And yet she did not hate, and yet she did not fear, and yet she said, when she had breath to speak, that the High Lord’s justice would rule in the end. The priests shouted threats, promised more torments, blustered and postured: the silence spread, as a pool rises silently above a new-broken spring when the dry season ends.
One by one the crowd fell still, or joined the mockery with less eagerness. She was so small, after all, broken like that . . . they could think of sisters, cousins, friends they had known, who might be where she was, if she were not there. They had thought it would be satisfying to see a paladin, one of the proud and powerful, brought low. But they knew her story, from the year that cruel rumor spread the tale of her cowardice. She was only a peasant girl, born into poverty. What did it prove to shame a sheepfarmer’s daughter who had known shame already? Some among them had been soldiers, and recognized the scars of a common soldier who has seen hard service. They felt no braver for breaking a soldier’s scarred hands. And those who had first laughed to see a virgin raped—and even those who had joined in eagerly—now looked from the dead servant girl to the other, and found something pitiful in both, something shameful in themselves, that they could take pleasure in such pain. She was no threat to them—why had they ever thought she was a threat? Paladins never threatened the helpless. The threat was elsewhere, in those who wore Liart’s horned circle, who flourished the barbed whips and the heated chains.
By such small degrees the crowd’s mood changed, shifting back in sudden fear when the priests turned their weapons on individuals chosen not quite at random, but slowly, inexorably, turning away from the praise of cruelty to some vague sympathy with suffering. Glass by glass, as the torches burned down and were replaced again and again, as the day passed into night and another day, and another night and day, one and another of those watching came slowly and without intent to a new vision of the world.
Of all this, Paks was hardly aware. At best, she knew what she must do, and why, but those moments seemed few. Pain followed pain in sickening procession; at times even her new insight failed, leaving her adrift in self-disgust or despair. For the most part she concentrated on refusing anger and hatred, accepting the pain as a necessary part of something chosen long before. When they broke her hands, each bone a separate torment, she struggled against her old fear of crippling. She had clung to the hope that if she lived, she would still be whole, able to fight. But she knew better, knew from having lived through it that she was more than a hand to hold a sword. She could live, being Gird’s paladin, with no more than breath, or die whole, of old age, and be nothing at all. The difference lay in her, was her, was what she had become: no one but she could change it. The rapes, that she had feared before as both violation and torment wholly unknown, were then nothing but physical pain, no worse than others. She lost nothing, for she had had nothing, had never invested herself in that, or hoped for that kind of pleasure. It seemed to her that Alyanya came in a dream, and comforted her, but dream, vision, and reality were by then too nearly mixed for clear memory.
Then they held her up once more for the crowd to see. The chamber was crowded with worshippers who had come to see the end of the spectacle. At the priests’ command the guards threw her to the floor.
“Will you admit that our Master commands your obedience?” asked one of the priests, nudging her face with the toe of his boot.
“I am Gird’s,” said Paks, forcing the words out. Her voice was clearer than she would have thought possible.
“You are meat. You are the sacrifice our Master demanded.” The priest’s voice was cold. “If you will not acknowledge our Master, the stones are heating for you.” Paks said nothing. “Do you want to be a helpless cripple?” he demanded.
“No,” she said. “But I do want to be Gird’s paladin.” Again she felt the lightest touch on her head, and a soothing haze came between her and her pain.
The priest snorted. “Gird’s paladin! A bloody rag too stupid to know the truth! Then you will suffer it all, paladin of Gird, just as you wish.”
Pain exploded in her legs as the burning stones were dropped in the hollow of both knees, and her legs bound tightly around them. She clenched her fists, forgetting the broken bones until too late. The pain was sickening, impossible; she retched, trying not to scream.
“And now, paladin? Where is your lord’s protection now?” The priests hauled her up by both arms, forcing weight on her knees.
“The High Lord has dominion,” gasped Paks. “Gird has upheld me here; I have not failed.” She felt herself falling, and willed to fall into that darkness.
The guards held a bloody wreck between them. The crowd smelled burnt flesh, and shivered, not hearing the priests’ final lecture. What had she meant, “I have not failed”? The paladin’s head hung down, slack against her chest, the brand of Liart dark on her forehead. Then the priests gestured, and the guards turned her around. The taller priest cut the cords around her legs, and her feet thumped down. With tongs, the priest yanked the stones from their place, ragged bits of skin clinging to them. The hall stank of it. The paladin did not move, or cry out; she might have been dead. For an instant, no one moved or spoke.
Then those in front saw, and did not believe, but recoiled even in disbelief against those behind. For the burnt bloody holes where the rocks had been disappeared, as a wave swept across lines on sand erases them, gone without mark or scar. At the movement, the priests turned, saw, and gaped in equal disbelief. One by one, other wounds healed, changing in the sight of those watching to unmarked skin. Finger by finger, her misshapen hands regained their natural shape. With a cry, the two guards dropped her, flinging themselves back. One of the priests cursed, and raised his whip, but when he swung, it recoiled from her and snagged his own armor. The other drew a notched dagger, and stabbed, but his blade twisted aside. She lay untouched, unmoving.
Now turmoil filled the halclass="underline" those behind wanting to see what had happened, those in front frantic to escape the wrath of Gird they were sure would come. The priests called other guards, who yanked her upright, head still lolling—now all could see that Liart’s black brand no longer centered her forehead. Instead, a silver circle gleamed there, as if inset in the bone itself. At that, the priests of Liart shrank away, their masked faces averted from the High Lord’s holy symbol. The terrified guards would have dropped her, but the priests screamed obscenities louder even than the crowds’ noise, and sent them away with her, out the same entrance through which they’d brought her earlier. And then they drove the crowd away, in a rage that could not disguise their own fear.
Chaos scurried through the warrens of the Thieves Guild, panic and disruption, as those who had seen tried to convince those who had not, and those who would not listen tried to find someone to believe. Some fled to the streets: black night, icy cold with a sweeping wind, and patrols of cold-eyed Royal Guards sent them back into the familiar warrens, even more afraid. Factions clashed; old quarrels erupted in steel and strangling cord. Those who had arranged to take the paladin’s body outside the city walls wrapped her in a heavy cloak and carried her gingerly, carefully not looking to see if that healing miracle continued, eager to get this terror out of their domain.
And at every grange of Gird, the vigil continued until dawn.
28
Kieri Phelan rode away from Vérella that dark night in an internal storm of impotent rage and frustration. He had been captured by a ruse he should have seen through—taken in by the plea of one of his veterans. That was stupidity, and he didn’t excuse himself that he was distracted by the day’s events. So he was Lyonya’s king—that didn’t mean he could let his mind wander. And then he’d been rescued—beyond his hopes—by another veteran—by Paksenarrion, now a paladin of Gird. She had freed him, and his squires, but she herself was now a prisoner—for five days, she had agreed to suffer whatever torments the priests of Liart inflicted. And he had agreed to that, because he could do nothing else. She made the bargain with the Liartians, and her oath bound him. He shifted in the saddle, glad of the darkness that covered his expression. What must they all think, of a king that would sacrifice a paladin to save his own life?