“Into Kolobia,” Paks said. “Or so I suspect from the information in Luap’s writings.”

“My family would not give it up or go into exile. They hid it except in their own domain, using Liart’s power and blood magery to preserve and strengthen it.”

“This will come out now,” Paks said. “Or will you try to hide it?”

“No. It must come out and it must end,” Dorrin said. “But there is more.”

“What?”

“This.” Dorrin ducked into the shadows of an empty stall, almost dark in the late afternoon. Light flared from her hands. “I have a little magery. I do not use it, but I have it.”

“The light of truth,” Paks said.

“No. The light of fire. It will burn.” The light died. In the darkness, Dorrin went on. “You saw my sword flare in Rotengre. It has its own magic, yes, but the light is its response to mine.”

“You’re certain it’s the old magery?”

“What else could it be? I never trained as a wizard. I’m not a paladin. The Knight-Commander of Falk made that clear.”

Paks led the way out of the dark stall into the stableyard. “Did you have any training in your magery? Anything useful?”

“No. What they wanted to teach me, I didn’t want to learn. I can light candles or kindle a fire, but nothing like the light you produced for the battle.”

Paks frowned. “I don’t know what other magics the magelords were supposed to have … though the Marshal-General said the evidence out there in Kolobia suggested a variety of things, from lifting rocks to healing.”

“The archives list a number of abilities, but they’re all supposed to require training,” Dorrin said. “Making light is the one they watch for in children, to see if they have the talent. Others are less likely to emerge without it, though it does happen.”

“What does it feel like, when you make the light?” Paks asked. “Does it feel hot, there in your hand?”

“No. I don’t feel anything. Do you?”

“Only inside,” Paks said. “In my heart, there’s a … a feeling of being … partly somewhere else.” She shook her head and chuckled. “I can’t describe it. Something feels open, and the light comes. Master Oakhallow told me that paladins’ powers come from the gods. But we ask for light, or healing, and it may or may not be granted.”

Dorrin looked at her, remembering the tall, yellow-haired peasant girl who’d impressed all the older veterans with her likeness to the Duke’s dead wife. But every recruiting season brought peasant girls and boys, artisans’ sons and daughters, into the Company, and Paks was not the only one who seemed special at first. She was not even the only one who had reminded them of Tammarion.

Now she bore the High Lord’s silver circle on her brow, proof of the ordeal she had endured and the reward she had more than earned, and Dorrin was torn between resentment, admiration, and relief.