First Test

Once she was on solid ground, she began to climb the bluff, her soaked feet digging for purchase in soft dirt and rock. Above, the spidren leaned over the edge of the bluff to leer at her. It reached into the sack, dragged out a second kitten, and began to eat it.

Kel still had a rock in her right hand. She hurled it as hard as she had ever thrown a ball to knock down a target. It smashed the spidren’s nose. The thing shrieked and hissed, dropping the rest of its meal.

Kel’s foot slipped. She looked down to find a better place to set it and froze. She was only seven feet above the water, but the distance seemed more like seventy to her. A roar filled her ears and her head span. Cold sweat trickled through her clothes. She clung to the face of the bluff with both arms and legs, sick with fear.

Leaving its sack on the ground, the spidren threw a loop of web around a nearby tree stump. When it was set, the creature began to lower itself over the side of the bluff. Its hate-filled eyes were locked on the girl, whose terror had frozen her in place.

Kel was deaf and blind to the spidren’s approach. Later she could not recall hearing the monster’s scream as arrows thudded into its flesh, just as she could not remember the arrival of her brother Anders and his men-at-arms.

With the spidren’s death, its web rope snapped. The thing hurtled past Kel to splash into the river.

A man-at-arms climbed up to get her, gently prising her clutching fingers from their holds. Only when Kel was safely on the shore, seated on a flat rock, was she able to tell them why she had tried to kill a spidren with only stones for weapons. Someone climbed the bluff to retrieve the sack of kittens while Kel stared, shivering, at the spidren’s body.

Her brother Anders dismounted stiffly and limped over to her. Reaching into his belt pouch, he pulled out a handful of fresh mint leaves, crushed them in one gloved hand, and held them under Kel’s nose. She breathed their fresh scent in gratefully.

‘You’re supposed to have real weapons when you go after something that’s twice as big as you are,’ he told her mildly. ‘Didn’t the Yamanis teach you that?’ During the years most of their family had been in the Islands, Anders, Inness, and Conal, the three oldest sons of the manor, had served the crown as pages, squires, then knights. All they knew of Kel’s experiences there came in their family’s letters.

‘I had to do something,’ Kel explained.

‘Calling for help and staying put would have been wiser,’ he pointed out. ‘Leave the fighting to real warriors. Here we are.’ A man-at-arms put the recovered sack into his hands. Anders in turn put the bag in Kel’s lap.

Nervously she pulled the bag open. Five wet kittens, their eyes barely opened, turned their faces up to her and protested their morning’s adventure. ‘I’ll take you to our housekeeper,’ Kel promised them. ‘She knows what to do with kittens.’

Once the animals were seen to and she had changed into a clean gown and slippers, Kel went to her father’s study. With her came a small group of animals: two elderly dogs, three cats, two puppies, a kitten, and a three-legged pine marten. Kel gently moved them out of the way and closed the door before they could sneak into the room. Anders was there, leaning on a walking stick as he talked to their parents. All three adults fell silent and looked at Kel.

‘I’ll do it,’ she said quietly. ‘I want the training, and the right weapons. Anders was right. It was stupid to go after a spidren with stones.’

‘And if they send you home at the end of a year?’ asked Ilane of Mindelan.

Kel took a deep breath. ‘Then I’ll still know more than I do now,’ she said firmly.

Piers looked at his wife, who nodded. ‘Then we’d best pack,’ said Ilane, getting to her feet. ‘You leave the day after tomorrow.’ Passing Kel on her way to the door, her mother lightly touched the eye the village boy had hit. It was red, blue, and puffy – not the worst black eye Kel had ever had. ‘Let’s also get a piece of raw meat to put on this,’ suggested the woman.

The next evening, Kel made her way to the stables to visit her pony, Chipper, to explain to him that the palace would supply her with a knight’s mount. The pony lipped her shirt in an understanding way. He at least would be in good hands: Anders’s oldest son was ready to start riding, and he loved the pony.

‘I thought I might find you here,’ a voice said as Kel fed Chip an apple. She squeaked in surprise. For a man with a limp and a cane, Anders moved very quietly. ‘You know we’ll take care of him.’

Kel nodded and picked up a brush to groom the pony’s round sides. ‘I know. I’ll miss him all the same.’

Anders leaned against a post. ‘Kel …’

She looked at him. Since the incident on the river the day before, she’d caught Anders watching her. She barely remembered him before their departure to the Islands, six years ago – he had already been a knight, handsome and distant in his armour, always riding somewhere. In the months since their return to Mindelan, she had come to like him. ‘Something the matter?’ she asked.

Anders sighed. ‘Do you realize it’s going to be hard? Maybe impossible? They’ll make it tough. There’s hazing, for one thing. I don’t know when the custom started, but it’s called “earning your way”. It’s just for the first-year pages. The senior ones make you run stupid little errands, like fetching gloves and picking up things that get knocked over. You have to do it. Otherwise it’s the same as saying you don’t have to do what the older pages did, as if you think you’re better than they are. And older pages play tricks on the young ones, and some of them will pick fights. Stand up for yourself, or they’ll make your life a misery.’

‘In the rules they sent, fighting isn’t allowed.’

‘Of course it’s forbidden. If you’re caught, they punish you. That’s expected. What you must never do is tattle on another page, or say who you fought with. That’s expected, too. Tell them you fell down – that’s what I always said. Otherwise no one will trust you. A boy told when I was a page. He finally left because no one would speak to him.’

‘But they’ll punish me for fighting?’

‘With chores, extra lessons, things like that. You take every punishment, whatever it’s for, and keep quiet.’

‘Like the Yamanis,’ she said, brushing loose hairs from Chipper’s coat. ‘You don’t talk – you obey.’

Anders nodded. ‘Just do what you’re told. Don’t complain. If you can’t do it, say that you failed, not that you can’t. No one can finish every task that’s given. What your teachers don’t want is excuses, or blaming someone else, or saying it’s unfair. They know it’s unfair. Do what you can, and take your punishment in silence.’

Kel nodded. ‘I can do that, I think.’

Anders chuckled. ‘That’s the strange thing – I believe you can. But, Kel—’

Kel went to Chip’s far side, looking at Anders over the pony’s back. ‘What?’

The young man absently rubbed his stiff leg. ‘Kel, all these things you learned in the Islands …’

‘Yes?’ she prodded when he fell silent again.

‘You might want to keep them to yourself. Otherwise, the pages might think you believe you’re better than they are. You don’t want to be different, all right? At least, not any more different than you already are.’

‘Won’t they want to learn new things?’ she wanted to know. ‘I would.’

‘Not everyone’s like you, Kel. Do what they teach you, no more. You’ll save yourself heartache that way.’

Kel smiled. ‘I’ll try,’ she told him.

Anders straightened with a wince. ‘Don’t be out here too long,’ he reminded her. ‘You’re up before dawn.’

Unlike normal dreams, in which time and places and people did strange things, this dream was completely true to Kel’s memory. It began as she knelt before an altar and stared at the swords placed on it. The weapons were sheathed in pure gold rubbed as smooth and bright as glass. She was five years old again.

‘They are the swords given to the children of the fire goddess, Yama,’ a lady-in-waiting beside Kel said, awe in her soft voice. ‘The short sword is the sword of law. Without it, we are only animals. The long sword is the sword of duty. It is the terrible sword, the killing sword.’ Her words struck a chord in Kel that left the little girl breathless. She liked the idea that duty was a killing sword. ‘Without duty,’ the lady continued, ‘duty to our lords, to our families, and to the law, we are less than animals.’

Kel smelled burning wood. She looked around, curious. The large oil lamps that hung from the temple ceiling by thick cords smelled of perfume, not wood. Kel sniffed the air. She knew that fires were terrible on the Yamani Islands, where indoor walls were often paper screens and straw mats covered floors of polished wood.

The lady-in-waiting got to her feet.

The temple doors crashed open. There was Kel’s mother, Ilane, her outer kimono flapping open, her thick pale hair falling out of its pins. In her hands she carried a staff capped with a broad, curved blade. Her blue-green eyes were huge in her bone-white face.

‘Please excuse me,’ she told the lady-in-waiting, as calm and polite as any Yamani in danger, ‘but we must get out of here and find help. Pirates have attacked the cove and are within the palace.’

There was a thunder of shod feet on polished wood floors. Swords and axes crashed through the paper screens that formed the wall behind the altar. Scanrans – men already covered in blood and grime – burst into the room, fighting their way clear of the screens and their wooden frames.

An arm wrapped tight around Kel’s ribs, yanking her from her feet. The lady-in-waiting had scooped her up in one arm and the swords in the other. Faster than the raiders she ran to Ilane of Mindelan.

The lady tumbled to the ground. Kel slid out the door on her belly. Turning, too startled to cry, she saw the lady at her mother’s feet. There was an arrow in the Yamani woman’s back.

Ilane bent over the dead woman and took the swords. Hoisting them in one hand, she swung her weapon to her right and to her left. It sheared through the heavy cords that suspended five large oil lamps. They fell and shattered, spilling a flood of burning oil. It raced across the temple in the path of the raiders who were running towards them. When their feet began to burn, they halted, trying to put the fire out.

‘Come on!’ Kel’s mother urged. ‘Hike up those skirts and run!’