Quentin"s eyes flicked away from me toward Carle. A look pa.s.sed between them, long and grave; then Quentin stepped back from me and addressed the line of silent patrol guards. "Soldier Gamaliel, step forward."

I turned my head to look as Gamaliel stiffly took a pace forward. He is the oldest patrol guard, older even than Quentin; he is only a few years younger than Fenton was when he died. As the light chiselled deeper the lines of somberness in Gamaliel"s face, Quentin said, "Soldier Gamaliel, please recount for the benefit of Soldier Adrian the events leading up to Sublieutenant Shepley"s dismissal from the patrol."

I heard a faint rustling behind me, as though several of the guards had shifted in their places. Gamaliel"s chin rose as he said rigidly, "Yes, sir. Two springs ago, Sublieutenant Shepley was on duty, close to the patrol hut, with his partner, Soldier Byrd. Both soldiers sighted a man wearing the clothes of a barbarian mainlander. The mainlander saw them at the same moment and drew his sword. Soldier Byrd promptly issued the Probable Danger signal.

"Before the full patrol had time to respond to the signal, sir, Sublieutenant Shepley, jealous of your t.i.tle-"

"Reword yourself, soldier." Quentin"s voice was sharp.

"My apologies, sir." Gamaliel was silent a moment, then started again. "Sublieutenant Shepley, desiring glory for himself, immediately drew his sword and ran forward to capture the barbarian. Soldier Byrd had no choice but to follow. Just as Sublieutenant Shepley was on the point of reaching the barbarian, though, his foot slipped on some loose pebbles, and he fell to the ground, striking himself unconscious in the process.

"Soldier Byrd, seeing his partner in danger, responded by attacking the barbarian. Because he had only recently joined the patrol, Soldier Byrd"s sword skills were not sufficient to allow him to defeat the barbarian unaided. The barbarian wounded him severely."

Gamaliel paused. The sun had set completely by now; cloakless, I was shivering in the evening wind, warmed only by the patrol fire flickering its glow upon us. Carle stood nearly outside the circle of warmth; only his face was alit.

"At that point, sir, you and your patrolling partner, Soldier Carle, reached the scene," Gamaliel continued. "As Soldier Carle is-" He stopped, his gaze sliding sideways over to me, then said, "As Soldier Carle was the best swordsman in the patrol, you ordered him to keep the barbarian occupied while you carried Soldier Byrd and Sublieutenant Shepley to safety.

"Unfortunately, the barbarian was well skilled with his blade. Although Soldier Carle was able to defend himself for a short while, the barbarian soon broke past his defenses and disarmed him. At that point, Soldier Neville and I had just come within sight, but we and the other guards were too far away to a.s.sist. You, sir, had returned from carrying Soldier Byrd to a secure distance and was just picking up Sublieutenant Shepley. In order to give you and Sublieutenant Shepley time to reach safety, Soldier Carle, now naked of blade, flung himself upon the barbarian."

My gaze jerked over to Carle. He was continuing to stand motionless, staring at emptiness; the copper brooch at his neck twinkled in the light. I let out my breath slowly.

"Fortunately, the barbarian was so startled by this action that he stumbled and fell beneath the weight of Soldier Carle," Gamaliel said. "Soldier Carle was able to prevent him from using his sword for the time it took the other guards to reach the scene. The barbarian was then captured by the remainder of the patrol."

"And the aftermath of this hunt?" Quentin hadn"t looked at me since the report began; his gaze was fixed upon Gamaliel.

"The barbarian was placed on trial and was discovered to be a legitimate border-crosser who had not realized that the men attacking him were the Chara"s patrol guards. He was granted mercy for his crime and was released to continue on his way. Soldier Carle was awarded the subcommander"s copper honor brooch for his courage, and he rose to the sublieutenancy of the patrol. Soldier Byrd died of his wound, but in his dying hours, he gave witness to Sublieutenant Shepley"s actions. Sublieutenant Shepley-"

"That is enough." Quentin"s soft voice cut off Gamaliel, who promptly stepped back into line; the lieutenant"s gaze had already returned to me. "Do you understand now, soldier?" he asked quietly.

I found it harder to swallow this time; there was an obstruction in my throat. "Yes, sir. By disobeying orders, Sublieutenant Shepley brought danger upon his fellow patrol guards." I nearly continued, then thought better of it and fell silent.

Quentin, though, had been running his dark gaze over my face. He said, "You have more comments?"

I took a deep breath; the chill of the mountain air bit at my lungs. "Only a question, sir. Sublieutenant Shepley disobeyed orders a but didn"t Soldier Carle disobey orders as well? Aren"t we under standing orders to retreat if we"re disarmed?"

The wind, whooshing down the sides of the mountains enclosing us, stirred Carle"s hair; otherwise, his body and eyes remained motionless. Quentin, who was now running his fingers over his sword hilt, kept his gaze fixed upon me until I felt my knees beginning to melt. Then he said, "Yes, Soldier Carle disobeyed orders, in the most blatant manner possible. When, Soldier Adrian, you understand the difference between what he did and what you did, you too may disobey orders. Until then, your judgment is not sufficiently mature to allow for that."

I said nothing. The wind whistled around the hollow. Somewhere in the distance, a bird of prey screamed.

The lieutenant stepped back. "The mistake was mine, as much as yours. I should have taken your background into account. We will let the matter rest there."

"Sir-" I stopped, biting my lip, until Quentin gave an impatient gesture. Then I said, "Sir, I"m an Emorian now, and I should be held to Emorian law and custom as much as any other Emorian. I would rather that you dealt with me the same as you would any other soldier in this unit."

I couldn"t tell, from Quentin"s expression, whether I had said the right thing. After a minute, though, he replied, "Very well. As it happens, we have a special discipline for this type of episode a a test that should teach you not to make this mistake again." And then, as I let my breath out in a sigh, he added, "If you survive."

The eleventh day of November in the 940th year a.g.l.

Carle took me into the mountains today for my test. He was very cheerful.

"Have you seen the seal yet?" he asked, after we"d walked for about an hour.

"What seal?" I asked as I stubbed my toe and stumbled.

"Watch out here; this path is rocky," Carle reported belatedly. "The Chara"s seal. It"s plastered everywhere in the palace, but since we didn"t go inside the palace- No, wait, move a bit to the right. You"re about to fall into a fissure."

I hurriedly crowded up against Carle"s body. My eyes were bound; I had long since lost all sense of which direction we were going in. All I knew was that we must be far away from the pa.s.s, for I could no longer hear the whistles of the patrol.

Our journey was like an eerie replay of my first arrival at the patrol hut, but this time my hands were unbound, and I could even have dispensed with the aid of a cloth over my eyes, if I"d been sure I could keep my eyes closed. Not wanting to take any chances, I had requested to have my eyes bound.

Other than that, I was dressed as I ordinarily would have been for a day"s patrol: I wore my army tunic, my thigh-pocket with its hidden dagger, my boots, my sword, and my back-sling, which held my water-flask, binding rope, and noonday meal. Also my journal and pencil, which I had received permission from Quentin to bring with me. "Recording your thoughts may be of use to you in seeing your way clear to the solution," he said, when speaking of my test.

Now Carle said, "Vengeance, mercy, judgment."

"What?" I swung my face toward him, as though I could see him.

"Those are the attributes of the Chara, and those are what are depicted on his seal. The Sword of Vengeance. The Heart of Mercy a that"s shown as a wounded bird. And the Balance of Judgment."

I hesitated a moment before replying, then decided that I really did not want to tell Carle that vengeance, mercy, and judgment were the three attributes of the Jackal as well. "The Balance of Judgment holds the bird and the sword in its scales?"

"Precisely." Carle sounded pleased at my reply. "But judgment is a much greater matter than that. Take the Court of Judgment, where the Chara hears his cases. First of all, it"s unlikely that the man the Chara is trying is being tried for the first time. More likely, the man has been judged by the lesser courts, the case working itself up the ladder of the courts as it becomes clear that the case offers some problem that the lesser courts haven"t dealt with before. By the time the case reaches the Chara, he not only has the prisoner"s witness to consider; he also has the judgments of the previous judges. And beyond that there will be witnesses a many witnesses in an important case. The Chara can"t make a judgment on his own. He depends heavily on what is stated and judged by other men."

"I see." My mind was less on Carle"s words than on the rocky ground that would have caused me to fall to the ground if Carle hadn"t been gripping my arm. "So you couldn"t just have a case where the Chara was alone with the prisoner-"

"Oh, that type of case happens occasionally. *Private judgment," it"s called, and the Chara is the only judge in the land who is permitted to make private judgment, because of his high office. Even then, he"ll invariably be drawing upon the written witness of men not present... . Here we are."

Carle pulled me to a stop. I strained my ears, trying to sense where we were. We had been travelling on the relatively level ground between mountains; I knew this from the number of times that Carle had pulled me back from stepping into fissures. I could hear no whistles coming from behind me, before me, or to either side of me. The wind shifted direction every few seconds. A few autumn birds twittered, but most had flown south at this time of year. Near us, a stone rattled down the side of a mountain.

My head jerked round; then I whispered, "It sounds like a breacher is near."

"We"re too far from the pa.s.s for that," replied Carle, adjusting the cloth binding my eyes. "Most likely it"s a cat."

"A mountain cat?" I tried to keep my voice matter-of-fact. "I thought they only lived in the dominion mountains, except when they"re tamed. Do the wild cats travel this far south?"

"They don"t come near the pa.s.s, but they"ll occasionally roam these mountains, away from the pa.s.s. Don"t worry. You may find that one is following you, but they rarely attack humans, unless the human is wounded. Now, then-" Without warning, Carle took hold of my shoulders and spun me round. By the time he stopped, I was thoroughly dizzy.

"Any idea which direction you"re facing?" Carle enquired blithely.

"None at all," I replied, trying to keep from toppling over.

"Good. Now, here"s how the test works. I"ll leave you here. You count to a hundred. Once the count is over, take the cloth off your eyes and make your way back to the patrol ground."

"That"s all?" I said cautiously. "It"s just a test to see whether I can navigate through the mountains?"

"You can manage that, can"t you?"

"Of course I can," I said quickly, though I was feeling uneasy, remembering Fenton"s warning about sticking to the pa.s.s.

"Good. Keep in mind, Adrian: this test isn"t meant to kill you. I don"t want you to make the same mistake that was made by the only guard I know who failed this test. When you find that you can"t locate the patrol ground, whistle, and we"ll come fetch you."

I was stung by the lack of faith that Carle"s "when" represented. "I"ll make it back on my own," I said stiffly.

"Good hunting" was Carle"s only reply. He said nothing more, and after a minute, I realized that he had left my side.

Taking a breath, I counted aloud to one hundred, keeping my count slow. I could not help continuing to strain for some clue of where I was. If Carle made any noise while walking back to the pa.s.s, I missed it. I thought, though, that I could hear the mountain cat, moving on some slope above. I had a sudden, nasty vision of what I must look like to the cat: an eye-bound man, easy prey.

Resisting the temptation to pull the cloth off my eyes, I pulled my sword instead. Perhaps the cat wouldn"t recognize the significance of the eye-binding. On the other hand, perhaps the cat wouldn"t recognize the significance of the sword either, if she had never encountered humans before. Not until she jumped me would the cat realize that I had a way to defend myself. And by the time I killed her, would her claws have mauled me sufficiently to make the killing mutual? I shivered.

I"ve been writing all this under a ledge in the tiny gorge where Carle left me. Evening had arrived by the time I removed the cloth from my eyes, and tonight the sky is too overcast for me to see the stars, so I will need to wait until dawn to figure out which direction I should take. I ate a little bit of my food and sipped a mouthful of my water, but I"m saving most of it for tomorrow. Surely I cannot be more than a day"s walk from the pa.s.s; that"s all the time that Carle spent in taking me here.

I haven"t heard the mountain cat again. I"m hoping that she never saw me and has gone elsewhere to hunt.

The twelfth day of November in the 940th year a.g.l.

It"s noonday; I"ve paused to rest. I had hoped last night that, by this time today, I would be halfway home a halfway back to the patrol ground. But something has happened that I hadn"t antic.i.p.ated: the sky is still covered with clouds.

I could tell this morning where the east was; the glow in the clouds told me that much. But as the day went on, and the whole sky lit up, even that much became hard to discern. It"s not as though I can even see most of the sky; the mountains here are so crowded together that I can only sight the sky directly above me. I had hoped that I might at least be able to tell at noonday which direction was south, since the sun is always slightly to the south at noonday. But even that much information has been hidden from me by the thick clouds.

There has been no rain; I can be grateful for that. Or at least, I thought I was grateful until I realized how far my water flask was depleted. Then I began keeping my eye out, not merely for glimpses of the sun, but for pools of water.

I"ve seen none. What pools there might be are probably drawn into the fissures, which are so dark that I find myself in continual danger of walking into one unsuspecting.

Perhaps I will have better luck higher up on the slopes.

Trying to climb around the sides of mountains is exhausting and frustrating. I keep running into insuperable barriers: blocks of rock that prevent me from travelling further. Of course, such barriers exist on the mountains alongside the pa.s.s too, but the patrol has been doing its work for so many centuries that the guards know where every barrier is located and can pa.s.s on that information to new guards. Here I am like an explorer in uncharted areas of the mainland.

I did find a wild-berry bush this afternoon. It was a pathetic thing, shrivelled up from living so far north, but it had a few late-autumn berries on it still, which I plucked and placed in my back-sling. I have enough food and water until the end of the day; after that, I have no idea what I will do. Trap mountain animals? I can"t imagine how to make a trap out of the one bit of rope I have, barely long enough to bind a man"s hands. And though I"m sure a mainland boy would be taught how to hunt with blade alone, I never was.

I spent a long while this afternoon simply standing still, trying to determine through sound where I was. All I could hear was the wind, and what might have been the mountain cat, moving closer to me from a slope nearby.

The thirteenth day of November in the 940th year a.g.l.

I"ve run out of water. I"m trying to remember how long a man can stay alive without drinking water.

The clouds still block my sight of the sun today, and they still refuse to drop any rain on me. Perhaps it"s just as well; the wind is so chilly now that I regret not having asked to bring a cloak. I barely got any sleep last night, curled up on the cold ground of a cave I found, wondering whether the cat would attack me before dawn.

My toiletry in the morning was exceedingly unpleasant. I miss the patrol"s latrine.

I"ve eaten the last of the berries, doing my best to suck out their moisture. The rest of the food I finished last night. It"s not that I"ve been greedy; it"s that the climbing I"ve been doing is so strenuous. I"ve been trying to climb high enough that I can see the pa.s.s. But the mountains are so high and so thickly cl.u.s.tered together that it"s like trying to sight Capital Mountain when you"re in the midst of the forest of central Koretia.

I heard the cat again today, her delicate paws sending pebbles down the side of a mountain. I couldn"t see her, though. I don"t suppose I"ll see her until she pounces on me.

And even if I should succeed in killing her before she kills me, what then? I"ll likely be so badly mauled that I can"t travel any further.

This afternoon, for the first time, I felt the temptation to whistle to the patrol for help. I manfully held back from doing so.

The fourteenth day of November in the 940th year a.g.l.

Another cold night, this time without shelter of the cave. I received no sleep at all.

I must admit now that I am thoroughly lost. For all I know, I"ve been travelling in the opposite direction that Carle and I came from and have been driving myself deeper into the mountains. There"s no way to tell; the day is overcast again.

Am I even within reach of the patrol if I should whistle? Most likely not, if I can"t hear their whistles. I haven"t heard a whistle since the time Carle left me.

My mouth is very dry.

It"s becoming harder and harder to travel; I keep having to pause to renew my strength. I find myself thinking of Fenton a of how Fenton looked when I first met him. Lying on the ground, barely alive ... Only Felix"s urgent ministrations saved Fenton from entering the Land Beyond.

I can see now why the cat hasn"t attacked. She"s waiting until I"m too weak to be able to fight back. That shouldn"t be long.

Now I really am in trouble.

This afternoon, trying to make use of the last hours of daylight, I hurried up a slope in too careless a manner. I slipped. I swear I fell down half the mountainside before I managed to stop myself. I"m bruised from head to toe, and my arm is bleeding. That"s not so bad; I"ve put my face-cloth on it to keep the blood from running out of me. But I think my ankle is broken. When I try to walk on it, my leg gives way.

It is time to admit that I have failed. Even expulsion from the patrol would be better than to die alone here of thirst, or to await the cat"s attack.

I sent out the Probable Danger whistle three times but received no reply. Am I too far from the pa.s.s? Or is the penalty for failing this test death?

I can"t bear the thought of never seeing Carle again.

The fifteenth day of November in the 940th year a.g.l.

I managed, through sheer exhaustion from my tears, to sleep a bit yesterday evening after I whistled my danger. When I awoke a short time later, the clouds were red with sunset.

Carle stood over me, holding a wine-flask.

I sat up and greedily took the flask from him. "Careful," he said, crouching down beside me as I began to swallow the wine. "You"ll make yourself sick if you drink too fast. Let me see that arm of yours."