and see the treasure.” He waved his hand at the array. “Amberion tells me you had no idea what you brought?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, if it were all you ever brought here, Paksenarrion, the Fellowship of Gird could count itself well repaid. We have all examined these—all those of us in Fin Panir with an interest in such things. I believe—and so do many others—that these scrolls were penned by Luap himself, Gird’s own friend. How they got where you found them I doubt we will ever know for certain.”

“But how can you know what they are?”

Marshal Kory grinned. “That’s scholar’s work, young warrior. But you would know a sword made in Andressat, I daresay, from one made in Vérella—”

“Yes, sir.”

“So we have ways to know that the scrolls are old. We have copies of Luap’s chronicles and letters; we compared them, and found some differences—but just what might have come from careless copying. And these scrolls contain far more than we have: letters to Luap’s friends, little sermons—a wealth of material. We think the writing is Luap’s own hand, because we have preserved a couple of lists said to be his—and one of the letters here mentions making that list of those who fell in the first days of the rebellion.”

Paks began to feel the awesome age of the scrolls. “Then—Luap really touched those—I mean, he was alive, and could—”

“He was a real person, yes—not a legend—and because he writes so, we know that Gird was real, too. Not that I charge you with having doubted it, but it’s easy to forget that our heroes were actual men and women, who got blisters when they marched, and liked a pot of ale at day’s end. Luap now—” His eyes stared into the distance. “That isn’t even his name. In those days, luap was a kinship term, for someone not in the line of inheritance. The military used it too. A luap-captain had that rank, for respect and pay, but had no troops under his own command: could not give independent orders. According to the old stories, this man gave up his own name when he joined the rebellion. There are several versions with different reasons for that. Anyway, he became Gird’s assistant, high-ranked because he could write—which few besides lords could do in those days—and he was called Gird’s luap. Soon everyone called him ‘the luap,’ and finally ‘Luap.’ Because of him, no one used luap for a kinship term after that; in Fintha the same relationship now is called ‘nik,’ and in Tsaia it’s ‘niga’ or ‘nigan.’ ” The Archivist seemed ready to explain the origin of that and every other term, and Paks broke in quickly, sticking to what she understood.

“And he speaks of Gird?”

“As a friend. Listen to this.” Marshal Kory picked up one of the scrolls, and began to read. “ ‘—and in fact, Ansuli, I had to tell the great oaf to quit swinging his staff around overhead like a young demon. I feared he would hit me, but soon that great laugh burst out and he thanked me for stopping him. If he has a fault, it is that liking for ale, which makes him fight sometimes whether we have need or no.’ And that’s Luap talking of Gird at a tavern in eastern Fintha. I’m not sure where; he doesn’t name the town.”

Paks was startled. “Gird—drunk?”

“It was after their first big victory. I’ve always suspected that the reason several of the articles in the Code of Gird dealt with drunkenness is that Gird had personal knowledge of it.” He laid that scroll down and touched another with his fingertip. “We have had the copyists working on these every day. It is the greatest treasure of the age—you cannot know, Paksenarrion, how it lifts our hearts to find something so close to Gird himself. Even when it’s things like that letter—that just makes him more human, more real to us. And to have in Luap’s own words the last battle—incredible! Besides that, we now have a way to prove whether or not these scrolls are genuine. Have you ever heard of Luap’s Stronghold?”

Paks shook her head. “I had not heard of Luap until I came here, sir.”

“There’s been a legend for a long time that Luap left the Honnorgat Valley and traveled west, to take Gird’s Code to distant lands. For a time, it was believed, he had established a stronghold, a fortress, in the far mountains, and some reports had Girdsmen traveling back and forth. But no one has come from the west with any reports of him for hundreds of years, so most scholars now think it was just a legend. But in one of these scrolls, sent back, he says, at the request of the Marshal-General of that day, he gives the location of that stronghold. If someone were to go there, and see it, that would prove that these are, indeed, the scrolls of Luap.”

Paks thought of it, suddenly excited. “What are the western lands like?”

“All we have are caravan reports. Dry grassland for some days travel, then rock and sand, then deep gouges in the rocks, with swift-running rivers in the depths. Then mountains—but they don’t go that way, skirting them on the south, to come to a crossways. North along that route is a kingdom called Kaelifet; I know nothing about it. Southward is more desert, and finally a sea.”

Paks tried to imagine those strange lands, and failed. “Will you go, then, Marshal Kory?”

“Me!” He laughed. “No, I’m the Archivist—I can’t go. Perhaps no one will. Some think it is an idle fancy, and the trip too long and dangerous to risk with evil nearer to hand. But I hope the Marshal-General sends someone. I’d like to know what happened to Luap—and his followers—and why they left Fintha. Perhaps there are more scrolls there—who knows?” He looked at her. “Would you go, if you could, or does this seem a scholar’s question to you?”

“I would go,” said Paks. “A long journey—unknown lands—mountain fortress—what could be more exciting?”