I had no more time to ponder who or what Kinrove guarded against. To be presented with the idea that he was powerful enough to quick-walk our entire party down to him from such a distance was unnerving. But the lantern bearer said only, “Walk with me,” and stepped out. We followed, and the night blurred around us. In a single step, we stood before a grand pavilion. That show of raw power was nearly lost on me as I looked about at the display of might that greeted us. Ranks of torches illuminated Kinrove’s pavilion and the open space that surrounded it. The music I had heard in the distance now sounded all around us. A fine dust hung in the air, the smell of burning tobacco was thick, and everywhere crowds of folk churned past us. The sudden assault on all my senses overwhelmed me for a few moments as I struggled to make sense of the scene around me.
Substantial timbers supported the pavilion’s leather walls. The walls were painted in ocher, red, and black in designs that were strange to my Gernian self yet familiar to Soldier’s Boy’s eyes. The music came from half a dozen musicians on an elevated stage. They blew horns and pounded drums, but there was no melody to their music, only rhythm. And the churning folk that had at first so confused me were actually a train of dancers, each one touching the shoulder of the one before him, and dancing in an endless chain that encircled not just Kinrove’s pavilion but wove a serpentine path through the smaller tents of the encampment. Many of the dancers carried short-stemmed pipes with fat wooden bowls. Soldier’s Boy blinked as the dance wove past him.
The dancers were all manner of folk, men and women, young and old, some brightly dressed in rich clothes and others looking worn and ragged. Women and girls predominated. Their bare feet had pounded the hard earth to loose dust. They did not dance lightly: every footstep landed with a thud. Their feet kept time with the rhythm of the music and stirred the dust that hung in the air all around us. Some looked fresh but most of them were worn thin as sticks.
Their faces were what arrested me. I did not know the theme of their dance, but they all wore expressions of fear. The whites of their rolling eyes showed, as did their bared teeth. Some wept, or had wept. The dust clung to the wet tracks down their cheeks. They did not sing, but there was moaning and sighing, a dismal counterpoint to the endless drumming and the blatting of the horns. When they drew on their pipes, they took deep breaths and then expelled the smoke in streams from their nostrils. None of them took any notice of us. They danced on, an endless chain of misery and rhythm.
We stood for what seemed a long time watching them pass. Likari appeared at my side and leaned close against me, obviously both dazzled and frightened. Olikea’s face was pale; she reached out and seized her son by the shoulder and abruptly pulled him closer to her, as if danger threatened him. Soldier’s Boy patted Likari absently and looked round for the lantern bearer who had guided us here. He had vanished, leaving Soldier’s Boy, Olikea, Likari, and the bearers with their quaya standing in the midst of this organized chaos. We waited, inundated with noise and dust, long enough that Soldier’s Boy began to seethe at the slight. Just as he turned to Olikea to complain of it, the door hanging of the pavilion was whisked aside and the plump young woman who had earlier visited us emerged.
“So you have come!” she declared as if mildly surprised. “Welcome to Kinrove’s kin-clan and our Trading Place encampment. I will have someone guide your bearers to a place where your goods can be stored while you visit us. Kinrove bids me invite you to enter his pavilion and find refreshment there.”
With this, she swept her hand toward the opened flap of the tent. Soldier’s Boy nodded curtly to her and stepped up onto the wooden platform that floored the pavilion. He had to stoop to enter it. Olikea and Likari followed him. As soon as the heavy leather flap dropped down behind us, the sounds of the music and dancers outside were muted. I had not realized how much of an irritant it was until I was relieved of it.
The leather walls enclosed a substantial chamber. It was warm, almost too warm, and stuffy from the number of people it held. In a strange way, it reminded me of Colonel Haren’s rooms at Gettys. It gave me the same strange sensation of having been transported to another place and time far from the forests and meadows and beach.
The floors were covered with reed carpets woven with designs that echoed the painting on the outside of the pavilion. Strips of bark fabric decorated with feathers and multicolored glass teardrops hung down from the shadowed ceiling. Suspended glass lanterns lit the room and drove the shadows back into the tapestry-draped corners. A long table burdened with food ran the full length of one side wall. There were several thronelike chairs in the room, all well cushioned and obviously designed to accommodate the weight and girth of a Great One. I was surprised to see that Jodoli occupied one of them, and a young but very heavy woman sat in another, smoking an elaborately carved ivory pipe. When she noticed me looking at her, she parted her lips and expelled a disdainful stream of smoke at me.
On the side of the tent opposite the food table, servants were pouring large jugs of steaming hot water into an immense copper bathtub. The water was scented and the rising steam perfumed the air. Other serving folk were coming and going, bringing in smoking platters of freshly cooked food and removing empty tureens or replenishing wineglasses.
But all of this coming and going of people bringing hot water and fresh food or removing dishes or refilling wineglasses was only the busy framework around the central spectacle. On a raised dais in the very center of the tent, Kinrove reclined in a cushioned hammock. The man was immense. Flesh was heaped upon flesh in rolls until the skeletal structure that had once defined him as a man was buried and muted. His body literally overspilled him; his belly sat in his lap and his head and chin were sunken in the roundness of his shoulders. A loose green robe covered him but did nothing to disguise his bulk; rather, it emphasized it. Broad stripes of gold outlined the contours of his body and repeated them. Among Gernian folk, such a man would have been an object of both ridicule and fascination. I had seen a man half his size displayed as a “fat man” in a Gernian carnival tent. He had been mocked and stared at. Here, Kinrove was an object of awe bordering on worship.
The man ruled the room. The gaze he turned on us was piercing, and there was power rather than indolence in the hand that lifted and beckoned us closer. His gesture was oddly graceful. He wore his flesh as another man might have worn a wealth of jewelry or the badges of his military rank. He used his size to command. The whole purpose of the pavilion was to center our focus on the sheer body size he had attained and it worked very well indeed. I was stunned by him. Feeders came and went around him, bringing food and drink, carrying off dishes, wiping his hands with moist cloths, massaging his feet and legs. A special stand at his elbow held several elaborate pipes and heavy glass canisters of tobacco. All the faces of those serving him showed deference, even affection. I saw no sign of resentment or anything less than devotion.
With a small jolt, I recognized the attitude that was displayed. When I was a small boy, my family had gone to visit the estate of another new noble family. They had lived up the river from us, a two-day journey, and I recalled how sternly my father had admonished me that Lord Skert was to be treated with great respect, for he had made many sacrifices for his king. I had expected to see some mighty muscled giant of a man, with a big beard and a booming voice. Instead, we were introduced to a man whose legs no longer worked. He was pushed from room to room in a wheeled chair, and burn scars had smoothed and twisted the side of his face and neck. Despite his scars and his disability, he had the bearing of a soldier. In the few days of our visit, I had come to see that he wore those scars as if they were medals he had earned. He was not shamed or humiliated by them; they were a part of his service record and he displayed them as such.
So did Kinrove. The size of his body obviously hampered him. Despite the scented oils being rubbed into his feet and calves, his legs looked painful, dusky, and swollen.
When he saw us, he moved his hand slightly, opening his palm to bid us enter. He inclined his head very slightly to the left. Again, I was struck by the grace of these small movements. There was an economy of motion to them that seemed full of beauty. “So. Here you are! I have heard of your coming among us, Soldier’s Boy, trained by Lisana.” He paused, cocked his head slightly, and said slyly, “And I give welcome also to Nevare of the Plain-skins.”
Before I could respond to that strange greeting, he turned his attention back to the larger gathering and spoke loudly for their benefit. He had to pause between phrases. Even the effort of speaking taxed his wind. “You are not unknown to us. Jodoli has told us of how Olikea found you and rescued you. He has also”—and here his smile grew very wide—“told us of your first contest of might with him! It was a good tale.” He chuckled, and all around the room, his merriment was echoed in rippling laughter.
He took another breath. “So I am pleased that you accepted my invitation.” A breath. “It pleases me to confer with the Great Ones of the People from time to time, to hear from them how our war goes, to accept their thanks and to direct them as to how their efforts might best aid me.” A breath. “Jodoli had told me that you were a very substantial man, before you burned much magic in a…shall we say ‘inexperienced’ rather than ‘vain’ attempt to stop the Jhernians?”
I felt the flush of hot blood that darkened Soldier’s Boy’s face. You did this; you brought this shame on me! He thrust the fierce thought at me, but to Kinrove he smiled and said, “I do not think my effort vain if it protected our ancestor trees for another season. I will do whatever I must to keep them safe until a final solution can be found.”
“So you would do what you must to drive the invaders from our land. Good. The magic asks much of us, and much especially of your kin-clan this year. I summoned Jodoli here, as the Great Man of your kin-clan, to speak to him of the magic’s need for more dancers. Imagine my surprise when he told me that his kin-clan had not one, but two Great Men now. Of course as soon as I heard that, I knew I must send for you. Such a strange thing to my eyes you are, a Great Man who grew up among the intruders. Jodoli thinks you are the key to the final solution. So the magic told him, in a dream, he says. And so the magic has whispered to me also. What do you say to that, Nevare of the Plain-skins? Do you know a way that we have not yet tried, Soldier’s Boy? Do you know a way to drive the Jhernians from our borders and restore peace and prosperity to our folk? Perhaps with a new dance that has not yet been danced?”
He had paused often to breathe as he spoke to me. His frequent pauses made it hard for me to decide if he had finished speaking. His question sounded dangerous to me. Twice he had referred to me by both names. Inside Soldier’s Boy, I huddled small. I did not like this Speck Great One addressing me directly. He saw too clearly.
Kinrove smiled. He did not move, but I felt that he leaned closer, and that he could see, not just Soldier’s Boy, but me, Nevare, hidden inside him. He held out two fingers toward us, like open scissors, and then closed them together. The gesture seemed fraught with magic. “A joining makes a path,” he said, and I felt threatened. His eyes peered more sharply. “A man cannot dance if his left foot tries to go one way and his right another. The dance happens when a man is in harmony with himself.”
“I know a way to drive the Jhernians away!”
Her voice cracked on the words, but it was emotion that made it do so. The young female Great One ensconced in a chair across from Jodoli spoke. She stood, spreading her arms wide. When she did so, the bright yellow and black robe that she wore billowed out around her, amplifying her considerable girth. I was sure it was a contrived gesture to make her seem larger than she was. I was grateful that she had attracted attention away from me, even though I felt Soldier’s Boy’s annoyance that she had interrupted the challenge between Kinrove and himself. Beside me, Olikea released a pent breath. I wondered if she was relieved or annoyed.
The female Great One drew a deep breath. She folded her arms at her elbows, bringing her hands in to touch her ample bosom. The bright fabric billowed again as she bade him, “Speak to me, Kinrove! Or rather, listen! I know a way, and I have come here to speak to you of it! You were reluctant to allow me to come in, and since I have arrived, you have given me no chance to be heard. You fritter away our time with food and pleasures and trivial gossip. You make me wait as if I am of no consequence at all, even though I have told you I bring the words of not just my kin-clan, but the dissatisfied of many kin-clans. Then he appears”—and she waved a disdainful hand at me—“and you forget entirely that I am here. Why do you trouble with him when I am here? He is of the Plain-skins. He is the enemy. Someone has marked him as if he were of the People, but how can he be? Vermin beget vermin, not stags. If you wish to show us something of your power tonight, do so by killing him. Be rid of him, Kinrove. He but does what Jhernians have always done; they come, they take what is ours and use it to evil ends. He has usurped our magic and done us no good with it. Begin to find your ultimate solution by killing him and then finish it by listening to me!”
She looked directly at me then, and I felt, as Soldier’s Boy did, the buffet of her power. He’d had sufficient warning to set my muscles and not stagger back from the blow, but her intent was clear. She’d meant to at least knock him down and humiliate him in front of the others if not do physical damage. I think it was the first time I’d met the eyes of another human being and actually felt the hate emanate from them.
“Stop!” When Kinrove spoke that word, I felt what the soldiers in Gettys had felt the night I had stopped them before they killed me. It was a word of command backed by more magic than Soldier’s Boy could resist. I hadn’t realized that Soldier’s Boy had mustered his magic to use against the girl. Perhaps he had done it more intuitively or instinctively than as a planned reaction. But in that moment, he dropped his guard just as a numbed hand releases a weapon. Across from me, the girl spasmed as if doused with cold water. I saw her take a deep, quivering breath. Then she retreated a step, with her two feeders coming swiftly to help her take her seat again. I could see that she was shivering and angry. Her teeth were bared in her fury, or perhaps clenched to keep them from chattering. I looked at her and thought that I would not have chosen to make an enemy of her.
Soldier’s Boy found his voice and spoke more boldly than I would have under the circumstances. “I did not come here to be insulted and attacked.” He gestured to Likari and Olikea to follow him and turned toward the door.
Behind us, I heard a flurry of steps and then frantic whispering. We were nearly at the tent flap when Kinrove spoke behind me. “This is not the meeting I intended, Nevare of the Plain-skins. Turn back, Soldier’s Boy. Let us welcome you, and let us speak together.”
Soldier’s Boy turned very slowly. It did not escape him that a feeder, older and more gloriously robed than the others, stood at Kinrove’s side. Galea, without a doubt. She clasped her hands before her, looking both anxious and hopeful. Soldier’s Boy spoke.
“I am not ‘Nevare of the Plain-skins.’ I am not completely Nevare, though I will answer to that name. Soldier’s Boy is an awkward name, for it names me as belonging to the Gernians. But I am of the People. I bear the marks of one of the People. I was accepted by the elders and instructed by Lisana. I have left the folk that I was born to, left the lands where I grew, and traveled far to come to you. If you do not wish to accept me, then speak to the magic that summoned me. Say to the magic that made me a Great One that you are wiser than it is, and would have me leave.” Slowly he crossed his arms over his chest and then stood silently confronting Kinrove as if daring him to commit that blasphemy.
Kinrove’s face flushed, and next to me, I heard Likari give a small whimper of fear. Soldier’s Boy stood firm and Olikea stood tall beside him. Whatever their earlier quarrel had been, they now stood united. The movement in the room had stilled. Outside the tent, the music thumped and squawked and the endless line of dancers shuffled on. It was a sound as eternal as the waves rushing against the beaches. I recognized it for magic and felt the drag of it against my senses. I wished it would stop so I could think more clearly.
I think Kinrove must have given her some sign, for Galea suddenly left his side and came bustling toward us. “Come, this is a poor way for us to begin. See, Nevare of the People, the bath that Kinrove ordered prepared for you awaits you now. And there is food and drink, freshly made, with which all of you can be refreshed. After you have relaxed a while we will all think more clearly and can begin to know one another. Come. Come.”
These last words she spoke not to us, but to a gaggle of young assistants that she beckoned forward. They moved cautiously as if they feared they were throwing themselves into a fray, but Galea’s face grew stern at their hesitation, and they suddenly came forward in a rush of brightly colored robes and reaching hands.
For the next few moments, I was almost glad it was Soldier’s Boy who was wearing my body rather than me. At first he stood stern, arms crossed still. Then, as if he were offering them an honor, he slowly opened his arms and held them out from his side. Olikea did the same and Likari copied her. Kinrove’s servants disrobed them, removing their garments respectfully. Two scuttled up behind me with a throne, so that Soldier’s Boy might be seated while they drew off my boots and socks. Off to one side, the slighted and insulted young woman sulked, her angry magic virtually glowering around her. Her feeders, two men, whispered and patted at her, trying to soothe her. No one else seemed to pay attention to her at all. All around us, the previous bustle and noise of the pavilion had suddenly resumed, as if some dangerous crisis had passed, as perhaps it had. The three of us were escorted to our bath.
There was a feel of ritual to it that perhaps put the others at ease, but to me it was a bizarre experience. I’d never shared a bath with anyone, let alone a woman and small boy, nor been attended throughout it by people who thought it their duty to scrub and rinse my back, to be sure that my feet were clean even between my toes, let alone support me while I lay back so that yet another attendant could massage a fragrant soap through my hair and then rinse it out. Olikea supervised all these attentions in a very possessive way, and Likari soon joined in, warning them sternly not to get soap into my eyes and to be very gentle where my feet and legs were scratched from my barefoot days in the forest. After Soldier’s Boy had clambered from the tub and was being toweled dry, Olikea and Likari received similar attention. Olikea maintained a dignity that said such was only her rightful due, but Likari wriggled like a happy puppy and exclaimed over the wonderful smells of the soaps and oils.
Galea’s assistants quickly surrounded me. It alarmed me and I tried to warn Soldier’s Boy to be on his guard against treachery. He either ignored or did not heed me as he relaxed in their hands. Three women were drying him carefully, lifting the folds of flesh to be sure that no moisture was trapped anywhere, while others were combing out my hair and dressing it with a fragrant oil. My feet were massaged and anointed, the many small scratches and abrasions on my calves were tended, and then two young women smoothed a buttery unguent onto them. My nails were carefully and gently trimmed and cleaned. Soft slippers were brought for my feet, and my own robe restored to me. A smoking table was set up near my chair, and an array of tobacco of various shades of brown displayed for my choice. Olikea shook her head firmly and motioned them all away, much to the amusement of Kinrove’s feeders. “I do not allow him to have that,” she said firmly, and while some of Kinrove’s assistants nodded their approval, others rolled their eyes at Soldier’s Boy in mock sympathy. Clearly my feeder managed my health with a strict hand.
Throughout all these attentions, the business of the pavilion had gone on about us. A number of emissaries had come and gone, and strain as he might, Soldier’s Boy had been unable to hear much of what had transpired. Some seemed intent only on buying the goodwill of the Great Man; these ones brought tribute in the form of all sorts of food and rich goods. One, an older woman, had come seeking some sort of a boon from him. It was solemnly refused her, and she left weeping and angry, escorted from the pavilion by several of Kinrove’s feeders. At this turn of affairs, the young female Great One looked more displeased and sullen than ever. She watched with great disapproval as Soldier’s Boy was dried and tended. Her scowl was dark and threatening. And always, always, the endless drumming and thumping of the music and dancers went on like the beating of a giant heart. I longed for it to cease, for quiet to flood in and soothe me.
But that was not to be. No one else at the gathering seemed to pay the constant noise any mind. Once Soldier’s Boy was dressed and ensconced on a throne again, Kinrove deigned to notice him once more. He made a signal to his feeders, and Soldier’s Boy was lifted, throne and all, and carried within a comfortable speaking distance. Jodoli and the young Great One were also lifted and brought forward, but I noticed that our chairs were arranged so that Jodoli was between her and me, and she was at a slightly greater distance from Kinrove’s elevated dais than either of us. Cushions were placed at my feet and Olikea and Likari made themselves comfortable there. Other people carried in tables already laden with food, plates, wine, and glasses, and these were placed in easy proximity to our chairs. It was all done swiftly and graciously, yet his hospitality did not extend to permitting his guests onto his dais. He kept his vantage: to look at him Soldier’s Boy had to tilt my head. The message was not subtle at all: he regarded himself as Greatest of the Great Ones and asserted his right to lord it over other Great Ones.
But the aroma of the food mollified the resentment and wariness Soldier’s Boy felt. I was shocked at how his hunger roared back to life at the sight of it. The quality of the food offered to us from Kinrove’s table made our earlier feast seem a crude meal indeed. The style of preparation and the spices used were foreign to me, as was the way the dishes were presented, but I could not quibble with the result. The flavors brought back rich memories to Soldier’s Boy of when Lisana had been alive and had dined as grandly as this every day. This lavishing of attention and catering to needs were how the Specks rewarded their Great Ones. For some years Kinrove had been the Greatest of the Great, but Jodoli and every other Great One anticipated that as they grew in size and mightiness, their kin-clans would pay this sort of homage to them. To sample this lifestyle now was a foretaste of what might come. Likari’s beaming little face betrayed that he was very much enjoying himself. Olikea looked around with greedy eyes, storing up her memories of this wonderful night. This was what she aspired to; she would live as Galea did, waited on hand and foot and accorded all the respect due to the favored feeder of a Great One.
There was little conversation; talking would have interfered with the eating. Olikea asserted her right to be the one to serve food to Soldier’s Boy, and this she did so assiduously that my mouth was scarcely ever empty. Firada was there to tend to Jodoli’s needs. She appeared to compete with her younger sister to be even more attentive to Jodoli than Olikea was to me. A moment later, I realized there was competition there, not for the food but for how much of it each of us could consume. Soldier’s Boy was sated and more than sated, but Olikea kept pressing him to eat, enticing him to try a bite of this or to have just one more mouthful of that. Behavior that had been shameful at my brother’s wedding less than two years ago was now hailed as the height of manners. Not only did Soldier’s Boy honor Kinrove with enjoyment of his food, he achieved status for himself as he continued to eat long after Jodoli had turned his face away from Firada’s entreaties.
The only competition was the young female Great One who had earlier expressed the desire to kill me. Between bites, Soldier’s Boy watched her from the corner of my eye and tried to overhear the few words that were spoken by her. I gleaned that her name was Dasie and that her people lived to the north of my Specks. Soldier’s Boy searched the recollections Lisana had shared with him. In summer, the two kin-clans had little to do with each other. It was only in winter when they came to the coast and shared the same hunting grounds under the eaves of the evergreen forest that the kin-clans crossed paths. But they shared with our kin-clan what we shared with every Speck kin-clan: the Valley of the Ancestor Trees. Their Great Ones were entombed there, living in the kaembra trees just as ours were. The two trees that had been the first to fall had been their eldest elders. My kin-clan mourned them as a loss to the People, but Dasie and her kin-clan mourned them as murdered relatives. It did not matter that the people embodied in the trees had died generations ago; if anything, it made their lingering awareness and wisdom all the more precious. The Gernians had destroyed their deepest link to their past. Their hatred burned hot. And so she watched as Soldier’s Boy ate, and I watched her. Her primary feeders were two men, one about my age and the other a man of about forty years. They conferred with each other as they fed her, and several times Soldier’s Boy caught the younger man staring at him with extreme dislike.
This was not at all the initial meeting that I had expected with Kinrove, and I wondered again what his strategy was in inviting us here. That his feeder hoped to win the use of the fertility image I understood. But looking at the man and feeling the sense of command that he exuded, I doubted that was the whole of why we had been summoned. The tension between him and Dasie was palpable. Why was she here? What did she hope to gain? I suspected that Kinrove played a deeper political game than we knew. It worried me.
I began to wish that Soldier’s Boy had not eaten earlier. My belly was uncomfortably distended now. He no longer ate with pleasure. Instead, he watched Dasie and matched her bite for bite. She was slowing; her feeders bent over her, urging her to continue eating. She accepted another bite.
It was only then that I became aware of Olikea’s role. She was showing a substantial portion of food each time she held it to Soldier’s Boy’s mouth, but a good part of it she was palming, making it appear that he was eating a lot more than he actually was. A flush of anger and frustration passed over Dasie’s face, and she abruptly turned away from her feeders. Olikea made a mime of feeding him not just one, but two more mouthfuls of food before she warned Soldier’s Boy, loud enough to be overheard, “I think you should stop for now, Great One. Later, I promise you, I will find more food for you.”
We had won. Soldier’s Boy breathed a soft sigh of relief. His gut ached, but as he looked slowly from Dasie’s sulky countenance to a chastened Jodoli, he knew it had been worth it. He had established himself in the order. He lifted his gaze to Kinrove. His feeder was starting a pipe for him. The Great Man gave no sign he was aware of what had just happened, but Soldier’s Boy was smugly certain that he was. Kinrove spoke.
“We have eaten together, and I trust you took pleasure in my food. Now let us speak to one another, for I would hear what is happening with the People, both far and near. Jodoli has told me of the kin-clan you share, Nevare. His words have saddened me. It is a great loss for us to know that yet more of our ancestor trees have fallen. And yet I savor my triumph as well. Many have spoken against my dance, saying that it costs our people too much. But what cost is too high to pay for keeping our ancestor trees? If the dance stops and the Jhernians flood forward with their iron blades to fell our ancestral groves, what good does it do that we are still alive here?” His hands moved as he asked each question. They spoke as eloquently as his words. “Does the leaf outlive the branch? The dance continues to protect our forest. Without it, I believe that all our ancestors would have been slaughtered by now. Without my dance, by now the Jhernians would be standing right here, and our magic would be lost. The People would be ended. But my great dance makes the fear that holds them at bay. My great dance sends weariness and despair rolling down on them. Against my dance, they have not prevailed and they will not prevail. Only my dance has saved us.”
He smiled down on us, as if inviting us to agree with him. Jodoli nodded slowly, but Dasie only looked at him with narrowed eyes. Soldier’s Boy was very still, waiting and watching. I noticed what he apparently did not; Olikea looked at Kinrove with stark horror. Kinrove looked at Soldier’s Boy, still smiling with his lips, but his eyes were waiting for his response and weighing his value as he did so.
Soldier’s Boy finally spoke. “The intruders are still there, Great One Kinrove. They still intend to cut the trees and to build a road that will bring them to our winter grounds. The Trading Place is full of their goods, and iron is traded without regard for the well-being of our magic. Our own people bring the most dangerous parts of the intruders among us. Simply holding them back will not prevail. I do not speak against your dance, but I do not think it is enough to save us.”
Next to me, Olikea jumped as Dasie suddenly spoke. “The intruder at least speaks the truth! The dance isn’t enough, Kinrove! The dance is not enough to protect us! And at the same time, the dance is too much. It is too much of a price for the People to pay. You sit on your throne and call yourself the Greatest of the Great! You smile and say you have saved us, that our trees still stand, as if we should forget the ones who have fallen. As if we should forget those who dance and dance and dance to work your magic. Six years ago, before the magic touched me and I became a Great One, do you know what I was, Kinrove? I was a child weeping for my kin-clan. For that was the year that you sent the magic on us, sent it on your own people, to command those that it touched to come and be part of your dance. Sixteen of my kin-clan came to answer your call. Sixteen: two old men, nine young women, four young men, and one boy. That boy was my brother, just a year older than I was.”
She paused as if waiting for him to deny it. Kinrove just looked down at her quietly. His words, when they came, were without mercy. “Every kin-clan has sent dancers. Your kin-clan has not contributed in any greater way than any other. We must have dancers for the dance.”
“How many of those taken from my clan six years ago still live? How many still dance for you?” She paused, but did not really give him a chance to respond. Soldier’s Boy was listening intently. I shared his focus; I sensed we were close to the heart of a mystery. Olikea had been standing behind him, her hands resting possessively on his shoulders. At Dasie’s words, her fingers had slowly closed until she gripped his robe with knotted fists. He could hear her tension in her breathing and feel it in her stance. What was this?
“I will tell you, Kinrove. For before I came into your grand pavilion this evening, I stood and watched your dancers pass. I watched them make three circuits. I studied each face as each one passed. I saw no joy in any of them. Only fear. Or despair. Many wore the look of one who knows that death is soon to come. A few hate you, Kinrove. Did you know that? Do you ever go outside and look at the faces of those you have called to dance? Have you forgotten that once your dancers were the People?”
The pavilion had grown quiet. Serving folk still moved, but they had slowed, as if they lingered to hear an answer. The importance of her question sang silently in the air around us. The drumming and horns and the endless shuffling of the dancers seemed to grow louder in that stillness.
Kinrove’s answer was not as strong as it could have been. “The magic calls the dancers. I but send it out. Every year, in rotation, it goes to a different kin-clan. It goes forth and it summons, and some answer that summons. I cannot control who is called. I do only what is needed. And those who are called and come here to dance, dance for all of us. It is not a shameful calling. When they die, they are buried with respect. Their lives have served us all well.”
“They have not had lives!” Dasie asserted in response. “Especially not those who answer the call when they are little more than children. Their lives stop on the day they come to you. What do they do from that day hence, Great One? Do they laugh or take mates? Do they have children or hunt or talk around the fire in the evening with their neighbors? Do they have any life of their own? NO! They dance. Endlessly. They dance until they drop, and then they are dragged away from the chain for a brief rest, fed the herbs and foods that will fill their bodies with energy again, and then they are taken back to the dance. They dance until they are mindless, nothing more than bodies in motion, like spindles weaving your dance of magic. And then they die. Why are their deaths so unimportant to you? Why are their deaths worth so much less than the death of a person who left his body a hundred years ago?”
I felt the same shiver that ran up Soldier’s Boy’s back. I knew what the magic’s call to me had done to my life. I thought of all the dancers I had glimpsed so briefly on my way into the pavilion.
I tried to imagine what it would be like to serve the magic in an endless dance. I knew how the magic had commanded me. I’d seen what it had done to Hitch. But what if it had demanded of me that I dance, endlessly, in a circle? What if I’d known that the dance would be the final sum of all my life? What would it be to rise daily from brief rest, knowing that all that day I would dance until weariness dropped me? Was the fear they had worn on their faces real? Did they dance in terror or black despair as a way to generate the waves of magic that rolled over the King’s Road and through Gettys? I could not imagine such an existence, nor the leader who would condemn his people to live it. Even the prisoners who labored on the King’s Road always knew there was eventually an end to their task. Some died before they reached that end, true, but those deaths were not inevitable. Many reached their freedom and even realized the King’s promise of land and a home of their own. Kinrove’s dancers were expected to dance their lives away, in the name of keeping the ancestral forest safe. And apparently he saw no eventual end to the dance, no final solution. To keep the intruders at bay, the dance would have to go on forever.
It appalled me. I was shocked that any leader could use his people so. I tried to break into Soldier’s Boy’s thoughts: “And I’m not the only one who thinks it’s monstrous. Look at Dasie, Soldier’s Boy. She and others like her are why Kinrove has a magical barrier around his encampment. He may call himself Greatest of the Great, but not all believe he should wear that title.” As before, I received no acknowledgment from the other half of myself. I retired to seethe quietly to myself.
At last Kinrove spoke. “I do not undervalue my dancers, Dasie. Without them, I could not weave the magic that protects us all. I spend them only because I must, just as I spend myself. They and I are part of a greater magic, one that you do not comprehend. You ask if their lives are not worth as much as those of our elders. No. They are not. Each elder in a tree was a Great One in his time, chosen not by man but by the magic. And in the years they have existed since then, they have acquired ever more knowledge. They hold our past for us and guide us toward a future. Those who must die to protect them should feel honored to do so. They are honored by us while they live and dance. We give to each the best care we can—”
“Except to give them back their lives!” Dasie cut in angrily. I could feel her anger. I do not know if she meant to expend magic, but she did. The fury rolled off her in waves; Soldier’s Boy felt it as a surge of unfriendly warmth against my skin. Her feeders were leaning forward, whispering to her urgently, but she paid them no mind. “For years you have used them, Kinrove. Used them, and claimed the magic they made as your own. You have styled yourself the ‘Greatest of the Great’ on the heaps of their bones. You say you do it to save us from the Jhernians. But you take from us more than we can replace. Yearly the dancers die, and we do not bear enough children to replace them. You are dancing your own people to death in the name of saving them.”
Kinrove looked aggrieved and angered. “You criticize what I do, Dasie. You tell me to do it differently. But you, what do you do to protect your people and our ancestor trees? You want to end my dance, but what will replace it? You have been a Great One less than a hand of years, but you will tell us what we must do to drive the intruders back?”
She was not daunted. She took a step toward him. “I will tell you what you must do to keep from killing our own people! Let them live in their homes, find mates, and have children. If after I have been a Great One for twenty years, I forget that, as you seem to have done, then I hope some youngster will come before me and remind me of it. What good is it to save the trees of our ancestors if they have no descendants left to honor them and seek their wisdom? And as to the intruders, yes, I have an answer to that. We must kill them. Kill them, and kill any who come after them, and keep killing them until no more of them come.”
“You are a child.” Kinrove said the belittling words flatly, but in a tone that made them more statement than insult. “You cannot recall what has gone before, because you were not born then. We tried to use the magic against the intruders, to take it right to their homes. Their iron confounds us. Within their village, our magic is weak. Our mages struggle to wake a spark from wood, cannot bid the earth comfort us, cannot even warm our own bodies. The only magic we have found that will work within their walls is the Dust Dance. And no one knows why it works when all other magic fails. By itself, it is not enough. It kills them, but they only call for more of their brethren from the west. Before you were a Great One, when first they threatened our forest of ancients, we tried to fight them as we have seen others fight. We rose against them and went to battle, protected by the magic of the Great Ones who came with us. But they fired their guns at us, and the iron passed through our magic and then our flesh, tearing as it went, flesh and bone and organ. The Great Ones who had thought to protect our warriors died that day. Many of our young men died. So many. A generation, Dasie. Shall we speak of how many children were not born because there were not men to father them? You say that over the years my dance has devoured the People. And what you say is true. But what my dance has devoured over all the years we have danced it is still less than the number of warriors who fell in that day.”
Dasie opened her mouth to speak, but a sharp gesture from Kinrove cut off her words. I do not know if he used magic or merely the force of his personality to silence her. There was power in this man, in every nod of his head or flick of his fingers. Great power. I felt there was something more there, something I was missing, but his words caught me up and distracted me.
“I was there, Dasie. I saw them fall, my father and my two elder brothers among them. I was not a Great Man then, though I had begun to grow fat with magic. No one else had noticed it in me, and I scarcely dared to believe it myself. But what I saw that day taught me the one thing that I still know is true. We cannot take the magic as a weapon and use it within their walls. The iron thwarts us. But the magic can be our wall that holds back the swelling tide of the intruders and keeps us safe. And as soon as I was large enough to implement such a plan, I did so. And because I did so, you were able to grow up, in relative peace, in our own forest and mountains. You say you want to bring war to the intruders and death? Dasie, I am your war!”
His voice shook with passion. I was shocked when Kinrove’s eyes left her and came to rest on me. “Have you nothing to say to this, Soldier’s Boy–Nevare?”
There was a long moment of silence. I felt Soldier’s Boy draw his courage together. Then his cold words stunned me. “Kinrove, I think that Dasie is right. Indeed, you have worked a great magic, and it has held them at bay for years. All of the People should feel gratitude to you for that. But the wall has begun to crumble. And I will tell you a fearsome thing, Kinrove. The intruders do not understand that we are at war with them. They do not even recognize the magic of the Dust Dance, let alone the power of the magic that sends fear and sadness down upon them. I have walked among them as one of them. Do you want to know what they believe? They think we are simple, primitive people, living like beasts in the forest. They pity us and they despise us. They think they will help us to become like them, and that we will be grateful for that. They believe we long to be just like them, and they are very willing to help us forget how to be the People and become just like them.
“They believe that eventually they will cut our trees and build their road and that we will forget what it is to be the People. They say that they will trade with us, and come to this land to trade with the folk from across the salt water. Our Trading Place would become theirs. A city of intruders would rise here. They would come here, with their iron and tobacco, and in a generation or two, we would no longer be the People. You have slowed their advance, Kinrove, but you have not stopped them. The dance has done all it can. Now it is time to fight them in a way they understand.”
The Great Man looked incredulous. His clenched hands rose over his head. They fell as he thundered at us, “You have no memories! You do not recall the last time we stood to fight them, how many of our people died in that single day! If we do as she suggests, it will not take long for all the People to be dead, and no one will be left to guard our trees or mourn when they fall! That is not the answer I expected from you, Soldier’s Boy–Nevare! Do you seek still to shirk your task? Do you think I have not taken the herbs that bring the magic’s true dreams to me? I know who you are! I know what you are! Why do you not do your duty and obey the magic? You are the one who was supposed to drive the intruders from our lands forever. All the Great Ones know this! Jodoli knows this, and I know he has spoken to you about it. I even know that you have told him that you do not know what the magic wants you to do! If we pressed Dasie, perhaps even she would admit that the magic has whispered to her that one is coming who will drive the intruders from our lands.”
He turned his head so abruptly that the blame he had been heaping on me appeared to belong to Dasie. If he had thought to see her quail, he was doomed to disappointment. She struck her breast with her open hand.
“Me, Great Kinrove. Not him. I am what the magic wants, and my way will clear the land of the intruders and restore the dancers to their families. I know this is so. He is not your answer; he is just in the way, confusing us. But as you seem charmed by him, pay attention to what he says. He says I am right. So will you listen to me? Will you help me to make the plans that will free us of the intruders forever?”
Kinrove flicked his hand at her, dismissing her. “I have listened to you tonight. All I have heard, Dasie, is the utterance of an unproven youngster seeking to make herself important. You wanted so desperately to speak to me, and finally I gave way and let you in. But you have not listened yourself, to anything that has been said. You just want to make this gathering listen to your ideas. We have listened. Now you should leave.” His extended palm pushed toward the entry of his tent, as if he were literally pushing her out of the door. His tone was adamant and his words final.
“I feared that you would say that,” she said, but her tone sounded as if she had not feared any such thing, but had hoped for it. “I do not willingly do this, Kinrove. I know it will sow discord among us. But you have to be shown that your ways no longer work. You have to be shown that I know how to remove the intruders from our land. And it begins by showing you what they would do if ever they reached this far. It starts now!”
I do not know how the signal was passed. Perhaps it was a magic that I did not know, a near instantaneous dream-walk into someone else’s mind. Perhaps she had simply timed her speech and brought events to this pass just as she wished them to happen. In any case, I felt it and I saw Kinrove’s eyes widen as the shock of it passed through him. The magical barriers that had guarded his encampment fell away in tatters. I felt them tear and give way, cloven by iron blades.