Protector of the Small Quartet

by Tamora Pierce

  At last Raoul opened the door to the chapel. Cold air swept over Kel’s skin. “Remember,” he said gravely, “you must make no sound between now and the time you leave the Chamber of the Ordeal.” Leaning down, he kissed her forehead as her father might, then gave her a hug. She hugged back, praying that it wouldn’t be the last time she would see this man.

  Turomot cleared his throat meaningfully. Taking a breath, Kel walked into that cold room. A single lamp burning in front of the gold sun disk behind the altar was the only light in the room. Kel followed it to the bench positioned in front of the Chamber of the Ordeal and sat.

  Her feet were cold. Her skin and hair were cold. She could see wisps of steam from her skin and breath. If she thought about physical comfort, it would be a long and bitter night. That would not do.

  She had been told to think about the code of chivalry, what it could mean to her and the realm. She was to think about her life, and choose where she wanted to go. No one had said she could not do that as she meditated.

  Behind her she could hear Lord Turomot settling himself in the chair that had been set at the back of the chapel for him. She wished he hadn’t done this. Of course he’d done it before—he was a knight, after all—but he was far too old to spend hours in an unheated room in the dead of winter. Still, his resolve to do his duty, to make sure that no one interfered with her vigil as Joren had interfered with her big examinations, awed her. If she could do as well at eighteen as he did tonight at almost eighty, she could take pride in herself.

  Kel settled on the bench and placed her hands face-up in her lap, pressing thumbs to forefingers to show wholeness and emptiness, as the emperor’s armsmistress had taught her. Yamani warriors meditated with broken limbs, in sleet and snow, even as their wounds got stitched up. I can do this, she thought. She let her thoughts and fears stream away from the still pond that was her image of herself as she wanted to be.

  That pond showed her a man, stubborn, harsh, old, who spent the night in discomfort. He did not do it for the squire who kept vigil there, but for the sake of duty, and for the web of custom and law that was the realm.

  The realm. In her time as a squire she had seen more of it than most people knew existed, from the damp and mossy streets of Pearlmouth to Northwatch Fortress. She had hunted pirates in the west, built up dams against floods in the east. Mountains, green valleys, desert—she had ridden or walked in them all, measuring them with blisters and grit. Was this what was meant by “the realm”? Or was it other things: a little girl with a muddy doll, Burchard of Stone Mountain livid with grief and rage, a king who admitted a law was wrong, Lalasa in her bustling shop with pins in her mouth. If they were the realm, then so were griffins, sparrows, dogs ugly and beautiful, Stormwings, foul-and sweet-tempered horses, spidrens.

  If she owed duty to the realm, then it was not the dry, withered thing it sounded in people’s mouths. Duty was what was owed, good parts and bad, to keep the realm growing, to keep it as fair as life could be kept. Duty was an old man, snug in his fur-lined robe, snoring lightly somewhere behind her.

  A hand touched her shoulder, calling her into the present.

  Kel looked at the priest. The lamp had guttered out. In the back of the Chapel, Duke Turomot cleared his throat.

  The door to the Chamber of the Ordeal was open.

  She tried to stand and almost pitched onto her face. Her legs were stiff after a long, motionless night. The priest caught her and held her until she could walk. With a nod of thanks Kel entered the Chamber. It was a small, boxlike room, its ceiling, walls, and floor all plain gray stone flags. The door clanged shut, leaving her in total darkness. Terror surged through Kel: anything could come at her now, and she would never see it.

  Clenching her fists until they hurt, she stuffed her fear into the smallest out-of-the-way corner she could find. Of course she was afraid; she was always afraid. She just didn’t have to admit it.

  Within herself she thought she heard a voice say, Now we shall see.

  She stood on a grassy plain. The only sound was the endless whistle of the wind as it blew, shaping tall grasses into shiny, rippling waves. She looked for the sun to fix her position and found solid, high, pale clouds. Later the sun would come out, or night would fall. She could guess her position then.

  Kel turned in a circle. There: a tree, a pine, a lone tower on the plain. The sky arched down to the ground in almost every direction, without mountains or any other trees to break the horizon. Kel listened, searching for the sound of animals or running water. All she heard was the constant sigh of the wind.

  If she was to survive for long, she would need water. That made her choice of action clear. The tree would be her goal. If she found no water by the time she reached it, she could use it as a watch post to find water. Kel stretched her muscles, then started to walk.

  She thought she trudged onward for a long time, but it was impossible to tell. The light never changed, the wind never stopped, and she didn’t get tired. She did get very bored. About to hum a song for company, she stopped just in time. If this was part of her Ordeal, she had to keep silent.

  Finally she reached the tree. It was a fir, like her northern watch post. Gripping a low branch, Kel hoisted herself up and began to climb. Bark and pieces of broken limbs bit into her sore feet. Patches of sap stuck to her hands. She climbed despite them, determined to see where she was. Up and up she went. She refused to think of how high she must be, far higher than she’d been in that border fir. I climbed down the outer stair of Balor’s Needle, she told herself grimly. At least here, if I fall, the branches will slow me down till I can grab on.

  The wind picked up, tugging her clothes. Worse, it pressed the tree until the fir began to sway. Reaching for the next branch, Kel missed. Her foot slipped. One-handed she clung to the overhead branch as the wind dragged at her.

  Is this the best you can do? she thought at the Chamber as she got both feet on a branch again. Balor’s Needle was scarier—

  She closed her eyes. Even in her own mind she couldn’t hold her tongue. How clever was it to anger the thing in the Chamber while she was in its power?

  Below she heard wood break. It was followed by the sound of heavy, leafy branches falling in an avalanche. When Kel opened her eyes, knowing she would not like what she saw, she found that the ground was now visible. It was hundreds of feet below, a distance far greater than that from the observation platform to the base of Balor’s Needle. Kel’s head swam. She trembled as she clutched the tree, and sweat poured from her body.

  She closed her eyelids—they fought their way open, though she wanted them shut. The pine swayed. A gust made the trunk whip away from the clinging Kel: she hung on, somehow, wrapping legs and arms around it. The trunk shook as the wind grabbed her clothes.

  Now her stomach rolled as she rode the trunk to and fro on arcs that grew gradually wider. The tree started to whip. She knew what was coming as clearly as if the Chamber shouted it in her ear. She could hang on as her grasp on the trunk weakened, or she could die when it snapped.

  Her chief regret was that they would think her death here meant that girls were not supposed to be knights. That Lady Alanna was a fluke or a miracle. Fianola, her sister, and Yvenne would have to find other dreams. It was no longer a matter of Kel’s surviving the Ordeal: the Chamber meant to kill her. What she could refuse it was the banquet of fear she would feed it if she clung to the very last. Perhaps it was her fate to die in such a fall—that would be why heights had always scared her.

  Kel let go of the lashing tree trunk, and dropped.

  She landed on sand with a thump. She was twelve again, in a familiar-looking valley in the hill country, with sand on the ground, reddish-brown stone cliffs in front of her. Faleron, Neal, Prosper of Tameran, Merric, Owen, and Seaver clustered around her. They carried hunting weapons and looked panic-stricken.

  Bandits rode around them on rugged horses, cutting the pages off from any escape. There were more than twenty raiders; hard, de
sperate men without so much as a patchless shirt between them. Their weapons were the only good things they had—good enough to carve up pages silly enough to stumble into their camp, at least.

  “Kel, help us!” cried Faleron. “What do we do?”

  It hadn’t been that way six years before. Faleron, the senior page, had been in command. He hadn’t asked for help from anyone; he had frozen. So had Neal, the oldest. They lived that day because Kel had kept her head.

  She wasn’t keeping it now. She couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t think. The archers among the bandits fitted arrows to strings. The pages had to do something, but what? If they broke left, they ran back into the bandit camp. The men blocked them in front and on the right. The cliff was at their backs. She couldn’t decide. If the page archers shot, what would happen if they missed? What if they ran out of arrows?

  But if those like Kel, bearing spears, attacked, wouldn’t the bandits shoot them?

  An arrow sprouted in one of Faleron’s eyes. He collapsed, trying to pull it out as he died. Kel looked at the man who had shot him, her mouth trembling. They would have to kill all of the pages, she realized. No word of a bandit camp must get back to Lord Wyldon, who would summon the army. . . .

  “Kel, help us!” Merric yelled. He loosed an arrow, grazing a bandit, and fumbled getting another to its string. Two arrows buried themselves in his chest.

  Owen screamed defiance and ran at a horseman, his spear raised.

  The man grinned, showing blackened teeth, and chopped Owen’s spear in two. She had to do something, Kel thought, sweating, queasy. She had done it before, why not now? Did her group have mages with them? She thought they did, but she wasn’t sure.

  The horseman beheaded Owen.

  The Chamber made her watch all of them die as she tried to think, as she tried to jerk free of her paralysis. She could have saved them, she knew. She did save them once. Was this how normal people felt when forced to battle? Frozen and witless?

  As an axe-wielding bandit walked toward her, Kel thought at the Chamber furiously, I thought you would be grand and terrible! I thought you would make us grow up, make us accept knighthood’s duties and sacrifices. This is just mean—you’re a nightmare device, bringing bad dreams to people who want to help others!

  She thumped to her knees on flagstones. Once again she was in a gray stone box with an iron door on one side. Her body steamed in the chilly room.

  You’ll do, a cold, whispering voice said somewhere between the inside of her ears and her mind. You’ll do quite nicely.

  On the inside of the door frame, in the key-stone, a face was carved. Its eyes glinted yellow as they surveyed Kel. The face was as lined and lipless as the mummies curiosity-seekers had found in a very old Yamani tomb. Kel wondered if she were seeing ghosts.

  Or was it an attempt to trick her into speaking?

  It was no trick. The stone lips did not move. The voice still sounded within her head, not without, but she knew somehow that voice and stone face were both the Chamber’s. This is no part of your test. This is something you must remember.

  One end of the Chamber went to shadows. In their depths grew an image. First she saw a little nothing of a man. He was short, scrawny, with mouse-brown, unruly hair clumsily cut, bewildered eyes that blinked constantly, and a thin, selfish mouth. He wore a dark, musty robe covered with stains and scorch marks. He could not stay still: he dug absently at a pimple on his face, chewed a fingernail, and picked hairs from his robe.

  Blackness moved out of the shadows. Kel stepped back, forgetting this was an image, not reality. Like so many alien beetles, the dreadful machine of the battle at Forgotten Well, multiplied by eleven, walked from the dark to form a half-circle at the back of the little man. They all turned their smoothly curved heads toward him with eerie attention.

  Kel blinked. She had not seen that something lay on the ground between the little man and the machines. It was actually a pile of something, she thought, trying to get a better look. She took two steps forward. Several somethings. Her eyes saw the gleam of dark, fresh liquid on a doll’s face. And there—who would make a doll with a black eye? All had bruised faces. . . .

  Later she would understand why she had refused to believe what she saw. It was too vile. A twelfth black killing device forced her to see things as they really were. It stepped out of the shadows. It tossed a dead child onto the pile. They were all battered, dead children.

  There is your task, the whispering voice told her shocked brain. You will know when it has found you.

  Tell me where, she demanded silently, fiercely. Tell me where this is!

  The Chamber door swung open. She could see Raoul, her parents, Jump, and the sparrows. They waited for her.

  It will find you, the Chamber told her. When it does, fix it.

  A force urged Kel forward. She walked out of the Chamber of the Ordeal.

  The king struck each of Kel’s shoulders with the flat of his sword, hard enough to bruise, then gently tapped her crown. “You are dubbed Lady Knight, Keladry of Mindelan,” he announced solemnly as his court watched. “Remember your vows and service to this Crown. Remember your promise of chivalry.”

  I’ll remember, she thought as her family and friends applauded. Particularly will I remember it when I find that little man.

  Ilane of Mindelan wept openly, smiling at her youngest daughter as she wiped her eyes.

  “Mama, you’ll lose face if you cry,” Kel pointed out, returning Ilane’s hug.

  “I don’t care,” her mother said. “I am so proud of you, Lady Knight!”

  Kel bent slightly to return her father’s hug. The sight of tears on his cheeks left her speechless. She blotted them with her sleeve, making him laugh. Then there was Raoul to hug, and Neal, and her other friends.

  She was beginning to think wistfully about food when Raoul tapped her shoulder. “Take a look,” he told her, pointing to the dais.

  The king had stepped aside, leaving three women to stand there: the queen, Buri, and in the center, holding a cloth-covered shield, Princess Shinkokami. As Kel watched, they removed the shield’s cover.

  There was the Mindelan device: a gray owl, wings outstretched, on a blue field rimmed with cream. There were two differences between this shield and those of her brothers. On Kel’s, the owl hovered over a pair of crossed glaives, cream embroidered in gold, matches for a Yamani glaive. The other difference was the shield’s border: it was formed by two thin rings, the outer blue, the inner cream. A distaff border, the heralds had named it, the coat of arms of a lady knight. They had studied them as pages, but distaff borders had not been used in over one hundred years. Not even Lady Alanna had ever claimed one.

  Kel stepped forward in a daze. Buri and Shinko helped slide the shield on her arm. It fit perfectly—Kel looked around to see Lalasa, teary-eyed, beaming at her. Of course the shield fit, if Lalasa had anything to say about it.

  “Wear it in health and victory,” Queen Thayet said. “Now, show the nice people.”

  Kel turned, and showed them.

  Her family and friends offered to wait in the courtyard while she put her new shield away: Raoul had arranged for a dinner at the city’s best eating-house as a celebration. Since horses had to be saddled and brought, Kel decided to tidy up again once she had placed her new shield on the bed for the animals to admire. Nari had already left some droppings on the Mindelan owl.

  “I hope that’s a comment on owls and not my family,” Kel told her as she combed her hair and cleaned her teeth. When she looked at the bed next, Jump stood on the shield, using his nose to rub a wet cloth over the besmirched owl.

  Kel, laughing, almost missed the very quiet knock on the door that connected her rooms to Raoul’s. Puzzled, since he was with the others, Kel opened the door.

  Lady Alanna stood there, a sheathed longsword in one hand. “I asked Raoul if I could see you privately,” she explained to the baffled Kel. “May I come in?”

  “My—my lady, of course,” Kel st
ammered. “Please. I would brew tea—”

  “Please don’t,” Alanna said with a smile. “I know you have people waiting.” Once inside, she knelt and gave Jump a moment’s attention—from the way the dog carried on, Kel thought, they must have made friends on progress.

  At last the King’s Champion straightened with a groan, her free hand going to her lower back. “Nobody ever says that, even with healers, your body still adds up your breaks and bruises, then gives you the bill in your mid-thirties,” she said wryly. She sat in Kel’s chair and offered the sword to her. “You’ve grown since the last sword I gave you, and I got a better idea of your fighting style on progress.”

  Kel took the blade in hands that shook. How casually this woman answered a question that had bothered her for eight years! “It was you?” she whispered. “The bruise balm, the exercise balls, the dagger, the—?”

  Alanna nodded. “It nearly killed me, that I couldn’t help you. Not with magic, like those mammering conservatives claimed, but with things like what works best on heavy opponents, and how to build up shoulder muscle. So I did what I could.”

  Thinking of all those gifts over the years, truly expensive things chosen with so much thought about what she would need, Kel shook her head.

  “Neal mentioned there were times when you thought I didn’t care,” the lady said, violet eyes serious. “I wanted to tell you, it was the opposite. And you went so far beyond what I hoped, for the next girl page, and squire, and knight. All those tournaments, and those girls in the stands, right down by the field, watching you hungrily—”

  “Oh, my lady, no!” protested Kel, shocked.

  “Yes,” the King’s Champion said firmly. “I had the magic, don’t you see, and the hand of the Goddess on me. Everyone could and did say I was a freak, one of those once-a-century people. No one else needs to strive for what I did, because they couldn’t reach it.” Alanna smiled crookedly. “But you, bless you, you are real. Those girls watched you, and talked about your style in the saddle, and the things you did. They swore they’d take up archery, or riding, or Shang combat, because you had shown them it was all right. I was so proud.” She cleared her throat. Kel realized that the Champion was beet red. “You know, those things look better out of the sheath,” she remarked, pointing to the sword Kel held.