Despite the overflow of humanity present for the congress
at the royal palace, the hall where Keladry of Mimdelan
walked was deserted. There were no servants to be seen. No
echo of the footsteps, laughter, or talk that filled the
sprawling residence sounded here, only Kel's steps and the
click of her dog's claws on the stone floor.
They made an interesting pair. The fourteen-year-old girl
was big for her age, five feet nine inches tall, and
dressed informally in breeches and shirt. Both were a dark
green that emphasized the same color in her green-hazel
eyes. Her dark boots were comfortable, not fashionable. On
her belt hung a pouch and a black-hilted dagger in a plain
black sheath. Her brown hair was cut to earlobe length. It
framed a tanned face dusted with freckles across a
delicate nose. Her mouth was full and decided.
The dog, known as Jump, was barrel-chested, with slightly
bowed forelegs. His small, triangular eyes were set deep
in a head shaped like a heavy chisel. He was mostly white,
but black splotches covered the end of his nose, his lone
whole ear, and his rump; his tail plainly had been broken
twice. He looked like a battered foot soldier to Kel's
young squire, and he had proved his combat skills often.
At the end of the hall stood a pair of wooden doors carved
with a sun, the symbol of Mithros, god of law and war.
They were ancient, the surfaces around the sun curved deep
after centuries of polishing. Their handles were crude
iron, as coarse as the fittings on a barn door.
Kel stopped. Of the pages who had just passed the great
examinations to become squires, she was the only one who
had not come here before. Pages never came to this
hall.Legend held that pages who visited the Chapel of the
Ordeal never became squires: they were disgraced or
killed. But once they were squires, the temptation to see
the place where they would be tested on their fitness for
knighthood was irresistible.
Kel reached for the handle, and opened one door just
enough to admit her and Jump. There were benches placed on
either side of the room from the door to the altar. Kel
slid onto one, glad to give her wobbly knees a rest. Jump
sat in the aisle beside her.
After her heart calmed, Kel inspected her surroundings.
This chapel, focus of so many longings, was plain. The
floor was gray stone flags; the benches were polished wood
without ornament. Windows set high in the walls on either
side were as stark as the room itself.
Ahead was the altar. Here, at least, was decoration: gold
candlesticks and an altar cloth that looked like gold
chain mail. The sun disk on the wall behind it was also
gold. Against the gray stone, the dark benches, and the
wrought-iron cressets on the walls, the gold looked
tawdry.
The iron door to the right of the sun disk drew Kel's
eyes. There was the Chamber of the Ordeal. Generations of
squires had entered it to experience something. None told
what they saw; they were forbidden to speak of it.
Whatever it was, it usually let squires return to the
chapel to be knighted.
Some who entered the Chamber failed. A year-mate of Kel's
brother Anders had died three weeks after his Ordeal
without ever speaking. Two years after that a squire from
Fief Yanholm left the Chamber, refused his shield, and
fled, never to be seen again. At Midwinter in 453, months
before the Immortals War broke out, a squire went mad
there. Five months later he escaped his family and drowned
himself
"The Chamber is like a cutter of gemstones," Anders had
told Kel once. "It looks for your flaws and hammers them,
till you crack open. And that's all I-or anyone will say
about it."
The iron door seemed almost separate from the wall, more
real than its surroundings. Kel got to her feet,
hesitated, then went to it. Standing before the door, she
felt a cold draft.
Kel wet suddenly dry lips with her tongue. Jump whined. "I
know what I'm doing," she told her dog without conviction,
and set her palm on the door.
She sat at a desk, stacks of Parchment on either side. Her
hands sharpened a goose quill with a penknife. Splotches
of ink stained her fingers. Even her sleeves were spotted
with "There you are, squire."
Kel looked up. Before her stood Sir Gareth the Younger,
King
Jonathan's friend and adviser. Like Kel's, his hands and
sleeves were ink-stained. "I need you to find these." He
passed a slate to Kel, who took it, her throat tight with
misery. "Before you finish up today, please. They should
be in section eighty-eight." He pointed to the far end of
the room. She saw shelves, all stretching from floor to
ceiling, al lstuffed with books, scrolls, and documents.
She looked at her tunic. She wore the badge Fief Naxen,
Sir Gareth's home, with the white ring around it that
indicated she served the heir to the fief. Her knight-
master was a desk knight, not a warrior.
Work is work, she thought, trying not to cry. She still
had her duty to Sir Gareth, even if it meant grubbing
through papers. She thrust herself away ftom her desk-
-and tottered on the chapel's flagstones. Her hands were
numb with cold, her palms bright red where they had
touched the Chamber door.
Kel scowled at the iron door. "I'll do my duty," she told
the thing, shivering.
Jump whined again. He peered up at her, his tail awag in
consolation.
"I'm all right," Kel reassured him, but she checked her
hands for inkspots. The Chamber had made her live the
thing she feared most just now, when no field knight had
asked for her service. What if the Chamber knew? What if
she was to spend the next four years copying out dry
passages from drier records? Would she quit? Would
paperwork do what other pages' hostility had not-drive her
back to Mindelan?