Limits of Power

by Elizabeth Moon

  Camwynya, one of the paladins then in residence, came in the gate from the main courtyard almost as Arianya entered the garden. “Gird’s blessing,” Arianya said. “Do you have time to sit with me? I have grave news and would appreciate your opinion.”

  “Certainly, Marshal-General.” Camwynya settled onto the bench along one side. “I saw a company of knights heading out—is there trouble?”

  “Yes, and unexpected. Tell me, what would you do if you saw a child’s hand light up?”

  “I would think the child had mage blood,” Camwynya said. “I would wonder where it came from and if the child had contact with mages.”

  “What would you do about it?”

  “Ask the child, I expect.”

  “Would you kill the child?” Arianya asked.

  “Kill the child? No, of course not. Why do you ask? Has someone—”

  “A yeoman-marshal and members of the grange killed a child two days ago,” Arianya said. “The Marshal wrote to tell me: he approves, and he blames my laxity for the child’s magery.”

  Camwynya stared. “That’s … evil.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not what Gird wants. What had the child done?”

  “Nothing but have a hand alight. I sent those knights to bring in the Marshal and yeoman-marshal, but … I am not sure what to do. Stop this killing, of course, but how? I was heading for the High Lord’s Hall to pray when I met you.”

  “They must be tried. A tribunal of Marshals?”

  Arianya nodded. “That would be best, to start with. But I fear there are others of the same mind.”

  “May I tell the other paladins in residence?” Camwynya asked.

  “Yes. Paladins may do better at convincing people this is wrong than a letter from the Marshal-General.”

  Prayers, Arianya reflected on her way back from the High Lord’s Hall, were a necessary duty but did not accomplish the work of changing minds. She finished the letter—brief and firm—and sent it down to the scribes to copy and distribute to all the granges. She met with Camwynya and the other two paladins in residence, and then walked down the hill to the nearest grange to talk to Marshal Cedlin.

  “Killed a child? For magery?” He looked as appalled as she felt.

  “Yes, Cedlin. And they’re apparently quite pleased with themselves for enforcing the Code of Gird.”

  He scowled, chewing his lower lip. “I won’t say I don’t have a few yeomen who might do the same, if they thought their Marshal approved,” he said. “Most of ’em born and bred in little vills like that. There’s pockets of meanness, Marshal-General. You know that.”

  “Yes, but I don’t have to tolerate it.”

  “No more you do. There’s not a grange here in Fin Panir will back killing a child even if the child does wrong. And making a light—that’s not evil in itself.”

  “So, Cedlin—I want you as one of the Marshals in a court I’m convening and on a council later. If one child can show magery after so many generations, so could another. I can’t count Duke Verrakai over in Tsaia, but there’s that boy Beclan, a duke’s son, but of a family thought to have no magery. If the gods are bringing magery back into the world—”

  “Then there’s a reason, and we’ve no call to be killing people that do no harm with it.” Cedlin ran a hand over his head. “Though defining what is harm and what isn’t—that’s going to take some thinking.”

  “You’ve heard nothing about children showing magery lately?”

  “No … but there has been more talk about the evils of magery. I blamed that on what’s been said about Duke Verrakai—evil or not, her killing her father did not go over well here, as you know—and her squire showing magery, as well as the deaths of those knights cased in rock last year. We Marshals agreed it was rockfolk magic, but to many folk magery is magery whoever does it, and it’s all bad.”

  Arianya visited every grange in Fin Panir that afternoon, with much the same conversation at each. Marshal Padlin, near the lower market, said he’d had to break up a fight. “They was hittin’ and kickin’ and sayin’ the weaver’s girl was a mage for some trick. I told ’em off myself and had my yeoman-marshal give all the young ones a good talking to about makin’ up lies about people—”

  “What was the trick?” Arianya asked.

  “Lightin’ a candle without a spill,” Marshal Padlin said. “She said it was a spell she’d learned from a wizard in Tsaia a summer ago when she stayed with her great-aunt downriver. I asked the family; they said she’d been sent there, right enough, because she’d been feverish. Her great-aunt knew herb-lore. Came home healthy, with some tricks she’d learned.”

  “I must see her,” Arianya said.

  “Down Weavers’ Lane, third door,” Marshal Padlin said. “Light-haired girl, about so high—” He held out his hand. “Her name’s Dalyin. Never any trouble in the grange until now. Family’s old Girdish, been here since whenever.”

  Arianya found the house easily enough. Outside, on benches set either side of the door, four children were busy: a small boy struggling with a mass of wool he was trying to card, a slightly older girl instructing him while herself weaving a square on a lap loom, a girl about the size Dalyin should be spinning a smooth thread, and an older boy shaping a piece of wood into something that looked like the treadle for a loom. Through the door came the regular rattle and clack of looms at work.

  “Are you Dalyin?” Arianya asked. “I’m Marshal-General Arianya.”

  “It’s not her fault,” the older boy said. “It was them kids—”

  “I’m not here to blame anyone,” Arianya said. “Dalyin, are your parents home? I’d like to speak to them—and to you.”

  The lower room held two looms; Dalyin’s parents were as light-haired as their children. One was weaving plain Girdish blue, and the other a blue and cream stripe. Their faces were tight with worry. “She’s done nothin’ wrong,” the woman said, reaching out to pull Dalyin close. “She’s a good girl, she is.”

  “I heard she was set on,” Arianya said, spreading her hands.

  “She was,” the man said. “Cruel mean, those boys are. She’s not the only one they set on.”

  “I heard you were sick last summer,” Arianya said, looking at the girl. The girl looked up at her mother before nodding silently.

  “We sent her to my wife’s aunt, just over the border to Tsaia, is all,” the man said. “She’s good with fevers, and we had a new ’un in the house, didn’t want fever here.”

  “What did she do for you?” Arianya asked, looking at Dalyin again.

  “She … made me drink things,” Dalyin said, barely above a whisper. “I don’t know what exactly. It was bitter. Then the fever went and I felt better, but she said stay until the cool weather or it might come back.”

  “And the wizard?” Arianya asked.

  “There was a fair—with a show. Music, a song I never heard before, and then the wizard. He juggled balls of light. He made a wind blow and then stop. He had spells and potions for sale.” Her voice had strengthened. “My great-aunt said it was nonsense and I should spend my bit on sweets or ribbons, but I can find sweets and ribbons here in Fin Panir. I wanted a spell for light, so Da and Ma could see better to weave in winter.”

  She stopped there; Arianya saw that the woman’s fingers had tightened on Dalyin’s shoulder.

  “Did you buy the spell, Dalyin? Tell me truly now, on Gird’s honor.”

  Dalyin bit her lip, looked down, and finally said, “No. It cost too much. But … but I really wanted it. I asked the wizard when my great-aunt was buying ribbons for herself, and he said … he said there was a trick. And that night I said the words and it didn’t work, but on the third night … my finger lit up. Like this.”

  Her finger did light up—almost as bright as a candle.

  “Dally—no!” That was her father. “Put it out, child, before anyone sees!” Then he looked at Arianya. “It’s not forbidden magery—it’s not, it can’t be. We been Girdish
a long time! There’s no magery in my family or m’wife’s. Just a wizard’s trick, is all it is, and she’s done no harm with it but to light candles and save a spill.”

  Arianya looked at the glowing hand. “What was the spell, Dally? Do you still use it?” Was there a wandering magelord pretending to be a wizard and implanting magery in children? Was that even possible?

  “No’m. It’s just a rhyme.” She repeated it in singsong cadence: “If you want light/then late at night/wish hard and pray/the gods bring day. I thought it was silly at first. But … but I said it and wished hard, and the third night my finger lit up.”

  The rhyme made no sense to Arianya. A lighted finger wasn’t “day.” And yet there the finger was, glowing. “Light a candle,” she said. The girl wriggled free of her mother and lit a candle; her finger’s glow vanished. “Does it always vanish when you’ve lit a candle?”

  “Yes—but it lights up again later when I want to light another one.”

  By all the old records, that had to be magery. But looking at the frightened faces—mother, father, and girl—Arianya could not say that, not without softening it. “Do you know the stories about Gird and the magelord priest?” she asked instead. They shook their heads silently. “When Gird was wandering, starting the first bartons, he found a man naked and beaten in a ditch. What do you think he did?”

  “Helped ’im,” said Dally at once.

  “That’s right.” Arianya decided to leave out the rest Arranha had written and come to the relevant point. “Gird did not know the man was a priest of the old religion, the Sunlord, and they were sheltering under a log in a snowstorm when the man made light with his finger … and cooked bacon.”

  “An’ Gird kilt ’im,” said the father. “Didn’t he?”

  “No,” Arianya said. “Gird did not kill him, and he and Arranha became friends. Arranha joined Gird’s movement.”

  “A … a magelord?”

  “Yes. And Luap, too, you know, was a magelord.” She paused, watching their faces. “Gird did not hate mages,” she said. “He hated meanness, lying, stealing: any cruelty. Arranha showed him that magery does not have to be cruel.”

  “But in the Code—”

  “The Code allows certain uses of magery,” Arianya said. “Healing—”

  “But not makin’ light.” That was Dally’s father.

  “Not at the moment,” Arianya said. “But laws do change. Dally wanted to make light so you could see better to weave, isn’t that right?” She looked at the girl, who nodded. “There’s nothing evil in wanting to help her family, not if it’s not taking from someone else. As best I know, her making a light with her finger doesn’t take light from anything else.”

  “Yes, but—” That was Dally’s mother, her brow furrowed. “If someone can do things by magery, they will, won’t they? And it’s easier and not fair.”

  “Hmmm. I suppose if no one needed candles or lamps, then candlemakers would lose their job … but we don’t complain if paladins make light. But Dally’s just lighting the candles, isn’t she? I don’t see that doing any harm. As long as she’s not setting fire to other people’s things or burning them—”

  “But if my finger’s hot and they grab my hand, it burns—I can’t stop it.”

  Arianya closed her eyes a moment and hoped they thought she was praying. It was too complicated—too difficult.

  But you will do it anyway.

  Her eyes opened even as her mind argued impossibilities. It could not be that voice. It had been that voice. “Just warn them,” she said. “And I will call a council.”

  “A council?” the father said.

  “If children start showing magery without malice, we have to change the Code,” Arianya said. “It has been changed before, on other things. It will take time, so you, child, must be careful. I will tell all the Marshals here in Fin Panir, but they cannot be everywhere every second.”

  She began with Marshal Padlin. “It is magery, though they hoped it was not. The girl wanted to light the room her parents wove in, to help them. My order is that until a council has made a decision on changing the law, magery that shows no malice will not be punished. It must be reported to a Marshal and then to me, but such a child must not be harmed in any way—nor the family, either.”

  He bit his lip even as he nodded. “I see that, Marshal-General, but there’s folk as will be frightened, and frightened people hit first.”

  “If you talk to them beforehand, they’ll be less frightened. I want you on the council I’m calling—”

  “Me! But I’m just—”

  “A Marshal, one of whose flock has shown magery without warning. Exactly the person who knows what it’s like for Marshals. Meanwhile: talk to your yeoman-marshals first and then the grange. I’m on my way to tell others.”

  The others, she realized, must include those in the Fellowship not only in Fintha but also in Tsaia, where magery had also appeared. Was Beclan Mahieran the only one? And why was this happening now? Everything had a cause; this must have a cause. If she could find the cause, maybe she could stop it. Change it back.

  A cold breath ran down her backbone, a whisper as of drawn steel. To think of changing it back … how was that different from undoing … was she really contemplating an appeal to Gitres Undoer? No. The High Lord had gifted some humans with magery; the High Lord must have chosen to reawaken the gift. It was not her place to stand in the way. It was her place to stand between innocent children and those who would condemn them.

  Two days later, she faced Marshal Sofan and his yeoman-marshal Rort across her desk; two Knights of Gird stood by the door. Downstairs, five Marshals waited to try them, but they had the right to hear the accusations from her and to make—if they would—such pleas of mitigation as they wished.

  She remembered Sofan from his marshaling ceremony five years before, a thickset man, broad-shouldered, heavy-boned. His yeoman-marshal was a hand shorter, wiry. Both glowered at her; the knights who fetched them had told her the two had been angry to be ordered to Fin Panir and had protested all the way in.

  “Gird never meant the Code to kill children,” Arianya said at the start. “You have admitted to inciting to kill, and approving the killing of, a young child.”

  “That’s not the way the Code’s wrote,” Sofan said. “Magery’s wrong, against the Code, and them as use magery must leave or die.” He leaned back in the chair and flexed his hands.

  “And you gave the lad a choice, did you? A lad of—what? Five winters?” Arianya glanced at the report in front of her; the knights had interviewed some of the yeomen.

  “Four,” Rort said with a tone of satisfaction. “Best rid us of ’em young. Older is more dangerous. Look what he did to me.” He held up his heart-hand, showing a few blisters on it. He glanced at his Marshal as if for approval. Sofan nodded.

  “Not more dangerous than a mob you stirred up to kill a four-winters child,” Arianya said. “And beat his mother and drive her away.” The knights had not found her, but at least they had not found her body. Nor had they found the father; he’d run off, they were told. Sofan and Rort stared at her, smirking. “Gird’s cudgel, can you not see that? Gird did not kill children! You know the story of Aris and Seri—”

  “They ’uz traitors,” Sofan said. “They chose that Luap and went away, didn’t they? That’s your proof, Marshal-General, and if you wasn’t soft as custard, you’d see that.” He smacked his hand on her desk, contempt in every line of his body.

  “Show respect!” One of the knights at the door took a step toward him. Sofan ignored him, and Arianya waved the knight back.

  “You got no right to drag us in here to scold like an old granna,” Sofan went on. “I’m a Marshal; you gave me the touch yourself. If you think I done wrong, I want trial of arms. It’s my right.” He leaned back again, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Child killers have no right,” Arianya said over the rage fizzing in her ears. “You’ll face a tribunal of Marshals.”

>   Sofan laughed. “Tribunal of Marshals—Marshals you handpicked, I don’t doubt. I’ll tell you what it is—” He leaned forward a little and tapped her desk with his forefinger. “You’re afraid to give me my rights. Afraid to fight, old woman as you are.” He looked at the knights and then at his yeoman-marshal, nodding as if they’d all just agreed with him. “A woman’s not fit to be Marshal-General, anyway. It’s a man’s job, ruling men. Wasn’t a woman led us against the magelords. Gird was a man. This magery’s come because the Fellowship’s gone all to weakness: evil attacks weakness.”

  Arianya felt her control slipping but tried once more for reason. “And you attacked a four-winters boy. Evil attacks weakness: you said it yourself.”

  “Words!” Sofan waved them aside. “Magelords is evil. Magery’s evil. Doesn’t matter if a mouse squeezes through a tiny hole, it’s still a mouse. Same with magery.” He stood up abruptly; his yeoman-marshal stood with him.

  Before the knights could move from the doorway, she was on her feet, hand on the hilt of her sword. Sofan’s expression wavered; she had surprised him. That only fueled her rage. “Fine,” she said. “If you demand a trial of arms, a trial of arms you shall have.”

  “Marshal-General?” That was one of the knights, frowning a little.

  “Out of their own mouths,” Arianya said. “They admit their deeds. Marshal Sofan does not trust a tribunal of his fellows. It is my choice to grant him the trial of arms he requests. High Lord’s Hall. Now.” When the others hesitated, she said, “Witnesses to the High Lord’s Hall.”

  She did not miss the gleam of satisfaction in Sofan’s eyes. He had intended this all along; he was sure he could take her. He meant to kill her … or his yeoman-marshal would. Both ten years or more her junior, both fit and weapons-skilled, as all Marshals and yeoman-marshals should be.

  “Marshal-General—” The other knight, looking back and forth from them to her. “What orders?”