“There are stories of others. Not that the stories are necessarily true. But that’s part of what I mean. In the Schools you are all taught so little about what really is and what may truly be.”
“Why would they do that? Why would my own thalan, for example, fail to teach me things I would need to know?”
“Because they do not believe you do need to know,” he replied in exasperation. “They think the least told, the least troubled. If you do not hear of the Northern Lands, you will not venture there. If you do not hear of Gifters, you will not fall prey to one. It is all arrant nonsense, of course. Pawner caravans pick up a hundred ignorant youths and carry them away north for every one who adventures there on his own. Gifters make between-meal bites of the naive, while the well-taught escape with their lives. I have even heard old Gamesmen speak with tears in their throats of the ‘innocence’ of youth. ‘Innocence’, indeed. They should say arrant ignorance and be done with it.” He fumed for another league and I did not interrupt him, for I often learned much by letting him burble. Thus it was I did not ask him more about Gifters when I should have done.
“There is a pawnish settlement in the south,” he said at last, “in which they do not teach their children anything of sex. It is kept a great mystery. The belief of this sect is that this ignorance will keep their children from harm. As a result, they value virginity highly and it is virtually unknown among them.”
I did not believe this, but allowed it to stand unchallenged as we rode on. I didn’t ask about Gifters, or the northlands, or anything else. Ah well. Yestersight is perfect, so they say.
We had been several days on the road when we came to a rolling range of hills and began to track upward by repeated switch-backs, higher and higher, the way becoming more rocky and precipitous as we went. I was reminded a bit of the road from Windlow’s House to Bannerwell, except that this one did not seem to run through wilderness. There were villages all along the way, cut into the sides of the mountains with meadows the size of handkerchiefs spread upon the ledges, and a constant procession of lanterns, little ones and big ones, never seeming to run out of candles. At last we came to a high pass at which the road split, one fork leading downward to the north, the other winding to the east among the crags.
“Well,” he said to me. “We are near Betand. We come to the parting of ways, Peter. I am thankful for your company thus far. If you will slit your eyes you will see the roofs of the city away to the northwest, and I wish you well in your journey.”
I was sorry to part from him. Truth to tell, I had never been really alone before the brief trip from Schooltown to Bannerwell, and I did not like it much. It was not fear I felt, but something else. A kind of lostness, of being singular of my kind. As though there were none near to greet me as fellow. Of course, the Necromancer’s hood had much to do with that. Nonetheless, I had been grateful for his company and said so. We sat a time there on the pass, saying nothing much except to let one another know we would be less comfortable on the journey after we parted. At last, as I was about to run out of polite phrases and begin to choke, he patted me upon one shoulder.
“I go east from here, to Kiquo, and to the high bridge only recently restored though it was eighty years ago in the great cataclysm that it fell. I go to seek mysteries, my boy. You go to seek mysteries of your own. Well, then, good journey and good chance to you.” And he went away, not looking back, leaving me to press down the further slope toward the city I could see beneath me in the westering sun of late afternoon.