Oath of Fealty

11

Paks’s room, at one end of the palace complex and a floor higher than her own, looked to have been a servant’s once. Plain, a pair of narrow beds separated by a carved chest, a bare wood floor. A wardrobe stood against one wall; the opposite had pegs at various heights. Paks’s cloak hung on one; her pack, neatly rolled, was at the foot of her bed.

“They could do no better for the paladin who saved their king?” Dorrin asked.

“They could, but I chose to move here,” Paks said. “I needed solitude, not care, for a while.” Her face had sobered, but now it lightened again. “Besides, this gives us the privacy I’m sure we need. Here—sit down on that bed.”

Dorrin sat, bemused by the shift in authority, as if she herself were a recruit facing a captain for the first time.

“Give me your hand,” Paks said next. Dorrin held out her hand; Paks’s hand on hers felt warm and dry and oddly soothing. Dorrin waited; Paks said nothing, but looked past her, into something Dorrin could not see. Slowly, she felt something else, something that seemed to pass from Paks to her, a strange tingle that ran up her arm and from there into her head, and down her torso. She wanted to pull her hand back, but Paks had a firm grip. She glanced up. Paks’s eyes were closed, her face unreadable, the slightest furrow of a frown between her brows, as if she were concentrating.

When Paks released Dorrin’s hand, she sat down on the opposite bed. Dorrin waited.

“That was … interesting,” Paks said. “Someone blocked your magery long ago, except for that light. Did you know that? Do you know who?”

“No,” Dorrin said. “I suppose my uncle, or a cousin.”

“I don’t think so,” Paks said. “From what you say, their contact would be evil, and leave a residue I should pick up. This was not an act of malice, but of protection. Who, that could do such a thing, might have chosen to do so?”

One name came immediately to mind. “The Knight-Commander of Falk,” Dorrin said. “When I trained there, when he found out who I was, I told him about my small talent. He let me stay, but said I must not use any magery while there, having learned only its wrong uses. He might have blocked it.”

“And not told you?”

“I can think of no one else,” Dorrin said. “He is the only one outside my family who knew that I had it.”

“Then we should ask him,” Paks said.

“He died,” Dorrin said. “Some years after I was knighted, I heard that he had died. The new Knight-Commander I have never met.”

“Ah. I wonder if he has the same powers. At least he is here; we can ask.”

“Do we need to involve him?”

Paks cocked her head. “I think so. I am not a Knight of Falk … I am not even a knight, for that matter, so I do not know what he did or how it was done. I do know we should not meddle in things like this without understanding them.”

“I will go—”

“No. I will go, and while I am gone, if you have such rituals as the Girdish knights have, to pray and prepare for a trial of some kind, that is what I think you should do. You have great deeds before you, Captain, and whether your magery can be restored and trained or not, you need time alone to ready yourself.” Paks leaned forward and patted Dorrin’s hand. “Do not worry, Captain. I will not be long.”

Dorrin sat on the bed, thinking. Worrying. Thinking how long it had been since she prayed to Falk in anything but a crisis. For the king’s life, she had prayed. For Paks’s safe return from torment, she had prayed. But though she wore the ruby, it had been years since she prayed for guidance, for Falk’s Will to be clear to her. She had substituted, she realized, Phelan’s orders, Phelan’s well-being, for the will of the gods, though she held herself true to them as she understood them.

As she had understood them as a runaway, as a young woman.

Time to do more than that. Time to do better, to outgrow her role as Phelan’s captain, as Paks had long outgrown hers as Phelan’s soldier.

By the time Paks reappeared with the Knight-Commander of Falk—who looked decidedly grumpy at being dragged up flights of back stairs with little explanation—she had prayed for aid and guidance and felt, for the first time in years, connected once more to Falk’s Company.

“Captain Dorrin!” the Knight-Commander said. “So it is you I have come to see—Paksenarrion here would not say.”

Dorrin had risen; Paks, vanishing from behind him in the doorway, reappeared with a chair. “Here, sir—if you will take a seat—”

“Hmph.” He sat, still staring at Dorrin, frowning.

Paks moved past him and sat cross-legged on the bed opposite Dorrin. “If I may, Captain, I’ll explain—”

Dorrin nodded, and Paks began. “You have heard, sir, that Captain Dorrin has been appointed by the prince and Council in Tsaia to take over the dukedom of Verrakai?”

He glanced from one to the other. “No … I had not.”

“Well, then, she has. And the difficulty is, as I’m sure your predecessor told you, that the Verrakai retain the old magery—the outlaw magery—and misuse it to maintain their rule. And she herself inherited that ability.”

He nodded, now staring hard at Dorrin. “So my predecessor told me, when he was old and ill. She had it, but had refused to use it cruelly, and thus had left Verrakai for Lyonya and our Hall. I was surprised he accepted her—you.”

“Did he tell you everything?” Dorrin asked. “That I came under a false name, that my family pursued and demanded my return, that he protected me from them?”

“Not that you came under a false name, no. I would not have let you stay, had you done that to me.”

“I understand, sir,” Dorrin said. “But it was his decision at the time.”

“He was an interesting man,” the Knight-Commander said. “And he felt strongly about you. He was glad to see you linked to Phelan—he felt you had an important role to play there.”

“I did?” Dorrin felt only surprise. “He never told me.”

“He wouldn’t. But on the road from Tsaia, was it not your cohort who defended the king long enough to save him from attack—including by your relatives?”

“Yes, but—”

“So what, now, is your need? I’m assuming your need, since this paladin brought me here speaking of great need.”

“Yes, sir.” Dorrin put her thoughts in order. “As Paks said, and your predecessor probably told you, I inherited the family magery, but was never trained in its use—I refused to cooperate with the training they attempted and eventually escaped …”

“What was that training?”

“In cruelty.” Dorrin felt the familiar tremor in her hands, and clenched them together. “It—it was their belief that our power was retained because of … of blood magery. When a child—when I—first showed any talent—such as making light, then we were taken into the—the inner keep. The old keep, with its dungeon. And there made to see what they believed maintained our powers.”

“Describe it.” The Knight-Commander’s voice was hard and cold as winter stone.

Despite herself, Dorrin’s voice trembled. “It was … it was an animal, that first time. A rabbit.” She could still see it, in her mind, the terrified, trembling little creature, heart beating so fast and hard, nose twitching. She had felt its fear and her own had doubled. Other rabbits, in wicker cages stacked along one side of the chamber, all terrified. She tried to swallow; her mouth was nearly as dry as it had been then. “They showed me first … my uncle made light, as I had, and then … then he hurt the rabbit and it screamed and his light grew stronger.”

“How did he hurt it?”

“I—I don’t know for sure. I closed my eyes—” She had seen the aftermath, though. “He must have pulled off a leg … and then another … that’s what it looked like after …”

“How old were you? Did you not know already what to expect?”

“No … I was very small. Still in shortlings—” She was not going to admit having wet herself, her uncle’s disgust, her mother’s slap that sent her reeling into the stacked cages. “I had never been in the old keep before, I know that. But then—” It had to be said; she had to say it. “Then they wanted me to do it, to prove to me it would make my light stronger.” The next rabbit had been spotted, dark spots on fawn. Her uncle had put a knife in her hand; her mother had gripped her shoulders, forcing her to the block of wood on which the rabbit now crouched, shivering, held there—her uncle said—by his magery. He had pointed to where she was to stab, in the rabbit’s hindquarters.

“Not to kill it, then?”

“Not to kill it,” Dorrin said. Bile had risen in her mouth. “I didn’t want to. I pushed back against my mother but I was too small. She picked me up—” She had kicked her mother; her uncle had done whatever he did to the rabbit to her legs; she could not kick again. Her uncle had told her “You must do it; you must try” with such menace in his voice that it scared her more than her dangling legs. “I dropped the knife,” she said. That had earned another slap. Her uncle had put the knife in her hand again, gripped it with his, so she could not open her hand or pull away, and guided it down, slowly, onto the hapless rabbit. The sound it made as the knife entered its flesh … as her uncle forced her hand to twist, to drag the knife sideways, to cause greater pain … would never leave her memory.

“They marked my face with the blood,” she said. “They forced my mouth open and put blood in—”

“My child—” Dorrin looked up again; the Knight-Commander was pale. “They did that to an infant! And this is what my predecessor knew?”

“Some of it.” No one knew all, none but those who had done it, and she, their victim. “They told me that now I belonged to them, that now my magery would grow, and I would learn to maintain it with greater blood. That I belonged to the Bloodlord—who is the same as Liart, sir, though they insisted on calling him differently. And they punished me for resisting, so I would learn how useless it was …”

“Punished you how?”

“They left my legs useless for three days, by their magery, and put me on the floor. I could not walk, or reach the food and water they put on a table in the cell …”

“Did they punish you thus when you refused later?”

“Not the same way, no.” Dorrin clenched her teeth on the horrors but it had to be said. “They tormented anything, anyone, that I cared for, as well as me. Animals. People. I tried to run away on my first pony. They killed the pony, slowly.”

“Did you ever submit willingly—did you ever harm any you were told to harm?”

She felt the hot tears on her face again, as she had felt them long ago. “The last … the last before I got away … a friend—” A friend maintained in agony to secure her outward obedience. “I tried not to, but sometimes—sometimes I was too weak. I thought if I did it, did it quickly, they wouldn’t. I learned better.” So many years, so many suffering victims, so many times she had not been able to do anything for them. “The last … I killed him,” she said quickly. “I killed him myself, to end his suffering, and then I ran, and that time I made it to the border.”

Heavy silence filled the little room. The Knight-Commander’s face might have been carved of stone. Then he sighed. “I understand now why my predecessor let you stay, and why he knighted you, Dorrin of Verrakai. If ever someone needed Falk’s protection, and had earned it, you did, and you had. But how did you escape? Surely they were watching you.”

“I thought there must be better gods, and I asked their help. Then I thought I should try to escape, and if I were killed, so much the better.”

“And you were still very young,” the Knight-Commander said.

“I was, yes,” Dorrin said. Looking back now, her escape did appear miraculous. She shivered a little.

“I have a dilemma which I expect Lady Paksenarrion will understand better than you,” the Knight-Commander said. “I now understand why my predecessor not only accepted you, but sponsored your knighthood. I concur with his judgment, which I did not before. But now … you say you still have those powers which in your family have been used only for evil.”

Paks stirred, on the bed, and said, “Not by her, sir.”

“Not by her, you say. And yet—she did kill once. By magery?”

“No,” Dorrin said. “With a knife. As quick as might be.”

“And he could not have lived, you say?”

“Not more than two days, and all of it in pain,” she said.

The Knight-Commander pursed his lips. “So … it was an act of mercy, and not carried out with magery. But you have magery still, Paksenarrion said.”

“Yes. Some. And I see no way to do what the prince and Council want me to do without using it. My family will certainly use theirs.”

“Are you trained in its use?”

“No.” Dorrin took a deep breath. “With your permission, this is what I can now do—” She paused; the Knight-Commander nodded, and she took up a candle and lit it with a touch. “This is child’s magery, the first most children show. I did once manage to lift a fruit that had just fallen to the ground, but not again.”

“I believe her magery was locked by your predecessor,” Paks said. “And you could unlock it and teach her its proper use.”

“Its proper use!” The Knight-Commander stared. “Its proper use is none. It is illegal in Tsaia—would you have her start her rule by breaking the law?”

“What we paladins do could be counted magery,” Paks said. “And wizards and their magicks are not illegal.”

“She is not a paladin nor a wizard.”

“Nor is she an evil person,” Paks said. Dorrin glanced at her; Paks gave her a brief smile before turning back to the Knight-Commander. “She has been given the task of dealing with her family; if they use their magery against her, she will not succeed unless she has the use of her own, to oppose them.”

“And you trust her?”

“I have known her some years,” Paks said. “And as a paladin, I sense no evil in her.”

“You are Gird’s paladin; Gird had no love for the magelords, as you must know.”

“Gird loved justice, sir, more than any group. He would not condemn Dorrin.”

The room brightened. Perhaps without her willing it, Paks had come softly alight, not as bright as in the battle, but enough to cast a soft glow through the room, drowning the light of the candle Dorrin had lit.

“You, I suppose, will take on the role of her supervisor?” he said.

Paks shook her head. “Not I, sir. She is a Knight of Falk; she is sworn to Falk. It is not my place, and I have no call to go with her. I do have a call to aid her here and now.”

The Knight-Commander closed his eyes a moment, then shook his head. “Arguing with paladins is like arguing with wind and stone. Very well. I would say I hope you’re right, but the light you cast is evidence of the origin of your words. Dorrin, give me your hands.”

Dorrin moved from the bed, kneeling before him, and raised her hands. The Knight-Commander’s hands enclosed both of hers. She felt nothing at first, then warmth flowing into her arms, like and unlike what she’d felt when Paks took her hand.

“Paksenarrion,” the Knight-Commander said, “your hands on her shoulders, please.”

Now Paks came behind her. Dorrin felt enclosed, sheltered, safer than she had felt in her entire life.

“Breathe slowly,” the Knight-Commander said. She breathed … in … out … in … out … there came a pressure, building along her bones, as if from within them, as a weather change made pressure in her head. It grew; she concentrated on breathing slowly, steadily, as it pushed and squeezed inside her, as the warmth from his hands and the sensation of light from Paks’s touch on her shoulders merged until finally with a sudden rush, a stream of cold fire raced through her body. She gasped at the intensity of it, and then it was gone, leaving behind a sense of great spaces burst open from within.

“Dear me,” the Knight-Commander said.

“She has it,” Paks said.

“She does indeed.” The Knight-Commander’s voice deepened. “What have I done? What have I loosed?”

Dorrin could scarcely hear him. In her mind, in her heart, the new spaces were both dark and sparkling with light, a clear winter’s night, cold and clean. What was this?

This is magery, came the answer, a voice she had never heard. Sonorous. Joyous. This is your heritage, Dorrin of Verrakai. Use it well. Music rose in her mind, music dimly recalled from earliest childhood. No human music, this, but the music she had imagined the gods might play.

She opened her eyes; the Knight-Commander, still holding her hands, was staring at her with an expression of wonder and horror mixed.

“What—?” she asked.

“Dorrin—you have it all.”

“All?”

“The magery, all of it. As great as any I read of, in the archives, and more than I have ever known to exist in these days. What my predecessor locked down, and well he did so. I do not know yet if I did well to loose it.”

“What did you hear?” Paks said from behind her.

“A voice,” Dorrin said. Suddenly tears burned her eyes and ran down her face. “I—I can’t believe it was—” But she did believe. “Falk,” she said. “It was Falk.”

“What did he say?” the Knight-Commander asked.

“He said This is your magery. Use it well. Only—I don’t know how.”

“You will,” Paks said.

The Knight-Commander nodded, and dropped her hands. “Dorrin, if Falk approved the restoration of your powers, then it must be the gods trust you to use them well. I doubt any of your family have near as much, though they may have more knowledge how to use what they have. I suspect you will learn quickly … there are hints I can give you. What do you most want to learn?”

Dorrin repeated what she had told Paks.

“A shield for yourself and those you lead should be the simplest; as a soldier, you know how shields function, and you’ve seen Paksenarrion in action.”

Dorrin tried to imagine such a shield; she felt a mental nudge, then another, and then felt a tingling in her head that ran down her body.

“I said you would learn quickly, but that—that is more than I expected,” the Knight-Commander said. “I’m going to push again …”

This time Dorrin felt nothing but a faint pressure, as if someone laid a cloth on her skin.

“That was not an attack, of course. But your personal shield has already strengthened.” He sat back. “I understand that you wish to leave soon, but my advice would be to spend another few days working with me and with Paksenarrion; it will be better for you and for those you lead if you have more understanding of your magery—both how to access it, and what temptations it presents.”

Dorrin glanced at Paks. “The prince bade me come as soon as possible.”

“You would not leave half-dressed, though that might be quicker,” the Knight-Commander said. “Magery—even such magery as yours—is not learned in an hour. You might ask Falk.” Implicit in that was his rank as Knight-Commander, second highest among Falkians.

Dorrin bowed. “Knight-Commander, I will do so, but I would not prolong the training beyond absolute need.”

“Understood,” he said. “With what I have seen this night, we are speaking of days, not hands of days.”