The Deed of Paksenarrion

by Elizabeth Moon

  “No. Not yet. Stay. As I feared, it will take more than one day of healing.” And he was gone, across the glade and along the path to the village.

  She sat trembling, hating herself for the fear that had slammed back into her mind. She could not even go to an inn—even here, where she had had friends, and no enemies. She stared at her hands, broad and scarred with the years of war. If she could not hold a sword or bow, what could she do? Not stay forever with the Kuakgan, that wouldn’t do. Her hand felt for her belt pouch, and she remembered that she’d put it in the offering basin. Everything was gone; everything from those years had gone as if it had never been. Warriors can’t keep much, but that little they prize; the loss of the last of her treasures to the kuaknom still hurt: Saben’s little red horse, Canna’s medallion. Now she had not even the Duke’s ring left (the third ring, she thought ruefully, that he’s given me and I’ve lost somehow.)

  As before, she wasn’t sure how long the Kuakgan had been gone when he returned. He was simply there, in the evening dimness, carrying another kettle. She forced herself up as he came toward her. He nodded, and they went into the house together. This time she helped unpack the kettle, and made no protest at eating. He had brought slices of roast mutton swimming in gravy, redroots mashed with butter, and mushrooms. Again. She looked up, to say something about the cost, met his eyes, and thought better of it. She ate steadily, enjoying the food more than she expected to, but fearing the questions he would surely ask after supper.

  But he said nothing, as long as she ate, and when she finished, and stacked her pans for return, he seemed to be staring through the opposite wall. His own dishes were empty; she reached for them, wiped them, and put them in the kettle. He looked at her suddenly, and smiled briefly.

  “You’re wondering when I will start to question you.”

  Paks looked down, then forced herself to meet his eyes. “Yes.”

  “I had thought tonight. But I changed my mind.” Along silence. Paks looked away, around the room, back to his face. It was unreadable.

  “Why?” she asked finally.

  He sighed, and shook his head. “I’m not sure how—or how much—to tell you. Healing is a Kuakganni craft, as you know.” Paks nodded. “Well, then, one part of the healing craft is knowing when. When to act, and when to wait. In the case of humans, one must also know when to ask, and when to keep silent. You are not ready to speak of it, whatever it is.”

  Paks moved restlessly. “You—I would have thought you’d have heard something--”

  “Hmmm.” It became as resonant as his comments to the bees. Paks looked at his face again. “I hear many things. Most of them false, as far as talk goes. Brewersbridge is a little out of the way for reliable news.” He looked at her squarely. “And whatever I might have heard, what is important is you, yourself. Just as you, yourself, will heal when you are ready.”

  Paks looked away. She could feel the tears stinging her eyes again.

  “There. You are not ready, yet. Don’t worry; it will come. Let your body gain strength for a few days. You are already better, though you don’t feel it.”

  “But I couldn’t go—” Her voice broke, and she covered her face with her hands.

  “But that will pass. That will pass.” She felt a wave of warmth and peace roll over her mind, and the pain eased again.

  But several nights later, the dream returned. Once more she was fighting for her life far underground, tormented by thirst and hunger and the pain of her wounds. She smelled the rank stench of the green torches, and felt the blows of knife and whip that striped her sides. She gasped for breath, choked, scrabbled at the fingers knotted in her throat—and woke to find the Kuakgan beside her, holding her hands in his.

  Soft candlelight lit the room. She stared wildly for a moment, lost in the dream, trembling with the effort of the fight.

  “Be still,” he said softly. “Don’t try to talk. Do you know me yet?”

  After a minute or two she nodded. Her tongue felt too big for her mouth, and she worked it around. “Master Oakhallow.” Her voice sounded odd.

  “Yes. You are safe. Lie still, now; I’ll get you something to drink.”

  The mint-flavored water cleaned remembered horrors out of her mouth. She tried to sit up, but the Kuakgan pushed her down gently. A tremor shook her body; as she tried to fight it off, the pain of those wounds returned, sapping her strength.

  “You still have pain?” he asked.

  Paks nodded.

  “How long ago were those wounds dealt?”

  She tried to count back. Her mind blurred, then steadied. “From—it would have been last summer. Late in the summer.”

  “So long?” His eyebrows rose. “Hmm. What magic bound them?”

  Paks shook her head. “I don’t know. The paladin and Marshal both tried healing. It helped, but the—the kuaknom had done something to them—”

  “Kuaknom! What were you doing with them?”

  Paks looked down, shivering. “They captured me. In Kolobia.”

  “So. I don’t wonder that you have grave difficulties. And they dealt these wounds that pain you now?”

  “Not . . . exactly. It—” As the memory swept over her, Paks could not speak. She shook her head, violently. The Kuakgan caught it, and held her still.

  “No more, then, tonight. Sleep.” He answered the fear in her eyes before she could say it. “You won’t dream again. That I can still, and you will rest as you did the first night, and wake at peace. Sleep.” She fell into his voice, into the silence beyond it, and slept.

  * * *

  In the morning she woke rested, as he had promised. Still the shame of her breakdown was on her, and she came to the breakfast table silently and did not smile.

  “You will not have those dreams again,” he said quietly, as she ate. “When I release your dreams again, those will be healed. This much I promise. I have waited as long as I could for your body’s healing, Paksenarrion; it is now time to begin on the mind. Whatever ill you have suffered has clearly injured both.”

  She nodded, silent and intent on her bread.

  “I will need to see these wounds you spoke of.” He reached for her arm. Paks froze an instant, then stretched her hand out. He pushed up her sleeve. The red-purple welts were still swollen. “You have more of these?”

  “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 p
ain 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.”

  “And so you left them. Or did they throw you out?”

  Paks shook her head. “No. They were generous. The Marshal-General offered to have me stay there, or train me to any trade I wished. But you know, sir, that Gird is a fighter’s saint. How can they understand? It’s not right, and Girdsmen know it. And the Duke—” Her voice broke again.

  “Was he there?”

  Paks fought for control. “Yes. He came when he—when they told him I—what they might do. He said he would take me then, as a captain or whatever. But—I knew—they were right. Something was wrong. It had to be done. I still think so. And he was there after, when we knew it had gone badly. He gave me—”

  “That ring you left in the basin.” Paks nodded. The Kuakgan sighed. “Your Duke is a remarkable man. He has no love for the Girdsmen in general, and the Marshal-General in particular. He must think a lot of you.”

  “Not now,” said Paks miserably.

  “He gave you the ring afterwards, did he not? After he knew what had happened? Don’t underestimate your Duke, Paksenarrion.” He stirred the fire again. “I saw him once, long ago. I wondered then what sort of man he would be. I have heard of him, of course, in the years since, but only what anyone might hear. For the most part.”

  “Why does he dislike the Girdsmen so?” asked Paks.

  The Kuakgan shook his head. “That’s not my story to tell. I have it only by hearsay, and may have it wrong. Perhaps he will tell you someday.”

  “I . . . don’t think so.”

  “Because you think you’ll never go back? Nonsense. In courtesy you must see him again, and ease his concern.”

  “But—”

  “You must. Whether you draw sword for him again or not, Paksenarrion, you cannot leave him wondering whether you are alive
or dead. Not tonight, no, nor tomorrow—but you must go. And when you go, you will agree with me on that.”

  Paks said nothing. She could not imagine going to the Duke’s hold with her fear still unconquered. Unless she regained her courage, and could fight, she could not face the Duke and her old companions.

  “One thing more, tonight, and then you will sleep. What was it like, when you first thought your courage gone? How did you know it?”

  Paks thought how to describe it. “When I first trained, with the Duke,” she began, “I could feel something—an eagerness—in the drill. When Siger—the armsmaster—threatened with his blade, I felt it rising in me. Excitement, eagerness—I don’t know how to say it, but I wanted to fight, wanted to—to strike, to take chances. When he hit me, the pain was just pain, like falling. Nothing to be afraid of, or worried about. And after that, in the battles—I was scared, the first year, but even then that feeling was inside, to draw on. As soon as the fight started, it seemed to lift me up, and carry me along. It never failed me. Even in the worst times, when we were ambushed, or when Macenion and I faced the old elf lord, I might think that I was likely to be killed, but it didn’t affect my fighting. Unless, perhaps, I fought all the better for it. That’s how we all were; those that feared wounds or death left the Company. That danger was our life. Some, indeed, loved the fighting so much that they were kept from constant brawling only by the rules. I had had one trouble with brawling; I didn’t want more. I liked my fights for a reason.” Paks stopped again; she was breathing faster, and her mouth was dry. The Kuakgan rose and brought the jug of water. They each had a mug of it, then she went on.

  “At Fin Panir it was like a dream. Everything I’d ever thought about, when I was a girl: the knights, the paladins, the songs and music, training every day with warriors known all over the Eight Kingdoms. There were none of the—the things that bothered me, in the south. We would fight only against true evil. And I met real elves, and dwarves. I could learn any weapon, learn as much as I could. They said I did well; they wanted me to join the Fellowship of Gird, they asked me to become a paladin-candidate. For me, for all that I’d dreamed of, that was—” She stopped, poured another mug of water, and took a sip. “I never dared dream so high, before. It came like a burst of light. All the strange things that had happened in Aarenis seemed to make sense. Of course, I agreed. I felt I was coming to my true home, the heart of my life.”