She spoke, asking in Jindobe, “Who approaches?” Her expression remained grave, but her low voice was courteously neutral. It was the question anyone might ask of a stranger approaching her door.
I halted. I wanted to answer her, but I could not remember my name. I felt that I had left it behind when I entered the Kidona world. I reminded myself that I had taken Dewara’s challenge in order to become Kidona. To become a warrior and gain Dewara’s respect, I had to defeat the enemy in front of me. Yet he had not warned me that the sentry might be an old woman. The part of me that was not Kidona felt shamed by the bare blade in my hand and my failure to reply to her courteous question. A Gernian soldier did not bear weapons against women and children. I felt a strong tug from that self and found myself lowering my sword. I tried to be chivalrous and yet warriorlike as I said, “The one who brought me here calls me ‘soldier’s son.’ ”
She cocked her head to one side and smiled at me as if I were very young. Her voice rebuked me gently, as a kindly old woman might recall manners to a youngster. “That is not your proper name, nor any way to introduce yourself. What is the name your father gave you?”
I took a breath and found a truth I had not previously known. “I do not think I can say that name here. I came here to be Kidona. But as of yet, I have no name in Kidona.” After I spoke, I felt suddenly childishly foolish to have confided this information to my enemy. I hardened my muscles and brought my blade up to readiness again.
She seemed singularly unimpressed with my saber. She leaned closer, and as she did so I perceived that her loose hair was snagged on the tree’s trunk, as if binding her to it. She peered at me and I felt that she looked deep inside me. In a quiet, almost confidential voice, she informed me, “I see your difficulty. He thinks to use you to force his way past me. He has made you believe that you must kill me to gain a man’s respect and standing. That is not true. Killing is only killing. The respect that Kidona will give you if you kill me is real only to him. No one else believes in it, least of all you. And you don’t have to kill me to earn true respect. My blood will only buy you that fool’s regard. I will pay a high price for you to be respected by a churl. Nothing bought with blood is worth having, young man.”
I thought about what she said. They were an idealist’s words that made sense as a lofty philosophy. But on a day-to-day level, I knew that much of my world had been bought with blood. My father often spoke of that, that our soldiers, especially the cavalla officers, had “bought the new Gernia with their lives, made these lands ours when the soils of them were watered with the blood of our soldier sons.”
“I don’t agree with you!” I called out to her, and then realized I need not have spoken so loud. Somehow I had drawn much closer to her without being aware of it. I wondered if the root path had drawn me closer, unperceived by me. I glanced around but had no way to tell.