’s Magic

SIX Confrontations

As Nevare, I did little the rest of that day. I retreated to the back of my mind and became an onlooker in my life. Soldier’s Boy ate the food that Likari brought him, drank deeply of clean water, and then slept. He woke to the wonderful aroma of hot food. Olikea brought it. A hastily woven net held leaf-wrapped packets the size of my fist and roasted tubers. The packets held chunks of fish cooked with a sour root. The leaves that held them were edible and added their own piquant touch of flavour. He ate the food and commented on it favourably. That was the only conversation between them. Neither apologized or explained where the situation now stood. It seemed far simpler a resolution than could ever have occurred between Gernians.

When Likari brought food, he ate that as well. I do not think that pleased Olikea but she didn’t talk about it. Instead, she took a wooden comb from her shoulder pouch and painstakingly combed out my hair. She spent far longer on the task than it deserved; I had never realized how good such a simple thing could feel. I do not think Firada approved of Soldier’s Boy’s easy acceptance of Olikea’s return. She announced that she was taking Jodoli down to the stream to wash him and to rest there. She stalked away and he stolidly followed her, a placid bullock of a man.

Olikea ignored their leaving. Likari had gone off to look for more mushrooms. She continued to work her comb through my hair. There wasn’t much of it. I had given up keeping it in a cavalla soldier’s short cut some time ago, but there was still not enough to plait or dress in any fashion. Still, it felt good, and the Great Man allowed her gentle touch and his full belly to lull him. He fell asleep.

Strange to say, I did not sleep. I remained awake and aware of all the sensations a man may feel with his eyes closed. I wondered if this was how it had been for my Speck self in the days when I had been so firmly in charge of my life – or thought I had been. In a way, it was pleasant. I felt that I had let go of the reins; surely no one could hold me responsible now for the chaos that my life had become. The early afternoon was warm, summer stealing one of autumn’s days, but here, deep in the shade of the forest, there was a pleasant chill that tickled the surface of my skin. If I lay very still, my body warmth lingered around me, but the slightest breeze stole it away. It did not much bother me. The moss I rested on was deep and my body had warmed it. I was comfortable. I was naked, I realized belatedly. Olikea must have taken my clothing when she rescued me. She had never approved of how much clothing I wore. Her discarding it struck me as foolish. Naked, others would more quickly see how wasted and thin I was. However strange my clothing might have seemed, at least it might have kept some of the disdain and mockery at bay. Among the Speck, few things were more pitied and despised than a skinny man. What kind of a fool could not provide for himself, or earn enough regard from his fellows to have them help him in a time of injury or sickness? I looked such a fool right now. Well, Soldier’s Boy was in command of the body now; he would have to deal with it. I let my mind drift to more pleasant thoughts.

I heard birdsong, the sound of the breeze in the needled trees, and the very light rattle of falling leaves whenever a gust of breeze was strong enough to dislodge them. I could hear them cascading down, ricocheting through the twigs and branches until they finally reached the forest floor. The Speck were right. Summer was over, autumn was strong and winter would be on its heels. Real cold would descend, followed by the snows and harsh winds of winter. Last winter I’d had a snug little cabin to shelter me. This winter, I would face that weather with not even the clothes on my back. A tide of dread started to rise in me, but again I turned it back with the simple demurral: it was not my problem. Specks seemed to have survived well through the ages. Whatever their tactic was, even if it was simply the stoic endurance of cold and privation, Soldier’s Boy would learn it and last the winter.

A bird sang again, loudly, a warning, and then I heard the crack of its wings as it took hasty flight. A moment later I heard something heavy settle into the branches overhead. A shower of broken twigs rattled against my face, followed by the slower fall of leaves. I looked up in annoyance. A huge croaker bird had settled in the tree above me. I grimaced in distaste. Fleshy orange-red wattles hung about his beak, reminding me both of dangling meat and cancerous growths. His feathers rattled when he shook them and it seemed as if I could smell the stench of carrion on them. His long black toes gripped the branch tightly as he leaned down to peer at me. His eyes were very bright.

‘Nevare! You owe me a death.’

The croaked words shot ice down my spine. I arced as if I’d been hit by an arrow, and then peered up at the creature in the branches overhead. He was no longer a bird. He wasn’t a man either. Orandula, the god of balances, teetered on the branch over my head. His long black feet gripped the branch with horny toenails. His nose was a carrion bird’s hooked beak, and the red wattles dangled from his throat now. His hair was a thicket of unruly feathers, and feathers cloaked his body and dangled from his arms. Unchanged were his piercing bird-bright eyes. He cocked his head and stared down at me. He smiled, his beak stretching horribly as he did so. As I stared, fixed with terror, his little black tongue came out of his mouth, dabbing at the edges of his beak and then retreated again.

It wasn’t real. It was too horrible to be real. Every prayer I knew to the good god bubbled to the top of my mind. I tried to form the words, but Soldier’s Boy slept on, his mouth closed, oblivious to my terror. I tried to close my eyes, to block out the sight of the old god, to make him a dream. I could not. My eyes were not open. I did not know how I was seeing him. I struggled desperately to lift an arm and put it across my eyes, but my body did not belong to Nevare. Soldier’s Boy slumbered on. I could not look away from the old god’s piercing gaze. It was horrid to experience such terror, and to feel at the same time the slow and steady breathing of deep sleep and the calm heartbeat of a man contentedly at rest. Soldier’s Boy could sleep but Nevare could not flee from the god in the tree above me. A whimper tried to escape me; it could not. I tried to look away; I could not.

‘Why do they always do that?’ Orandula asked rhetorically. ‘Why do men think that if they cannot see a thing, it goes away or stops existing? I should think any sane creature would want to keep its eyes fixed on something as dangerous as me!’ He opened his arm-wings and rattled the pinions at me menacingly, and the whimper inside me tried to be a scream. His smile grew broader. ‘Yet, without exception, when I pay a visit such as this, men try to avert their eyes from me. It’s useless, Nevare. Look on me. You are mine, you know. Neither your good god nor your forest magic will dispute my claim. You took that which was intended for me. Your life is forfeit. You owe me a death in payment. Look at me, Nevare Burvelle!’ When he commanded me to look on him, a strange thing happened. A chill calm welled up in me, just like the cool air over the water within a deep well. I recognized something in him, or perhaps something in my situation. Inevitability. I still feared him with a heart-stopping intensity but I knew I could not escape him. Struggle was pointless. The calm of despair filled me. I could look on the god I had cheated. I found a voice to speak to him, one that did not use my lips or tongue or lungs. I met his gaze, even though it was like pressing my palm against the tip of a sword.

‘A death? You demand a death? You had a hundred deaths, a glut of deaths. How many did I bury at the end of the summer? Strong soldiers, little children. Strangers. Enemies of mine. Friends. Buel Hitch. Carsina.’ My voice broke on the name of my former fiancée.

Orandula laughed like a crow cawing. ‘You tell me what I took, not what you gave me. You gave me nothing! You stole from me, Nevare Burvelle.’

‘All I did was free a suffering bird from its impalement on a sacrificial carousel. I lifted it from the hook and released it. How is that so great a trespass that I must pay for it with my life? Or my death.’

‘You wronged me, man. The bird was mine, both its life and its death. Who were you to say it should not suffer? Who were you to pick it free and put life back into it and let it fly away?’

‘I put life back into it?’

‘Hah!’ His exclamation was a harsh croak. ‘There speaks a man! First, you will pretend you did not know how grave a thing you did. Then you will deny you did it. Then you will say—’

‘It’s not fair!’

‘Of course. Exactly that. And then finally, each and every one will claim—’

If I had had lungs, I would have drawn a breath. I invoked the strength of the words with the full force of my fear. ‘I am a follower of the good god. I was dedicated to him as a soldier son when I was born, and I was raised in his teachings. You have no power over me!’ The last I uttered with conviction. Or attempted to. My words were drowned in the caws of his laughter.

‘Oh, yes, the final denial. I can’t be your god; you already have a god. You keep him in your pouch and let him out on occasions such as this. Calling on your good god is so much more effective than, say, pissing yourself in terror. Or, at least, it has a bit more dignity.’ He spread his tail feathers and leaned back, rocking so hard with laughter that the big branch shook. I looked up at him, unable to avert my eyes. He took his time getting his hilarity under control. Finally, he stopped laughing, and wiped his feathered arm across his eyes. He leaned forward, turning his bird’s head sideways to look at me more closely. ‘Call him,’ he suggested to me. ‘Shout for the good god to come and rescue you. I want to see what happens. Go ahead. Yell for help, man. It’s the only thing you haven’t done yet.’

I couldn’t do it. I wanted to. I wanted desperately to be able to cry out to some benign presence that would sweep in and rescue me. It wasn’t a lack of faith in the good god’s existence. I think I feared to call on my god lest he come to me, and find me lacking and unworthy. I knew in my heart, as most men do, that I’d never really given myself fully to his service. I do not speak of the way that a priest resigns his life to the service of a god, but rather to how a man suspends his own judgment and desires and relies on what he has been told the good god desires of him. Always, I had held back from that commitment. I had always believed, I discovered, that when I was an old man I could become devout and make up for my heedless youth. Age would be a good time to practice self-discipline and charity and patience. When I was old, I would give generous alms and spend hours in meditation while watching the sweet smoke of my daily offerings rise to the good god. When I was old, and my blood no longer bubbled with ambition and lust and wild curiosity, then I could settle down and be content in my good god.

Foolishly, I had believed that I would always have the opportunity to be a better man, later. Obviously, a man’s life could end at any time. A fall down the stairs, a chill or a fever, a stray bullet; youth was no armour against such fates. A man could lose his life by accident, at any moment. Some part of me, perhaps, had known that, but I’d never believed it at a gut level.

And I’d certainly never considered that at any moment, an old god could materialize and demand my life of me.

I didn’t merit the good god’s intervention and worse, I feared his judgment. The old gods, I knew, had been able to plunge men into endless torment or perpetual labour, and often did solely for their own amusement. Such anguish on a whim suddenly seemed preferable to facing a just banishment.

My cry of supplication died in me unuttered. I looked up at Orandula, the old god of balances and felt myself quiver with resignation and then grow still. The feathers on his head quirked up in surprise.

‘What? No shrieks for rescue? No pleas for mercy? Eh. Not very amusing for me. You’re a bad bargain, Nevare. Looks like half of you is the most I can get, and it isn’t even the interesting half. Yet, being as I am the god of balances, something in that appeals to me.’

‘Do what you will to me!’ I hissed at him, weary already of teetering on that brink.

He fluttered his feathers up, gaining almost a third in size as he did so. ‘Oh, I shall,’ he muttered as he eased them down. He leisurely groomed two wing plumes, pulling them through his beak and then settling them into order. For a moment, he seemed to have forgotten me. Then he pierced me with his stare again. ‘At my leisure. When I decide to take what you owe me, then I’ll come for it, and you’ll pay me.’

‘Which do I owe you?’ I was suddenly moved to ask him. ‘My death? Or my life?’

He yawned, his pointed tongue wagging in his mouth as he did so. ‘Whichever I please, of course. I am the god of balances, you know. I can choose from either end of the scales.’ He cocked a head at me. ‘Tell me, Nevare. Which do you think an old god such as me would find most pleasing? To demand your death of you? Or insist that you pay me with your life?’

I didn’t know the answer and I didn’t wish to give him any ideas. My fears toiled and rumbled inside me. Which did I most fear? What did he mean when he said those words? That he would kill me and I’d become nothing? Or that he’d take me in death and keep me as his plaything? What if he demanded my life from me, and I became a puppet of the old god? All paths seemed dark. I stared up at him hopelessly.

He fluttered his feathers again, then suddenly opened his wings. He lifted from the branch as effortlessly as if he weighed nothing. Then he was gone. Literally gone. I didn’t see him fly away. Only the swaying of the relieved branch testified that he had been there.

‘Do not wake him!’

Olikea’s warning hissed at Likari did precisely what she had told the boy not to do. Soldier Son stirred, grunted and opened his eyes. He drew a deeper breath, and then rubbed his face. ‘Water,’ he requested, and both his feeders reached for the waterskin that lay beside him. Olikea was a shade faster and a bit stronger. She had her hands on it first, with the better grip and snatched it from Likari. The boy’s eyes widened with disappointment and outrage.

‘But I was the one who went and refilled it!’ he protested.

‘He needs help to drink from it. You don’t know how. You’ll get it all over him.’

They sounded for all the world like squabbling siblings rather than a mother and her son. Soldier’s Boy ignored both of them, but took the waterskin away from Olikea to drink from it. He nearly drained it before he handed it back to the boy with a nod of thanks. He yawned and then carefully stretched, noting with displeasure how the limp skin dangled from his arms. He lowered them back to his side. ‘I feel better. But I need to eat more before we quick-walk tonight. I would like cooked food to warm me; the world will cool as night comes on.’

He groaned as he sat up, but it was the groan of a man who has eaten well, slept heavily, and looked forward to doing the same again. How could he be so unaware of all that had befallen me while he slept? Did he even sense that I still existed within him? How could he have been so blithely unaware of Orandula’s visit to me and how it had terrified me? Yet so he seemed. How had it been for him, submerged within me for the better part of a year? I recalled the moments when he had broken through and into my awareness, and the times when he had forced me to take actions. What had it taken, there at the Dancing Spindle, for him to push me aside while he both stole and then destroyed the magic of the plainspeople? Had it been a burst of passion, or had he simply gathered his strength and waited for a moment when he desired to use it? I needed to learn how he had manipulated me and to discover why he was now ascendant over me if I were to survive and ever re-capture control of the life we shared. I was not certain that I wished to be the one in command of our life, but I did know that I was reluctant to cede full control to my Speck self. I refused the notion that I might never again control my own body. The strangeness of the situation suspended my judgment of it. The terror I should have felt hovered, unacknowledged.

Likari had anticipated Soldier’s Boy’s appetite. In his basket, there were several fat roots from a water plant and two bright yellow fish that were just now gasping their last breaths. The boy presented the basket expectantly. Soldier’s Boy nodded at it, pleased, but Olikea scowled.

‘I will cook these things for you. The boy does not know how.’

Likari opened his mouth to protest, and then shut it with a snap. Evidently his mother had spoken true. Nonetheless, his lower jaw and lip quivered with disappointment. Soldier’s Son looked at him dispassionately, but I felt for the boy. ‘Give him something!’ I urged my other self. ‘At least acknowledge what he has done for you.’

I could sense his awareness of me, just as I had once been the one to feel his hidden influences on my thoughts and actions. He scowled to himself, and then looked at the boy again. His shoulders had fallen and he was withdrawing. Soldier’s Son lifted the waterskin. ‘My young feeder will fill this again for me. The cool water was very good to have when I awoke.’

The boy halted. My words transformed him. He lifted his head, squared his shoulders and his eyes sparkled as he smiled up at me. ‘I am honoured to serve you, Great One,’ he replied, taking the waterskin. The words were a standard courtesy among the Speck when they addressed a Great One, but the boy uttered them with absolute sincerity.

Olikea folded her lips tightly, and then briskly added, ‘Bring firewood, too, when you come back with the water. And see that it is dry, so that it will burn hot to cook the fish quickly.’

If she meant her words to sting, she failed. The boy scarcely noticed that it was her giving the command. He bobbed acquiescence and raced off to his task.

Soldier’s Boy watched Olikea as she scoured the area for kindling and twigs to get the fire started. She pushed the newly fallen leaves away to bare a place on the forest’s mossy floor, and then peeled the moss away to reveal damp black earth. There she arranged her kindling. She untied one of the pouches from her belt and took out her fire-making supplies. When she did so, I felt a tingly itch spread over my skin. Soldier’s Boy shifted uncomfortably. Idly, I noted that the steel she used to strike sparks from the flint was of Gernian make. She had set to one side a handful of sulphur matches. For all her professed hatred of the intruders, she did not despise the technology and conveniences they had brought. I smiled cynically but Soldier’s Boy’s lips did not move. He seemed to be thinking something else, wondering how many other Specks now carried steel so casually, even knowing the iron in it was dangerous to magic. He ignored my thoughts. Was I a small voice in the back of his mind, a vague sensation of unease, or nothing at all to him? All I could do was wonder.

Olikea built the fire efficiently. I considered her as she moved about the area, gathering twigs to feed the tiny flame, stooping down to blow on the fire and then as she began to cut up the roots and clean the fish from Likari’s basket. I could not compare her to Gernian women at all, I realized. She moved with ease and confidence, as completely unaware of her nudity as Soldier’s Boy was. That was odd to consider. He felt no surge of lust for her. Perhaps it was that I’d spent so much of his magic he felt as if he could barely stand, let alone mate with a woman. I stood at the edge of his flowing thoughts; he was not thinking of sex, but of the food she was preparing. He was gauging how much he could rebuild his strength by nightfall and how much of his magic he would have to burn to quick-walk all three of them back to the People.

Quick-walk. One could travel that way, seeming to stride along at an ordinary pace, but covering the ground much more swiftly. A mage could carry others along with him, one or two or even three if he was powerfully fat with magic. But it took an effort to get the magic started, and stamina to sustain it. It would not be easy for him, and he was reluctant to burn what little reserves he had restored. Nevertheless, he would have to do it. He had said that he would, in front of Jodoli. A Great Man never backed away from a feat of magic he claimed he would do. He would lose all status with the People if he did.

Likari came back with an armful of firewood. Olikea thanked him brusquely and sent him for more water. I suspected she was trying to keep him at a distance from Soldier’s Boy while she carried out the more obvious tasks of a feeder. She seemed to feel my gaze on her and turned to look at me. As our eyes met, I felt as if she could still see me, the Gernian, buried inside Soldier’s Boy. Did she notice that he had changed in his demeanour towards her? She dropped her eyes and appraised me as if she were looking at a horse she might buy. Then she shook her head.

‘Fish and roots will help but what you need is grease if we are to rebuild you quickly. Likari will not find that in this part of the forest at this time of year. Even if he could, he is too small to kill anything. Once we have rejoined the People, you will have to do the hunter’s dance for us, and summon a bear before it goes to its winter rest. Slabs of bear meat thick with fat will build you quickly. I will cook it with mushrooms and leeks and red salt. It will take time, Nevare, but I will restore you to your power.’

Her mere description of the food made my mouth run with saliva. She was right. The body craved fat. The fish and roots suddenly seemed meagre and unsatisfying. Soldier’s Boy sat up and rubbed the loose folds of his belly. Moving slowly and cautiously, he got to his feet. The whole body felt peculiar. It was strange to be so light. I had built muscle to carry the fat that was now gone. My skin sagged all around me, wrinkling in unexpected places. He held my arms out from my body, looked down on my wasted form and shook my head in disgust. He’d have to begin all over again.

‘I can restore you,’ Olikea promised me as if she’d heard his thoughts. ‘I can be a very good feeder to you.’

‘If I allow it,’ he reminded her.

‘What choice do you have?’ she asked me reasonably. ‘Likari cannot even cook for you. He certainly cannot give you children to help care for you when you are old. You are angry with me now. I was angry with you before. Perhaps I am still angry with you, but I am smart enough to know this: Anger will not get me what I want, so I will set it aside. Anger will not get you what you want and need. You should be wise enough to set it aside and let things go back to the way they were. The People will have enough reasons to mock you and doubt you. Do not give them any more by having a mere boy tending you. Let me be by your side when we return. I can explain that you spent all your magic in making a great tangle of forest that will protect our ancestor trees through the winter. I can make them see you as a hero who spent all he had in an effort to protect that which is most important to all of us, rather than as a fool who depleted himself yet found no glory or power in doing it.’

I was beginning to perceive the Specks in an entirely different way. I’d always been told they were child-like and naïve, a primitive folk with simple ways, and so I had treated Olikea. I’d imagined she was passionately in love with me, and actually flogged myself with guilt over taking advantage of the infatuated young maiden. Plying me with food and sex had been her tactic to win me, and to enjoy the effects of bringing a man of power and girth into her kin-clan. She competed with her sister far more savagely than I’d ever striven to outdo either of my brothers. But, far from being enthralled by me, she had seen me as a tool for her ambition and used me accordingly. She spoke now, not out of love or affection, but only that anger was keeping both of us from what we wanted. Even our potential children were not the fruit of our affections for one another, but my insurance against feeble old age. She was hard, hard as whipcord, hard as tempered steel and Soldier’s Boy had known that about her all the time. He finally smiled at her.

‘I can set my anger aside, Olikea. But it does not mean that I set aside my memory of what caused my anger. It is very clear to both of us how my power may benefit you. Less clear to me is why I need you, or indeed why your kin-clan is the only one I should consider for my own. While you cook for me, perhaps you could explain to me why you are the best choice to be my feeder, and why your kin-clan, folk who already have a Great One in their midst, would be my best home among the People. There are kin-clans that have no Great Ones, where a feeder would have all the gathering skills of a kin-clan to aid her in caring for me. Why should I choose you?’

She narrowed her eyes and folded her lips. She had wrapped the fish and roots in well-moistened leaves and put them to steam in her fire. She poked vindictively at them with her cooking stick; I was sure she would rather have jabbed me with it. Soldier’s Boy watched her coolly, and I could feel him speculating on which would win out, her anger or her ambition. She kept her gaze on her cooking and spoke to the fire.

‘You know that I can prepare food well, and that I gather food efficiently. You know that my son Likari is an energetic gatherer. Name me as your feeder, and I will put him in your service as well. You will have the benefits of two of us bringing you food and seeing to your needs. And I will continue to give you pleasure and seek to become pregnant with your child. That is not an easy task, you know. It is hard to catch the seed of a Great Man and harder still to carry his child to term. Few of the Great have children of their own. But I already have a son that I can put in service to you.

‘If you wish to have two of us serving you, before you have become fat and worthy again, then this is the only way it can be so. If you choose Likari over me, then I will have nothing more to do with either of you. And if you choose to leave my kin-clan when we reach the Wintering Place to find a feeder among some other clan, well, I will see to it that all hear of how faithless you are, how clumsy with your magic and how you wasted a wealth of it to very little success. Do you think that every woman wants to be a feeder? You will find, perhaps, that there are not that many of us willing to give up our lives to serve one such as you.’

Soldier’s Boy had let her have her say without interruption. When he held his silence after she had finished, she glanced up at him once, her annoyance plain. He made her wait, but I noticed she did not prod him. Finally he said, ‘I do not like your threats, Olikea. And I believe that yes, actually there will be many women at the Wintering Place who would want to become my feeder and share in my glory and power, without making threats or sour faces at me. You still have not given me a powerful reason to choose your kin-clan. Do Jodoli and Firada support the notion of another Great Man sustained by your kin-clan?’

She didn’t answer directly, but the way she lowered her head and scowled told me much. At that very moment we heard their voices through the trees, and in a moment more they came into sight. Jodoli looked clean and well rested. His hair was freshly plaited, and his skin had been rubbed with fragrant oil. ‘Like a piece of prize livestock,’ the Nevare portion of me thought wryly, but I felt Soldier’s Boy’s keen jealousy cut through me. In contrast to Jodoli, he felt grubby, unkempt and skinny. He glanced at Olikea; she likewise burned with frustration. She spoke louder than necessary.

‘The boy has done well at finding food for me to prepare for you. After you have eaten, I think I will help you bathe. And then perhaps you should sleep again.’

Jodoli gave a huge, contented yawn. ‘That sounds a good plan, Nevare, if we are to quick-walk tonight. Ah. That food smells good.’

A remarkable thing happened. Firada bristled at his compliment to Olikea. Olikea looked at her sister and said almost sharply, ‘I have prepared all this for Nevare. He will need his strength.’ Then, with a sideways glance at me, she added to Jodoli, ‘But perhaps we can spare enough for you to have a taste.’

‘We will share it with Jodoli and Firada,’ Soldier’s Boy suddenly decreed. ‘I owe them thanks for bringing you here. Sharing food to replace the magic that Jodoli spent on me is called for, I think.’

He took command of the situation that easily, and presided over the meal that ensued. I was pleased that he did not forget Likari. The boy had made trip after trip at Olikea’s request, bringing firewood, cooking water, the wide flat leaves of a water plant to wrap the fish, and so on. He sat at a respectful distance from the adults, looking as if he could barely keep his eyes open, but eyeing the food all the same. Soldier’s Boy’s announcement that he would share food had brought out hospitality in Jodoli as well. He asked Firada what supplies she had brought with her. She had meal cakes seasoned with a peppery herb and little balls made of suet, dried berries and honey. These combined with the food Olikea had prepared to make a delicious and generous meal for all of us. Likari seemed very conscious of the honour of being given Great Man’s food to eat. He ate it slowly, in tiny nibbles that reminded me of my days locked in my room under my father’s jurisdiction and he seemed to savour each morsel as carefully as I had then.

There was little talk. Jodoli and Soldier’s Boy concentrated on their food as only Great Ones knew how to do, while Firada and Olikea regarded one another in wary rivalry. Soldier’s Boy did more than eat; he considered each mouthful as he chewed it, enjoying flavour and texture, but also calculating how much of it his body could store for later use as magic and how much he must keep ready for the simple business of living. He was not pleased with his results. What he ate today he would almost certainly have to use tonight to quick-walk them back to the People. He couldn’t begin to rebuild his resources until they reached the Wintering Place. The fat and easy days of summer were past; he wondered if the People would be generous with their winter supplies when it came to feeding an unproven Great One.

After the meal, Jodoli announced that he planned to visit the Vale of the Ancestor Trees until the cool of the evening. ‘Magic is always easier when the sun no longer beats down on us,’ he observed, and I knew it was so without knowing how I knew it. ‘We will meet again at the Wintering Place?’ he asked me, and Soldier’s Boy nodded gravely and thanked him once more for his aid. I watched them depart, Jodoli moving unhurriedly while Firada gently chivvied him along.

Olikea was as good as her word. She even made a show of helping Soldier’s Boy to stand and then guiding him down to the stream’s edge. Likari came with us, and she put him to work, bringing fine sand to scrub my feet and handfuls of horsetail ferns to scrub my back. Nevare would have felt embarrassed to have a young boy and a lovely woman wash his body while he sat idly in the shallows and let them. Soldier’s Boy not only allowed it, he accepted it as his due.

Olikea tsk’ed over the sagging folds of skin, but served me well. I had never known that having someone scrub my feet and then massage them could feel so delightful. I think she realized that she nearly paralysed me with pleasure, for after I was washed, she had me rest on the clean moss beside the stream while she rubbed my back, my shoulders, my hands and my neck. It felt so good Soldier’s Boy did not want to fall asleep and miss the sensations, but of course he did.

I slept when Soldier’s Boy did that time. The physical weariness and needs of the body were his to bear, but I think there is a soul weariness that one can feel, and I felt it. Less than two days had passed since my life had profoundly changed. I’d been a condemned man, escaping execution one night, and a mage who had spent all his magic the next. Those were two giant strides away from the boy who had been a second son, raised to be a cavalla soldier. I think my awareness needed to retreat, and it did.

When next I noticed the world, I was looking up through Soldier’s Boy’s blinking eyes at the interlacing tree branches overhead. The leaves were shivering, rustling so hard against one another that many of those loosened by autumn’s bite were breaking loose from their weakened grips on twigs and falling. A few falling leaves became a flurry of yellow and orange, and then a blizzard. I stared up at them, befuddled. The sound of their falling was unearthly; there was a rhythm to the trembling of the leaves that sounded like people whispering in the distance, a rhythm that had nothing to do with the wind.

There was no wind.

And the voices were there, whispering.

There were dozens of voices, all whispering. Soldier’s Boy strained to pick out a single thread of sound.

‘Lisana says—’

‘Tell him, tell him to come now!’

‘Hurry. She’s mad with grief, she’s threatening—’

‘Fire fears no magic. Hurry.’

‘Soldier’s Boy, Nevare, tell him, wake him, tell him to hurry—’

The air was thick with falling leaves. The rustling whispering filled the air. Soldier’s Boy rolled to his belly and scrabbled to his feet. He swayed and then steadied himself against the trunk of a nearby tree. His stirring had awakened Olikea. She had been sleeping against his back. He spoke to her. ‘I have to go to Lisana right now. She’s in danger. The mad Gernian woman is threatening her.’