Squire

by Tamora Pierce

  That night, when the king knighted him, Neal wore Yuki’s delicate, deadly shukusen in his belt.

  Kel was there each morning as her year-mates emerged from the Chamber. Esmond of Nicoline was second. Seaver of Tasride was third, followed by Quinden of Marti’s Hill. They looked as if they’d been ground up and spat out, just as Neal had. Each was whole in mind and body; by the time they were knighted at sunset, their terror was hidden, replaced by awe that this moment had come at last.

  Then it was Merric’s turn. Kel, Neal, and Seaver spent the afternoon with him. They rode, sledded, and practiced quarterstaves, anything to keep him moving and unthinking. It didn’t work. He got paler as the sun began to set; he couldn’t eat supper. Finally they went to his room to wait until the Watch called the hour when he had to prepare for the bath. As Kel, Seaver, and Neal rose to go, Merric asked, “Kel? A word?”

  She waited until Neal closed the door after him. “What is it?”

  He swallowed. “Are you scared?” he asked, blue eyes huge in his bone-white face.

  Kel reviewed the answers she could give, then said, “Witless.”

  Merric nodded. Taking a deep breath, he lifted his chin. “I can do this.”

  She smiled. “I know you can.”

  He clasped her hand warmly, then shooed her from his room. She kept her own kind of vigil again with Neal and Seaver. They spent the long watch in her room, dozing in chairs as they waited.

  Dawn. They went to the Chapel, arriving just as Merric left the Chamber. He looked exhausted, but oddly reassured. He grinned at his friends when he saw them. “Too scared to scream,” he told them, before his knight-master towed him off for a bath, food, and rest.

  In the morning Kel had breakfast with her parents and visited Lalasa, just in case. Then she took Peachblossom, Jump, and the birds, and went for a long ride in the Royal Forest, where she heard nothing but the calls of birds and the plop of snow falling from the trees. She drew that quiet into her. What would come would come, whether she fretted herself to pieces or not. She would rather enjoy the weather, which wasn’t too cold, and the quiet. As much as she loved her friends, sometimes it was good to hear no one at all.

  She returned to her room late in the day and sat down to write to Cleon. More than anything, she wished he were here. That was her main regret, that he wasn’t here. If something were to happen tonight, she wouldn’t have seen him, talked with him, or kissed him good-bye.

  She lost track of how long she sat looking at blank parchment, unable to think of something graceful to say. The ink was dry on her quill when she finally tried to write. Frowning, she trimmed the pen and waited this time until she came to a decision, then dipped her quill. She wrote, “Dear Cleon—I love you and I will miss you. Kel.” After all, if she survived, he would never read one of their two forbidden words, “love,” in her note. If she didn’t, it wouldn’t matter.

  “I could do better,” she told Jump, “but I can’t seem to manage it right now.”

  She didn’t want to eat with people who’d talk to her. Instead she went to the kitchens and cajoled a maid into giving her a plate of food. She ate in a little-used pantry and returned the plate with thanks, then went to visit Peachblossom and Hoshi. Her last stop was her room. She gathered up the clothes she was to wear during her vigil, then went to the sparrows to give each one a caress.

  She kissed Jump on the head. “Be good and be careful, all of you,” she said, her voice shaking. She gripped her fear with an iron hand before it made her weak. Thinking back on the things she had seen when she touched the Chamber door, she knew that it could resurrect all that terrified her and make it real. This time would be the last, one way or another. “Goddess bless,” she told her animals, and closed her door behind her. Inside her room, baffled by her strange behavior, upset at being locked in, Jump began to bark.

  The room where the bath was held was attached to the Chapel, but at least it was heated. Raoul and Turomot met her there. No one’s added sugar to Duke Turomot’s lemon, Kel thought as she bowed and thanked the Lord Magistrate for honoring her.

  The men waited in the hall while she scrubbed every inch of herself from crown to soles. Once she had put on the undyed cotton breeches and shirt, the rough material chafing her damp skin, she admitted Raoul and Turomot.

  “Keladry of Mindelan, are you prepared to be instructed?” asked the duke. He would not sit this night out shoeless in thin cotton. Over his clothes he wore a heavy velvet robe with a fur collar and lining; on his head was a velvet cap with flaps that covered his ears. He even wore gloves.

  “I am,” Kel replied firmly.

  Ritual dictated each man’s words.

  “If you survive the Ordeal of Knighthood, you will be a Knight of the Realm,” said Raoul gravely. “You will be sworn to protect those weaker than you, to obey your overlord, to live in a way that honors your kingdom and your gods.”

  Turomot cleared his throat, then said, “To wear the shield of a knight is an important thing. You may not ignore a cry for help. It means that rich and poor, young and old, male and female may look to you for rescue, and you cannot deny them.”

  Back and forth they continued the instruction, reminding her of her duty to uphold the law and her own honor, to keep her word, to heed the rules of chivalry. Kel let all of it fall into her heart like stones into a still pool, sending ripples through her spirit as they fell. Those words were the reason she had come this far, the whole reason she needed to be a knight. She wanted them to be as much a part of her as blood and bone.

  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 cli fs 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, desperate 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 cli f 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, whi
spering 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.