Jann and Elinda's third child is another little girl, named Ana. In her first winter she gets a fever and doesn't get better. The local priest is second circle; all he can do is bury her and say what scant words of comfort he can find that aren't false. 

Two-year-old Samora knows her baby sister isn't here and her parents are sad, and she doesn't understand but she pats her mother's head and lets herself be clung to, and clings back. 

Little Ovir, born the next year, fares no better than his sister, but Keren the year after that is strong and hearty and runs after her siblings as soon as her little legs can support her.

The whole family goes to temple every Sunday, same as the rest of the village. The temple is a little stone building, built to be defensible, with a main hall full of benches and a room with a clear floor and a circle marked out for a channel, and a couple side rooms for when someone wants to talk privately with the priest, and the priest's cottage out back. The main room has a large shrine to Iomedae and nooks on the sides with smaller shrines for Erastil and Sarenrae and Shelyn and Abadar and Pharasma. Sometimes people pray to others when the occasion arises, Irori or Nethys or Desna, Gozreh for a relative at sea.

Select Fairstone has been Greentree's priest since Jann and Elinda were children. He only writes a new sermon when he comes up with a good idea for one, so he only has a few years' worth and most weeks it's a repeat, but he does his best to tie it in to recent events without touching on anyone's personal dramas. People inevitably try to come up with a connection between something in the sermon and their personal dramas afterwards, of course, so they can pursue them via pointed comments on the sermon without anyone being able to call them on it, but that's just life.

Before and after the sermon they say the standard prayers, and the holiday prayers if it's a holy day of any of their gods, and they sing. It's not always the same songs, but it's always eight-or-so of the twenty-or-so that everyone knows. Hymn to Breaking Strain, Rise Again, Forward Bold Crusaders, A Mighty Fortress In My Soul, Victory in Iomedae, When the Saints March on Hell, Walk With Me.

Samora likes the sermons alright, once she's old enough to understand them, but she loves the singing. When everyone is singing the sound is a greater, richer, deeper thing than anyone could make alone, or than any group could make without a plan. Singing in temple is, she thinks, a demonstration of the power of Law and Good, of what can happen when ordinary people work together and do their best: everyone gets more out than any one of them could have put in.

"Today's sermon is about the Inheritor's commandment to her paladins to do something pleasant once a month purely because it is pleasant. You have heard that this commandment was given because people with no sources of joy in their lives are weaker. This is true. You have heard that it was given because we must all keep an eye on the purpose of our struggle lest we forget and make struggle its own purpose. This is also true. But there is a third reason, and it is relevant to all of us.

A commandment to do something pleasant once a month is a commandment to have the time and the resources to do that thing. It need not be much time, or many resources; an hour of story and song with a few friends will suffice. If you do not have that hour, or those friendships, or the strength in your heart to sing, then you are not prepared for an emergency. The commandment to enjoy yourself is a commandment to have spare resources. If you are spending everything you have, an unexpected expense of a single copper will put you in debt. If you are doing the most you can do and still survive, the slightest unpleasant surprise will kill you. If you have no time or thought to spare, you cannot seize an unexpected opportunity, however useful it may be. And so we are, all of us, commanded to keep some resources in reserve, and if we fail to do so then we must notice that we are failing in our holy obligations, before we let it lead to some irreparable harm. . . ."

"Why is gambling a vice? Because it drives men to ruin. Why does it drive men to ruin? Because once they have begun, they cannot stop. It is as though they lose the free will to stop. Why is this so? A man who takes to fishing can choose to fish when the fish are biting and go home when they aren't. A man who takes to woodcarving can set it aside when there is more important work to do, or abandon a piece that is going poorly. Yet the dice-player cannot put aside the dice, however his luck turns against him. Why is this? Because the choice to gamble is the choice to set aside your free will. 

The natural state of a man is to do those endeavors that will succeed or fail by his effort and his skill. The farmer waters and weeds his crops; the hunter chooses where to place his traps. Yes, every endeavor has some aspect of luck--no amount of diligence can prevent the flood or the drought. But it can soften their impact. Diligence can turn good weather into a bumper crop and prevent bad weather from being a disaster. But in card-playing and dice-playing, any attempt to take charge of your own fate is called cheating.

Wiser scholars than I have said that the Old Fiend first conceived His hatred of mortals when He saw that we had free will. He would have mortals be pawns of the gods, accepting ruination with no thought that they might seek better. When you hand over your free will to a pair of dice, you do the Old Fiend's work for Him! . . ."

(the summer Samora is five)

"Papa, is it still wrong to make bets if you're betting on something with skill in it, like who can climb further up a tree?"

"I don't know. Probably less wrong but still a little wrong? Just don't fall outta the tree, that's the important bit."

"I didn't. Can I ask the priest next week?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"If everyone asked him all the questions they had, he wouldn't have time to do anything but answer them."

"What if I waited until I had ten questions and asked the most important one?" 

"I guess if it's less than one a month it's alright."

"Okay. The tree one isn't going to be the most important one I think."

(Samora remains under the misapprehension that she has a normal number of ethics questions until she's seven.)

(nine days prior)

"Jann. Hey Jann. Jann."

"Yeah sis?"

"Bet you that red rock you found yesterday that I can climb higher up that tree than you."

"Hah, okay."

(twenty minutes later)

"Wow, okay, I knew you were lighter than me but I didn't think you'd be able to get to that first branch."

"I knew I could because I did it yesterday while you were playing with Karl!"

"That's cheating!"

"Oh! In that case you keep the rock then. I just wanted to show you how high up I could get."

Once a year, Select Fairstone gives the sermon where he calls all the children under ten up to the front and asks them what Iomedae is the goddess of, and calls on everyone with their hand raised, youngest first.

"Lastwall!"

"The army!"

"Fighting demons and orcs!"

"Doing what your parents tell you and keeping your promises!"

"You're all right, but none of you are perfectly right! Iomedae protects our countrymen in the army, but She also makes sure our leaders are honorable and righteous and wise. Iomedae wants us to fight the demons and the orcs, but only because that's how we keep our friends and the rest of the world safe. Fighting when you have a good reason is important, but it's never its own good reason. Iomedae wants us to fight, and to listen to our parents and keep our promises, and to be honest and kind, and to help people who need it, because those things make the world a better place, and Iomedae is the goddess of making the world a better place as much as you can. Lastwall is Iomedae's country, but She cares about people everywhere. Lastwall is the shield Iomedae uses to protect the rest of the world. When you are honorable and good, you make Lastwall stronger, and that makes Iomedae stronger."

The winter Samora is eight, her grandfather starts coughing and doesn't stop, until one night he stops for good.

Samora is old enough to grieve properly this time, but also old enough to understand that there's less need for grief. Grandfather Ovir was old, and had finished all his important earthly business, and lived a good and honorable life.

Select Fairstone reads the usual prayers at his funeral, while his widow Arwyl weeps quiet, dignified tears. "Mother of Souls, as you guided Ovir into the world, so guide him out of it, and see him safely to the river's other shore."

"Amen," say all assembled.

"Inheritor, I commend to you the soul of Ovir, who lived long and well in Your service. Welcome him now to his reward, to rest and renewed strength, and number him among Your angels." 

"Amen."

Grandmother Arwyl makes a speech, addressed to Ovir as such speeches always are, talking about his kindness and dependability and how much she loved him, thanking him for his years of marriage and telling him not to worry about her, because she has their wonderful children to look after her, and she will look after them, and will come to join him when the time comes.

Elinda and her brother Kerr make a speech as well, thanking Ovir for everything he taught them about life and promising to take care of their mother, and wishing him well in Heaven.

(the winter Samora is four)

"Jann, are you going to join the army when you're grown up?"

"Of course. Everyone does."

"I'm going to join the army too. We can kill demons together."

"You can't join the army Sammy, you're a girl."

"Oh."

"You're supposed to get married. Anyway I'm gonna kill all the demons so there wouldn't be any left for you anyway."

(the spring Samora is seven)

"Here for your monthly question, Samora?"

"Yes, Select. Why is it right to keep secrets and wrong to lie?"

"Well, if everyone told everyone everything, that would be very awkward and cause a lot of problems, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, but does it really--line up like that? With the things it's okay to keep people from knowing being the same things you can keep them from knowing by not saying anything?"

"More often than you'd think, yes, because if something is important for someone to know they're more likely to ask about it. But it's not always that way, and it's still wrong to lie. Because if someone lies then anyone who hears them has to wonder if they're lying, but everyone knows everyone has some secrets and they can still trust that people's words mean something."

"That makes sense."

"And of course, it matters who the secrets are from. The government has a lot of secrets they don't tell us ordinary folks, not because they don't want us to know, but because they don't want the forces of Evil to find out, and telling as few people as possible helps with that. And the forces of Evil definitely know that Good isn't telling them everything."

"So . . . it's okay to keep a secret if the people you're keeping it from know it's the sort of thing you'd keep secret and not the sort of thing you'd tell them?"

"Roughly speaking, yes. Do you have any secrets that it's troubling you to keep and that you want to tell me about? I can keep them with you, though I might advise you to tell them."

"No, I just wanted to know."

The summer Samora is twelve, it's very hot, hot enough that the old folks are comparing it to that summer thirty years ago when it was even hotter than this, you wouldn't believe how hot it could get back then. Everyone sleeps fitfully, with the windows open for any bit of breeze.

One night Samora wakes up to a strange light outside the window, too golden to be moonlight and too steady to be a candle, and slips out the door to take a look. It might be dangerous, but if it is dangerous then better to have someone look at it and warn everyone else then everyone being asleep while it does whatever it's doing. 

The light is coming from a patch of empty air that's been replaced with . . . a different patch of empty air? Empty air lit like daylight and like something more than daylight, and rippling like the surface of water. It's beautiful. As soon as Samora looks at it she forgets to be afraid, and as soon as she's unafraid she forgets to keep her distance, and walks closer, and reaches out a hand--

It's wonderful. It's overwhelming and indescribable and alien, but it doesn't hurt, and she isn't afraid. It's like staring at the sun without being dazzled, like leaping off a cliff in the moment of realizing you can fly.

And then it's gone, and the night is just the night again, and Samora is as tired as if she'd run for hours. She sneaks back inside and collapses back into bed, wondering if she's going to think in the morning that this was a dream.

Breakfast the next morning--

"Why are your eyes grey?" asks Young Jann.

"°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°?"

"What??"

"I said, what do you mean?"

"I mean your eyes are supposed to be brown and now they're grey. Kinda silvery."

"Are you making things up to be funny?"

"What are you two arguing ab--Samora, why are your eyes grey?!"

"Mom, why would I know why--OH. °•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•. °•°•°•°•."

"Stop talking gibberish and tell me what happened."

"I said, I got too close to a weird light in the yard last night."

"Jann, something funny's happened to Samora, I'm taking her to the temple."

"Hello Elinda, what can I do for you? And young Samora--why are your eyes grey?"

"There was a weird light in the yard last night and I got too close to it and it felt very strange, but in a good way, and now I speak two languages. I figured that bit out on the walk over here, I was mixing them up earlier. Sorry for all the bother, I know I shouldn't've got so close."

"Can you say something in the other language for me?"

"°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•."

"Why, I do believe that's Celestial. This is very strange. Can you tell me more about the weird light?"

After hearing her story, the Select strokes his beard thoughtfully for upwards of a minute. "Well, I'm no planar theory expert, but--it sounds to me like you were very fortunate. Yes, very fortunate. Perhaps you have received a blessing from one of the upper planes, not by the act of any god but by an accident. I wouldn't be surprised if there turned out to be more to it than just the language and your eyes."

"Is there a way I can use it to do good? We're supposed to use everything we're given in the cause of Good and I figure that goes triple for blessings."

"Hmm. Hmmm. Well, I had been thinking even before this that you're the sort of person who might make a good priest. Perhaps, if your parents think it's a good idea, I could write you a letter of recommendation for the seminary in Vigil when you're older. You'd need to learn to read and write between now and then, but I can teach you."

"That would be amazing! May I, Mom? If I get all my chores done before reading lessons and do a good job in them and everything?"

"Well, I don't want to promise anything before talking to your father, but I really don't see why not. It would be something, to have a priest in the family, and you do seem wise enough for it, considering your age. But have you thought about what it would be like?"

"I'd study for a few years and either be chosen or not, and if not I'd probably get a job in the church somewhere, and if I did I'd join the army and heal and fight and probably retire to be a village priest somewhere. Or die in action, but even if I die it's likely enough someone else would have died if I hadn't gone. Having more people won't make it worse. And if I would do a bad job of it then the Inheritor wouldn't choose me, so the only reason it might be a bad idea is if I take someone else's place in seminary who would have done a better job than me, and that seems like something the people running the seminary have a better chance of catching than I will. And if they do decide that then I will have spent a bunch of time learning to read instead of playing around, so what."

"And you couldn't marry."

"And I couldn't marry. Which is a loss, it would be nice to have someone who was for me what Dad is for you, but--there's no guarantee I'd get that if I tried for it either. Maybe I'd end up an old maid at home, maybe I'd die in the army, can't guarantee anything in this life. And I think I can get along alright without ever marrying."

"I really don't think you'd end up an old maid, dear, but I think you're right that a life in the church would be good for you, and a way for you to do good."

Samora has reading and writing lessons every Sunday, Toilday, and Oathday for the next two years. Select Fairstone starts with the alphabet and goes from there to example words and sentences written on a slate, to the almanac and his handwritten notebook of sermons, to his well-worn copy of the Acts once she's fluent enough to handle the archaic phrasings. She asks a lot more than one theological question a month. Keeping up with her chores enough to keep going turns out to be easier than it might have been when she realizes she can see in the dark now, and do the mending in the gloom of twilight.

Once she's confident with Taldane, he starts her on Celestial. It's been years since he had a use for it, but most of what he's forgotten is vocabulary and grammar, and those are burned into Samora's brain. No, not burned, that would imply something static and dead, and hers is a living knowledge; as she learns new concepts the Celestial words for them appear in her head beside the Taldane ones, as if she had always had them and just didn't know where to look. It's interesting to see what Celestial has convenient phrases for that Taldane doesn't, or vice versa. Select Fairstone says her accent is more like the lantern archon he met once than like the vulpinal agathion he met once, though who knows if that means anything. 

In the autumn of 4707, as Samora is learning to sound out words, the Fourth Crusade ends. The balor lord Khorramzadeh the Storm King has been driven back, but not slain, and the forces of Good and Law have used up their strength against him. They consolidate their gains, dismiss the troops they can't afford to pay for another campaign season, and settle in for more years of holding action.

The soldiers go home, to Greentree as to a thousand other villages, and tell their stories of hardship and valor to a thousand sets of raptly listening neighbors. Samora listens with wide silver eyes and hopes her time to crusade will come.

Samora,

On the basis of your sponsor's recommendation, it is our pleasure to offer you a place at Vigil Theological Academy and War College, for the term beginning on 31 Arodus, 4709. Present this letter to the Novice Affairs Office no later than 28 Arodus.

Elinda doesn't cry, because she's been expecting this for two years. Jann claps her on the shoulder and says, "I knew you had it in you! You go and make us all proud, my girl, just like I know you will." Her parents' friends congratulate them and her; her own friends wish her luck. And they pack her bag and send her off. 

Vigil is ten days journey away by wagon, and even in Lastwall it isn't safe for a teenage girl with no skill in combat to travel the roads alone. But Young Jann is sixteen, and strong as an ox from years of pumping the forge-bellows, and has a good long knife, and he goes with her. They hitch a ride with a group of merchants transporting cloth and dyes, first by road and then by barge up the Path River. 

Samora hugs Young Jann goodbye at the door of the Novice Affairs Office, and doesn't let go for a long time. Seminary is four years long; he'll be leaving for his term in the army in two. 

She had expected seminary to be wonderful, and it is. She had expected it to be quite a lot of hard work, and it is that, too.

Sword drill every morning is the worst part, because she pours every bit of effort she can into it and ends up at just barely adequate while the boys get twice as far working half as hard. This isn't the only reason there are so few female priests, but it's one reason, and a good one, and she resents her own body, for a while, for being small and weak and a girl's body. But she also improves with the sword.

The most fun part is, of course, theology, Iomedaean and comparative alike. It's a new insight every twenty minutes, it's argument and persuasion and both parties ending up on the opposite side from where they started. She has a dozen good friends by six months in, and most of them were made in theology classes.

Her easiest class turns out to be, for some reason, Fiend Studies. It is an essential survival skill, for a cleric, to be able to look at a horrible thing with too many teeth and identify within three seconds whether it should be stabbed with silver, cold iron, or regular steel, channeled at, blasted with light, set on fire, pelted with acid, frozen, or hit with pure Good energy, and likewise whether to worry about the too many teeth, or being enchanted or paralyzed or life-drained or spellcast at, or all of the above and you should forget about the stabbing and run away. And so there are classes on fiends and undead and aberrations and the beats of the forests. It seems, at first, that this is just a lot of memorization, and there's nothing for it but to put in the hours reviewing flashcards, but she quickly starts to see a logic to it. Sometimes it's something she can put into words during study group: "look, that's got to be a venom sac", "those forelimbs don't have the range of motion for spell gestures, you need fingers". Sometimes it's harder to articulate, just a sense from woodcuts of something she's never seen before that this is a deadlier threat than that, that these are cunning spellcasters and those are barely more than mindless beasts. 

In the spring  of 4711, Young Jann goes off for his two years of service, with a sword his father made him and a warm coat his mother sewed him, and gets posted to a fort on the Ustalav border. One of the men in his unit can read and write; he dictates letters home.

One night a common-room argument about whether repenting of Evil deeds is Good in and of itself or merely indicates a disposition to do Good in the future runs later than anyone intended, and Samora still has an essay on the history of the balance of power between the Taldane Emperor, nobility, and churches to write for class tomorrow. She stays up late to write it, expecting to get tireder and tireder and hopefully not be completely useless in the morning.

That doesn't happen. Instead, the farther she gets from her usual bedtime, the more alert and energetic she feels. By the time the essay is done, going to bed seems ridiculous. At dawn, she's completely awake.

She stays up late the next evening too, and this time it's even easier to turn it into an all-nighter. Sleep, it turns out, was just a habit. She takes to doing all her homework at night and converting as much of the extra time as possible to more swordfighting practice. 

A few weeks later, she tries going a day without food on a hunch. Her friends notice immediately and express their concern, but she's told them all about the planar anomaly (that's what the Planar Studies teacher called it when she asked) at one time or another, and when she explains the sleep thing they reluctantly agree it's not a completely stupid experiment. Hunger, too, turns out to have simply been a habit of eating at particular times--and once she's established that she can go a week without food with no discernible ill effects, it's a habit she gets back into, because she wants to be in the mess hall to talk to her friends anyway and not eating when everyone else is is weird and attention-getting.

(She does ask one of the teachers, discreetly, if extra food goes somewhere useful such that it would be better not to eat it. The teacher says sternly that too many students have asked that question for the answer to be anything other than throwing all the extra in the rubbish heap. Samora nods, and eats.)

She doesn't resent her body anymore. It's still not strong enough, but it has its strengths.

In Arodus of 4713, Deskari attacks Drezen and the Fifth Crusade is declared. The war college talks about nothing else for weeks. Samora's year is widely considered the luckiest; they're about to graduate, and may be able to go crusading in the second campaign season.

(Dawn of 11Neth, 4713, the morning after the last day of classes)

Samora kneels by her bed and watches the first rays of the sun light up the window.

Inheritor, I have spent these four years gaining knowledge and skills. I have considered what a life in Your service would be like, and I choose it freely. I will strive to uphold Your laws, emulate Your virtues, and do as much Good as I can in this life. If it would best advance the cause of Good for me to wield Your magic in that cause, I ask that You make it so. 

It feels almost exactly the same.

A little gentler, a little more distant. The same current sweeping her away but this time she's in a rowboat instead of swimming, and that means she can steer. Detect Magic, Create Water, Mending, Stabilize. Shield of Faith, Bless Water. Prayers of gratitude and solemn joy.

With the exception of the two hours it took her to make her first friend at seminary, Samora has never been without someone she could call an ally. Now she never will be.

It's tradition, the day after classes end, for the seminary's channel rotation to be covered by the new clerics who just got their channels that morning and need an outlet for their youthful high spirits. Samora turns out to have six.

(a fork in the road)