Paks handed over the heavy leather sack she’d brought from Brewersbridge. “This, and some on account with the Guild in Tsaia.”
His eyebrows went up. “Did Marshal Cedfer know how much gold you had?”
“I don’t know.” Paks thought back to Brewersbridge, already distant to her mind. “I told him the elfane taig had gifted me; he saw the jewel I gave the grange, and knew I had money for food, lodging, and clothes.”
Amberion frowned, and Paks wondered what she’d done wrong. “Did you know that most orders of knights charge a fee for their training, which is waived for poor applicants?” he asked. Paks shook her head. She had assumed that the training company was maintained by the Fellowship of Gird, through contributions from the granges. “Perhaps Cedfer expected you’d become a Girdsman, as you have, and didn’t bother to mention it,” Amberion went on. “As a paladin, you may not hold wealth. We are bound to keep this for you, and restore it if you fail, but if you are called as a paladin . . . well . . .”
“You mean I owe the Training College?” asked Paks.
“Not precisely owe. Cedfer sponsored you here, at first, and you accepted this chance freely, as a gift. It would be ill grace on our part to ask alms of you now. On the other hand, while we would ask nothing of a farmer’s daughter who had nothing, we would ordinarily ask a fee of someone who could pay. And that gold, that fee, would not be returned, whatever happened.” He shifted the bag from hand to hand. “What had you planned with this?”
“Well—” Paks had trouble remembering the clutter of plans and dreams with which she’d ridden from Brewersbridge. “I had sent money to my family, to repay my dowry, but I’d planned to send more if I became a knight, for then I could always earn my own way. And I’d thought of a new saddle for Socks—my black horse.”
He nodded slowly. “You thought of warriors’ needs ahead, and your family. Are they poor, Paksenarrion?”
“Not really poor, like some I’ve seen. We had food enough, if not too much; we always had clothes and fire in winter. But there’s no money, most times. It took me years to save up the copper bits I left home with. And all the other children to be raised and wed—” Paks shook her head suddenly. “But now I’m here—and if I’m a paladin, I won’t need a saddle, will I? Someone else will take Socks. And I won’t be looking for work. Tell me what the fee is, sir, and I can send the rest to them and be done with it.”
Amberion smiled at her with real warmth. “You choose well. Would you agree to give this bagful to the Fellowship, and send whatever is on account to your family?”
“There’s more on account,” said Paks.
“No matter. We are not here to fatten ourselves at the expense of farmers. Now—what’s this—?” He pushed at the little bundle of scuffed and tattered old scrolls left in her saddlebags. “I thought you weren’t a scholar.”
“I don’t know,” said Paks. “I found them in my things after the elfane taig. I was going to ask Ambros about them, but that’s when the caravan was attacked, and after that I forgot. I couldn’t read them then—maybe now—” She started to unroll one of them; the parchment crackled.
“Here—wait—” Amberion took it from her. “These are old, Paksenarrion—we must be careful with them, or they’ll go to pieces.” He peered at the faded script. “Gird’s arm, I can’t—what do you think that is?” He pushed it back to Paks, who leaned close.
“I’m not sure. ‘For on this day—something—Gird came to this village where was the—the—’ is that word knight?”
“I think so,” said Amberion. “I think it’s ‘knight of the prince’s cohort, and there they—’ something where that’s rubbed out, and then ‘and as he said to me, that he did, and called the High Lord’s blessing on it’—” Amberion looked up at her for a moment “Where did you say you found these?”
“I didn’t find them, exactly,” said Paks. “After the fight underground, the elfane taig got me back to the surface—somehow—and then had me pack up a whole load of things. I was too sick to notice much, but the elfane taig insisted. A day or so later, when I looked through the packs, the scrolls were there. I tried to read them, but—” Paks flushed. “I didn’t read that well—and the script is odd.”
“Yes—it is.” Amberion seemed abstracted. “Paks—this has nothing to do with your training, but I believe these scrolls may be valuable. They’re old—very old—and I’ve read something like this in the archives. Would you let the Archivist see them?”
“Of course,” said Paks. “I’d be glad to know what they are and why the elfane taig gave them. I almost threw them away, but—”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” said Amberion. “If they’re really an old copy of Luap’s writings—”
“Luap? Is that Gird’s friend?”
“Yes. Most of what we know about Gird comes from the Chronicles of Luap. This—” he nodded toward the scroll he held, “seems to be part of that—it’s talking, I think, about the battle at Seameadow.” He put the scroll down and looked around the room. “That’s all, then? Good. Now about your horse—what do you call him?”
Paks felt herself blushing again. “Socks,” she mumbled. She had had enough comments to know that it should have been something grander. But Amberion did not laugh.
“Better, to my mind, than some long name you can’t shout at need. You know that if you pass the trials you’ll have a mount?” She nodded. She had heard more than once of the paladins’ mounts that appeared after their Trials, waiting fully equipped in the courtyard outside the High Lord’s Hall. No one knew whence they came; no one saw them come. “But in the meantime you can use Socks for training. Doggal says he’s good enough. In fact, the Training Order would take him when you pass the trials, unless you want to sell him elsewhere.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take the things you won’t need back to the steward, and then come back here; you’ll meet the other paladins and candidates.”
For some days after that, Paks heard nothing more about the scrolls. Her schedule kept her too busy to ask. It was unlike any training she’d had before. Instead of weapons drill or military theory, she found herself immersed in history and geography: which men had come to which area, and when, and why. She learned of their laws and their beliefs; she had to memorize article after article of the Code of Gird. Gradually she built in her mind a picture of the whole land about, and the beliefs of the people. She could see, as in a drawing, her father’s family perched on the side of a moor north of most trade routes. They had believed in the High Lord, and the Lady of Peace, but also in the horse nomad deity Guthlac, and the Windsteed. Their boundary stones, and the rituals for keeping them, came from Aarenis; the well-sprite for whom she had plucked flowers every spring was called the same—Piri—from Brewersbridge to Three Firs, and south to Valdaire. But in Aarenis proper, the well-spirits were multiple, and called caoulin: they had no personal names.
She learned that elves claimed no lands: the elvenhome kingdoms cannot be reached by unguided humans anyway. In Lyonya, where elves and humans ruled together a mortal kingdom, human land-rights were held provisionally, and any change of use had to be approved by the crown. Dwarves claimed daskgeft, a stonemass, but cared little who traveled the surface. Gnomes held all property by intricate law, and to step one foot-length on gnomish land without legal right could bring the whole kingdom down on the criminal. Even in human lands, the laws of property differed. In Tsaia, where land was granted by the crown in return for military service, those who actually farmed rarely owned the land they worked—but in Fintha nearly all farms were owned by the farmer.
High Marshal Garris taught them the lore of the gods—all that was known of the great powers of good and evil. Paks learned that Achrya, the Webmistress, had not been known in Aare—proof, according to Marshal Garris, that Achrya was a minor god, for the great gods had power everywhere in the known world. Liart, on the other hand, had been known in old Aare, but not to the northern nomads or the Seafolk until they met the men from Aarenis. She learned that her fear of the Kuakkganni came from mistaking them for kuaknom, a race related to elves but devoted to evil; the Kuakkganni, Garris insisted, were never wholly evil, and often good. Of the greatest evils, Marshal Garris taught only their names and general attacks: Nayda, the Unnamer, who threatened forgetfulness, and Gitres, the Unmaker.