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The good god can do all and anything, the Writ says He can make a square circle and create justice frorow hope fros for his people, did the old gods possess a silimpsed a reality that was not e of ht My , sleepless but unwearied, I rose with the sun As the first light touched od seeh outcropping of stone For a moment the dawn sparkled on trapped flecks of ed, and it beca I walked to it, crouched by it, and touched it, feeling its hard reality This, I was sure, was the mother of the small stone I’d carried in my flesh That cruel souvenir, at least, had definitely come from this world I mounted Sirlofty and rode toward hoht, as if to rewardin the brush at the wet end of a gully where I had decided to caht hile shot I cut his throat to bleed his between the tendon and the bone, and hoisted hi there and propped the chest cavity open with a stick to let the e and his rack was no more than a set of spikes, but he was sufficient excuse for my expedition

I don’t think I was exceptionally surprised when Sergeant Duril rode into ca better than fresh liver," he observed as he dis, or why he was there Our hobbled horses grazed together and we shared the h that elcomed the fire’s warmth

We had been in our blankets for so to sleep, when he asked me, "Do you want to talk about it?"

I nearly said, "I can’t" That would have been the honest answer And it would have led to all sorts of other questions and probing and worries I would have had to lie to hieant I don’t think I do"

And that hat I learned from Dewara

CHAPTER 6

Sword and Pen

I have spoken to men who have suffered sudden severe injuries, or endured torture or extreme loss They speak of those events distantly, as if they have set them out of their lives So I atte proven to myself that none of my encounter with the tree woman had even the most tenuous tie to reality, I htoblins understars

It was hts I also banished my father’s secret doubt of me from my ruminations Dewara had been a test to see if I could, when circumstance demanded it, question my father’s wisdom and resist the old Plains warrior and become my own leader I had only briefly defied Dewara before becouidance I had never defied my father But I had lied to him I had lied to try to make him think I’d found the backbone to stand up to the Kidona If I had thought that lie would buy me new respect froed at all that I could detect

For a short tiard I redoubledand cavalla techniques that I loved, but also on the academic studies that were my demons My scores soared, and when he discussed the ress, he praised me for my efforts But the words were the sa never suspected he doubted er believe in his praise And when he rebuked ust with nified his disappointment in me

So that would guarantee my father’s approval So I made a conscious decision to set those experiences aside Spirit journeys to tree wo toof my existence, and so I discarded theet from one day to the next: they set aside all experiences that do not mesh with their perception of themselves

How different would our perception of reality be if, instead, we discarded the mundane events that cannot coexist with our dreaht that only came to me many years later What remained of my fifteenth year demanded the full focus of rowth spurt that astonished even my father I ate like a starved beast at every ht and h three pairs of boots and four jackets in eight months My mother declared proudly to her friends that if I did not soon reach , she would have to hire a seamstress just to keep me decently clad