The Knight

“You always tell the truth. Correct?”

My mouth was full, but I shook my head.

“You know you try to give that impression.” He pointed his forefinger at me. “That impression itself is a lie.”

I chewed some more and swallowed. “Sure. Since you’re awake now, go see to the horses.”

He ignored it. “You told His Grace that you had guided Sir Ravd and me in the forests above Irringsmouth. Another lie.”

The scream of some animal made us both jump up.

Svon took a deep breath and gri

I walked around the fire and knocked him sprawling.

He may have touched Pouk when he fell, because Pouk sat up. He stared at Svon, blinking and rubbing his eyes.

I picked up the stick Svon had dropped and passed it to him. “Here. The meat’s got ashes on it, but they won’t hurt you.” After that, I went over to where our baggage was piled and got my bow and quiver.

Svon sat up. (Maybe he thought I had gone—I had found out already that I could be hard to see sometimes ever since Baki.) He fingered the back of his jaw and the side of his neck, which was where I hit him.

“Had it comin’,” Pouk told him.

Svon said, “I ought to cut off his base-born head,” and I stepped back a little farther. I did not want to kill him, and I knew that if he saw me I might have to.

Pouk had been looking at the meat I had given him. He decided it needed more cooking, and held it over the fire. “Wouldn’t try, not if I was you, sir.”

“I am a gentleman, and gentlemen avenge any wrongs they suffer,” Svon said stiffly

“Had it comin’,” Pouk repeated, “so it ain’t wrong.”

“You couldn’t know. You were asleep.”

I turned to go. Behind me, I heard Pouk say, “I knows him, sir, an’ I knows you.”

“I’ll kill him!”

Very faintly: “If I thought you meant it, sir, I’d kill you meself.”

Chapter 44. Michael

If I had known where I was going when I walked away from the fire, I would tell you. The truth is that I did not have any idea. I wanted to get away from Svon, and I wanted to get away from Org. That was all there was to it. I wanted to find a place where I could rest and get my head straight before I had to deal with them again. I could have built a fire where I stopped; but working in the dark it would have taken a long time, I was tired, and it was not really very cold at all then, even at night. I suppose it was about the end of June or early July but I do not know.

Anyway, I just closed my cloak around me the way you do and lay down. I did not even take off my boots, something I heard about from Uri and Baki later. They found me while I was lying there asleep, and so did Gylf, who went back to our fire and tracked me by scent. All three stayed around to protect me, I am not sure from what.

When I woke up, the sun was high and bright. As soon as I was awake Gylf licked my face; he had been waiting his chance, and it was something he did only when he thought I needed bucking up. I kind of gri

Baki waved from a shadow when she saw I was looking her way, and Uri waved from under the same tree. “We feared that you might come to harm, Lord. All three of us were afraid for you.”

“Thanks.” I stood up and looked around for a stream, hoping I could get a drink and splash some water on my face, and maybe even take off my clothes and take a sponge bath after they had gone. There was not any, so I asked where I could find Pouk and Svon.

“I do not know where they are now, Lord,” Uri said, “but Baki and I will search for them if you wish us to.”

Baki said, “Gylf might know,” but he shook his head.

Uri drifted toward me, a pretty girl about as slender as girls get, dark red but transparent in the sunshine. (Think of a naked coppery-red girl in a stained-glass window.) “Why did you go into this forest alone and by night? Surely that was foolish.”

“It would have been foolish to stay where I was. Is there any water around here?”

“No,” Uri told me, “not for a league or more.” But Gylf nodded.

“You had water where you camped,” Baki pointed out. “It was in your water bottles.”

“If I had stayed there, Svon and I would have fought,” I explained. “Besides, I knew Org had killed, and I wanted to see what it was.”

Baki said, “Oh, we can tell you that.”

“It was a mule,” Uri said. “A woman came up the road on a mule, and Org rushed at it. I do not think he was going to kill her.”

Baki added, “But she thought he was.”

“The mule reared and threw her. Then Org got it. That was what you heard.”

“He ate it, too. A lot of it, anyway.”

I thought that over. “The woman escaped?”

“Yes.”

A cloud passed between us and the sun just then, and Baki came forward, very real. “She had a sword, but she ran just the same. I ca

“I would,” I said, “or at least, I did. Maybe I’ll want to again someday. I don’t suppose you know where he is right now?”

Both shook their heads.

“Then find him for me. Or find Svon and Pouk. When you’ve found somebody, come back and tell me.”

They faded to nothing.

“You said you knew where to find water,” I told Gylf. “Is it very far?”

He shook his head. “A nice pool.”

“Please lead me to it.”

He nodded and trotted away, looking over his shoulder the way dogs do to see if I was coming.

I had to trot too, to keep up. “Nobody else is around, are they? You can talk?”

“I did.”

“Did Uri or Baki know about this water of yours, too?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But they wouldn’t tell me. It can’t have been because they wanted me to die of thirst. This is a forest, not a desert, so it can’t be very hard to find water. Why didn’t they want me to know about this water of yours?”

“A god’s there.”

That stopped me dead for a minute. Parka was the first thing I thought of, then Thunor—he was one of the Overcyns that people talked about a lot. “Nobody calls the Overcyns gods,” I told Gylf. “Nobody around here, anyhow. Was this Parka? Do you know who Parka is?”

He did not answer, and by that time he was almost out of sight. I took off after him, ru

I looked for a god then, but I did not see one, so I knelt down and washed my hands and my face (I was sweating a lot) and had a good, long drink.

After that I splashed more water on my face, and spooned some up with my hands and poured it over my head; and while I was doing that, the sun came out again. Sunlight turned the drops that rained from my fingertips to diamonds and struck deep into the pool. At the bottom, way, way down, I could see Uri and Baki. They were in a room that seemed to be about the size of an airport. It had swords and spears and axes all over the walls and in stands and long racks, so that you saw the gleam of steel everywhere you looked. They were talking to something big and dark that writhed like a snake. Uri turned back into a Khimaira while I was watching.

Soon it faded out. The sun was still bright but was not shining straight down anymore. Or that is what I think. As soon as it was gone, a cloud came—or what seemed like one—and Gylf said, “The god’s here.” He got excited sometimes and he sounded excited then, but quiet and polite too.

I looked up, and there was no cloud. It was a wing, so white it glowed and a lot bigger than the Western Trader’s biggest sail; it was coming from the back of a man in armor sitting at the edge of the pool. I could not believe that the wings—there were four—really belonged to him. Just by looking at me, he knew that I could not; so he folded them around him. When he did it, you could not see his armor—he looked like he was wearing a long robe of white feathers. He said, “I too have been sent away.”