The Reign Of Istar (7 page)

Tremaine did not reply.

Nelk nodded. “I thought not. It may be that Brother Gurim or Arack or some other will
discover that I have been saving lives, but, until then, I will continue to serve the goddess. There will be more like you. The inquisitors are very busy men.“ The elf
smiled, looking much like Sylverlin at that moment. ”If you are strong enough to ride, I
recommend you do. Best not to take chances.” He tossed the reins of both Arryl's steed and
the pack animal to the confused and bewildered knight.

“I refuse to thank you.”

“I do what I must.” Nelk waited until Tremaine had mounted before adding, “If you could
forego wearing your armor until you are farther from Istar, I would recommend it.”

“I ... understand.”

Nelk took a tighter hold of the reins in his hand. “May the blessings of Kinthalas and
Chislev be upon you, Arryl Tremaine.”

The Solamnian glanced up at the mention of the latter name. Chislev was a neutral goddess
who had a fondness for the elven race. She was the goddess of nature, of life in the
forest.

Nelk met his gaze. “Yes, I will not deny that my own blood, however darkened, might also
be responsible for my desire to maintain the balance of life.”

Turning his horse, the cleric started to depart. Arryl, though, felt he needed something
solid to cling to, something to explain the inexplicable.

“Nelk, wait. I need to know ... Fen told me ... Nelk is not your true name, is it?”

“No, Sir Knight.” Bitterness crept into the elf's voice. He halted his steed. “It was
given to me when I was cast out. There is no direct translation from my tongue, but it
essentially means 'of no faith, lacking in belief.' To my people, that name was the
greatest punishment they could lay upon me.”

“How could they - ”

“By their beliefs, I was ever a betrayer of the way. Even though I still followed the
gods, I did not follow them in the manner elves deemed proper. In that, my people are more
like Istar's clerics than they want to admit.” The elf raised his good hand in farewell
... and blessing. “May your own beliefs stay strong, Knight of the Sword. But may they not
blind you to truth.”

Arryl Tremaine remained where he was until the elf had vanished over a nearby hill. The
knight was still at a loss concerning the elf, who was and was not everything Arryl would have expected of a
worshiper of the Queen of Darkness.

To Tremaine's surprise, he found that despite the corruption and insanity that he had seen
in the holy city, his faith WAS still strong ... and it was the dark elf's doing. Arryl
didn't understand exactly how, yet. Perhaps he never would. But Nelk had been right. From
now on, Arryl would champion his faith and help fight injustice - wherever he found it.

“May Paladine watch over YOU as well, Nelk,” he called as he mounted his own steed. “You
are right. Someday, we WILL meet again.”

For he intended, someday, to return to Istar, holy Istar.

Kender Stew Nick O'Donohoe Moran moved a swordsman forward, feinting the game piece sideways to prevent ambush. “Your
mercenary is endangered.”

Rakiel's mouth quirked. “For the first time in our lives.” He stretched a slender, thinly
muscled arm out and withdrew the mercenary down an alley.

They were playing Draconniel, said to have been invented by Huma himself to keep knights
ready for war. The game grid was laid over a map of Xak Tsaroth, and the dragon side was
moving small raiding parties through the back streets, down the storm drains, and inside
market carts. Moran, accustomed to the open play favored by Solamnic Knights, was
intrigued by Rakiel's underhanded style - and a little appalled.

He brought a second swordsman forward. “I'm preparing a sortie down Grimm Street.”

“Your frankness does you credit.” Rakiel withdrew a previously concealed bowman from Grimm
Street. “Perhaps it's just as well that you honor-bound knights no longer fight wars.”

Once the cleric's caustic remark would have cut through Moran. A long, thin man, Moran
awakened morning after morning in a lonely, wide bed, knowing that he had spent his life
training for a war he would never fight: a grand and glorious war on dragonback, a war
such as the great Huma had fought. No more. The dragons were driven away. Istar was bringing “peace” to the
world. He had thrown himself into drilling squire novices with a ferocity that had earned
him the name “Mad Moran.”

Now in his fifties, “Mad Moran” was a legend, parodied for his sternness, revered for his
teaching. He seldom smiled. He never laughed.

A door, opening far below, distracted Rakiel from the game. He peered out the tower
window. “Someone's coming in. More novices?” He said the word with distaste. Istar was
beginning to resent the Solamnic Knights' claims to piety, as well as, perhaps, their
wealth.

Moran fingered his moustache thoughtfully. “The boys are not due till tomorrow, and I've
interviewed them all and read their references.” He considered who the late caller might
be. “The meat and fruit and other supplies were delivered yesterday, and the cook quit
this morning.” All sensible cooks quit before drill season. “Probably someone volunteering
for knighthood,” he decided.

Rakiel snorted. “You're dreaming. These days the volunteers go to the clerics. The knights
only get disinherited second sons and,” he added with a hint of a sneer, “the needy poor,
the people who think that the knights' treasury will open up to them when they sign on.”

Moran winced. Rakiel was a “guest,” here in the Manor of the Measure in Xak Tsaroth to
prepare a report for the clerics on knighthood and training methods - or so he claimed.
Actually, he never missed an opportunity to discredit the knights, and he seemed to take
an uncommon interest in the treasury.

“These novices aren't like that,” Moran said stiffly.

“Not after gold, I grant you, but what about that first one, Saliak? Power hungry, if
anyone ever was.”

“His father's a knight,” Moran said. “His son will learn to lead.” In fact, the father was
impoverished and bitter, and that had affected Saliak, the son. Moran had found Saliak
arrogant, self-centered, and - Moran suspected - a trace cruel. Without the discipline of
the knights, the boy's obvious talent and courage would never come to anything.

“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 three-
hundred-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.