“How did he hurt it?”
“I—I don’t know for sure. I closed my eyes—” She had seen the aftermath, though. “He must have pulled off a leg … and then another … that’s what it looked like after …”
“How old were you? Did you not know already what to expect?”
“No … I was very small. Still in shortlings—” She was not going to admit having wet herself, her uncle’s disgust, her mother’s slap that sent her reeling into the stacked cages. “I had never been in the old keep before, I know that. But then—” It had to be said; she had to say it. “Then they wanted me to do it, to prove to me it would make my light stronger.” The next rabbit had been spotted, dark spots on fawn. Her uncle had put a knife in her hand; her mother had gripped her shoulders, forcing her to the block of wood on which the rabbit now crouched, shivering, held there—her uncle said—by his magery. He had pointed to where she was to stab, in the rabbit’s hindquarters.
“Not to kill it, then?”
“Not to kill it,” Dorrin said. Bile had risen in her mouth. “I didn’t want to. I pushed back against my mother but I was too small. She picked me up—” She had kicked her mother; her uncle had done whatever he did to the rabbit to her legs; she could not kick again. Her uncle had told her “You must do it; you must try” with such menace in his voice that it scared her more than her dangling legs. “I dropped the knife,” she said. That had earned another slap. Her uncle had put the knife in her hand again, gripped it with his, so she could not open her hand or pull away, and guided it down, slowly, onto the hapless rabbit. The sound it made as the knife entered its flesh … as her uncle forced her hand to twist, to drag the knife sideways, to cause greater pain … would never leave her memory.
“They marked my face with the blood,” she said. “They forced my mouth open and put blood in—”
“My child—” Dorrin looked up again; the Knight-Commander was pale. “They did that to an infant! And this is what my predecessor knew?”
“Some of it.” No one knew all, none but those who had done it, and she, their victim. “They told me that now I belonged to them, that now my magery would grow, and I would learn to maintain it with greater blood. That I belonged to the Bloodlord—who is the same as Liart, sir, though they insisted on calling him differently. And they punished me for resisting, so I would learn how useless it was …”
“Punished you how?”
“They left my legs useless for three days, by their magery, and put me on the floor. I could not walk, or reach the food and water they put on a table in the cell …”
“Did they punish you thus when you refused later?”
“Not the same way, no.” Dorrin clenched her teeth on the horrors but it had to be said. “They tormented anything, anyone, that I cared for, as well as me. Animals. People. I tried to run away on my first pony. They killed the pony, slowly.”
“Did you ever submit willingly—did you ever harm any you were told to harm?”
She felt the hot tears on her face again, as she had felt them long ago. “The last … the last before I got away … a friend—” A friend maintained in agony to secure her outward obedience. “I tried not to, but sometimes—sometimes I was too weak. I thought if I did it, did it quickly, they wouldn’t. I learned better.” So many years, so many suffering victims, so many times she had not been able to do anything for them. “The last … I killed him,” she said quickly. “I killed him myself, to end his suffering, and then I ran, and that time I made it to the border.”
Heavy silence filled the little room. The Knight-Commander’s face might have been carved of stone. Then he sighed. “I understand now why my predecessor let you stay, and why he knighted you, Dorrin of Verrakai. If ever someone needed Falk’s protection, and had earned it, you did, and you had. But how did you escape? Surely they were watching you.”
“I thought there must be better gods, and I asked their help. Then I thought I should try to escape, and if I were killed, so much the better.”
“And you were still very young,” the Knight-Commander said.
“I was, yes,” Dorrin said. Looking back now, her escape did appear miraculous. She shivered a little.
“I have a dilemma which I expect Lady Paksenarrion will understand better than you,” the Knight-Commander said. “I now understand why my predecessor not only accepted you, but sponsored your knighthood. I concur with his judgment, which I did not before. But now … you say you still have those powers which in your family have been used only for evil.”
Paks stirred, on the bed, and said, “Not by her, sir.”
“Not by her, you say. And yet—she did kill once. By magery?”
“No,” Dorrin said. “With a knife. As quick as might be.”
“And he could not have lived, you say?”
“Not more than two days, and all of it in pain,” she said.
The Knight-Commander pursed his lips. “So … it was an act of mercy, and not carried out with magery. But you have magery still, Paksenarrion said.”
“Yes. Some. And I see no way to do what the prince and Council want me to do without using it. My family will certainly use theirs.”
“Are you trained in its use?”
“No.” Dorrin took a deep breath. “With your permission, this is what I can now do—” She paused; the Knight-Commander nodded, and she took up a candle and lit it with a touch. “This is child’s magery, the first most children show. I did once manage to lift a fruit that had just fallen to the ground, but not again.”
“I believe her magery was locked by your predecessor,” Paks said. “And you could unlock it and teach her its proper use.”
“Its proper use!” The Knight-Commander stared. “Its proper use is none. It is illegal in Tsaia—would you have her start her rule by breaking the law?”
“What we paladins do could be counted magery,” Paks said. “And wizards and their magicks are not illegal.”
“She is not a paladin nor a wizard.”
“Nor is she an evil person,” Paks said. Dorrin glanced at her; Paks gave her a brief smile before turning back to the Knight-Commander. “She has been given the task of dealing with her family; if they use their magery against her, she will not succeed unless she has the use of her own, to oppose them.”
“And you trust her?”
“I have known her some years,” Paks said. “And as a paladin, I sense no evil in her.”
“You are Gird’s paladin; Gird had no love for the magelords, as you must know.”
“Gird loved justice, sir, more than any group. He would not condemn Dorrin.”
The room brightened. Perhaps without her willing it, Paks had come softly alight, not as bright as in the battle, but enough to cast a soft glow through the room, drowning the light of the candle Dorrin had lit.
“You, I suppose, will take on the role of her supervisor?” he said.
Paks shook her head. “Not I, sir. She is a Knight of Falk; she is sworn to Falk. It is not my place, and I have no call to go with her. I do have a call to aid her here and now.”
The Knight-Commander closed his eyes a moment, then shook his head. “Arguing with paladins is like arguing with wind and stone. Very well. I would say I hope you’re right, but the light you cast is evidence of the origin of your words. Dorrin, give me your hands.”
Dorrin moved from the bed, kneeling before him, and raised her hands. The Knight-Commander’s hands enclosed both of hers. She felt nothing at first, then warmth flowing into her arms, like and unlike what she’d felt when Paks took her hand.
“Paksenarrion,” the Knight-Commander said, “your hands on her shoulders, please.”
Now Paks came behind her. Dorrin felt enclosed, sheltered, safer than she had felt in her entire life.