The aroma of cooking fish coaxed me slowly out of a very deep sleep.
I came out of it clutching a peculiar dream. I’d been sitting in my father’s study. He was in a dressing gown and slippers, seated in a cushioned chair in front of an autumn fire. His hair was neatly combed, but in a way that made me think he had not done it himself. There were slippers on his feet; it was the guise of a man who had not been outside the house in days. On a table near his elbow was a bowl of late apples; their fragrance had perfumed the room. My father’s face was bowed into his hands, and he was weeping. His hair had gone gray and the hands that covered his face were ropy with tendons. He seemed to have aged a decade in the single year I’d been gone.
He spoke to me without looking at me. His voice sounded odd, the words badly formed. “Why, Nevare? Why did you hate me so? I loved you. Fate made you the only son I could truly claim as my own, the only one who would follow in my footsteps as a soldier and a cavalla officer. You alone could have won glory for our name. But you threw it all away. You shamed me and you shamed yourself. Why? Why did you destroy yourself? Was it to spite me? Was it because you hated everything I was? What did I do wrong? How did I fail to inspire you? Was I such a poor father to you? Why, Nevare? Why?”
The questions were like a driving rain, relentless and chilling. They soaked me with guilt and confusion. He was so miserable. So hurt and vulnerable, so profoundly hopeless in his sorrow.
“I did everything I could think of to make you want to change, Nevare. Nothing moved you. Even when I took your name and home from you, you never once said that you wanted to try again. You never once said you were sorry for what you had done! You never came back. Did you hate me so badly? Why, son? Why couldn’t you just be what you were born to be? Why couldn’t you have taken what I’d earned for you, and enjoyed it?”
In that dream, I was mute. I was not even sure I was really there. Perhaps I watched him through a window. Perhaps the window was in my mind.
I woke confused. The fragrance of apples had changed to the aroma of fish, and I was cold, not warmed by a fire. My father would not weep for me; he had driven me away. I rubbed at my sticky eyes. My head still hurt, but not as badly as it had. I was hungry and very, very thirsty. I opened my eyes. Olikea had returned. She’d built up the fire. On stones beside the coals, two fine fat fish were baking. Food. Light. A bit of warmth. All good things.
But as I took a deep breath and tried to sit up, I realized what else had changed. My fever was gone. The sores still itched abominably, and when I scratched, one loose scab peeled away under my nails. But my fever was gone. I sighed heavily. “Is there water?” I heard myself ask hoarsely.
“You’re awake! Oh, good. Likari, bring water.”
The boy was no longer sleeping against my back, I realized. He came into the light, bringing the water skin with him. “I kept watch while you slept,” he told me proudly.
I smiled. But when I tried to thank him, I abruptly became aware that I was not the one in charge of the body. Soldier’s Boy smiled at him with my mouth and felt kindly toward the boy, but he did not utter the words of thanks that I would have said. Instead he nodded at him and took the water skin from his hands and drank heavily of the cold, sweet water.
I pulled my awareness apart from his. As I did so, I felt that he knew I had separated from him again. His smile widened. Because, for a time, I had merged with him and had not fought him. I had not even been aware that I existed separately from him for those minutes. “I’m feeling stronger,” he said aloud, and I cringed, thinking that he aimed the words as much at me as he spoke them toward Olikea and Likari.
I held back from him, silent and observant, as Olikea finished cooking the fish and portioned it out. They all ate greedily, scarcely letting the fish cool before gulping it down. When it was gone, Olikea proudly produced a double handful of a viscous-skinned fungus. It wasn’t shaped like a mushroom, but instead had a fingered structure. In the barely flickering firelight, they looked yellow. The appearance repulsed me but Soldier’s Boy took a deep breath of their enticing odor.
“Mage’s honey,” Olikea named it proudly. “Very nourishing to the magic. Never before have I seen it growing in such quantity. It was on the wooden lip of the spill for the fish trap, all growing in a fringe. This will replenish your strength and put you on your feet.”
Both Likari and Olikea were still hungry, yet neither of them showed any desire to share this food. Instead they watched intently as Soldier’s Boy picked up one of the gelatinous structures and set it on my tongue. My physical reaction to it was immediate. I felt a shiver run over my whole body; my skin stood up in gooseflesh and the hair rose on my head and on the backs of my arms. An instant later, I actually tasted the mage’s honey. It was named for its color, not its flavor. The taste was not unpleasant, but it was not memorable either, offering only a faintly musky flavor. As Soldier’s Boy chewed it, it had the texture of an overcooked jelly. It was not appetizing. But when he swallowed it, the shiver that I had experienced on my skin was repeated, but as a quivering throughout my entire body. The sensation was so intense that I was not sure he enjoyed it. Yet he picked up another of the fungi and put it on my tongue.
The sensations were sharper and more prolonged with each one. At the fifth one, I thought I heard Olikea mutter, “See how he glows with power now!” but I did not pay much attention to her, so completely did the sensations absorb me.
When every bit of it was gone, I sat shivering. My senses were painfully alert to every sort of stimulus, but my awareness of touch was overwhelming. It seemed to extend beyond my skin like a cat’s quivering whiskers. I noticed the movement of air currents in the cavern, felt the striations in the rock beneath me, and even sensed the disturbance of the air caused by an insect flying past me. As I sat there, the acuity of my senses only increased. I could see in the darkness with a clarity of vision that surpassed my ordinary sight in daylight. At the same time, a restless energy crawled through me and over my skin, demanding that I be up and doing something, anything. Soldier’s Boy rose abruptly. “It is time to travel,” he announced, and my own words sounded like trumpets in my ears, not just when he uttered them, but when their previously faint echoes returned to me.
“Fill up the water skin, roll the blanket, and gather our things,” Olikea urged Likari in an excited voice. “We will quick-walk now, I’ll wager.”
So charged with energy was he that it was difficult to wait for them. I think Olikea sensed his restlessness, for she caught at my arm as I rose and clung to it, bidding Likari, “Come, come quickly, and take his other hand.”
The boy came at a run and seized my free hand as if his life depended on it. Perhaps it did. The magic rippled through me like fire in my veins.
In four steps we burst forth from the dark and dank cavern into daylight and a brisk wind. The day was heavily overcast with fat gray clouds, but the light was still shocking. Soldier’s Boy halted, dazzled, and only when both Olikea and Likari tugged hard at my hands before stopping did I realize the momentum we had had.
When Soldier’s Boy glanced back, I could see the opening of the cavern we had left as a tall crack in a jagged rock face. We stood on a beaten pathway on a hillside covered in tall, yellowed grass and fading gorse. Ahead of us, the trail wended its way down into a sheltered valley thick with evergreens. In half a dozen places, plumes of smoke drifted up past the treetops, only to be quickly swept away by the fresh breeze. A swift-flowing river from the mountains behind us divided the valley; even at this distance, I could hear the river’s voice, deep and greedy. It ran a steep course downhill, and stones moved with it, grinding and grumbling. Its waters were white with rock dust. It cut through the valley like a cleaver. In the distance, the sun was coming up over a sparkling bay at the river’s mouth. I had never seen such a dazzling vista. “Is that the ocean?” Soldier’s Boy asked dazedly. I shared his question, wondering if I were beholding the final destination of the King’s Road.
Olikea glanced at the distant water and shrugged. “It is a great water. No one has ever gone around it, though if you travel north far enough, it is said there are islands one can visit. They are cold and rocky places, good for birds and seals that eat fish, but not a place for the People. This valley is the best place for us. It has always been our Wintering Place.”
“Why?”
“By now the leaves will have fallen in the forest on the other side of the mountains. There will be no shelter from that light, or the deep cold. Here, the trees never lose their needles; it is always dim and gentle beneath their canopy. Snow falls in the valley here perhaps one year in five, and when it does come, it does not linger. It rains here, sometimes a great deal, but rain is kinder than snow and freezing, I think. In both late autumn and early spring, fish are thick in the river, and deer in the woods. In winter, we can live in plenty here.”
“Why don’t you stay here year-round?”
She looked at Soldier’s Boy as if he were daft. “The ancestor trees are not here, nor will they grow here, even when we have planted seedlings here. And in the summers, this is a place of fog and rains and floods. Sometimes people have tried to stay here, thinking they were too old to make the journey or that they would prefer to summer here. They do not prosper; sometimes they do not survive.”
Soldier’s Boy had bowed his head. Her words tickled at his mind, waking memories that Lisana had shared. He lifted his head and looked out over the valley. Then he pointed and said, “There. Those rising columns of smoke over there. That is our village, isn’t it?”
His eyesight was as shockingly keen as his sense of touch. His gaze picked out glimpses of mossy roofs and then small figures moving nearby. The thick foliage of the prevalent evergreen trees obscured most of the village scene. I could not tell how large a settlement it was. As he watched, a flock of croaker birds rose suddenly from their perches in the trees. They circled once over the village and then flew toward us, cawing loudly.
“Yes. And from the amount of smoke, most of our kin-clan have already returned there. I thought they would still be at the gathering place at the river’s mouth, trading.” She shook her head in disappointment. “We are too late. All our folk have gone to the Trading Place and returned already. What a shame! All the others will have new jewelry and winter robes, but I shall have to make do with what I have left from last year.”
“I did not think you cared for robes and pretty clothes.” Soldier’s Boy gestured at her near nakedness.
“In the Summer Place, there is no need to be hampered by such things. But now?” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “One must be warm. And if a woman is prosperous, she chooses to be warm in beautiful garments.”
“We have missed the trading time?” Likari asked dolefully. The distress on his small face was heartbreaking.
“There may be a few of the clans gathered there still. But the best of the trading will be done. Look at the valley and see the rising smoke. The People have returned to their traditional spaces for the winter. Trading is over.” Olikea pronounced the words like a doom.
Likari’s face fell and he sank into a morose silence.
Soldier’s Boy was perhaps trying to be practical when he reminded them, “We have nothing to trade anyway. We would have gone that extra distance only to be taunted by the pretty things we could not obtain.”
Olikea gave him a sideways glance. “You have nothing to trade. I had plenty in my pack; I gave it to my father to carry it here for me, when I was called away to care for you. I had my trading all planned. Last year, the Spolsin kin-clan had lovely sealskin capes to trade. Warm, sleek spotted fur that sheds water! That was what I meant to get for myself at the trading time. Now I shall have to do with my old wolfskin coat. I hope the mites have not got into it over the summer! Last year, maggots devored Firada’s sealskin boots; she would have been barefoot for the winter, had not Jodoli traded magic for her to have new boots of elk hide with fox trim.” There was no mistaking the envy in her voice. Obviously her sister had the better bargain in a Great Man.
“And did you think of what I would wear, when you discarded my old clothing?”
She looked at him in consternation. “Better to go naked than to wear those disgusting Gernian rags. It would shame me to have you go about the People in such garb! I would beg my father’s old clothes from him first!”
Soldier’s Boy grimaced and I felt the tingling in his blood grow dim. The cold wind chilled him. He’d shut the magic down. I had a glimpse of his thoughts. He was conserving the magic, saving up every bit of it that he could hoard.
My arm itched. Soldier’s Boy scratched it, glancing down at it as he did so. I was horrified at what I saw, but Soldier’s Boy looked at Olikea and changed the subject, asking, “How do I look? Did the pattern stay in place? I like my arms. I am glad I did not scratch them too much and spoil them.”
I could sense his satisfaction and pride, but I felt only horror and dismay. The result of wounding himself with the crystal and the slime was now clear. My skin bore a pattern of blotchy scars from the injuries and the subsequent infections. I was a Speck.
I had never suspected that Speck children were born with unblemished skin. I had thought the dapples that marked their people were inherent to their race, a defining difference that set them apart from both the Gernians and the Plainspeople. To discover that it was a deliberate marking, a cultural rather than a biological difference, disturbed me. Soldier’s Boy had irrevocably marked my body in a way that proclaimed I was no longer Gernian. The fat had been an extreme enough departure from my image of myself. This was worse. Even if by some miracle I discovered a way to regain control of my body and return to my previous level of fitness, my skin would be forever scarred with the dapples of a Speck. I felt helplessly suspended as I watched my own life drift even further from my reach. Soldier’s Boy’s satisfaction was, I suspected, twofold. He had marked himself as a Speck, to further his own cause. And by doing so he had dealt me a crippling blow, claiming the body even more as his own. I suspected he could feel my despair and rejoiced in it.
Olikea looked at his face critically. Then she walked slowly around him as if he were a horse at the fair and she were considering buying him. When she came back to face him, her eyes were approving. “I have marked babes before; Likari is my work, and you can see that I patterned him tightly, so that when he grew, his pattern would still be attractive. With you, it was more difficult, for you are a man grown, and yet you have lost so much fat that your skin was slack. Even now, it is possible that when you are full again, your pattern will not be entirely pleasing. But I do not think it is likely. Your back is dappled like a brook trout, but I looked to the mountain cat for your shoulders. I wish you had let me mark your face. Even so, it looks very good. You have the camouflage of both hunter and prey, a very strong marking. That they have turned out so well is very auspicious.”
She smiled as she spoke, well pleased with her work. But then the pleasure faded from her face and she folded her lips. “But it is a shame that you must show yourself so to our kin-clan, let alone to Kinrove at the winter gathering. Nevare, we must fatten you as quickly as possible. That is all there is to it.”
“Such is my intent also,” Soldier’s Boy replied. I was unsurprised to hear him say so, and yet my spirits sank again.
“Shall we go on to the village, then? If you quick-walk us, we can be there in just a few moments.” She frowned, squinting. “I wish to be out of the light. Even at this time of year, when the clouds are thick as good furs, the light still dizzies me.”
Soldier’s Boy was silent. Plainly he was thinking, but his thoughts were inaccessible to me, and I lacked the spirit to pry my way into them. When he spoke aloud, it sounded as if he had reached a hard decision. “I will send you on soon. But I cannot show myself to the People this way.”
“This way?” Olikea asked, puzzled.
“Thin. Poor. With my markings barely healed. This is not how I wish them to see me, not how I wish them to think of me.” Distress was suddenly evident in his voice. “If I present myself to them like this, I will never attain the standing I must have. They won’t listen to me at all.”
“And so I have warned you, over and over! But you would not listen to me!”
Olikea sounded both satisfied and angry at having her opinion so completely vindicated. But I felt they were talking at cross-purposes. Olikea was thinking of status and honors and gifts. I could not discern Soldier’s Boy’s thoughts clearly, but I suspected he was thinking of strategy. His next words chilled me, for they were words I had often heard from my father’s lips.
“If I wish to command, I must appear to be in command already when I am first seen. Even if I must delay my arrival at the village. When we get there, I must be well fed. All of us must appear prosperous. If I go to our kin-clan now, they will see me as a needy beggar and an embarrassment to them.”
“But what can we do about that?”
“Not go,” he said abruptly. “Not go until I am ready. Not go until you are ready.”
“Until I am ready? I am ready now. I am more than ready to seek my lodge and be comfortable again. My father will have food, and he will share with me. There is much to do to prepare my lodge for the winter. I must take down my sleeping skins and shake them out, and air my winter furs.” She looked at me suddenly in a very odd way. “As I am your feeder, I suppose you will live with me now.” She ran her eyes over me as if I were a large piece of furniture that might not fit in her parlor.
“Does Likari live with you?” Soldier’s Boy asked her.
“Sometimes. As much as a child lives with one person. He seems to prefer my aunt’s lodge to mine, and often he is at my father’s or with Firada. He is a child. He lives where he pleases. No one denies a child a meal and a place by the fire.”
“Of course,” I replied, but I sensed that Soldier’s Boy was as surprised as I was. And as oddly pleased. It seemed a wonderful idea to me, that a child could choose where he lived and no one would think of turning him out. That a child could expect food and a warm place to sleep from anyone in his village. Amzil’s children came to my mind; well, such had they found at Spink’s home.
“I am his feeder, too!” the boy suddenly but stoutly insisted. “I will live where the Great One does.”
“Do you think I will put up with having both of you underfoot?” she demanded. “I will have work enough to take care of him!”
“I will not be underfoot. And I will be taking care of him, too. Did not I stay and guard him while you went to get the fish? Have not I brought food often, and carried the water and the blanket all this way? It is my place and I will have it.”
“Very well,” she conceded, but not graciously. “My lodge will be small for the three of us, but I am sure that somehow we will manage.”
“If need be, I will build it bigger,” Soldier’s Boy suddenly asserted. “But I shall not go to it today. You will, Olikea. Go home, to your lodge, and find your trade goods. Then set out for the trading meet right away.”
“But—but the best of the trading is done. And the walk to my lodge will take me half the day, and then there will be two, perhaps three more days to walk to the Trading Place. Everyone will be gone. And what will you be doing?” This last she asked suspiciously, as if she expected him to somehow trick her.
“I will keep the boy with me. And we will also be journeying toward that place, to meet you there. So when you set out, bring extra sleeping skins for us. Winter comes on quickly. I do not wish to sleep cold.”
“Your plans make no sense to me. I am weary of journeying, and you have no supplies. Let us go to my lodge now, and have a good rest and a hot meal. Then, when you are recovered a bit, you can quick-walk us to the Trading Place.” She ran her hand over her head and then glanced up at the overcast sky, obviously bothered by the light and impatient to be on her way.
He considered. I think he was tempted by the idea of a hot meal and a restful night in a warm place. But then he shook his head. It was a Gernian gesture, I suddenly realized. He was incorporating more of me into himself. I wondered fearfully if that meant I was losing myself to him. He spoke.
“No. I will not show myself to our kin-clan again until I can do so with pride. I am determined that when next Jodoli sees me, I will have put on flesh and appear as a prosperous man.”
“And how will you do this?” Olikea demanded. “What will the others think of me, returning without you?”
“I am not entirely sure. But it is not for you to worry about. If anyone asks about me, tell them that I sent you on ahead. For now, think only that you will be getting what you want, time at the trading fair. Go on, go now. Likari and I will find you there.”
“There will be many questions for me when I arrive at my home village without either of you!”
“Just smile and promise them a surprise. Tell them the boy is safe with me. And then start off for the Trading Place. Four days hence, we will find you there.”
“Four days?”
“You said you might need to sleep. You will arrive before we do. Brag of the Great Man you have found. Trade with abandon, as if you have no need to strike the best bargain, as if you know you have untold wealth.”
Her brow had furrowed and her eyes shifted with uncertainty. She wanted to go to her home, she wanted to rest and then to journey to the Trading Place for the last days of trading. But curiosity was biting her like an insatiable flea. “What are you planning?” she demanded.
“I am planning to arrive at the Trading Place four days hence and impress everyone. Including you.”
“But if I go and I brag of you and trade my goods recklessly, and you do not come, I shall look a fool!”
“But if you do, and I do arrive, then you shall be celebrated and honored as a woman of great foresight.”
She was silent, staring at him.
“I know it’s a gamble, Olikea. Only you can decide if you will wager or not.”
A moment longer she stood, debating, and then she turned on her heel and walked away toward her village. We watched her go. Soldier’s Boy then glanced down, to find Likari looking up at him uncertainly. Olikea had departed without even a farewell to the boy, let alone a list of cautions for taking care of him. I thought of how wary Amzil had been about letting me take care of her youngsters for even a few minutes. Yet plainly Olikea regarded Likari as an independent entity, one capable of making his own decisions or objections to the decisions of others. I was not sure that I approved, but the system seemed to work for this boy.
Had Soldier’s Boy heard the echoes of my thoughts? He met Likari’s gaze. “Do you wish to go with me? Or to return to the village with your mother?”
He drew himself up. “I am your feeder. You have said I will go with you. So I shall.”
“Very well.” Soldier’s Boy sent a final glance after Olikea. The sun shone on her skin. She was as unconcerned as a lioness as she strode down the trail toward the villages. As he watched, she entered the shelter of the trees and was lost to sight.
“What do you mean to do?”
“I intend to hunt. You will help me. And I intend to eat. A lot. Then when I have grown as fat as I can in four days, we shall quick-walk to the Trading Place. And there I shall trade.”
He cocked his head at me. “What will you trade?”
“I’m not entirely sure yet. What is considered valuable?”
He furrowed his brow. His eyes were very serious as he pondered my question. “Tobacco. Tobacco is always good. And furs. Pretty things. Things that are good to eat. Knives.”
“I think I should have asked your mother before she left.”
“Probably. Why do you call Olikea my mother so much?”
“Well. It is what she is, isn’t it?”
“I suppose. But it sounds odd to me.” He glanced about and said anxiously, “We should go beneath the trees. I start to burn.”
“I feel it, too, especially in my markings.” All my skin had become more sensitive to light, but my new specks were noticeably sore, even from this brief exposure to sunlight. Soldier’s Boy began to walk slowly down the path that Olikea had taken and Likari fell into step beside me. His small dark head bobbed as he walked. “How is Olikea usually named to you?”
“Olikea.”
“You do not call her ‘Mother’ ever?”
This seemed to puzzle him. “A ‘mother’ is what she is, not who she is,” he said after a time.
“I see,” Soldier’s Boy replied and I thought I did.
The wind rose, sweeping down on us. He looked back the way we had come. High above the cavern from which we had emerged the peaks already boasted snow. He felt a pang of guilt. “You must be cold. I should have sent you with Olikea.”
“Winter is coming. It’s right to be cold in winter. The wind will be less keen once we are in the shelter of the trees.”
“Then let’s hurry,” Soldier’s Boy suggested, for the keenness of the wind stung his bare skin almost as much as the light had. Likari might be philosophical about being cold because it was winter, but he saw no reason to be cold if he didn’t have to be.
Even when we reached the shelter of the trees, he was cold, and I was suddenly skeptical about Soldier’s Boy’s decision. He had nothing from his previous life save his blanket. The boy carried a small amount of gear: a water skin, the fire-making supplies, and a knife and a few other basics in his pouch. But he himself was nearly as resourceless as a child newly born to the world. I thought how they had abandoned my worn clothing and suddenly mourned those meager possessions as if they were squandered treasure. Cold and hunger pressed us, extending their claws even into my awareness. What was he thinking? Why hadn’t he followed Olikea to her house? We could have been warm and fed by now. Likari seemed to share none of my doubts but toiled along at Soldier’s Boy’s heels, patient as a dog.
This was a different sort of forest from the one on the other side of the mountains. It was greener and lusher. Most of the trees were needled evergreens, and ferns were thick in the mossy shade. I was suddenly grateful for the dimness they provided. Huckleberry bushes mocked me with their past-season greenery. The forest here smelled different, wetter and greener, than the woods on the far side of the mountains. The signs of human habitation were plainer here. The path we followed was well trodden and at intervals lesser paths separated themselves like tributaries branching out of a river. Fat gray squirrels seemed plentiful. One stopped halfway up a tree trunk to scold us, jerking his tail at us and angrily denouncing our presence in his forest. If we’d had my sling, we’d have had squirrel stew very shortly. Perhaps some trickle of that thought reached Soldier’s Boy, for he hesitated and almost I thought his hand went to a pocket that wasn’t there. Then he shook his head and walked on. He had something else on his mind. But what could be more pressing than a need for food? I knew he was hungry. It ate at him as it had once eaten at me. But whatever was driving him now had sharper teeth. I tried to sense what it was, but felt that he shielded it from me.
We had walked for perhaps an hour when Soldier’s Boy halted and stood, staring about himself like a hound trying to pick up a lost scent. There was no pathway, but after staring around and noting several of the larger trees, he gave a sharp nod to himself and left the trail we had been following. Likari glanced at the worn trail that led toward his home village, gave a small sigh, and followed him.
Soldier’s Boy did not move with certainty. He paused often, and once we backtracked and then went on in a slightly different direction. When we came to a lively stream that crossed our path, he smiled. They both stooped to drink the icy water.
Likari wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Where are we going?”
I was surprised when Soldier’s Boy answered him. “To Lisana’s old house. It’s hard for me to find the way; much has changed since she actually walked these hills. Saplings have become mighty trees. The old paths have been devoured by the moss and ferns, and new ones have been trodden. It is confusing to me.”
“The old Great One, Lisana? She is a tree now?”
“But she wasn’t always a tree. Many years ago, she lived close by here. She told me about her house here. She spoke to me, very strongly, in my earliest dream visions. And later, she was my mentor and instructor.” And lover, he might have added, but he did not.
“Do you think her lodge will still be there, after all these years?”
“Probably not. But we shall see.”
I ventured closer to Soldier’s Boy’s thoughts and aligned myself with him. I could not tell if he was aware of me or not. I tried to be very still and unobtrusive. I felt like a small boy trying to peer over his father’s shoulder while he was writing a letter.
He had Lisana’s memories and consulted them like a map. The path to her home had wound past a rise, and then between two immense trees. Only one of them was still standing. The other was an empty stump, like a rotted-out tooth sticking out of the forest floor. Soldier’s Boy walked between them and then paused, thinking. Uphill, he decided, because he remembered that she had enjoyed a good view of the valley.
She had stopped living in the village when she became a Great One. Too many unfulfilled dreams resided there. The man she had loved had not wished to be the feeder of the Great One, to live always in the shadow of her power. She had no desire to see his children scamper past her door each day. She had never truly taken a feeder. There had been villagers who served her, and all her kin-clan had been proud to have produced a Great One. She lacked for nothing; they saw to that. Food, jewelry, furs to sleep under, music to lull her to sleep, perfumes to stimulate her thoughts—she had but to express a wish for something and it was provided to her. In return, she served her people well and faithfully.
She lacked for nothing. Nothing except the simple life that she had once believed she would have. Nothing except a man who had turned away from her when power touched and then filled her.
A tremendous sympathy for her flooded and filled me. I had thought we were so different, but peering through Soldier’s Boy’s mind and sharing her memories, I suddenly found many places where our experiences touched.
Her home had been stoutly built of cedar logs. The roofs of such houses were sharply peaked and the eaves reached almost to the ground. Roofed with logs and thatched with moss, it had been, and as the years passed, ferns and mushrooms had grown on the roof and sprouted from the moss chinking. She had encouraged the growth. Her house was alive, an incarnation of the forest from which she drew her power. It had been fitting.
He passed it twice. I saw it before he did. I tugged, stamped, and poked at his awareness until he finally turned back. He was looking for her house as she remembered it, roomy yet snug, and with a well-trodden path leading up to it. It was long gone. I recognized the overgrown green mound as what remained of it.
In this rainy forest region, the folk built houses of cedar for a good reason. In favorable conditions, cedar doesn’t rot. In adverse conditions, it rots very slowly. Lisana’s house had been well built, of thick logs sealed with boiled pitch. Even so, time and the elements had had their way. Years ago, the front wall had boasted two window openings and a door. Trailing vines had overgrown them in a curtain of roots and tendrils, and eventually, moss had filled in the gaps. Soldier’s Boy found the door by touch, thrusting against the greened walls until he reached a place that gave to his push.
Likari watched him in silence as he thrust his arm in elbow deep and then tore away at the wall of foliage. It was not easy work: the roots were tough and woody, and the moss was thick, but eventually he had torn out a hole big enough to look through. He peered into darkness that smelled of damp and rich rot. Likari, near naked, had begun to shiver.
“Build a fire for us while I do this,” Soldier’s Boy suggested. Likari gave a relieved nod and ran off to collect twigs and dry debris.
Soldier’s Boy cleared the doorway and ventured inside. He blinked, letting his eyes adjust. The walls and roof had held, but the forest had still invaded. Cascades of pale roots had penetrated and actually strengthened the walls. More groping white roots dangled from the ceiling. The earth floor was damp underfoot. He could make out vague shapes that had been her possessions. There, against the wall, that would have been a chest of cedar-wood and that collapsed huddle of moss and mildew was where her bed had been. He found one of the windows and began to clear it to let more light in. The central hearth of careful dry-stone work had survived, but the smoke hole above it was blocked. The afternoon was advancing. He looked out of the low door. Likari had kindled a small fire and was perched on the rolled blanket beside it.
“Come in here! You see that? Climb up there and open it up for us. Once that’s done, we can bring the fire inside. We’ll be a little more comfortable tonight.”
The boy peered into the darkened lodge. He wrinkled his nose in distaste for the damp smell and the busy beetles and pale roots that dangled down from the ceiling. “Could not you just speak to the forest and bid it give us shelter for the night?”
It was presumptuous but Soldier’s Boy chose not to take offense. “I could. But that would use magic. And I need to build my magic, not spend it. So, tonight, we will stay in here.”
I sensed that he had other reasons, and most of them were that his beloved had once lived here. He looked around a chamber that a Gernian would have considered a root cellar and saw a cozy home, lit by a warm hearth and filled with the comforts that befitted a Great One. His secondhand recollections startled me. He recalled copper cooking pots and green glass bowls, hair combs of ivory and silver pins for her hair. Yet his memories of her wealth were tinged with sadness. Perhaps only he knew how lonely she had been. Did he think that somehow he could retroactively amend that by residing here?
While Likari tugged and pulled diligently at the shrubs, roots, and moss blocking the smoke hole, Soldier’s Boy moved purposefully about the room. She had had no heir to inherit her wealth, not even a favorite feeder to claim three cherished possessions. So, as was their custom when dealing with folk who were full of magic, her home had become taboo once she had died. Magic had a price and left a residue, the Speck believed. This chamber remained as it was the day she last left it. Lisana had died on the far side of the mountains. She had known she was dying, and had stayed behind to be near the tree she had chosen. Her youngest brother and three of her feeders had stayed with her, loyal to the end, to prop her failing body against the tree and guard it until the tree could send its seeking roots tendriling into her body to absorb both the nutrients of her corpse and all that remained of her person.
These things he knew almost as clearly as if they had happened to him. These were the memories Lisana had given him. And so he went to where a shelf had been, and groped on the floor amid the wreckage of the long-ago rotted plank. From its debris, he lifted a soapstone lamp. He went outside and scrubbed it with fallen needles beneath a cedar tree. He would get oil for it when he went to the Trading Place. He held it in his hands, feeling it warm beneath his touch. She had liked to sit outside in the mild evenings of early autumn with its soft glow lighting the night.
He looked up at the sky through the lacy fronds of the cedar trees. The light was going fast. If they were going to eat tonight, he had to hunt now. He clenched his teeth. Now that he had found the house, he didn’t want to leave it. He longed to lovingly restore it to what it had been, to see the log walls lit by dancing firelight, to recline on the bed where she had slept, to drink from the cups she had used. He ached for her with a depth of feeling that bordered on obsession. He was sick with his loneliness and love, and I pitied him.
Yet for all that, he disciplined himself, as my father had taught him when he was the same boy I was. He looked up to young Likari, who was still dispiritedly dragging roots and moss and vines out of the smoke hole. “Do you still have my sling?”
Likari grinned. “I saved it for you.” He fumbled in a pouch at his belt and then tossed down the flap of leather with the long thongs wrapped around it. Soldier’s Boy caught it neatly. He turned to leave.
“Do you wish me to hunt for you?”
Soldier’s Boy was almost startled. He hadn’t even considered it. He made a quick decision. “No. Thank you: finish clearing the smoke hole. Then clean the hearth inside and bring the fire into the house. Gather some firewood for the night. I’ll see what I can get for us to eat.”
The boy stood in a half crouch over the chimney, staring at him. He made no reply. Soldier’s Boy turned and walked away from the house reluctantly. He didn’t want the boy to tidy the hearth. He wanted to do it himself, to be sure that every stone was put back as it had been when Lisana lived there. He hadn’t gone a dozen strides when the boy called after him, “Great One, this is a bad-luck place! Please! Don’t leave me here alone!”
Soldier’s Boy halted and turned, surprised. “Why is it a bad-luck place?”
“A Great One lived here, and now she is gone. We should not be here. To come here uninvited is the worst sort of luck. It does not matter that she has been gone for a long time. The bad luck is still here.” His voice quavered on the last words. He pinched his mouth shut to keep his lip from trembling.
Soldier’s Boy stood still, listening to chill wind in hemlock and cedar needles. Then he said, “I was invited. And you are my feeder. It isn’t bad luck for me to be here, or for you.”
The boy didn’t reply. I looked at him through Soldier’s Boy’s eyes and thought how young he really was. Soldier’s Boy didn’t give it another thought. The light was going fast now. This time of day animals would be on the move, but it would not last long. I might pity Likari, left alone with his fears, but Soldier’s Boy simply assumed he would cope with them.
His hunting luck was good. I could feel him draw on my skill and experience with the sling when he used it. It felt odd, almost as if he were bleeding me for sustenance. At the same time, he could not open that link and take from me without leaving his own thoughts vulnerable to my spying. I caught a glimpse of his plan. He would stay here, in Lisana’s house, and eat all he could for four days before making a quick-walk to the Trading Place. He hoped he could regain enough of his weight to be impressive to the folk gathered there. There was something else, too, something he guarded more closely. I could not see it, but knew he anticipated it with excitement but also with a strange regret.
This was a different forest he moved through, as different as the forest on the other side of the mountain had been from my prairie home. That was a revelation to me. I had thought that all forests would be, well, forests. To discover that they differed as much as one city does from another was almost shocking. On this side of the mountains, evergreens predominated, cedar and spruce for the most part. Their fallen needles carpeted the earth and I tasted their resinous scent with every breath. I passed anthills that were waist high; at first glance they seemed to be merely heaps of rust-brown needles. Ferns were also plentiful, and mushrooms in astonishing variety. He recognized some as energizing for his magic and picked and ate them. Soldier’s Boy recognized them from Lisana’s memories. My reluctance to trust such a secondhand memory swayed him not at all from eating every last one of them. And when he had finished, the subtle humming of the magic in my blood rose. He walked on with a satisfied smile. He liked being able to take care of himself, I realized.
The first hare he saw escaped him because he had foolishly not thought to gather stones for ammunition before he set out. He sought out a stream, and again I felt him pilfering my memories to select stones of the right size and heft for the sling. I resented that. He had his own secrets that he kept from me. Why should I share the skills I’d worked so hard to perfect? I clenched my mind shut to him.
He paused a few moments by the stream to drink, and then to make several practice shots with the sling. He was not very good at first. He selected a tree trunk as his target. The first stone went wide, the second grazed the bark, and the third did not leave the sling at all but fell at his feet. I felt his frustration, and felt, too, the hunger that gnawed at him. He needed what I knew.
I gave in, reasoning that if he did not eat, my body would suffer. When he reached again for my memories, I actively offered to him what he needed to know, not just how to stand and when to release the stone, but also the “feel” of the sling itself. The next two stones he launched each hit the tree trunk with a solid and satisfying “thwack!” He grinned, replenished his ammunition, and stalked on, suddenly a predator in these woods.
He killed the next hare he saw with a single stone and lifted the limp carcass with satisfaction. It was a big one, and fat for winter. Satisfied, he headed back toward the cabin. They would have fresh meat tonight. It wouldn’t be enough to sate him; he felt as if he could eat four more just like it. But it would calm the hunger enough to let him sleep. Tomorrow he would send the boy out to forage as well. Tomorrow, he promised his growling belly, would be a day of plenty. For tonight, the single fat rabbit would have to do. He hurried through the gathering gloom.
He smelled the smoke through the trees, and then saw flickering light through the cabin’s window. Winter, with short days and long nights, was venturing closer with every day. He felt a lurch of fear as he considered how poorly equipped he was to face the turn of the seasons, but then gritted his teeth. He had four days. Four days to fatten himself, to find trade goods and trade them. He needed winter clothing and a steady supply of food from a loyal kin-clan. But he wouldn’t get those things by going to the Trading Place looking like a skinny old beggar. “Power comes most easily to the man who appears powerful,” he said aloud. I felt a lurch of dismay. Another of my father’s teachings. Would all the harsh wisdom he had passed on to me in the hopes of making me a better officer now be turned against Gernia and my king? Traitor, I suddenly thought. Renegade.
I was suddenly glad I was dead to my world. I wished with deep passion that Epiny didn’t know I was still alive, that no one did. I had the sudden sick conviction that all I’d ever learned was going to be used against my own people. Coward that I was, I did not want anyone to know that I was the one responsible. If I had had my own heart any longer, it would have felt heavy. As things stood, I had to endure Soldier’s Boy’s satisfaction as he strode up to the house.
A croaker bird abruptly appeared, probably drawn by the smell of the dead hare. Cawing loudly, he swooped in to settle on the main roof beam of the little house. He perched there, looking down on the scene with bright and greedy eyes.
Likari was crouched in front of the cabin by the small fire he’d kindled earlier. He looked miserable and alone, and at the sound of Soldier’s Boy’s approach, he looked up fearfully, the whites showing all around his eyes.
“What are you doing out here?” Soldier’s Boy asked him severely.
Likari squirmed. “Waiting for you.”
“Then it has nothing to do with being afraid of bad luck? With doubting what I told you was true?”
The small boy looked down at his bare feet as he crouched by the fire. Did Soldier’s Boy feel pity for him? His tone was gentler as he asked, “Did you do all I asked? Is there water and firewood? Did you clean the hearth stones of moss and earth?”
“Yes, Great One. I did everything that you told me to do.”
“Well. We are in luck. My hunting went well, and I have a nice hare for us to eat tonight. Do you know how to skin a hare and make it ready for the pot?”
The boy hesitated. “I’ve seen Firada do it. I could try.”
“Another time, perhaps. I’ll show you how it’s done tonight.” Privately he thought that he didn’t want any of the meat wasted by a clumsy skinning job.
“We don’t have a pot to cook it in.”
“You’re right. Perhaps. Come inside with me. Let’s see what we do have.”
Lisana’s memories told him that she had had a stewing pot of fired clay. It had been a favorite of hers, glazed a creamy white on the inside and adorned with black frogs against a dark blue background on the outside. It had been just the right size for cooking. He went to the place where she had kept it. Beneath a rumpled carpet of thick moss, his seeking fingers found only fragments of fired pottery. He pulled one from beneath the moss and wiped it clean. Half of a leaping frog remained on the shard. Next to it, a greenish half-moon of badly corroded copper was all that remained of a once-gleaming pot.
It saddened him unreasonably. What had he expected? How many generations ago had Lisana lived here? It was irrational of him to hope that her possessions had endured. I was surprised to find that her cabin and its contents had survived at all. How could he be so disappointed that a fired pot had not lasted?
As he crouched outside alongside the boy and they gutted and skinned the hare for roasting, the answer came to me. He carried Lisana’s memories and the grief he felt now over the destroyed pot was as much her grief as his. It had been a cherished possession, and somehow it had been important to her that it still existed. As if, I slowly reasoned, the survival of her possessions was the continuation of her life.
As the thought came to me, I could suddenly experience Soldier’s Boy’s emotions as he felt them. As if I were a traced overlay of a sketch, I came into synchronization with him. For a fractional moment, I was Soldier’s Boy. If I had relaxed, I would have merged with him, would have dissolved like salt stirred in water. For one paralyzed moment, I felt lured by that. In the next instant, I leapt like a hooked fish and tore myself free of him. I retreated from him, heedless of fleeing into darkness. I sank myself deep, beyond his reach, beyond Lisana’s memories. Or so I tried. I could not quite escape the sound of his voice.
He smiled slowly and spoke softly. “Eventually I will win.”
“Win what?” Likari asked him.
“Everything,” Soldier’s Boy replied. “Everything.”