Tyro Marigold was not lying. The other girl believed her utterly; I examined Catherine specifically to be sure of this. The haunting is real, there is nothing like it in all the modern literature, and I am going to be renowned throughout the Twenty-four Kingdoms.
All I need is for Marigold either to lose her sword arm or to learn something significant from the haunt of her aunt.
For the next five days I stuck to Marigold like a spell on a frog. I watched intently as she jousted; no fall severed her arm. I peered over her shoulder at her lesson scrolls; no writing changed to haunted runes from a tutelary ghost. I sat on the sidelines as she worked out in the ring; no opponent's sword cut through her elbow. I knelt beside her at vigil; no haunt appeared, dressed in bloody armor.
I was not discouraged. But I may have become a touch impatient with the stupid tyros (it is my only fault). Unfortunately, they are all stupid. This is how I know I will have nothing to learn beyond the grave-I am being given all my trials now.
On the sixth day, however, it happened. Everybody saw it, even the watchravens.
Thus is scholarly vigilance rewarded in the worthy.
"I can't stand it," Marigold moaned. "I can't, I can't!"
"Keep your voice down," Tyro Elizabeth said nervously from the pallet beside Marigold. Loremaster Gwillam slept on Marigold's other side. Three watchravens perched on the six-inch-high carved wooden fence between.
"Liz, it's awful. Today in Summa Logicales he screamed at me that I was horse dung. In front of everybody!"
"I know. But quieter, Mar. Shhhhh."
"What does he want from me?"
Elizabeth didn't answer. No one knew. From beyond the symbolic fence came the loremaster's soft snoring. The ravens' black eyes, wide open, gleamed in the moonlight from the open window.
"And tomorrow," Marigold moaned, but very quietly, "we have to-what was that?"
"I didn't hear any-oh!"
Both girls sat up, grabbed each other, and rose to their knees to look out the window. Then they shrieked to raise the dead, although in this case that was unnecessary.
The haunt of First Dame Cecilie of Castle Thlevin stood a hundred yards off, at the edge of the wood. At such a distance she was a small armor-clad figure, but clearly one-armed. She keened despairingly, "Marigold! Marigold of West Riding!"
"Oh! Oh!" Marigold shrieked.
"What? What?" screamed the rest of the Third Bedchamber, now awake.
"Severed yore!" cried the watchravens.
"Go! Go to her, you stupid girl!" Loremaster Gwillam cried, bolt upright on his pallet, clutching the windowsill greedily. His striped nightcap fell over one eye and he shoved it away. "Go! Wait-go alone!"
"Alone?" cried Marigold, aghast.
"Yes, yes! How else can she cut… er, how else can she learn whatever she must know from you? Go!"
Marigold was not the brightest young woman in the Twenty-four Kingdoms, but she did not lack bravery. At an order from a loremaster, she started to pull on her armor.
"No, wait-I will go with you!" the loremaster cried.
"You go with-no, no, I'll go alone!"
"Are you contradicting me, Tyro?" Loremaster Gwillam pulled himself up to his full height, plus slightly tilted nightcap.
"No," Marigold said miserably.
"Never sore," said a raven.
"Ever on the floor," said another.
But by the time they reached the edge of the wood, the haunt of Dame Cecilie had vanished.
The mistake was mine. I admit it; I am not one such as cannot admit when he is in error. I was impatient (it is my only fault). I should not have tried to go with Marigold the Stupid. I should have instead let her go alone, respecting the sacred privacy of a tuition haunting, and then spied on her with a spell pool. Next time, I will know better. Next time, I will be better prepared.
Next time came two days later.
Although I thought, before those two days had elapsed, that I had my prize. Tyro Marigold fell at sword practice in the armory.
She was matched against Tyro Catherine, who was as inept as she. Oh, I will be glad when I shake the dust of this brackish excuse for a castle from my boots, and leave these stupid girls behind me! Living always among women is itself enough of a curse; living with tyros is a flagellation no loremaster should have to bear.
The practice was held indoors in the armory, a windowless building large enough to hold all thirty-three tyros, only because outside it rained. For an hour the tyros had been set at the pel-quintain, a stake driven upright into the ground, with which they "fenced" with double-weight sword and shield. Each girl wielded forty pounds of metal, so that when it should be changed for regular weaponry, sword and shield would seem light by comparison. Rain drummed steadily on the roof, just above the bannerettes and pennoncels stored in the rafters. A rack against the wall held more shields, swords, and armor, most of it slung over nails and pegs.
"Change now!" called the training mistress. "Hut, hut!"
The weary girls staggered to the wall rack and switched their double-weight swords and shields for standard-weight. Training Mistress Joan again paired them off, this time without regard for list ranking. Perhaps it was a deliberate attempt to expose them to different competencies. Or perhaps Joan was weary, too, and paired whomever happened to stand beside each other.
Or perhaps-I thought then-it was fate.
Tyro Anna smiled, nastily, at Tyro Marigold, who smiled back, waveringly.
"Begin!"
The girls started whacking away. Tyros, of course, were not allowed to foin; a direct thrust of the point by such beginners might cause serious injury. So they slashed and feinted and whacked, most of them unbalanced by the sudden change in weapon weight, all of them looking as silly as flailing chickens thrown into a pond. And in the midst of the whacking and flailing and lurching, Tyro Marigold tripped.
She slashed at Anna, who moved easily out of the way. The too-hard slash unbalanced Marigold, carrying her sideways until she crashed into a pel-quintain. That caromed her into the wall rack of armor. It was bolted to the wall, but the careless and stupid and exhausted tyros had slung their double-weight weapons on the pegs any which way, and many pieces fell.
A double-weight sharpened sword fell bladeside toward Marigold's right forearm.
The room seemed underwater, so slowly did the sword fall. There was time for me to jump to my feet, to raise my fist halfway to the sky, to cry out.
"Yes! Oh, thank you, Fate!"
The sword turned in the air, as heavy objects sometimes will. And Marigold turned, too, twisting her body away from the falling weapon. With both these turnings, the sword landed flatside on Marigold's arm. It would leave no more than a bruise.
I could not contain myself. "You stupid bitch! Why did you move? Do you know what you've thwarted, what you've destroyed, you moronic thieving turd, you silly bitch-"
They all looked at me, tyros and teachers alike, mouths gaping open. They did not understand. I stalked from the room, and it was many hours before I could calm myself and return to my usual deep understanding of a complex situation, my usual far-seeing knowledge.
She had not lost her arm. Even though it was the perfect time for it. This, I finally saw, was intended as a sign to me. Marigold would not lose an arm, so the other circumstance must be the truth. This was a reverse haunting, and soon Marigold would learn something from Dame Cecilie instead of the other way around.
Once I realized this, I was no longer disappointed that Marigold had not been maimed. In fact, I could see that her escape was a gift to me. It showed me the broad outlines of the marvelous phenomenon I was chosen to witness, even if the exact details must wait for my later sharp-eyed discovery.