Oath of Gold

THE DEED OF PAKSENARRION
Sheepfarmer’s Daughter - Book I
Divided Allegiance - Book II
Oath of Gold - Book III
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 1989 by Elizabeth Moon

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

Baen Publishing Enterprises
PO Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471

ISBN: 0-671-69798-6
Cover art by Kevin Davies

Oath of blood is Liart’s bane
Oath of death is for the slain
Oath of stone the rockfolk swear
Oath of iron is Tir’s domain
Oath of silver liars dare
Oath of gold will yet remain…

—from
The Oathsong of Mikeli

T
he village seemed faintly familiar,
but most villages were much alike. Not until she came to the crossroads with its inn did she realize she had been here before. There was the paved inn court, and the wide door, and the bright sign—
The Jolly Potboy
—hanging over it. Her breath seemed to freeze in her chest. The crossroads was busier than she remembered; there was much bustling in and out of the inn. The windows to the common bar were wide open, and clear across the road she heard a roar of laughter she recognized. She flinched. They might recognize her, even in the clothes she wore now. She thought of the coins in her purse, and the meal she’d hoped to buy—but she could not go there, of all places, and order a meal of Jos Hebbinford. Nor was there any other place to go: she was known in Brewersbridge, and dared not beg a scrap from some housewife lest she be recognized.

Paks shook her head, fighting back tears. Once she had ridden these streets—stayed at that inn—had friends in every gathering.

“Here now, why so glum?â€

P
aks was aware of something cold and hard
touching her skin before she could think what had happened. It was dark. She began to shiver from the cold. A pungent, resinous odor prickled her nose. When she tried to rub it, she found she couldn’t move her arms. Sudden panic soured her mouth: dark, cold, trapped. She tried to squirm free. Now she could feel pressure along most of her body. Nothing moved. She heaved frantically, heedless of roughness that scraped her. She stirred only dust that clogged her nose and made her sneeze. The sneeze stirred more dust; she sneezed again.

A ghost of reason returned: if she could sneeze, she was not being crushed utterly. She tried to think. Her head hurt. Her arms—she tried to feel, to wiggle her fingers. One was cramped under her; she worked those fingers back and forth. The other moved only slightly as she tried it. It felt as if it were under a sack of meal—something heavy, but yielding. When she tried to lift her head from the dust, it bumped something hard above her: bumped on the very place that hurt so. Paks muttered a Company curse at that, and let her head back down. Her legs—she tried again, without success, to move them. They were trapped under the same heavy weight as the rest of her body. She rested her cheek on the dust beneath it and wandered back into sleep.

When she heard the voices, she thought at first she was dreaming. Silvery elven voices, much like Ardhiel’s, wove an intricate pattern of sound. She lay, blinking in the darkness, and listened. After a moment, she realized that the darkness was no longer complete. She could see, dimly, a gnarled root a few inches from her nose. Remembering the hard barrier above her head, she turned cautiously to the side, and tried to look up. Tiny flickers of dim light seeped through whatever held her down. The voices kept talking or singing. It might not be a dream. She listened.

“—somewhere about here, if I heard the call rightly. Mother of Trees! The daskdraudigs must have fallen on them.â€

B
y the start of the third watch that night,
the stronghold was in a very different mood. The servants Venner had hired over the years were huddled in one of the third floor storage rooms, guarded by Dorrin’s soldiers. They were clearly confused and frightened. Paks, on the pretext of bringing Dorrin messages from the Duke, had wandered among them. None triggered her warnings of evil, and the Duke now believed them to be innocent. But he was taking no chances, and they remained under guard for the next day and a half. Kessim’s shrouded body lay in state in one of the reception rooms, with an honor guard from all three cohorts.

Arcolin and the oldest veterans prowled the stronghold, looking for any signs of hidden weakness. Some they had already found, in the Duke’s quarters. “I didn’t build it this way,â€

O
ver the next few weeks,
Paks divided her time between attending the Duke and leading scouting parties of archers north and east from the stronghold. No orcs showed, but the Duke took no chances.

“I don’t want to take the whole Company into the Lairs,â€

S
ince you insist your quest is to find our prince,â€

T
hey traveled to Vérella with far less difficulty
than Paks had feared—though with far more publicity than she’d hoped. Marshal Pelyan, whom she’d met on the way to Lyonya, had heard of the quest before their arrival. Travelers, he said, had brought word as soon as it came to Harway. And he himself had passed the word on through the granges. So their arrival in any town caused excitement but not curiosity. Paks enjoyed the crowds of children that followed them, the flurry when they entered an inn, but hoped the admiration was not premature. As well, she remembered the winter before, when she had stumbled into such towns as a hungry vagrant, whom the children tricked and harrassed instead of cheering.

In each town, they spent the night in grange or field, for Paks wished the King’s Squires to have such protection at night. The Marshals each had a measure of news or advice; she listened to all. She did not tell them the prince’s name, but she told what she could of the quest so far. The nearer she came to Vérella, the more recent the news became. In Westbells, just east of Vérella, Marshal Torin told her that the Duke had been summoned to the Council. She had not asked, but it seemed Phelan’s call to court was of interest even to a neighboring town.

“What I heard,â€

O
n the higher ground, Paks could see farther;
from time to time the light strengthened as if the sun might break through. The red horse seemed to know the way—Paks had explained, as if he were a human companion, that they needed to find the grange at Westbells. She concentrated on riding. Now that she had time to think, she wondered that she was able to move about at all. Something or someone had worked healing on her: her own gift, Gird, the gods themselves. She was not sure why the healing was incomplete, but told herself to be glad she was whole of limb. Enough pains were left that she was glad when they came to Westbells near midday, with the winter fog still blurring distant vision. When she slid from the red horse’s back, she staggered, leaning against him. Her feet felt like two lumps of fire.

Marshal Torin stared at her when he opened the door to her knock. “Is it—â€