The Knight

“So do I—they sacrificed to us while they held the Mountain of Fire. Do you want my opinion on these matters?”

I said yes, I would really like it.

“I do not believe you will. Or at least I doubt that you will be willing to accept every side of it.” For a minute Garsecg seemed to be thinking about where to start.

“The first item, the Osterlings. You believe you lack courage because you feared them. Do you imagine that your brother would have felt no fear?”

“He fought the giants.”

“And you the Osterlings, Sir Able. You were afraid, but you mastered your fear. Do you imagine they were not afraid of you? If you do, we will find a pool in which you can look at your reflection. You had armor?”

“A mail shirt and a steel cap. I bought them before we went on the boat.”

“And Sword Breaker in your hand. Besides all of which, you were the man who had laid waste to them with the bow. Believe me, Sir Able, they feared you from the moment they laid eyes on you.”

“Well, they sure didn’t act like it.” I found the durian I had been trying to eat and started all over again trying to get it open with my fingernails. It was just as bad as it had been the first time.

“Did you act as though you feared them?”

There did not seem to be anything I could say to that.

“I was not present, yet I know the answer. So do you, who were present. You mastered your fear until you fell wounded. They mastered theirs—for a time. When a knight is on a ship, that ship flies his pennant from its foremast. Did yours do that?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have one, and I didn’t know about it anyway. Maybe that’s why the captain didn’t think I was a real knight.”

“In most cases, the Osterlings will not attack such a ship. They must have been surprised, and frightened, when they found you were on board.”

I said all right, what about the rest?

Chapter 26. The Second Item And The Third

“Very well, let us move on to the next item. You brought a glass tube, as well as the goblet, back from the lime tree. Certainly it must have struck you that I would see it sooner or later. Are you going to let me examine it?”

I said, “After we had talked about the other things, I thought.” It had been pretty well hidden in the long grass, and it was green anyway. But I picked it up and passed it to Garsecg. “There’s a paper rolled up inside.” He nodded. “Did you break the seal?”

I told him there had not been any, and Uri leaned over to look. Baki came over so she could see better. They did not have anything on, then or after, and it was hard for me not to look at certain places, but I did it.

Garsecg pulled out the stopper and took out the paper. “It is a scroll,” he told us. “A kind of book.” He was untying the strings.

“I untied them too,” I said, “but they were tied just like that.”

“Did you read it?”

I shook my head. “I looked at it, but I can’t read that kind of writing.”

“Nor can I. This is the script of Celidon, presumably.”

He handed the scroll to Baki, who said, “Huh-uh. I can read our writing, but not this stuff.”

Uri snuggled closer. “If Baki cannot, I cannot.”

Garsecg took the scroll from Baki, rolled it up again and tied it, and put it back into the tube. “This may be the testament of the woman whose bones we found, but I have no way of knowing. You may keep it if you like, Sir Able, or return it to its place.”

After I had put it back under the tree, I asked if he thought she knew she was going to die.

Garsecg pointed to the goblet. “When one finds a cup beside a body, one assumes poison. That was why I advised you to rinse it thoroughly, although it has certainly been weathering here for a long time. If she was poisoned, she may have poisoned herself, and grasped her testament until she died.”

I tried to imagine why a woman would kill herself in such a beautiful place.

“You may have more questions about this. Ask them if you like, but I confess I have no more answers.”

“You said you’d seen the bones,” I reminded him. “Did you see that glass tube too?”

He shook his head. “I looked around, but the sun was only just coming up. I did not see it.”

“You were talking about a big war when the Aelf drove out Setr.” I said it like that because I thought Garsecg did not want Uri and Baki to know who he really was. So I felt like I was being smart, but Uri started shaking and I had to promise her I would not say the name any more.

“We were supposed to die,” she told me. “If we came up here, we were supposed to die.” Baki said that, too.

“He forgives you,” Garsecg told them. I could see they did not understand, but the way he said it made them believe it, or almost.

“A thousand of your years have passed since that war,” Garsecg told me. “I can give you a wealth of detail, if you want it. But do you?”

“I guess not. Only I was thinking about that woman. Those bones can’t have been here that long, can they?”

“In this well-watered place? Certainly not.”

“Then the person who built this skyscraper we’re on didn’t put her up here?”