The Knight

Garsecg did not seem to want to say anything about that.

“It seems like ten years. I mean thinking about how I was before that night when she made me grow, and the way I am now. About ten years.”

“Or less.”

“Only Bold Berthold, he’s maybe thirty, forty years older—”

Uri said, “I feel better now, Lord. I think I can stay up if you’ll help me.”

I did, and she sort of snuggled.

Baki said, “You just wanted his arms around you.”

Uri gri

Kind of under my breath, I told Garsecg, “Sometimes I dream about the Osterlings.”

“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 pe

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 ca

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?”

“Who can say? A thousand years here might be a hundred in Aelfrice, or even less.”

Baki said, “Besides, he comes back. Let’s not talk about him at all.”

I was thinking hard. For one thing it seemed to me like the woman might have been shipwrecked, but if she had been, why did she kill herself? I asked Garsecg again about the top of the skyscraper being an island in Mythgarthr, and he said again that it was. Then I said, “All right, if it’s an island, why don’t I hear the sea? I haven’t heard the sea the whole time we’ve been up here.”

“When it is calm, as it often is, it makes no great noise.”

“Well, I’m going to look. You stay here with these sick girls.”

Really humbly Baki said, “Uri and Baki, Lord. I am Baki.” That was when I got them straight. I never did get them mixed up again after that.

Garsecg shook his head, meaning he was not going to stay, but I did not pay any attention. The sun was still only halfway up the sky, so to keep it out of my eyes I turned my back to it and went west. I broke twigs and let them hang every hundred steps or so, and after a while I heard Garsecg behind me. He said, “Why do you do that?”

I did not look. “So I can find my way back, of course.”

“And why do you want to go back?”

“Because those girls are sick, and we ought to be taking care of them. I was hoping you’d stay with them and do it.”

“The Aelf have struggled to free themselves from the monster called Kulili throughout their history. You are their last hope, and their best. I am not letting you out of my sight—no, not for ten thousand puking maidens.”

I had stopped to look at a tree of a shade of green I had never seen before. I am sure it came from Aelfrice, but it was so fresh and new-looking that it seemed like God had just made it. Like He had planted it a minute before I got there. It had blue and purple flowers, and the long feelers or whatever you call them inside the flowers were bright red. I have never seen another one like it, and I have remembered it all this time.

Anyway, I heard Garsecg laugh behind me, but I still did not look at him. But when I started walking again I asked if we were going the right way.