Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [179]
“In a way,” Kieri said.
“Your paladin—that yellow-haired girl—”
“Not my paladin,” Kieri said firmly. “She’s Gird’s, or the High Lord’s. And her name is Paksenarrion.”
“I know. She meddled in forbidden things. Places. Unwitting, at the time, but she did. And it is in those things the great change began, both the change to this age and the change to come.”
Kieri scowled. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“No. And I do not know what, if anything, to tell you. If the gods are moving in this, it is not my place to interfere—something the Lady would agree with. But if they are asking me to speak, then I must. I dislike this uncertainty.”
“I would prefer to know.”
“I am sure you would, and yet knowledge given out of time can bring disaster.”
“As can knowledge withheld,” Kieri said. “In war, it is most commonly withholding knowledge that kills.” Dameroth looked thoughtful but said nothing. Kieri went on. “Does Arian share your certainty about this change?”
“No. And I am not certain—it is the uncertainty that drives me to speak, but only partially. I will tell you this: what that paladin touched—in two places far apart—has begun the next great change. And I hear from elves in Tsaia that someone else you knew, your former Verrakai captain, has touched another, and the paladin with her.”
“You can’t leave it there,” Kieri said. But Arian’s father was already turning away; he vanished in a pulse of light. Another damned elf evading conflict, refusing to help … Kieri sat on the bench and stared at the water, thinking of everything Arian’s father had said. Despite himself, he found his mind drifting to what hadn’t been said. What had Paks done—or been involved in—that could bring about a great change—whatever that was? What places had she been? Kolobia? What else? It was easier, in a way, than thinking about Arian and why she had run away like that. Every time he thought of Arian, his anger rose again, and grief, and he could feel the taig react.
Where was Arian? Did even her father know? Was her father right about why she had left … and that she would return? What would the Lady do if she did?
He left the garden a little later, hardly noticing as the Squires on duty fell in behind him without speaking. He did not want to speak to anyone … he went down, and down again until he was in the chamber outside the ossuary. Sitting on the bench, taking off his boots and socks, he felt more numb and empty than he had before. Why had he come here? What could the dead tell him, that the living could not?
And yet … he went in and stood once more by his father, his father who had loved an elf and suffered her loss … suffered his son’s loss.
“We both lost a loved wife,” Kieri said, as if to that man. “We both lost a son, and I a daughter as well. I do not want to lose Arian. I don’t know how—what to do—” He turned to his sister’s bones and laid a hand on her skull. “As you were woman, sister, you may understand Arian better than I do. Help me understand, help me know what to do …”
Peace sifted down on him, flake by flake, it seemed. In the silence, in the freshness of the air, he felt calmer. Under his bare feet, the stone grew a little warmer; he felt moved to lie down, there in the aisle, having been invited. Under his back, the stone felt firm, warm through his clothes, almost as if shaped for him.
Rest. No outward voice, but an inward command. Why here? Why now? He closed his eyes, in spite of uncertainty. His thoughts wandered to the past, as far back as his arrival at Aliam’s … as recent as the confrontation with the Lady … as distant as the coast of Aarenis and the king of Pargun …
And once again, his sister’s presence, this time more clear than ever before. They lie. She lies. She did not send the sword.
Kieri tried to hold the same stillness, to listen only.
She called mother. She called you. She did not protect. The image he’d seen before: the Lady’s face. Then another image: two elves