“When you’re in Vérella next,” Dorrin said, “you should talk to the Merchants’ Guild about trade to his dukedom. It’s been profitable and he kept the roads in good repair. I expect he’ll do the same here.”
“I hope so. I’ve always traded on the east-west routes, not to the north, but if that’s true … then good.”
Should she mention that she knew Kieri wanted to include merchants in the Council here? No, that was for him to say.
By late afternoon, Dorrin had conferred again with the king and Selfer. On her way back to the palace, she stopped by the stables to check on her own mount, hoping to find Paksenarrion there. Paks, indeed, was in the stall with her paladin mount.
“Good evening, Captain,” Paks said. “Did you ride out today?”
“No … Paks, I wanted to talk to you, if you’ve time.”
“Certainly.” Paks stood up, giving the red horse a caress as she left the stall. “What is it?”
“The prince of Tsaia has asked me to take on the Verrakai matter,” Dorrin said. “I believe you know that I am Verrakai by birth … I left home and they erased my name, they said, but—”
“Why are you telling me?” Paks asked.
“It’s complicated.” Dorrin stopped in front of her own horse’s stall. The sturdy bay put out his head and she stroked it absently. “I hated what they did; I ran to Lyonya and entered the Company of Falk. At one time, as a girl, I had dreamed of coming back to them as a … a paladin, like you. Breaking the bonds of Liart’s barbed chain, making them better … but I was not chosen for such training.”
“They don’t need a paladin,” Paks said. “They need a good ruler. Paladins don’t govern … I told the Council here that.”
“Why?” Dorrin asked. “I always wondered about that. Why wouldn’t paladins be good at it?”
“I’m not sure,” Paks said. “Perhaps because good governance requires different gifts. Rulers must stay with their land, wherever it is, while our calls to quest may take us anywhere. It would not be good for a land if its ruler left suddenly.”
“True. I had not thought of that.”
“And most rulers have heirs of the body,” Paks said. “Paladins are vulnerable in their loves … we are not encouraged to form families as rulers do.”
“So it is not simply that we lack abilities that you—that paladins have?”
“No … I think not. We are not perfect, Captain, just different. A sword and a plough are both useful, but for different things.”
“My family have done bad things, Paks. Very bad. I do not know how I will change their habits.”
“Do you know why they follow Liart?”
“They say it is the only way to preserve and strengthen the mageborn abilities,” Dorrin said. “They tried to initiate me, as a child. I was uncooperative. A spineless coward, as my father and uncle put it. But the others consented. I do not know how willingly.” She swallowed. “Because the Code of Gird forbids magery, some magelords fled into exile—”
“Into Kolobia,” Paks said. “Or so I suspect from the information in Luap’s writings.”
“My family would not give it up or go into exile. They hid it except in their own domain, using Liart’s power and blood magery to preserve and strengthen it.”
“This will come out now,” Paks said. “Or will you try to hide it?”
“No. It must come out and it must end,” Dorrin said. “But there is more.”
“What?”
“This.” Dorrin ducked into the shadows of an empty stall, almost dark in the late afternoon. Light flared from her hands. “I have a little magery. I do not use it, but I have it.”
“The light of truth,” Paks said.
“No. The light of fire. It will burn.” The light died. In the darkness, Dorrin went on. “You saw my sword flare in Rotengre. It has its own magic, yes, but the light is its response to mine.”
“You’re certain it’s the old magery?”
“What else could it be? I never trained as a wizard. I’m not a paladin. The Knight-Commander of Falk made that clear.”
Paks led the way out of the dark stall into the stableyard. “Did you have any training in your magery? Anything useful?”
“No. What they wanted to teach me, I didn’t want to learn. I can light candles or kindle a fire, but nothing like the light you produced for the battle.”
Paks frowned. “I don’t know what other magics the magelords were supposed to have … though the Marshal-General said the evidence out there in Kolobia suggested a variety of things, from lifting rocks to healing.”
“The archives list a number of abilities, but they’re all supposed to require training,” Dorrin said. “Making light is the one they watch for in children, to see if they have the talent. Others are less likely to emerge without it, though it does happen.”
“What does it feel like, when you make the light?” Paks asked. “Does it feel hot, there in your hand?”
“No. I don’t feel anything. Do you?”
“Only inside,” Paks said. “In my heart, there’s a … a feeling of being … partly somewhere else.” She shook her head and chuckled. “I can’t describe it. Something feels open, and the light comes. Master Oakhallow told me that paladins’ powers come from the gods. But we ask for light, or healing, and it may or may not be granted.”
Dorrin looked at her, remembering the tall, yellow-haired peasant girl who’d impressed all the older veterans with her likeness to the Duke’s dead wife. But every recruiting season brought peasant girls and boys, artisans’ sons and daughters, into the Company, and Paks was not the only one who seemed special at first. She was not even the only one who had reminded them of Tammarion.
Now she bore the High Lord’s silver circle on her brow, proof of the ordeal she had endured and the reward she had more than earned, and Dorrin was torn between resentment, admiration, and relief.
“I am not a paladin, but I would do what my people need,” Dorrin said. “The king told me to take my cohort, if they were willing, and they have agreed. I’m not sure it will be enough.”
Paks grinned. “Nothing’s certain, is it? But what bothers you most?”
“I’m not sure I’ll recognize everything that needs to be done,” Dorrin said. “I’m not sure I can stand against the magery they have.”
“The strength of their talent, or their training? Do you think your power is that much weaker, or is it that you don’t know how to use it?”
“Training, I suppose. Like a novice picking up a good sword, but having no skills, no experience.”
“You believe they could overpower you? Kill you?”
“I suspect so,” Dorrin said. “It’s not the danger to myself that I worry about—much, anyway. It’s what will happen to the land and people should I fail. Not just Verrakai land, either, but the whole of Tsaia. I don’t suppose you feel a call to come help me …”
“No,” Paks said. “I feel no call at all right now, but I can think of a way to help you, if you are willing.”
“And what is that?”
“If it is training you lack, then let us train your talents. Now. Perhaps it will not take as long as you think.”
“You could do that? You would do that?”
“I can try. We can try.” Paks grinned like a child about to try swinging from a vine over a river, all glee and eagerness. “What do you need most, do you think?”
Dorrin ticked them off on her fingers. “A shield against their magery, protecting not just myself but those I lead. A way to lock their magery, so they cannot use it. I saw one of my uncles do that once, to a half-breed, one of his bastards, who showed fight. Healing, if that’s in me—by legend, it had become the rarest of the gifts, and I never saw any of my family use it.”
“So first we find out what your gifts are, and waken them,” Paks said. “We should start, then, with the one you believe most difficult, healing.”
Dorrin felt her belly clench. Her family’s stories of the healing magery all involved loss, despair, weakening … but Paks was right.