Limits of Power

by Elizabeth Moon

  “It’s heavy,” Arcolin said. It felt heavy as stone; he realized it probably was stone.

  “I know you have a gnome in the Company now—”

  “Not for long; he’s going north with me to join others.”

  “Well … it’s unusual, isn’t it?”

  “The whole thing is unusual,” Arcolin said. “If you’re interested—”

  “Indeed yes. You are of value to us. Tell on, if you will.”

  Arcolin told it all and finished with, “The Aldonfulk messenger said his prince would be displeased. I suspect this is some evidence of that displeasure, and I hope it does not bar me from use of the pass.”

  “Why would it?”

  “Because the road north, from the crest of the pass on, traverses Aldonfulk territory. They made treaty long ago, but they still control travel between north and south by that route, and humans pay their toll.”

  “I had not realized they had the will or power to close that way,” the banker said.

  “It’s rare, but it’s happened to individuals. I hope I will not be one of them.”

  “Tell me, if you do not mind, what it is when you find out.”

  Arcolin shrugged. “I might as well open it here and see.”

  The gray wrapping, as thin and flexible as paper, seemed of a different texture; Arcolin did not recognize it. Several layers protected the contents: sheets of paper with writing on them in the gnomish script and a thin flat slab of stone.

  “That explains the weight,” the banker said. “Can you read that script?”

  “Slightly,” Arcolin said. He knew the first block of words was a greeting but did not recognize the rest. “Luckily I can ask Dattur—the gnome with me. I will certainly tell you, since if it is a refusal to allow me to use the pass, I must seek another way north.” He knew of only two other passes, and the nearest, Hakkenarsk, north of Dwarfwatch, lay many days to the east.

  “I hope it is not that,” the banker said.

  Dattur read the papers without difficulty; Arcolin never ceased to wonder that all gnomes could read. “The Aldonfulk prince greets you and asks your presence in his hall…” Dattur’s voice trailed off. “My prince, he is either showing friendship or great guile. He offers the use of the gnome way through the mountain—the same given to Captain Selfer, his cohort, and the Count of Andressat. You must understand that if you accept, you will be at his mercy for those days under the mountain, and if you do not accept, it can—it probably will—be taken as an insult.” He looked up at Arcolin. “And he wants an answer within a day. His messenger will come tomorrow at noon.”

  “I can’t leave tomorrow,” Arcolin said. “I have business to attend.”

  “It is an answer he wants, I believe, not an immediate attendance. How long do you think your business will take?”

  “A hand of days at least,” Arcolin said. He looked at Dattur. “Do you think it is friendship or ill intent?”

  Dattur spread his hands. “I do not know. Friendship between human and kapristi … is very rare. Alliance is possible. Ill intent, however, is against the Law unless wrong has been done. It may be only that he wants to know and understand how you came to be a prince of kapristi. And know that he may send—may have sent—one of his own to the north to find out what he can.”

  Arcolin scrubbed at his head as if he could push his thoughts into order. “It is more complicated than I thought, and I already knew it was complicated. I certainly did not intend to cause trouble with other gnome princes.”

  “You did not … but the situation would be … bothering. Annoying, even. It does not happen before.”

  “You are coming with me—will it bother you to be underground in a different princedom?”

  “No, my prince. It is hard if kteknik, but you declared me not kteknik and gave me cloth of your choice to clothe myself. If it was not kapristi-made, it was still the right cloth to you. So I told him, and so I will tell the prince.”

  “I am not sure my gnomish is good enough to follow everything a prince might say, and answer as I should.”

  “I will help, my prince. And should it be necessary, I will work the stone that is not my stone, though they will protest loudly.”

  “What is this stone, then?” Arcolin asked.

  Dattur ran his fingers over it. “It’s a seal-stone. It is the prince’s seal, stone from his stone-mass, that certifies who he is. It may also be a key, but that we may find out from his messenger tomorrow.”

  The messenger arrived promptly at noon. Arcolin and Dattur were waiting at the gate when he walked up and bowed stiffly. He spoke Common fairly well. “You were able to read what my prince wrote?”

  “Yes,” Arcolin said. “With some help.”

  “And what answer do you return?”

  “I cannot come at once,” Arcolin said. “I have appointments made that must be kept. But I accept Aldonfulk’s invitation to meet with your prince in his hall.”

  “It is well,” the messenger said.

  A few days later, Arcolin sent his escort ahead to cross the pass alone. “I am delayed here. Await me at Fiveway,” he said, handing over a letter pouch for a courier. “A royal courier might be waiting; if so, hand this over.”

  “But sir—we’re supposed to be your escort.”

  “And you will be, from Fiveway north.”

  “But sir, who will be your escort to Fiveway?”

  “I can always find someone safe to travel with that far. After all, once over the divide, we’re in gnome territory almost all the way to Fiveway. Brigands don’t last long there.” He grinned at them. “I don’t know exactly how long my business here will be, but do not worry.”

  Two nights later, Arcolin and Dattur rode north out of the winter quarters and met their guide on the first ridge. By dawn, they were high on another ridge, with fog in the valley below and the flank of the great mountain in front of them.

  “It will not be as with your captain,” their guide said. “You travel with a gnome of your princedom, and though you are human … I have been told not to cloud your memory. For that reason, the prince has commanded that we enter the mountain in a different place and travel to the main passage along a new one that closes behind. Though if this frightens you, you may sleep and not know.”

  “I am not frightened,” Arcolin said. “Or not enough to wish to be asleep.”

  Nonetheless, when they rode up to a vertical face of rock and it opened silently before them, Arcolin’s belly tightened. The night had been dark, with rising fog dimming the stars, but the dark they rode into was darker yet. His horse balked at first, but their gnome guide laid a hand on its neck and muttered something; the horse relaxed and plodded into the dark without resistance.

  All Arcolin could tell of the first part of that journey was clopping of the horse’s hooves on stone and the echo of that sound off the walls of the passage. He knew the passage climbed steeply because of the horse’s grunts of effort. He had the uneasy feeling that they traveled in a moving hole in the rock, but in the blackness he could not see rock opening and closing. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to. Finally he saw a dim glow ahead, and they came out into a level passage wider than the one they’d been in. Arcolin looked back in time to see the rock flow together like mud and stiffen again into stone. He shuddered and did not look back again.

  Light grew as they moved along the level passage; they emerged in a wider one in which it was light enough to see the expressions on faces. More gnomes waited there: a small troop Arcolin chose to consider an honor guard. From there the journey resembled what the two veterans had told him about except that they did not come out of the mountain before arriving in the great hall. Arcolin dismounted; one of the gnomes took his horse and led it away. Selfer had remembered this: the carved screen with its patterns that caught and confused the eye, the dais, the gnome prince. Arcolin bowed.

  “You speak kapristi?” the prince asked.

  “Poorly, as yet, but I do.”

  “It is
not known before in all time that a man was prince of gnomes. It is not good.”

  “It is not good that gnomes die naked in the snow,” Arcolin said.

  The prince rose from his throne and came down, the dark shining eyes fixed on Arcolin’s face. “It is that even mountains move,” he said. He bowed stiffly. “Prince to prince: greeting.”

  Arcolin bowed again. “Greeting.”

  “You care for your kapristin.”

  “I do.”

  “It may be the Giver of Law teach you … it may be the Giver of Law use you to punish oathbreakers.” While Arcolin puzzled his way through that, the prince closed his eyes a long moment, then opened them.

  “For this my kapristin say kapristinya to your kapristin. It is prince speaking Law.”

  “It is prince speaking Law,” all the other gnomes said.

  Arcolin wondered if he should repeat the formula when Aldonfulk was already a known entity. “It is Aldonfulk prince speaking Law, and it is I learning,” he said.

  “This one,” the prince said, looking at Dattur. “This one has not had chance to make proper clothes?”

  “It is so,” Arcolin said.

  “Without incurring debt, as true gift to new prince, I would offer for your teacher of Law a suit of clothes.”

  Arcolin bowed. “It is a gift I would be honored to accept for him.”

  “Then let him go, and you and I will sit to refreshment and I would ask you of the men of the south, what we need to know for the safety of kapristin.”

  They brought a human-size chair for Arcolin, and a chair that height with a footstool for their prince. A flagon was set before them, and a measure of salt; Arcolin took out the loaf he had thought to bring for such a possibility and his own travel cup. The prince nodded at this. “Indeed, prince, you are not unacquainted with our courtesies. It speaks well of your Law-teacher.” The servant—or assistant—set down a cup for the prince and poured a measure of liquid into it. In that light, Arcolin was not sure what it was, only that it was not water. With a knife the servant divided the loaf and sprinkled salt on each cut side. Arcolin pushed the piece nearer himself to the far side, and the prince did the same. Then, following the prince’s lead, he picked up his portion, took a bite, and then sipped the liquid in the cup, a tart wine.

  “It is good wine,” Arcolin said.

  “It is good bread,” the prince said. “May honest salt bring savor to our tongues and fair exchange to our hearts, by the Law. And now, if you please—what news?”

  Arcolin told him what he had learned in the past two summers and who he thought was behind it.

  “This necklace,” the prince said. “Do you have a description?”

  “Yes, though I have not seen it myself. Blue and white stones, quite large. I was told that no one knows their origin—kapristi, hakken, Sinyi, and humans have all been asked, and none know.”

  “Has any asked Drakon?” the prince asked, using a word close enough to Common.

  “Dragon! Would a dragon know?”

  “Might. But where was it first seen in these days?”

  “In the cellar of an old fort in southern Tsaia, near Brewersbridge,” Arcolin said.

  “Ah … and what manner of being had lived there?”

  “I’m not sure. Something evil. One of my veterans was there, Paksenarrion, as well as the man I spoke to this year.”

  “Paksenarrion! That name is known to kapristi. She was given an oath-ring in return for her service to merchants of mine, but has never yet claimed her pay.”

  “She lost all to kuaknomi in the far west,” Arcolin said.

  “Kuaknomi … the elves’ shame, the iynisin?” The prince sounded angry. “I thought she was now a paladin.”

  “Yes,” Arcolin said. “But the rings she wore then were lost.”

  “It is a debt unpaid,” the prince said. “It will be redeemed. As for the necklace you speak of—in the time of the prince before me, and that would be three or four lifetimes of men, there was a division in Tsaia, in one of the great houses, one in the east of that land. There was talk in the trade roads of something stolen, jewels of great worth and—but this was held a secret, to the limit men can hold secrets—magical as well. It was said that one fled with a part of a treasure and by so fleeing took away the power of the whole. This is not certain truth, but rumor only, and I had it from that prince, who wrote it in our remembrances. A man came here, fleeing, and asked sanctuary, but was refused, for upon him that prince smelled blood magery.”

  Arcolin told what he knew of the Verrakai and the Verrakai regalia; the gnome prince nodded.

  “That would be the family. And the jewels would be old, from across the sea.”

  “Sapphires and diamonds, I was told,” Arcolin said.

  “Not,” the gnome prince said. “For those any of the rockfolk would know. I do not know what they are, but I know what they are not.”

  When the prince signaled that they had finished their talk, other gnomes escorted Arcolin to a guest chamber, where he slept until wakened by a gong. Dattur reappeared in sober gray gnomish attire with braid on his jacket that did not match that on the Aldonfulk gnomes. He waited until they were once more on the road to Fiveway, the mountain behind them and their guides well behind. “Can you read this?” he asked.

  “No,” Arcolin said. “But you told me what it would say.”

  “It is a great honor. And they made this for you.” Dattur handed over a folded stack of gray cloth. “It is a prince’s stole, but longer, for your height. You should wear it when you greet your subjects in the north.”

  Arcolin started to unfold it, but Dattur stopped him. “No one must see,” he said, jerking his head to a caravan slowly making its way down, two turns behind them. “Later.”

  Arcolin put it away, into one of his saddlebags.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Fin Panir

  When the first chill autumn winds blew in from the north—winterwards, as the Finthans called it—and prompted Arvid Semminson to unpack his cloak again, he realized he had not heard Gird’s voice in his head for a long time. He wondered why, but when he asked Cedlin, the Marshal shrugged. “Who can know the ways of the gods and their saints? My guess would be that whatever you were called to do, you need more training, more knowledge of the Fellowship. Young lads ask what great deeds they will do later, and I tell them what I’m now telling you. Do your work faithfully, grow in strength and knowledge and wisdom, so that when trouble comes, you are ready to do those deeds.”

  Arvid nodded. “I understand that, Marshal, but wondered if I had missed some word—”

  “From what you told me before, you hear Gird clearly enough. He had his reasons for turning you out of your old life, and you’ll find them out later. Though—where would your son be, if you had not been diverted?”

  Arvid shuddered. “If that was the only reason, Marshal, it was reason enough. I am content.”

  “Not for too long, I’ll wager,” the Marshal said. “I hear you’re raising questions up the hill … called Luap an idiot, didn’t you? Ambitious scoundrel?”

  “Well, yes. He was.”

  The Marshal chuckled. “Keep that up, Arvid, and you’ll find yourself rising like the bubbles in boiling water. Aiming at Marshal-General, are you?”

  “No, Marshal!” Panic roiled his mind for a moment. “The Fellowship does not need a thief-enforcer for a leader.”

  “Only the gods know what the Fellowship needs,” the Marshal said. “And someone who actually hears Gird may someday be what’s needed.”

  Arvid shied from that thought and scrambled to find another topic. “This Council the Marshal-General’s called—do they always last so long?”

  “No. You know what it’s about—”

  “Something about magery,” Arvid said. He had heard scattered comments but could not make sense of them. “Blood magery, isn’t it? People using it here? Does it mean priests of Liart moved here from Tsaia when they were driven out there?”


  “Not at all,” the Marshal said. “Not blood magery, but innate magery, what Duke Verrakai in Tsaia has. A talent, like a talent for singing or swordplay or strength.”

  “But it’s bad—” Even thinking of magery brought the memory of Paksenarrion’s torment to mind, and everything he’d heard linked magery to evil, including the rumors now murmured in the markets here in Fin Panir.

  “Is swordplay bad? Is singing? Either one can be used for bad purposes. Either one can be used for good purposes.” Arvid said nothing. The Marshal reached out and tapped his hands. “You have killed with those hands, Arvid. And you have saved a paladin with those hands, and saved a child—your son—with those hands. Is the strength and skill of your hands bad, because you used it to steal and kill, or good because you used it to save?”

  Awareness of Gird’s presence settled on Arvid’s shoulders like a heavy cloak. “I … don’t … know. I suppose … it’s not the strength of my hands but … how I use them.”

  “Exactly. That’s what the Marshal-General is saying about magery, but many people believe it’s evil no matter how it’s used. That’s what you learned, eh? What we’ve learned in the past few years, from Luap’s writings and other writings found in Kolobia, is different from what’s in the current Code of Gird. Gird did not hate magery but cruelty. He knew—at least by the end of his life—that magery could be used for good and that cruelty wasn’t confined to magelords.”

  “So … what does magelord magery look like?”

  The Marshal gave him a long considering look, then nodded as if he’d seen something in Arvid’s face. “Often the first sign is light—a finger or two giving off light. It’s hot, like fire: a magelord could light a candle or start a fire just by touching it. A paladin’s light has no heat: it gives sight only.”

  “Wizards make fire.”

  “Yes, but with spells or potions. It’s not the same thing.” The Marshal paused. “I do hope, Arvid, you are not becoming too interested in magery.”

  “If you mean do I wish to become a mage, the answer is no. But what you have been teaching me about the Code and what I have seen up the hill, copying texts old and new and listening to the talk about magery … I want to know more about everything.”