Messages and Forgiveness

While he was at Egremont Castle, Owen's days quickly fell into a routine that was mostly pleasant. His mornings were spent in combat training with Lord Wyldon, which he rather enjoyed no matter how exhausting it was, because he could see the progress he was making and because, even though he knew his friends would never believe him, training alone with Wyldon wasn't a nightmare. Sure, his knightmaster would never be as patient or as mild-tempered as someone like Lord Raoul, but in an individual setting, he really did listen to and try to understand Owen.

After they were done training, Wyldon would grant him the afternoons off. Whenever she could, Margarry would sneak off to meet him for horse rides and picnics on the grounds, and the idyllic summer weather combined with the laughter and secrets they shared convinced Owen that during those afternoons he was enjoying a sliver of the best the Divine Realms had to offer while he was still alive.

On those days when Margarry could not sneak off, Owen would spend his free time with his friends among the squires, or with Kel and Neal, although he had noticed that Kel was more difficult to find outside the company of Dom lately. Remembering with a jolt how a similar thing had happened with Cleon, Owen realized with some astonishment that Kel was indeed a girl, even if she acted like one of the boys most of the time.

Still, no matter how uncomfortable the blossoming romance that may or may not have existed between Kel and Dom sometimes made him, the only really unpleasant moments at Egremont Castle involved dealing with Oakbridge and serving at parties. Therefore, Owen was rather upset when the day of Roald and Shinkokami's wedding arrived, even though he was glad that Roald would finally be married to the woman he loved, because it meant that this blissful interlude in his life would be over in three short days.

During the ceremony, Owen tried to pay attention out of a sense of loyalty to Roald, who had been his page sponsor and had been in his circle of friends since then. The fact that Princes Liam and Jasson, who were Owen's age and a year younger, both played a relatively prominent role in the proceedings should have functioned as an added attraction.

Despite all of this, Owen still found his mind wandering during the Mithran priest's sermon. Part of the problem, of course, was the acoustics of the cathedral, which ensured that Owen, who was seated near the rear, only heard a hollow echo of what seemed like every other sentence the priest uttered. Under such circumstances, it required a diligent effort to follow even a quarter of what the priest was babbling on about, and Owen rapidly lost interest in doing so when he discovered that the priest was determined to turn the sacred rite of marriage into a common business transaction full of mutual obligations. In the priest's skilled hands, the magic of love was reduced to something as dry as a trigonometry equation. Listening to the priest, and thinking of how Margarry's tongue danced inside his mouth sometimes and of how his tickled the inside of hers, Owen had to pity the priest for never being able to sample such passions, and for being forced to teach others about something he didn't comprehend himself.

Given how dull the sermon was, it wasn't surprising that within ten minutes of its opening, Owen was staring blankly at the lurid depictions of wicked people suffering torments in the afterlife. Looking at the mute screamers on the wall, Owen wondered if any of them were being punished for daydreaming during wedding ceremonies.

Before he could arrive at a satisfactory answer to this riddle, Roald and Shinko had finished exchanging vows, and, after that, Owen didn't have a moment to idle until well after midnight, when the frenzied celebrations finally ended for that day.

Owen might have risked Wyldon's anger by sleeping late if it hadn't been for the wretched songbirds that awoke him at dawn. Cursing the evil creatures and asking himself how Kel could tolerate having a flock of sparrows for pets, he rose and dressed.

"Take this to Lord Matthias of Nond," Lord Wyldon ordered the instant he laid eyes on his squire, thrusting a note into his hands. As usual, he did not waste any time on pleasantries, which was just as well, because it saved Owen from the necessity of pretending it was a good morning.

"Is he awake, my lord?" asked Owen, eyeing his knightmaster dubiously. As far as he was concerned, except for the servants, he and Wyldon were probably the only beings awake in the whole castle, and he would have been asleep if it hadn't been for the horrid songbirds.

"Of course he's awake," Wyldon informed him, his lips twitching wryly. "My friend is what you might term an insomniac. It is unlikely that he will get more than three hours of sleep on a good night, and the second that the sun starts to rise, he wakes up because the light bothers him. The reason he is so addicted to tea is that it keeps him alert."

"Oh," was all Owen could think to say. He had noticed Lord Matthias' odd habit of drinking tea regularly even though they were in a sweltering desert while they were on the royal progress, but he hadn't dared to inquire about it. Not only had that seemed rude even to him, but he figured that everyone was entitled to a few harmless quirks. In fact, Owen had sometimes thought that if tea made Lord Matthias happy, Wyldon should probably try it more often and see if it lightened his spirits.

"Go now." Wyldon waved a hand at the door, and Owen obediently bowed and left.

As he navigated his way through the empty corridors, he thought that his hypothesis that most of the castle's inhabitants were still abed was correct. When he reached Lord Matthias' quarters, he asked Matthias' manservant, "Is your master awake?"

In response, the manservant nodded and led him into Matthias' study.

"Good morning, Squire Owen." Matthias, his palms wrapped about a steaming mug of tea, glanced up from a map of the Scanran border as Owen entered. "You must have grown a foot since I saw you last."

"Thank you, sir." Owen grinned, although he knew that he had to have grown less than half a foot in that time.

"So, tell me what I can do for you," said Matthias, sipping at his drink.

"My lord asked me to give this to you, sir," Owen explained, holding out Wyldon's letter.

Matthias took the proffered parchment and slit it open. As he read, his forehead furrowed for a moment. Then, it smoothed out, and he instructed Owen, "Kindly tell your knightmaster that I would be honored to accept his invitation and that I am greatly offended that he felt the need to ask at all."

"Yes, sir." Owen bowed and left, observing inwardly that Matthias was probably one of the few people in Tortall who could get away with teasing Lord Wyldon.

As he headed off to deliver Matthias' reply to Wyldon, Owen assumed that the hallways would be as empty as they had been earlier. However, he had just rounded the corner onto the next corridor when he almost rammed into a raven-haired nobleman with a peg leg. The man smelled so strongly of alcohol that Owen had to fight the overwhelming urge to gag, and, as far as he was concerned, it was really much too early for the man to be clutching the wine glass he had almost dumped all over Owen.

"Sorry, sir," Owen muttered, moving around the intoxicated nobleman and starting down the hallway again.

Unfortunately, he was halted when the man clamped a hand around his upper arm. "You should watch where you're going," he growled, fixing a bleary midnight blue glare upon Owen. His lips burning, Owen bit back a retort that nobody could see around a blind corner and that the nobleman was as much at fault for the near collision as he was. "You're Wyldon's squire, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am," answered Owen in a clipped voice, sticking his chin out defiantly, because the man had posed the question as though it were a bad thing when it most certainly wasn't. As he spoke, he yanked his arm out of the man's grasp. Even cheerful drunks, like his father, made him uneasy, since he could see that it was the alcohol, and not them, that was in control, but a belligerent drunk like this man was even worse.

"Humph," the man snorted. "I'm Sir Bevin. Did your knightmaster ever mention me?"

"I know of you." Owen eyed Bevin contemptuously, deciding not to state that most of his information had come from Quinton and Margarry rather than from Wyldon. "I know how you came to be injured because you had too much to drink. I know how Lord Wyldon took pity on you and gave you his oldest daughter's hand in marriage to comfort you. I know how you repaid him by abusing her."

"You know Wyldon's side of the story, obviously," sneered Bevin, gulping down his wine. "Clearly, it never entered your mind that the wench was mine to do with as I wanted once I married her. She wasn't his anymore; she was mine. Wyldon had no right to steal her from me."

Sickened by Bevin's complete lack of remorse for beating Anwen and his conviction that he had owned his wife the way one might own a horse, Owen could only gawk at the man, appalled that someone who so conspicuously lacked chivalry would have the gumption to call himself a knight.

"Of course, that's typical of Wyldon's treatment of me," Bevin went on, and Owen was astonished by the bitterness flooding the man's tone. Spotting the expression on Owen's face, Bevin smirked, "Come, come, boy. There's no need to look so amazed. I was his squire, too, so I know what you suffer every day. I know how you have to endure his constant lectures on your every little mistake. I know what you wait for—his approval and his trust. I know how he wraps himself in a sheet of ice and locks both away from you. I know how the more you strive to please him, the farther away he slips."

"Perhaps you just didn't give him reason to praise you," Owen volleyed back, thinking that Wyldon's compliments might have been rare, but they weren't nonexistent and at least they meant something when they came. "Besides, he obviously trusted you, since he gave you his daughter in marriage. That's when you betrayed him, and a betrayal can't exist without trust."

"That's what he'd want you to think," leered Bevin. "He would want you to see him as the victim, rather than me. After all, if you viewed me as the victim, you might start thinking that he is the worst sort of knightmaster. You might begin contemplating how much he demands from you, and how much he denies you."

"He denies me nothing," snapped Owen, his gray eyes blazing. "He just gave me a new horse."

"Believe what you want, boy." Bevin's lips curled derisively. "Don't be surprised, though, when he abandons you after he has sapped everything he can from you."

Before Owen could retort, Bevin, squeezing his wine glass tightly, lurched away. Scowling and trembling with ire, Owen spun on his heel and marched back to the rooms he shared with Lord Wyldon.

"Lord Matthias says that he would be honored to accept your invitation, my lord, and that he is greatly offended that you felt you needed to ask," Owen announced, as he entered and Wyldon directed an inquiring look at him.

"I have no doubt he would be more miffed at me if I didn't ask him, and just assumed he would do it," muttered Wyldon. Then, he added, "You could look happier, you know. I just got a second knight to advise you during your Ordeal."

Reeling from the notion that the thought of his Ordeal was meant to cheer him up, Owen made no reply. It was more than a tad unnerving that Wyldon was already preparing for his part in the ritual, although Owen supposed that he shouldn't have been so alarmed. After all, Wyldon liked to finish things as soon as possible, so finding a second knight for the Midwinter rite any time after midsummer would probably have seemed entirely too haphazard to him.

Perhaps at another time Owen might have felt relieved that the second knight who would be advising him would be someone he was familiar with and liked well enough. Right now, though, Bevin had soured his mood enough that there really was no room for upbeat thoughts of any sort.

"Why don't you tell me why you look like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders all the sudden?" Wyldon sighed, leaning back in his chair and studying Owen owlishly.

"It would only anger you, sir." Owen shook his head. He remembered quite plainly how almost all of Wyldon most terrifying moments of rage occurred whenever something that reminded him of Bevin transpired. Therefore, his survival instincts screamed at him not to share Bevin's incendiary words with his knightmaster. After all, if the words riled Owen, they might make Wyldon apoplectic. Besides, Owen sensed that Bevin's comments would hurt Wyldon, and he didn't want to be a cause, however indirect, of anguish for his knightmaster.

"Perhaps it will. However, I assure you that I will be able to cope with anything that you might have to tell me." Unfazed, Wyldon shrugged. "Whatever it is you've done, you might as well inform me of it now. I'll only be angrier if I hear it from someone else."

"I didn't do anything," protested Owen indignantly. "Bevin did. He's the problem, not me!"

As soon as he realized what he had said, he clapped a hand over his mouth in horror, and cursed himself inwardly for having no control over his tongue the second that his sense of justice was trespassed upon. Wonderful. He had revealed the very thing he had been aiming to conceal from Wyldon. Oh, it was a shame he hadn't become a spy, given the fact that subtlety was his middle name.

Before he could attempt to change the topic, Wyldon demanded in a flat voice, "What has been Bevin up to now?"

"He stopped me in the corridor on the way back from Lord Matthias'. He said—well, he said all sorts of nasty things about you, my lord," Owen burst out, the story pouring from him before he could plug the floodgates. "He said that you were a dreadful knightmaster to him. He said that you lectured him constantly, and that all he ever wanted was his trust and approval, but you deprived him of both. He said that you demanded everything of him and denied him everything."

"Of course he did." Wyldon sounded disgusted. "Bevin's life is one gigantic pity party that he is throwing for himself. I shall not hide from you the fact that I have little patience for his tendency to complain about how hard I was on him to anybody who will listen when Mindelan, whom I put upon probation, doesn't go around sniveling about how difficult I was on her."

Here, Owen gaped at his knightmaster. That was the closest that he could recall the older man coming to confessing that the probation he had placed upon Kel the year before Owen had met her was unfair. Somehow, although he had envisioned that it would be reassuring to hear Wyldon admit that he was wrong in this matter, he found it oddly disconcerting. Even though there were occasions when he was convinced that Wyldon was incorrect and even though Wyldon had apologized to him twice, Owen still felt a weird flash of betrayal whenever the uncompromising man confessed that he was in the wrong. In a way, it was as though a giant of Owen's childhood changed into a pygmy whenever it happened.

"Speak or close your mouth, Squire," Wyldon chided him. "Looking at someone with your jaw hanging open isn't just impolite. It also makes you appear stupid."

"You never wanted to discuss Bevin with me before, sir," he stuttered, electing to speak. That was certainly true and in its own manner as astonishing as Wyldon's hint that he had been wrong to place Kel on probation. After all, Wyldon had always brushed off the subject of his former squire whenever it was mentioned. Normally, he treated Bevin's name as though it were a deadly disease that must be quarantined. In the past, he had deflected Owen's questions about Bevin and had been furious to hear that Quinton had told Owen about Bevin.

"You're right. I haven't." As he established as much, Wyldon stared at the wall behind Owen. Then, his gaze cleared, and he waved his hand at the chair across the desk from him, ordering, "Bring that around and sit beside me."

Once Owen had complied, Wyldon paused before continuing, "The subject of Bevin and everything related to him is one that I refrain from talking about with most people. For awhile, that included you, Owen. As far as I was concerned, Bevin was in the past, and you were in the present. In my mind, there was no need for your two worlds to collide, but I should have realized earlier that the past is forever impacting the present. Indeed, no matter how much I told myself when I first asked you to be my squire that I wouldn't permit my experiences with Bevin to cloud my relationship with you, he's always hovered in the shadows. He's the reason why I would sometimes be harder on you than I should have been, because you would say or do something so reminiscent of Bevin that it would feel like a slap in the face, and I would decide that I had to stomp that behavior out of you. In short, even if Bevin hadn't stopped you in the hallway and accosted you with his tale of woe, he would have succeeded in wedging himself into our relationship. I imagine the thought would bring him considerable glee. After all, since he has managed to convince himself that I have ruined his life, he has taken a perverse pleasure in destroying the lives of innocent people close to me, so it would delight him to know that he had hurt you."

"He hasn't hurt me, he definitely hasn't ruined my life, and he hasn't wedged himself between us," Owen countered fiercely. "I don't intend to give him the power to do any of that, my lord. In the corridor, I told him that he was wrong on every count—that you didn't praise him because he didn't deserve it and that he had your trust since he ended up abusing it. When he suggested that you demanded everything of me and denied me of everything like he thought you did to him, I told him you denied me nothing and that you had just given me a new horse." Hit by a sudden sensation of guilt, he looked down and mumbled, "I didn't tell him that I had betrayed you, too, though."

"We've put the Scanran affair behind us, Owen." When Wyldon smacked his knee briskly, Owen determined that it was safe to glance up again. "I have chosen to regard it as an expression of your fidelity to Keladry rather than a display of disloyalty to me."

For a few seconds, there was silence as Owen mentally thanked his knightmaster for what must have been the thousandth time for being so understanding about the whole Scanran jaunt. Then, he pressed, "Sir, why don't you challenge Bevin to a joust? That would prevent him from spewing any more venom about you. I was tempted to challenge him in the hallway myself, but I didn't, because that was when I didn't want you to find out about the conversation I had with him."

"Owen, what satisfaction could I possibly derive from defeating Bevin in a joust?" Wyldon shook his head, and Owen was stunned by the bleakness in his knightmaster's gaze. "I am perfectly aware that, as out of practice as he is, I can send him flying halfway to the Yamani Islands without breaking a sweat. So is he, which is why, for all his grumbling about me, he has never challenged me. Beating him would just increase his feeling that I had devoted myself to making his life miserable, and I will not indulge his obsession with theatrics. Besides, no matter how much of a monster he is now, Bevin was my squire. Out of the memory of the eager, talented boy I once knew, I can't humiliate him in such a fashion. When I think of the agony that he was in after he lost his leg, I can't bring myself to cause him any more pain."

"So, you'll just let him get away with insulting you?" Owen blinked. "My lord, he has to recognize by now that you won't challenge him. That's why he dares to say what he does."

"I let him get away with nothing," snapped Wyldon, his brown eyes burning. More mildly, he explained, "The truth, not gossip, is what's important to me. Those who believe Bevin's story don't know the facts behind our failing-out, and, thus, their opinion doesn't make a difference to me."

"I thought a good joust could solve everything," Owen grumbled, reflecting on how many knights had ceased making withering remarks about Kel once she had proven her skill in tournaments.

"They don't when those who disagree with you can always claim that you won because you are a brute, and not because you are in the right," observed Wyldon grimly. His eyes shadowed, he shook his head and added, "Anyway, there are some wrongs that can never be compensated for with jousting. Bevin's abuse of my daughter is among them. In fact, even if he were to seek forgiveness from me for beating my child, I will never forgive him for it any more than I will forgive myself for failing to protect my little girl. Knights are sworn to temper justice with mercy, Squire, but I cannot find it in me to pardon Bevin."

"Only the gods could forgive Bevin," responded Owen, trying to comfort his knightmaster, whom he was sure was being too harsh on himself. "Probably even they can't, sir. To earn the gods' clemency, they say that you've not only got to ask for it, but you must show a genuine sense of guilt and desire to atone for your sins in the future. From what he said about your daughter in the corridor, he felt no remorse for what he did, and no compulsion to redeem himself."

"For the sake of his soul, I hope that Bevin changes his mind before he appears in the Black God's court, because I have enough sympathy for his suffering after losing his leg not to wish an eternity of misery upon him," Lord Wyldon sighed, staring at the wall again. "However, I think you are mistaken that only a god could forgive Bevin. After all, Anwen, who is perhaps a holier, nobler, and stronger person than I will ever be, has already forgiven him. When my wife and I uncovered what he was doing to her, all she said was that she deserved to be hit, because she couldn't make his pain disappear. While she was being beaten, all she was worried about was the agony her abuser was in. She poured so much of herself into others that she ended up as nothing more than a shell. Few of us can claim to be that pure of spirit."

Listening to this, Owen discovered that his brain had gone numb. In his opinion, Wyldon was one of the toughest beings in Tortall, and, as such, the notion that he would perceive Anwen as stronger was stupefying. After all, Owen had always regarded Anwen as a delicate, sweet creature who had shattered upon her first encounter with the cruelties of the world. In short, while he had felt nothing but contempt for Bevin for abusing her, he had also perceived Anwen as weak for failing to fight back. Now, he had to face the uncomfortable prospect that perhaps it took at least as much courage to refrain from punching back. Yet…

"My lord, no matter how many times he beat Anwen, Bevin wasn't going to feel any better," Owen pointed out heatedly, because this topic was starting to remind him of the hazing that occurred in the pages' wing. "Besides, nobody should have to go through life being somebody else's punching bag."

"That's why I had Anwen divorce Bevin." Wyldon glared at Owen, as if he thought that his squire underestimated how seriously he took what happened to his child. "A man who beats his wife doesn't deserve her, especially not if she is as good a woman as my daughter. Of course, the fact that I managed to raise a squire who deemed violence against women as an acceptable practice to engage in will shame me forever."

"Some people are born evil," Owen answered, remembering Joren and Vinson. "You can't blame yourself for every flaw in your students, sir."

"Yes, I can," Lord Wyldon informed him shortly, "or at least I can for the major ones. It's my job to hammer out those faults, and as many of the minor ones as I can."

"Some people can't be made good, my lord," insisted Owen, thinking of Blayce and Stenmun. "Some people love nothing more than being wicked, and so they'll always be evil."

"Bevin wasn't born evil, Owen," Lord Wyldon stated softly, and Owen had to admit that Quinton would probably have never liked Bevin if he had been. "He was determined before life transformed it into adamantine cruelty, he was brave before he lost his leg, and he was funny before broken dreams turned him bitter. As a squire, he was ambitious, he had an explosive temper, and he had a horrible habit of getting drunk. On a whole, however, many knightmasters have dealt with much worse throughout the centuries, and the good outweighed the bad in him. It must have been my training that eventually permitted the bad to overcome the good."

"He was old enough to make his own decisions." Owen shook his head stubbornly. "Just because he chose incorrectly, that doesn't make you responsible for his actions."

"Perhaps." Meditatively, Wyldon scratched at the arm the hurrock had attacked. "You're resolved to defend me from myself, I see. I can't say that I'm surprised, given that you seem to have set me up on a pedestal."

"I know you're human," frowned Owen. Normally, Wyldon scolded him for a lack of respect, and now he was being taken to task for an excess of it. Life was so bewildering, especially when his knightmaster was involved. "I'm aware that you can be wrong. For instance, now I think that you're wrong about being wrong with Bevin. Besides, you're always cross at me for not showing you enough respect, and now you want me to show you less of it. That makes no sense, sir."

"You should respect me. In fact, you should respect all your instructors for being willing to take the time to teach you," replied Wyldon. Quiet fell between them for a moment, and then he sighed, "Everyone talks about how difficult knightmasters are on their squires; nobody ever mentions how hard squires are on their knightmasters."

"I don't mean to argue with you that much, my lord." Flushing, Owen ducked his head. Sometimes, he wished he was less stubborn, and this was one of those occasions.

"For once, I wasn't referring to your frightfully headstrong nature."At this revelation, Owen dared to tilt his face up again in time to hear more shocking information from his knightmaster. "No, I was referring to the fact that every squire is constantly watching their knightmaster's behavior and judging it. I'm speaking of the fact that every knightmaster knows that he ought to be an example of a perfect knight for his squire, and every knightmaster realizes that he falls short of that. Until you have a squire of your own, you won't understand how much it hurts to recognize that you aren't the man your squire believes you to be."

"I don't care what you say." Owen folded his arms across his chest and lifted his chin. "Just about everything I know about being a knight, I learned from you, and no matter what you think right now, sir, that's a good thing. I'll probably never be as great a knight as you are, but just trying to be will make me a better one."

"You say that because you are my squire," declared Wyldon, resting his hands on Owen's shoulders. "The curse of the squire is that he will always feel inferior to his knightmaster."

"Then squires have it every bit as bad as knightmasters do, my lord," Owen mumbled.

"No, because until you are a knightmaster, you will only feel like a single failure, not a double one." Smiling crookedly, Wyldon released Owen. "When you have your own squire, you'll understand what I mean exactly."

"After this conversation, I'm not ever taking a squire," pronounced Owen firmly. Judging by Wyldon's words, he'd probably be doing the theoretical squire a favor by not accepting him, anyway.

"Oh, you'll take a squire." A rare glint of humor flashed abruptly in Wyldon's eyes. "I know you, Owen. You'd get lonely without one, and, however vexing they can be, squires do make excellent company. Now, we've spent more than enough time philosophizing. Let's see if we can still use our weapons after all this sitting around."