“Yes.”
“Many?”
“Yes.” Despite herself, she was shivering again.
“And they are all over a half-year old?” Paks nodded.
“Powerful magic, then, and dangerous. Have they faded at all? How long did it take for them to heal this far?”
“They . . . fade sometimes,” Paks said softly. “For a week or so, as if they were healing. Then they swell and redden again. At first—I don’t know how long it was. I think only a day or so, but I lost track of time.”
“I see. Have any true elves seen this?”
“Yes. One that came with us. He thought they had used something like the true elves use to speed and slow the growth of plants.”
“Ah. It might be so, indeed. Perverted, as they would have it—to heal quickly partway and then stay so. But why that far?”
Paks fought a desire to roll into a ball like a hedgehog. It was harder to speak than she had expected; that was hard enough. “So—so I could fight.”
“Fight?” The Kuakgan paused. When she said nothing, he went on. “You said they did not deal these wounds themselves. They wanted you able to fight, but hindered. And now you cannot fight. Was that their doing, too?”
“No.” She could not say more. She heard the Kuakgan’s sigh.
“I need to try something on one of the wounds. This will probably hurt.” He took her arm, and held it lightly. Paks paid no attention. She felt the fingers of his other hand running along the scars. After a moment she felt a trickle of cold in one, then heat in another. The feelings ebbed. She glanced at his face; it was closed and remote. A savage ache ran up her arm from the wrist, and was gone instantly. A pain as sharp as the original blow brought a gasp from her; she glanced at her arm; the scar was darker than ever. Then it passed, and the Kuakgan’s eyes came to focus on her again.
“The true elf was correct in his surmise. These will heal no better without intervention. Did he try?”
“He said he had not the skill. He had known one who had, but—”
“I see. Paksenarrion, this will take time and patience. It will not be easy for you; it is a matter of purifying the wounds of the poison they used. If you can bear the pain a short while longer, you should be strong enough in body for the healing. Can you?”
Paks forced a smile. “After these months? Of course.”
His face relaxed briefly. “Good. And now we must come to the other—it’s not for this pain that you were ready to throw away your life. What else did they do to you?”
“Do I have to—? Now?”
“I think so. Healing those—getting that poison out—will take strength from us both. I must know what else is wrong, what reserves you have, before I start that.” He started to gather up the remains of breakfast, though, as if it were any other morning. Paks sat where she was, unspeaking. After brushing crumbs onto the windowsill for the birds, he turned back to her. “It might be easier outside. Sunlight cleanses more than dirty linen. Come walk with me.”
They had wandered an hour in the grove before Paks began to speak, starting with her first days in the training barracks at Fin Panir, and the sun was high overhead when she came to the kuaknomi lair. Even in the bright sunlight (for they had come again to the glade) she felt the darkness and the foulness of that place. Her words came short, and halted, but the Kuakgan did not prompt her. The fountain’s chuckling filled the silence until she spoke again.
“I could not say his name,” she said finally. “I couldn’t call on Gird. I tried, at first. I remember that. But after awhile . . . I couldn’t say it. And I had to fight: whenever I woke again, they were there, and I had to fight.” She told what she could remember of the battles in the arena, of her horror at seeing the great bloated spider that devoured those she defeated. “After awhile, I don’t remember more. They said—those who came and found me—that I was wearing enchanted armor, and wore Achrya’s symbol around my neck.”
“Who found you?”
“Others in the expedition: Amberion, Marshal Lord Fallis, those. I don’t remember that at all. They told me that after a day I was awake and talking to them clearly, but the next I remember is walking along a trail in another canyon, and finding the way to Luap’s stronghold.”
“So it was real—you found it?”
“Oh yes, it’s real. A great citadel, deep in the rock, full of all kinds of magic.” In her mind’s eye the dark lairs were replaced by that soaring red rock arch between the outpost and the main stronghold. “We’d hardly be back to Fin Panir by now had it not had magic. That’s how we came.”
“Magic, then, but no healing?”
Paks stopped short. “No. Not for me, anyway.” She went on to tell him what had happened when she returned to Fin Panir. How the Marshal-General had said she was deeply tainted with kuaknomi evil, and how she had come at last to agree. She shivered as she spoke, and the Kuakgan interrupted.
“Let’s go back for supper. It’s late.” Already the sun was far behind the trees. When they came to the house, Paks feared to stay alone, and could not say it. But instead of leaving her, the Kuakgan came in and brought out bread and cheese. They ate in silence, and he seemed abstracted. After supper, for the first time, he lit a fire on the large hearth, and they sat before it.
“Now go on,” he said. “But don’t hurry yourself. What did your Marshal-General propose to do? Why did she think Gird had not protected you?”
“She didn’t say why,” said Paks, answering the last question first. “But I think they believe I was too new a Girdsman, and too vulnerable as a paladin candidate. They’d said we were more open to evil, in our training. She said that fighting under iynisin command had opened a passage for their evil into my mind. It could be taken out, but—” Paks broke off, steadied her voice, and went on, staring into the flames. “She said the evil was so close to the—to what made me a fighter, that to destroy it might destroy that too.”
“And what did she say that was?”
“My courage.” She barely breathed the words, but the pain in them rang through the room.
The Kuakgan hummed briefly. Paks sat rigid as a pike staff, waiting for his reaction. He reached a poker to the fire, and stirred it. Another pause, while sparks snapped up the chimney. “And now you are not a fighter. You think that is why?”
“I know it. Sir.” Paks sat hunched, looking now at her hands locked in her lap.
“Because you know fear? Did you never fear before? I thought you were afraid of me, the first time I saw you. You were afraid of Master Zinthys’s truth spell—you said so.”
“Before I could always face it. I could still fight. And usually I wasn’t afraid. Very.”
“And now you can’t.” His voice expressed nothing she could take hold of, neither approval nor disapproval.
“That’s right. As soon as I could get out of bed again, afterwards, I tried. But my own armor frightened me. Weapons, noise, the look on their faces, all of it. It was some little time before I could walk well, and I was clumsy with things at first. The Marshal-General had said that might happen, so when I picked up my sword and it felt strange, I wasn’t upset. At first. But then—” She shook her head, remembering her first attempt at arms practice. “It was just drill,” she said slowly. “They knew I’d been hurt; they wouldn’t have injured me. But I couldn’t face them. When that blade came toward me, I froze. They told me later that I fainted. It didn’t even touch me. The next day it was worse. I started shaking before I got into the practice ring. I couldn’t even ride. You know how I loved horses—” she looked up, and the Kuakgan nodded. “My own horse—the black I got here—I couldn’t mount him. Could not. He sensed my fear, and fretted, and all I could think of was the size of his feet. They all thought it would help somehow, so they lifted me onto a gentle little palfrey. I sat there stiff, and shaking, and as soon as she broke into a trot I fell off.”