Chessie had found a book. He wouldn’t say where he got it, and it was unlikely it had come from the library at Talatour, which consisted of three or four volumes on heraldry, The Gallic Wars, a few smudged ballad sheets, and Triumph of Talatour: Origins and Tournaments of the Jade Jousting Team, privately copied and bound. But wherever it had come from, he had it.
Reading was a problem. He finally figured out that if he splayed both paws over opposite pages he could keep the book open and still read between his claws. This left each page with a faint paw print, deeper at the claw end and smelling vaguely of rabbit. After he had spent an entire morning splaying and clawing and reading, he went to find Kirila.
She was sitting alone in the solar, embroidering a yellow satin sleeve with green thread, and had just pricked her finger. When Chessie trotted in she was sucking the finger and searching the satin for blood. He saw it wasn’t a good time, but some urgency, pressing upward from a panicky spot in his stomach, pushed him ahead anyway. Kirila, dressed in her new satin gown with her hair in ringlets, looked a stranger. The neckline made him nervous, and the nerves made him shy.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
“What are you doing?”
She eyed him irritably. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re embroidering.”
“Well, that’s what I’m doing.”
“Oh.” He coughed diffidently. “May I see? Oh, yes, very...very nice.”
“Well, it’s not too bad,” Kirila said. She spread the sleeve out on her lap. “I was afraid I might have gotten blood on it, but I didn’t.”
“That’s good.”
“It’s a sleeve. For Larek to carry in the tournament.” She looked at Chessie defiantly, but he merely nodded and smiled, bobbing his head four or five times as though he wouldn’t be sure where to place it if he stopped.
“See, it’s a fairly difficult pattern. The green cinquefoils have to have each petal rounded at the tip, and that’s hard with straight stitches.”
“Oh,” Chessie said. “Yes, of course. Rounded.” He was bobbing again.
“It would have been easier to do trefoils, of course—two less petals—but the Talatour arms have cinquefoils.”
“I see. Cinquefoils.”
“Of course, I could have been really unlucky; they might have been octofoils, and that would have been really difficult.”
“Yes. It would. Be difficult.”
“I’ll tell you a secret, Chessie, if you won’t tell Larek,” Kirila said. She glanced around the solar worriedly, and Chessie, ears pricked and muscles taut with sudden wild hope, strained forward and held his breath. Kirila bent over and whispered into his ear, her voice hushed and tense. “I never embroidered before.”
“Never—”
“Embroidered. Not once. I did work a tapestry once, when I was a child, of the Creation of the Natural World. But no embroidery, till this sleeve, and it’s so important that it turn out well.”
“Never—”
“Chessie, what’s the matter with you? Why do you look so stupefied? It’s not that serious; just don’t tell Larek and he’ll probably never even guess.” She gazed complacently at the green cinquefoils.
Chessie shook his head as if he were shaking off flies. “Kirila—I have a book.”
She waited, but no more seemed to be coming. Finally she said encouragingly, “A book, Chessie? Where is it?”
“Outside, in the hall.”
“Well, why don’t you just go and bring it in?”
“I’ll just go and bring it in.”
He trotted back in carefully, mouthing the book as though it might explode, and laid it tenderly at her feet. Kirila picked it up. The title was Quests: A Longitudinal Field Survey, by Brother Sanctimus Moyle, O.F.M., of Eastwell Abbey.
“It’s a sort of a study of actual quests,” Chessie said. His words skittered over themselves like a rockslide, picking up a disorganized, plunging speed. “What the Brother did was gather a lot of information from questers and their questees, if it happened to be a quest for a person, and chart some common patterns. Impassable fords, for instance, turn up in 69.8% of all quests, did you know that? And holy hermits in 82.60. Makes us rather atypical, doesn’t it make you feel atypical? It makes me feel atypical. But he hasn’t just named all these recurring motifs—that’s what he calls them, ‘recurring motifs’—he hasn’t just named them, the really fascinating thing is, he’s organized them into—Kirila, are you listening?”
“Umm,” Kirila said. She was holding the book as though it smelled bad.
“—organized the recurring motifs into a sort of composite pattern, a kind of predictor of what the average quester can expect, although of course there are always individual differences to be provided for. But the underlying pattern is clear. There are always trials to be passed, usually either three or seven, in three main types. The first two types are physical and moral. Examples of the former would include dragon-slayings, joustings with Black Knights, and rescuing maidens, while among the latter are typically found such phenomena as—”
“Chessie,” Kirila said, “come to to point.” She held the embroidery needle poised in front of her, a little to one side, like a sword.
“The point, yes. Well, the point is, of course, that you fit the pattern, too, in a general sort of way. You’ve had various trials on your quest, what with the Quirks and the Liel...um...and in Rhuor, and—”
“I didn’t need this...thing to tell me that,” Kirila said. She lifted the book with two gingerly fingers and dropped it on the floor. “Really, Chessie, I’m surprised at you. Belaboring the obvious didn’t used to be among your flaws. Even I know a trial when I see one.”
“No,” Chessie said simply. His skittering nervousness abruptly left him and he held himself still, velvety depths in his brown eyes. “No. Not the third type.”
“Third type of what?” Kirila said, without much interest. She glanced out the window; Larek was due back soon from team practice. He was going to show her how to feather arrows.
“The third type of trial. Physical, moral...those you can walk away from when they’re done. If you’re not dead. But the third—the third is gyve.”
Kirila’s head snapped back from the window. Chessie went on, his great eyes steady. “Gyve. Enchainment. Cloistering. Caesura. Captivity. Arrestment. Often accompanied by bewitchment. You can’t walk away from that. It holds you immobile. You turn into something you’re not.”
“Chessie—”
“It’s very well documented. Prince Taefor of Eel, for instance, was gyved for sixteen years into believing he was an oak tree, and spent the whole time dawdling by an impassable ford, trying to grow leaves. And there’s notarized proof of the case of twin knights, Sir Ector and Landis, who were gyved asleep in mid-quest in an enchanted castle for 100 years. When they finally woke up, they’d completely forgotten what they were questing for and had to walk home empty-handed. And a magician turned—”
“Chessie—”
“—the Laird of Iverling, who was chasing the Questing Beast, into a large diamond, interrupting his quest until—”
“Chessie!” Kirila shouted, but when he stopped she had nothing to say. After a moment she offered, a little sulkily, “Larek’s not a magician.”
Chessie snorted. “Talk about the obvious. Of course he’s not a magician, magicians have brains. But you’re missing the point, Kirila. Gyve just isn’t all that rare. Forty-four percent of all quests—”
“Oh, for—Chessie, do you know how utterly ridiculous you sound? You sound like a Quirk, cramming the whole world into neat little numbers. And you told them that reductionism was a limited philosophy!”
“I didn’t say—”
“It makes me want to laugh,” Kirila said, not laughing. “It really makes me want to laugh.”
“Kirila, all I wanted you to see was—”
“I know what you wanted me to see! And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear the team riding in, and I promised Larek I’d meet him at the drawbridge.”
They stared at each other, the dog very still, the girl’s breast heaving under yellow satin. Tackma had sewn tiny imitation pearls around the neckline and on the girdle; the pearls caught the noon light from the window and shimmered like tears. In the distance a hunting horn sounded.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper, Chessie,” Kirila said. “It’s not worth quarreling over, is it? Some musty book.”
The horn sounded again, closer, silvery peals echoing faintly off the stone walls. The sound seemed to turn Kirila formal. She smoothed her ringlets, sat up straighter, and reached for her headdress. It was five-cornered, satin and pearls, and framed her face like a Gothic arch. From the top floated a useless wisp of yellow chiffon, fluttering in the breeze from the window.
“I wish,” Chessie said quietly, “that you had ever been able to see more than one thing at a time.”
She didn’t hear him. Rising in a straight regal column, she held out her hand and smiled, a smile as dazzling and empty as a soap bubble. “Again, my apologies, my Lord, for being so churlish. The fine sewing must have given me a headache. I know you have naught but my best interests at heart.” Again the dazzling smile; Chessie closed his eyes.
Kirila walked gracefully from the solar. Behind her trailed the yellow satin train, whispering over the stone floor. The train was edged with old, exquisite lace the color of cream; it had been in Tackma’s family for ages, and was considered a treasured, irreplaceable heirloom.