Oath of Fealty

by Elizabeth Moon

  “And just as dangerous,” Dorrin reminded him. “I’ll be back later. When you get to the lower levels, call me first.”

  The nursemaids had their charges up and dressed, ready for the outing Dorrin had promised if the day was fair. Dorrin looked them over, this time touching each with a flicker of magery. Her heart sank. There, and there, and there … three more children who were not children. Two boys and a girl, seven winters, six, and five.

  She should have done it last night, while they were sleeping, but that would have been terrifying for the other children, and the nursemaids … now, in daylight, with all of them awake and alert, Dorrin realized it would be hardly less frightening. They would ask her about Restin; the ones who were not truly children, with adult cunning, would soon know he must have been discovered. She tried to think how best to proceed.

  Suddenly one of the children—Mikeli, the sickly one—collapsed, falling to the floor with a strange mewing cry, his body jerking, foam at his mouth.

  One of the maids ran to him, felt his face. “It’s the crisis!” she said. “He’s burning with fever. We must get him away from the others.” The others hurried over, warning the other children away; children cried out, all was bustle and confusion.

  Dorrin watched, wondering which Verrakai was trying to transfer to the child, wondering how to stop it. A bolt of magery staggered her, then another.

  It should have been impossible to use attack magery here in the shielded nursery—she’d trusted that shield. Now she felt the leaden weight of that attack; the two boys came toward her, smiling, their power beating at her. Dorrin fought it back, felt the weight ease. She could move; she could think—but what to think? What could she do here, in front of the others?

  Trust the light. In her mind, the voice was firm but not harsh. Which light, though? Magery’s light was fire; Falk, after his years of toil, had burned out the prison in which he had been kept, cleansing it. Here were children she did not wish to burn. She did not have that other light, the light by which paladins revealed the truth of evil.

  Trust me, then. But she still doubted. Was it Falk and the High Lord in her mind, or the Verrakai who had violated children’s bodies to take them over? An internal laugh, good-natured, without malice, answered her. Again she thought of Paksenarrion, and seemed to see a ruby centered in the circle she wore on her brow.

  She had sworn her life to Falk. She had received her magery back from a paladin and Falk’s own Captain-General. With that thought she released whatever kept light from doing whatever Falk and the High Lord wanted. It burst from her, soundless, effortless, unconsuming and revealing. By that light, she saw the adult selves in the two boys nearest her and the girl squatting on the floor behind the others … that one pouring magery at Mikeli as he lay twitching across the room.

  Saving him had to come first. Dorrin attacked full speed, disabling the other two with one blow each to the head. The other children fled screaming to the corners of the nursery, except for the little girl. She did not even look up, concentrating on Mikeli. Dorrin felled her with a blow, and turned to the maids now huddled protectively over the sick boy.

  “These three were making Mikeli sick with magery,” she said. “I am taking them away. He may recover now.”

  “But—but you—”

  “He’s sweating,” one of the maids said. “He’s not as hot.”

  “Stay here,” Dorrin said. She carried the little girl, now bleeding from mouth and nose, over her shoulder, and managed to pick up the others and get them out of the room. She shut the door, took a breath, looked around. What now?

  Out of the house. No more killing blood here.

  Dorrin called for Selfer and explained. “We must kill them—they are not children, but adults using children’s bodies—but we must not kill them in the house. Too much blood here already.”

  “They’re so little,” he said. “Can it really be—” He looked at her face and then nodded. “You are sure; that’s enough for me. Do you want someone else to do it?”

  “No. I must.” She sighed. “I hate it, but it is my inheritance. I am the legitimate duke—and every duke I know of killed, and killed family members. That is not power I ever wanted to inherit.”

  “What about the orchard? That is a fruit orchard isn’t it? Alyanya’s preserve, a place of peace?”

  “We can hope,” Dorrin said.

  Together they wrapped the little limp bodies in linens and carried them out of the house to the orchard, and Dorrin cut their throats. A detail of Phelani dug the graves at one end; it did not take long, since the bodies were so small. Selfer spoke a Girdish prayer for their rest, and Dorrin spoke both the Falkian prayers and the traditional Verrakaien farewell.

  As they walked back up the orchard paths, Selfer said “Children! How could they use children so?”

  “I know. It’s disgusting in ways I can’t even describe. Those children—the real children—having their lives taken away …”

  “I was never convinced the Verrakai were evil until I saw this,” Selfer said. “I knew you—fought beside you—and if anything you were more committed to good than even Kieri—the king.”

  “I had memories of this place, and the fear that I would become like them,” Dorrin said.

  “Not you,” Selfer said. “Ever.”

  “Now that I have the power, I feel its temptations,” Dorrin said. “Anyone with power, magical or not, Selfer. You’re a captain now—has it started for you, yet? You speak and others obey … how does that feel?” She kept her voice light; Selfer had been a good squire and junior captain.

  He said nothing for a few paces, then: “I know what you’re speaking of. And when I was first a squire, I thought how grand it must be, to have a cohort or a whole company at my command. I felt a thrill of pride, even though I had no right. But the Duke taught me, you taught me, all you captains, that being a commander was not about that. Do I like it, when the cohort does what I command? Yes, of course. But I must command well, for that pleasure to be … to be honorable. It isn’t all about me.”

  Dorrin punched him lightly on the shoulder. “So I thought. You are a good captain, Selfer, and we’ve all seen that coming as you grew into it. But there are temptations at every level of power, temptations to take the easy way. Even Kieri—even the king, that last year in Aarenis.”

  Selfer nodded, then said, “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Wasn’t anything you could do. We captains couldn’t do anything; he was beyond reason for a while. He dragged himself back from being even worse. But anytime you have power, you will have temptations. You know that; always remember it. We are not gods; we make mistakes, we judge wrongly. If you can keep in mind ‘I might be wrong’—”

  “But doesn’t that slow your thinking in emergencies?”

  “Indeed.” Dorrin kicked at a withered pear on the ground. “It nearly killed me, just now. Trust the gods, trust your experience of Gird, but when you have time, don’t trust yourself too much.” She stopped; Selfer slowed and turned to face her. “It’s not easy, Selfer—it’s not ever easy, or it wasn’t for me. But if I can do what the prince wants, what the realm needs, what the honest remnants of Verrakai need—it will be by my understanding that I am not always right, and my willingness to admit that, face the consequences, and go on trying.”

  “I would wonder if it was easier for paladins, had I not seen Paksenarrion’s face,” Selfer said. “When I was a boy, I heard of them and wanted to be one …”

  Dorrin walked on. “So did I. But it was made clear to me, in my time in Falk’s Hall, that I was not.” Another few steps. “We have our own tasks, Selfer. When I knew Kieri Phelan in Falk’s Hall—”

  “You knew him then? You never said—”

  She shrugged. “No reason. He was older by a few years. I admired him greatly; many of us did. The commander of our year spoke highly of him as someone who had followed Falk’s path of service—he’d been with Aliam Halveric, as you know—and then throug
h his own merits had been accepted into training.”

  “Was he the same?”

  “Yes … not exactly.” Dorrin felt her cheeks heating. Like the other young women in her class, she had found him handsome beyond bearing; they had discussed him, in their dormitory, when they thought the sergeants could not hear. Those tough older women had no patience with girlish chatter. From his flaming red hair to the broad-shouldered, fit body, the shapely legs, the … she forced that memory back. “When he was young,” she said instead, “he was already a natural leader, and he’d been to the wars with Aliam. No one else had actual fighting experience. He had most of us students wrapped around his finger; everyone wanted to be him, or be near him, or both.”

  “I’m sure you had your own following,” Selfer said. “With all due respect, you must have been beautiful as a girl; you’re good-looking now.”

  “I was a mess,” Dorrin said. “And I was always in trouble. It wasn’t the way my face was made, but how I used it. Growing up here, I learned lessons that made people distrust me, dislike me.”

  “Well,” Selfer said, “people don’t distrust or dislike you now.”

  “Except my own family, and that’s nothing new,” Dorrin said. “I hope that child lives—”

  “Which one?”

  “The one who was sickening, being prepared for a transfer. That’s what happened—one of the children I’d identified tried to force a transfer. Now we know it’s possible.”

  “Gods! Which one?”

  “The girl.” Dorrin felt tears stinging her eyes. The girl she might have been, had things been different. A girl who would never have her chance to escape. “I must make it better for the others,” she said. “Verrakai must not be a name of terror, treachery, evil.”

  “You’ll do it,” Selfer said.

  “That’s the scariest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Dorrin said. Her heart lifted as they came to the front entrance. The sun seemed brighter; the great doors looked less ominous. “Falk’s grace,” she said. “If Falk and the High Lord want this done, then surely it can be done.”

  “And Gird,” Selfer said as they came up the steps.

  “And Gird,” Dorrin said.

  A kitchen maid waited for her in the reception room. “Cook says the pastry’s still waiting.”

  Lunch. She had completely forgotten about lunch. “That’s very kind,” she said. “Where—”

  “We’s set a table in the servants’ hall since them soldiers won’t let us in the dining room.”

  “Fine,” Dorrin said. “Lead the way. Selfer?”

  The pie, mincemeat and vegetables in a pastry crust, was delicious. Dorrin ate it quickly, anxious to get back upstairs and check on the children. She met one of the nurserymaids on the stairs.

  “He’s better still, my lord,” the maid said. “The fever’s all gone; we’ve never seen the like.”

  “Is he awake?”

  “No, but he’s sleeping restful, no twitching. Malin says let him sleep it out.”

  “That’s good. I’m sorry the children couldn’t go out this morning, but this afternoon let them play outside.”

  “In the orchard? That’s where we usually take them when it’s this cool, out of the wind.”

  “No, not in the orchard today. It’s cool, but not windy—they should be fine in the front of the house.”

  The children came downstairs quietly, obviously anxious with the house full of strangers and none of the familiar adults about. Dorrin watched them file out the front entrance; none were invaded that she could detect.

  Once outside, their reserve gradually leached away and soon they were running around the wide graveled entrance, screeching and playing like normal children. They were normal children, Dorrin reminded herself. The nurserymaids watched, trying to keep the children into rough age groups.

  After a few minutes, she went back upstairs to check on Mikeli and find out why the nursery’s protection against aggressive magery had failed. Mikeli slept peacefully, appearing normal to all her senses. The nursery’s protection, a spell controlled at the door, had been turned off; Dorrin turned it back on.

  While on that level, she spent the next hour checking room after room for any evil magery and found nothing—the children’s floor seemed clear. Down one flight, where the adults had their chambers, was a different matter. After finding multiple death-dealing traps of various kinds, familiar from her time in Aarenis, and spells set to confuse, injure, or kill, in the first bedchamber she explored, she decided she’d continue to sleep somewhere else.

  A soft call from the stairway to the third floor brought her back up. “He’s awake, my lord.”

  Dorrin went into the nursery; Mikeli was now propped up on pillows, rubbing his eyes.

  “Mikeli—how do you feel?”

  “Better. Hungry … Who are you?”

  “I’m Dorrin Verrakai,” Dorrin said. “The new Duke.”

  “Where’s Mama?”

  “She had to go on a trip,” Dorrin said. “But I’m here. If you’re hungry, let’s go see if the cooks can find you something.” She looked at the nurserymaid. “I don’t know what a child who’s been sick should eat—”

  “Toast, weak sib, to see how it settles.”

  “I’m hungry,” Mikeli said in a stronger voice, pushing away from the pillows. “I feel … different.”

  Dorrin extended her magery a little. No hint of someone other than a five-winters child inside, a child thinner and paler than he should be, but with healthy energy surging inside him.

  “Come downstairs with me,” she said, standing and holding out a hand. Mikeli got up and took her hand without hesitation.

  “Your shoes, Miki,” said the nurserymaid, fetching them and putting them on his feet as he stood on one leg at a time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  On the way downstairs, the boy asked question after question: what had happened, where were the others, where were his parents, where had Dorrin come from and why, what had been wrong with him and why was he better … on and on. Dorrin answered as well as she could, with what she thought would be good for him to know. That was always less than the full truth, but she tried not to lie.

  In the kitchen, Farin recommended broth and dry bread. Mikeli drank a mug of broth and inhaled the bread so fast Dorrin was afraid he’d choke. A little color had come into his pale cheeks.

  “Had the crisis this morning, I heard,” Farin said. “Fever gone so fast—is that real, or will he relapse?” She said that quietly, to Dorrin, across the kitchen from Mikeli.

  “I believe it to be real,” Dorrin said. “Falk’s grace, I call it.”

  “Falk! I’ve never heard my lords and my ladies talk of Falk’s grace.”

  “You will hear me do so,” Dorrin said, touching her ruby. “I’m a Knight of Falk, remember.”

  The cook gave her a long look. “Does that mean no more of those … with the …” She made a gesture, circle and horns.

  “No more priests of Liart, no more blood magery,” Dorrin said. Everyone in the kitchen but Mikeli stopped short and almost cowered. “No more,” Dorrin said, louder. “I am your Duke, and my word is your law, but my word is founded on Falk and the High Lord, not those scum.”

  “But—but I—” That was a kitchen maid by the bread oven, a girl perhaps thirteen or fourteen. Dorrin remembered her as one of those who had carried water for her bath. “I—they made me swear to—”

  “Be quiet, Efla!” Farin said.

  Dorrin walked over to the girl. “Efla, what did they make you swear?”

  Tears ran down the girl’s face. “They—they made me swear to him—to Liart—they hurt me and hurt me and I was so scared—”

  Dorrin reached out; the girl flinched but Dorrin pulled her closer, into a hug. “Child, the gods forgive such oaths … you are not bound to Liart. You can renounce that oath and take a better one.” The girl sobbed in Dorrin’s arms; Dorrin patted her back. “Efla, listen … listen to me. I’m your Duke now. I
’m your protector.”

  Efla pulled back a little, gasping out her story through her sobs. “They—they made me—he—he took me—he put his—and a child—they said it—was really—Liart’s—”

  Dorrin hugged the girl close again. “It’s all right, Efla. They lied. The Bloodlord’s servants lie to scare people, and lie to trick them, and lie to harm them. If you have a child inside you, it is the human child of whoever raped you, not a god’s child. The Bloodlord cannot engender life.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. When did this happen?”

  “Ten-days and ten-days afore you came. Right before a lot of them left to go somewhere. It was Hagin, son of Jurin, son of Haron who did it. And—and I don’t know, and—”

  “Come, sit down here.” Dorrin led the girl to the stool she herself had sat on that morning. “Bring me a wet cloth,” she said to the others. Motion resumed; the others moved around and Farin brought the cloth.

  “Wipe your face,” Farin said to Efla. “What a silly girl, to bother the Duke with all this. And I still think you wanted it, only you got caught and made up all that about being forced—”

  “I did not!” Efla said, with another burst of tears. “I was in the pantry there, I told you—”

  “I want to hear all her story,” Dorrin said to Farin. “She may have something to tell that will help me clear the last evil from this place. Can you watch Mikeli for me? Will eating too much now make him sicker?”

  “Oh!” The cook looked over at the table, where Mikeli was reaching for a pot of honey. “I’ll watch him, never fear.”

  “Now, Efla,” Dorrin said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  It was much as she expected. One of the young men had found her in the pantry, late in the evening, when she was finishing the evening audit as assigned. She had been unable to move; he had laughed, fondled her, kissed her, and then forced her to come with him to the old keep, into the dungeon itself. Horrible monsters had been there, dressed in red and black. They’d tortured a kitten in front of her and rubbed her face in its blood. They’d hurt her under her clothes, and laughed at her, and the man—Hagin—had hurt her most between her legs. They’d threatened worse, showing her the tools, the fire, and made her swear eternal loyalty to Liart of the Horned Chain.