He picked up the ring, kissed it, and slid it onto his heart-hand thumb; it fit as if made for him. The light returned again; the tiny dragon seemed to writhe, his hand and arm tingled, and then the stone showed clear pale green again and the sensation vanished.

When he put the gold torc on the shrine, the twisted strands brightened, then slowly untwisted to show something gleaming between them … the strand on which they were wound. White, glowing like polished ivory, itself twisted … he reached out, and the gold tightened, closing over it again. He laid his hand on it. He felt it was something magical, but he had never seen anything like it. No vision or word came to him, but the conviction that he should wear it. He ran his hand over the thing … His mother’s neck, as he remembered it, was smaller than his own. But when he set it about his, it also fit precisely, comfortable … even comforting.

Well. The belt clasp next. The bright enamel shone as if lit from within, which did not by this time surprise him. Tiny letters appeared like those on his father’s and sisters’ bones; he could read those, though the words made little sense at first, jumbled together as they were. They faded before he could read them clearly.

Finally, the only object left was the box of selani tiles. He set that on the shrine. The clasp opened of itself, and the lid lifted. The box inverted itself, pouring the tiles out on the shelf. Two rolled off the shelf; Kieri caught them in his hands. Both were green, their runes in silver. He didn’t recognize them, but the meaning seeped into his mind as he held them. Loyalty. Regard. Not opposites, this time.

He considered loyalty: to whom had he been loyal, and who had been loyal to him? To Aliam Halveric … to his oaths, to his kings, to his soldiers … and he had known loyalty from them. Regard? Yes, that, too.

He laid those two on the shelf, and another two stirred. He picked them up. Pair by pair, the same thing happened—runes he could not read revealed themselves and sometimes gave him alternatives and sometimes merely examples. He did not understand the colors … why loyalty and regard were green, and courtesy and kindness were red and blue, respectively, but all of that kind—virtues or valued qualities—had their runes in silver. The ones with opposites had their runes in gold and false gold.

By day’s end, he had worked through perhaps half the tiles. When his Squires called that they had prepared a meal, he stood up—finding himself less stiff than he expected—bowed to the shrine, and poured the tiles back into the box.