The end result of which was that I offered Riddle my hand, though not smilingly, and accepted his explanation for what it was worth.
“It was a year ago, Peter, that I found some old papers of my grandfather’s. They told of an ancient contract, a promise of honor between our people and Barish. I had never heard of it. My father was only a child when his father died. I was only a child when my father died. So if there had been a contract, this sacred and secret indebtedness, the chain of it had been broken at Dindindaroo. The papers spoke of a certain place in the north. You recall traveling with me a year ago. I left you below Betand to go on to Kiquo and over the high bridge into these wastes. It was all futile. There was no guide, no map, nothing.
“Then, not a season gone, came this fellow Vitior Vulpas Queynt to tell me of this same contract. He was full of hints, full of words and winks and nods. And at that same time, some of our people found Quench here wandering among the mountains to the west. Well, Quench and I put our heads together, and it seemed the only way we would know anything surely was to raise up my grandfather. As I said, we meant no harm.”
“So that is why you were burrowing about in Dindindaroo,” I said. “You had only recently learned of this ancient agreement.”
“Learned of it,” rumbled Quench, “for all the good it did us. I wanted proof the Gamesman Huld was a villain. I wanted to know where Barish had gone, and what this Council business was all about. Our own history spoke of Barish, mind you, and Vulpas too. I wanted to know everything, real things, but you sent us scurrying off to the south on an idiot’s quest. Well. I suppose we deserved being ill led for having led you ill. Let it be past and forgotten.”
“When we returned,” said Riddle, “with empty hands, we went to Himaggery as we should have done in the first place. I knew him to be honorable. We should have gone there first.”
“It would have saved us much thrashing about,” said Himaggery, who had come up to us in the midst of all these revelations and confessions. “We were hunting Quench all over the western reaches from Hawsport south, and we were hunting Huld everywhere but Hell’s Maw. We knew it for a den of horrors, a Ghoul’s nest, but we did not envision Huld as master of the place. He had seemed too proud for such dishonor.”
“I believe,” said Jinian, “that we will find it necessary soon to revise our notions of dishonor.” She squeezed my hand and left me to ruminate upon that while the others continued their explorations into history in a mood of such profound veneration that it almost immobilized them.
Dorn was not among the group. I went off looking for him. He was with Silkhands, Tamor, and King Kelver upon a bit of high ground near Barish’s Keep. Tamor had been healed of his wound, though not of the wound to his pride, for he had been the only one of us to be wounded at all. He bowed himself away after a wink at me, as did Kelver and Silkhands, hand in hand, oblivious of much else in the world. I think I sighed. Dorn gave me a sharp look which I well recognized, though I had not seen it with physical eyes before.
“You had plans concerning her?” he asked.
“No. And yes,” I confessed. “Yes, some time ago. But no, not since Kelver came along.”
“And Jinian came along?”
That was rather more difficult. True, she had said she loved me at some confused point during the last day or two. True, she had told me I was clever and that had proved to be marginally accurate, if the outcome of the battle was any test. True, parts of me stirred at the thought of her, at times. But …
“She says she is a Wizard,” I said.
“Ah,” said Dorn. “That is difficult.”