First Test (17 page)

I should have known, she thought, trotting up a narrow stair to the top of the wall in Merric's wake. I was lucky to go for so long without facing this. I should have known it couldn't last. And I'll just have to do it, that's all.

"Waiting bores me!" she heard Wyldon roar from the open door above. "Get those legs moving!"

Kel locked her eyes on Merric's ankles as they ran gasping out of the tower. Don't look ahead, don't look to either side, she ordered herself. Just follow Merric.

"Go!" Wyldon bellowed. "Don't wait for permission, I told you run the wall, so run it. Smell that fresh air! Don't make a face, Queenscove, air is good for you. Breathe it!"

Stone after stone passed under Kel's nose. Her feet, shod in thin leather slippers, slapped the ground.

"You run like a lamb, probationer!" The boom of Wyldon's voice in her ear made her jump.

"Open your stride—put some distance between your knees. Plant those feet—don't touch on your toes and kick up your heels. I hope your precious Yamanis don't run like this."

I'd like to see how you run with a silk kimono wrapped around you from thigh to ankle, Kel thought as she lengthened her stride. The thought of Wyldon in Yamani dress made her giggle as her thigh muscles strained, then relaxed, easing into the new way to run. A quick glance ahead told Kel the boys were starting to race. Let them—she was going to stay right behind Merric's steadily churning feet.

Wyldon slowed them to a walk, then made them run again. He alternated walking and running, never allowing them to come to a complete stop. They were a strong group, hardened by a winter of short runs to the stables and back. This was an easy track, flat and dry, but the length began to tell on them. Keeping her eyes down, Kel moved up until she was between Merric and Seaver.

"How's Lord Wyldon?" she inquired, gasping.

"Fresh as rosebuds in May," growled Merric.

"Don't you two know?" Seaver asked. "His lordship runs this whole wall, both ways, every morning before dawn. My cousin says that's how he got the lungs to yell like he does."

"I hate the Stump," Merric said tightly. He liked Neal's term for Wyldon.

"As if he cares a docken," Kel remarked. "How's Neal?"

Seaver looked up, scanning the pack of older boys. "He's ahead of everybody."

"Horse blood," guessed Merric. "There must be some in the Queenscove family."

"A racer," agreed Seaver, panting. "The family keeps it hushed up."

Kel would have laughed, but she was too breathless. She stayed with her two friends as they ran to the end of the wall. They stopped at the watchtower that marked one end of the flattened half circle.

"Keep moving!" ordered Wyldon, running in place as he watched the pages. "Don't stop—you'll cramp. If you throw up, do it outside of the wall—the wind can't blow it back in your face."

"Oh, good," gasped Esmond, who looked like he might well vomit. "That's an important tip."

I'd better not get sick, then, Kel thought. She stubbornly kept her eyes on the walkway as the boys drifted toward the view of the city. She'd heard it was splendid.

Wyldon had come to a halt. As the pages drew within earshot, he said, "You might one day command an attack on a walled fortress. How would you approach this position? Quinden of Marti's Hill?"

"I'd go around the back," he said, and smirked as the other pages laughed.

"Very true," Wyldon said frostily. "With no attacks on this palace in centuries, previous monarchs who wished to expand knocked out the rear wall. We are discussing a hypothetical, Page Quinden—a chance for you to use your imagination. How would you attack, Page Merric?"

"I'd still go around back, m'lord," replied Merric, who had caught his breath. "With the Royal Forest there, you can get men and catapults and rams really close before you're seen. Here in front, there's all that open ground between us and the Temple District."

"If you brought an army into that forest, there is a mage king in possession of the Dominion Jewel who will raise the trees and streams to fight you. He has a wildmage who would ask every vole, fox, rat, wolf, owl, and otter to harass your flanks. You would never be seen again," Wyldon informed them. "Probationer, how would you attack this wall? You must survey the ground before you reply."

Kel stared at Wyldon, white-faced.

Wyldon motioned for her to step up to one of the square notches between the tall stones in the wall. "Before we grow old, probationer."

Kel's legs trembled, and not just with exhaustion from the run. She forced one foot forward, then the next.

"I hope you are quicker to advise your lord in a combat situation," Wyldon told her.

Stone halted her advancing steps. She had reached the wall. Kel took a deep breath and looked out through the opening.

Straight ahead the city was a jeweled blanket on both sides of the Oloron River. It was a very pretty sight. Kel didn't feel as if she were high up, but as if she were looking at a complex tapestry.

"Our attackers have already overrun the city and put it to the torch, girl," Wyldon said overpatiently. Kel heard the other pages snickering. She was taking too long. "How must they come at us?"

It's all right, Kel thought. This isn't so bad.

Then she looked down.

Kel's ears roared; she could not catch her breath. The broad moat that passed in front of the wall was a long drop below. She heard nothing, did not feel hands prying her grip from the stone. The fear gripped her as tightly as it had on the day Conal held her over the tower balcony. Her whole body crawled with a weak, paralyzed itch.

A clean-shaven face thrust itself before hers. "Look at me, girl," a stern voice ordered. "Nowhere else. Look at my face. Whose face do you see?"

Kel blinked. That hideous drop was gone, replaced… Her eyes darted to red furrows of scar at the corner of his right eye.

"Lord Wyldon," she croaked.

"Exactly. Look at my face and turn with me." His hands on her arms tugged, twisting her body to one side. She had to move her feet or be wrapped around her own spine. She turned, her eyes locked on his.

"Now. We're on a flat place. There's stone under your feet, do you understand? Look down."

"I'll fall," she whispered.

"You can't. You're on solid ground. Just look. Curse it, girl, do as you're told!"

Instinctively—they'd all learned to jump for that tone this winter—she looked down. The only thing that she saw was stone, flat, gray, and wonderfully close.

A boy snickered. "Ooh, I'll fall," someone squeaked in a falsetto voice.

Kel closed her eyes, close to tears with humiliation.

Wyldon let go of Kel. "All of you, back to the practice courts," he said. "We've time for a few rounds of staff work."

A few boys passed her, giggling. A friendly arm was slung around Kel's shoulders. "Come on, Mindelan," Neal's husky voice murmured in her ear. "We'll get you inside."

"But you're not afraid on stairs," Seaver remarked.

She cleared her throat. "Most are narrow and twisty. You can't see far in either direction. The rest of the time I just look at the next step."

"You better pray he never makes you climb Balor's Needle," Cleon advised as they entered the tower stairwell closest to the pages' wing.

"He doesn't make us run up there, does he?" Kel squeaked. Balor's Needle was the tallest part of the palace, a lean, high spire with a fragile-looking iron stair that spiraled around its length. The mages used it to observe the stars or to work spells of long-seeing that let them view the countryside around the palace and capital.

Cleon shook his head. "None of us are allowed up there. A page failed the examinations about six years ago and jumped off the Needle."

In silence they finished the walk to the court where staff practice was held. It surprised none of them that someone might jump to his death after failing the dreaded spring examinations.

Not that I'll have to worry, Kel thought dully as she picked up her staff. He knows I'm afraid of heights now. He can say if I'm afraid of heights, I can't keep up with the boys, and I'll be out on my ear.

By early April Kel was able to hit the quintain's small shield every time she jousted. Her lance could only take so much of this accuracy; at last it shattered. Taking a buffet from the sandbag—she had yet to strike the small ring on the target, which would cause the bag to swing just halfway around—Kel rode Peachblossom to the quintain and dismounted, picking the pieces of her shattered lance out of the mud.

"Stop mourning like it's a dead friend," Wyldon said curtly. He'd been short with her since that day on the palace wall. "Go choose another."

Joren was ahead of her, picking a lance from the spares and holding it to Kel as she approached. Expressionless, she accepted it, knowing his eagerness to help was just so he could give her another weighted lance. This one felt no lighter than the old one. Kel ran her fingers along it and found the hair-fine breaks where plugs had been fitted back into the wood. She looked at Joren. He smirked.

Something happened to her then, something she would not be able to explain if she lived to be a thousand. A feeling like cool rain poured over her, making her feel more focused than she ever had before.

She mounted Peachblossom.

She floated in an empty space, enclosed in glass like one of Master Lindhall's animals. Outside the glass, the older boys practiced sword work from horseback as they waited their turn on the quintain, or they joked or rested, one eye on Sergeant Ezeko as he corrected Faleron's seat. A single quintain was free, the one assigned to the new pages: Esmond was next, but Lord Wyldon was showing him something as the other three first-years watched.

Unobserved, Kel kneed Peachblossom into line with the free quintain. She swung her lance into the couched position, its grip firmly in her gloved hand, the butt passed snugly between her ribs and arm. The long, tapered end thrust out over the gelding's withers at just the right angle to hit the shield. Gently she kicked Peachblossom, urging him forward at a trot. Her world narrowed to one small, painted circle on a slab of wood. She was halfway down the lane, and everything—her seat, her grip, the heft of the lance—felt perfect in a way it never had before.

"Charge," she whispered to Peachblossom. She hadn't demanded that speed from him since their first try at the quintain.

He lowered his head and charged, hooves thundering on the damp, springtime ground.

Kel rose to meet the target, her lance aimed at the circle. She struck it dead center. The target snapped to the side, precisely as it did for the third- and fourth-year pages, the quintain turning neatly. Kel galloped past, waiting for the bruising impact of the sandbag. It never came.

She raised her lance and drew back on the reins, guiding Peachblossom into a gentle turn. She was almost certain that the gelding congratulated her. "Extra oats for you tonight," she murmured, slowing him to a walk.

Wyldon watched her, arms crossed over his chest. "Good," he said. "When you can do it reliably, instead of once or twice, you will have something."

Kel didn't hesitate. She knew the feel of it now. She walked Peachblossom into a turn and pointed him at the target. One of the pages had already set it for the next tilter. Kel tucked her lance butt under her arm, lowered it until it crossed the gelding's shoulders, and urged him into a trot, then a gallop, then the charge. Everything that had been so perfect a few moments ago felt exactly right again. She struck the circle dead center a second time, then went back and did it a third time and a fourth. After her fifth perfect tilt, she stopped in front of Lord Wyldon.

"Very good, probationer." Wyldon sounded as if his teeth hurt to say it. The other pages had all stopped what they were doing to watch her last three passes. "You are released for the remainder of the morning."

She bowed to him from the saddle and turned Peachblossom toward the stables.

The sound of applause made her turn in the saddle. "Huzzah, Kel!" Neal cried gleefully. "Huzzah, huzzah!" The prince, Merric, Seaver, Faleron, and Cleon were all clapping and cheering. So were Eda Bell, the Shang Wildcat, and Stefan the hostler, who often came to watch the tilting practice. She waved to them with a grin, and nudged Peachblossom to a trot.

The examinations at the end of April had existed for only fourteen years. King Jonathan's father had introduced them after the discovery that a girl—Alanna the Lioness—had concealed her sex to become a knight. The suspicion that trickery was involved had led King Roald to create public tests.

Now anyone could watch as a panel of nobles, mages, and teachers asked pages questions about their classwork and watched them show their physical skills in practice bouts of all kinds. Only three boys had failed the examinations since they were set up, yet all the pages were convinced that they would be the next. Even the prospect of the lesser examinations, the "little tests," which gave younger pages experience in public questions and performance, made them nervous.

Kel dreaded the public exams, but she was beginning to think that this year's tests would be the only ones she would get to take. Lord Wyldon would never let her return in the fall. He was as cold to her in April as he'd been in September. He still referred to her as "probationer," which seemed like a bad sign.

Knowing that, she had to force herself to study for the little tests. The reality was an anticlimax: their audience was tiny, the classroom questions basic. The pages had to write and do mathematical problems on a large slate so everyone watching could follow their work. They had to recite the Code of Ten, the set of laws that formed the basis of government in most realms north of the Inland Sea. They reported aloud on the habits and behavior of some species of immortal—Kel chose hurroks. Then they demonstrated three different ways to greet dignitaries. That marked the end of the classroom work.

Going to the outdoor practice court for their examinations, the first-year pages had to saddle, mount, and ride their horses around a ring. They went through the most basic maneuvers with unarmed combat, staff, wooden practice sword, and bow. Then, to Kel's surprise and relief, it was over. All of the first-years passed.