“Magery,” she said.

“Verrakai has wizards?” he asked.

“Wizards do magicks,” she said. “Some better, some worse, some more powerful than others, but that is not magery. This is the old magery, Valthan. Southern magery, that all the magelords once had. Surely you know what the prince told me—it was used against him, when Verrakai meant to kill him.”

His hand rose to his own knightly insignia, the Bells. The Order of the Bells was rigorously Girdish, in origin and practice. His voice trembled. “I thought—it must have been—Liart’s spells the Duke used. The old magery was all lost, if it was ever more than the powers granted by evil gods. Gird destroyed it—”

“No,” Dorrin said. Once having started, it was easier. “It was not all lost, and Gird did not destroy it. Magery was failing even before Gird’s rebellion destroyed the old system … some families had lost it completely, and in others only a few individuals had it. The Marrakaien, for instance, had no effective magery then. The only Mahieran left alive after the war had none; that’s why he was made king; the other surviving families agreed, to make the peace with the Girdish. But some families … our family … still had the old magery, and held it close. They chose then not to fight openly—they lacked the numbers—but preserve it for some future time.”

“Did the prince know? The Council?”

“The prince certainly does now, since he experienced it himself. Before, I don’t know—I don’t imagine so. To be honest, Sir Valthan, I do not know how much of Haron’s magery was his own innate power and how much was—as you thought—granted to him as one of Liart’s worshippers. Its existence was always a close-held secret, and they believed alliance with Liart was the means to retain and strengthen it.”

His face expressed all the disgust and horror she herself felt. “Is that the—” He gulped, then went on. “Is that the only way to preserve the magery?”

“No,” Dorrin said. “Some children are born with it, long before they could swear service to Liart.”

“Do … do you have this magery?”

“Yes,” Dorrin said, and watched his already pale face pale even more. “I do. I was born to it, but never trained in its use.”

“Does the prince know that?”

“Yes,” Dorrin said. She handed over the third note. “As you said.”

He looked up from the note, eyes blazing. “It’s against the Code! The practice of magery is expressly forbidden. He cannot permit this—”

“He believes, as I do, that it is the only way—”

“He should have called for a paladin,” Valthan said. “A Girdish paladin.” His glance at her ruby was eloquent of scorn. “You had one with you—did you not think to ask her help?”

“Indeed I did,” Dorrin said. “And her response was that she would not come with me—she felt no call to come—but she did help me awaken my own magery.”

“Awaken?”

“It had been blocked by the Knight-Commander of Falk when I was a student at Falk’s Hall. See here, Sir Valthan, I am no more happy about this situation than you are. I have no love for my family; I never meant to see the place again. I did not regret the loss of the little magery I then had; I made a good life for myself without it. But this is what my—and your—prince wants, for the good of the realm. Otherwise, he thinks, Tsaia might face civil war and thousands could die, leaving the realm weak against foreign enemies like, for instance, Pargun.”