Part 24 (1/2)

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!” Metric 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 keystone, 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 s.h.i.+eld, Princess s.h.i.+nkokami. As Kel watched, they removed the s.h.i.+eld'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 s.h.i.+eld 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 s.h.i.+eld'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 distaffborders 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 s.h.i.+nko helped slide the s.h.i.+eld on her arm. It fit perfectly - Kel looked around to see Lalasa, teary-eyed, beaming at her. Of course the s.h.i.+eld 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 s.h.i.+eld, 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 stammered. ”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. ”n.o.body 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 G.o.ddess 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.

”Oh!” She had forgotten it was in her hand. Looking at it, she admired the style of the plain black leather sheath and neat, wire-wrapped hilt: they matched the sword and the dagger Alanna had given her. She looked under the cross-guard. There it was: the stylized enamel raven that was the sign of Raven Armory.

The blade, when she worked up the nerve to draw it, did not match the sword and dagger. It showed the blue wave tempering of the finest Yamani steel. She held a fortune in metal in her hands.