When we finally reached Lisana’s old lodge, Soldier’s Boy ate like a starved dog. He spoke not a word to the feeders who had awaited him there, keeping the food ready and the lodge fire burning. He left Olikea to deal with them, went to bed and slept for most of a day. He woke late in the night, got up to piss and drink some water, and then went right back to bed. The second time he awoke, it was daylight and his feeders were astir. They spoke softly to one another as they worked. He thought it might be late afternoon. He lay as still as a fox that has gone to earth and hopes to escape the hounds. He kept his eyes closed and listened to the sounds of the lodge around him, but gave no sign to anyone that he was awake. Every muscle and joint in his body ached. His back was a column of pain.
He did not move at all and breathed as slowly as if he were still sleeping. The bed was warm. His belly was still digesting. He turned his face into the pillow, his special pillow. It was stuffed with down but also contained sachets of cedar bark, dried forest flowers, and leaves. It smelled, I suddenly realized, like Lisana. He lay in her bed, in her lodge, breathing the fragrances that reminded him of her. He was trying to pretend that the sounds he heard were made by her as she moved about the lodge.
“Pretend as much as you like,” I said derisively. “She is gone, dead for all these many years. And you cannot reach her.”
My words shredded his dream of her. He could not regain it. He still did not move.
“Did Dasie’s death teach you nothing?” he thought at me. “When I die, they will take me to a tree. I will become one with the forest of ancients. And once again, Lisana and I will walk side by side.”
I laughed at him. “After all the ways you have failed, do you think the Specks will still honor you with a tree? You are a fool. You are as big a failure to your people as I was to mine. Look at the wreckage strewn behind you. Dasie is dead. Of the handsome young warriors who bravely followed you off to battle, a third did not return. And many of those who did come back are injured and demoralized. Likari has been taken for the dance and Olikea has lost her spirit. Kinrove sees you as his enemy, Jodoli as his incompetent rival for power. The fort at Gettys still stands and you have raised the hatred of the Gernians against the Specks to a boiling point. You have not only failed to improve things, you have made them worse. Next spring, when we return to the forests on the other side of the mountains, there will be no fur traders, but only soldiers waiting to kill you. No trade goods, Soldier’s Boy. No honey, no bright beads, no woven fabric. No tobacco. None for the People to smoke, and none for them to carry to the Trading Place. The long guns will point at the Specks, and all they will trade you are iron bullets for your lives.”
“Silence!” he hissed and struck at me. I made myself small and avoided the blow. I was getting better at dodging his attacks. Like a mosquito, I buzzed and sang in his ears, only to vanish when he angrily slapped the side of his head.
From my silent concealment, I watched in satisfaction. I had shredded his dream of Lisana and left him only cold reality to consider. I’d seeded his thoughts with all his failures. His stillness became a morose silence. For the first time since the raid on Gettys, he had stillness and time to think. He could no longer hide from his musings. Time and silence gave him nothing else to think about.
He reviewed the night of the battle over and over. He considered what he had done wrong, the situations he had failed to plan for, the instructions he had not given to his troops. Whenever I could impinge on his thoughts, I pushed my own memories at him: the sentry falling, his throat sliced. The wounded Specks squirming and crying out on the snowy earth after the ambush, and how he had ridden away. The soldiers who had died as they tried to escape the flaming barracks, slaughtered like cattle in a chute. I slid my thought across his like a knife blade across skin. “It was a cowardly way to kill soldiers. They had no chance to fight at all.”
He shouldered my thoughts aside. His tone was mocking as he said, “Do you still think war is a game, with rules and limits? No. War is killing the enemy. It wasn’t about a ‘fair fight’ or any of your strange ideas of honor and glory. Honor and glory! War is blood and death. It was about killing as many Gernians as we could and losing as few of our own as we could. It was about destroying a nest of vermin. Don’t try to make me feel guilty over exterminating the intruders. If you want to saw on my nerves, think instead about how I failed my troops. Chide me for what I should have done to save the warriors of the People. Rebuke me that the walls of Gettys still stand, not that fewer long guns would peer over the palisade at us.”
I kept silent. He would not bait me into discussing his failures. I could taunt him over what he had done and what he had neglected, but that would only be instructing him in how to improve the next time. I ignored him and sank into my own retreat. It was abhorrent to think that this ruthless butcher was actually a part of me—the dominant part right now. I did not want to acknowledge my attachment to him at all. I retreated into my own darkness, to mull over the things that “I” had done that horrified me still. The murdered sentry, the slaughtered troops—The worst, I think, was recalling Spink’s face in that moment of recognition. What must he think of me? And if he had known me, had others? It ate at me that I could know nothing of the aftermath of our attack on the fort.
Had Amzil and her children survived? Had Epiny and her babe? And if they had survived the fires and the attacking Specks, then what was their life now? Cold and starvation?
My thoughts turned over and over to the night I had dream-walked to Epiny. I worried that she was taking the laudanum, and tried to make sense of her rambling confessions to me that night. She had sent my soldier-son journal to my uncle, but it had fallen into my aunt’s hands and she had done something with it that related to the Queen, something that threatened the reputation of the Burvelle name. I put that unsettling thought together with the idea that it had been Soldier’s Boy prompting me to write so much in that journal, far beyond the diary that a soldier’s son would be expected to pen. He believed he had been obeying the dictates of the magic when he did so. If that were true, what did it mean to me? Had I written more in there than I knew? How could my journal and what it contained be a part of the magic’s plan to drive the Gernians away from the Speck lands? The rock he had mentioned was almost certainly the one I had given to Caulder. How could that matter to the magic? I could make no sense of that and there was no one I could ask. Soldier’s Boy himself did not know why the magic had prompted him to write so much, nor why it was imperative that he leave the journal behind when he fled to the mountains. There was no one I could ask.
Save, perhaps, Lisana.
“Lisana.” Soldier’s Boy spoke the name aloud, and I wondered if he were aware of my thoughts or if his had touched me. Now that I put my attention on him, I realized he was again pining like a schoolboy for her. Thoughts of her were what held him immobile in his bed and kept him from wanting to interact with the others. He simply wanted to be still and think of her. He thought that she alone could offer him the comfort and understanding he craved. To all others, he must stand firm as a Great One, even when he felt he had failed them in every way. Only with her could he be honest about his confusion and fear. I felt him reach for her then, a magical groping that went in a futile circle and came back to himself. He could not find her; could not touch her, sense her; could not dream-walk to her. That ability had stayed with me. “The magic gave you Lisana. And what did I get?” he asked bitterly.
“Apparently, the ability to kill people and feel absolutely nothing. Or to witness a death, such as Dasie’s, and be unmoved by it.”
Something, I felt something there, something he hid before he responded to me. “Oh. So you will mourn Dasie, too, will you? She knew her risks. She had no love for us, and all but laughed when Likari was summoned to the dance. But I forget. You do not have the spine to hate your enemies. So do not let that stop you. Mourn her, and mourn the men who were glad to murder you when they had the chance to do so as a cowardly mob. Is there anyone you do not weep for, Nevare? Will you sigh over the rabbit that is simmering in the pot right now?” A pause and then, “Truly, you should have been your father’s priest son. Or better yet, his daughter, always wailing and snuffling her nose in a handkerchief.”
“I sigh for Likari,” I said quietly and viciously. “Likari, whom you condemned to death by dancing. Dancing takes a bit longer than slitting a man’s throat, but I’m sure it works just as well in the long run.”
He struck me then and I felt it. “I hate you. I hate that you were ever a part of me.”
I set my will and endured his blow. I think it shocked him that I could. “The hatred is mutual,” I informed him coldly.
A sudden coldness flowed through him, a hatred so strong that it nearly froze me. “While you live in me I will never enjoy any part of my life. I see that now. Always you will be there, sniping and criticizing me. Always there will be a weak Gernian conscience whining at me.” He paused and announced, “I will find a way to kill you.”
“You can try,” I retorted, my anger masking my fear. “It seems to be what you always attempt. Kill anything that opposes you. Kill anyone who makes you think. So kill me if you can. I suspect that if you destroy me, you will destroy your last link with Lisana. And that, I think, would only be just. She is not like you, Soldier’s Boy. She has a heart. She should not have to associate with a conscienceless murderer like you.”
“No worse than you, Nevare Burvelle. Or will you deny that you tried to kill, not just me but also Lisana? You even believed you had succeeded. But you had not. And now it is my time.”
I waited, expecting a blow or some final words from him. Instead, I received nothing. Some time passed. He stirred in his bed and instantly his feeders surrounded him. No Gernian cavalla officer, no matter how high his rank, would have allowed underlings to tend him as assiduously as Soldier’s Boy’s feeders did. They flocked around him, offering him food, drink, clothing to wear, and slipping shoes on his feet. They tended him as if he were the King of Gernia, and he accepted it as his due. I wondered that he could stand being cosseted so.
“Are you a man or a great doll?” I asked him snidely, but received no response. Often when he did not directly reply to me, I could sense his reaction to my barbs, but this time there was nothing. I realized I could not pick up any trace of what he was thinking. He ignored me absolutely as he resumed his morning routine. He washed, he ate, and Sempayli came in to report to him. The man had a low, soft voice. I had to strain to hear what he was saying. He seemed to be giving a solid military report of who had returned and in what condition and how the raid had unfolded for those not immediately under Soldier’s Boy’s commands. Soldier’s Boy took it all in, but I could sense nothing of his feelings let alone his responses. I felt as if my ears were packed full of wool.
Soldier’s Boy rose and followed his lieutenant out of the lodge. Some of his troops had assembled for his review. Close to four hundred warriors had followed him on his raid. He had lost nearly a third of them, and only fifty or so now awaited him. These were the men who had been most loyal to him and were now most disillusioned. A dozen or so bore injuries of varying severity. They looked at him and their eyes were full of confusion. I watched him try to rally their spirits. I wondered why he bothered. “You will not lead those troops into battle again,” I sneered at him, but as before, I felt no response to my jibe. It became harder and harder to hear the words addressed to Soldier’s Boy and near impossible to hear anything of what he said in response. He was cutting me off from him, I now knew. It was strange to realize that he had been allowing me to break in on his thoughts.
And now he was not. What did that bode for me?
As the day passed, I became more and more isolated from him. I could look out through his eyes, and hear, in a muffled way, what he heard and even what he responded. I was aware of what he did with his body, how he ate and drank, what he did, but he had separated me from himself. My sense of taste and smell faded, just as my hearing had. Even touch seemed muted and distant. It was not the absolute emptiness that I’d once been marooned in, but an even stranger place where what I thought had no impact on my life at all.
My life. I wondered if I could even call it that anymore. It was more like being trapped inside the body of a marionette, and unable to anticipate what string would next be pulled. With every passing day, the world outside his body became less accessible to me. Daily he spoke to people—Sempayli, his warriors, his feeders, and Olikea. I heard his words and could make out their responses, but sensed nothing of what he felt. My emotions were so often at odds with his. I was truly a man living in a stranger’s body. Where I would have wished to comfort Olikea when she silently wept at night, he made no move toward her. When I thought he should have rebuked a member of his household or praised one of his warriors, he just as often did something entirely different. My disconnection from his thoughts became a sort of madness for me, excruciating in a very different way from my time in the emptiness. It was like reading a book in which the words and sentences almost made sense, but not quite. I could not predict what he would do next.
In the times when he slept and I did not, I thought often of Gettys and the raid. I tried not to imagine what must have followed; the warehouses of food had been put to the torch, as had many of the dwelling places. I tried not to think of families without adequate food or shelter in the deep cold of winter. Sometimes I thought about Spink and wondered if he had ignored my warning, or if he had reacted to it in a way I didn’t understand. Obviously, he’d been outside the walls of the fort that night. Had he heeded my warning and removed his family from the fort? I tried to imagine where I would have hidden Epiny and Amzil and the children if I knew a Speck attack was imminent. I was actually pleased when I could not decide; a secret a man does not know is one he cannot betray.
The remaining days of winter trickled by. Soldier’s Boy regained his girth. Olikea remained a cipher to me, her movements listless and her face nearly expressionless. She still went about the tasks of being his feeder, but I saw little of her old spirit. She did not speak of Likari; had she given up all hope of recovering him? She seemed indifferent to everything in life; even when she accommodated Soldier’s Boy’s need for sex, she seemed uninterested in her own pleasure. I wondered what emotions and thoughts he had at such times, but those, too, were hidden from me. She was neither cruel nor contemptuous toward him. It seemed as if every intense emotion had vanished from her, leaving a woman gray as the overcast sky.
Soldier’s Boy’s status with the People had dwindled, but he remained a Great One. His feeders did not desert him: that would have been unthinkable for a Speck. It did seem to me that they had to work harder to provide for him. The kin-clan had turned the sunshine of their attention back onto Jodoli, and he was the one who benefited from their hunting and gathering. There was no want in Soldier’s Boy’s lodge, but there was not the sumptuous plenty of days past. If he noticed it, he gave no sign of it to any of his feeders.
For a time, his warriors continued to seek him out. They gathered outside his lodge to smoke and talk, and then go off to hunt and fish together. I could not decide if habit brought them, or if they somehow hoped that something more would come of their failed effort. Each morning, he went out to greet them but every day fewer of them came. He had nothing to offer them. His promises of victory had been empty. The intruders remained at Gettys, the ancestor trees were still in danger, and Kinrove’s dancers were still prisoners of the magic. None of the rewards he had offered them in exchange for all their hard work had been fulfilled. After a time, they no longer bothered to wait for him, but met up with their comrades and dispersed to the day’s hunting and gathering. No one spoke any more of driving the Gernians away by force of arms. His army was no more.
I made efforts to be neither idle nor passive. Any number of times, I tried to see if I could slip away from him to dream-walk. I never managed to. He was rebuilding his cache of magic, and he guarded it so jealously that I could find no way to tap into it and siphon off what I needed for that magic. I constantly watched for some vulnerability, but as day after day trickled away, my hopes receded. I felt I was an animal trapped and forgotten in a cage that grew ever smaller. Soldier’s Boy often sat and stared into the hearth fire, brooding. I wondered if he planned a return to power or merely dwelt on his failure and frustration. To me, Soldier’s Boy seemed like a man without a purpose.
As spring ventured closer, the Specks began to prepare for their annual migration. Food was prepared and packed for the journey, while the lodges were put in good order and all the winter equipment and garments were carefully stored away. I heard more talk about what the summer would bring, and especially I heard more discussions about whether there would be any trade at all with the intruders. The trading or lack of it seemed to bother the People more than the concept of danger or vengeance from the Gernians. Even without knowing Soldier’s Boy’s thoughts, I was forced to confront yet again just how different the People were from the Gernians in how they thought. These two cultures, I decided, would never find common ground. Perhaps Dasie would eventually be proven right; the war would end only when one side had destroyed the other.
The night before our migration was to begin was a busy one for everyone except Soldier’s Boy. He was a center of stillness as he sat in his cushioned chair and watched all his feeders busy around him. Olikea supervised the tidying of the lodge. She determined which cooking pots would travel with us and which would be stored, how much food we would take and who would carry what. She immersed herself so completely in her task that she seemed almost her old self. Then, one of the women asked her about storing Likari’s things.
The boy had not owned much. The cedar chest for his possessions was not a large one. His garments were as he had left them, tossed in, rumpled, crumpled, dirtied still from the last time he had worn them. Most of them showed the wear and tear that any boy of his years would put on clothing. Doubtless by now he had outgrown most of them, I thought. Then I wondered if he was growing, or if the constant dancing had stunted him as I’d heard it would. He had also, not toys, but the tools of a boy learning to be a man. I watched with Soldier’s Boy as Olikea took them, one at a time, from the chest. A knife. A fire-starting kit in a worn pouch, one that Olikea had passed down to him. A net for fish. The sharp crystal that Soldier’s Boy had used to cut himself to mark himself as a Speck. That was wrapped carefully in a soft square of doeskin. The last item Olikea exhumed was my sling. I didn’t recall giving it to him, and yet there it was, among the litter of things in his chest. Olikea picked up a pair of worn shoes, and suddenly clutched them to her chest and broke down in loud sobs. She rocked the old shoes as if they were a baby, clutching them to her chest and calling, “Likari, Likari!” in a voice that penetrated past any muffling.
Soldier’s Boy had not been helping with the packing. Instead, he had been sitting on a chair next to her, idly watching her work. I thought he would put his arms around her or that he would at least say something. Instead, he rose ponderously and walked away from her. At the door of Lisana’s lodge, he hesitated, then strode out into the mild spring night. When a feeder sprang to her feet and would have followed after him, he curtly waved her back. For the first time in weeks, he left the lodge alone.
The area around the lodge had become a tiny village. Hearth light leaked out into the night from shuttered windows and doors left open to the fresh air. He walked past the smaller dwellings where his feeders and some of his warriors lived. The mossy trail down to the water had become a well-trodden path. Where there had been brush and brambles the first day that he and Likari found the lodge, there now was open space under the immense trees. Dry branches and fallen wood had been gathered for the fire long ago, and new paths crisscrossed each other as he made his way down to the stream. Even that was changed. A rough bridge had been built over it. He crossed it and walked on, following the stream downcurrent.
I had no sense of where he was going, and when we came to a place where the stream widened, he sat down on a rock. I thought perhaps he was taking a rest; he had walked farther than he had in some days. For a time, he sat in silence. Around us, the forest evening breathed out its spring breath. The brush willow along the stream’s edge had the beginning of catkins. The water in the stream was running fast and cold from snowmelt in the mountains, gurgling over stones. After he had sat for a time in silence, tiny frogs resumed creaking and cheeping to the night. Soldier’s Boy listened to their chorus.
Abruptly he spoke to me in his mind. “I must go to Lisana. I must see her, touch her, talk to her. I must.”
His words reached me but he still kept his emotions walled off from me. I replied with caution. “But you can’t. Unless I take you to her.”
He looked down, staring at the rocks in the streambed that were blurred by the water’s swift flow. “That’s true. So what is your price?”
I was shocked that he would bargain so baldly, and distrustful of it. “What are you offering?”
“I don’t have time to barter with you over this.” Anger scorched the words. “Name what you want and I’ll likely give it to you. I need to speak with Lisana.”
“I need to speak with Epiny. And Yaril.”
He scratched the back of his scalp. His hair had grown out long over the winter. Olikea had begun to pull it back into plaits for him. The forest folk had few looking glasses, and as Soldier’s Boy was groomed by his feeders, he seldom looked in one. I was grateful. I suspected I looked even more ridiculous than I had.
“Very well,” at last he said tightly. “I don’t see what harm you can do to me by talking with them. Of course, I don’t see what good you can do for yourself, either. But it’s what you’ve asked for. Take me to Lisana. Now. And while I speak to her, I wish to be alone.” Grudgingly, he added, “I will provide you the magic you need to dream-walk to your cousin and sister.” That suited me far better than anything I could have devised. Distracted by Lisana, he would not be able to spy on my conversations. Of course, the reverse was also true, and I was sure he had deliberately chosen to make it so. “Lisana, then,” I agreed readily. “Right now?”
“We cannot go sooner,” he said, and closed his eyes.
I approached closer to him and his magic. Wariness warned me that this might be some trick on his part to destroy me. To use the magic he willingly offered me, I would have to make myself accessible to him in the same way he was open to me. I weighed the risk and suddenly found I didn’t care. If he destroyed me, at least it would be over. I still believed he would not risk losing his link to Lisana by killing me. Briefly I thought of how ruthless he was, and then decided I would have to take the chance. This might be my last opportunity to converse with my cousin and be sure that she had survived our raid on Gettys.
I thought it would be difficult. Instead, it was like reaching out to clasp hands. I knew that Lisana had been waiting for this. She literally pulled me into her, and for a long moment, I lingered in the warm embrace of her mind. It was healing.
For that moment, there was no conversation, no questions or answers, nothing that even resembled thought. All that existed was acceptance and love. It was how I had imagined my mother felt about me when I was a baby, though in retrospect, I had always wondered if she had. That was the most joyous thing about our joining. I could feel what Lisana felt about me; all the doubts that lovers must have were banished in that meeting. No deceptions were possible in that intimacy. She loved me far better than I loved myself. And I reciprocated it.
I think I might have lingered forever in that healing balm, except that Soldier’s Boy suddenly pushed me aside. “Go to what you wish to do and leave me here for a time,” he said brusquely. “My magic will serve you.”
“You are still separated, still not one?” she asked us with dismay.
“He will not join me,” Soldier’s Boy replied sullenly.
I heard Lisana’s soft rebuke. “And in your heart, you do not wish him to. You hold him as far from you as he does you. Are you jealous even of yourself? Do you think I could love you and not love all of you?”
I smiled to hear that, even as it amazed me. Trust the heart of a woman to be large enough to encompass two such disparate people and make them one. I felt his magic push me away from her, but not before she was aware of my thought. I felt her warmth follow me as she enfolded Soldier’s Boy in her embrace.
Freed, I arrowed through something that was neither space nor time, traveling across something that was not distance. Unerring, Soldier’s Boy’s push sent me to my cousin Epiny. I found her sitting in a rocker by a fire. She was neither asleep nor awake as she rocked but wearily insensate after a difficult day. She had always thought babies were sweet little cherubs who slept and ate and slept again. She smiled at her childhood memories of her own little sister. The moment Purissa even gurgled in a discontented way, she’d been whisked away by her nurse, her wails vanishing with her when the nursery door was shut firmly behind them. She’d always imagined that her nurse quickly discovered what discontented the child and solved it and that Purissa went back to being a placid and contented infant. Solina seemed placid and contented only when being held by her mother. Held and rocked, endlessly rocked. From elsewhere in the cottage, I heard a child’s voice uplifted in querulous complaint, and Amzil’s irritable hushing. Dia was unhappy about something. The babe in Epiny’s arms squirmed and wailed a thin protest in sympathy.
Epiny sighed and tears started under her eyelids. She was tired, so very tired, and her head hurt. Spink had stopped taking the Gettys Tonic and forbidden it to everyone in his household. Amzil had nearly left over it; if she’d had anywhere else to go, she would have. The whole household had been miserable since Spink had decreed it, and he had been so unreasonable. He wouldn’t allow it in the door, not a drop, not even to soothe the children when they had nightmares.
“But you know, he’s right, Epiny.” I inserted myself into her meandering trail of thoughts.
“But being right doesn’t get him far. When he was right about the dangers of a Speck attack, it only brought him blame for not shouting more loudly and taking more action.”
“What did Spink do that night?”
She sighed. The baby on her breast was not quieting but only wailing in an endlessly hopeless way. With the toe of one foot, she started the rocker moving again. “He said he’d dreamed of you that morning, and asked me if I had. I thought I might have, but I couldn’t remember details. Only that you were very agitated and kept saying that I had to warn everyone. So he tried telling people that he had a bad premonition and that we must all be extra wary that night. But of course everyone just laughed at him. The Specks go away in winter; everyone knows that. But he made Amzil and me take the children, some bedding, and some food and go spend the night in a little stone cottage outside the gates. The cottage was abandoned years ago, and it was so cold and he forbade us to have any fire or light at all. We ended up huddled together like mice under a doormat. He told his men, soldiers accustomed to working in supply, and announced that he was having a night drill, and that all must turn out for it armed and uniformed for the cold. And he took them outside the fort, too, and made them march a patrol around the town outside the fort. He thought that when the attack came, it would be noisy, with guns firing and men shouting. He never even knew that the Specks were inside the fort until the fires blazed up. He was riding back toward the fort when—Nevare? You are here? Really here with me?”
“Yes, Epiny. I’ve dream-walked to you. I wanted to be sure you had all weathered the attack intact.”
“Small thanks to you!” she said with sudden deep bitterness. “Nevare, Spink saw you that night! He says that you looked right at him, eye to eye. He had been on the point of firing, and then when he saw your face, he could not!” A shiver of outrage ran over her. “Some have faulted him for that, calling him coward or traitor! Yet none of them faced up to you, either. How dare they speak so about him, how dare they! And how could you have put him in such a position, Nevare!”
“Epiny, you know how I am bound! I did all I could, to come and warn you both. It was as much as I could do!” The accusing tone of her words tore me. How could she believe I had done that of my own will? “Even now, I am held! My time to speak with you is short.”
“I know. I do know. But still, it is a heavy thing for him to bear, for there is no possible way he could explain it. Others saw you, Nevare. Or what they said was your ghost, come back as a Speck. The heaviest losses were taken by the men who were in the mob that night when you fled Gettys; only five now survive who witnessed your death. Rumor mutters about the town. Some say your ghost led the attack to take vengeance on the town. The barracks where the men were massacred as they tried to escape? Those soldiers were under Captain Thayer’s command. You remember who he was, don’t you? Carsina’s husband? The monster that was going to let his men rape and murder Amzil, simply as a way of tormenting you before they beat you to death! Now, whenever he sees Amzil on the street, or even little Kara sent out on an errand, he glowers and stares like a madman! He rules his own troops like a despot. I fear him, Nevare. I fear that he will stop at nothing to feel he has avenged himself. He says that Amzil is worse than a whore and he will prove it. Oh, how could you take vengeance, and then leave us here to bear the brunt of the ill will you woke?”
The agitation of her thoughts rose and with it the tempo of her rocking. Little Solina had not ceased wailing the whole time and now, sensing her mother’s upset, cried even harder.
“Epiny, please! I took no vengeance! That was not me. No matter what they had done to me, they were still the King’s soldiers, the men of my own regiment. I would not slaughter them like that. I cannot describe what it was like for me. I witnessed how they were murdered, with no chance to defend themselves. I would not massacre our soldiers like that, the innocent alongside the guilty. I would not choose to see anyone die like that! Surely you know me that well.”
“I thought I did,” she said in a low voice. “Hush, child, hush. Please hush!” The cries of her baby were jarring to her, agitating her in a way almost beyond my understanding. I knew she was not asleep, but in the light trance of a medium.
“Be calm, Epiny. Be calm for your child’s sake, and for me. Stay with me. Stay.” I breathed calmness at her. “Think of a good time. Think of—” I scrabbled through my knowledge of her, trying desperately to find a calm and happy memory for her. Nothing came to mind. Everywhere Epiny was, turmoil seemed to follow her. “Think of that first evening when we played Towsers on the floor of the drawing room in your father’s home. The first night you spent any time with Spink. Think about that; hold to the good memories.”
A wave of sadness washed through her, dulling her agitation. Her rocking slowed. “Will I ever live in such a house, so comfortably, again?” she asked me plaintively. “Will I ever be free of counting each slice of bread, of having to say to my household, ‘That is enough now, you’ve had your share, no matter what your belly says’? Oh, hush, baby, please hush. Sleep for a little while. Please let me rest.”
“Are things so difficult now?”
“Difficult? ‘Difficult’ is a word that only applies where there is hope. Nevare, we are starving. Unless the lands warm soon and the fear ceases to keep our men from hunting, we will all die. Yesterday, Amzil went walking outside the fort and came back with some wild greens for us. Oh, they tasted so wonderful, but there were not much of them. Gettys is shattered, Nevare.” She gave a small, bitter laugh. “We missed our cemetery soldier after that attack. No one had thought to do as you had done, and dig extra graves for the winter or stockpile lumber for coffins. Folk used to say you were morbid, waiting for us to die. After the fires, there were huge arguments over whether it was more important to build coffins for the dead or use whatever wood we could salvage to keep warm. The ground was too frozen to dig graves; the bodies had to be stored. I’ve heard it said there is a wall of coffins out at the cemetery now; the thaws have softened the ground somewhat, but fear and discouragement boil out of the forest there like a poisonous spring. It is hard to get anyone to work there and harder still to find someone who works hard enough to get anything done.”
I thought of Kesey and Ebrooks and pitied them both. I was sure that particular duty had fallen on them.
“We are in a bad way for any sort of supplies. The Speck seemed to know exactly where to strike; they burned the warehouses, and the barns and the stables, and so many homes! Those who stayed have had to crowd in together as best they might. Many others chose to flee when the fear came back. They could not tolerate it, not even with the Gettys Tonic. Not just families, but soldiers deserted by the dozen. I’ve no idea what became of them; I expect a lot of them simply lay down in the cold and snow and died.”
“Epiny, Epiny, I am so sorry.” As I listened to her thoughts wander, it seemed very unlike the usual meandering of her previous prattling. There was nothing fun or gossipy about her words; it was a recounting of an endless circle of despair. I could not think what else to ask her. Did I want to know the details of how badly Gettys was damaged? No, I decided. Belatedly, I wished she had not told me where Spink had hidden them, for whatever was in my mind might be ferreted out by Soldier’s Boy.
“The despair and the fear are the worst part, Nevare. They come down thicker than ever before. Even the children talk of death and dying as an escape from it. There had been problems with suicide among the forced workers, as I’m sure you know, but not like it is now. Every day, they find prisoners who have hanged themselves. Some of the guards laugh and say it is for the best as we can scarcely feed them, but my heart goes out to them. I have less sympathy for the murderers and rapists who leave in such a way, but some of those fellows were little more than boys when they were sent east, and some for no more than stealing a silk pocket handkerchief!
“I fear I will die here, Nevare. I will tell you true, what I dare not say to Spink. I fear I will die by my own hand!” She took a shuddering breath. If I’d had a heart of my own, it would have stood still with horror. She lifted a slow hand to pat her baby’s back. Little Solina’s wails were subsiding, more from weariness than because she was comforted. “She is what holds me here,” Epiny said in a soft whisper. “I no longer live for any joy I find in life, or for love of my husband. I live only because I know if I killed myself, her misery would be even deeper than it is. Poor little bird. I can tell when the sorrow and discouragement wash through her. Sometimes I find her in her crib, staring at the wall not even crying. That isn’t natural for a baby, Nevare. I wonder that she can feel such things and still live. She does not eat well or sleep soundly. No wonder so many babies born at Gettys die before their first year is past. They have no will to live.” Her voice faded away. What followed was a shamed whisper. “Last night I asked Spink to desert. I told him that as soon as the roads were less muddy, we could all run away. Anywhere would do. There could not be a worse place to live; there could not be a worse life for us than this one.”
“What did he say?” The words dragged out of me unwillingly. I was stunned by her words. More shocking still was my tiny hope that Spink would do as she had suggested.
“Nothing,” she said sorrowfully. “Nothing at all. He had just come home for the evening meal. Not that there was enough food to call it a meal. He did not even eat his share of it. He just put his coat on and went out again. I think he went to join the work crews. They went out for the first time yesterday. They no longer care if they are hungry or cold. The prisoners were rousted to go out, but they did not need to be forced. Half our soldiers marched out there with them. I don’t know what is going on, Nevare. But Spink didn’t come home last night, and I don’t know if he will ever come back. Neither Amzil nor I dared to go out to look for him. Gettys has become a dangerous place for a woman or a child alone on the streets. All is darkness here, even in brightest daylight. I believe that I will die here, one way or another. I have come to understand Amzil’s fear; the worst would be to lie dying and know that your baby was alive and helpless. That would be the worst.”
A wordless horror rose in me. “Epiny. Do not do anything desperate. Please. Just—just live on. A day at a time, a night at a time. Things will get better.”
I had no basis for telling her that things would get better. I feared, as she did, that things could only get worse for her and for everyone at Gettys. Still, I lied bravely. “The supply wagons always start to run again in spring. They are probably already on their way. Hold out a little while longer. Have faith in Spink and believe in yourself. You are brave and strong, the bravest and strongest woman I’ve ever met. Don’t give up now.”
Her thought was strained as if she forced herself to form it. “I’ve told you, Nevare. I cannot give up. Not while Solina lives and needs me.”
“And she will live. She will. And so will you.” I hesitated and then plunged on. “As soon as the roads dry out, Epiny, as soon as they are passable, you must take your horse and cart and go back to Old Thares. If you tell Spink what you’ve told me, he’ll understand. Leave Gettys. Go to your father. Take refuge there until the regiment is moved to a better assignment.”
“Flee like the coward I am,” she said in a low voice. “Go back to live at ease on my father’s wealth, listening to my mother tell me what a fool I was to marry a new noble’s son. Live with her denigrating Solina. No, Nevare. Dying would be easier than that. But I shall do neither. I pledged my life to Spink when we wed, and here I shall stay, and do the best I can.”
“But you urged him to flee.”
“And that was wrong. And if—when he comes back, I will tell him I know it was wrong, and beg his pardon. No. I will stay here with him, come what may.” She sighed heavily.
The babe on her breast was finally asleep, but she scarcely dared move for fear of awakening her again. Her breathing deepened and our connection became less tenuous. Instead of merely feeling the sensations she felt, the rocking chair, her aching back, the warmth of the small fire, her hunger, and the weight of the baby against her, I found myself holding both her hands and looking at her. The aspect that she presented to me was very young and plain; she saw herself, I suspected, as childish and powerless to change her situation. Her lips were chapped and her hair fuzzing out of her braids. I gripped her hands firmly and tried to put my heart in my words. “Epiny, you are brave and strong. When you share that with Spink, who is brave and strong himself, you anchor each other. Don’t give up. You are right. I was wrong to tell you to flee to your father. Whatever becomes of you, you must face it together.”
She looked deep into my eyes. “I will stay here. To the end, whatever it may be, I will stay here. I ask only this of you, Nevare. Dream-walk to my father. Tell him of what has befallen us. Then come back to me, to tell me that he has said he will send help to us. Please, Nevare. Can you do that?”
“I don’t know.” Her request staggered me. Did I know my uncle well enough to attempt such a thing? It had always been easy to dream-walk to Epiny. Her abilities as a medium left her sleeping mind open to my intrusions. My close bond with my sister Yaril had let me contact her, but I wasn’t sure how much she believed her “dreams” of me. My uncle? I respected him, yes, and loved him for all he had done for me. But to enter his sleeping mind and speak to him? “I’ll try,” I said, though my heart misgave me. I doubted that I had much time, and I had desperately wished to see Yaril, to know if she was all right. It was a hellish choice; to use my time trying to reach my uncle and then return to Epiny to give her some hope, or to find out how my younger sister was faring as she faced an arranged marriage in a household run by my deranged father. “I’ll try. I’ll try right now,” I told her, and let go of her hands.
Find my uncle. Find Sefert Burvelle, Lord Burvelle of the West. He was the heir son of the old line of my family, the holder of the family mansion and the estates in and near Old Thares. My father had been the second son, his soldier-brother. When my father had served his king well in the wars with the Plainsmen, the King had elevated him to the status of a lord with a small grant of land, making him one of his “new nobles.” That had not suited my uncle’s wife. Lady Daraleen Burvelle felt that one Lord and one Lady Burvelle were quite enough, and that my father had moved above his proper position in life. That had prompted her starchy welcome of me when I came to attend the Cavalla Academy in Old Thares. She blamed me because her daughter Epiny had met and fallen in love with another “new noble” son and a poor one at that. When Epiny had scandalized her by running off with Spink, that had been the final straw. Although my uncle still thought warmly of me, my aunt regarded me as the one who had ruined her chances to engineer a well-placed match for Epiny at court.
I tried to push my dislike of my aunt aside. It was clouding my memories of my uncle. I did not want to focus on her so much that I accidentally wandered into her dream. I tried to find quiet within my soul, to ignore the nagging sense that my time to dream-walk was ticking away, and to focus instead on my memories of my uncle. I summoned up the sensory memories that linked me to him: the smell of his tobacco, the taste of his brandy, the warmth and casual comfort of his study in Old Thares. I focused on the warm clasp of his hand on mine whenever he greeted me, and the sound of his voice as he said my name.
“Well, there you are, Nevare. And how have you been? Will you join me in a game of Towsers?”
I had to smile, knowing how much he detested the inane game that Epiny and his younger daughter Purissa so often trapped him into playing. In his dream, his daughters were in the room with him, cards in hand, but the moment I entered his dream, they faded into shadows in the background. They went on playing, slapping down their cards and leaping up to shout wildly when they’d made a point, but the actions and the sounds of their voices became distant and muffled.
“Uncle, I’ve little time. I’m visiting your dreams to tell you that things are desperate in Gettys. The fort has been attacked by the Specks. Their food stores are nearly depleted and their morale is devastated. Epiny and Spink are doing their best; they have a baby now, a little girl, Solina. But hunger presses them, and the spring rains bring cold and hardship. I know the roads are bad. But Epiny has asked me to reach you this way. I want to tell her that you are sending help to her. Even if it will be weeks before it reaches her, to know that help is on the way will lend her strength. Truly, times are desperate in Gettys.”
“Will you have a glass of wine with me, Nevare?” My uncle was smiling at me. Our contact was more tenuous than I’d thought. In the morning, he might remember he’d dreamed of me, or he might recall nothing at all. I suddenly recalled something Epiny had said to me.
“Sir, my journal. My soldier-son journal. Epiny sent it to you. If you’ve read it, you’ll know about this kind of magic. Dream-walking. I’m really here, in your dream, talking to you of real things. Epiny needs your help. Please, Uncle Sefert!”
“That damnable book! I am deeply disappointed in my wife, Nevare, deeply disappointed. Has she no idea how this could smear the Burvelle name? Epiny said not to read it, and I am a man of honor! But my wife made no such promise, and she has been full of folderol and foolish mysticism for too long. She will bare my nephew’s derangement, for such it must be! Poor Nevare! Keft was too hard on the boy, too hard, as he now admits to me in his letters. But what am I to do? He drove his son from under his roof, and only the good god knows what became of him. I do not think he should ally himself with the Stiet name, let alone engage his daughter to a boy who is himself a disowned soldier son of a soldier son who was never truly a soldier! What is the advantage in that? I’ve told him he should send little Yaril to me. I would see her safely into a good match. But I fear his mind is no longer sound; my brother’s handwriting looks more like a random trickling of ink, and his words wander more than his lines do! Curse the Specks and their dirty plague; I fear it has been the undoing of the Burvelles!”
I’d unsettled him. I suddenly became aware that his back was cold. At the same moment, he felt the draft. He left me, surfacing from sleep just enough to pull his blankets back into place. I waited in a limbo of grayness, hoping, but although he slept, he did not dream. “Lord Burvelle!” I cried into the nothingness. “Hear me! Your daughter needs you. She is hungry and cold and oppressed with sadness. Send help to her. Please, say you’ll send her help!”
There was no response. A sudden and dangerous idea came to me. Recklessly, I acted on it. The clinging scent of her heavy perfume. The clicking of her heavily ringed hand against her wine goblet at a dinner table. The cold stare of her icy eyes. “Lady Burvelle. Daraleen Burvelle!”
I tumbled into her dream as if a trapdoor had opened under me. Instantly, I wished to be away from it. I had not thought a woman of her years and position would be prone to such salacious fancies. She was entangled with not one virile young man, but two, and from her panting, was fully occupied with the sensations their efforts were waking. I was horrified, scandalized, and embarrassed. “Lady Burvelle! You daughter Epiny is in dire circumstances and has need of your aid! The Specks have raided Gettys and near destroyed it. Do whatever you must to send her help.” I barked out the words. My message jolted her from her dream and once more plunged me into a gray netherworld.
I wondered how much time was left to me. My first impulse was to return to Epiny, but I had no good news to give her. I doubted that either her father or mother would heed the messages I had delivered.
It came to me that I might still see Yaril that night and possibly fulfill Epiny’s charge to me as well. I fled to my sister and found her effortlessly. The dream I slipped into made no sense to me at all. Yaril was pinning fish to the wall of the parlor, rather like the way she had once collected butterflies. But the fish were alive, slippery and thrashing, so it was a messy and futile undertaking. No sooner had the drawing tacks been put through their tails and fins than they wriggled free of them and fell to the floor. Yet Yaril seemed obsessed with finishing her task.
Even before I spoke, she was aware of me. “Nevare, hold this one, please. I think if you held him, I could pin him down properly and he wouldn’t come loose again.”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked her in some amusement. Her activity had distracted me completely from the desperation of my visit.
She looked at me as if I were daft. “Well, if I don’t, they’ll all be on the floor and underfoot all the time. What else should I do? Hold his tail flat to the wall. That’s it! There!” She pushed another drawing tack into the fish’s tail and then stepped back to admire the effect.
“Yaril,” I said quietly as she began to choose another fish from the floor. “Do you know that you’re asleep and dreaming this?”
“How would you know?” she asked me in a tolerant fashion. “Oh, look, let’s have that handsome bluegill next.”
“I would know because I’m using Speck magic to visit you in your dreams. Because I have something important to tell you, and many things to ask you.”
“Ask away, so long as you hold the fish for me. Here. Mind, now! He’s a slippery one.”
“I’d rather tell first,” I said as I took the flapping fish from her hands. I tried to keep my voice calm and my tone light. I didn’t want to startle her out of her dream. “The first thing is that you must remember this dream in the morning, and you must believe that you dreamed true.”
“Oh, I always remember my dreams. You should know that. Don’t you remember how Papa sent me from the breakfast table for talking about my dreams, and you came afterward to comfort me? And to bring me a cold pastry to eat.”
“I do remember that. Good. So you will remember what I tell you. It’s important. I have bad news but you must take it calmly. Otherwise, you’ll waken yourself and we won’t have any time to talk.”
“Oh, drat! That’s my last tack, and I need two more.”
“Here are some more.” I reached into my pocket, wished for tacks to be there, and drew out a handful of them. “You pin him while I talk. Yaril, it’s about our cousin Epiny. She’s at Gettys with her husband, Spink.”
“I haven’t heard from her in ages! I expect I shan’t until the post riders can get through the snow again. They say it was deep this year in the foothills.” She made a little sound of effort as she pushed the tacks through the tail and into the wall. I tried not to focus on it. If I thought too much about my dainty little sister tacking living creatures to the walls of the drawing room, it would bother me, and I was sure she’d be aware of it. Aware enough to perhaps awaken herself. She stooped to pick up another fish from the floor.
“Yes, the snow was very deep. It has blocked the roads between Gettys and the west. That is why I need you to send a letter to our uncle Sefert in Old Thares. Or perhaps ask our father to intervene directly, if you think you can persuade him to do so. It has been a hard winter in Gettys, and both Epiny and Spink are in dire circumstances.” I took a deep, slow breath, willing calmness toward her. “The citadel at Gettys was attacked by the Specks, Yaril. They came by night, with fire and arrows and swords. Much of Gettys was burned, and many soldiers killed. Epiny and Spink and their infant came through unscathed, but in the days since then, the cold and the lack of food have been a great hardship.”
She was staring at me. The fish slowly waved its tail. “Cannot they simply cut firewood and stay warm that way?”
“It is difficult for them to go into the forest. A magic spell makes them fear to go there.”
“Wait. You say they have a baby now?”
“Yes. And that makes it even more difficult for them.”
She nodded slowly, the fish in her hands forgotten. “What should I do?”
Patience, I counseled myself. Patience. “Write to Uncle Sefert. Say that you’ve had word of the Speck attack and their harsh conditions. You don’t have to say how you know. Just tell him that he must urge that food and other supplies be immediately sent to Gettys. Even if he has to make such arrangements himself, it must be done. And if you think our father will act on it, recommend to him that he immediately send off whatever supplies he can.”
“Father is not well.” The fish in her hands stopped wriggling. It became a rag doll and she held it to her cheek now, seeming to take comfort from it. “Things are strange here, Nevare. You should come home and help me. I don’t know what to do!”
I sensed her rising emotion. In the dream, I opened my arms and she fled into them. I held her tightly. I was a tall, strong young cadet, golden-haired and fit. That was the Nevare she needed now, and she made me take that form; she wanted me to be the hero who would come to rescue her.
“My dear, I will do what I can.” I did not say that it would be nothing. “What is your situation?”
“Father is…changed. He is healthier in body, though still he walks with a stick. He…sometimes he seems to know that Mother and Rosse and Elisi are dead. But sometimes he asks questions about them, or speaks as if he has just seen them. I am a coward, Nevare. I don’t contradict him. I let him be. He speaks of you, too, with pride. He says you have gone for a soldier, and soon will come home covered in glory. That is what he always says of you, ‘covered in glory.’ It is comforting to hear him speak well of you. I don’t remind him that he sent you away in disgrace. It is easier, so.”
“Covered in glory,” I repeated softly. My father’s dream for me. My dream for myself, not so long ago. For a moment, my mind wandered. The old dreams stung now but still I touched them and longed after them.
“Nevare,” Yaril said, speaking against my chest. “You are really here, aren’t you?”
“It’s magic, Yaril. I’m here in your dream, and as real as I can be in a dream. My body is far from you, but my heart is here.”
“Oh, Nevare.” She held tighter to me. “Stay here. Stay here and help me, even if you must be a ghost who only comes into my dreams at night. I am so alone and adrift. And Caulder’s uncle frightens me.”
My heart sank. Of all my betrayals of my own people, this was bitterest and most shameful to me. My little sister was threatened, and I could do nothing. Coward that I was, I wanted to know no more. I forced the words out woodenly. “What does he do, Yaril, that frightens you?”
“He is so strange, Nevare. He and Caulder have stayed so long here, far past the length of a proper visit. I fear for my reputation among the neighbors, for all know that Father is not the man he used to be, and I can claim no proper chaperone in this household of men. Caulder feels it keenly and is humiliated. Over and over he has urged his uncle to leave. He has found some courage, he says, and wishes to go back to his father and demand that his father be the one to make an offer for my hand. He had a great quarrel with his uncle over this. His uncle was most cruel, reminding Caulder that his father had disowned him, and saying a great many things to put Caulder in his own debt. He says that he is as Caulder’s father now, and has made the offer, and he sees nothing improper in staying so long as guests in the home that Caulder will eventually inherit.”
These were words that stuck in me like a knife. Caulder Stiet would inherit the estates of the Burvelles of the East. Their firstborn son would be Lord Burvelle of the East, if my father petitioned the King to make it so. But he would be a Stiet by his blood. For a moment, anger seethed in me. My father could have elevated me to be his heir son, if he had chosen to do so. Many desperate nobles had petitioned the priests to move a soldier son up to the status of heir. But before my anger could turn to greater bitterness, Yaril’s words caught me again.
“I overheard other words he said. He told Caulder not to be a fool, that they must not leave until he had deciphered the map you sent them. Time and again, he has asked a hundred questions, of me, of the hired men, of virtually anyone who can speak, asking about a ridgeline or a dried-up watercourse. He studies and studies the map you sent him, but will not allow anyone else to see it to interpret it for him. He is obsessed with finding the place where you picked up the rock you gave Caulder. I have shown him all the other rocks you had gathered—you thought they had been thrown out, didn’t you, but I saved them. I thought they were quite interesting, but he pronounced them all just rubbish and pebbles and took no interest in them.”
I recalled the map I had sent him. I had dashed it off in a matter of moments, from memory, giving little thought to accuracy or even scale. At the time I had thought to do nothing more than send him a token map in order to put an end to his nagging correspondence. “Sergeant Duril could look at the map and recognize the area I drew. Tell him to show it to Duril.”
“The sergeant has offered, several times, to look at it for him, but Caulder’s uncle always declines. Sergeant Duril has become quite frustrated with the man, for he says he has made him waste time riding aimlessly about when he should have been tending to the concerns of the estate.”
“Duril’s a good man. Keep him by you, Yaril, as close as you can. And if at any time you feel you are in danger from anyone, go to Duril and tell him.”
I had no warning. Even if I had, perhaps I could not have chosen better words to end on. With a sudden tug, I felt my awareness pulled loose from Yaril’s. Soldier’s Boy was calling me back. “Not yet!” I shouted at him. “It’s not fair! I’m not finished.”
A most peculiar thing happened. Suddenly my father, eyes empty, was sitting up in his bed, his hands clutching mine. “Nevare? Nevare? Where are you, boy, where are you? Do you need my help? Son, where are you?”
He was a glimpse of a nightmare to me. He was pale and aged, and the magic had eaten holes in him, like a piece of fruit spoiled by worms. I could see, in this dimension, how it had attacked him, body and heart and mind. He’d caught it from me, I suddenly knew. It had infected me, and I’d passed it on to him. And just like Buel Hitch, it had reduced him to doing its will.
“Father!” I shouted at him. “Be strong. Protect Yaril!”
Then I was torn loose again.
As sudden as blinking, I was back in Soldier’s Boy’s body. This time, the wall he had held between us was gone. I was once more a party to his thoughts and emotions. It was like being plunged into a hurricane. Anger, despair, humiliation, and defeat battered him and thus me. The strength of his emotions was such that it was some time before I became aware of my physical surroundings.
Night was full around us and chill. Dew had settled on his skin. Those cold drops contrasted harshly with the hot tears that flowed down his face. He curled forward over his belly and put his face in his hands and wept like a scolded child. I thought he had seen what the magic had done to my father, and felt as horrified by it as I had. There was a strange comfort for me in that he wept. If I’d had the body under my control, I’d have done the same. “It wasn’t really him, doing that to me,” I told myself hesitantly. “The magic had to tear all support away from me, to make me come to where it wanted me to be. I don’t have to blame him. I don’t have to hate him.”
“I knew that!” Soldier’s Boy spoke disdainfully. “I never hated him or blamed him. I could see that much clearly; I’m surprised that you could not.”
“Then what is it?” I asked at last, unwillingly. The harshness of whatever assailed him made me pity him; I felt sorry for myself in a way I never had before. No man should be as pitifully miserable as he was. He did not immediately answer me. His sorrow choked him. A very long time seemed to pass. The wind blew in the branches overhead. In the distance, I heard someone call into the night, “Great One, where are you?” Someone called something else in reply. Soldier’s Boy made no response. His harsh breathing filled my ears as he got his sobs under control. I waited.
After a time, he sat up slowly. “We’ve failed her,” he said quietly. “Yesterday the workers came again to the road’s end. They have begun to clear away the winter debris and repair the last of the damage you did. Soon enough, the axes and saws will begin to bite their way through the ancient forest. The workers are no longer drugged. You know the best way to combat fear, Nevare? With hatred. I woke hatred in the intruders, and their hatred of us is now stronger than Kinrove’s fear spell. They will chew through the trees like worker ants. They will cut our forest and drive straight into the mountains and beyond. They are resolved to find us, and when they do, they intend to kill us all.”
“Just as you intended to do to them,” I reminded him.
“Yes.” He took a deep breath and sat up, squaring his shoulders. “Yes.”