Part 23 (1/2)

One day in mid-October they halted on top of a bluff. Corus sprawled on both sides of the Olorun below. Opposite, on the southern heights, was the palace.

Kel sighed. Raoul looked at her. In reply to his silent question she said: ”I was wis.h.i.+ng we didn't have to stop.”

He nodded. ”I thought the same. But you know, Buri might object.”

Kel s.h.i.+vered. ”As much as I like you, my lord, I'd sooner deal with the objections of a cobra. It's safer.”

Chuckling, Raoul led the way back to the road. It was time to go home.

To Raoul's disappointment, Buri was in the south with her Seventeenth Rider Group. Kel expected the K'mir's absence would mean uneven numbers in the morning glaive practices, but instead she found no lack of partners. Several young n.o.blewomen had joined the group. Being part of the circle around s.h.i.+nkokami, Kel was also called in on plans for that spring's royal wedding: after allowing the realm to recover from the Grand Progress, Roald and s.h.i.+nkokami would marry at last. Kel thought asking her for wedding ideas was like asking a cat how to raise horses, but she did her best.

She did not visit the Chapel of the Ordeal. She would spend the night there soon enough.

Raoul continued her lessons as winter set in. Using their tactical experience of the Scanran raids in their district, he helped her put them together with the reports from all the other districts on the northern border. From that knowledge they worked out the Scanran warlord's overall strategy for the summer - Raoul called it the eagle's-eye view, instead of the vole's. Kel liked this as much as she did chess.

The King's Own was recruiting: Captain Linden of Second Company had a.s.sembled candidates for Raoul's approval. If they were accepted, they would begin training with Second Company among the Bazhir. Kel sat in on Raoul's interviews, taking notes and giving her impressions of each candidate at his request. He called it part of her continuing education in command. She still thought he was optimistic.

Neal and Merric returned in early November, the Ordeal clearly on their minds, though they talked of everything but that during meals and time off. Kel worried about them: Neal and Merric were the most imaginative of all those in her year. She understood their nerves, of course. No one could forget Vinson or Joren, and her own experiences of the iron door gave her dreams that woke her gasping in the night.

Buri and the Seventeenth returned. So did other knights and squires, most from the north. Cleon did not come, but wrote instead. General Vanget had ordered him to drill local boys in the defense of themselves and their villages. The best time for such lessons was in the winter, when the crops were in. Kel wrote back that she knew orders were orders, though she had to throw out three efforts before she had a letter she could send. The others had splotches on them.

Six knight-masters prepared their part of the Ordeal ritual. The timetable was that followed by knights and squires for centuries: a bath, instruction in the code of chivalry by two knights, a night-long vigil in the chapel until the first ray of sun touched the wall, then entry into the Chamber. One instructor would be the squire's knight-master, who also found the second knight for the ritual. The other could be a family member, but it was more proper if he were someone less closely connected. Lady Alanna had bespoken the king for Neal's instruction that summer. The lady, Neal told Kel in his wry drawl, left very little to chance.

Kel was afraid to ask Raoul if he'd approached anyone for her. She didn't want to hear that he'd been refused. What if she were the first in memory to be instructed by one knight? It was bad enough that her own ritual differed slightly from the others'. As Lady Alanna had done, with knights who knew she was female, Kel would bathe alone, and be instructed in the code after she dressed.

She knew she was silly to worry about bad luck following any changes in the steps of the rite. Clean was clean, no matter who did or did not see her wash. Many knights owed Raoul favors and would help him, if not The Girl. When she caught herself worrying about things she couldn't fix, she found work to keep her busy. Raoul would say if there were a problem.

One December morning he returned from a meeting to find Kel in his study, sorting his notes about the Owns applicants. ”Well,” he said, digging his hands into his pockets, ”we have a second knight. I don't know what you'll think. I took him up on the offer. I thought he had a point.”

Kel stared at him. ”He who?”

Raoul grimaced, a sheepish look in his eyes. ”Turomot of Wellam.”

She knew that name, though she hadn't thought of its owner as a candidate. Turomot of Wellam, when did she... ”The magistrate?” she cried, her voice squeaking.

Raoul nodded.

”The Lord Magistrate?” she persisted.

Raoul nodded again.

”The conservative?”

Raoul nodded a third time. ”Kel, it was his idea.”

”He hates me,” Kel said, her knees wobbling. ”And he isn't a knight. Is he?”

”Actually, yes,” Raoul told her. ”He hasn't lifted a sword in fifty years, of course. And he doesn't hate you. At least, I don't think he does. What he hates, what he told me, is that people meddled with his procedures to validate pages. He's going to make sure no one tries that with you again. Look, if he's there, no one will dare say anyone gave you any help.”

”The vigil?” Kel looked at Raoul with pleading eyes.

”He's, um, going to sit up with you. That's been done before, so you don't have to worry about a jinx.”

Kel's head ached. ”He's too old to be up all night. That place isn't even heated.”

”G.o.ds above, don't tell him that! He already told me he wasn't in his grave yet and he'd thank me to stop hinting he was decrepit!”

The day before the holiday, the knight-masters of the squires to take the Ordeal met for their own ceremony with the new training master and the king and queen. They drank a toast to the new year, wrote the squires' names on bits of paper, and shook them up in a plain clay bowl. The order in which the queen drew names was the order in which the squires faced the Chamber. When Kel heard the results, she thought that the Yamani trickster G.o.d Sakuyo had danced in that bowl.

Neal was first. She was last.

As candidates for the Ordeal, they were excused from Midwinter service. Kel wondered if someone had miscalculated - it couldn't help them to have more time to imagine the worst - but that was the way it was done. She also knew Neal. If he wasn't distracted, he would make himself sick with worry. She enlisted Yuki to help her. Neal and Yuki always had something to talk, or argue, about. That Midwinter day the three of them went to the city for an early supper and a visit to the winter fair. They played games, watched jugglers and fire-eaters, and listened to a storyteller relate the birth of Mithros. By the time they climbed the hill to the palace, they had to rush; the sun had set.

The girls left Neal in the squires' wing and walked on through the palace in silence. Kel was about to bid her friend a good evening when she realized that Yuki's silence might not be due to weariness. The Yamani's mouth was drawn tight and her eyes were haunted.

”You're afraid for him,” Kel remarked as they crossed the main hall.

Yuki automatically reached for her fan, popped it open, and hid her face behind it. It was the Yamani way to say the fan holder was embarra.s.sed. ”I'm not a Yamani anymore. I'm allowed to be rude. Foreigners don't know any better,” Kel pointed out. She pushed the trembling fan aside. ”Yukimi noh Daiomoru, it is going to be a long night. You're worried for him. So am I. We'd best sit it out together, don't you think?”

Yuki furled her fan and traced the pattern on one slender steel rib. ”I was there, when they carried the beautiful Joren out. Not - as a sightseer. But there were shadows in him, for all his beauty. I wanted to see if this Ordeal purged them.” She tucked her fan in her obi. ”He looked as if he'd lost all hope of sunrise. Neal... If something happens...”

”I wondered,” Kel admitted. ”But you flirt with so many men that I wasn't sure.”

”Neither was I,” Yuki said with a shaky smile. ”Not until today.”

”Time for glaive practice,” Kel said, glad to have someone to look after. ”Then a bath, a ma.s.sage, some archery in one of the indoor courts. If you don't sleep after all that, I will admit defeat.”

Yuki did sleep, in one of her armchairs. Kel stayed awake through the long night, deep in meditation. She woke Yuki before dawn and helped her change into fresh clothes. The sun was half over the horizon by the time they reached the Chapel of the Ordeal.

They weren't alone. The chapel was crowded. Even though last year's squires had taken their Ordeals without problems, everyone remembered Joren and Vinson.

It felt like forever before the iron door to the Chamber creaked open. Yuki grabbed Kel's arm.

Neal stumbled out. His hair and the undyed cotton garments he wore were dark with sweat. His face was gray, his green eyes hectic and red-rimmed, as if he'd wept.

Lady Alanna wrapped a blanket around him and led her former squire toward the door. They were pa.s.sing Kel and Yuki when Neal halted and turned toward them. There was a question in his eyes for Yuki. The Yamani girl looked down, then drew her folded shukusen from her obi and offered it to him, dull end first. Neal took the fan with trembling fingers, then let Alanna guide him out of the chapel.

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.”