"Well, Lord Dohni, I'll bow until my face blackens in the mud," one old peasant geezer said to Dohni Ganderlay in the field the next morning. All the men and gnomes who had gathered about Dohni broke into mocking laughter.

"Should I be tithing you direct now?" asked another. "A bit of this and a bit of that, the feed for the pig and the pig himself?"

"Just the back half of the pig," said the first. "You get to keep the front."

"You keep the part what eats the grain, but not the plump part that holds it for the meal," said a pointy-nosed gnome. "Don't that sound like a nobleman's thinking!"

They broke into peals of laughter again. Dohni Ganderlay tried hard, but unsuccessfully, to join in. He understood their mirth, of course. These peasants had little chance of lifting themselves up from the mud they tilled, but now, suddenly and unexpectedly, it appeared as if fortunes might have changed for the Ganderlay family, as if one of their own might climb that impossible ladder.

Dohni could have accepted their teasing, could have joined in wholeheartedly with the laughter, even adding a few witticisms of his own, except lor one uncomfortable fact, one truth that nagged at him all the sleepless night and all that morning: Meralda hadn't wanted to go. If his girl had expressed some feelings, positive feelings, for Lord Feringal, then Dohni would be one of the happiest men in all the northland. He knew the truth of it, and he could not get past his own guilt. Because of it, the teasing bit hard at him that rainy morning in the muddy field, striking at raw nerves his friends couldn't begin to understand.

"So when are you and your family taking residence in the castle, Lord Dohni?" another man asked, moving right in front of Dohni and dipping an awkward bow.

Purely on instinct, before he could even consider the move, Dohni shoved the man's shoulder, sending him sprawling to the mud. He came up laughing, as were all the others.

"Oh, but ain't he acting the part of a nobleman already!" the first old geezer cried. "Down to the mud with us all, or Lord Dohni's to stomp us flat!"

On cue, all the peasant workers fell to their knees in the mud and began genuflecting before Dohni.

Biting back his rage, reminding himself that these were his friends and that they just didn't understand, Dohni Ganderlay shuffled through their ranks and walked away, fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles were white, teeth gnashing until his jaw hurt, and a stream of mumbled curses spewing forth from his mouth.

*****

"Didn't I feel the fool," Meralda said honestly to Tori, the two girls in their room in the small stone house. Their mother had gone out for the first time in more than two weeks, so eager was she to run and tell her neighbor friends about her daughter's evening with Lord Feringal.

"But you were so beautiful in the gown," Tori argued.

Meralda managed a weak but grateful smile for her sister.

"He couldn't have stopped looking at you, I'm sure," Tori added. From her expression, the young girl seemed to be lost in a dreamland of romantic fantasies.

"Nor could his sister, Lady Priscilla, stop mudding me,"

Meralda replied, using the peasant term for insults.

"Well, she's a fat cow," Tori snapped back, "and your own beauty only reminded her of it."

The two girls had a giggle at that, but Meralda's proved short-lived, her frown returning.

"How can you not be smiling?" Tori asked. "He's the lord of Auckney and can give you all that anyone would ever want."

"Can he now?" Meralda came back sarcastically. "Can he give me my freedom? Can he give me my Jaka?"

"Can he give you a kiss?" Tori asked impishly.

"I couldn't stop him on the kiss," Meralda replied, "but he'll get no more, don't you doubt. I'm giving me heart to Jaka and not to any pretty-smelling lord."

Her declaration lost its steam, her voice trailing away to a whisper, as the curtain pulled aside and a raging Dohni Ganderlay stormed into the room. "Leave us," he commanded Tori. When she hesitated, putting a concerned look over her sister, he roared even louder, "Be gone, little pig feeder!"

Tori scrambled from the room and turned to regard her father, but his glare kept her moving out of the house altogether.

Dohni Ganderlay dropped that awful scowl over Meralda, and she didn't know what to make of it, for it was no look she was accustomed to seeing stamped on her father's face.

"Da," she began tentatively.

"You let him kiss you?" Dohni Ganderlay retorted, his voice trembling. "And he wanted more?"

"I couldn't stop him," Meralda insisted. "He came at me fast."

"But you wanted to stop him."

"Of course I did!"

The words were barely out of her mouth when Dohni Ganderlay's big, calloused hand came across Meralda's face.

"And you're wanting to give your heart and all your womanly charms to that peasant boy instead, aren't you?" the man roared.

"But, Da-"

Another smack knocked Meralda from the bed, to land on the floor. Dohni Ganderlay, all his frustration pouring out, fell over her, his big, hard hands slapping at her, beating her about the head and shoulders, while he cried out that she was "trampin' " and "whorin' " without a thought for her ma, without a care for the folks who fed and clothed her.

She tried to protest, tried to explain that she loved Jaka and not Lord Feringal, that she hadn't done anything wrong, but her father wasn't hearing anything. He just kept raining blows and curses on her, one after another, until she lay flat on the floor, arms crossed over her head in a futile attempt to protect herself.

The beating stopped as suddenly as it had begun. After a moment, Meralda dared to lift her bruised face from the floor and slowly turn about to regard her father. Dohni Ganderlay sat on the bed, head in his hands, weeping openly. Meralda had never seen him this way before. She came up to him slowly, calmly, whispering to him that it was all right. A sudden anger replaced his tears, and he grabbed the girl by the hair and pulled her up straight.

"Now you hear me, girl," he said through clamped teeth, "and hear me good. It's not yours to choose. Not at all. You'll give Lord Feringal all that he's wanting and more, and with a happy smile on your face. Your ma's close to dying, foolish girl, and Lord Feringal alone can save her. I'll not have her die, not for your selfishness." He gave her a rough shake and let her go. She stared at him as if he were some stranger, and that, perhaps, was the most painful thing of all to frustrated Dohni Ganderlay.

"Or better," he said calmly, "I'll see Jaka Sculi dead, his body on the rocks for the gulls and terns to pick at."

"Da . . ." the young woman protested, her voice barely a whisper, and a quivering whisper at that.

"Stay away from him," Dohni Ganderlay commanded. "You're going to Lord Feringal, and not a word of arguing."

Meralda didn't move, not even to wipe the tears that had begun flowing from her delicate green eyes.

"Get yourself cleaned up," Dohni Ganderlay instructed. "Your ma'll be home soon, and she's not to see you like that. This is all her hopes and dreams, girl, and if you take them from her, she'll surely go into the cold ground."

With that, Dohni rose from the bed and started for Meralda as if to hug her, but when he put his hands near to her, she tensed in a manner the man had never experienced before. He walked past her, his shoulders slumping in true defeat.

He left her alone in the house, then, walking deliberately to the northwest slope of the mountain, the rocky side where no men farmed, where he could be alone with his thoughts. And his horrors.

*****

"What're you to do?" Tori asked Meralda after the younger girl rushed back into the house as soon as their father had walked out of sight. Meralda, busy wiping the last remnants of blood from the side of her lip, didn't answer.

"You should run away with Jaka," Tori said suddenly, her face brightening as if she had just found the perfect solution to all the problems of the world. Meralda looked at her doubtfully.

"Oh, but it'd be the peak of love," the young girl beamed. "Running away from Lord Feringal. I can't believe how our da beat you."

Meralda looked back in the silver mirror at her bruises, so poignant a reminder of the awful explosion. Unlike Tori, she could believe it, every bit of it. She was no child anymore, and she had recognized the agony on her father's face even as he had slapped at her. He was afraid, so very afraid, for her mother and for all of them.

She came then to understand her duty. Meralda recognized that duty to her family was paramount and not because of threats but because of her love for her mother, father, and pesky little sister. Only then, staring into the mirror at her bruised face, did Meralda Ganderlay come to understand the responsibility that had been dropped upon her delicate shoulders, the opportunity that had been afforded her family.

Still, when she thought of Lord Feringal's lips against hers and his hand on her breast, she couldn't help but shudder.

*****

Dohni Ganderlay was hardly aware of the sun dipping behind the distant water, or of the gnats that had found him sitting motionless and were feasting on his bare arms and neck. The discomfort hardly mattered. How could he have hit his beloved little girl? Where had the rage come from? How could he be angry with her, she who had done nothing wrong, who had not disobeyed him?

He replayed those awful moments again and again in his mind, saw Meralda, his beautiful, wonderful Meralda, falling to the floor to hide from him, to cover herself against his vicious blows. In his mind, Dohni Ganderlay understood that he was not angry with her, that his frustration and rage were against Lord Feringal. His anger came from his meager place in the world, a place that had left his family peasants, that had allowed his wife to sicken and would allow her to die, but for the possible intervention of Lord Feringal.

Dohni Ganderlay knew all of that, but in his heart he knew only that for his own selfish reasons he had sent his beloved daughter into the arms and bed of a man she did not love. Dohni Ganderlay knew himself to be a coward at that moment, mostly because he could not summon the courage to throw himself from the mountain spur, to break apart on the jagged rocks far below.

Part 2

WALKING DOWN A DARK ROAD

I have lived in many societies, from Menzoberranzan of the drow, to Blingdenstone of the deep gnomes, to Ten-Towns ruled as the most common human settlements, to the barbarian tribes and their own curious ways, to Mithral Hall of the Clan Battlehammer dwarves. I have lived aboard ship, another type of society altogether. All of these places have different customs and mores, all of them have varied government structures, social forces, churches and societies.

Which is the superior system? You would hear many arguments concerning this, mostly based on prosperity, or god-given right, or simple destiny. For the drow, it is simply a religious matter-they structure their society to the desires of the chaotic Spider Queen, then wage war constantly to change the particulars of that structure, though not the structure itself. For the deep gnomes, it is a matter of paying homage and due respect to the elders of their race, accepting the wisdom of those who have lived for so many years. In the human settlement of Ten-Towns, leadership comes from popularity, while the barbarians choose their chieftains purely on physical prowess. For the dwarves, rulership is a matter of bloodline. Bruenor became king because his father was king, and his father's father before him, and his father's father's father before him.

I measure the superiority of any society in a different manner, based completely on individual freedom. Of all the places I have lived, I favor Mithral Hall, but that, I understand, is a matter of Bruenor's wisdom in allowing his flock their freedom, and not because of the dwarven political structure. Bruenor is not an active king. He serves as spokesman for the clan in matters politic, as commander in matters martial, and as mediator in disputes among his subjects, but only when so asked. Bruenor remains fiercely independent and grants that joy to those of Clan Battlehammer.

I have heard of many queens and kings, matron mothers and clerics, who justify rulership and absolve themselves of any ills by claiming that the commoners who serve them are in need of guidance. This might be true in many long-standing societies, but if it is, that is only because so many generations of conditioning have stolen something essential from the heart and soul of the subjects, because many generations of subordination have robbed the common folk of confidence in determining their own way. All of the governing systems share the trait of stealing freedom from the individual, of forcing certain conditions upon the lives of each citizen in the name of "community."

That concept, "community," is one that I hold dear, and surely, the individuals within any such grouping must sacrifice and accept certain displeasures in the name of the common good to make any community thrive. How much stronger might that community be if those sacrifices came from the heart of each citizen and not from the edicts of the elders or matron mothers or kings and queens?

Freedom is the key to it all. The freedom to stay or to leave, to work in harmony with others or to choose a more individual course. The freedom to help in the larger issues or to abstain. The freedom to build a good life or to live in squalor. The freedom to try anything, or merely to do nothing.

Few would dispute the desire for freedom; everyone I have ever met desires free will, or thinks he does. How curious then, that so many refuse to accept the inverse cost of freedom: responsibility.

An ideal community would work well because the individual members would accept their responsibility toward the welfare of each other and to the community as a whole, not because they are commanded to do so, but because they understand and accept the benefits to such choices. For there are, indeed, consequences to every choice we make, to everything we do or choose not to do. Those consequences are not so obvious, I fear. The selfish man might think himself gaining, but in times when that person most needs his friends, they likely will not be there, and in the end, in the legacy the selfish person leaves behind, he will not be remembered fondly if at all. The selfish person's greed might bring material luxuries, but cannot bring the true joys, the intangible pleasures of love.

So it is with the hateful person, the slothful person, the envious person, the thief and the thug, the drunkard and the gossip. Freedom allows each the right to choose the life before him, but freedom demands that the person accept the responsibility for those choices, good and bad.

I have often heard tales of those who believed they were about to die replaying the events of their lives, even long past occurrences buried deep within their memories. In the end, I believe, in those last moments of this existence, before the mysteries of what may come next, we are given the blessing, or curse, to review our choices, to see them bared before our consciousness, without the confusion of the trappings of day-to-day living, without blurring justifications or the potential for empty promises to make amends.

How many priests, I wonder, would include this most naked moment in their descriptions of heaven and hell?