One of Kinrove’s senior feeders gave over her tent for our use. It was hard to become accustomed to the place. It smelled like someone else’s home, and I knew that Soldier’s Boy felt awkward being there. Olikea did not. She had entered and gestured to the man carrying Likari to put him down on the bed. She had covered the boy warmly against the cooling evening, and then directed the man to move the tent owner’s furnishings aside to make room for the large chair that had followed me from Kinrove’s pavilion. The tent had seemed roomy before the chair was brought in.
Kinrove had given way to Olikea’s indignation with no argument. He had put one of his feeders in charge of us for the time being, saying that he also had to make preparations for the magic he would work. Kinrove’s feeder had made the arrangements for a tent for us, and had received Kinrove’s instructions as to what had to be done to prepare me. I had overheard enough of it to be alarmed. Soldier’s Boy did not appear to share my anxiety. He settled himself in the chair and then sat looking over at Likari. The boy slept on. His color seemed better than it had, but he still had not awakened long enough even to speak to them. I felt Soldier’s Boy concern for the boy’s mind.
“He is so thin,” Olikea said worriedly. She had settled next to Likari on the pallet. Through his blanket, she stroked his back. “I can feel every knob of his spine. And look at his hair, how coarse and dry it is. Like a sick animal’s pelt.”
“From now on, he will only get better,” Soldier’s Boy told her. I wondered if he believed it. Silence settled for a short time between them.
“You spent all of Lisana’s treasure to get us here, and to get Likari back.”
“I do not judge it a bad bargain,” Soldier’s Boy replied easily.
“You called him ‘our son’ when you spoke of him.”
“I did. So I wish him to be known. The son of Olikea and Soldier’s Boy.”
A long silence followed those words. I would have given much to know what Olikea was thinking. Either Soldier’s Boy thought he knew or felt no driving need to know. Her next words were another question. “What is Kinrove going to do to you? Why do you wish him to do it?”
He spoke as if it were a simple thing. “Two men live in this body. One is a Gernian, raised to be a soldier. One is of the People, taught by Lisana to be a mage. Sometimes one controls this flesh, sometimes the other. For when the magic spoke to Lisana and said I was to serve it, she divided me, so that I could learn the ways of both peoples. It seemed wise to her. It seems wise to me now. But the magic can only work through me if I become one once more. A single entity, made of both Gernian and the People.”
“I understand,” she said slowly. And then, looking at me more piercingly, she repeated, “Yes. I do understand. For I have known both of you, haven’t I? How will Kinrove do this thing?”
“He expresses his magic in dance. Perhaps he will have to dance for me, or perhaps his dancers will have to. Maybe I will have to dance.”
“I think that is likely.” She was thoughtful and silent for a time, smoothing Likari’s hair as she sat beside him. Then she asked, “When you are one, will you still want me to be your feeder?” More hesitantly she asked, “Will you still call Likari ‘our son’?”
“I don’t know.” He sounded reluctant to consider it.
She fixed her eyes on the sleeping boy. “I know that you have always loved Lisana. I know that I have sometimes been only—”
Her words were interrupted by an odd noise. Something heavy fell onto the roof. Soldier’s Boy looked up as something scrabbled wildly against the leather tent’s side, clambering awkwardly back up it until it achieved a perch at the top. A moment later, I heard the croaker bird give three satisfied caws. The god of balances and of death sat on the peak of our tent.
“Likari—does he sleep still?” Soldier’s Boy demanded anxiously.
Olikea heard the anxiety in his voice. She leaned down close to the boy’s face. “He does. He breathes.”
Abruptly the door of the tent was flipped open and two servers entered carrying a laden table. There was a single large bowl on it, the size of a punch bowl, holding a chowderlike substance. The aroma that rose from it was both delicious and repellent, as if someone had prepared a succulent dish and then attempted to conceal a strong medicine in it. The two men carrying it positioned the table carefully on the uneven floor and left. Soldier’s Boy breathed a sigh of relief as the tent door fell into place, but an instant later, it was lifted again, and more feeders entered. One carried a large ewer of water and a cup. Others brought various food dishes—breads, new greens, fish, and fowl—that they set down near the vat of chowder.
This parade of food was followed by the feeder whom Kinrove had put in charge of us. She was a buxom, comely young woman, with long gleaming black hair and her face patterned with tiny specks like a scattering of fine seed. Her name was Wurta, and as she introduced herself she seemed very pleased to have been given such an important task. She almost ignored Soldier’s Boy, speaking directly to Olikea, feeder to feeder.
“I have been given instructions that I must pass on to you,” she announced. At her words, Olikea rose, reluctantly leaving Likari, and came to stand beside my chair. The seed-speckled feeder spoke briskly, almost officiously, as she stepped up to the table and stirred the vat of creamy-brown chowder, releasing clouds of steam trapped beneath its thick surface. “This, all of this, he must eat. We have done our best to give it a pleasant flavor, but the roots that feed this magic have their own strong taste. It may be hard for him to stomach. Kinrove has had us flavor his water to give him some respite from it. These other foods are for you to feed him sparingly. Do not let him fill his belly with them; most of what he eats must be this soup, and Kinrove judges that he must eat it all.”
Wurta was interrupted by a loud snuffing noise. Likari, eyes still closed, had lifted his head from the bedding and was sniffing after the steam rising from the chowder pot. His face had a blank, infantile look, or perhaps more like that of a still-blind puppy mindlessly seeking the scent of food. Olikea looked at him with a gaze full of horror.
“Oh, no, he must have none of this,” Wurta said quickly as her eyes followed the direction of his snuffling. “I will have something else brought for him right away. And some washwater? Yes.”
She hastened away to fulfill those errands while Soldier’s Boy leaned forward and hesitantly lifted the ladle from the pot. He touched it to his lips, and then took a mouthful. It did not taste awful. He swallowed it and waited, anticipating a bitter aftertaste. Nothing. No, there was something, a perfumy tang. Not unpleasant, but not something I would ever associate with food. It rather reminded me of the food served to us at the Academy. There was a lot of it, but none of it tasted so delicious as to make one long for more.
Likari stopped his sniffing and suddenly sagged back onto the bed. If the sound of his muffled snores were an indication, he had fallen into a new depth of sleep. Olikea looked relieved. She turned her attention back to Soldier’s Boy. “Perhaps you should begin eating while it is still warm and fresh,” she suggested. So saying, she came and ladled up a bowlful of the stuff and set it before him.
Soldier’s Boy ate it. He ate the next three bowls of it as well. It was warm and not unpleasant, though the perfume began to be annoying. Olikea, watchful as ever, offered him a bit of the fish and some bread. It cleared his palate of the soup, and when he was finished she served him up another bowlful of the stuff and he attacked it manfully.
About a third of the way through the cauldron Wurta shepherded in a team of feeders with a large pot of aromatic salve, food for Likari, and a washtub and several pots of warmed water. She smoothly suggested that Olikea wake her son, wash him, and then feed him. While she was doing that, Wurta proposed that Soldier’s Boy would accompany them to where he could be treated with the salve that Kinrove had had them prepare. Olikea looked doubtful at this, but Soldier’s Boy put her mind at ease. “I am well able to speak for myself in how I am cared for. But I do not wish to entrust Likari to anyone else but you. Take care of him. I am sure I will be back soon.”
“I should be taking care of you. I am your feeder,” she said, but her voice held no conviction and her eyes kept moving toward her son.
“So is Likari. Tend to him for now. If I require you, I can send for you.”
“As you wish,” she said with relief, and even before Soldier’s Boy had left the tent, she had moved to Likari’s side.
Soldier’s Boy followed Wurta and her assistants. They took him to a steam hut. It was small and tightly built of branches plastered over with earth. Inside, a big copper kettle boiled over a fire pit. All of them stripped before entering the hut, and once they were inside, with the door shut tight behind them, the heat and steam were close to unbearable. “First,” Wurta told him, “we must open your skin, so that the salve can soak into you.”
This involved him sitting in a chair while heavy cloths were dipped in the boiling water. The feeders allowed them to cool enough so that they could wring them out, and then immediately began to wrap him in them. They were not scalding, but hot enough to be unpleasant. Soldier’s Boy gritted his teeth and endured the treatment. When they removed the cloth, his skin was a bright scarlet by the firelight. His specks showed dark against the redness. The feeders went to work quickly, rubbing the salve into his flesh. As quickly as they covered his skin with the slippery stuff, they wrapped him afresh with the hot steaming cloths. Between the heat and the minty pungency of the salve, he felt giddy. The meal he had just eaten coiled and squirmed in his belly. He began to fervently wish that Olikea were there, to protect him from Kinrove’s feeders.
I agreed with him. “They will kill you with this treatment,” I warned him. “Listen to your heart beating. You can scarcely breathe for the steam and the stink. Tell them to let you go; they’ll have to listen to you. You’re a Great One. You have what you came for; Likari is restored to you. You should leave and take him and Olikea back to the kin-clan. Let us find another way to solve our problem.”
It was getting hard for him to breathe. The air was hot and the pungent aroma of the salve seemed to only make it worse. Yet he said, “I will do whatever I must—”
And the words died on his lips. For the briefest moment, he breathed music, not air. It lifted him weightlessly; he felt himself rise with it, float on it, towed away from the bonds of earth and up into the air.
Just as abruptly, he was back in his flesh, and fighting, not for air, but for the music he had breathed but a moment before. “—to regain Lisana.” He finished his thought in a hazy voice. He opened his arms wide, trying to bring the music back.
“Do you feel that?” Wurta asked in wonder.
Several of the others murmured awed assents.
“He will dance,” Wurta said, but her tone conveyed far more than her words. “Kinrove spoke true. When he is one, he will be a river for the magic. The dance has already found him. We must hurry to be sure he consumes the rest of the food he will need.”
But it was already too late.
They led Soldier’s Boy from the steam hut, still swathed in the hot wraps that held the herbal unguent against his skin. As we emerged from the darkness into the forest light, he took a deep breath of the clean, cool air that greeted him. And the blood that flowed through his body turned to music. He began to dance.
The feeders cried out in alarm. Two seized his arms and tried to restrain him, shouting, “No, not yet, not yet! You are not prepared!” Someone else shouted, “Tell Kinrove! Run, run!” and yet another one cried out, “Fetch his own feeder! He may listen to her.”
When Olikea came running, I heard her voice. But Soldier’s Boy did not. He was caught up in a rapture of sound and movement, far past drunkenness, deeper than unconsciousness. I shouted for him and then reached for him as one might plunge an arm into a deep, cold lake to retrieve a comrade who had fallen overboard. But I could not reach him. No part of us touched anymore, and that realization terrified me. Instead of uniting us, Kinrove’s magic seemed to be separating us even more completely.
Olikea rushed to him and seized his hands. “Oh, I should not have let them take you! I should not have listened to you at all. Nevare, Nevare, stop, stop dancing. Come back to me!”
But he did not. Instead, he tried to pull her into the dance with him. He gripped her hands and dragged her along as he stepped and turned and bowed. Kinrove’s feeders cried out in fear, and four of them seized her and pulled her from his grasp. Then they fought her, holding her back as she shrieked and clawed and struggled to get back to him.
“It will do you no good! He cannot hear you. If you let him seize you, he will drag and dance you to death. Remember your son, remember your boy! Stay here and care for him!”
I caught only glimpses of that struggle. Soldier’s Boy’s eyes were wide, but he did not look at any of the people. He saw the trees and the shifting of light through the young leaves. He saw the fluttering of a single leaf, and his shaken fingers echoed it. He felt a light movement of the breeze on his face, and he danced backward, airily wafted on it. Like many a heavy man, he had strength in his legs beyond what one might expect. His movements were graceful and controlled; the unguent seemed to have loosened and oiled his muscles. He shifted, turned and lifted his hands to the sky, mimicking the rising steamy smoke from the sweat hut. From his half-closed eyes, I caught a glimpse of Kinrove, supported by two of his feeders. Dismay sagged his features.
“It is too soon. Only half of him dances! I do not know what will happen now. Show me the kettle of food. How much did he eat?”
Olikea had sunk to her knees, still weeping and wailing. Behind her, I glimpsed a very thin Likari, a blanket clasped around his bony shoulders, trying to hurry to his mother. When the boy saw me, a thin wail escaped his mouth. Pointing and weeping, he, too, sank to his knees. My only comfort was that at the sound of his voice, Olikea had turned. She caught her breath and then crawled to her son. When he would have risen and staggered toward me, she caught him and held him in her arms. At least he was safe from Kinrove’s mad dance.
I was not. The music ran in my veins like boiling water seething down a pipe. It hurt and exhilarated at the same time. For me, the sensation reminded me of being whirled around and around by my older brother when I was small. It dizzied me and I could not focus my eye on any object. There was also the same sensation of imminent disaster. When Rosse had gripped me by wrist and ankle and flown me around and around, I had always known that if he lost his grip, I’d have bruises. But I’d also known that sooner or later, my brother would tire and would attempt to land me gently. That was what had allowed me to enjoy the experience.
With Soldier’s Boy’s dance, there was no promise of respite. I could not find him in the densely twined music and dance. He had merged with it, become one with it rather than with me. I became even more aware of my body, or the body that had been mine. My lungs worked like bellows and my mouth was already dry. In a seizure of music, Soldier’s Boy danced. He turned and spun; he made small leaps off the ground, and then bent low and swayed, a tree caught in the wind. I felt that with every step he took, he retreated from me and ventured deeper into the music’s power.
I caught a spinning glimpse of Kinrove in the chair that had been brought out for him. His face was grave, but his hands moved with Soldier’s Boy’s dance, almost as if he were conducting it. Did he command it? There was a chilling thought. Soldier’s Boy’s eyes had closed to slits. I focused on the little I could see. Most of it was sky, or a brief image of tree trunks. Olikea, tears on her cheeks. One of Kinrove’s feeders scratching her nose. The wall of the steam hut. Kinrove, weaving his fingers as his hands danced with me.
On and on Soldier’s Boy danced, until he no longer leapt but shuffled and wove. After a time, it was a struggle to keep his head up or to lift his hands. Blood throbbed painfully in his feet and all the muscles along his spine shrieked that they had been torn loose from their anchorage. But on we danced.
I had to stop it. Whatever Kinrove had believed this dance would do, it wasn’t accomplishing it. I was more separate from Soldier’s Boy than ever and it was destroying the body that housed us. Breath rasped in and out and his heart thundered in his ears. Veins pulsed in his calves. I stopped trying to see out of the eyes and turned my attention inward, seeking for Soldier’s Boy.
His consciousness was all but gone. I could find no sign of his awareness of himself as something separate from the dancing magic. I groped deeper, following the magic and the dance that seethed through him like a river in flood, a frightening thing to behold. “Soldier’s Boy!” I shouted at it, wondering where he was in that rush, or if he had already melted into it completely. I dared not touch it. I wondered if I could seize control of the body now that he no longer consciously possessed it. Perhaps, if the dance magic had stolen him completely away, I could possess my body again.
That thought gave me a surge of hope such as I had not felt for months. I readied myself, as best I could. There was so much to take control of, and I felt I must seize it all at once. My hands and arms, my shuffling feet, my bobbing head—how did anyone ever manage to control so many pieces of a living body at once? For only a second I marveled at that thought.
Then I felt a sudden red lurch of pain in my chest. Soldier’s Boy staggered three steps to one side, and I thought we were falling. But he fetched up against a tree, clung there grimly for a moment, and then, as his heart steadied its thumping, he once more pushed himself free to stand upright and then to dance. It was then that I knew he would dance us to death. I spread myself out and attempted to inhabit my body once more.
It was the strangest sensation, as if I had flung myself onto the back of a galloping horse. I was there suddenly feeling the muscles move, feeling the jabs of pain from my abused feet. The body was mine, and not mine. I danced on, awkward and jolting, like a marionette whose strings have been seized by a child. I planted my feet, but my hands and arms flapped and waved. If I focused on holding them still, then my head wagged wildly and my errant feet began to slide sideways. Suddenly it was an all-out struggle between me and Soldier’s Boy as to who would control it. I felt him there, not as the twin of my mind, but as the body’s will. I clenched my body’s teeth and curled my hands into fists and held them there. I tightened the screaming muscles all along my spine, forbidding them to twist or sway or bow. I bent my arms into my chest and embraced myself, bent my head down to my chest and held it there. With a surge of resolution, I folded my legs under me. I crashed to the earth, falling hard, but still keeping my control. I rolled myself into as tight and still of a ball as my flesh would allow. I shouted stillness into myself and then realized my mistake. No, not my breath, not my heart. I pulled breath after deep breath into my lungs and tried to calm my leaping heart as if it were a wild creature I strove to soothe.
“Be still, be still, be still,” I whispered to every part of myself.
And that was how they caught me.
I had no sense of becoming one with Soldier’s Boy. I felt no encounter with some “other self” hidden in my flesh. Instead, I was besieged by a decade of memories and thoughts. They were mine, they were his, but they had belonged to both of us, and I had always been aware of my twin lives and experiences. I had always been me, never Soldier’s Boy, never Nevare, always me. Carsina had broken his heart as much as mine, and I had longed for Lisana just as deeply as he had. I loved the forest and he wanted to make his father proud. It was me the mob had tried to murder in the streets of Gettys, and I had every right to hate them for it. Those were my trees that they were trying to cut, the wisdom of my elders, and it infuriated me that no one would listen to me.
I rose slowly from the ground. My body settled into place around me. I was home. I was complete and all I had been meant to be. I was the perfect vessel for the magic and ready now to take up my task. Oh, but it was no task, it was joy. The magic and the music of that magic coursed through every vessel in my body, prompting me to the dance. My hands floated at the ends of my arms. I lifted my head and felt the music pull me taller. I moved with grace and beauty, dignity and purpose. I danced twice round Olikea and Likari, binding my protection round them. My hands wove, shaping a life for them. Then I moved to Kinrove and stood before him, meeting his eyes as I danced my independence of him. His hands might move and weave, but they were only his part of the dance. They did not control me. I turned my back on him, snapping the gossamer threads that had bound me to his magic. I opened my arms to the forest, and beyond it, to the wide world and all it contained. I opened my heart and my eyes and my mind, and I danced away from those who had been watching me. I had a task to do.
I danced out of the world and back into it, into its truer deeper form. Place no longer bound me, nor time. Instead, I moved through the magic, called by a series of unfinished tasks.
I returned to the Dancing Spindle. It was still; I had seen to that. I had engineered that the iron blade would fall to become a wedge beneath the tip of that magic artifact. But I had not finished that task. The Spindle still stood, and it still strained against the blade that bound it. How foolish of me. The very first time I had seen it, I had wondered at it. How could such a large spindle of stone remain balanced on such a tiny point? How could it not fall? The Gernian engineer had not been able to find an answer to that riddle, but the Speck mage knew it. He could see the filaments of magic that flowed from the tip of the spindle and shot off into the spirit world I had visited with the Kidona shaman all those years ago. Dewara had known.
I danced up the many steps that spiraled up the tower. I danced on the tower’s top, and with my opened eyes, I could see the magic that held the spindle, like a string on a top. It was less than a string; it was a cobweb to me. I reached toward it. For a moment, I felt a shadow of a reservation about what I was about to do. Dewara had taught me, had been my mentor. Despite all the evil he had done me, did I not owe him something for that? And what of the wind-wizards, what of the other mages of the other Plainspeople? I sighed. They would have to go back to being individual mages, with each mastering only the power he himself could generate. The decision was made. With one hand over my head, I leapt, and my fingers snagged and tore that thread of magic.
The spindle fell, coming down on the tower top. Only my dancing saved me as the tower cracked and sighed thunderously and collapsed. I danced atop the wreckage as it fell, not falling with it, but leaping upon it, landing and then leaping again. Down and down we went, and when we struck the valley floor, the spindle fell and parted into a thousand rounds of red-and-white-streaked stone. The circles of stone bounced and rolled throughout the ancient ruins. A haze of pink dust rose to fill the valley. The spindle was no more. Never again would the Kidona threaten either of my peoples. That battle was over.
And I danced away from it, leaving it behind, a task completed. Lisana would no longer have to keep a watch against the Kidona mages. She was freed from that endless task. I sensed her and knew that I could go to her. She would greet me with joy. But not yet. Not until all was completed.
My dancing feet carried me to Old Thares. No distance was a barrier to the magic. I danced into my uncle Sefert’s home and into his library. My book, the book I had so carefully written, called me. But it was not there on a shelf. Bodiless as a shadow, I danced, up the stairs and through the halls of his home. I found it open on my aunt’s writing desk. I danced thrice around her desk and then she came into the room and walked to the desk and seated herself there. She looked down at the book, and I pushed ideas into her mind. This book held everything she needed to become a favorite with the Queen. Again, I felt the moment of hesitation. What of my dignity? What of my family’s noble name? There were secrets in there that should never have been committed to paper.
And yet revealing them, no matter how it might hurt me, might put an end to war between two peoples. The greater good had to be served. With her I turned the pages and showed her the parts she needed to read. I bent and whispered in her ears. “A few changes. That would be all it would take to avoid scandal and win the Queen’s favor. Think of what power you could wield if you were in her highest graces. Think of the future for your daughter. A few changes. Make those words yours. Whisper them where they must be heard. That would be all that was needed.”
I danced around her while she looked at the journal. Then she opened the drawer of her desk, took out good heavy paper, textured thick as cream, and her own mother-of-pearl pen. She uncapped her inkwell, dipped her pen, and began to take notes. I smiled, danced around her a final time, and then danced away.
Away from Old Thares, following the river and the King’s Road. As I went, I could see how the road had changed everything. Wherever the road had gone, little trails and paths and byways had sprouted out from it and spread their roots. Cabins and cottages, hamlets and new noble holdings, bustling towns and ambitious little villages seemed to spring up wherever there was a crossroads or wherever the road kissed the river’s shore. There was good in that, and there was bad, but of itself it was neither; only change. People had to live somewhere, and population pushed from one area flowed into another just as surely as water flows downhill. There was nothing evil about it; change was only change.
To make people move, I saw, they had to be pushed or pulled. The Landsingers had pushed the Gernians, and the Gernians had pushed the Plainspeople. That push from the Landsingers taking our coastal provinces had propelled the Gernians all the way to the Barrier Mountains, just as a wave of water from a stone dropped in a still pond eventually laps against the far shore. The King’s Road wasn’t really the problem. The road was only the spear’s point that led the way. The People had tried to push back against the Gernians. But their impact hadn’t been strong enough; the People could not muster a large enough push to repel the Gernians.
No. But something might pull them back.
I danced to the Midlands, to my father’s holdings of Widevale. Evening was falling there. I danced up the graveled road to his house, and as I went, I saw changes there, too. The signs of neglect were small, but I saw them. Winter-broken limbs had not been pruned from the line of trees that edged the driveway. Potholes that should have been filled instead held rainwater. The circular drive for carriages and wagons was developing ruts. Small things now, but untended, they would only worsen. They all suggested to me that my father had still not resumed the day-to-day management of his estate, and that Yaril, although doing the best she could, would not see such tasks until they urgently demanded attention. But Sergeant Duril should; why had not he spoken to her?
I danced into the house; the neatness and order I saw there comforted me. Here, at least, Yaril was in her element and still in command. Spring fires burned brightly in each neatly swept hearth, and sweet bouquets of early anemones, tulips, and daffodils filled the vases. The breath of hyacinth was in Yaril’s room; she sat at her small white desk, writing a letter. I danced as I looked over her shoulder. It was a note to Carsina, asking why she had not replied to her earlier missive and asking her if she had news of me. I breathed by her ear: “Remind her that once she loved me, that once we were to be wed. Remind her of that.” I did not know why I asked her to do such a thing; her letter was to a woman months dead. The magic suggested it to me and so I did it.
I said no more to her than that. Somewhere, I felt something give way inside my body. It is hard to describe the sensation. If my body had been a house, then it would have been the sensation of a weight-bearing wall starting to crack. For a moment, I was in that body again. I felt what the dance was doing to it. Every shock of my foot against the earth was translated up through my flesh, muscle, and bone. Like rhythmic earthquakes, they shook and tore at my body, fraying tendons, tearing blood vessels that in turn leaked blood into the cavities of my flesh. The pounding of my feet against the earth might as well have been tiny hammer blows against my body. Each step of the dance did damage.
It could not be helped. The damage was part of the dance.
I put my mind back to the magic and found myself in my father’s study. A fire burned in the hearth. My father sat next to it in a cushioned chair, a robe across his knees. Caulder’s uncle was seated on the other side of the hearth. I had never met the man, but I knew him by his resemblance to Colonel Stiet, his brother. He fairly trembled with eagerness as he showed my father the crudely sketched map I had drawn so many months ago. Folding and much handling had not improved my rough sketch. “This,” he said, tracing the ravine I had drawn. “What do you suppose he meant this to be? Do you recognize the terrain?”
My father had grown older; his hair was whitening, and veins and tendons stood out on the back of his hands. As before, I could see the ravages of the magic. But I thought I could also see some healing of the damage, like scar tissue knitting together what remained of sound flesh. My father would never be the man he had been, but he might heal, and at least be himself rather than what the magic had made of him. It need not have him if it had all of me.
Stiet did not allow my father to hold the map he was showing him; he kept possession of it, merely pointing at the part he wished my father to study. My father glanced at it with polite interest, then turned aside with a vague scowl. “I’ve told you three times, I don’t know what that is. If you are so keen to know, ask Nevare. You say that he drew it.”
“He did draw it! But I cannot ask your son. You sent him away. Do not you remember that you did that? You spent most of yesterday weeping over it!” Stiet flung himself back suddenly in his chair. “Oh, you are useless!” he exploded. “The smallest, simplest bit of information stands between me and a fortune. And no one has it.”
Frustration vied with cruelty in the man’s words. My father’s face crumpled, as if he’d been dealt a blow to the stomach. His mouth worked, trembled, and then with an effort he firmed his jaw. Seeing my father weakened and uncertain and treated so abusively by a man who was taking full advantage of my family’s hospitality washed away the final dregs of my anger and resentment toward my father. Stiet’s callous mockery of him made me furious. I danced around my father, sealing him off from Stiet’s cruel words. I danced strength of will and pride for him. “Tell him to leave you alone! Tell him to ask Sergeant Duril. Duril will know what my scribble meant.”
My father drew himself up taller in his chair. “Ask Sergeant Duril. He knows the boy best; he’s been as much a father to him as I have. He’ll recognize what Nevare’s scribble means.”
Stiet clenched his jaw. Nervously, he refolded the map, smoothing the creases ever deeper. “But can we trust him?” he demanded of my father. “I’ve told you, there is a fortune at stake here. And I do not know if we can wait until he returns from Gettys. Spring grows stronger every day. At any time now, someone else may find the place we seek and claim it for his own. And all, all will be for naught. Why did you have to send the sergeant away?”
My father folded his knobby hands on his blanketed knees. His gaze seemed clearer as he stared at Stiet. “Why, to help my niece Epiny. Yaril had word from her; the winter has been quite harsh at Gettys, with skirmishes with the Speck. Duril set out with the high-wheeled cart full of supplies. He’ll look into what has become of Nevare as well. Seems there’s reason to believe the boy made it that far east and enlisted at the fort there. Plucky lad. Can’t keep a Burvelle down for long.”
“Plucky lad? You disowned him! He’d become fat as a pig. He was kicked out of the Academy, came home in disgrace, and you disowned him!” With difficulty, Stiet calmed himself. He took a breath and leaned toward my father, speaking as if with sympathy for a poor old man. “He’s gone, Lord Burvelle. Your last living son is gone. It’s a shame he disappointed you so, but he’s gone. All your sons are gone. Your last best hope is for your daughter to marry well, stay here, and take care of you. My adopted son is a good match for her; he’s from a good family. Unfortunately, I have little fortune to leave to him. But if only we could establish where the mineral sample came from, I feel it would be of interest to certain other geologists. I could provide handsomely for the boy then. And he in turn could provide for your daughter. It could do us all a good turn.”
“I want to see the rock.” My father spoke with sudden strength. “I want to know what is so unique about it. Let me see the rock.”
“I told you before, sir. It has been misplaced. I cannot show it to you. You must take my word for it that it shows a most uncommon mix of elements. It will be of great interest to those who study geology, but likely laymen will only find it boring. Scholars of the origins of the earth will be intrigued if they can view its place of origin.”
As I danced, I shook my head. The man was lying. He had no scholarly interest in that stone. There was something else about that rock, something of monetary value. I was sure of it, though I did not know enough geology to say what it might be. Then, unnervingly, my father’s eyes met mine. He did not stare through me; he seemed to really see me. In response to the shaking of my head, he slowly shook his own. “No,” he said, and swung his gaze to Stiet. “No. You are not telling me the full story. And even when Sergeant Duril returns, he will not help you. Not until you are honest with us. And if my son lives”—his voice grew stronger—“if my son lives, he will come home. Don’t dangle that pale little boy before me like bait. He’s barely out of short trousers, and my daughter has told me she does not wish to marry so young. She’ll tell you so herself.” He lifted his voice suddenly. “Yaril! Yaril, I want you!” And for a moment he sounded like the father I recalled from my youth rather than the man crazed by my failure at the Academy and broken by the grief of his plague losses.
I heard the sound of a chair pushed back, and then the hurrying patter of Yaril’s feet down the corridor. “Never mind, never mind,” Stiet was saying hastily. “Send her away; you’ve no need of her. Don’t make yourself upset. I only asked a simple question.”
“I need her,” the old man replied testily. Again, he looked directly at me, and I would have sworn he could see me. “I need her to do the things that I cannot do. The things I no longer have the strength to do for myself.” He kept his gaze on my face as he spoke, and I had the strangest sensation of an interchange between us, as if the magic I had infected him with was now returning to me. I felt more whole for it coming back to me, and I could almost see it leaving my father and allowing him to become more himself again. How much magic had I spread, and to how many people? I knew that it had touched Epiny strongly, and Spink. Carsina, it had forced to come to me after her death, to beg my forgiveness. Yaril? I’d touched Caulder with it, when I turned him back on the bridge. Who else? How many? A part of me wished to feel guilt over what I had done. Another part effortlessly recognized that it was not me, but the magic that had acted so. It would not accept or tolerate the guilt.
The dancing of my distant body intruded again in my thoughts. Kinrove knew how to express the magic only as dance, and at his bidding, at his summons, I danced. How had I expressed the magic? I suddenly wondered, and then speculated that perhaps words had been my strongest manifestation of it. The journal, the hastily sketched map, even the letters that had flown between Carsina and Yaril and Epiny and myself. I felt something in the distant physicality. Water flowing down my back. Feeders were pouring cooling water over me. I felt it trickle and flow. Somewhere, I thirsted. I did not stop dancing, but opened my mouth and someone trickled water into it. Olikea? Perhaps.
But I could not think of her now, could not think of anything except stitching up the holes in my magical tasks. All that my separate halves could not accomplish was coming together for me. It takes two hands to weave, and that was what I was doing.
When Yaril entered the room, I knew what I had to do. A furrow creased her brow and she suddenly clasped herself in an embrace. “Is there a draft in here?” she demanded, and then hurried about the room, drawing curtains and checking to be sure that the casement windows were securely closed and latched. That done, she hurried up to my father, her skirts rustling and her feet tapping on the floor. Those simple sounds, so often ignored, suddenly seemed a part of the music and I danced with her. Her words seemed a song when she said, “Here I am, Father. What did you need?”
“I need an answer!” Abruptly my father slapped his palm against his leg, as if somehow Yaril had been deceiving him and he was upbraiding her for it.
It broke my heart to see the quiver that passed through her. But she drew herself up straight and met his gaze. “An answer to what question, Father?” she asked him. Her voice was grave, without impertinence. I saw how she used her own demeanor to recall him to his.
“This man’s son—his adopted son, this Caulder. Do you wish to be engaged to him?”
She glanced down but spoke strongly for all her averted gaze. “You gave me to understand that the decision was not mine to make.”
“Nor is it now!” he shouted. His voice was louder, but it lacked the timbre of his old thunder. Yaril stood firm before it. “But you can have an opinion on it, can’t you, and I’m asking you that opinion. What is it?”
She lifted her chin. “Do you wish me to speak it in front of Professor Stiet?”
“Would I ask you while he was sitting here if I did not?”
“Very well.” The new edge in her voice rose to meet my father’s old steel. “I do not know enough about him yet to completely judge his character. I have seen him only as a guest in our home, rather than as a man about his business in the world. If I must take him, then I will make the best of it. It is what women do, Father.”
My father stared at her for a moment. Then he gave a cracked laugh. “And doubtless it is what your mother did with me. So there. You hear the girl, Stiet. I don’t think you’ve got anything we want just now. I think you can keep your damned rock and your damned slip of paper and your damned ‘son.’ I don’t think my daughter and I need any of them.”
I saw something then. I saw how my father sensed and defied the magic. It writhed through him like a squirming parasite, seeking to bend him to its will. The magic did not want Professor Stiet to leave. My father lifted a bony hand and rubbed at his chest as if trying to ease an old pain. I had a glimpse of his set teeth when his lips writhed back, but he mastered it. He fought the magic, just as I had. I recalled suddenly the day I had made that map, how I had dashed it off furiously, a deliberately sloppy rendering simply to be able to say I had done it and be finished with it. That Nevare had almost instinctively defied the magic, just as my father did now. I saw him twitch again.
“Wait!” I cried the word aloud, from my body in the distance. “Leave him. Leave him be. There is another way, a better way. Let me guide the magic in this, and I swear you will have your way. But only let the old man alone.”
Without hands, I reached; without fingers, I gripped. I drew the magic out of his body as if I were pulling out a snake that had tunneled into his flesh. He cried out as I did so, and clutched at his chest. I knew it gave him pain, and worried that his body would not be able to withstand the strain. But that was uncertainty; what I knew was that if I left the magic in control of him, he would either capitulate to its will or die. I suspected he would choose death.
His face was white, his lips darker than scarlet when at last the magic came free of him. With a cry, he curled forward, clutching his chest. Yaril rushed to his side, crying, “No! No, Father, you must not die. Breathe. Breathe, Father, breathe.” She turned to Stiet and barked, “Do not stand there! Call the servants, send someone to fetch the doctor from the Landing.”
Stiet didn’t move. Cold calculations were totted up in his eyes.
“Send for the doctor!” she shrieked at him.
“I’ll go myself.” The voice came from the doorway. Caulder Stiet stood there. He had become bookish, to put it kindly. If I had seen him on the streets of a city, I probably would not have known him. His hair had grown out of its military cut, and he wore low shoes on his feet, gray trousers, and a white shirt with a soft gray cravat. In one hand, he held a book, his finger marking his place. He did not look a man of action and the eyes he fixed on Yaril were puppyish with affection.
“Yes! Go!” she cried. Still, he took three steps into the room, set the book down on a side table, and then turned and hurried off.
I had considered using Caulder. That glimpse of him decided me. No. Father was right. Yaril must do what he was no longer strong enough to do. The old man was looking directly at me. His lips moved. “Thank you, son. Thank you.” His head sagged to one side on his neck.
The magic squirmed against me, flailing and then wrapping around my ghost fists as it sought to escape. I danced harder, caught in the magic and yet battling with it. My heart rattled in my chest like an empty wagon hitched to a runaway team. I was the magic and I fought the magic, trying to master it, trying to force it into a channel that would not destroy all of the Burvelle family. I clenched it tightly, looked at my helpless little sister as she knelt by my father’s failing body, and then doubled the magic into a loop. I pressed it to my brow, imprinting it with an old memory, searing an image into it, and adding to it a message. “This is where the stone came from. But do not give this knowledge to Stiet. Use it for the good of the Burvelle family. Gift whatever it is to the King and Queen. It is the only way.”
I froze my heart. “I am sorry,” I said to Yaril. “Sorry to make you serve us so. But there is no one else.” And then I took my coronet of magic and knowledge and crammed it onto my sister’s bowed head.
At the touch of it, she flung her head back, like a horse refusing a bridle. But the magic was there, and the knowledge, and yes, my memory of telling her all that had befallen me that summer my father had given me over to the Kidona warrior Dewara. The magic brought it back to her vividly. And she knew now, as clearly as I did, how to get to the place where Dewara had built his fire and conducted me over to his spirit world. There, I believed, was the source of the rock that I had carried with me as a reminder of that encounter, the same rock that Caulder had stolen from me during my year at the Academy.
I felt the magic, felt its anger that I had torn it from its chosen course and set it into mine. I knew, in a way that defied explanation, that my path would work. It would be more convoluted, but it would serve just as well. Even the magic accepted that, but it accepted it coldly, with an angry promise of vengeance to come. And I acceded to that. I would pay, as I had paid before. But this time it would be worth the price.
Yaril had been crouched by my father. Now she sat down ungracefully, flat on the floor, her legs bent awkwardly under her. She swayed. My father’s eyes, opened to slits, looked down at her. Then he leaned his head back on his chair. He took a deeper breath and sighed it out, as if a heavy harness had been taken from him. His eyes traveled to meet mine. His pale lips parted; it could have been a smile. “Lord Burvelle,” he sighed. He reached out a shaking hand and set it on my sister’s fair head. “Protect her,” he murmured. He leaned back and closed his eyes.
“He’s dead,” Stiet said.
“No.” My father drew a deep, slow breath. “I’m not.” He breathed again, more raggedly.
With difficulty, he shifted until he was looking down at Yaril. She still sat on the floor, dazed. She was very pale, save for a bright spot of blood on her lower lip where she had bitten herself. She lifted her hands to her head and pressed them to her skull, as if holding her head together.
“Are you quite all right, my dear?” he asked her.
“I—I am.” Her eyes were clearing. Stiet held out a hand to her. Instead, she planted her own hands on the floor, pushed herself to her feet, and then swayed toward my father’s chair. She caught hold of the back of it, stood up, and set her hands on his shoulders. She leaned to say quietly by his ear, “I think that everything will be fine now for both of us. I know what I need to do.”
And with her words, suddenly the magic was finished with me. I watched the nimbus that had been playing about Yaril’s head suddenly fade, leaving only the necessary knowledge behind. It was over. I’d done all the magic wished me to do. I’d served its purpose and it was done with me. I danced still, but more slowly.
I lifted my head and turned my vision to the east. I could still feel my body, dancing its plodding dance, but it seemed very far away from me. I wondered if I could get back to it before it failed completely. I knew there was an important thing to do, but suddenly it seemed an onerous task, one at the very edges of my ability. I turned back to the room. Some time must have passed. There was a doctor there, fussing about my father, mixing a foaming powder into some water for him. Professor Stiet was gone, but Caulder was there now, very red in the cheeks from his recent exertion, and looking at my father with what seemed like genuine concern. Yaril sat in a chair to one side of my father, and a housemaid was just setting down a tray with a teapot and several cups on it. To me, Yaril looked more physically worn than my father. I felt my distant body tug at me faintly, a failing puppet trying to call its strings back to it. I went to my father.
“Good-bye,” I said. He did not look at me or give me any sign of response. I bent down and kissed his brow, as he had occasionally done when I was a little lad going off to bed. “Good-bye, Lord Burvelle. I hope you keep your title for many years to come.”
My body pulled at me more strongly now. I ignored it to go to Yaril, to bow and dance a final time with her. “Farewell, little sister. Be strong. I’ve given you the key. You must deduce how to turn it and unlock what is there in a way that will benefit the family. I leave it in your very capable hands.” I bent again and kissed her on the top of her head. She smelled of flowers.
Then I surrendered to the pulling of the magic. It drew me out of the house and down the long King’s Road. It was a quick-walk of the spirit. I knew the long road, recognized the growing towns and was startled by the mushrooming farms and homes along the way. Time rushed with us, it seemed, as it swept me along at a heady pace. The magic pulled me back into evening, but when I recognized Sergeant Duril camped alongside his high-wheeled cart, I dragged my feet to a halt. He was sleeping already, in a cramped bed made upon his cart’s load, with his long gun ready under his hand. His hobbled team shifted and one horse lifted his head and whickered softly as I drew near. The sergeant’s hat had slipped away; he was nearly bald now. I thought of trying to find my way into his dreams and decided not to. As soft as a breeze, I danced once around his cart. Then I put my hand over his. “No matter what they tell you, try not to think badly of me,” I asked of him. “I remembered all you taught me. It took me a long way, Sergeant. You did your task well.”
He didn’t twitch. But it was not for him that I said my farewell, but for myself. I knew that. And the pulling string of magic tugged me again and I was off, down a long stretch of moonlit road, past Dead Town, and Amzil’s old house swayed to one side from last year’s snowload, and on until I saw the lights and smelled the smoke of Gettys. Again I slowed my pace. It was hard to do. The failing magic pulled at me like a hook in my chest.
My body was using up the last of its resources. I needed to get there while it still lived, but even more, I needed to see the faces of those I loved. I found their house and I danced up to their door. Silent as a wraith, I flowed through plank walls and into a room where Spink and Epiny shared a bed, their child nestled between them. Epiny looked almost corpselike, her face waxy with dark circles under her eyes. Spink’s hair looked dried and brittle, like a starved dog’s fur. Even the baby looked thin; her little cheeks were flat rather than fat. “Don’t give up,” I begged them. “Help is coming. Sergeant Duril is on his way here.” I dragged my fading fingertips across their sleeping faces, softening the lines there, but I lacked the strength to break into Epiny’s dreams.
The pull of the fading magic was pain now. Somewhere, my abused heart was flopping unevenly in my chest. Still, I stayed for a last indulgence. I dared myself to find the woman who once had saved me. My lips brushed Amzil’s bony cheek; she slept huddled with her children in the same bed, and all their faces were as thin as when first I had met them. “Farewell,” I breathed at her, softer than a whisper. “Know you were loved.” I tried to believe I had not failed them as I was swept away from them yet again.
Then, in the blink of an eye, I was back in the wreckage of my body. It was full dark, but a blazing fire lit the night. I still danced, but no sane person would have known it for a dance. I stood upright, my hands shaking loosely at the end of my arms. I could no longer feel those hands or the purpling fingers that hung from them. I leaned forward, unable to straighten myself. Below, I could see the shuffling of my feet. They were bare and bloody where they were not blackened. A thought came to me. My overburdened and abused heart could no longer pump my blood to my extremities. Experimentally, I tried to lift one foot. I could do it, if I lifted from the hip. I managed a lurching step forward. Then another. And another. I could only step with my left foot. The right I had to drag behind me.
“What is he doing?” someone cried out. The voice had the sound of a shout but the shape of a whisper to me.
“Let him go.” Kinrove’s voice I recognized. “Follow him, but do not interfere. It is his time and he knows it.”
I wanted to tell him I knew nothing. But there was no strength for that. The only thing I must give strength to now, I knew, was to this shuffling, dragging walk. Something pulled at me, something stronger than the magic of Kinrove’s dance. Something that was mine. After what seemed a very long time, I reached the edge of the circle of firelight. “Follow him!” Kinrove commanded again. Someone came to stand at my side with a torch. I was grateful. The person was small and weeping. Someone else came to join him. Olikea and Likari. They stood at my side and held the torches that lit my way. My vision was fading, but I followed some other sight. I could not see far enough ahead to know for sure where I was going, but I was certain I was supposed to go there. A step and a drag, a step and a drag. I followed a path for a long way, but when it no longer went in the direction I must go, I left it. A step and a drag, a step and a drag.
As the last hours of the night dissipated, my shuffle grew slower, my step ever smaller, and the drag of my other foot ever heavier. The ground began to rise. At some point, I went to my knees and then my hands and knees. I crawled on. More than once, I heard them call for fresh torches, and torches were brought, for them to kindle from the stubs, but they never left my side. Their weeping died away to hoarse breathing. By the time I was dragging myself on my belly, they were silent. “The torch is nearly gone,” I heard Likari say and, “No matter,” Olikea replied. “The sun is rising. And he cannot see anymore anyway.”
She was right.
I knew the place by the smell, and the angle of the dawn’s light, and the familiarity of the terrain. I felt Lisana watching me as I drew nearer. I had no strength to speak to her, but she called to me. “I cannot help you with this, Nevare. This you finish on your own. And it must be finished.”
I crawled past her broken stump. It was hard. Her fallen branches littered the ground all along her old trunk. I did not think I could drag my bulk past their tangle, but I did. And then I had to drag my body up, up to where the small tree sprouted at the end of the fallen trunk.
“It’s too small!” someone objected.
“Let him choose. Don’t argue with him.” That was Kinrove’s voice.
I dragged myself the last bit of distance and reached out to seize the sapling. I fell facedown, my hand clinging tight to its bark. That was all it took. My decision was clear to all of them. Kinrove spoke again.
“He has chosen his tree. Bind him to it!”