Oath of Gold by Elizabeth Moon

  When he came, he was accompanied by another, clearly of elven blood. Paks scrambled to her feet awkwardly; she had seen no one but the Kuakgan all this time.

  "This is Paksenarrion," he said to the elf. "She was gravely wounded by the dark cousins—" The elf murmured something softly, and the Kuakgan frowned. "You know the truth, Haleron; they are no myth. Paksenarrion, this is Haleron, an elf from Lyonya. He tells me that the rangers in the southern hills there are looking for new members. I think that would suit you; the outdoor work would restore your strength, and they will hire you on my recommendation."

  Paks was so surprised that she could not speak. The elf frowned at her, and turned to the Kuakgan.

  "We have no need of the weak," he said in elven. "Let her find another place to regain her strength. And is she not the one I heard of, from Fin Panir, who—"

  Paks felt a wave of anger, the first in months. "May it please you, sir," she said in her best elven, "but I would not have you think me an eavesdropper later."

  He stared at her. "My pardon, lady, for the discourtesy. I didn't know you were learned in our language."

  "She knows more than that," said the Kuakgan. "And I assure you that she is quite strong enough for your woods work." He and the elf stared at each other; Paks could feel the battle of wills. The elf seemed to glow with his intensity; the Kuakgan grew more and more solid, like a tree. At last the elf shook his head.

  "The power of the Kuakkganni is from the roots of the world." It sounded like a quote. The elf turned to Paks. "Lady, the rangers are in need of aid. If indeed you seek such employment, and have the skills of warfare, we would be glad to have your assistance."

  Paks looked at the Kuakgan. His face was closed; she felt shut out of his warmth into darkness. She thought of the things he'd said, and sighed. If he turned her out . . .

  "I would be glad to aid the true elves," she said carefully, "in any good enterprise." She shot a quick glance at the Kuakgan; his eyes were alight, though his face showed no expression.

  The elf nodded. "Very well. I leave at dusk—unless you require more rest—if you are weak—?"

  Paks felt fine. "No. I'd like to eat first."

  "Of course. And pack your things, no doubt."

  "I have none." She thought of her pack, cloak, and clothes, but did not even glance toward the Kuakgan. The elf raised his eyebrows. She stared back at him in silence.

  "And where, Master Oakhallow, shall we eat?" the elf asked.

  "Oh, at the inn, I think." He was watching Paks; she could feel the weight of his eyes. She swallowed, and braced herself for that ordeal.

  But, in fact, it was no ordeal. No one seemed to notice her on the street, though several people glanced sideways at the elf. At The Jolly Potboy, the elf and the Kuakgan argued briefly and quietly over who would pay, and the elf finally won. She kept her eyes on the table at first, concentrating on the good food, but finally looked around.

  The inn was not crowded, as it would be later, but she saw one or two familiar faces. Mal leaned on the wall, as usual, with a tankard at his elbow. Hebbinford's mother, in the corner, knitted on another scarf. Sevri darted through on her way outside; she had grown two fingers, at least, since Paks had seen her. But no one seemed to recognize Paks, and she relaxed. She listened to the talk, the clatter of dishes—so loud, after the Kuakgan's grove—but it didn't frighten her as it had. She almost wished someone would call her by name. Almost. The Kuakgan ordered tarts for dessert. The elf leaned back in his seat, and glanced around the room. Paks watched him covertly. He was a half head taller than she, with dark hair and sea-green eyes. The leather tunic he wore over shirt and trousers had dark wear-marks at shoulder and waist: Paks decided these were from sword-belt and bow. He caught her looking at him and smiled.

  "May I ask, lady, where you learned our language?"

  "I was honored with the instruction of a true elf from the southern mountains." If he knew she came from Fin Panir, he would know that already.

  "You speak it well for a human. Most are too hasty to take time for it."

  "Paksenarrion, though a human warrior, knows the folly of haste," said the Kuakgan. Paks looked at him, and he smiled at her, lifting his mug of ale.

  "That is a wonder," said the elf. "Are the younger races finally learning patience of the elder?" He was watching the Kuakgan.

  "From experience," said the Kuakgan. "Where all who know it learned it. Surely elves have not forgotten their own early days?"

  "Alas, no. However remote, the memory remains." He turned to Paks. "I beg pardon again, lady, for any discourtesy."

  "I took no offense," said Paks carefully. She wondered if the Kuakgan and the elf were old enemies. Surely the Kuakgan wouldn't send her to someone evil. She thought of their last conversation and wondered.

  As they came out of the inn, the sun dropped behind the high hills to the southwest. A group of soldiers from the keep was coming down the north road toward the crossing; despite herself, Paks shivered.

  "Are you cold?" asked the elf.

  "No. Just a thought." She looked at the Kuakgan. He smiled.

  "If you come this way again, Paksenarrion, you will be welcome in the grove."

  "I thank you, sir. I—" But he was already moving away, nodding to the approaching soldiers, waving to a child in a doorway.

  "We'd best be going," said the elf quietly. "I mean no discourtesy, but we have far to go, and if you have been unwell you may find it difficult to travel at my pace."

  Paks tore her gaze away from the Kuakgan. She had not thought to part so soon. "I—yes, that's fine. I'm ready."

  "You have nothing to take with you? Nothing at all?"

  "No. What I have, I'm wearing."

  "Hmmph. Those boots won't last the trip."

  Paks looked at her feet. "I've worn worse for longer."

  The elf laughed, that silvery sound she remembered so well. "Very well, then. Come along; we go this way first." She started a pace behind him, then caught up. They were walking east out of Brewersbridge, on the road she had come in on a year and a half before. The Kuakgan's grove was on her left, dark and alarming in the evening light. On the right were cottages: she tried to remember who the people were. The woman in the second one had knitted socks for her, socks that had lasted until this last winter.

  Past the last plowed field, with the young grain like green plush, the elf turned aside from the road.

  "This way is the shortest for us, and we will meet no other travelers. Follow in my footsteps, and they will guide your way."

  Paks did not like that instruction, but she did not want to start an argument, either. She wanted to think about the Kuakgan, and what he had done, and why. She dropped behind the elf as he started across a sheep pasture. The sky was still pale, and she could see her way well enough. As the evening haze darkened, though, she saw that the elf's footsteps were marked in a pale glow. When she stepped there, she found a firm flat foothold.

  By dawn she was heavily tired, stumbling even as she followed his tracks. She had no idea how far they had come, or which direction: she had not been able to check that by the stars and see his steps at the same time. But she had smelled woods, then grassland, then woods again.

  "We will rest here awhile," the elf was saying.

  Paks looked around. They were in open woodland; clumps of trees left irregular meadows between. The elf had found a spreading oak near a brook, and was spreading his cloak on the ground. Paks stretched her arms overhead and arched her back. Those casual strolls around the grove had not prepared her for such a long march. Her legs ached, and she knew they would be stiff after a rest.

  "Here," he said. "Lie down and sleep for awhile. I will watch."

  Paks looked to see if he mocked her, but his smile was almost friendly. "You have walked as far," she said.

  "I have my own way of resting. If you know elves, you know we rarely sleep soundly. And you are recovering, the Kuakgan said, from serious wounds. Go on, now, and sleep. We
have a long way to go."

  Paks stretched out on the cloak after removing her boots. Her feet were hot and swollen; she took her socks off and rubbed the soreness out of her calves and feet. When she looked up, the elf was looking at her scars.

  "Were those truly given by the dark cousins?" he asked.

  "Not by them," said Paks. "At their command, by orcs." The elf tensed, frowning, and looked away.

  "We had heard that they dealt with the thriband, but I had never believed it. I would think even iynisin would call them enemy."

  Paks shook her head, surprised that she was able to talk about it without distress. "Where I was, the kuaknom—iynisin, I mean—commanded orcs as their servants and common warriors. When I was captured, in a night raid on our camp, the iynisin made their orcs and other captives fight with me. Unarmed. I mean, I was unarmed, at first."

  The elf looked at her with a strange expression. "You fought unarmed against the thriband?"

  "At first. Then they gave me the weapon of one I killed, to fight the next battle with. Only then there were more of them. And the next—"

  "How many times?" he interrupted. "How many battles did you fight?"

  "I don't know. I can't remember that. If you count by scars, it must have been many."

  "And you lived." The elf sat down abruptly, and met her gaze. "I would not have thought any human could live through their captivity, and such injuries, and still be sane. Perhaps I should admit I have more to learn of humans. Who cleansed the poison from your wounds?"

  "The Kuakgan. Others had tried healing spells, but though that eased the pain for awhile, the wounds never fully healed. He knew another way."

  "Hmm. Well, take your rest. I think you will do well enough in Lyonya."

  Paks lay for a few minutes watching the leaves overhead take shape and color as the dawnlight brightened, then she slept. When she woke, it was warm afternoon, and sunlight had slanted under the tree to strike her face. The elf had disappeared. She looked around, shrugged, and made her way to the brook to drink and wash her face and feet. She felt stiff and unwieldy, but after stretching and drinking again she could think of the night's march without dismay. When she came up from the brook, the elf was standing under the tree, watching the way they had come.

  "Trouble?" asked Paks. She could see nothing but trees and grass, and the flicker of wings as a bird passed from tree to tree.

  "No. I merely look to see. It is beautiful here, where no building mars the shapes. We will not be disturbed on this journey. I have—I don't think you will understand this—I have cast a glamour on us. No mortal eye could see us, although other elves might."

  "Oh." Paks looked around for some revealing sign—flickering light, or something odd. But everything looked normal.

  "Are you hungry? We should leave in a few hours. It's easier to blur our passage when we cast no sharp shadows."

  Paks was hungry indeed; her stomach seemed to be clenched to her backbone. She nodded, and the elf rummaged in the small pack he wore. He pulled out a flat packet and unwrapped it.

  "It's our waybread. Try it."

  Paks took a piece; it looked much like the flat hard bread the Duke's Company carried on long marches. She bit into it, expected that toughness, and her teeth clashed: this bread was crisp and light. It tasted like nothing else she had eaten, but was good. One piece filled her, and she could feel its virtue in her body.

  That night they crossed into Lyonya. The trees loomed taller as they went on, and by dawn they were walking through deep forest, following a narrow trail through heavy undergrowth. When they stopped, the elf pointed out berries she could eat. "It's a good time for travelers in the forest," the elf said. "From now until late summer it would be hard to starve in the deepest wood, did you know one plant from another."

  "I know little of forests," said Paks. "Where I grew up we had few trees. They called the town Three Firs because it had them."

  "Ah, yes, the northwest marches. I was near Three Firs once, but that was long ago for you. I had been to the Kingsforest, far west of there, and coming back found an incursion of thriband—orcs as you call them. The farmers there had fought them off, but with heavy losses."

  "There were orcs in my grandfather's time. Or maybe it was my greatgrandfather."

  "And no war since, that I've heard of. What made you think of becoming a soldier?"

  "Oh—tales and songs, I suppose. I had a cousin who ran away and joined a mercenary company. When he came home and told us all about it, I knew I had to go."

  "And did you like it?"

  Paks found herself grinning. "Yes. Even as a recruit, though we none of us liked some of the work. But the day I first held a sword—I can remember the joy of it. Of course there were things, later—I didn't like the wars in the south—"

  "Were you in the campaign against Siniava?" Paks nodded. The elf sighed. "Bitter trouble returned to a bitter land. When we lived in the south—"

  "Elves lived there?" Paks remembered being told that elves lived only in the north.

  "Long ago, yes. Some of the southern humans think that the humans from Aare drove us out. They have their dates wrong; we had left long before."

  Paks wanted to ask why, but didn't. After they had walked another long while, and the sun was well up, he went on.

  "Elves are not always wise, or always good. We made mistakes there, in Aarenis as you call it, and brought great evil into the land. Many were killed, and the rest fled." He began to sing in a form of elvish that Paks could not follow, long rhythmic lines that expressed doom and sorrow. At last the music changed, and lightened, and he finished with a phrase Paks had heard Ardhiel sing. "It is time to rest again," he said quietly after that. "You have said nothing, but your feet have lost their rhythm." They had come without Paks noticing it to a little clearing in the undergrowth; a spring gurgled out of the rocks to one side.

  "Tell me about Lyonya," said Paks after drinking deeply from the cold spring. "All I know of it is that Aliam Halveric has a steading in it somewhere. And the King is half-elven, isn't he?"

  His voice shifted again to the rhythms of song and legend, his eyes fixed on something far away. "In days long past the elves moved north, long before humans came to Aarenis, when the towers of Aare still overlooked the deserts of the south. All was forest from the mountains to the Honnorgat, and beyond, to the edge of the great seas of grass, the land of horses. In Dzordanya the forest goes all the way north to the Cold Lands, where nothing grows but moss on the ground. We settled the forests between the mountains and the great river, rarely venturing north of it. The forest was different, over there, alien to us." He paused, looked at her, and looked away. "Are you by any chance that Paksenarrion who was involved with the elfane taig?"

  "Yes."

  "Mmm. You may know that elves do not live, for the most part, in buildings of stone. We have ceremonial places. That—where you were—was one such, a very great one. It centered a whole region of elves; the elfane taig was both powerful and beautiful. But old trouble out of Aarenis came there, and the most powerful of our mages could only delay it long enough for the rest to escape. He paid the price for that delay with the centuries of his enslavement."

  "That was the one we saw? The same?"

  The elf nodded. "Yes. He risked that, to save the rest, but he could not save himself. We have no worse to fear than such slavery. A human can always hope for death; you will not live even a hundred years, but for an elf to endure the touch of that filth forever—" He stopped abruptly and stood up, facing away from her.

  Paks could not think of anything to say. She had finished her piece of the waybread, and she went to the spring for another drink of water. When she returned, the elf had seated himself again, and seemed calmer. "Do we travel again tonight?" she asked.

  "No. We will meet the rangers here, at this spring. If you are not ready to sleep, I could tell you more of Lyonya—"

  Paks nodded, and he spread his cloak and reclined on it.

 
"I told you how the elves came here," he began. "The land was not empty even before. The rockfolk, both dwarf and gnome, quarried the mountains and hills. Orcs harried the forests, in great tribes; we drove them out, foot by foot. Other, smaller people lived here; they all vanished, quite soon, and we never knew them. For long we had the forest to ourselves, and for long we planted and shaped the growing of it, flower and tree and moss. Then men came." He stopped, frowning, and paused long before going on. "The first to come was a shipload of Seafolk, fleeing enemies up the broad Honnorgat. They cut a clearing on the shore, and planted their grain. We watched from afar. A colony began along the coast, where Bannerlith is now, and another across the river's mouth. More ships came. We held council, and decided to meet with them."

  "What happened?"

  "They were hasty men, used to war. I think they thought they could drive us all away. But one sea-captain's son, and his crew, befriended an elf trapped by wolves along the shore, and as one note suggests a harmony, one honorable deed suggests the possibility of friendship. After awhile those who wanted to live with us settled on the south shore, and the rest took the north. Elves are not much welcome in Pargun and Kostandan. Then men began coming from the south. These were different, and they moved into Fintha and Tsaia. When we met them, they had friendly words, not blows, for us. Many of them had met elves in the mountains west of the south marches. Here, in Lyonya itself, we made pacts with the humans, and agreed on lands and forests. We had begun to intermarry, very slowly, and when Lyonya grew to become a kingdom, elven blood ran in the royal family, though little enough in the present King."

  "And it's now shared by elves and men?"

  "Yes—as much as immortal and mortal can share anything. Those that will meet us here are both elven and human—most of mixed blood."

  "Aren't you one of them?"

  "I?" He laughed softly. "No. I wander too much. Master Oakhallow knew of the need, and used me for a messenger and guide. He is, as all the Kuakkganni are, one to make use of any chance that comes."

  "Don't you like him?"