“They marked my face with the blood,” she said. “They forced my mouth open and put blood in—”

“My child—” Dorrin looked up again; the Knight-Commander was pale. “They did that to an infant! And this is what my predecessor knew?”

“Some of it.” No one knew all, none but those who had done it, and she, their victim. “They told me that now I belonged to them, that now my magery would grow, and I would learn to maintain it with greater blood. That I belonged to the Bloodlord—who is the same as Liart, sir, though they insisted on calling him differently. And they punished me for resisting, so I would learn how useless it was …”

“Punished you how?”

“They left my legs useless for three days, by their magery, and put me on the floor. I could not walk, or reach the food and water they put on a table in the cell …”

“Did they punish you thus when you refused later?”

“Not the same way, no.” Dorrin clenched her teeth on the horrors but it had to be said. “They tormented anything, anyone, that I cared for, as well as me. Animals. People. I tried to run away on my first pony. They killed the pony, slowly.”

“Did you ever submit willingly—did you ever harm any you were told to harm?”

She felt the hot tears on her face again, as she had felt them long ago. “The last … the last before I got away … a friend—” A friend maintained in agony to secure her outward obedience. “I tried not to, but sometimes—sometimes I was too weak. I thought if I did it, did it quickly, they wouldn’t. I learned better.” So many years, so many suffering victims, so many times she had not been able to do anything for them. “The last … I killed him,” she said quickly. “I killed him myself, to end his suffering, and then I ran, and that time I made it to the border.”

Heavy silence filled the little room. The Knight-Commander’s face might have been carved of stone. Then he sighed. “I understand now why my predecessor let you stay, and why he knighted you, Dorrin of Verrakai. If ever someone needed Falk’s protection, and had earned it, you did, and you had. But how did you escape? Surely they were watching you.”

“I thought there must be better gods, and I asked their help. Then I thought I should try to escape, and if I were killed, so much the better.”

“And you were still very young,” the Knight-Commander said.

“I was, yes,” Dorrin said. Looking back now, her escape did appear miraculous. She shivered a little.

“I have a dilemma which I expect Lady Paksenarrion will understand better than you,” the Knight-Commander said. “I now understand why my predecessor not only accepted you, but sponsored your knighthood. I concur with his judgment, which I did not before. But now … you say you still have those powers which in your family have been used only for evil.”