by Victor Milán
"I hight Shield of Innocence," the orog said.
Farlorn cocked a sardonic brow. "And were you born with that name, friend?" The word friend dripped sarcasm as a Shadow Thief s knife dripped poison.
The great orc shook his bulldog head. "What I was called before is of no consequence," he said, his speech slow and measured as if somehow painful. "The god remade me when he called me into his service. I am Shield of Innocence now. I am Torm's paladin."
Paladin! The crowd gasped again-an effect Zaranda was getting mightily sick of. Father Pelletyr gasped as well and clutched at his Ilmater medal. Stillhawk made no sound, showed no reaction in face or posture, but the knuckles that gripped his bow showed white through his boot-leather-dark skin.
"Oh, really," said Farlorn with acid sweetness. "And here all this time I thought only true men could be paladins."
"I know little of such things," Shield of Innocence declared. "I was unworthy-all are unworthy. Yet the god chose me. His hand lifted me up and remade me. Perhaps because I was unworthiest of all. I cannot question the will of Torm, praised be his name."
The crowd found articulate speech again, or at least as dose as mobs get:
"Lies!"
"A trick!"
"The monster seeks to deceive us!"
"Blasphemy!"
The gold-bearded man stood taller, more from swelling with outrage than straightening with courage.
"The only meet penalty for falsely claiming to be a paladin," he declared in a choked voice, "is death."
"If it is Torm's will that I die," the orog said, "I die. I will not raise my hand to smite you."
Zaranda swung down off her mare.
"Are you leading with your chin again, Randi Star?" Goldie asked.
"My nose," the warrior woman said.
"That's how it got broken the first time."
She patted her steed on the neck and walked up the hill toward the tree. Yellow-beard stared at her with eyes bugged as she walked within arm's reach of him, but made no move to stop her. The crowd shifted uneasily behind him.
Zaranda stopped a pace away from the orog and stood facing him. Though she kept her face calm, inside she was vibrating like Stillhawk's arrow after it struck the tree. It was easy for her to talk about tolerance and forbearance, but she had had extensive dealings with orcs, none of them pleasant. Now she stood near enough to the great orc to smell his breath, and her impulses were to vomit, flee, or run him through.
So what are you, Zaranda? she asked herself. Animal or woman? Do you follow your instincts heedlessly, or do you follow where your reason leads?
There was a time to be ruled by instinct, she knew, and had survived tight situations accordingly. But now was the time she must master herself, or lose all form.
She forced herself to look the orog in the eye. They were blue and surprisingly clear. Like a pig's eyes-but no. And a pig was no evil thing, nor unclean left to its own devices… but these were not the eyes of an animal. Nor were they the eyes of a creature of filth and darkness. They seemed to shine with inner purpose.
Can you really read a soul through such windows? she wondered. You know better, Zaranda.
His carriage, though erect, was not orc-chieftain haughty. Rather it seemed… noble. His breath, surprisingly, was not foul. It was as clean as any man's, likely cleaner than any of his tormentors'. She raised a hand to his face.
And stopped, as if an invisible shield repelled her. His skin was orc's skin, gray-green and coarse, almost pebbled in texture, although it was scrubbed cleaner than the skin of any orc she'd seen. Her fingers trembled like small frightened animals longing to flee.
The question now isn't what he is. If s what you are.
She touched his cheek.
The crowd gasped a third time. "Zaranda!" Father Pelletyr exclaimed.
"Zaranda," Farlorn said, in tones suspended between regret and disgust.
With mongoose abruptness the creature caught her hand in both his claws. Now you've done it! she thought as her free hand darted to her dagger-hilt. She could feel Stillhawk drawing his elf-bow behind her.
The orog dropped to his knees, still clinging to her hand. The great head hung.
"You are my mistress," he said. "I shall serve you."
"What?" Zaranda said.
He raised his hideous face. Tears glistened in his eyes. "You have been sent to me by Torm," he said. "You are the one I must serve."
7
"Tell me," Farlorn said. The light of the campfire shone in his eyes and his fingers played like glum children on the strings of his yarting. The great orc stared at him with dog fixity. "You say the god Torm named you Shield of Innocence and set you to protect the innocents of this world from unjust attack."
The great tusked head nodded.
They were camped, with the owner's permission, in an olive grove half a day's journey at a pack mule's plod from the walls of Zazesspur. They might have pressed on and arrived after dark; there was traditionally little effort made to seal the city after sunset, and anyway the outer walls had suffered many breaches after the fall of the royal house.
But the travelers they met on the high road from Ithmong had shadow-haunted eyes and unsettling tales of nighttime Zazesspur. Zaranda could not have said why she, who had faced the darkest magic and hordes of undead in Thay, should be so fearful. The darklings were fearsome enough to normal folk, but by all accounts, nothing she and her comrades could not handle — though they were said to be growing stronger in nature as well as numbers. But the dreams kept coming, and they were getting worse. Zaranda decided not to drive weary men and mules on to their destination, and that was the end of it.
She had chosen the grove for poor Stillhawk, who languished in cities as a free spirit might in a cell. He could use a final night beneath sky and trees. Also, camping off the road rather than staying at an inn would give strangers small scope to look at the cloaked figure of the warrior who bore two curved swords across his back.
Now Stillhawk sat as far away from the orog as he could, across one of the two fires they had built — the other being for the muleteers and guards, who were given to muttering darkly and keeping hands near hilts when Shield of Innocence was around. Father Pelletyr sat on Zaranda's far side from Shield, protectively near, though whether to shelter her or be sheltered by her in the event of trouble Zaranda could not say. For once he showed small interest in his food.
Farlorn, though, sat near the orog, strumming his yarting and plying him with questions. His tone was feather-light, deceptively so.
"Ah, yes," the bard said with an air of satisfaction that put Zaranda instantly on guard. "Did it never then occur to you that, when those villagers beset you, you were the innocent one, suffering wrongful persecution?"
The orog's heavy brows beetled until his shocking water-blue eyes nearly disappeared. He sat staring in silence into the flame-dance. Finally he shook his great head.
"No," he said. "I did not think of that. If I had, I would have had to kill them."
The bard flipped his hands in the air like copper-colored birds taking flight. "And there you have it! The beast's not to be trusted, I tell you." Zaranda scowled. "You led him into a trap with your wordplay," she said. "I can scarcely condemn him for that."
If his intellect were the world's brightest light," said Goldie from just outside the firelight, "we'd all be learning to navigate by sound like bats."
"You certainly have the advantage on the rest of us in that department," Farlorn said cheerfully.
Goldie pinned her ears at him, seeking some retort.
"Weren't you eating your oats, dear?" Zaranda asked.
"I finished them. Such a paltry handful." She sniffed.
"They're all I dare give you," Zaranda said. "You're getting fat."
The mare sniffed, turned away, and flounced off into the night-the effect Zaranda desired. In serious counsel, the mare offered sound advice, but her contributions were rarely helpful in debates of this nature.
"He's a monster, Zaranda," Farlorn said, quietly intense, gesturing at the orog, who squatted impassive as an idol with clawed hands resting on his thighs. "No matter what he claims. And if he's had a religious revelation, what of it? His nature will get the better of him in the end. Hell work us harm; you'll see."
Shield showed no sign of response. It struck Zaranda as heartless to be discussing him as if he weren't there. But she'd long learned she had to bet the dice according to the spots they showed.
She looked to Stillhawk. The ranger had little taste for argument. But when she would not look away, he signed, He is a creature of evil. Once an evil creature, always one. And he rose and stalked away into the night.
"And what of you, Father?" asked Zaranda in resignation.
The cleric frowned, almost as if in pain. "I have been praying for guidance in this matter," he said. "He seems sincere, and his bearing is that of a paladin-even I cannot deny that."
Farlorn snorted and waved a hand in disgust.
"Yet I cannot bring myself to accept that what he says is true," Father Pelletyr went on. "It comes to me, though, that I might make use of the power holy Ilmater has vouchsafed me, whereby I may divine where his heart really lies, for good or ill."
"No!" Zaranda was on her feet with cheeks flushed.
"I'll have none of that!"
"I am willing to submit to any examination, Zaranda," the great orc said, "if it will help me continue to serve you."
"I'm not willing! A man's thoughts are his most private possessions-an orog's, too. It's obscene to pry them from him with magic. And I don't want you serving me."
The orog sat unmoving. Father Pelletyr looked pained.
"But child, such powers of divination are granted by my god. They must be good."
"Can't a cleric use such powers for ill if he chooses?"
The cleric nodded, but his eyes were boiled pearl onions of shock. Zaranda dropped her gaze and raised a conciliatory hand.
"I'm not accusing you, Father. I'm merely trying to point out such powers are not intrinsically good nor bad, no matter whence they spring. I'm not sure that I buy that a thing can be considered good just because a god does it, anyway. If that's the case, why aren't we all votaries of Bane?"
"B-Because he's dead?" squeaked the cleric.
"Cyric then. I'm just saying I've had it to my eyebrows with gods and powers, whatever their ilk. I don't get my destiny from the stars, and I don't get my values from them."
"So you're saying you won't drive the fell creature from our midst?" demanded Farlorn in a voice like a yarting string frayed to the point of breaking.
"Indeed," Zaranda said. "And I must say it does my heart good to hear genuine emotion in your voice, Farlorn. Even if it is anger."
The bard made an inarticulate sound, jumped to his feet, and huffed off into the dark. A few moments later Zaranda heard an equine snort and a flurry of hoof-beats as the half-elf rode his dapple gray away.
"He'll be back," Zaranda said, massaging her temples. She wondered whom she was reassuring. Probably me.
She glanced at the cleric, who was still staring at her as if she'd cast off her clothes and started turning handsprings. "Everyone else is going off to sulk," she said. "To save you the trouble, I'm going, too."
She marched into her tent, dropping the flap behind her. As she began to disrobe, she heard a soft rustle outside. She froze, her mind instantly recalling exactly where her sundry weapons were at the moment. Then came a huffing exhalation of breath, and she realized that Shield of Innocence had seated himself like a watchdog outside her tent.
That brought a grim smile to her lips. Won't that cheer Farlorn when he comes back from his nocturnal pout.
"Don't stop undressing on my account," the brazen head said from the camp stool on which she'd placed it.
She seized the heavy artifact up under one arm, threw open its ironbound chest, and dropped it in.
"Wait!" the head exclaimed. "I can reveal secrets to you such as you cannot rrmmmpphl"
What she could not do with the secrets was lost in a muffle as Zaranda dropped a wadded blanket over the head's mouth. She slammed the lid shut and triple locked it. Then she went to bed.
"But I don't want to be served," Zaranda said for what seemed the ten dozenth time.
The orc-orog, in truth-trotted along beside Goldie on his bandy legs, apparently tireless despite the heat and the weight of his armor. Horses raised by men or elves had to be specially trained to abide an orcish rider, even a very clean one. Not surprisingly none such had been available. Fortunately the plodding of the heavy-laden pack mules kept the pace down.
"I must serve someone," said Shield, also for about the ten dozenth time. "You were sent to me. It is the will of Torm."
Zaranda sighed. No less than Father Pelletyr, she had trouble believing he was really a paladin. Yet she was at least convinced that if there were deceit to his claims, it was a deceit he practiced on himself
Zaranda Star had little knowledge of paladins or paladinry. Though she had always fought for what she thought was right, the paladin life-path had never appealed to her. Shield did display certain characteristics of the breed. He was uncommon strong, being able to tie tenpenny nails in effortless knots with those black-taloned fingers, and he radiated a quiet force of personality that his ceaseless deferring to her did little to mask. He must have been a formidable war leader indeed among the orcs. Unless of course that gift was the result of whatever revelation had changed his life.
He wasn't very bright-, as Farlorn had demonstrated the night before, which meant that debates such as this one were exemplars of futility, inasmuch as they always ended with his retreating behind a stout palisade of "It is the will of Torm" and refusing to budge.
So who's the simple one, Zaranda? a voice asked inside her mind. She sighed.
They crested a rise and there before them, still blue with distance, the spires of Zazesspur floated in a pool of haze.
"It's beautiful!" exclaimed Father Pelletyr, who had never been to Tethyr before.
Even Zaranda felt her breath catch in her throat.
Shield stopped and stood with legs wide, seeming braced, gazing at the city. Then he nodded. "My destiny awaits there," he announced. "I shall die in that city. Torm has told me this." He seemed to derive satisfaction from his certainty.
"And dare we hope," Farlorn whispered, his breath tickling Zaranda's ear, "that it will befall sooner rather than later?"
Golden Dawn whipped her head around and snapped at the bard's thigh. His mount caught the motion and shied away. "Back that little trollop away from me," Goldie snarled, "or I'll bite a chunk from her rump, you pimp."
Farlorn laughed as if in delight.
"Goldie!" Zaranda said reprovingly, but she was too angry with the half-elf to put much weight behind it.
What's happening to us? she wondered. Is there really something dreadful in the city, drawing us in? She shuddered but kept on riding toward the far-off towers.
A couple miles from the walls, Zaranda ordered the caravan off the main road one final time. That provoked the usual whining from Father Pelletyr, as well as an unusually vehement outburst from Eogast, who tore at his beard, stamped his feet upon the ground, and swore fearsome throat-tearing dwarven oaths that he had never in all his centuries known of so much pointless lollygagging.
"The less used the entry," she explained patiently during a breath break in his tantrum, "the less we'll have to pay in bribes to gate guards and bureaucrats- and the larger the shares when we pay off."
As expected, an appeal to avarice soothed Eogast's dwarven heart and stilled his outcries. Nonetheless, his outburst had held more than the usual edge. Leading the caravan down a brushy defile toward a breach she knew of by the old Dung Gate, she wondered if he shared her growing misgivings about their imminent arrival in the city.
Stillhawk rode knee-to-knee with her. They were under the loom of tall buildings and the wall, which was here t
wenty feet high. The ranger kept casting apprehensive glances up at the masonry pinnacles.
I don't like this, he signed to her.
"I understand," she said. "We're a long way from your native woods." Stillhawk was never comfortable in or even near a city. Surrounded by walls of wood, brick, or dressed stone, he always felt as if he were caged, even if he were walking in a broad open plaza. He tolerated exposure to cities from his long comradeship with Zaranda. She in her turn tried not to drag him into them any more than necessary.
She might indeed have left him outside the walls while she took the caravan within and tended to business. That was their usual operating practice; he could certainly shift for himself, even in strange countryside, and he trusted her for his share of the payout. Not that he cared overmuch for such things.
Zaranda was not entirely sure why he stayed with her as her comrade-in-arms and, technically, her employee. He had a restless craving for action, and knew that where Zaranda went, action tended to follow. Her escapades provided ample opportunity to loose arrows and swing his sword against those beings that worked evil in the world. IB a way, she sensed, his association with her tempered those cravings; had he not accompanied her, he probably would have devoted his life to a grim and bloody-handed quest for vengeance, exacting installments on a blood debt that could never be repaid. Stillhawk had enough wisdom to foresee the loss of his humanity caused by such obsession, to see that he would, in time, become one of the monsters he lived to slay.
Or so it seemed to her. Stillhawk was a man not much given to talking about himself.
It's not that, he signed. My heart is bad about this city, now. There is great evil here.
Which is why I want you beside me, she signed. I'm sorry to drag you between walls of stone, old friend.
She caught herself then, just on the verge of suggesting he stay outside anyway-which would be a slap in the face to his ranger pride. I'm beginning to feel the loss of sleep, she thought. It's starting to affect my judgment.
She wondered if Stillhawk's sleep was troubled, too. If he had had a dream he regarded as a vision, he would likely have told her. But if his dreams were like the ones that afflicted her, they were vague and formless, whispering darkness and dread-nothing clear-cut.
