Tamora Pierce - Protector Of The Small 4 - Lady Knight

Tamora Pierce

Protector of the Small 04

Lady Knight

ISBN 0 439 99241 9

This e-book is not for sale!!!

To the people of New York City:

I always knew the great sacrifice and kindness

my neighbours are capable of, but now the rest

of the world knows, too

The palace in Corus, the capital of Tortall, in the twenty-first year of the reign of Jonathan and

Thayet, his queen

Mid-March, 456 HE (Human Era)

1

STORM WARNINGS

She lay with the comfortable black blanket of sleep wrapped around her. Then, against the blackness,

light moved and strengthened to reveal twelve large, vaguely rat- or insect-like metal creatures, devices

built for murder. The killing devices were magical structures made of iron-coated giants' bones, chains,

pulleys, dagger-fingers and -toes, and a long, whiplike tail. The seven-foot-tall devices stood motionless

in a half circle as the light struck what lay at their feet: a pile of dead children.

With the devices and the bodies revealed, the light spread to find the man who seemed to be the

master of the creations. To Keladry of Mindelan, known as Kel, he was the Nothing Man. He was

almost two feet shorter than the killing devices, long-nosed and narrow-mouthed, with small, rapidly

blinking eyes and dull brown hair. His dark robe was marked with stains and burns; his hair was

unkempt. He always gnawed a fingernail, or scratched a pimple, or shifted from foot to foot.

Once that image - devices, bodies, man - was complete, Kel woke. She stared at the shadowed

ceiling and cursed the Chamber of the Ordeal. The Chamber had shown Kel this vision, or variations of

it, after her formal ordeal of knighthood. As far as Kel knew, no one else had been given any visions of

people to be found once they were knighted. As everyone she knew understood it, the Ordeal was

straightforward enough. The Chamber forced would-be knights to live through their fears. If they did this

without making a sound, they were released, to be proclaimed knights, and that was the end of the

matter.

Kel was different. Three or four times a week, the Chamber sent her this dream. It was a reminder of

the task it had set her. After her Ordeal, before the Chamber set her free, it had shown her the killing

devices, the Nothing Man and the dead children. It had demanded that Kel stop it all.

Kel guessed that the Nothing Man would be in Scanra, to the north, since the killing devices had

appeared during Scanran raids on Tortall last summer. Trapped in the capital by a hard winter, with

travel to the border nearly impossible, Kel had lived with growing tension. She had to ride north as soon

as the mountain passes opened, if she was to sneak into Scanra and begin her search for the Nothing

Man. Every moment she remained in Tortall invited the growing risk that the king would issue orders to

most knights, including Kel, to defend the northern border. The moment Kel got those orders, she would

be trapped. She had vowed to defend the realm and obey its monarchs, which would mean fighting

soldiers, not hunting for a mage whose location was unknown.

"Maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe I'll ride out one day and find there's a line of killing devices from the

palace right up to the Nothing Man's door," she grumbled, easing herself out from under her covers. Kel

never threw off her blankets. With a number of sparrows and her dog sharing her bed, she might smother

a friend if she hurried. Even taking care, she heard muffled cheeps of protest. "Sorry," she told her

companions, and set her feet on the cold flagstones of her floor.

She made her way across her dark room and opened the shutters on one of her windows. Before her

lay a courtyard and a stable where the men of the King's Own kept their horses. The torches that lit the

courtyard were nearly out. The pearly radiance that came to the eastern sky in the hour before dawn fell

over snow, stable and the edges of the palace wall beyond.

The scant light showed a big girl of eighteen, broad-shouldered and solid-waisted, with straight,

mouse-brown hair cut short below her earlobes and across her forehead. She had a dreamer's hazel

eyes, set beneath long, curling lashes, odd in contrast to the many fine scars on her hands and the muscles

that flexed and bunched under her nightshirt. Her nose was still unbroken and delicate after eight years of

palace combat training, her lips full and quicker to smile than frown. Determination filled every inch of her

strong body.

Motion in the shadows at the base of the courtyard wall caught her eye. Kel gasped as a winged

creature waddled out into the open courtyard, as ungainly on its feet as a vulture. The flickering torchlight

caught and sparked along the edges of metal feathers on wings and legs. Steel legs, flexible and limber,

ended in steel-clawed feet. Between the metal wings and above the metal legs and feet was human flesh,

naked, hairless, grimy, and in this case, male.

The Stormwing looked at Kel and grinned, baring sharp steel teeth. His face was lumpy and

unattractive, marked by a large nose, small eyes and a thin upper lip with a full lower one. He had the

taunting smile of someone born impudent. "Startle you, did I?" he enquired.

Kel thanked the gods that the cold protected her sensitive nose, banishing most of the Stormwing's foul

stench. Stormwings loved battlefields, where they tore corpses to pieces, urinated on them, smeared

them with dung, then rolled in the resulting mess. The result was a nauseating odor that, in the heat, would

make the strongest stomach rebel. Her teachers had explained that the purpose of Stormwings was to

make people think twice before they chose to fight, knowing what might happen to the dead when

Stormwings arrived. So far they hadn't done much good as far as Kel could see: people still fought

battles and killed each other, Stormwings or no. Tortall's Stormwing population was thriving. This was

the first she'd seen on palace grounds, though.

Kel glared at him. "Get out of here, you nasty thing! Shoo!"

"Is that any way to greet a future companion?" demanded the Stormwing, raising thin brown brows.

"You people are getting ready to stage an entertainment for our benefit up north. You'll be seeing a lot of

us this year."

"Not if I can help it," Kel retorted. Grimly she walked across her dark room, stubbing her toe on the

trunk at the foot of her bed. She cursed and limped over to the racks where she kept her weapons.

When she found her bow and a quiver of arrows, she strung the bow and hopped back to her window.

She placed the quiver on her window seat, and put an arrow on the string. Outside, the courtyard was

empty. The Stormwing's footprints in the snow ended right under Kel's window.

Scowling, Kel looked up and around. There he was, perched on the peak of the stable roof, a

steel-dressed portent of war. Kel raised her bow. She wouldn't actually kill the creature, just make him

go away.

He looked down at her, cackled, and took to the air, spiraling out of Kel's range. He flipped his tail at

her three times in a mockery of a wave, then sailed away over the palace wall.

"I hate those things," grumbled Kel as she removed the bowstring. The thought of anyone's dead

providing Stormwings with entertainment gave her the shudders. And she knew there was a good chance

that she might become a Stormwing toy very soon.

There was no point in going back to sleep now. Instead, Kel cleaned up, dressed, and took down her

glaive. It was her favourite weapon, a wooden staff five feet long, shod with iron, cored with lead, and

capped by eighteen inches of curved, razor-sharp steel. Banishing all thoughts, opening herself to

movement, she began the first steps, thrust, lunges and spins of the most complicated combat

pattern-dance she knew.

Her dog, Jump, grumbled and crawled out of bed. He leaped out of one of the open windows to

empty his bladder. The sparrows, fluffed up and piping their own complaints, fluttered outside to visit

their kinfolk around the palace.

Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie's Peak, Kel's former knight-master and present taskmaster, was not

in his study when Kel arrived there after breakfast. Another morning conference, she thought, and sat

down with chalk and slate to calculate the number of wagons that would be required to move the King's

Own's supplies up to the Scanran border. She was nearly done when Lord Raoul came in, a sheaf of

papers in one ham-sized fist.

"We're in it for certain," he told Kel. He was a big man, heavily muscled from years of service with the

Own. His ruddy face was lit with snapping black eyes and topped with black curls. Like Kel, he was

dressed for comfort in tunic, shirt, breeches and boots in shades of maroon, brown and cream. He

slammed his bulk into one of the chairs facing the desk where she worked. "You know, I thank the gods

every day that Daine is on our side," he informed Kel. "If ever we've needed a mage who can get animals

to spy and carry messages, it's now."

Kel nodded. Unlike other generations, hers did not have to wait for Scanran information until the

mountain passes cleared each year. Daine, known as the Wildmage, shared a magical bond with animals,

one that endured even when she was not with them. For three years her eagles, hawks, owls and geese

had carried tidings south while the land slept through winter snows, allowing Tortall to prepare itself for

the latest moves in Scanra.

"Important news, I take it?" Kel asked.

"I'm glad you're sitting down," Raoul said. "The Scanrans have a new king."

Kel shrugged. Rulership in Scanra was always changing. The clan lords were unruly and proud; few

dynasties lasted more than a generation or two. This last one hadn't even lasted one generation. She was

surprised that Raoul would be concerned about yet another king on what was called the Bloody Throne.

Far more worrisome was the threat that had emerged a couple of years before, a warlord named Maggur

Rathhausak. He had studied combat in realms with real armies, not raiding bands. Serving as one clan's

warlord, he had conducted enough successful raids in Tortall that other clans had asked him to lead their

fighters as well. With more warriors he had won more victories and brought home more loot and slaves,

enough to bribe other clans to swear allegiance to him. It was Rathhausak that the Tortallans prepared to

fight this year, not the ruling council in Hamrkeng or its king.

"So they'll be fighting each other all summer instead of…" Kel let her voice trail off as Raoul shook his

head. "Sir?" she asked, unsure of his meaning.

"Maggur Rathhausak," Raoul told her. "He's brought all Scanra's clans into his grip. This year he'll

have a real army to send against us. A real army, trained for army-style battle, instead of a basketful of

raiding parties. Plus however many of those killing devices he can send along to cut our people to shreds.

The messages from the north report at least fifty of the things, wrapped up in canvas and waiting for the

spell that will make them move again."

Kel set her chalk and slate down. Then she swallowed and asked, "The council let Maggur take

over?"

"They weren't given a choice. Maggur had nine clans under his banner last year. The word is he

smuggled them into the capital at Hamrkeng after the summer fighting and, well, persuaded the clans to

make him king." Raoul tossed his papers on the desk with a sigh. "We knew it was to be war this

summer, but we thought we'd be facing half the warriors in the country, not all of them. Jonathan's

sending messengers out to all the lords of his council. He wants our army to start north as soon as we can

manage it." The big man grinned, showing all his teeth, wolf-like. "We'll prepare the warmest reception

for our northern brothers that we can. Once they cross our border, they'll think they've marched into a

bake oven, by Mithros."

Kel stared blindly at the paper on top of the stack Raoul had just thrown on to the desk. It was

decision time: await the Crown's orders, or slip away to wait for the northern passes to clear so she

could track down the Nothing Man? She didn't know enough; that was the problem. She needed

information, and there was only one place she could think of to get it. "Sir, has anybody entered the

Chamber of the Ordeal a second time?"

For a moment the only sound was the crackle of the fire in the hearth. Raoul froze. At length he said, "I

must tell the bathhouse barber to clean my ears tomorrow. I could have sworn you just asked me if

anyone has ever returned to the Chamber of the Ordeal. That's not funny, Kel."

"I didn't mean to be funny, sir," she replied. Shortly after her Ordeal and knighthood Raoul had

commanded her to address him by his first name, but "sir" was as close as she could bring herself. She

clenched her hands so he couldn't see them shake. "I'm serious. I need to know if you've ever heard of

anyone going back there."

"No," Raoul said firmly. "No one's been mad enough to consider it. Most folk can tell when once is

more than enough. Why in the name of the Great Mother Goddess do you ask?"

Kel swallowed. If he didn't like her question, he really wouldn't like what she was about to say. "I need

to talk to it."

Raoul scrubbed his face with one hand. "You need to talk to it," he repeated.

Kel nodded. "Sir, you know me," she reminded him. "I wouldn't ask anything silly, not when you bring

such important news. But I have to know if I can enter the Chamber again. I need to find something out."

"You're right, I do know you," Raoul said glumly. "No, no, you wouldn't jest at a time like this. I'm

afraid you're stuck, though. No one has been allowed back inside that thing in all history. No one would

ever want to go back. You'll just have to settle for what you got in there the first time." He held her

questioning eyes with his own anxious ones.

Kel wished that she could explain, but she couldn't. Knights were forbidden to tell what had taken

place during their Ordeal. "I didn't mean to worry you, sir," she told him at last.

Raoul scowled at her. "Don't frighten me like that again. I've put far too much work into you to see you

go mad now." He looked around. "What were we doing last?"

"Wagon requisitions, sir," she replied as she held up her slate.

He took it and reviewed her numbers. "Let's finish this now. I won't be able to work on them this

afternoon - the council will be meeting."

Kel fetched the papers he needed. "There was a Stormwing in the courtyard this morning," she

remarked as she laid them out. "I think he already knows how bad things will be this summer."

Raoul grunted. "I wouldn't be surprised. They probably smell it. Now what's this scrawl? I can't read

Aiden's writing." They spent the rest of the morning at work, sorting through the endless details that had

to be settled before the men of the King's Own rode north to battle.

After lunch Kel saw to her horses, stabled in the building the Stormwing had turned into his momentary

perch. There were hostlers, whose job it was to mind the hundreds of horses kept at the palace, but Kel

preferred to see to her riding mount, Hoshi, and her warhorse, Peachblossom, herself. The work was

soothing and gave her time to think.

Jump watched as she tended the horses. The scruffy dog had put in an appearance at Kel's side about

mid-morning, clearly recovered from having his morning's sleep interrupted by Kel and a Stormwing.

Jump was not a typical palace dog, being neither a silky, combed, small type favoured by ladies, or a

wolf- or boar-hound prized by lords. Jump was a stocky, short-haired dog of medium size, a combat

veteran. His left ear was a tatter. His dense fur was mostly white, raised or dented in places where it

grew over old scars. Black splotches covered most of the pink skin of his nose, his only whole ear and

his rump. His tail was a jaunty war banner, broken in two places and healed crooked. Jump's

axe-shaped head was made for damping on to an enemy with jaws that would not let go. He had small,

black, triangular eyes that, like those of any creature who'd spent a lot of time with Daine the Wildmage,

were far more intelligent than those of animals who hadn't.

"I need more information," Kel murmured to Jump as she mucked out Hoshi's stall. "And soon, before

the king orders us out with the army. I certainly can't tell the king I won't go. He'll want to know why,

and I can't talk about what happened during my Ordeal."

Jump whuffed softly in understanding.

Her horses tended, Kel reported to the palace library. There, she and the other knights who were her

year-mates (young men who had begun their page studies when she had) practiced the Scanran tongue.

Many Scanrans spoke Common, the language used in all the Eastern Lands between the Inland Sea and

the Roof of the World, but the study of Scanran would help those who fought them to read their

messages and interpret private conversations.

After lessons Kel spent her time as best she could. She cared for her weapons and armour, worked

on her sword and staff skills in one of the practice courtyards, ate supper with her friends, and finally

read in her room. When the watch cried the time at the hour after midnight, she closed her book and left

her room, with Jump at her heels.

The palace halls were deserted. Wall torches in iron cressets burned low. Kel did not see another soul.

In normal times the nobility would be at parties; not this year. The coming war dictated their hours now.

They retired before midnight after evenings spent figuring what goods and labour they could spare for the

coming bloody summer. Even the servants, always the last to sleep, were abed. It was like walking in a

dream through an empty palace. Kel shivered and grabbed a torch from the wall as she passed the Hall

of Crowns.

It was a good idea. No lights burned in the corridor that led to her destination. The Chapel of the

Ordeal was used only at Midwinter, when squires took their final step to a shield. Now it was shut and

ignored. Still, the Chapel's door was never locked. Kel shut it once she and Jump were inside. There was

no need to post a guard: over the centuries, thieves and anyone else whose motives were questionable

had been found outside the Chapel door, reduced to dried flesh and bone by the Chamber's

immeasurable power.

Once a year during her term as a squire, Kel had visited the Chamber to try her will against it. On

those visits she had confined her encounter with it to touching the door.

To converse with the thing, she suspected that she had to go all the way inside once again.

Kel set her torch in a cresset near the altar. Its flickering light danced over the room: benches, the plain

stone floor, the altar with its gold candlesticks and doth, and the large gold sun disc, the symbol of the

god Mithros. To the right of the disc was the iron door to the Chamber of the Ordeal.

For a moment Kel could not make her legs go forward. She had never had a painless experience from

the Chamber. In the grip of its power she had lived through the death of loved ones, been crippled and

useless, and been forced to stand by as horrors unfolded.

"This is crazy," she told Jump. The dog wagged his tail, making a soft thwapping noise that seemed

loud in the silent Chapel.

"You wait here," Kel said. She ordered her body to move. It obeyed: she had spent years shaping it to

her will. She stepped up to the iron door. It swung back noiselessly into a small, dark room with no

windows or furnishings of any kind.

Kel trembled, cold to the bone with fear. At last she walked into the Chamber. The door closed,

leaving her in complete darkness.

Suddenly she stood on a flat, bare plain without a tree, stream, or animal to be seen. It was all

bare earth, with no grass or stones to interrupt the boring view.

"What is this place?" she asked aloud. Squires were forbidden to speak during the Ordeal, but

surely this was different. In an odd way, this was more like a social visit than an Ordeal. "Do you

live here?"

It is as close as your human mind can perceive it. The Chamber's ghost-like voice always sounded

in Kel's head, not her ears.

Kel thrust her hands into her pockets. "I don't see why you haven't done something with it," she

informed the Chamber. "No furnishings, no trees or birds… If you're going to bring people here,

you ought to make things look a bit nicer."

A feeling like a sigh whiffled through Kel's skull. Mortal, what do you want? demanded the

Chamber. Its face - the face cut into the keystone over the inside of the iron door - formed in the

dirt in front of her. It was lined and sexless, with lips so thin as to be nearly invisible. The deep-set

eyes glinted yellow at Kel. The task you have been set is perfectly clear. You will know it when you

find it.

Kel shook her head. "That's no good. I must know when and where. And I'd like another look at

the little Nothing Man, if you please."

Instantly the dirt beneath her was gone, the air of the plain turned to shadow, as if she dreamed

again. She fell like a feather, lightly, slipping to and fro in the wind. When she landed, she was set

on her feet as gently and tidily as she could have hoped.

During her Ordeal she had seen the Chamber's idea of her task as an image on the wall in a

corner of the grey stone room. Now she was living the image, placed in a room like a cross

between a smithy and a mage's workroom. Unlike her vision and then the dreams that had

followed it, this place was absolutely and completely real. Behind her a forge held a bed of fiery

coal. An anvil and metal-working tools lay nearby. Along one wall stood open cupboards filled

with dried herbs, crystals, books, tools, glass bottles and porcelain jars. Between her and the

cupboards was a large stone worktable with gutters on the sides. It was covered with black stains.

To her left was another, smaller, kitchen-style hearth set into the wall. Its fire had burned out.

Kel inhaled. Scents flooded her nose: lavender, jasmine and vervain; damp stone; mould; and

under it all, the coppery hint of old blood.

There he was, scrawny and fidgeting as he stood beside the worktable chewing a fingernail. Kel

shrank back.

It is safe, the Chamber said. He cannot see you.

The Nothing Man was just as she remembered, just as he'd been in all those dreams she'd had

since Midwinter. There was nothing new to be learned from this appearance.

In the shadows to Kel's right, metal glinted. She gulped and backed up as a killing device

walked out of the shadows, dragging a child's body. The devices also looked just as she

remembered, both from her Ordeal and from a bloody day the previous summer, when she and a

squad of men from the King's Own had managed to kill one. The device was made to give anyone

who saw it nightmares. Its curved black metal head swivelled back and forth with only a thin

groove to show where a human neck would be. Long, deep pits served as its eyes. Its metal

visor-lips could pop open to reveal clashing, sharp steel teeth. Both sets of limbs, upper and lower,

had three hinged joints and ended in its nimble dagger-fingers and -toes. Its whiplike steel tail

switched; the spiked ball that capped it flashed in the torchlight.

The little man flapped an impatient hand. The machine left the room through a door on Kel's

right, towing its pitiful burden.

Moments after it was gone, a big man came in. He was tall enough to have to stoop to get

through the door. His greying blond hair hung below his shoulders. A close-cropped greying blond

beard framed curved, narrow lips. Brown eyes looked out over a long, straight nose. He wore a

huntsman's buff-coloured shin, a brown leather jerkin, and brown leather breeches stuffed into

calf-high boots. At his belt hung axe and dagger. He stopped in front of the Nothing Man and

hooked his thumbs over his belt.

"We just shipped twenty more to King Maggur. That leaves you with ten, Master Blayce," he

said, his voice a deep baritone. He spoke Scanran. "Barely enough to make it to spring."

Blayce, Kel thought intently.

"It'll do, Stenmun," Blayce replied. His voice was a stumbling whine, his Scanran atrocious.

"Maggur knows - "

Suddenly Kel was back in the Chamber's dreary home. She spared a glance around - did she see

a tree in the distance? - before she turned to glare at the face in the pale stone. "Where is he?"

she demanded. "Look, Maggur Rathhausak is king now. He'll march once Scanra thaws out. The

king will be sending the army - that includes me - north as soon as he can. You have to tell me

where to look so I can leave before that happens! If I go now, I won't be disobeying the king. We

mortals call that treason."

I cannot, the Chamber said.

Kel disagreed with a phrase she had learned from soldiers.

I am not part of your idea of time, the Chamber told her. Apparently her language had not

offended it. You mortals are like fish swimming in a globe of glass. That globe is your world. You do not

see beyond it. I am all around that globe, everywhere at once. I am in your yesterdays and tomorrows

just as I am in your today, and it all looks the same to me. I only know you will find yourself in that one's

path. When you do, you must stop him. He perverts life and the living. That must not continue. Its tone

changed; later, Kel would think the thing had been disgruntled. I thought you would like the

warning.

Kel crossed her arms over her chest, disgusted. "So you don't know when I'll see that piece of

human waste. The Nothing Man. Blayce. Or that warrior of his, what's his name? Stenmun."

No.

"And you don't know where they are."

Your ideas of countries and borders are meaningless tome.

"But you thought I'd be happy to know the one who's making the killing devices, who's

murdering children, will come my way. Sometime. Somewhere."

You must right the balance between mortals and the divine, the balance that is my reason to exist. That

creature defies life and death. I require you to put a stop to it. Your satisfaction is not my concern.

Kel wanted to scream her frustration, but years of hiding her emotions at the Yamani court

stopped her. Besides, screaming was a spoiled child's response, never hers. And as a knight at

eighteen, she was supposed to act like an adult, whatever that meant. She tried one last time.

"The sooner, the better."

You will meet him, and you will fix this. Now go away. The iron door swung open.

"Can I at least talk to people about this? Tell them that you showed me this?" she demanded.

If you think they will believe you. You are not considered to be a seer or a mage, and your own mages

know the name of Blayce already. They just cannot find him.

Kel responded with another word learned from soldiers and walked out of the Chamber.

The news of Maggur's coronation in Scanra sped the process of gathering Tortallan fighters and

supplies. Preparation for war filled the hours at the palace. Every knight who was not already detailed

was summoned to the throne room. The king, queen and their advisers told the knights that they were

now in military service to the crown for the length of the war, and gave them their instructions. Kel

remained under Lord Raoul's orders for the moment. She readied her own gear as she helped him

assemble all that his men would require.

Weather mages turned their attention to the northern mountains. A week later they told the monarchs

that while it would be hard going, Tortall's army could move out. The next day the warriors readied for

departure in the guesthouses and fields around the Great Road North, assembling knights, men of the

King's Own, six Groups of the Queen's Riders, ten companies of soldiers from the regular army, and

wagon after wagon of supplies. It would take three times longer to reach their border posts than it would

if they waited another two weeks for the sleet, snow and mud of the northern roads to clear. It would be

worth the trouble if they could be in place when the Scanrans came to call.

At dawn on the first morning of the last week of March, the army's vanguard of knights and lords of

the realm set off on the muddy road north. Kel rode Hoshi, with Jump in one of her saddlebags and

sparrows clinging to every part of her and her equipment. On the bluffs north of the city she murmured a

Tamora Pierce - Protector Of The Small 4 - Lady Knight

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