The reign of Istar

Colors of Belief

Arryl Tremaine stepped into the common room of Timon's Folly, the inn where he was staying, and immediately noted the eyes that fixed on him. He was clad in simple traveling clothes. Those in the inn could not know for certain that he was a Knight of Solamnia, but they COULD mark him as a foreigner. That in itself brought attention enough. Had he not prudently decided to leave his armor back in his room, the rest of the patrons would not have pretended that they were looking anywhere but at him.

Ignoring the others, he marched toward the innkeeper, a heavy, bustling man named Brek. The innkeeper was the only one to give him any sort of greeting, likely because he felt a kinship with the young knight. Brek's grandfather had been the Timon whose folly had earned the inn its name — and likewise drove the family to leave Solamnia. Timon had been a Knight of the Sword, like Tremaine.

Tremaine was of the opinion that Timon's line had grown much too soft in only two generations.

"Good evening, Sir Tremaine," the man said in a voice that carried well. Now all the patrons looked up.

"Master Brek." Arryl Tremaine's own voice was low and just a hint sharp at the moment. "I have asked you to not use my title."

Solamnic Knights were a rare sight in the land of Istar, much less the holy city of the same name. Arryl, coming from the more secluded southwest of his own country, had never truly understood why. Both the knighthood and the Kingpriest — he who was ruler of Istar — served the same lord, the god of light and goodness, Paladine. Once compatible, the two servants no longer seemed to be able to work side by side. There were rumors that the church had grown jealous of the knights' power, and the knights jealous of the church's wealth. A Tremaine never bent low enough to believe such rabble-rousing. The House of Tremaine might have seen better days, but the pride of the family was still very much in flower. The young knight had come to Istar three days earlier to learn the truth.

"My apologies, Master Tremaine. Have you decided to take your meal here? We've not seen you since you arrived. My wife and daughters fear you find something amiss with their cooking."

Arryl had no desire to talk about either food or the innkeeper's family, especially where Master Brek's daughters were concerned. Like many a woman, they were taken with the young knight's handsome, albeit cool, visage and his tall, well-honed form. Arryl in no way encouraged them and, in point of fact, found the thought of mixing base desires with his holy trek to Istar sacrilegious.

"I have come merely to ask some information of you before I retire for the day."

"So early? It is barely dark, Master." Brek thought the knight a little odd. It was clear that the innkeeper either had forgotten or had never been told by his grandfather about the daily rituals of a Solamnic Knight.

Arryl frowned. He wanted answers, not more questions about his personal habits. "I saw a man arrested by the city guard, a man who had simply been standing by his cart and selling fruit. I have made purchases myself from him in the past day. The soldiers gave no reason for his arrest, something unheard of in my country. He was chained and dragged — "

"I'm certain there was a PROPER reason for it, Master Tremaine," Brek interrupted quickly. His smile suddenly seemed strained. "Will you be staying for the Games, Master? Rumor has it that there will be something special going on this time. Some say the Kingpriest himself will attend!"

"I do not believe in these so-called Games. And I've seen enough of the Kingpriest, thank you." Everywhere Tremaine wandered through the vast city, with its tall white towers and extravagantly gilded temples, he saw the benevolent image of the holy monarch smiling down at him. The many majestic banners, which had initially reminded Tremaine of his training days at Vingaard Keep, all bore a stylized profile of the Kingpriest. Sculpted faces, like the one that hung high on the wall behind Master Brek, invoked a frozen blessing on the knight.

Worse yet were the statues, especially the one portraying the Kingpriest holding a smiling baby in one hand and a writhing, many-headed snake in the other. The snake was some artist's interpretation of the dark goddess Takhisis, Paladine's eternal nemesis. Arryl was outraged. All knew that Huma, a Knight of Solamnia, had defeated the Dragonqueen! Huma had invoked the aid of the gods — Paladine — not the Kingpriest!

As for Paladine, the god for whom Istar had originally been erected, he was represented, but not nearly as often as the master cleric. In fact, many of Paladine's tributes had him standing shoulder to shoulder with the Kingpriest, as though they were equals!

"Holy Istar seems more concerned with the greater glory of the servant than it does of the one who is his master," said Arryl sternly.

Brek paled, cast a darting glance sideways at three men seated in a booth. "If you'll be excusing me, Sir… Master Tremaine, I–I must be about helping my wife." Master Brek was gone before the knight drew another breath. Apparently speed was not one of the traits diluted by two generations of sloth.

Shrugging, Arryl turned and headed for the stairs leading to his room. He had much to think about. The pilgrimage to holy Istar had been a great disappointment. Tremaine hoped that his evening prayers would give him the answers he needed.

The knight had taken no more than a dozen steps when a voice from a comer table asked dryly, "Could you spare us a moment, Sir Knight?"

Arryl would have declined, then he noted the silverand-white robes worn by the three men.

They were clerics of the Order of Paladine. Arryl acknowledged their presence with a polite nod. "Good evening to you, brothers."

"May the blessings of the Kingpriest be upon you, brother," responded the smallest of the trio. His companions said nothing, merely nodded. It was clear that the one in the middle was the senior. "Am I correct? Do we have the honor of addressing one of our Solamnic brethren?"

The two acolytes, for that was what they must be, looked more like soldiers than priests. Of course, the Order of Paladine contained capable fighters, even if they were forbidden to use blades. They fought with blunt weapons, such as maces, like the ones these two had resting on the table. Arryl suspected that these two acted as bodyguards for the third, which said something for his authority and power.

Not that he looked all that powerful. The priest was thin, with slightly hunched shoulders. His face was long and narrow and reminded Arryl of a rat. Nevertheless, the man WAS a holy brother.

"I am Arryl Tremaine, Knight of the Sword," he answered politely.

"As I thought. A Solamnic warrior." The cleric clasped both hands together. Arryl noted that the priest wore thin leather gloves that matched the cleric's robes. The index fingers pressed tight, forming a steeple. The knight wondered if there was something wrong with the man's hands, that he should hide them under gloves. The weather was certainly not cold enough to make protection desirable. "Forgive me for not introducing myself," said the cleric. "I am Brother Gurim."

Although it might be a sin in the eyes of Paladine, Tremaine could not help feeling repulsed by the man's countenance. Brother Gurim had eyes like a rat that watched everything. His nose was long and crooked. It looked as if it had been broken and had not healed properly, which made little sense, considering that Gurim should have been able to heal himself. The priest was nearly bald, his sparse hair combed into a poor semblance of a monk's crown.

A twisted smile stretched Brother Gurim's thin lips, which only made the resemblance to a rodent even stronger.

The knight realized he'd been staring impolitely. He finally remembered to acknowledge the cleric's introduction. "I am honored by your acquaintance. If you will forgive me, I must retire to my quarters to prepare for evening prayer."

Gurim nodded in understanding, but did not bid the knight farewell. "How pleasing it is to meet one of our brothers engaged in the struggle against the Dark Mistress. How pleasing to know that not all of you knights have lapsed in your faith."

Arryl was angered, but careful to maintain his poise. "We knights are faithful to the tenets set down by Paladine. Our faith lapses in man, not the god."

Gurim nodded and smiled unpleasantly. "Is that so?" The gloved hands separated. Brother Gurim placed them on the table, palms down. "I shall not detain you from your vigil, then, Sir Knight. I merely wished to state that I am pleased you are visiting Istar. I pray for the day when the knighthood once more takes its rightful place as His Holiness's tool against the minions of evil. Your presence has encouraged me in that respect."

"I am glad I have pleased you, Brother." Tremaine bowed low so that the look of disdain was not visible. The knighthood a TOOL of the Kingpriest? The Knights of Solamnia were as strong in their beliefs as any in holy Istar. Strong and independent… as Paladine ordained when he and the gods Habbakuk and Kiri-Jolith appeared before Vinas Solamnus, the knighthood's founder, and instructed him to break from his evil master, the emperor of Ergoth.

There had been a knighthood long before there had ever been a Kingpriest.

Tremaine started toward the stairs. Brother Gurim drew a symbol in the air. "Go in peace, Sir Knight. May the blessings of the Kingpriest be upon you."

Arryl glanced back. "And may Paladine watch over you, Brother."

Brother Gurim's rat smile remained in Arryl's mind all the way up the stairway and down to where his quarters were located. Only when he began his evening prayers did the sight at last fade, and only when he was deep within his own mind did Brother Gurim's distasteful countenance disappear.

The memory of the man, unfortunately, did not.

By the end of his fifth day in the holy city, Arryl Tremaine had seen enough. He doubted the sanctity of Istar and its leaders. Istar was not the bastion of good that he had imagined during his childhood. It was not the city of miracles. Parts of the city were beautiful, certainly, but parts of it were ugly, filled with unfortunates living in poverty and squalor. The bad parts were ignored, however, by most of Istar's citizens, who seemed to think they might pray them away.

That day, Arryl told Brek he would be leaving Istar on the morrow.

That night, Arryl was within sight of the inn when he heard a stifled cry and a grunt. A warrior experienced in combat, Arryl recognized the sound of someone being beaten or stabbed. It came from an alley to his right.

This being holy Istar, the law forbade men to carry weapons, unless they were part of the priesthood or the city guard. Daggers were allowed, since no one liked to go about the city completely unarmed, but they were to be bonded, strapped securely in their sheaths.

Arryl struggled with the bond that held his dagger in place as he hurried to the alley. Whoever had bound the dagger had done a good job, however, and he finally gave up, deciding to rely upon his other skills instead.

Solinari shone brightly. By the moons light Arryl could see three men fighting among themselves. Or rather, two of them were beating a third. The two attackers wore swords at their sides.

When he was almost within arms reach of them, the knight shouted, "Stand away and surrender!"

The two men released the third, who lay unmoving. One attacker already had a knife out. The second assailant drew a broadsword. In the shadows, Arryl could not make out the features of either man, but he guessed their type: bullies, who relied on brute strength and quick results. Skill was unimportant.

The first slashed with his blade, then tried to follow through with a meaty fist. Tremaine let the dagger pass him by, fended off the oncoming hand with a sharp blow of his own, and kicked out with his foot.

The hard toe of his boot caught the man just below the kneecap. Yelping, the attacker fell to the street, his empty hand clutching his leg.

The tip of a sword grazed Arryl's forearm. Tremaine, rather than stepping back as most people would have done, dove forward while the second assailant was still completing his swing. His adversary realized what was happening, but by the time he began to pull his sword back, Arryl had him by the waist.

The two men crashed against the alley wall. The swordsman, caught between the wall and the Solamnian, grunted, dropped his blade, and tried to regain some of the air that had been shoved out of his body by the crushing blow.

Tremaine gave him no quarter. With his left hand balled into a fist, he struck his hapless opponent hard in the stomach.

Folding over, the second man fell.

Arryl heard movement near him, and he kicked out to the side with his foot. The first attacker, just about to leap, went flying against the opposite wall.

There was no resistance after that.

Barely breathing hard, Arryl looked for the victim. It did not surprise him when he found no one. The unfortunate had likely crawled off as soon as he had been able to do so. Arryl could not blame the man. There were few whose courage and abilities matched those of a Solamnic Knight.

Arryl was just debating what to do with his two charges when a group of armed soldiers, obviously the city guard, appeared at the end of the alley.

"What goes on here?" asked another man, stepping forward. Unlike the others, he wore the robes of the priesthood.

"These men were beating another. I ordered them to surrender, but they chose to attack ME instead."

The soldiers began to filter into the alley. Several men reached the two dazed assailants and half-dragged the limp forms away. The cleric, meanwhile, ordered a torch brought so that he might better survey the scene. After observing the alley and the weapons dropped by Tremaine's adversaries, the cleric turned his attention to the waiting knight. Seen by the flickering light of the torch, the priest's pale face and emaciated countenance made him look like a week-dead corpse.

"Why did you not call the guardsmen?"

"They wouldn't have arrived in time. A man's life was in danger."

"So you say." The cleric sounded skeptical.

Arryl's temper rose a bit at the thought that someone would dare question his word, but he reminded himself that the priest did not know he was a Knight of Solamnia.

"Is the sword your weapon?" The cleric pointed at the blade lying on the street.

"I had no weapon. These belonged to them."

The cleric was genuinely impressed. "You took on two men without a weapon?"

Tremaine shrugged. "I am a Knight of Solamnia, a Knight of the Sword. I have been trained to fight with or without weapons. The two who attacked were hardly a threat." Arryl shrugged. "Swords and knives in the hands of novices are generally more dangerous to themselves than to anyone else."

The city guardsmen glanced at each other and muttered among themselves. The cleric demanded quiet. Arryl noted the silver stripe running across the man's chest, the same stripe he had seen on Brother Gurim and several other clerics since his arrival. He wondered briefly about its meaning, but the priest demanded his attention again.

"Your name, Solamnian?"

"I am Arryl Tremaine."

"Arryl Tremaine, I want you to come with us."

"Excuse me, Brother, but I would like to return to my quarters. I have been negligent in the performance of my evening prayers."

The cleric smiled. "I commend your dedication, but this is a matter of justice. The laws of His Holiness and the great Paladine have been broken. Surely you see that this is of much greater import than missing one day of prayer?"

Arryl hesitated, then nodded. The cleric had a point. The law had been broken and Tremaine was a witness. Likely they wanted him to testify against the two.

"Come, then, Sir Knight," said the cleric pleasantly. "Walk beside me. It is not often that we have one of our Solamnic brothers among us."

Very understandable, Tremaine thought. When he left Istar tomorrow, he certainly would never be back.

The city guardsmen suddenly closed in around him and jostled him roughly. Angered at their effrontery, Arryl started to reach for his sword, then reminded himself that not only was he not the prisoner, but that his sword was back in his quarters.

To his astonishment, the guardsmen took him to the Temple of Paladine.

"Why are we here?" Tremaine asked. "I would have thought felons would be taken to the headquarters of the city guard."

The emaciated priest, who still had not introduced himself, gave Arryl a look that said that only a foreigner would ask such a question. "The city guard is the physical arm of justice. Defining and overseeing the law is a matter for the Order of Paladine."

Despite the merit of the statement, the Solamnian had his doubts. "You have not yet explained my purpose here. Am I to act as witness?"

"That is up to the inquisitors to decide."

Inquisitors? Arryl disliked the sound of that.

The temple itself was as splendid as anything in Istar. Immense marble columns rose high in the air. Intricate friezes representing both the history of Istar and Paladine's glory decorated the walls. Sculptures and other valuable artifacts lined the halls. The temple had been built long before the present Kingpriest. The additions made since his rise to power were gaudy and seemed out of place. His banners and masks were everywhere, but here the true wonder of Paladine overwhelmed that of his servant, as was only proper.

A pair of tall silver — true silver — doors led to the chamber where the inquisitors meted out justice. Tremaine and the others waited for several minutes, the knight trying not to grow impatient.

The doors suddenly swung open. Two large acolytes, armed with very solid-looking maces, pushed the doors aside and stood guard. One of them nodded to Arryl's guide.

"Enter."

The guards shoved Arryl forward, as if HE were the prisoner! He glared at them angrily.

The room was lit by only a handful of torches, but it was still enough light to allow Arryl Tremaine to study his surroundings. The contrast between this chamber and the rest of the temple was astonishing. It seemed that the original builders had forgotten to finish this room once the walls were up. To be sure, the familiar banners and masks commemorating the Kingpriest were present, but little else. The only furniture consisted of a table and three chairs atop a dais.

The doors behind them closed.

Three hooded and robed figures entered from a side door that the knight had not noticed in the dim light. They all wore the same robes that Brother Gurim and the cleric beside him wore, white with a silver stripe running across the chest. Tremaine guessed now what that symbol meant. These specific clerics served as the keepers of justice in the Kingpriest's city.

Their hoods masking their features, the three newcomers sat down in the chairs and faced the group. The one in the center clasped his hands together and asked, "Is this the one involved in the struggle, Brother Efram?"

Arryl's companion stepped through the line of guards and took a position two or three feet in front. The knight tried to follow him, but the soldiers formed a tight ring around him. Arryl frowned, but did nothing more, assuming that this was merely a matter of protocol.

Brother Efram bowed respectfully and answered, "This is the one."

The spokesman for the triumvirate signaled someone beyond the side doorway. Arryl was shocked to see the two men he had beaten enter on their own. The knight was the one being guarded!

"This is the man?" the center figure asked them.

They nodded.

"You are dismissed."

The two departed. The hooded clerics focused their attention on Arryl, who was growing extremely angry. He was forced to remind himself he was in a temple of Paladine.

"You are Arryl Tremaine, Knight of Solamnia?" the cleric demanded.

"I am!" he answered proudly.

The center cleric folded his hands together again. "You appreciate the letter of the law, do you not, Sir Knight?"

"I do. What — "

"Then you realize that you have transgressed."

"I — " Arryl stiffened. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. "I am INNOCENT of wrongdoing! What do you mean by saying that I have transgressed?"

A second inquisitor spoke. "Arryl Tremaine, you are charged with preventing two members of the city guard from performing their duties. Further, you assaulted and injured both soldiers."

"This is preposterous!" Tremaine retorted. "They were beating an unarmed man senseless! When I called to them to stop, they did not identify themselves. They attacked me! I defended myself!"

"Where is this third man?" asked the same cleric.

"I…" Tremaine had no answer. His only witness had vanished during the struggle. "How could I know these men were guardsmen? I am innocent! This is madness!"

"None of us are truly without sin," the center cleric intoned. The third inquisitor, who had not spoken yet, nodded agreement. The spokesman added, "And you of all people, Knight of Solamnia, should know that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Think of the chaos if we allowed that."

For Arryl Tremaine, the world ceased to be. All that existed for him were the three men and their incredible accusations. What was HAPPENING here?

They took him then, realizing he was weakest at this moment. Two guards caught hold of his arms and pinned them, while two more clamped manacles around his wrists, ankles, and throat. Arryl was too proud to resist; against so many, his struggles would have been useless. In less than a minute, the knight was shackled.

"Arryl Tremaine," said the inquisitor, "you have been found guilty of crimes against the laws set down by the Kingpriest of Istar and Paladine himself. To argue against those laws is to argue against your very faith."

Arryl said nothing, his mind dazed as he tried to understand what was happening.

"You are hereby sentenced to the Games, there to train and fight for your eventual freedom… if Paladine deems you worthy of salvation."

The Games? As with everything else, even Arryl's sentence bordered on the absurd, the unbelievable. The Games were death itself, senseless, bloody conflicts that were against the laws of Paladine, as set forth in the Oath and the Measure.

"Place him in a cell for the night and see to it that he is sent to the arena first thing in the morning," the inquisitor ordered. Brother Efram bowed. To Arryl, the inquisitor said, "May the Kingpriest watch over your soul, Sir Knight"

The three hooded clerics rose. Arryl shook free his guards' hands and marched out, glaring balefully at the inquisitors. His mind noted and locked on one feature concerning the third inquisitor, the silent one. Arryl tried to hold back to get a better look, but the guards shoved him toward the doors.

Nonetheless, Tremaine was certain that the third inquisitor — and ONLY the third inquisitor — had worn a thin, elegant pair of gloves.

Arryl Tremaine stood outside the tall walls of the arena, staring at it with disgust and loathing. Until his misguided pilgrimage to Istar, he had considered the Games the one aberration, the one pit of darkness he had been willing to admit existed in the holy center.

Certainly he had not thought to ever find himself inside, sentenced to fight for a crime he had not committed. Now he was just one among a group of dour men, standing in a wagon that had drawn up just outside of the stonework leviathan. The arena looked massive enough to seat every citizen of Istar. From where he stood, he could see a portion of the field where men killed one another for the amusement of the masses.

In Istar, holiest of holy places.

"Step down, step down!" ordered an ugly, scarred dwarf, who apparently was in charge of the arena. "My name is Arack. This here is Raag." Raag was an ogre. Yellowish of skin, he was taller than even the tall Tremaine and had a warty face that Arryl doubted even the proverbial mother could love. The ogre was the most monstrous thing the Solamnic warrior had ever come across.

The knight, with his proud air and stiff, upright stature, stood out in comparison to the slouchy, slovenly half-dozen others. Most had the hang-dog expression of long-time felons. Arryl took an interest in only two — a boy dressed in motley, who obviously had no idea what was going to happen to him, and a half-elf, whose face was that of a man who knows he is doomed. Having studied the rest during the short, bleak trip from his cell to this place, Arryl guessed that most would not survive long enough to win their freedom.

Arryl Tremaine glanced about and grimaced at the ex terior of the arena, adorned with the benevolent visage of the Kingpriest. Brother Gurim came immediately to mind.

Brother Gurim. The rat-faced cleric was responsible for his being sentenced to this place, of that Arryl was certain. A night in a dank prison cell had been long enough for the Solamnic warrior to question the law and authority by which he had been judged. Something was amiss. It was too coincidental that the same man who had spoken to the young knight only a day prior, and who had overheard what Arryl was forced to admit may have been injudicious remarks about Istar, should be one of the inquisitors at his sudden, mad trial.

Marble masks lined the arena walls, each visage gazing down in sculpted tenderness upon the monarch's spiritual children when they entered on the days of the Games. Through the open gateway Arryl could see the faces that adorned the inside of the arena. Probably the countenance of each succeeding monarch replaced that of his predecessor. Not at all to Arryl's surprise, he saw very little tribute to Paladine.

Once again, Tremaine wondered whether Istar, stronghold of Paladine, had forgotten exactly who it was its citizens were supposed to worship.

"You there!" The dwarf walked up to him. For one of the hill folk, Arack was surprisingly lean, like a small cat. Knowing the strength of Arack's kind, Arryl wondered if he could take the dwarf in combat. One did not gain authority in an arena without some prowess. "Which are you?"

"I am Arryl Tremaine."

"The knight." The dwarf looked him over, pausing at one point to eye Tremaine's flowing, well-groomed Solamnic moustache. "Yer in good shape. Last o' yer kind I saw looked more like a merchant man than a fighter. Round as a tub."

Raag laughed. Arryl kept silent, figuring the dwarf was only trying to provoke him into a fight.

"I understand you took on two of the city guard," Arack pursued.

"I did what I thought was right. I did not know they were guardsmen," Arryl replied sternly.

The dwarf snorted. "Yeah, that's what they all say!" Arack pointed the knight out to the other prisoners. "Ya see this man? Fought the city guard. Beat 'em. both… and bare-handed, yet!"

There was a subtle movement away from the Solamnian, as if anyone who had crossed the guard was unclean.

"What's yer best weapon?" the dwarf asked, all business again. His eyes sparkled with some scheme.

Arryl had the uncomfortable feeling the scheme involved him. "Sword."

"Just that? 'Sword,' he says. Any particular type of sword?"

"Broadsword. Short sword." Tremaine decided not to tell him more.

Scratching his chin, Arack considered. "You'll be going to Nelk's bunch, then."

"I will not fight. I will not become a part of this barbaric ritual! This place, these Games, are an affr — "

"You'll go to Nelk's group, whatever you end up doin'!" That was the end of the discussion, as far as Arack was concerned. He stepped away from the knight and moved on to the half-elf, who was surreptitiously observing the Solamnian.

Arryl Tremaine knew that arguing would be a waste for now. He kept quiet, turned his mind to other matters. He wondered what Master Brek would think when he did not return. It occurred to him that maybe the innkeeper knew exactly what had happened to the knight, perhaps had had a hand in it.

The fight… outside the inn… No, Arryl couldn't believe something so monstrous, not even of Brother Gurim. The knight wondered about his belongings…

MY ARMOR! Arryl was horrified that he could have gone so long without thinking of the armor passed down from his grandfather. "Master Arack!" he called.

The dwarf glanced over his shoulder. "What do you want, Sir Knight?" he asked with a sneer.

"My armor! What has become of it?"

"The guard'll return it to ya, if it's decided ya should wear it in the arena! Now keep yer place!"

The city guard did have his belongings, then. Arryl was most concerned with the armor. Those who had seen him ride into Istar in full armor might have thought him an elegant, rich knight, but the truth was that, while the House of Tremaine was not poor, like so many of its cousins, it had learned to be frugal. He had been fortunate in that his grandfather's suit had fit him with very little alteration and had also borne the symbol of the order to which the young Tremaine had always aspired to join. Among many Houses of Solamnia, armor, when still serviceable, was a treasure to be handed down until the day when someone else might be able to don it.

Of course, if such a suit did not fit, then a new one had to be put together. Some knights preferred new armor. Arryl considered it an honor to wear the armor of a noble ancestor.

There was nothing he could do about his armor, save hope that someone in the city guard did not take a fancy to it.

Raag's leering visage loomed before him. The ogre's rancid breath struck Arryl like one slap after another. "Knight!" Raag grinned, revealing sharp, yellowed teeth. "You come."

"Take these two as well," Arack called, jabbing a thumb at the half-elf and the confused-looking boy, dressed in the sort of loose, colorful clothing worn by peasants in the villages far to the southwest of Istar. Arryl recalled hearing that those places were very relaxed in their worship of the gods. They were even said to worship the gods of neutrality, despite the Kingpriest's efforts to alter their thinking. Arryl wondered what sort of crime brought a mere boy, who couldn't be more than fourteen, to the arena and how the gawking boy was expected to take part in the Games.

The Games at this time consisted of both live combat and tournament battle, with more of the former than the latter. The difference between the two was that "live" combat usually meant "live" death as well. Tournament battles were fought between gladiators of exceptional skill, who were too valuable to let themselves get killed, and generally ended when one of the men was disarmed. None of the prisoners were to be a part of those tournaments. The Games Arryl and his fellows had been chosen to play would be very, very real.

Raag led them into the arena and out onto the field. The sound of two weapons ringing against one another was almost deafening. A group of fighters — obviously veteran gladiators — stood in a circle, cheering on two combatants. The battle sounds stirred something inside Arryl. He craned his head to see. It was evident from the frequency of the strikes that here were two opponents who not only fought with speed, but with skill.

Despite the noise, someone noticed Raag's approach. It paid to notice the ogre before one became a temporary obstacle in his path. The gladiators gave way for the oncoming ogre. Arryl made a quick study of the men. Hardened fighters all, but lacking in the grace and elegance of a knight. If not for the arena, many of them would have ended up mercenaries or highwaymen. More than a few had probably worked as one or both during the course of their lives.

Raag, gruff as ever, turned to Arryl and pointed at the duelist to the left.

"Nelk. Arack say, you fight with Nelk."

Arryl stared, amazed.

Nelk was an elf.

A maimed elf. Arryl wondered about the sort of elf who would deal in death, decided he must be a dark elf, one of the outcasts of elven society.

Tremaine studied Nelk. He seemed no different from the few elves the knight had met, except that the arrogant, delicate features were marred by a sardonic twist of the mouth, as if Nelk — that could not be his true name — had seen too much of the world and not found it to his liking. But he handled a mace with a skill becoming that of a Solamnic master, a necessary skill, since the elf lacked the lower half of his right arm and could not, therefore, have used a shield to any real purpose. His natural grace and agility also served to compensate for his physical handicap.

Nelk's opponent was a human, a thin, brown-haired man who both looked and moved like a snake. He fought with a sword and Arryl, who took an instant dislike to the serpentine man, grudgingly had to admit he was skilled.

It was a strange duel, mace against sword. Both men were caught up in their practice and it was evident that here were two masters. Arryl forgot his troubles, watching the two skilled fighters at work. Although Nelk had only one arm, his mace was nearly three feet long. He moved with a speed that few humans could match. His heavier adversary compensated for a lack of elven speed by utilizing both sword and shield as few men in the knighthood could have managed.

The weapons clanged together again and again, never remaining motionless. Each time one duelist seemed about to break through the defenses of the other, a counterassault brought them back to their standoff.

Then, Arryl saw the human make a blunder. An overextension of his arm left his side vulnerable. It was a very slight mistake, but a master such as Nelk should have been able to capitalize on it easily.

Nelk ignored it. The gap in the human's defenses vanished instantly. Once again the two were on even footing.

"Hold, Sylverlin!" The elf stepped back, still guarding himself. His serpentine counterpart did the same. Both men saluted each other, then smiled grimly. Nelk was not breathing hard at all; his human adversary seemed only slightly put out by the strenuous activity. Arryl silently applauded their abilities.

Turning, the elf eyed the newcomers. The rest of the gladiators melted away as he walked over to inspect the small group Raag had brought him. "What is this?"

"Arack said," was all the ogre commented.

"Mine, then." The elf surveyed the trio of prisoners. He seemed amused by the boy, and sneered at the half-elf. Most elves — even dark ones — looked down upon halfbreeds as being less than either of the two races from which they had sprung.

Nelk paused when he came to Arryl. "You are a fighter, I see."

"Solamnian," Raag offered.

"Ah. The knight," said Sylverlin, coming up behind.

Both instructors studied Tremaine with interest.

Tremaine straightened. "I will not fight in your Games."

"Won't you?" Nelk shrugged. "We'll see. Arack gave you to me and that is all that matters."

"Too good for us?" Sylverlin hissed. He even sounded like a serpent.

"Arack waits," Raag grunted.

Satisfied that Nelk was now in charge of the three, the ogre turned and departed without another word. Nelk watched him go, seeming to appraise the ogre's every movement.

"He'd still beat you, my good friend," the reptilian man commented offhandedly. "Raag's quick in the head when he needs to be, not to mention having a skin as tough as a breastplate."

"I am well aware of both my limitations and his, Sylverlin. Best to worry about your own. If we had been dueling to the death, I would have crushed your rib cage after that last ploy of yours."

"You mean the opening I left? Wasn't a mistake, my good friend." Sylverlin bowed in mockery to Arryl, then slid off in the opposite direction Raag had gone.

"I knew it was not," the elf commented with a wry smile, his voice loud enough for the knight to hear. "Why else would I have avoided it?" The elf's slanted eyes returned to Arryl. "As for you, you will fight, human. You will fight for the simple reason that you will die if you do not. You… and others because of you." His glance went, as if by accident to the half-elf and the boy. "For now, you should get something to eat, I think. You will need your strength today. That is a promise. Go with them."

He pointed to several gladiators who leered at the newcomers and made crude comments about "last meals" Arryl stiffened and reached for a sword that wasn't at his side. Nelk laughed and sauntered away.

The half-elf leaned toward Arryl and whispered, "They will kill us on the spot if you choose to give them trouble now! Best to live and find a better moment, human!"

Tremaine reluctantly gave in and started walking. The half-elf's words made sense to him, but he wondered exactly when that better moment might come. Escape seemed impossible. The arena was well protected; archers and sentries were everywhere.

An indrawn breath from the half-elf made Tremaine shift his gaze. "What is it?"

"The senior inquisitor is up in the stands with the arena masters!" his companion muttered. "Pray he is not here concerning us! If so, we go from having

little chance to none!"

Following the direction of the other prisoner's eyes, the knight focused on a man who had been watching the duel between Nelk and Sylverlin from the stands.

Brother Gurim!

Arryl Tremaine tripped and nearly fell. He stared and stared at the rat-eyed priest. Arryl was certain now. He had stepped into a nightmare whose master was the gloved cleric.

Was this truly what Istar had become?

Sylverlin marched Arryl out into the arena after the meal and handed the knight a sword. Arryl dropped it at the man's feet. Sylverlin told him to pick it up. Arryl told him the same thing he had told the elf earlier: "I will not fight." The knight fully expected to be beaten or tortured. Sylverlin clenched his fist, seeming to enjoy the idea.

"Leave him be," ordered Nelk. He made Tremaine stand aside while the elf took the half-elf and the boy and added them to another group of mixed unfortunates. Sylverlin glowered, obviously disappointed. He obeyed Nelk, however, though he flashed the elf a vicious glance that Nelk saw but ignored. The abandoned sword remained at the knight's feet, as if a challenge of some sort. Arryl folded his arms and stood unmoving the rest of the afternoon.

At the end of the day, he again expected to be punished. Nelk ordered Arryl into the line with the others. That was all. No mention of punishment. Sylverlin joined Nelk; the two seemed as attached as two branches of the same tree. They walked off together, now apparently the best of friends.

During the evening meal, the half-elf chose to join Arryl. No one else sat near them. The other men, both veteran gladiators and newcomers, were unwilling to sit next to either a Solamnic warrior who had fought the city guard or a half-elf whose crime was the fact that he existed. The only one who seemed to want to join them was the peasant boy, who also sat alone. He gave the two of them a shy, nervous smile, obviously hoping to be invited. Tremaine started to signal him over, but his companion shook his head.

"I would like to talk to you alone. My name is Fen Sunbrother," the half-elf said in a low voice. He had a swarthy complexion and his mixed background gave him exotic features. A thin beard attested to the fact that his human half had at least some dominance. "What are you called?"

Tremaine hesitated. While Solamnia had been built on the principles of justice and fairness, mixed breeds like Fen Sunbrother were not accepted members of society. It may have been that his own desperate situation made the knight more tolerant, for he found himself replying, "I am Arryl Tremaine."

"We are both outcasts, it appears." Fen indicated the empty benches around them. "You hardly seem the type who should be here. Knight of Solamnia, yes?"

"I am a Knight of the Order of the Sword."

"Thought that." Fen glanced warily around, as if he expected someone to be spying on their conversation. "You need not tell me, but I would be interested to know for what reason you are here."

"I am innocent of wrongdoing. I came to the aid of a man being beaten. I did not know the bullies beating him were city guardsmen."

The half-elf gave him a sour smile. "Crime enough here, depending on the situation. Tell me about it."

Arryl did, leaving nothing out. After a day of having no one willing to hear his side, he was gratified to find a sympathetic ear. Fen Sunbrother listened, and as he listened, his expression turned dark and bitter.

"I have all the luck. I am constantly allying myself with those who draw the ire of the mighty." The half-elf took a bite of his food, grimaced, but swallowed it nonetheless. The food at the arena was designed to keep the men fit enough to fight; taste was not a priority. "You have brought the attention of the inquisitors down upon you. Worse, you have attracted the personal wrath of Brother Gurim."

"What have I done to the man?"

"What have you done? It could be any number of things" Fen poked the gruel with his finger. The hole formed did not fill in when he pulled the finger out. "The worst part of being in the arena is not the possibility of death — it's the food."

Arryl did not smile.

The half-elf shrugged. "There is something that you must understand, Tremaine. In Istar, the clerics are the law. Among the clerics, the inquisitors are justice. It is they who define the words of the Kingpriest and how those words affect the citizens."

"Would that they were as concerned with the word of Paladine as much as that of the Kingpriest," said Arryl sternly.

Fen's eyes widened, then he nodded in understanding. "You knights are very strong in your faith, not to mention vocal about it. You've been talking like that for the past few days, haven't you?"

"What of it? I am within my rights — "

"In Solamnia, you would be within your rights, but not here…" Fen shook his head. "Istar is another matter. A Solamnic Knight, one of the legendary warriors of justice and good, rides into the holy city and finds it not so holy. Small wonder that you incurred the wrath of Brother Gurim. To him, you are a threat to the order."

"For speaking out?" Arryl realized his voice had risen. He glanced around, but everyone else was working hard to pretend they had not heard him. "I am only one man! What sort of threat could I be?"

The half-elf grunted, began eating his gruel again. Between bites, he muttered, "You come to a place few of your kind ever visit and you immediately question the ways of the priesthood. Those who rule Istar have long seen the Solamnic Orders as rivals, jealous of the priests' wealth and power."

Tremaine recalled Brother Gurim's words at the inn.

I pray for the day when the knighthood once more takes its rightful place as His Holiness's tool…

"Brother Gurim may even think this a plot by your kind to undermine the authority of the Holy One. That alone would be enough to have you executed," added the half-elf.

It was such a preposterous thought that Arryl could not take it seriously. He decided it was time to turn the conversation. "And you, Fen Sunbrother? What harm have you done that sentences you to the arena?"

He had expected something on the order of thievery, but the half-elf shrugged and said, "I'm a 'breed.' A mongrel."

"That is hardly a crime."

The half-elf turned his attention to the unappetizing gruel. "Welcome to Istar, Sir Knight."

Another day dawned. Arryl refused to take the sword Sylverlin handed to him. Sylverlin taunted, jeered, insulted him. The knight ignored him.

Nelk watched in silence.

Sylverlin shoved the knight a couple of times, but did him no harm. Tremaine wondered at Nelk's ploy. It would have been simple enough to execute the knight, but someone appeared to want more. Someone wanted Arryl to fight in the arena. He thought he understood. If he gave in, it would be as great a victory for his captor as if he HAD died in battle. It would mean that Gurim had broken the knight, could claim he was weak.

Arryl had no intention of bowing to the will of the senior inquisitor.

Eventually Nelk sent Sylverlin off to instruct some of the gladiators in the finer points of swordplay. The snakelike man was showing them how to pretend to strike an opponent. None of the veteran gladiators wanted to accidentally die or kill one of their comrades during tournament combat. The prisoners, of course, had no choice. They could only hope to survive long enough to either win their freedom or be offered a place in the tournament combats.

"This will avail you naught, Solamnian," said Nelk, glancing at the sword.

"I will not fight. Execute me if you will, but I will not go against the Oath and the Measure by fighting for the pleasure of others."

Nelk laughed. "Do they teach such arrogance in the knighthood or is it something you were born with?" Arryl refused to respond. The elf stepped closer, his voice lowered. "You WILL fight in the Games, Knight! Listen to me! I had hoped you would not force me to this, but I want you to know that — "

"Nelk!" Sylverlin shouted. "Spectators!" With his blade, he pointed to their right.

Brother Gurim was once again in the stands. The hood covered his unsightly features, but Arryl had now learned to look for the gloves. Brother Gurim gestured to Nelk.

The maimed elf gave Arryl a long, intense look and whispered, "You may have lost your last chance, human fool!"

Nelk and Sylverlin went over to talk with Brother Gurim. The two had barely departed when Fen Sun-brother and the boy, struggling beneath weaponry enough to arm a legion, joined the knight. Arms full, the boy smiled cautiously at Tremaine, who nodded in return.

"What did the Cursed One want of you?" Fen asked.

Arryl's brow knitted. "Cursed One?"

"You don't know what 'Nelk' means in Elvish, do you? Never mind. Did he threaten to have you beaten?"

"He said nothing of that, but I think something is going to happen soon."

The half-elf shook his head. "And you'll just let it happen to you! You'll take their punishment… or the axe if they decide you're not worth the time. Mark me, Tremaine. Brother Gurim has let you live this long for a reason. He has a reputation for playing games with his victims."

"Is he really that bad?" the boy asked shyly. It was the first time Arryl had heard him talk. "But he's a cleric!"

"Yes, he is," Sunbrother snarled. "So?"

"Do not frighten him unnecessarily," the knight warned.

"You there, breed!" One of Sylverlin's trusted gladiators struck Fen on the side of the head. "The guards don't like quiet talk! Get movin'. Arack'll count all those swords before he lets you back out of the storeroom!"

Fen Sunbrother staggered beneath the blow, grimaced, and moved on, his younger companion struggling to keep up. Tremaine thought over the half-elf's warning, but remained unmoved. He could and would continue to resist, despite whatever punishment Nelk or — more likely — Sylverlin decided to mete out.

Arryl stared at the cleric, trying to will the man to meet his gaze. Not once, however, did Gurim glance at him. The inquisitor knew the knight was watching him, was deliberately ignoring him. Arryl felt his temper rise. The cleric was baiting him, and it was working.

The conversation between the gladiators and the cleric was short, which might have been good or might have been bad. Nelk and Sylverlin returned to the field. Brother Gurim, accompanied by his two large shadows, departed the arena. Nelk's countenance was carefully indifferent. Sylverlin gave Arryl a serpentine grin.

Nelk did not talk to the knight again that day. No one spoke to Tremaine or asked him to pick up the sword. A decision had been made, obviously, and the instructors were only waiting for the proper moment to carry it out.

That night, Arryl Tremaine made his peace with Paladine. He did not expect to live out the morrow.

Arryl was certain of his fate when the groups were rearranged. The half-elf, the boy, and most of the veteran gladiators were sent to the opposite end of the arena in order to commence with a series of practice duels. Nelk, Arryl, and a much smaller but distinct group remained in the area where the knight had stood the day before. Nelk was instructing the group in the uses of a mace against a sword. He seemed preoccupied. Tremaine guessed something of far greater import had possession of the elf's thoughts.

Nelk ignored Arryl, save to tell him where to stand. From his vantage point, the knight could see clearly the elaborate box set aside for the Kingpriest. Fen had informed him that the Kingpriest seldom appeared at the Games, but that other high-ranking clerics often sat in the box.

He was not very surprised, then, when Brother Gurim and his two acolytes entered the box only a couple of hours into the day's training.

The senior inquisitor seated himself in the very center of the box and, looking rather bored, settled himself to observe the practice. His hood had been pulled back. As with the day before, he seemed to pay no attention to Arryl. The cleric was intent on watching Sylverlin's group.

Nelk ordered one of his subordinates to take over. His eyes flashed to Brother Gurim, then to Arryl. The maimed elf, mace still in hand, walked slowly over to the knight, who regarded the elf with cool disdain.

"I tried to warn you," Nelk said in a low voice. "He knew all along that it would be useless to threaten your life, but he enjoys his own games almost as much as he does those in the arena."

"What do you mean?" Tremaine frowned, convinced it was a trick.

"One way or another, he will make you do what he wishes, no matter how many lives it costs." He glanced in Sylverlin's direction.

Arryl understood. Fear gripped him. He stared at the large group on the opposite end of the field. The gladia tors clustered about, staring at a body lying on the ground.

"Sometimes," Nelk was saying, "there are those who do not make it to the Games."

The boy! was Arryl's first thought.

"Blessed Paladine!" He started to run, but the elf's foot tripped him up.

Arryl tried to regain his feet, but found the hooked and jagged head of the elf's mace against his throat.

"It's already too late, Sir Knight. It was too late before I even started to speak." Nelk stepped back and allowed Arryl to rise. Several gladiators from Sylverlin's group were heading toward them, carrying a limp form.

"It seems there's been another training accident," Sylverlin shouted jovially.

The victim was not, as Arryl had feared, the boy.

"Fen Sunbrother," he murmured. Part of the half-elf's body had been covered by an old, stained cowhide, but blood had already seeped through it. Arryl guessed he had died instantly.

Nelk called out, "What happened?"

"What always 'appens?" retorted the lead gladiator, a grizzled bear of a man with scars all over his arms and face. " 'e fairly threw 'imself on the blade! 'e was warned about movin' like that, but 'e wouldn't listen!" As an afterthought, the bulking figure added, "Master Sylverlin couldn't 'elp but run 'im clean through."

Sylverlin!

The head of Nelk's mace rested, as if by accident, on Arryl's shoulder. The knight took the hint and watched in impotent rage as the gladiators carried the body from the field. Tremaine's gaze shifted to where the senior inquisitor sat. For the first time, Brother Gurim stared back.

"Accidents could happen at any time," Nelk was saying casually, "especially to those who are not familiar with weapons. Take the boy, for instance…"

The knight turned sharply. "You wouldn't!"

"He would," the elf replied, indicating Brother Gurim. "Can you stand by and let others die because of your stubbornness?"

The Oath and Measure of the knighthood said otherwise. To allow others to die in his place would be tantamount to cowardice.

"The boy can be saved," Nelk said softly. "Brother Gurim wants you, not him."

To prove that a cleric could make a Solamnic Knight yield his principles. To make a knight bow to the cleric's will. Brother Gurim's countenance might be expressionless, but his eyes were not. The senior inquisitor would order the boy's death if Arryl rejected his demands.

Arryl turned away, faced Nelk. "What will happen to the boy?" the knight asked.

"A mix-up. He should have been sent to work cleaning the temple floors for a month in order to make his penance. These things happen." Nelk shrugged. "Sometimes the mistakes are rectified, sometimes not."

Holy Istar! Arryl thought bitterly. There was no choice. The Oath and Measure demanded he protect the innocent from harm. "I agree, providing you personally guarantee the boy's life."

"It will be guaranteed. I swear to that. You have not dealt with the eccentricities of the inquisitor as I have. He will be happy to give the boy back his life, if only to prove how benevolent he can be."

There was relief in Nelk's eyes, a strange thing, the knight noted. The elf removed the mace from its resting place and, turning it upside down, sank the head into the dirt.

It was a signal, a signal of Arryl's defeat. The moment the mace touched the ground, the inquisitor rose and departed the arena. No backward glance, no lingering. Brother Gurim had seen his adversary bend knee to him and that was all the cleric wanted. For now.

The maimed elf smiled. "Pick up your sword and join us. I want to see what you can do."

Tremaine knelt and picked up the sword that had been handed him each day. They will see what I can do, he vowed. He had been forced to this decision, but now that the barrier had been breached, he had no intention of holding back. The gladiators would see what it was like to face a true knight.

Brother Gurim would see what being a Knight of Solamnia truly meant.

Nelk made certain Arryl was present when the city guard marched the boy away. It took some time for the guard to explain to an annoyed Arack that there had been a mistake. The dwarf evidently did not like mistakes. He lit into the hapless guard commander with a tongue that lashed out as hard as his fists. Tremaine could see that Arack's anger was genuine. This helped convince the knight that the boy would indeed receive lighter punishment.

"I gave you my word," said Nelk.

It was on that same day, shortly after the boy's removal, that the swordmaster issued his challenge to the knight.

Sylverlin watched the two duel with avid, jealous attention. He did not interrupt, but stood patiently by. Nelk finally called a halt. "What is it you want, Sylverlin?"

The tip of the snaky human's sword pointed at the knight. "I've come for him. I need to see if he'll be ready for the Games."

Arryl, still burning over the half-elf's murder, started forward. Nelk darted between the two.

"He'll be ready. I will see to him."

"You?" Sylverlin scowled. "You're mistaken, friend Nelk. This one is definitely mine."

"It is you who are mistaken, friend Sylverlin."

Sylverlin glanced at the wary knight. "A pity," he said, shrugging. "I'd hoped that our blades might cross. Now, no such luck. You'll be dead before I get the chance."

Arryl would have replied, but Nelk was quicker. He brought the mace around and pushed the swordmaster's blade away. "Never wish ill, Sylverlin. The gods have a habit of returning such wishes to their makers."

The serpentine fighter laughed, bowed mockingly to the knight, and left without another word. Arryl was barely able to restrain himself from charging after.

"He has marked you for his own sport. This changes everything," Nelk muttered.

Tremaine studied the elf's features. A sense of foreboding washed over him as he noted his companion's dark expression. "What do you mean?"

"Sylverlin has never really cared about those I choose to fight. But you, Knight, are something special to him. He hates your kind and always has. He murdered the last knight quickly enough. Some say he is one of your castoffs. Who knows? The only man he wants to fight more than you is me and that is forbidden to him. Sylverlin never argues with Brother Gurim."

Arryl stared. "I am to fight you in the arena?"

"You must fight me, human!" Nelk paused, then quickly whispered, "I could not save the half-elf, but I might be able to save you, Knight of Solamnia!"

At first, Arryl thought his ears had betrayed him.

Nelk gave him a barely perceptible nod. "I can save you from the arena, Arryl Tremaine, just as I have saved others. You won't be the first."

Tremaine had already had enough treachery. He pulled away from the elf. "I will not fall prey to any more traps set by Brother Gurim! Give me to Sylverlin, who does not pretend to be other than he is! He still owes for Fen Sunbrother's life!"

"This is not a trap! I have saved others and, if it had been in my power, I would have saved even the half-breed! Listen, for I doubt we will have long to talk! There is a way for you to escape the arena and Istar, but to succeed you must put total faith in me!"

"Why should I?" Arryl scoffed.

Nelk dropped his mace, reached out, and grabbed the knight's sword by the blade's sharp edge.

"Are you mad?" Arryl snatched the weapon back, but blood was already streaming from the wound in the elf's palm.

"Watch," Nelk commanded. His eyes closed and he whispered something. Arryl felt a tingle in the air.

The elf's wound began to heal! First slowly, then with ever-increasing speed, the deep cut closed and sealed itself. A scab formed along the wound, but it only remained a moment. In the matter of a breath, a thin scar was all that was visible of the cut, yet Nelk was not finished. Even the scar dwindled away, ever shrinking until the only evidence of the self-inflicted injury was the blood that had stained the elf's hand.

Nelk wiped his palm on the sleeve of his shirt. "You're a cleric of Mishakal!" Arryl gasped.

"I serve the goddess."

"But… your maimed arm…"

"I chose not to heal myself in order to hide the fact that the goddess still favors those who keep the true faith. Have Brother Gurim perform the same miracle and see if he can heal himself. You will find that the inquisitor seems to be lacking somewhat in his faith, or perhaps his god lacks faith in him." The elf eyed his companion. "Will you listen to me now? Will you believe in me?"

Tremaine lowered his sword blade. "If I thought my sentence just, I would still ignore you, but there is no justice in Istar." He shook his head. "And little faith, other than yours. What must I do?"

Nelk nodded his approval. "Sylverlin is eager to match blades with you, but I have been granted the right to face you in the arena. When open combat begins, we must be certain that Sylverlin does not come between us. The battle must be my mace against your blade." Nelk shook his head. "Always before I have trusted my skill, never mentioned my plans to those I rescued for fear they would weaken and betray us both! This situation with Sylverlin, though, and your own worthy abilities, have made this change necessary. I find I must trust you, Knight!"

"What about Sylverlin? He cannot be allowed to go unpunished for what he has done!"

"Leave the swordmaster to me. The time is fast approaching when he and I will clash. He might call me friend, but there is no love between us. We are marking the day. You might wish his death now, Knight, but rest assured I have prior and greater reasons than you. What concerns us now is making certain that it is we two alone who face each other during the Games. No one else must be allowed to come between us."

Arryl was still not pleased about leaving Sylverlin to the elf, but Nelk WAS a cleric — a true cleric. "I will abide by your decision, but tell me, why do you risk yourself here? Why do you do it?"

The elf considered his answer well before giving it to the knight. "Because there is a balance to maintain… and Istar threatens to tip it too far the wrong way."

"Very well, then. Tell me now your plan. What happens when we come to blows?"

Nelk tapped Arryl's chest with the tip of his mace. 'Then, while the crowd and Brother Gurim watch, I will kill you, Sir Knight."

So eager for blood!

The day of the Games came too soon, yet not soon enough. Arryl stood in the line of anxious gladiators, his eyes scanning the packed stadium. Istar seemed especially eager to watch the blood flow this day. Tremaine had heard rumors that HE was the attraction. It had been rumored that a Knight of Solamnia was among the fight ers. Despite the fact that his armor was still a prize of the city guard, he had no doubt that most of the crowd had picked him out already.

Across from him stood Nelk… and Sylverlin.

The Kingpriest's box was filled, but the holy monarch himself was absent as usual. Today the box played host to a group of men garbed in identical silver-and-white robes. In the center sat the only one wearing gloves, Brother Gurim. Arryl could not clearly make out his features, but he guessed the senior inquisitor had a smile on his face. For Gurim, all was right in the world. This day was to mark yet another triumph.

Arryl wished he could drag the false cleric down to the field and tell him the truth.

The tournament had been played, the exhibitions had finished. All that remained was the final mass combat. A free fight, in which a man could only hope that he survived the time limit. Arryl heard some of the prisoners plotting desperately to keep in the back, away from the rest of the combatants. Their plans collapsed when Arack informed them that hesitation would not save any man here. The archers on the walks had orders to shoot any gladiator who shied from battle. The prisoners had to fight. As long as they did, they had a chance. Arack emphasized the last, and the prisoners looked more hopeful.

Arryl could have told them the truth. They were doomed. Most were unskilled fighters, even barring the days of training. They had learned enough to hack and slash, but the skilled fighters were few and far between. The masters of the Games did not want their hand-picked gladiators killed.

Arryl knew the outcome, having been forewarned by Nelk. The skilled fighters had already been picked out by the veteran gladiators. Two, even three, would converge on the newcomers while the rest took on the other prisoners. It might look as if the sides were even, but the experience and brutal skill of the gladiators would almost immediately turn the tide in their favor. The crowds would cheer because most of their favorites would win and no one would pay any mind to the dead, who were convicted criminals, anyway.

Sylverlin was grinning with anticipation. Nelk was eyeing Tremaine with an almost indifferent expression. He had armed himself with a sinister-looking ball-and-chain mace that gave him almost half again the reach of his other weapon. Tremaine was somewhat startled by the change, and tried not to think of what an accidental blow might do to him. His only protection lay in a rusting shield, his sword, and his skill.

The horns sounded their death knell. The gladiators charged their chosen opponents. They all avoided the knight, knowing he was reserved for Nelk.

All except Sylverlin. He ran up behind Nelk. Tremaine shouted a warning.

The elf turned. Sylverlin shot past him, sword ready. "You are mine, Knight!" Sylverlin hissed.

Tremaine moved to meet him.

Nelk ran up alongside his friend as if he now planned to join Sylverlin in the duel against Arryl. The spiked ball of the elf's mace swung back and forth, a wicked-looking pendulum. It grazed Sylverlin's leg.

The swordmaster howled in pain and collapsed into a writhing heap on the now-bloody surface of the field.

"The goddess has blessed it," said Nelk, smiling at Arryl. Nelk was on him, mace cutting a deadly arc. The one-armed elf moved with far more speed than the Solamnian was expecting, struck at him with lethal skill. Had he not trusted Nelk, Arryl would have suspected that the elf was indeed trying to kill him!

Arryl brought up his sword and jabbed, keeping the other at bay, as they had planned. Nelk nodded and, his back to the crowd, he winked at Arryl. The two circled one another, feinting strikes, but, as far as onlookers were concerned, they were too expert to fall prey to such tricks. The crowd cheered.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Sylverlin appeared. Sword raised, he headed for Nelk, prepared to stab the elf in the back.

Arryl had no time to shout a warning. Nelk could not have heard him if he had. The knight thrust forward. Nelk reacted to the attack by stepping aside, still unaware of the true danger. Sylverlin's blow caught the elf's shoulder, but Nelk's movement left the human gladiator open to Tremaine.

The knight's blade sank to the hilt in Sylverlin's stomach. Arryl jerked his sword free. Sylverlin slid off the blade to the ground.

Arryl heard a rattling sound behind him. Instinctively, he started to turn, and forced himself to stand still. This was Nelk's plan.

A thick chain wrapped around his throat. Arryl pretended to struggle to free himself, then suddenly realized Nelk wasn't pretending to kill him!

The crowd had hushed, breathless with excitement.

"Sylverlin was mine!" Nelk shouted loudly, and wrenched the choking chain tighter.

Once more, Arryl thought, my beliefs have been betrayed… and this time it will be fatal.

He tried to lift his sword to strike the elf, but he lacked the strength. The blade slipped from his nerveless fingers. He tried to speak, to curse Nelk, to plead. All that escaped his lips was a pathetic gasp.

The dying knight saw the silver-and-white figure of the senior inquisitor rise to his feet in anticipation.

The chain crushed Arryl's windpipe. Bone crunched; the pain was horrifying. He fought to breathe, but he was choking on his own blood. He staggered and would have fallen, but the cruel chain held him upright. He saw the stands and then the sky, and then he was falling. Fire burst in his eyes, his head, his lungs. When the flames died, darkness.

"Trust in me," a voice whispered… and laughed.

When Arryl woke, he realized two things.

The first thing was that, despite the knowledge that he had died, he was not dead.

The second was that he was lying on his back in a field that must be far from the arena, for he could neither hear the crowds nor see the high walls.

Dazed and confused, his hand instinctively reaching for his throat, Arryl sat up. He was well, whole, no trace of injury. Just like the cut on the elf's hand…

Arryl looked around, saw Nelk seated astride a tall black horse. In his hands, he held the reins of Arryl's own horse. Armor — his grandfather's suit of armor, packed neatly and strapped to a packhorse — glinted in the sunlight.

"The terror of death must have been worse for you than for most of the others I've brought back. I wondered if you were ever going to wake up."

Brought back! The knight stood. He glowered at the amused elf. "What do you mean, brought back? You killed me!"

"Yes. Then I brought you back to life. That is within my powers as a true cleric."

"You are not a cleric of Mishakal!" The knight recalled his last thoughts. "You told me you were a cleric of the goddess!"

"Ah," said Nelk cunningly. "You never asked which goddess!"

Arryl reached for his sword and immediately discovered that it was not at his side.

Nelk held up the scabbard and weapon. "You chose to make me a follower of the gods of good, not me. I am not a cleric of Mishakal, true. I am a servant of Kinthalas, whom you term Sargonnas."

Sargonnas, consort to the Dark Lady, Takhisis, Queen of Darkness.

"Why did you bring me back?" Tremaine demanded suspiciously. "Why? For what purpose?"

Nelk considered the matter. "What I said to you in the arena holds true, Knight. There IS a balance to maintain, though I must admit the Dark Lady would like to see it shift in her favor. I do what I can to help those I think will aid the cause. Those I rescue are beholden, however little they may realize, to my own patron."

"You expect such thanks from me?" Arryl asked harshly.

"I expect nothing. I find it amusing to think that a Knight of Solamnia, imprisoned by the Order of Paladine, owes his life to a servant of his god's eternal foe."

Tremaine could not deny what the elf said, but he was determined that neither Sargonnas nor Takhisis would ever own the knight's soul. He would die first… again. "I am not your slave, dark elf! Give me my sword and we will fight. Fairly, this time."

"I will return your sword, Sir Knight, and the rest of your belongings, which took some doing to procure. As for a battle, that may yet be what the future holds for us, but not now. I will not fight you. And I do not think you will strike me." Nelk tossed the sword to the knight.

Tremaine caught the sheathed blade, but did not draw his sword.

"If it will ease your conscience, I have no hold over you. You may continue your way, free once more, but with perhap's a little more understanding of the world." Nelk smiled. "You have my word."

"What happens now? Where am I?" Arryl asked gruffly. His greatest desire at the moment was to return to the master keep of the knighthood and reorient his own beliefs. The world that once had been black and white had become too complex, too gray.

"We are a half-day's ride northwest of Istar, a safe place, though we should not stay too long. You need to be on your way, and I have to return — "

"You are returning to Istar? To the Games?"

"Of course. I was on leave of absence to take Sylverlin's body to his kin," Nelk said grimly. "His kin were jackals. They enjoyed what was left. You did me that favor, Knight. Sylverlin had discovered my secret and threatened to reveal me. Sylverlin is dead and my secret is safe… for a time. Only you know that I am a cleric, and I doubt you would be willing to inform Brother Gurim, would you?"

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 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 sword, 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 scare 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.

Moran was proud of those stains; he'd spent much of last week painting them on and aging them. "Right."

All heads turned. He stood in the archway, a twelvefoot lance tucked under his arm as easily as if it were a riding whip.

He saluted with the lance, missing the arch top by inches. He flipped the lance over his right shoulder, then his left, then spun it around twice and tucked it under his arm, all without scraping the arch.

Tarli applauded. His clapping slowed, then stopped, under his classmates' cold stares.

"The lance," Moran said loudly, "is the knights' weapon of tradition. Huma consecrated one, called Huma's Grace, to Paladine. A single knight, with a single lance, defeated forty-two mounted enemies during the Siege of Tarsis."

He looked over the group with disdain. "Let me also mention that your lance may — just may — keep you alive while you are squires. Later you'll train with footmen's lances. For now — " He pointed the lance suddenly under Saliak's nose, then transferred the lance to his left hand and all but stabbed Tarli. "You and you, choose lances and mount up."

Saliak flinched. Tarli, to Moran's pleasure, did not even blink.

"On the barrels?" Tarli cried in excitement. He stared at the wooden mounts, whose reins ran through eyelets to join the pulley ropes.

"They're not barrels, runtlet," Saliak hissed.

Tarli shrugged. "They're not horses, either. What are they supposed to be?"

Saliak said, "Who cares," and pulled the first lance from the rack. He snapped it up, then down, in a clumsy salute. He was long-limbed and strong. Despite his inexperience, he could control the lance well.

Tarli lifted his own lance upright and staggered as the weight toppled him backward.

"It's too long," he complained. His classmates snickered.

Moran regarded him solemnly. "Grow into it."

Saliak laughed loudly.

Carrying his lance clumsily by the middle, Tarli walked over to his mount, which was scored with lance hits. A stubby board projected from under each side of the saddle. He studied them. "If these were bigger, I'd say they were wings."

He turned to face Moran, his face alight. "It's supposed to be a dragon, isn't it? You're training us to fight dragons, like in the classroom tapestry."

Good guess, Moran thought. Once that was probably true; now the drill was kept to honor Huma and to make beginning squires feel clumsy and humble.

Aloud he said only, "Spotters," and passed the ropes to the boys. "When I give the signal, raise the mounts into the air. Riders, mount up, take reins and shields, and fasten your lances."

The two combatants straddled their mounts. Saliak sat easily and comfortably with bent knees, the unmistakable pose of someone who had owned and ridden horses. Tarli could only reach the stirrups by half-standing.

They set the lances in the saddle-mounted swivels. The greater weight of the lance was in front. Tarli kept his weapon upright by putting nearly his full weight on the butt end. He swung the point up clumsily.

Saliak swung his sideways, up, down, and circled it. He smiled at Tarli. "Say good-bye."

Moran paused before signaling the start. "Yes?" he said to Steyan. "Did you want to say something?"

Steyan, who looked as if he hadn't slept in nights, glanced back at Saliak speculatively.

"Nothing," he mumbled finally. Several of the other novices looked relieved.

Moran turned to the riders, dropped his raised hand. "Now." The spotters tugged on the ropes. The mounts swung into the air.

Tarli nearly dropped his lance when his mount jerked upward; his spotters had pulled too hard, possibly intentionally. He recovered, but his lance popped out of the swivel, and he was forced to bear its full weight. The tip dropped to where it couldn't threaten anyone except Tarli's own spotters.

Early days, thought Moran. Let him make his mistakes here, where he might survive.

On the riders' first pass, Saliak speared Tarli's shield, knocked it to the ground. His classmates cheered.

Tarli stared down at the shield, then, brushing his hair out of his eyes, he looked up at the exultant Saliak. Tarli's expression was excited and confused, but unafraid.

At a tug on the reins, Saliak's spotters dragged him backward, then launched him straight at Tarli.

Saliak swung his lance sideways. Tarli crouched against the saddle, avoided being slashed.

By intention or by accident, Saliak sliced through Tarli's reins. Tarli's spotters, given no signals, tugged wildly.

Tarli lurched from side to side, trying to avoid being smashed against the courtyard walls. He glanced at Moran, the boy's eyes asking for help or advice.

Moran watched silently.

Saliak pulled back on his reins and hung motionless, watching Tarli's flight. Drying his palms on his legs, Saliak grasped the lance firmly. His spotters slowly pulled him backward, preparing for his forward arc.

Tarli glared in frustration at the lance he could barely hold. Suddenly, he took the reins in his mouth. Holding the lance crosswise, like a balance pole, he smashed it against the saddle pommel. The lance broke in two.

The watchers gasped. Tarli threw down the lance point, tied the broken reins hastily around the butt, and whirled the stick over his head by the leather thong. The stick whirred like a living thing. Tarli's mount swung crazily. Saliak dove toward him.

Saliak aimed the lance straight for Tarli's unguarded chest.

Tarli leaned away, brought the whirling lance end down on Saliak's lance, breaking it. The pieces bounced over Saliak's shield, struck him in the forehead.

Stunned, Saliak dropped his reins. Tarli shifted his small body to the center of the saddle, whirled the lance butt faster.

The mounts, both out of control, swung past each other. Tarli got in four more good hits before Saliak fell off into the arms of his spotters.

Tarli slid off his mount easily, catching the footrest and lowering himself to the ground to shorten his fall. He ran to where Saliak sat, dazedly rubbing his eyes.

Tarli bent down and patted the bigger boy. "Don't cry."

Moran had seen one man look at another as Saliak did at Tarli. It was in a seaside tavern in Tarsis. The ensuing fight involved marlinespikes, and the memory made Moran queasy still.

Saliak staggered to his feet, turned away. Tarli shrugged and went to join the others, but they edged over to Saliak. Even the tall, thin one and the fat one, possibly fearing their classmates, shunned Tarli.

Moran looked impassively at them all. "Drill is over until we can repair the mounts." The other boys looked more relieved than disappointed. "Go to your barracks."

Tarli stayed behind to pick up the thonged stick he had made. He looked up and noticed the knight standing over him.

"I've made an enemy," the boy said.

Moran nodded. "Only one?"

A grin flickered across Tarli's tired face. "Saliak is the best-liked boy in Xak Tsaroth. Maybe in the world. His father hosts his own festival in autumn. His father and grandfather were both knights."

For just a moment, Tarli sagged. "I wonder what that feels like, to have a father so important that everyone respects you before you even do anything."

He left the courtyard, swinging the stick on the thong. Moran stared after him, aching inside.

They walked through the market by evening, Loraine tugging on his hand.

They looked more like father and daughter than lovers.

From time to time, a breeze would sweep the marketplace, and she would carefully, almost primly, pat her beautiful hair in place over her ears.

Moran loved watching her. he enjoyed telling her about the market's various wares.

"That gadget, that's gnomeware from Mount Nevermind… it's probably illegal to sell it, and it's certainly dangerous. that axe, the dwarves use those up north to cut firewood. The blades'll last a dwarfs lifetime, let alone ours. That hammock, that's made by net weavers from Tarsis. Talisin and I went there once, when I was young…" He stopped. Loraine reached up and touched his arm.

"You miss him all the time."

"When I was young, he was everything to me. He took me everywhere, and people were good to me just because I was with him. I learned all I know of the world from him."

"He was like a father to you. Everyone needs someone like that." she regarded him critically. "You'd make a wonderful father."

He looked down at her nervously. "What makes you say that?"

She laughed and swung on his arm like a small girl.

"Because it worries you. You don't like jokes, do you? Someday, 'Sire,' I'll make you laugh again."

Late that night, Moran stood brooding in the courtyard. He had dined with Rakiel, then watched the novices from one of the Manor of the Measure's observation niches.

Moran expected hazing and abuse, but the novices seemed cruder than those in past years. To some extent, Tarli was to blame. Tarli's presence, Moran corrected himself. Novices always attacked those different from themselves, and Tarli was so different…

As if Moran had conjured him, Tarli appeared in the barracks window. "Good evening, Sire. By the way, I did you a favor."

"Favor?" Moran was learning, already, to be leery of Tarli's initiative.

The boy nodded. He must have been standing on tip toe to be seen from below. "I made you more of those short lances like I used today."

"Did you, now? Wait. Made them how?"

"From the other lances. I told you they were too long. I broke them into thirds, mostly… some halves for the larger boys."

"You broke the lances?" Moran gasped. Huma, pray for us all! "All of them?"

Tarli shifted uncomfortably. "I did my best. Besides those on the rack, I found just the one storeroom full — the one with the lances in colors. Was that all?"

Sweet Paladine! "The ones in colors… You mean red, silver, and gold? For parade dress, for the full knights?" Moran shook his head, not wanting to believe. "Those were locked up."

Tarli waved a hand. "Don't thank me. They weren't locked up that well. It was easy." He dropped from the window; he must have been standing on a stool. "Good night, Sire."

Moran dashed, panic-stricken, to the weapons store. He spent the evening going through the lances and confirming that they could not be reassembled.

The treasury would cover replacing the lot, but the paperwork would be a quest in itself.

In the end, Moran gratefully accepted Rakiel's offer to write the requests to release funds. Rakiel's help almost, but not quite, made up for the cleric's sour I-told-you-so smile.

"Breaking and entering should be a handy skill for the boy's future. Tell me, can the treasury really afford to train a bastard AND a vandal?"

"The treasury," Moran snapped, "could afford to replace the entire manor."

"Really. Just with the funds available to you?" Rakiel raised an eyebrow, not believing. "Well, let's hope Tarli isn't that ambitious."

Rakiel moved a spy across the grid. "So what are they calling him?"

Moran munched a breakfast roll. " 'Kender Stew.' They claim he's not human." He moved a footman, casually speared the spy. "They've hung his pack above his reach, and they call him an animal and chain him up. I'm not supposed to know."

Rakiel stared at him, shocked.

Moran buttered another roll. "Oh, and the tall one, Steyan, is 'Mount Nevermind.' Night before last, they sawed partway through his bed legs and, when his bed broke, made him stay up fixing it. Maglion, the fat one, is 'Gully Gut.' They make him eat table scraps and pretend that he's part gully dwarf and that they're doing him a favor."

"Aren't you going to stop them?"

Moran looked surprised. "Why would I? I spend all day drilling them to death, then chew them up and spit them out. They're frustrated all the time. They take it out on each other at night."

He pointed the butter knife at Rakiel. "Then, one night, one of them will start to think about the Measure. Really think about it. He'll be afraid, but he'll stand up to the others and say, 'This is wrong. We shouldn't do this.' The next day they'll all be living the Oath."

Rakiel's expression was dubious.

"It happens every year," Moran assured him.

"And in the meantime," Rakiel retorted, "you let them torment each other, even when they pick on your own — "

"My own what?" The butter knife was still a butter knife, but suddenly the blade glittered in the light from the window.

"Nothing," Rakiel said with a nervous smile. "I can't imagine what I was thinking."

As with all unceremonious business of the knights, the classes were taught in the language known as High Common. Only the beginning part was in the old tongue. Moran took a place in the first row of novices as they said, "Est Sularus Oth Mithas" and sat.

Moran stood between Tarli and Saliak, who had ended up sitting next to each other for the term. Neither boy wanted to look cowardly by moving away from the other. Besides, Saliak often enjoyed himself by punching and prodding Tarli when the older boy thought Moran wasn't looking.

Instead of moving to the table, Moran sat on the bench and turned to Saliak after the recitation of the Oath. "Why did you say those words?"

"You make us," Saliak answered nervously.

Someone giggled.

"Why do I make you?"

"Because the Oath is important," Tarli said.

Moran turned the full force of the Mask on the boy. "What makes it important?"

Before Tarli could answer, Moran snapped his head around to the second bench. "You, Maglion. What makes the Oath important?"

Maglion turned bright red. "Wh-what it means…"

"No." Moran stood, walked to the front, slowly and deliberately.

"The Oath," he said quietly, "does not mean anything. The Oath IS everything. Day, night, waking, sleeping, honor is your life.

"Once you know that, you can no more do wrong than you can rise from the dead unaided." He eyed Maglion coldly. "Do you understand?"

"Yes." But Maglion sounded unhappy.

"You do," Moran agreed, "and maybe you don't like it"

The boy turned even redder. "Well — I mean — so, if a knight has been insulted, let's say wronged repeatedly" — he took great care to look away from Saliak — "then a knight should fight the person that wronged him? A duel? For revenge, I mean?"

"For honor. Never for revenge."

"If you're fighting him, either way, what's the difference?"

Moran leaned forward, hands on the table. "Suppose someone tormented you for months and you challenged him and demanded an apology. If he didn't give one, you could fight him. But if he apologized sincerely, you'd have no choice but to accept it and not fight. That's the difference."

Steyan muttered under his breath.

"Is that a problem?" Moran asked quietly.

The tall boy scratched his head, looked from side to side for help, and finally said, "It's hard."

"It is." Moran intentionally dropped the Mask and spoke as a simple human being. "Honor, when it's easy or you can't avoid it anyway, tastes better than food or drink. When you don't want it, it eats at you, day and night."

Tarli, looking unusually solemn, said suddenly, "What if one kind of honor fights with another?"

Moran did not reply immediately. Finally he said, slowly and carefully, "Learn this, and learn it well. There is only one kind of honor. Don't ever believe that a conflict with the Oath or the Measure means that there's a conflict of two honors."

He relaxed. He alone knew what a crisis of faith that sort of question produced in a man. "There are, however, conflicts between kinds of duty," he added.

Late in the summer she said playfully, "Are you a family man?"

"I've told you." Moran had shown her his family tomb, recited most of his ancestors' history.

She poked him in the ribs teasingly.

"I mean, would you be good to a child, no matter who the child is, or what it's like?"

"Of course I would."

She waved her arms, laughing at him, but there were tears in her eyes, too.

"I mean look after and train, and see to its needs. Do you promise, even if that child comes between you and something else you want to do?"

Her laughter faded.

"Please — "

Unhesitatingly he said, "I'd do all that and more. no matter what I had to give up."

He picked her up easily and kissed her repeatedly. He promised that he would always, for her sake, "Look after and train" children.

Looking back, he realized that his promise had made him the best teacher the knights had ever had.

Out in the courtyard, Moran squinted at the sun. "Awfully bright, don't you think?" he asked casually. In the past month, the novices had learned to dread his casual questions.

He stared around in surprise. "No? Ah. You're young. You don't notice. Don't worry. I'll take care that you don't hurt your eyes by squinting."

He handed each boy a blindfold, told him to put it on. With some misgivings, he gave Tarli's to Saliak. The older boy tied it around Tarli's head, all but planting his foot in Tarli's back to pull the knot tight. Tarli, raising his hands to his head, made a small, startled sound.

"Something wrong?" Moran asked.

"Not really." Finally Tarli said hesitantly, "This is so tight, it hurts."

"Think of the pain as a distraction. You may have to fight in pain someday." He held the boy's shoulder, mostly to keep him still. "Now you tie on Saliak's blindfold."

Saliak flinched. He hadn't thought about that. Tarli, his skin puckering beneath his own blindfold, grinned. Saliak didn't make a sound when Tarli tightened the blindfold, but Moran saw the older boy grimace in pain.

Moran passed each blind and groping boy a dagger. Maglion yelped when he pricked his finger on the point; the rest jumped at the sound.

Moran guided each of them, stood them against one of the walls. "And now," he said calmly, "all you have to do is walk across the courtyard without being stabbed. Simple enough, I'd think."

It was. If you used your ears and remembered that defensive weapons were as important as offensive, the task wasn't hard at all. The novices began to shuffle tentatively across the courtyard.

It wasn't as dangerous as it sounded; most boys were afraid to strike at all, sure that they were exposing their hands to a blade.

Moran moved among them with a short sword, occasionally parrying a novice's thrust, more often touching a novice's back to remind him he was exposed.

Tarli, from either uncommon sense or recklessness — Moran couldn't decide which — skipped halfway across the yard before the others had gone a step. Alone in the center, he cocked his head, listening carefully and stepping around each of the approaching novices, who were tiptoeing and shying away from each other, striking at nothing and ducking from the same.

Tarli reached the opposite wall in record time and stood listening. Moran felt a burst of pride in him.

Saliak, nearly halfway across, called softly, "Here, kender. Little Kender Stew, come on, boy." He clucked his tongue. "I've got something for you." He sidestepped away from the target spot his own voice had defined.

Tarli smiled and stepped back into the courtyard. He moved behind Saliak and matched him step for step.

Saliak called in a sweet voice: "Here, kender. Don't be afraid, little fella. Do you want my surprise?"

Tarli licked one of his fingernails, then reached up and pressed it against Saliak's neck.

"Depends. What is it?" Tarli asked conversationally.

Saliak froze at the feel of what he thought was the cold point of a dagger.

Faron, hearing Tarli, shuffled toward him, dagger thrust out.

Tarli stepped back from Saliak, who all but leapt away.

Faron made a quick thrust, low enough to pierce Tarli's heart.

Tarli, his head cocked, caught the rustling of cloth. He turned and smacked Faron's wrist with the dagger's hilt. The other boy yelped, dropped his dagger, and Tarli snatched it up.

Faron fell to his hands and knees, searching for his weapon. Tarli stood beside him and called loudly, "Janeel!"

Janeel lurched toward him, fell over Faron, and lost his dagger as well. Tarli stepped between them and shouted, "Paladine help me! Steyan! Somebody! They've got my arms pinned."

A number of boys advanced on what they thought was easy prey. After the first few went down in a heap, the rest were inevitable victims.

Gradually the groans and mutterings of the defeated pile of arms and legs sank to nothing. Except for Tarli, only Saliak, feinting determinedly around the empty courtyard, was still upright.

"Dein?" Saliak sidestepped. "Faron?"

Faron and Dein, half-buried in the pile, were cursing each other and Tarli.

Saliak had wrapped his shirt around his arm in a makeshift shield and used his dagger as a probe to find someone. "Janeel?" He sounded afraid. "Anybody?"

Then he did something that impressed Moran. Saliak ran end-to-end in the courtyard, his fingers outstretched. When he touched the far wall, he spun around and ran the other way.

As luck would have it, both times he missed the pile of novices. He stood still and called out, "Is everyone all right? You sound like you're in pain. Do you need help?"

The worst among them is becoming a knight, Moran thought with satisfaction.

Saliak was now thoroughly frightened. "Answer me!" He leapt to one side, as though something he couldn't see had lunged at him. "Sire, tell me they're all right!"

Although he remained silent, Moran was moved.

Tarli tiptoed over to Saliak.

"Booga-booga-booga!" Tarli yelled and poked Saliak in the ribs with his finger.

Saliak screamed and slashed wildly. Tarli leapt back, laughing. The others, hearing the noise, struggled to stand, grunting and cursing.

Moran viewed glumly the shambles of the exercise. "All right, take off your blindfolds."

Those who could helped those who couldn't. They gaped at what they saw: themselves, unarmed, in the center of the courtyard, and Tarli, still blindfolded, standing confidently over a stack of daggers.

Most of the boys were bruised, hardly any cut. Moran supposed that the exercise might be judged a success.

Saliak tugged angrily at his blindfold. "It won't come off." Several boys tried to untie Saliak's blindfold, but every tug made the knot tighter. Finally Janeel asked Tarli for a dagger.

Tarli shrugged and tossed it, lightly and easily, without having to look, then he cut his own blindfold off, picked up his ever-present duffel and thonged stick, and walked to lunch alone, whirling the stick, listening to it hum.

Saliak, rubbing the marks out of his head, stared viciously after him. "I'll kill the little animal. I'll kill him. I'll kill him."

Moran, standing behind him, said coldly, "Saliak."

Saliak spun, reddening. "Sire."

"A word of advice: Don't attempt it blindfolded. You'll hurt yourself."

Steyan laughed aloud. Saliak shot him a nasty look. Moran thought sadly, He'll pay for that laugh. Rakiel watched the boys limp out of the courtyard. "Tarli's hearing is amazing — for a human," he commented.

"It's a common enough human talent," Moran retorted irritably. "My own hearing — " He stopped.

"You were about to say something about your hearing?" Rakiel prodded him.

"It's fairly good." He looked pointedly at the cleric, daring him to continue. Rakiel smiled, shrugged, and walked off. As soon as he was alone, Moran began sorting and counting the daggers. The count was woefully off. A trip to the barracks — and Tarli's duffel — replaced only a few of them. Tarli was vague about what had happened to the rest. A search of the manor produced no more daggers.

Moran spent the evening in more paperwork, helped by a sarcastic and skeptical Rakiel. A late-night bout of Draconniel, in which Moran lost seven footmen to Rakiel's suicide squadrons, did nothing to improve the knight's temper.

"Another expense?" Rakiel asked a week later.

Moran grunted. This one was for missing pots and pans — Tarli had used them in the nightly barracks battle, for "armor."

"Doesn't anyone ever ask you if you're overspending?" the cleric demanded.

"No." Moran gritted his teeth, then said calmly, "Knights trust one another. I write the forms, I sign and seal documents, and I hold the gold and silver in the treasury room below, not far from the novices' barracks and… Oh, Paladine!" It was the first time in twenty years that Moran had sworn aloud.

Rakiel watched, amazed to see an old man run so fast.

By the time the cleric arrived, puffing and panting from his exertions, Moran was standing in the open door, staring at the shelves laden with sacks of gold, coins, caskets, bowls, and chalices. There were noticeable gaps.

Moran started down the hall, then turned back around. "Here." He tossed Rakiel the key. "Make an inventory, then lock up as tight as a dragon's… Tight." Rakiel nodded dazedly. "Then sit against the door till I come back."

Moran was planning for a long search, but it was all too short. He found the missing items standing on a stone windowsill in the barracks.

A golden chalice, encrusted with gems, tapered into a griffin's foot, clutching a silver semispherical base.

A marble chest was inlaid with onyx. The top handle was in the shape of a red dragon swooping down on a knight and horse. The dragon's eyes were rubies; the knight's shield was a single multifaceted emerald.

A tray, inlaid with pearl, jet, and diamonds, portrayed the tomb of Huma by moonlight. The tray was propped up so that the diamonds, catching the sunlight, reflected onto the ceiling.

"Aren't they beautiful?" Tarli was sitting on the bed in the comer. The bed legs had been removed, or maybe he had traded beds with Steyan. He was alone in the room, calmly whittling on the thong-stick.

Moran pointed to the articles in the window. "Are those

… Did you…"

"Put them there? Yes. I borrowed them." Tarli, stick in hand, walked to the window. "The room needed something cheerful, and — can you believe it? — these things were just sitting on shelves in the dark. I thought they'd remind some of us of our training," he finished quietly.

"Are these the only things you… borrowed?"

"They were all I could carry." Tarli looked around the bare, dismal room critically. "I could go back for more — "

"No!" Moran said, then, more calmly, "Don't go into that storeroom again. Don't take things out of it again. Don't do anything at all in relation to the storeroom, unless I give my written permission to do so."

"All right, Sire." Tarli looked puzzled.

"And now I'll take these back." Moran gathered up the chalice, the chest, and the tray.

"Why? They won't do anyone any good, shut up in that room."

Moran said delicately, "The knights prefer that these things be locked away, to discourage thieves."

"No!" Tarli was shocked. "Thieves? Here?" A monstrous idea occurred to him. "Among the novices?"

"It's been known," Moran said dryly.

Rakiel had completed the inventory when Moran returned. The cleric quickly added the last three items. "Do you want to see the list — ?"

Moran shook his head. He sat heavily on an oaken chest whose lock, he noted thankfully, was rusted shut and intact. "That's the lot. Sorry to put you to the extra work."

"No trouble." Rakiel crumpled the list and stuffed it in his robes. "I assume it was Tarli who stole them. Have you noticed — ?"

Moran cut him off. "Go to the basement. Bring me a handful of spikes and a hammer. I'm sealing this door."

Rakiel did not move, eyed him grimly. "Have you noticed," he said determinedly, "that the novices are right about his being like a kender? He doesn't have the pointed ears, of course," he added hastily, "or the topknot hair, and he is a little taller, but his habits, and his recklessness, and his…"

Moran glowered at the cleric. "Loraine was human. Very short, a bit odd, but human. Go."

Rakiel left. The knight, alone on the trunk, sagged and closed his eyes, too tired even to dream of Loraine.

Moran sat clearing away his manuscripts. Drill reason was nearly over.

The game of Draconniel was over as well; last night Rakiel's forces, depleted over months of ruthless tactics, withdrew in disorder. Moran killed and captured as many as mercy and logistics allowed, then accepted Rakiel's sullen congratulations and gladly slipped downstairs to check on the novices.

In retrospect, he wished he had stayed with Rakiel.

Hidden in his niche, Moran listened to the boys in the barracks. This was their last night. In the morning, the novices would be given squires' tunics and the names of the knights they would serve.

The boys had smuggled in cakes and ale — Moran had known — but they didn't feel like eating or drinking. It was no longer fun breaking the rules.

Unfortunately, none of them felt that way yet about bullying their three victims.

Janeel, with false heartiness, said, "Gully Gut can celebrate for us."

Dein and Faron had bound Maglion's arms to his bed. By now he offered only a little resistance, mechanically pushing the others away. Only his eyes showed anger and pain.

Steyan, his legs doubled up behind him and his body stuffed into an open trunk, watched as best he could. His head and neck were bent forward to fit in the trunk, which was labeled, "Gnome's Shortening Device."

Tarli was chained, muzzled, and gagged. Set in front of him were a gnawed bone and a sign: beware! kender bites!

Tarli watched the others with patient indifference.

"Mustn't leave you thirsty." Janeel poured a full flagon of ale down Maglion's throat, some of it foaming into the fat boy's nostrils. He choked and sputtered.

"And now" — Janeel waved a cake in front of Maglion like a conjurer — "a nut cake! Made with real honey. Don't you want it? Or should I feed it to Kender Stew?" He held it to Tarli's nose. "Poor Kender Stew. Has to beg for treats." He spun, and mashed it into Maglion's face. "Gully Gut gets them for nothing."

He pulled the fat boy's hair, forced open his mouth, and shoved the entire cake in. Then he mashed Maglion's jaw up and down on the cake. A single angry tear leaked from the fat boy's eyes.

"Wait." The voice sounded weary, embarrassed, and ashamed. To Moran's surprise, it was Saliak who spoke. "This is wrong. I've been wrong."

He wiped Maglion's face clean, using one of his shirts as a towel, then untied his arms. The fat boy took the shirt from him without a word and finished cleaning himself.

"I thought it was fun." Saliak bent down and undid the strap buckles on Steyan's knees and elbows. "I thought, they're strange, and we're not, and it's only… fun."

Steyan, free of the trunk, stumbled and fell. Saliak massaged Steyan's arms and legs to bring the feeling back.

"We all thought that." Saliak looked around anxiously. "Didn't we? We all laughed." He looked as far as Tarli and looked away, flushing. When Steyan groaned and rolled over, Saliak stepped to Tarli.

"I never thought about the Oath." Saliak unlatched the chain. "And the Measure was just, well, classroom stuff." He unbuckled the muzzle and said, as he untied the gag, "I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to hit me."

"Fair enough," Tarli said, and kicked Saliak in the groin.

The others gasped, in surprise and in sympathetic pain. Maglion and Steyan looked as though, after a rainy spring, the sun had broken through.

Saliak, when he could rise to his knees, gasped, "Is that any way for a knight to fight?"

Tarli shrugged. "You'd rather fight face-to-face?"

Saliak looked green. "I'd rather not fight just now"

"But you insulted my honor. Repeatedly. And now you know it."

Saliak blinked several times; he was having trouble focusing. "The Measure says that if I choose not to fight, and have apologized, then you must accept my apology."

Tarli nodded. "So it does." He added, so casually that Moran's heart froze within him, "But my own code is more important than the Measure. Face-to-face?"

Saliak nodded, grunting with the effort.

"Good." Tarli tilted Saliak's head up. With the taller boy on his knees, the two boys were on eye level. Tarli clenched his hands together and swung them both into Saliak's face, knocking him backward.

"This may hurt a little — "

After a few more punches, Tarli propped Saliak upright with the thonged stick and began a systematic top-tobottom dismantling of Saliak, punches only. Moran, watching in dismay, had to admit that what Tarli did not know about mercy or the Measure, he clearly made up for with his knowledge of anatomy.

At length, Tarli, staggering under the weight, carried the beaten Saliak to bed. Steyan and Maglion shook Tarli's hand several times. Then, to Moran's immense relief, the two larger boys dressed and bandaged Saliak. Everyone but Tarli seemed at last to understand what the Measure was, to a knight.

Moran hated doing it.

He could see Loraine's laughing face, quizzical and completely trusting. All that summer, she had never looked as though she thought anyone would hurt her, and he had tried very hard never to be the one who did.

After breakfast, Rakiel, with every show of sympathy and every indication of smugness, went down the stairs and sent Tarli up.

Moran argued with himself a final time. The best I could hope for, he said to himself, is that it would be many years before he failed. And then it would be trial, and conviction, and the black roses of guilt on the table.

He sat quietly, rehearsing what he would say. As many years as he had sent squires from the manor, Moran always hated good-byes — unexpected good-byes the most.

At the end of the summer, Loraine came

to him. "I'm going away. Don't ask, and don't follow."

He argued, but she stood firm. "You have

your duty. your honor is your life,

remember? Keep your honor for my sake.

Remember your promise to me."

She kissed him. He tried to catch her, but

she twisted out of his hold and was gone -

both from his arms and from Xak Tsaroth.

She was carrying a duffel that he hadn't

even noticed she'd brought. Hurt, he

watched her walk away. As the winds from

the side streets blew across her, she

carefully patted her hair in place over her

ars. She did not look back.

Moran returned to his studies. Years

later, when he heard that Loraine had

returned, he didn't go to visit her.

Tarli knocked. For once, Moran didn't put on the Mask, but left his face as gentle and weary as he'd seen it in the mirror. "Come in."

Tarli had his duffel and thonged stick with him. He looked at Moran quizzically. "I've never seen you at your desk. Is that where you wrote The Brightblade Tactics?"

"Yes." Moran gestured at the other chair. "Sit down."

Without further delays, he began: "Tarli, I've watched your progress these past few weeks. You've done wonders, in spite of your size."

Tarli nodded proudly.

"And in every situation — and I know that in some training sessions you've faced real danger — you haven't shown the slightest fear."

Tarli looked puzzled. "Of course not."

"Most of your classmates found it harder. In three decades of novices, you're probably the most courageous boy I've ever taught."

Tarli beamed.

Moran did not smile back. "However, your courage showed itself in — well, in strange ways. Instead of using weapons, you broke or… took them. Instead of accepting training as offered, you took it and reshaped it. It would not be too much to say that you changed everyone else's training, too."

Tarli sat rigidly. "I did my best for them." He seemed not to understand what was happening to him.

"There has also been a problem of property" — Moran tried to dance around it — "private property. You don't seem to acknowledge others' property as off-limits, unavailable."

Tarli frowned, irked. "If people would just label things — "

"We can't label everything, and what with one thing and another — " Moran waved his arm. "Lances, daggers, miscellaneous books, and foodstuffs — this has been the costliest term I can remember."

Tarli scratched his head. "I've heard people saying that costs are going up all over the city."

Moran said more diffidently, "Finally, in private, you've faced a certain amount of… of hardship from the other boys. For the most part, you endured it patiently."

Tarli's eyes widened. "You knew, then."

Moran nodded. "I needed to know how each of you would respond. Being a knight is learning to act like a knight." He finished, watching Tarli's face, "Not just in training or in combat, but at all times."

He waited.

Finally Tarli said, unembarrassed, "Then you know about last night, too."

"I do." Moran cleared his throat. "You fought in direct defiance of the Measure. What you said, even more than what you did, shows that you don't believe in the Measure."

Moran sighed. "Believe me, Tarli, I'm sorrier than you can imagine. But you just weren't meant to be a knight. You have your own way of doing things, your own view of others' rights, and your own code of honor, and they'll never square with becoming a knight." Righteous but unhappy, he faced Tarli.

"You're absolutely right, Sire. The knights are all wrong for me." Tarli made it sound as though it were the knights' fault.

Moran stared at him. "You don't mind?"

"Not anymore." Tarli frowned. "I would have minded when I started. Did you know, I promised my mother that I'd try to become a knight?"

Moran shook his head, partly to clear it.

"She said it would be good for me and for the knighthood." He sighed loudly. "Sometimes, these past few weeks, I've wondered if she meant it as some kind of joke."

Possible, Moran thought, smiling sadly. Very possible.

"Ah, well. Time to go." Tarli stood up, but he didn't leave. "By the way, I do have another name, Sire."

Moran stiffened. "So I assumed."

"I just don't use it, since my father and mother weren't married." He looked, clear-eyed and innocently, at Moran.

"Your mother's name was good enough," Moran said gruffly. Since that summer, Loraine had become elevated in Moran's mind into a sort of spirit-woman, someone whose love was too wild and pure for Moran.

"By rights I can use the other name." Tarli didn't sound bitter or ironic, merely stating a fact. "Did you know that?"

Moran nodded. "I assumed you didn't know the name." He added quickly, "Which is not an insult to your mother. She was a wonderful woman. I knew her well, you know."

"I knew that."

Moran licked his lips, which were suddenly dry. "Of course you have the right to use your father's name. I think" — he paused and braced himself — "I think he'd be proud."

"Are you?" Tarli asked quietly.

Moran was stunned by the simple directness of the question. Tarli had to repeat it.

Finally Moran stammered, "I… uh… She never told me…"

"Well, my mother told me. And she always told the truth." Tarli looked tolerant of someone else's failing. "She said you probably wouldn't like it if I took your name. She said you might feel awkward about it, training boys like you do. It didn't make sense to her, but she thought you'd want it that way."

Moran nodded. "She was good to me when I needed her most. Except for leaving, she was always good to me." He asked a question he'd wondered about for eighteen years. "Did she know that I would have married her?"

Now Tarli looked startled. "She never told you? She knew, but she didn't think it would work. You're very different from her." He added calmly, "But I think she loved you."

"I think so, too" Moran thought, briefly and with regret, of the demands of knighthood, of bastardly scandals in the knighthood, and of the fact that conflicts of duty can be every bit as painful as conflicts of honor. "You have my permission. Use my name if you wish."

Tarli smiled. "Thank you, but I think I'll keep using my own name, plus my formal name, now that I'm an adult."

Moran, amused by this sudden eighteen-year-old adult, said, "And what name is that?"

Tarli answered easily and calmly, "Tarli Half-Kender."

Moran's jaw sagged slowly, like something settling into a swamp. "Half… kender?" he repeated faintly.

"That's right." Tarli flipped the broken lance end-forend.

Moran remembered Loraine's words. No matter who the child is, or what it's like? And her laughter. I love strange places and strange men. Even her constant patting of her hair, over her ears. "Half-Kender?"

"I suppose I could use 'Flamehair.' It's a respected name among her people, you know. I didn't want to use it at first, since it would look like social climbing."

Moran's room reeled around him. "Half-Kender?" How could he have been so stupid? Or was it that he just wouldn't admit it to himself?

"That's right." Tarli stared off into space and said reflectively, "But my mother left her people and came here. Kender all love wandering. That's why she left here, too, partly."

Tarli walked around the room with his duffel, looking absently at things. The shaken Moran would later discover that a bottle of wine, a table knife, and a copy of The Brightblade Tactics had disappeared. "I'd better get going."

But Tarli stopped and rummaged in the duffel, which seemed disturbingly full. "Could you give these back to your cleric friend?"

Moran took the offered scrolls. "He gave these to you?"

"Not exactly." Tarli grinned. "I just needed something to read one night, and his room was unlocked — or almost." He trailed off, then brightened. "The parts about the knights' treasury are pretty good."

Moran unrolled the top scroll (the seal was already broken) and read:

Most Revered Cleric Ansilus, in Istar.

Greetings, and the blessings of the only true gods, from their servant and your brother rakiel; may you and they speak well of him.

Written when the moon Solinari is on the wane in the Month of the Moon Lunitari ascendant in the Queen of Darkness.

So far, things go well. I have learned the extent of the knights' wealth here in Xak Tsaroth and believe that it is more than is needed for a defensive training force in peace time. I will recommend that the Church could make better use of it.

I have gained access once to the Treasury, and have enclosed an itemized list of its contents. I am unsure how the money and precious metals are transported from the Treasury and where the knights' main store is, but hope to find out soon. The old man who trains these peasants is a fool…

Moran closed his eyes, remembering Rakiel asking questions, Rakiel filling out forms, Rakiel offering to handle requisitions for the lances.

"Plus this. I kept it because of the map — I love maps — but I don't suppose I'll be back here ever."

The "map" was a floor plan of the Manor of the Measure, with the storeroom marked in red. On the bottom of the scroll was a careful tracing, from the top, bottom, and end, of the treasure room key.

"I'll kill him," Moran muttered, but even as he said it he recoiled. There was no honor in Solamnia's best-trained weapons master killing a cleric who trembled when the knight brandished a butter knife.

Moran turned the paper over thoughtfully. If he could soothe his honor somehow and refrain from slaying Ra kiel, this page alone, sent to the Order of the Rose, would humiliate the clerics and probably keep the knights in Xak Tsaroth free of their influence for years to come.

"Thank you for showing me this," Moran said.

Tarli smiled, looked at the knight affectionately. "Uncle Moran, you've been good to me."

"Uncle Moran? You may call me 'Father.' "

Tarli nodded, almost shyly. "I'd like that. You know, you've been almost a spiritual guide to me — "

Moran, holding Rakiel's tracing of the knights' treasury, had a wild idea.

"I may still be your guide," he said slowly. "Tell me, Tarli, where will you go from here?"

Tarli frowned, considering. "No idea," he said finally. "Maybe to meet my mother's people again. I've been with them, and they're nice." He frowned still more, and Moran was reminded forcibly of himself. "But sometimes I think I ought to make something of myself."

Moran took a deep breath and said carefully, "Have you considered the clergy?"

From his blank expression, clearly Tarli never had.

The blankness turned to wonder. "You know, you're right," Tarli said excitedly. "They're perfect. I'd have a wonderful time. The more I know of clerics, the more their code seems more like mine than the knights' does." He looked up suddenly at Moran. "No offense."

"Oh, none." Moran hid a smile.

"Tell me, do the clerics accept common — accept people like me?"

Ah, Tarli, Moran thought fondly, there ARE no other people like you. His hand closed in a fist around Rakiel's letters. It was hard, not killing a man for a debt of honor, but this way might be better.

"I'll write your recommendation myself. The clerics owe me a large favor. You'll get in, sight unseen." He pictured, briefly, Tarli in a classroom of fledgling clerics. This was better than murdering Rakiel in uneven combat.

"Thank you." Tarli was genuinely surprised and pleased. "Mother always said you would be good to me."

"Ah. And what will you do as a cleric?"

Tarli's eyes looked far away and dreamy. "I'll go to my mother's people. Something tells me they'll need clerics in the future."

He swung the stick at his side. "And I'll take them this weapon I've designed. It's a great thing for short people in a fight. I need a name for it." He spun the stick over his head. "Isn't that a wonderful sound? Hoop," he said happily. "Hoop."

Moran scribbled a quick note. "Take this to the clerics and wait. I'll be sending… some other items… on to the Knights of the Rose." After a brief moral struggle, he added, "I hope the church will open many doors for you."

"If it doesn't, I'll open them myself." Tarli stuffed the note in his duffel, which by now was bulging ominously.

He said quickly, "Good-bye, Father."

Moran's arms remembered what eighteen years could not erase. He caught Tarli and held him. Tarli kissed his cheek. Not even the Mask could have kept a few tears from Moran's eyes.

Tarli dropped back to the ground and, in a gesture surprisingly like Loraine's, patted his hair back over his ears. It didn't matter, since his ears — however well they heard — looked exactly like his father's. He walked to the door, turned back suddenly.

"Maybe I'll be able to teach the clerics as much as I've taught the knights."

And he was gone.

Moran, watching from the window as Tarli rode off on Rakiel's horse, laughed out loud for the first time in many years. "Maybe you will, Tarli. I know you will!"