Vokia

Vokia was Edwinem’s squire and the unnamed old man whose nighttime appeal at the chapel brought Tiuri into the mission that carried Edwinem’s message across the Kingdom of Dagonaut and into Unauwen. His brief intervention connects the dying knight’s final request to Tiuri’s long journey; his later death gives that opening summons a second, mournful consequence.

Identity and Role

When King Unauwen asked Tiuri how Edwinem had entrusted the message to him, Tiuri recounted the old man who had knocked on the chapel door at night and asked for help. The identity was not apparent at the time. In a later conversation, the king and Tiuri’s companions identified the old man as Vokia, Edwinem’s squire. Vokia had thus been the person who first drew Tiuri out of the chapel and into the chain of events that followed Edwinem’s death.

The Mission’s Aftermath

After hearing about Tiuri and Piak’s adventures, King Unauwen asked Tiuri to try to find Vokia when he returned to the Kingdom of Dagonaut. The king wanted Tiuri to make sure the elderly squire received whatever he needed, and hoped he might be able to travel back to Unauwen or to Forèstèrra. At that point, the king feared that age and sorrow had weakened Vokia, but did not know the final outcome.

Ristridin later supplied it: Vokia had been seen again in the City of Dagonaut, and died shortly afterward. Ristridin attributed his death to the shock of losing Edwinem, his master. The man who had managed to carry a plea for help to the chapel had not recovered from the loss that gave the plea its urgency.

Burial and Remembrance

Vokia was buried beside Edwinem near the Inn at Yikarvara. Edwinem’s grave lay beneath a mound topped with a cross and his white shield; Vokia’s was the other grave beside it. The paired burial preserves their bond in the landscape: master and squire rest near one another, while the shield marks Edwinem’s grave and Vokia’s place beside him.

Vokia’s part in the story is brief but structurally decisive. First known through an urgent knock and a request for aid, he is later named and remembered as Edwinem’s faithful squire. His death closes the possibility of the return King Unauwen had hoped for, and makes clear that the mission Tiuri inherited was born not only from a knight’s final charge but also from the grief of the man who carried it to him.