"So Saliak will learn to lead," Rakiel said dubiously. "Well, 'lead us not into evil,' as has been said. And what about Steyan? A tall and clumsy oaf of a boy."
Moran waved that aside. "I'm tall. I was clumsy. He's quiet and a little sensitive. He'll do just fine."
Steyan had won Moran's heart when, instead of asking first at the interview about swords or armor, the boy had blurted out, "Is it hard seeing friends die? I'd want to save them."
Moran had said simply, "Sometimes you can't."
The tall boy had scratched his head and muttered, "That's hard." And he'd still agreed to learn to be a knight, as his father and mother wanted. He was the fourth son and, obviously, would inherit nothing. He would have to make his own way in the world.
Moran shook himself back to the present. "What do you think about Janeel and Dein? Their parents are fairly well off. Their pedigrees are fairly established."
Rakiel mimicked, "Their minds are fairly easily led. See if they amount to anything." He folded his arms. "At least they stand a better chance than the fat one. He won't last a day."
"The fat one," Moran said, annoyed, "has a name, too." But he couldn't remember it. The fat one, at the interview, had the habit of ducking his head and letting his older brother do all the talking — and the brother had never mentioned the other boy by name. "He'll find self-respect here."
"Only if the others let him look through the blubber." Rakiel laughed at his little joke. "And these are the 'flowers of youth' that come to the knights. Once it was probably different, I'm sure, but how can you care about these… these… dregs? They're hardly worth the money spent on them. Do you really think you can make knights of them?"
Before Moran could answer, he cocked an ear to the sound of footsteps far below. "I was right. A volunteer."
Rakiel said acidly, "Aren't you going to rush down to meet him?"
"If he really wants to be a knight," Moran said, "he'll climb all the way. You don't think my rooms are in the tower just to keep me above the heat and the dust, do you?" Mad Moran was dropping into character. "Training begins on the walk up and never stops." He added with satisfaction, "Put that in your report."
The footsteps stopped outside the door and loud knocking began immediately. No hesitation, Moran noted to himself. Good. He waited at the door, putting on the Mask, the fierce, moustache-bristling, confidence-draining facial expression that the novices came to know and dread. Moran always thought of the Mask as hanging over the door, where he could grab it and "put it on" over his real face before striding down to the lower hall for lecture and drill.
The knocking stopped. There was an odd scraping sound, then nothing. Moran, sword in hand, threw open the door, swung the blade across at chest height on a young man.
The sword arced at eye level past the boy in the doorway, who didn't even blink.
A child, Moran thought disappointedly. Then he saw the eyes: clear and innocent, but thoughtful, set in a face that had its first (premature?) wrinkles. The boy's hair fell over his forehead in a tangle, all but blocking his vision.
Moran studied him as a warrior studies a new opponent. The boy wore a baggy jerkin and faded breeches. He held a battered duffel in one hand and a stray piece of brass that Moran thought he recognized in the other.
The boy stared interestedly at the knight. Moran had a hawk nose and bristling white moustache; he looked fierce and remote except on the rare occasions when he smiled.
"You could have killed me," the boy said.
No fear, Moran thought. None at all. "I may yet. What have you come for?"
Rakiel half-rose at the daunting boom of the Voice, companion to the Mask.
The boy said simply, "I want to become a Knight of Solamnia."
Rakiel chuckled aloud. The cleric's laugh ended abruptly when Moran, with a single wrist flick, sent the sword flying backward to THUNK, quivering, in the wall opposite him.
Moran resisted the temptation to see where the sword had landed. Always assume, Moran's own mentor, Tali-sin, had said, that it landed well if you still have work in front of you. Part of Moran was pleased that his skill had impressed Rakiel as much as it had the boy.
"Name?"
"Tarli. Son of" — he hesitated and said finally — "of Loraine of Gravesend Street. She sewed funeral clothes."
The Mask nearly cracked for the first time in Moran's career. "Loraine of Gravesend. A dark-skinned woman, one-half my height, slender, red hair?"
Tarli shook his head. "Gray and red when they buried her. It's been a year."
Moran felt as if the Mask were looking at him;
Moran's own sternness was piercing him. "We met. She did work for… a… friend of mine." He added gruffly, "You're holding my door knocker."
"So I am." Tarli turned it over in his hand, as if startled to see it. He passed it to the knight. "It came off."
The boy peered beneath Moran's arm and stared at the bound books that stood on the simple shelf above the bed.
"The Brightblade Tactics? Bedal Brightblade?" Tarli ducked around the knight, entered without being invited. He reached past the startled cleric, pulled the book out. "Handwritten." He turned to a careful drawing of an intricate parry-and-thrust pattern, trying to follow it through with his left hand. "Did you write this?"
"I did." Moran tried not to sound proud. It had taken years of reading, and more years of testing technique, until he was sure of how the legendary Bedal Brightblade had fought. "There are twelve copies of that book, one for each trainer of squires plus the original."
He had unintentionally dropped the Voice and Mask, and immediately brought them back. "Swordplay is nothing. If you want to be a knight, there is the Oath and there is the Measure, and they are all. The Oath is four words, the Measure thirty-seven threehundred-page volumes. Which is more important?"
"The Measure," Tarli said firmly, then added, just as firmly, "unless it's the Oath."
Moran pointed a single finger at the boy. "Est Sularus Oth Mithas. My honor is my life."
Tarli looked at him blankly. "Isn't everybody's?"
Moran stared at him a long time to be sure he wasn't joking. Rakiel regarded them both with amusement, which he didn't bother to hide.
"Put your gear in the barracks downstairs, Tarli," Moran said. "Classes begin tomorrow."
"Yes." Tarli added quickly, "Sire." He bowed, bumping the writing desk and bouncing the Draconniel pieces. As he headed toward the door, he gave Rakiel a nasty whack with the duffel.
Tarli," Moran began.
The boy whirled, knocking over a candlestick. In picking up the candlestick, he shattered the water jug on the dresser.
Moran regarded him gravely. "The book."
"Oh. Right." Tarli handed it over. "I'd like to read it."
They could hear his dragged duffel bump behind him all the way down the stairs.
Rakiel stared at Moran in amazement and disgust. "Surely you're not admitting him?"
"He admitted himself."
Rakiel laughed, a nasty noise. "Are the knights as desperate as all that?"
Moran was looking down the stairs. "The knights choose first for honor, and second for noble family." It hadn't always been true.
"But you don't even know his father." The cleric's lip curled. "HE may not even know his father."
"Then I'll judge the boy and not his family."
Rakiel sniffed. "It's insupportable. He's not only common, he's probably a bastard."
"Not nearly as much as a cleric I could name," Moran muttered, well beneath his breath.
Rakiel was ranting on. "And so short. He hardly looks human. Do you suppose he's…"
Moran, staring out the window, said absently, "Loraine was very short."
It was the hottest summer anyone could remember. All the travelers who had Tarps put them up and were lying under them. The others trudged as far as the city walls and lay in the narrow midday shadows.
Only Moran rode on, a thin, tired knight pulling a cart that held a s
word, a shield, and a corpse. the body had been reverently wrapped in a blanket.
Moran had kept it cool with water from his precious travel ration. He passed the obelisk at the edge of town, glanced at the final line on it: The Gods reward us in the grace of our home .
He turned away.
Moran rode past the nearly completed temple of Mishakal.
Several wanderers gawked at it, all of them more impressed with the stonework than a single dusty knight of solamnia. He knocked at a shabby wooden building. Itsstone rear wall was a side wall of the entrance gate for the staircase called "The paths of the dead."
A young girl answered.
"I'm looking for Alwyn the Graver," said Moran.
"He's bought into his own wares," the girl said simply. "The business is mine now. I'm Loraine."
Moran looked at her and thought at first, "Nothingbut a child."
He looked at her eyes and quickly realized that she was a woman — just grown shorter than most. Loraine couldn't see over the cart sides. She climbed one of the wheels, Stared in, then gasped at the sight of the sword and shield.
"Who is it?" she was like a child at a puppet show, waiting for the next surprise. Her shining red hair spilled over her shoulders as she leaned in, watching Moran unwrap the body: Talisin, his black moustache even blacker against his icewhite skin. The back of his helm was split in half.
Moran said dully, "The greatest swordsman since Brightblade, killed by a thrown axe."
He turned on her, shamed by the sting of tears in his eyes.
"Mend the robe, patch the cape, give him new leggings — everything. He'll be entombed with his family; he's noble, and a hero, and the best — " Moran couldn't talk anymore.
Loraine, surprisingly strong, rolled the cart inside by herself. She quickly measured the body and figured cloth and labor costs while Moran stood by, empty with grief.
"Come back in two days," she said. As he turned to go, she laid her hand on his arm. "And come back often after that."
He noticed how clear her eyes were, how soft her voice could be.
"You'll need to talk, and I — " She looked suddenly embarrassed and straightened her gown, patted her hair over her ears. "You're like no one I've met. I love strange places and strange men."
As he left, he heard her singing, in a clear, young voice, " 'Return his soul to huma's breast…'
" Moran had sung the song himself, in a voice cracked with grief, two days ago. To his surprise, he came back to see her within a week after the funeral.
On the front wall of the classroom hung a tapestry (on loan from the permanent gallery of the city fathers) picturing knights riding silver and gold dragons, aiming lances at red dragons and riders. The dragons, woven in metal thread, glittered disturbingly in the grim gray hall.
The novices were excited. Two of them were leaping benches in mock swordplay, and almost all of the rest were ringed around the term's first fight: two boys, rolling on the floor.
Moran strode into the room, carrying two breastplates. The boys froze in place, then drifted to seats. Tarli's lower lip was bleeding. Another novice — Saliak, Moran noted — had bloody knuckles.
Oh-ho, Moran thought. It's starting already. He walked in silence to the flat table below the tapestry and turned to face the novices, who were now sitting quietly on the low wooden benches. Only Tarli, sitting apart from the others, was too short for his feet to touch the floor.
Two other novices sat apart: the ungainly tall boy, and the fat one. Moran, from long experience, knew that the three would be targets in the barracks.
He slammed one of the breastplates on the table. It clanged loudly. All the boys jumped.
"This," he said coldly, "is the armor of a Knight of the Sword. The hole you see was made in combat, by a lance."
This," he said, slamming the second breastplate on the table, "was worn in the last week of drill by a novice, training to become a squire. The hole was made in practice, by a lance.
"The holes are exactly alike. So were the wounds — both fatal."
In the silence that followed, a number of boys glanced at each other nervously.
"Can a lance really go through armor like that?" Tarli asked with interest.
Silently, Moran turned the breastplates around, showing the small exit holes the lance points had made. One of the novices gagged.
Moran looked and found him. "Janeel. You have something to say?"
The boy coughed, cleared his throat. "Sir, if it would help the training, my father knows a true healer."
Moran said flatly, "While you are training there will be no plate armor and no healers."
He let that sink in. "The greatest favor that I can do the Knights of Solamnia is to kill any of you who can't defend yourselves, before you fail in the field, where other knights are depending on you. When a novice dies, I offer thanks to Paladine that it happened here and not later. That is why" — he lowered his voice slightly — "I give you every chance to die that I can manufacture, before you are even squires."
Moran moved to the door at the back of the room. "I'll be back. If any of you want to leave, do it now." He eyed Saliak, who already had the look of a leader. "Don't shame anyone into staying. That's a little like murder."
He walked out and went to reinspect the drill equipment.
A short time later he walked back in and went straight to the front. When he turned around, he saw a group of frightened but determined novices, who had just learned that honor could be fatal but were willing to be honorable.
Where Tarli had been, he saw an empty space.
He was relieved, both for the boy and for himself, but he also felt a sudden, sharp disappointment that only the Mask kept him from showing.
"Those of you who remain," he said, "may die for it. Some in training, some in service, and some in combat — yes, even in these times." The pain of this next story was duller after all these years. "The knight I first squired for was killed in combat. I have vowed, since then, to prepare each novice well for an honorable life and a fitting death."
They stared at him, and he let it sink in. For the first time, these boys were getting some sense of what their deaths might look like. They were also feeling, for the first time in their lives, grown-up courage.
He looked at the faces in front of him and felt relieved that Tarli had left; the boy had an innocence that would be destroyed by training -
A terrible growl came from directly underneath Saliak, who let out a startled, high-pitched shriek, leapt straight up, and scrambled over the second and third row of benches to find the door. Most of the others jumped, but settled back embarrassedly.
Saliak made it almost to the door before he turned to see. Smiling innocently, Tarli crawled out from under the front bench. He took a seat in Saliak's place.
Saliak slunk back and sat next to Tarli.
Tarli, bright eyed and grinning, said to Moran, "Excuse me, Sire."
The Mask stayed in place, not acknowledging what had happened, but Moran didn't miss the stony glares of the embarrassed novices, or the utter hatred on the face of the humiliated Saliak.
Tarli, Tarli, Moran thought with a surprising rush of exasperated fondness, I couldn't have charted a rougher path for you than you just mapped out for yourself.
When class was over, Rakiel stepped out from behind the dragon-covered tapestry. He'd been observing. "What do you think of them?" he asked.
"The usual," Moran answered shortly. "Too much ambition, too much energy, not enough thought."
Rakiel chuckled. "And can you make them think?"
"Fear can." Moran looked out the window, saw Saliak take an ill-advised swipe at the back of Tarli's head. Tarli heard it coming — how, Moran couldn't imagine — and ducked the blow. Saliak stumbled. Tarli, stepping aside, let him fall. Saliak, without getting up, threw a well-aimed stone, which struck Tarli in the shoulder.
Moran turned from the window. "This afternoon we start with the first lance drill. That would s
care anyone. They'll think about what they're doing, from then on."
"Even that Tarli?" Rakiel shook his head. "Face it, he's not fit to be here. He's a head shorter than any of them, and he's making enemies already." He grimaced with distaste. "Moreover, he plays jokes like a kender. Frankly, I don't think some paltry lance drill will make him think."
" 'Some paltry drill'? Perhaps you should try it, then."
Rakiel glanced at the tapestry; his eyes lingered on the lance points. "Some other time. Draconniel tonight?"
Moran glanced pointedly at the niche behind the tapestry. "I'll be observing the boys tonight. Over dinner? It would be my pleasure." And, oddly, it was a pleasure. At least Rakiel was someone to talk to.
The oddity didn't escape Rakiel. " 'Your pleasure'? Really, Moran, you must be starved for company."
He was lonely for the first time in his life.
He spent most of the summer with her. first he told her about places he'd visited, then he talked about talisin and how it had hurt to see him die in some minor skirmish with a bunch of goblins. Finally he told her his deepest secret: that he was no longer sure what being a knight meant, and that he wondered whether or not, by doubting the measure, he had violated the oath. Loraine laughed, as she often did, and told him he was too serious. He tried to ruffle her hair, as he often did, and as always she ducked away under his hand. Every morning that summer, Moran woke up angry. At night, anger turned to passion, as it sometimes does to make aging men feel young. He lay awake for hours the night Loraine, leaping up, kissed his nose (he caught her, as he always did) and said, "I hope your honor is never as soft as your touch." is it, he wondered? Do I want to stay a knight and live for a war that will never come, or would I rather give my whole life to Loraine? That was eighteen summers ago, shortly before Tarli was born.
In the afternoon breeze, the wooden saddle-mounts creaked on the ropes and pulleys. The squires looked from the mounts to the rack of shields and metal-tipped lances, and stared uneasily at the suspicious-looking rust-brown stains on the courtyard stones. The stones had been scrubbed well, but the stains were too deep to come out.
The reign of Istar t2-1 Page 6