“Take it easy, Paks. It will come back to you. You’re safe here.” The man turned away for a moment, and waved to someone Paks could not see.
“But if I—when I was with the Duke, I was a soldier. I must have been. And you’re wearing mail. What happened?” Paks tried again to push herself up; this time she got both arms out of the blanket around her. She had on a loose linen shirt; below its sleeves her arms were seamed with the swollen purple lines of healing wounds. Her wrists were bandaged with strips of linen. She stared at them, and then at the man. “What is this place? Did you—”
He reached out and took her hand; his grip was firm but gentle. “No, Paks, I did not deal those injuries. We brought you out of the place where that happened.” He turned to another man who had just walked up to them. “She’s awake, and making sense, but her memory hasn’t returned. Paks, do you know this man?”
Paks stared at the lean face framed in iron-gray hair and beard. He looked stern and even grim, but honest. She wanted to trust him. She could not remember him at all. “No, sir,” she said slowly. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” said the second man. “I wonder,” he said to the first, “whether we should try to tell her what we know.”
“Names, at least,” said the dark man. “Or she’ll be completely confused. Paks, my name is Amberion; I’m a paladin of Gird. And this is Marshal Fallis, of the Order of the Cudgel.”
The names meant nothing to Paks, and the men looked no more familiar with strange names attached. She looked from one to the other. “Amberion. Marshal Fallis.” They looked at her, glanced at each other, then back at her.
“Do you remember who Gird is, Paks?” asked Marshal Fallis.
Paks wrinkled her brow, trying to think. The name woke a distant uneasiness. “Gird. I—I know I should. Something—it’s—what to do—to call—when—” she stopped, breathing hard, and tried again. “When you start to fight—only—I couldn’t say it aloud! I tried—and it wouldn’t—something on my neck, choking—No!” Paks shouted this last loud enough to startle the entire camp. She had shut her eyes tightly, shaking her head, her body rigid. “No,” she said more softly. “No. By—by Holy Gird, I will fight. I will—not—stop. I will fight!”
She felt both men’s hands on her shoulders, steadying her. Amberion spoke. “Paks. Listen to me. You’re out of that. You’re safe.” Then, more quietly, to Fallis. “And what do you suppose that was about. Surely she wasn’t free to fight them?”
“I don’t know,” was Fallis’s grim reply. “But I suspect we’d better find out. Considering how we found her—”
“I won’t believe it,” said Amberion, but his voice had thinned.
Paks opened her eyes. For a moment she stared blankly at the sky, then shifted her eyes to look at Amberion. She could feel patches of memory coming back, unconnected still, but broadening. “Amberion? What—”
“You were injured, Paks. You don’t remember much.”
“I feel—strange. Will you tell me what happened?”
“We don’t know all that happened. And it might be better to let you remember it for yourself.”
Paks looked around. “I don’t recognize this place. But the color of the rocks—something—is familiar.”
“We moved the camp after you—after the fight.”
“Are we in Kolobia yet?” Paks saw Amberion’s face relax a little.
“Good. You are remembering. Yes, we’re in Kolobia. How much do you remember of the trip here?”
“Some of it—we were in a caravan, for a long way. We saw the horse nomads, didn’t we?” Amberion nodded. “And I remember a bald-faced red horse, bucking—”
“That’s my warhorse,” said Fallis. “Do you remember why we were coming to Kolobia?”
Paks shook her head. “No. I wish I didn’t feel so peculiar. Did something hit my head? Was it a battle?”
Fallis smiled at her. “You’ve been in several battles. Both on the caravan, and here as well. I think you’ll remember them on your own when you’ve rested more. Your wounds are healing well. Do you need anything more?”
“Water, if there’s enough.”
“Certainly.” The Marshal walked away and returned with a full waterskin. He set it beside Paks, then he and Amberion walked upstream, looking at the cliffs on the far side. Paks managed to get the waterskin to her mouth. She took a long drink, then looked around again. The dwarf was looking her way, talking to the woman. When he caught her eye, he rose and came toward her. She tried to think of his name.
“Good morning, Lady Paksenarrion,” said the dwarf. His voice was higher and sweeter than she’d expected. She wondered how she knew what to expect. “How fare you this day?”
“I’m all right. A little—confused.”
“That is no wonder. Perhaps even names have escaped you. I am Balkon of the House of Goldenaxe.”
The name fit; Paks could almost think she remembered it. As she looked at the dwarf, the distant silent scraps of memory came nearer and seemed to fuse in his face. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Master Balkon. You came with us from Fin Panir. You know about rock, where it will be solid or weak. You are a cousin of the Goldenaxe himself, aren’t you?”
“Eighth cousin twice removed,” said the dwarf with a smile. “I think you must be recovering very swiftly. We are glad it should be so, who saw you in such dismay.”
“Dismay?” Paks felt a twinge of fear.
The dwarf’s face constricted into a mass of furrows and then relaxed. “Is that not the correct term? You must excuse me, Lady Paks. I have not the skill in wordcraft as were I an elf. Dismay? Distress? Dis—oh, I cannot find the word, plague take it! But you were much hurt by those blackhearts, and that your friends sorrowed to see. And you are now much better, and we are glad.”
“Thank you, Master Balkon,” said Paks. She did not understand what he was talking about, exactly, but his kindness was welcome.
“I wanted to ask you—if it will not be too great a sorrow to speak of it—what those rockfilth used on your injuries.”
Paks stared at him. “Rockfilth?”
“They corrupt the very stone, good stone, by living in its heart. Those blackheart elf cousins, I mean, who took you.”
“Took me?” Paks shook her head, as a sudden chill ran over her. “I have no memory of such a thing, Master Balkon.”
“Ah. Magics, then.” The dwarf muttered rapidly in dwarvish; Paks caught only one or two words. He stopped abruptly and looked sharply at her. “You remember none of it at all?”
“None of what?” Paks began to feel a prickling irritation. Everyone else knew something about her, but wouldn’t tell what it was. It was unfair. She glared at the dwarf.
“Tech! Be still. That Lord Amberion, your paladin, and the Marshal Fallis, they will not have you told too much, for seeing what you shall remember in time. Do you make noise, they will come to see what we speak.”
“Will you tell me?” asked Paks with rising excitement.
The dwarf smiled, a sly sideways smile. “And should I say what such men of power want not to be said? I am no prince or lord to rank myself above them. But they did not say to me what not to say—it is a point on which it is possible to differ. So—” He looked at her again. “I will say what I think should be said, as it would be done in the House of Goldenaxe.”
Paks forced herself to lie still, remembering this much about dwarves, that they cannot be hurried in the telling of anything. The dwarf pulled out his curved pipe, packed it, lit it, and drew a long breath. He blew three smoke rings.
“Very well, then,” he said, as if he had not paused. “You were taken by those blackheart worshippers of Achrya,” he spat after saying that name, “such as elves like Ardhiel do not like to admit exist and are of elvish origin—despite having their own word for them. That was when they attacked our camp, the second night in this canyon, and they carried you away down their lairs, under that cliff yonder—” he jerked his head to indicate the cliff across the stream. “And there they held you, some days. We know not what befell you in that dark place, save the marks you carry. Dire wounds enough, they must have been, to deal such marks. We had some trouble to follow your path and find you—do you truly remember nothing of this?”