A bit more for Part Fourteen.

Again Selden whispered, “Matron, did Primus share his truename with you?”

“Heavens no,” she answered. And she thought, “You are a queer sort... No one gives their truename.”

Which was true enough, though a daughter might tell her mother–a man might tell his bride–but it was the village priest who would remember and would give a dead man a proper burial and stone, a stone with one’s truename etched for all to see and remember. It was no secret then. The dead were past caution, past any fear they might have that their truename be used against them. One’s true name bound one irrevocably to those who knew it, perhaps more completely even than marriage.

One never asked for another’s truename. That was understood. When given, it was nearly always an unexpected gift ... and always a burden. Sometimes the vagrant, the lonely traveler, the exile ... they might give their truename to a priest when they thought they had no more days to live. More often, they died nameless and unclaimed. If there were a stone, it might read “Berwin, as he was known,” or “Aline, as we called her,” but such a monument seems to break the heart.

“He might share it,” Selden supposed, “but I don’t think we should count on it.”

“You can’t divine it?” Matron asked, which brought a smile to Selden.

“Fairy tales, Matron. Not even the Black Arts can force a man’s truename.”

Matron shivered and mouthed, “Avert,” the spoken charm that even toddlers learned. “Avert” meant to turn evil. Many gestured, too, passing a flattened hand, palm down, across the air in front of them, as though they were at table and meant to say “No more.”

Fourteen.

“Thank you, Pater,” the old woman said.

“It’s a gift from the Archmage himself.”

Bread of life, bread of heaven.

Selden remembered the story the Archmage told when he handed the bread over to him: The Archmage began his religious life as a monk, one who traveled his city’s streets begging for food. One day a housewife was so irritated with him she threw a very hard loaf and struck him in the head. “It hurt very much,” the Archmage recounted. “I think that perhaps she did not give it with a glad heart.”