’s Magic

SEVEN Epiny’s Ultimatum

Soldier’s Boy led the way. Olikea followed unwillingly and Likari, laden with the supplies, trailed after them. ‘What does she need of you?’ Olikea had demanded angrily as she sat up.

‘She’s in danger,’ Soldier’s Boy replied. ‘I have to help her.’

He did not wait for her to respond to that, but set off immediately. He was stiff and his body seemed unfamiliar after so many months as a very fat man. He ached, but he forced his legs to bend and he hurried. The trees whispered to him, urging him on in a flurry of leaves and a susurrus of voices.

‘He’ll be too late—’

‘All of us, not just Lisana—’

‘—her own fault for dividing him—’

‘Why didn’t the fear stop her? How did she get that far?’

‘Stolen magic. She burns with it.’

‘Drop a branch on her. It might kill her.’

Sweat broke out on Soldier’s Boy’s back and trickled over his body, finding new wrinkles to settle in and new places to chafe. He laboured on. His body was lighter and his muscles strong, but every part of him felt strained and old and creaky. His heart flopped wildly in his chest. His half-digested meal seemed to slosh inside him miserably. Nonetheless, he forced himself to hurry.

Behind him, Olikea kept up a string of reminders and warnings that made it hard for him to listen to the whispering. She did not seem to hear it, or perhaps she just dismissed it as wind in the trees. ‘You are being foolish. Why do you need to go to Lisana? What can she need from you? You will use up all your strength, and then what will happen to us tonight? Must we spend another full day here while you rest and eat before we can rejoin the people? Most of the kin-clans have already reached their winter settlements and will soon go on to the trading beaches. I want to be with them when they reach the Trading Place. Always, there is much talk, feasting, dancing, music and trade when all the kin-clans come together for the winter. We will want to enjoy it, not arrive there exhausted. And I do not wish to first show you there as a skeletal man with no energy. As it is, we must spend a few days at my lodge before we go on to the Trading Place. I must prepare you so that you command respect. Nevare! You are not listening to me! Slow down.’

Despite his weakened condition, she was having a hard time keeping up with him. I realized he was doing a quick-walk, making the distance between himself and Lisana contract. He was not using a great deal of magic, but it made the trees blur slightly and the ground seemed less solid under his feet. Olikea and Likari were pulled along in his wake. When he caught the first whiff of smoke, he suddenly redoubled his efforts, consuming the magic as if he had infinite reserves. In two strides, we stood beside Tree Woman’s stump.

Epiny had heaped leaves, some dry and some freshly fallen, in a large mound against the stump. My cousin stood, her teeth bared with satisfaction, watching thick white smoke rising from the tiny fire she had kindled at the base of Lisana’s stump. She had a ready supply of dry branches next to her, to feed the fire once she had it established.

Epiny herself looked a fright. Her hair was pulling out of braids that looked as if they’d been plaited days ago. She wore a shapeless green dress, cut to allow for her growing pregnancy and round her middle, above her growing belly, a battered leather belt with tool loops on it. A canteen hung from one side of it. She’d snagged her dress on something; there was a long rent in the skirt, and it was obvious she’d simply let it drag behind her as she trekked through the forest to get here. Brambles and dead leaves clung to it like a dirty train. She’d unbuttoned the cuffs of her sleeves and turned them up to bare her forearms. Her face gleamed with sweat, and the throat and back of her dress were damp with it. Her hands were smudged with dirt and soot from her fire-making efforts. As I approached, she drew the back of her forearm across her brow, wiping sweat and leaving a streak of dirt in its wake. An open leather pack rested on the earth behind her. Despite her dishevelled appearance, she seemed to seethe with energy.

‘Burn!’ she cried in a low, mad voice. She gritted her teeth and I heard them grind together. ‘Burn, you cheat, you whore of magic. Burn, and be dead forever. As dead as Nevare. I did what you asked! I did all you asked; you promised you’d save him if I did! But you didn’t! You let Nevare die! You lying, cheating bitch!’ The words poured out of her like thick acid. She stooped awkwardly over her belly to snatch up an armload of the firewood and flung it onto the smouldering leaves. They compacted under the weight of the fuel. For a moment, I thought she had smothered the fire. Then the smoke thickened and a tiny tongue of flame wavered up among the heaped wood. It licked the bark of Lisana’s tree stump longingly.

And all the while, Lisana herself manifested as a fat old woman with grey-streaked hair standing with her back against her stump and her arms spread protectively behind her. Her incorporeal presence could do nothing. Her bare feet and her long dress of bark fabric and moss lace dangled down into the lapping flames. I do not think she felt the fire but she still screamed as the flames ran up the trunk.

It had been weeks since it had last rained. The forest was dry. I suddenly understood what the whispered words had meant. Fire fears no magic. Tiny sparks whirled aloft on an updraught of heat, floating on bits of blackened leaves. It was not just Lisana that was in danger. If this fire spread, it could engulf the entire mountainside and the Vale of the Ancestor Trees below.

Soldier’s Boy had my memories. He knew her name and our language. ‘Epiny! Stop! Stop that! You’ll kill us all.’ He rushed forward and kicked barefoot at the fire. He scattered it, letting air into the smouldering mass, and the flames gushed up, crackling like laughter. Epiny, startled, made no move to stop him. She stared at him, her mouth hanging open.

‘Put it out, put it out!’ Lisana shrieked.

I do not think Olikea and Likari heard her, but they recognized the danger all the same. Heedless of burns, Soldier’s Boy was stamping at the edges of the burning fire. Olikea had taken the food pouch from her belt and was using it to beat the flames down. But it was Likari who unshouldered the heavy waterskin he had been carrying. Opening it, he squeezed the bag, directing the stream into the heart of the fire. Epiny had retreated when the three had rushed up on her. Now she stood transfixed, watching as they tore her fire apart and poured water onto it and then stamped and smothered the remaining flames. In a few moments, the danger was past. Olikea was near sobbing with terror, but Likari was capering with joy. Soldier’s Boy sank down. He saw another glowing ember, and lifted a handful of the wet leaves and quenched it. All three of them were streaked with smoke and soot.

‘I told you!’ Lisana shouted angrily at Epiny. ‘I told you I’d kept my word. Even if I hadn’t, the magic would have. The magic doesn’t lie and cheat. There, you see him? You see? Nevare is alive. What you bargained for, you got. Nevare lives!’

Soldier’s Boy turned towards her. Epiny stared at him. Her eyes ran over his dwindled body, but I think his nakedness was just as shocking to her. To her, he was a piebald thing, tanned face and hands, skin pale white and sagging where it was not sun-burned scarlet. She blushed, then deliberately fixed her eyes on my face. I burned with shame but Soldier’s Boy scarcely noticed his nakedness before her. With great hesitancy Epiny asked, ‘Nevare? Can that be you?’

‘It’s me,’ he lied. And for the first time, I fully realized my position. This other entity was controlling my body. Completely. Using it as he willed without regard for me at all. I flung myself against his walls, and battled hard to take back control of my body. I could feel his contempt for Epiny, and recalled that she had been instrumental in defeating him the first time we had battled. He looked at her and saw his old enemy, come back to give him more trouble. I saw my cousin, ravaged by grief, dirty, tired, thirsty and miles from where she should be. She was heavy with her first pregnancy, and I knew that it was a difficult one. She should have been home, safe in her house, with Spink and Amzil and her children. I thought I had arranged all that. When I’d changed the memory of every witness to the mob, when I’d sent Spink and Amzil home relatively unscathed, I thought I’d bought that for her. I knew that if I’d tried to stay, if I’d even planned to make some sort of a return to the people I knew and loved, the magic would have found a way to take them all away from me.

Two nights ago, it had nearly done it. If I hadn’t surrendered to it, if I hadn’t used it and allowed it to make me its own, Amzil would have been gang-raped on the streets of Gettys. Spink, I knew, would have died fighting to save her and to protect me from the mob. What would have become of Epiny, her unborn child and Amzil’s little children then? Unchanging grief for Epiny, loss and poverty for Amzil’s children. That was why I’d made that sacrifice. Everything I’d done, I’d done to save them.

Yet here she was, wild-eyed and dishevelled, miles from home in a hostile forest. And a man wearing my flesh was pretending to be me. She goggled at me, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. ‘You’re naked,’ she pointed out in distress. ‘And you’re … you’re not fat any more. What happened to you? How could that happen in one night? How can you be alive? Spink and Amzil saw you killed. Spink saw you beaten to death on the streets, by his own fellows, his own regiment. Do you know what that’s done to him? Do you know how that’s made him hate everything he was once so proud of? Amzil saw the end of everything that she had just begun to hope for. But here you are. Alive. I don’t understand, Nevare! I don’t understand anything!’

She took two hesitant steps towards me. If I had opened my arms, she would have rushed into them. But Soldier’s Boy did not. He stood before her, naked and unlovely, my arms folded on my chest and asked her solemnly, ‘Why did you come here? What do you want?’

‘Why did I—what? I came to avenge you, you great idiot! To make her suffer for your death as we were all suffering. I came to make her sorry for betraying you, to punish the magic for not keeping its word! And what do I want? I want my life back! I want my husband to see me when he looks at me instead of looking through me. I want Amzil to stop scowling and snapping at the children. I want her to stop weeping at night. I want my baby to be born healthy and happy, not into a house where daily we endure floods of desolation or tides of panic. That’s what I want. That’s what I came for. I knew I wouldn’t get it, but I thought I could at least kill one of those who had taken it from me.’

I felt as if I was dying. I threw myself against Soldier’s Boy’s awareness, trying to break through. I wanted to take her in my arms and comfort her; I wanted something for Epiny. It seemed that everything I’d thought I’d purchased for her by turning my back on Gettys was hollow and sordid by the light of day. I hadn’t solved anything when I’d given way to the magic. I’d only left them to muddle through grief burdened by guilt that none of them deserved.

‘I won’t let you kill her.’ He spoke flatly to Epiny. ‘You should just go home. Pretend you never saw me here. Accept that I’m dead. Then leave Gettys. Go back west where you and your kind belong.’ He lifted his eyes to Lisana as he spoke, but I had the oddest sensation that he could not see her. The strangest part was that I felt Lisana definitely could see me. I stared through his eyes at her, begging her for some kind of mercy, for some splinter of kindness for my cousin. What had she ever done to them save try to protect me and stand by me? Why did she have to suffer so for the magic?

Lisana spoke softly to Epiny. ‘As you see, Gernian, I spoke truth to you. The magic keeps its word. Nevare isn’t dead.’

Epiny swung her head back to look at me. Her lips were parted and she swayed slightly. The whites showed all round her eyes. I’d once seen a horse that had been ridden near to death. She reminded me of that poor beast, as if she stayed on her feet more by sheer will power than by physical strength. She stared at me for a long time, then looked back at Lisana. Her voice was flat. ‘Don’t try to deceive me. That’s not Nevare. I know Nevare and that’s not him. You forget that the magic touches me? You forget that I can look at his aura, and see that something is very wrong? You can’t cheat me again, Tree Woman. I intend to kill you or die trying.’ She stooped down. For the first time, I saw the small hatchet she had used to cut her firewood. Against Tree Woman’s thick stump, it looked ridiculous, a child’s toy. But it was a toy made of iron. Its presence burned against my skin. When Epiny raised it over her head, her teeth bared in a grimace of hatred, Soldier’s Boy acted, springing between her and the stump and catching her falling wrist. He squeezed hard and the hatchet fell from her grip. He caught her other wrist when she tried to rake his eyes with her nails. Despite his wasted condition, he held her easily. Epiny snarled and shrieked at him wordlessly. She kicked out at him; he accepted the blows.

‘Her mind is gone,’ Olikea opined. She sounded appalled, as if Epiny’s loss of dignity was shameful to her as well. ‘It would be a kindness to kill her.’ She spoke in Speck, her words directed to Soldier’s Boy. The lack of malice in her voice chilled me. She meant it. She thought Soldier’s Boy should put Epiny down as one would a diseased dog. She ventured closer to pick up the hatchet. I feared she would do the deed herself, just sink the shining blade into Epiny’s spine.

‘No!’ I bellowed. ‘Lisana, help me! Please! Don’t let Epiny be killed! It will be too much for me to bear!’

I made no sound. I had no command of lips or lungs or tongue. I spoke not in words, but in a flow of thought that dismissed the need for words, just as Epiny and Lisana spoke to one another. They were the words of my heart, voiceless in the world. All I could do was to plead and threaten. I was helpless to stop what was happening. My hands held my cousin helpless and waiting to be slaughtered.

Lisana looked at the scene before her. Epiny’s struggles against Soldier’s Boy had become increasingly feeble. His big hand trapped her thin wrists. She all but dangled in his grip. Behind Epiny’s back, Olikea had raised the hatchet. Likari watched the drama with the rapt attention of a small boy staring at the unintelligible behaviour of adults. The hatchet began to fall.

‘Epiny!’ I cried out mutely. A stray beam of sunlight moved on the blade as it travelled.

My impotent threats had not moved Lisana. Soldier’s Boy looked at her stump; again, I had the feeling that I was seeing Lisana in a different way from him.

‘If I help kill my own cousin, I’ll go mad! My hatred for him will be unending. Can Soldier’s Boy serve the magic while a mad man gibbers in the back of his mind?’

When Tree Woman slowly shook her head at me, my heart sank. She spoke.

‘Stop.’

Now that I knew what such magic cost, I saw the effort go out of her. Tree Woman’s presence dwindled when she spoke, but for me, it had the desired effect. Olikea’s resolve failed. She lost her grip on the hatchet. It tumbled to the ground behind Epiny. Soldier’s Boy did not release his grip on my cousin, but he set her back on her feet. She twisted one wrist free and folded that arm across her belly, in a gesture that was both supportive and protective. When he released her other wrist, she staggered a few steps away from him and then burst into tears. With both arms, she cradled her pregnancy. She didn’t look at him, but past him at Tree Woman’s stump. ‘Why?’ she demanded of Lisana. ‘Why did you do this to Nevare? Why my cousin, why me? We were innocent of any crime against your people. Why did you reach all those miles to take him hostage to this fate? Why?’

Lisana stiffened. Her presence wavered for a moment, then seemed to grow stronger as she gathered her reserves and retorted, ‘Blame the Kidona, not me! He is the one who took your cousin and tried to make him a warrior to use against me. I, I was the one who had mercy. I could have just stripped his soul from his body and he would have died in all worlds. If I had not thought to offer him to the magic, he would have been dead all these years. The magic chose to keep him. Not I. I didn’t know its reasons. But the magic chose him and now it has taken him. You’d best accept that, Gernian woman. Just as he must accept and become whole to the magic. Nothing is going to change it. What the magic takes, it keeps.’ Perhaps only I could hear the old resignation in her words. She, too, had been chosen and kept by the magic. She, too, had never lived the life she had imagined for herself.

‘Please,’ I thought to Lisana, hoping she still had some influence with Soldier’s Boy. ‘Please. Let me talk to Epiny. Let me send her home. Let me have that small comfort before I must bend to the magic’s will.’

Soldier’s Boy was staring intently at the stump. ‘Lisana?’ he asked. There was a world of longing in his voice. He ignored the sobbing woman, and Olikea scowling in puzzlement at them. He stepped up to the stump and put his hands on it. ‘Lisana?’ he said again. He glanced back at Epiny angrily. I felt the indignation in his heart that the Gernian woman could obviously see and speak to his beloved when all he could behold was the stump of her fallen tree.

Lisana sighed heavily. ‘I’m a fool,’ she said. ‘I know I’ll regret this. Speak to her, then. I’ll help you.’

I had hoped she would do something to Soldier’s Boy, to give me control once more of the body. Either she could not, or she did not trust me that far. I felt the most peculiar sensation, a cold peeling as if I were being skinned away from my life. A moment later, I could see Lisana much more distinctly, and I once more had the disembodied sensation I’d felt when she’d called me from my cell. Speaking to Epiny had been my errand then. Now I looked at my cousin and suddenly didn’t know what to say to her. I could see Soldier’s Boy as Epiny saw him. It was a shock. He wore my naked, sun-burned body differently. I would never have stood in that posture; I would never have been so completely unselfconscious of my nakedness before my cousin. Yet, with the fat stripped from my flesh, I saw my face almost as it had been when I had set out for the Academy. Despite the sagging of the emptied jowls, I looked more youthful than I had in the last year. My blond hair was an untidy tousle but with a sickening wrench I could recall that I had been a handsome young man once. The sudden mourning I felt for that lost attractiveness shocked me with its intensity. I had never thought myself vain, but I had enjoyed being a man that girls smiled at. It was a distorted glimpse of the tall, golden cadet that I’d been. It was like a knife in my heart.

Epiny had lifted her eyes to Lisana, and when her gaze fell on my ephemeral self, she gasped. She lifted a seeking hand towards me, as if she would strive to touch me. ‘Nevare?’ she asked.

Soldier’s Boy glared at her, and then leaned close to the tree stump. ‘Lisana?’ he pleaded. We all ignored him.

I found my words. I suddenly knew that only the truth could satisfy her, and I gave it to her. ‘Epiny. Epiny, my dear. Yes, it’s me. I’m here. I’m sorry. I did what I had to do. I used the magic to make Spink and Amzil believe I was dead. I made the entire mob in the street there believe that they’d achieved their goal and beaten me to death. Then I left. It was the only way for me to escape cleanly, the only way to break my life off from yours.’

‘But—’ Her eyes were wide with shock. She looked from me to Soldier’s Boy in my body and back again.

I spoke hastily, talking through her attempted interruption. I knew Epiny well. Once she started talking, I’d never get a word in edgeways. ‘The magic wouldn’t let me stay. Don’t you see? It boxed me in and gave me no choice. If I’d tried to stay, the mob would have beaten me to death. Amzil might have survived being raped by them, but I doubt it. And we both know that Spink would have forced them to kill him, too, before he would submit to simply witnessing something like that. The magic wanted to make it impossible for me to go back to Gettys, to force me to flee to the forest and do its will. The magic won.’

Epiny was panting, both from the warmth of the day and her exertions. Her shoulders rose and fell with it. As I’d spoken, fresh tears had begun to stream down her dirty face. I thought they were for me. They were not.

‘We both know that Spink would never have allowed them to beat you to death without throwing himself into the fray. It runs counter to all that he is. And yet, Nevare, you have left him believing that somehow he allowed it to happen and emerged from it with only a few bruises. Amzil must believe that as well; she insists that he sacrificed you to save her. They are both miserable. Last night, for the first time, Spink decided that he needed Gettys Tonic. Rum and laudanum. It let him sleep, but when he awoke, he looked no better. So he took a half-dose and went off to his duties. He left in a haze. Amzil dosed both herself and the children into oblivion; they were still sleeping when I left. I do not know what is to become of any of them.

‘Spink resisted both the gloom and the terror of the magic for so long. Now that he has crumbled twice, I fear his walls are breached. I do not think—’

Her words ran out as if her private fear was too terrible to utter aloud. She gave a half-sob and before I could speak, asked me angrily, ‘Do not you see, Nevare? What you have chosen for all of us saves none of us! The magic will still destroy us; it will just take longer to do it.’ She swung her gaze to Lisana. ‘And so I will say it again. The “bargain” you offered me was a cheat and a sham. I did as you asked, I did as the magic asked, and in return, all will be taken from me.’

‘I do not control the magic,’ Lisana replied stiffly. ‘It does as befits the People.’ Her words were cold but I suspected that she had been moved by what Epiny had said.

‘Can you see her? Can you speak to her?’ Soldier’s Boy asked wildly.

Epiny glared at him. ‘She’s right there. Cannot you see her?’

Lisana answered her question. ‘As I told you. I cannot control the will of the magic. Soldier’s Boy does not see me, and I can speak only to the facet of him that is Nevare. Perhaps it is our punishment for failure. Perhaps it is simply the effect of dividing the soul. One half often acquires an ability at the expense of the other half.’ She hesitated and added in a low voice, ‘I never foresaw that he would remain divided this long. Whole, I think he would succeed.’

‘I cannot see her. I cannot hear her. I cannot touch her.’ The frustration in Soldier’s Boy’s voice was apparent. Olikea, behind him, looked affronted.

I knew what it was, without understanding it. ‘I kept that part. I kept the part that lets me see and speak with Tree Woman in this world. Because—’ I fumbled towards knowledge and guessed, ‘Because that part had always belonged mostly to me. When Soldier’s Boy was with you, he was in your world. I had to reach to speak to you from mine.’

‘Do you think so?’ Lisana asked me, and it was a genuine question.

Epiny sank down exhausted on the moss. She pushed her tumbled hair back from her sweaty face. ‘What does it matter? It’s all destroyed. There is nothing in this life left for any of us. It does not matter who you love, Nevare, in what world. Neither you nor the one who wears your body will have joy and peace. And I must go home to the slow destruction of mine.’

‘Epiny.’ I spoke quickly, before I could change my mind, before Lisana could silence me. ‘Go home to Spink. Tell him the truth. That I used magic on him. That he did nothing cowardly. I used him to get Amzil safely away.’

‘And of course he will believe me,’ Epiny replied, sarcasm cutting through the grief in her voice. ‘He will not think me mad, oh no.’

‘He will believe you if you give him proof.’ I wracked my brain for an instant. ‘Tell him to go to the graveyard and talk to Kesey. Ask Kesey if he had a strange dream the morning I died. Ask Kesey if my sword was on the floor when he woke. If he tells the truth, Spink will have his proof.’ I hesitated. ‘And if you must, tell him to ask Scout Tiber. He had a glimpse of me as I fled that morning. I’d just as soon he wasn’t reminded of it, but if Spink doubts still, have him ask Tiber.’

Epiny was still breathing hard, her shoulders rising and falling with it. ‘And Amzil,’ she demanded. ‘What about Amzil?’

‘I think it is better that she continues to believe that I am dead.’

‘Why?’ she demanded.

I hesitated. My reason sounded vain, even to myself. ‘Because she is a stubborn woman. I think she might attempt to come after me and rescue me, if she thought I had given up everything to save her. If she knew how I loved her, she might risk herself.’

Epiny rubbed her hands over her eyes. The soot and tears combined to smear a mask across her face. ‘Perhaps I know her better than you, in some ways. She is also a pragmatic woman. She puts her children first in her life.’

She paused, and I bowed my head. She had said enough. I understood. Then she added, ‘But I think it would mean a great deal to her to know that she had been loved that way by a man, at least once in her life.’

I thought about that. I thought about how much Amzil’s whispered words in Gettys the night she had helped me escape meant to me. Epiny was right. It was good to know such things, even if they could have no consummation.

‘You may tell her, also, then,’ I conceded. ‘And you can tell her that I loved her. Love her still, even though I must leave her.’

Epiny gave a strangled laugh. ‘I not only “may”, I can, and therefore I shall, Nevare. I have not forgotten how shamed and foolish I felt to discover how long you and Spink had kept a secret from me. I will not do that to Amzil!’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and meant it.

She glanced away from me to Soldier’s Boy. He was glaring, a flat-eyed intimidating stare. He wanted to blame someone for his inability to see Tree Woman but could not decide whom. It startled me to realize that my face could look so mean. The expression deepened the lines in his face; that made me wonder if it was a look I had often worn without being aware of it. Epiny looked from him to Lisana. ‘Does he know what’s going on? That you’re letting me talk to the real Nevare?’

‘He has never been stupid,’ Lisana said, with some pride in her voice. ‘But like Nevare, he has suffered from being incomplete. That can happen when a soul is divided; part becomes impulsive, and the other half indecisive. Half can be given to dramatic shows while the other half expresses next to no emotion at all. One acts without thinking; the other thinks without acting.’

Epiny looked from one to the other of us. ‘That makes sense,’ she said calmly.

Soldier’s Boy spoke. ‘I know what is happening here. I do not know why she is permitting it. Make the most of it, Gernian woman. It will not happen again.’ He crossed his arms on his chest.

‘What are you waiting for? We’ve put out the fire. You should kill that woman and leave. Look at her. She’s sickly. She looks like a string with a knot tied in it; how can any woman that skinny be pregnant? Do it and be done with it, Soldier’s Boy. You are wasting strength that you will need if you are to quick-walk us to the People tonight.’ Olikea spoke in Speck. I do not think Epiny understood her words but her disdain was unmistakable. Epiny smoothed her hair back from her face and turned aside from Olikea without making any response or even seeming to notice her. I wondered if Olikea even recognized that Gernian snub.

‘He is right,’ Lisana said. ‘Your time is short. Nevare, you begged this from me. You said you could send her home. Speak whatever final words you have to say to her, and then you must be on your way.’

‘Send me home!’ Epiny said, sparks of anger kindling in her sunken eyes. ‘Send me home? Am I a dog then, to be told, “Get home!” and I obediently trot along?’

‘No!’ I said hastily. ‘No. That’s not it at all. Epiny, you have to listen to me now. You can do no good here. Go home to Spink and Amzil and her children. Do what you can for them, comfort them with the truth, if you think it will be comfort, and above all, have a care for yourself and your baby. Do whatever you can for my little sister. Yaril is beyond my reach now.’

‘What? What are you going to do? And why are you speaking to me like this, instead of—Why does he have your body?’

‘I don’t really know. I think that his part of me is the stronger half now, and so he gets his way. I am where he was after I first defeated him.’

Lisana was nodding silently.

‘Nevare, you must try to be stronger! You must fight him and take control of your body again. Come back to Gettys. Look at you. You’ve lost the fat. You could be a real soldier now.’

‘Epiny, think! I could also be hanged for escaping from my cell, once they realized that they hadn’t killed me the first time. There is nothing left for me back in Gettys.’

‘He can not prevail against Soldier’s Boy,’ Lisana said quietly. ‘His time is past. He had his chance and he failed. His solutions have not solved anything. It is time for him to let go, to become a part of Soldier’s Boy and time for Soldier’s Boy to try his way. They need to unite their strengths.’

Epiny’s face changed. Her expression hardened and something very like hatred shone in her eyes. ‘I will not let you destroy him,’ she said. ‘He will fight you and I will fight you. We are stronger than you know. He will take back his body, and he will come back to us. I know he will.’

Lisana shook her head. She spoke calmly, patiently. ‘No. He will not. You would be wiser to listen to him. Go home. Take care of what is yours. When your child is born, leave this place and go back to your own lands.’

Epiny stared at Lisana levelly. ‘I won’t give up on Nevare. If you want me to leave, you will have to give me back my cousin.’

Lisana didn’t smile nor snarl. Her face was impassive. ‘I believe that when they are one, they will succeed where both failed before. I believe that then he will accept whatever magical task he must do, and that when he does it, the intruders will leave our land. What I am offering you is a chance to save yourself and your child. Go now, before you are driven out. I do not know how the magic will rid our lands of the intruders, but I do not think it will be gentle. Gentleness and persuasion have been tried without success. The time for that is past.’

‘I won’t give up on Nevare,’ Epiny repeated. She said it as if perhaps Lisana had not heard her or had not been paying attention. ‘I don’t believe he will give up. He will keep trying, and when he is strong enough, he will take back his life from Soldier’s Boy, and he will come back to us.’

I tried to think of some response.

She smiled at me and added, ‘And if he does not, then come next summer, when the days are long and hot and the forest is dry, I will burn your forest. All of it.’ She was suddenly calm. She folded her hands together and held them in front of her. She did not look at me at all. Her face and hands were dirty, her dress smudged and torn and her hair was falling down all around her face. But it was as if all her sorrow and pain had drained out of her, as if nothing were left but the determination; she was like a shining steel blade drawn from its worn scabbard.

‘This is the gratitude of a Gernian,’ Lisana observed coldly. ‘The magic kept its word to you. I have shown you your cousin, alive as promised, and even interceded that you might say farewell to him. I have offered you a chance to escape to the west with your baby. And in return, you threaten to destroy us.’

I knew that Soldier’s Boy could not hear Lisana’s words, and yet he seemed to reply to them. ‘I will kill her now,’ Soldier’s Boy announced, and Olikea, grim-faced, nodded.

Epiny probably did not understand the words he spoke in Speck, but she recognized the threat. It did not move her. ‘You can kill me,’ Epiny said. ‘I doubt it would be difficult for you.’ She lifted her chin, as if baring her throat to him. Her eyes remained locked with Lisana’s. Epiny didn’t say anything else. Yet danger hovered in the air, unspoken and all the more worrisome that it was undefined.

‘Kill her,’ Olikea said quietly. There was fear and desire in her voice. ‘Use this.’ She drew a knife from a sheath on her belt and offered it to him. It had a black, glittering blade; obsidian. A memory stirred. It was as sharp as a razor, a knife fit for a mage who must not touch iron.

Soldier’s Boy took it from her, then looked about helplessly, as if seeking guidance. He could not hear Lisana. He could not seek her guidance and Epiny’s fearless acceptance of her position clearly bothered him. I saw him decide there was something he didn’t know. I wondered if there were, or if Epiny was bluffing. I longed to ask her and knew I could not even look as if I wondered. I tried for a small smile to match hers. I probably failed.

Soldier’s Boy decided. He struck with the knife.

I felt his decision a split moment before he acted. Two things happened in the next instant. I stopped him. I didn’t know how I did it, but I stopped him in mid-lunge. It startled him, and worse, it burned more of his small reserve of magic. I’d actually used his magic against him, to prevent him injuring Epiny. I was as surprised as he was.

And Epiny, despite her ungainly pregnancy, ducked down abruptly and then lunged towards the hatchet that Olikea had dropped. She hit the ground harder than she had planned; I heard her grunt of pain. But she came up gripping the hatchet, her teeth bared in triumph. ‘Let’s see what happens when you get hit with cold iron!’ she threatened him, and she threw it, as hard as she could, at Soldier’s Boy’s head. It made a nasty solid noise as the butt of it hit his forehead. He dropped. I do not know if it was the force of the impact or the iron hitting his body, but he shuddered, twitched, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Likari’s mouth hung open in an ‘O’ of shock. Olikea screamed like a scalded cat and rushed Epiny.

And I watched, helpless. Not only was I disembodied, but the only body I could have hoped to affect was unconscious. Olikea was taller than Epiny, heavier, accustomed to more physical activity and unencumbered by clothes or pregnancy. She flung herself on Epiny as a cat leaps on prey. Epiny dodged to one side but still went down beneath her onslaught. Both women were shrieking, the most unhallowed sound that I had ever heard. Epiny used language I would not have suspected her of knowing, and fought with a strength and ferocity that astounded me. She fought to defend her unborn child as much as herself. Olikea was on top but Epiny writhed in her grip to face her and drew first blood, raking her nails down Olikea’s face and breast. For all that Epiny’s clothing encumbered her, it also protected her from casual damage, and when Epiny rolled to one side, drew her leg up and then managed to kick Olikea in the belly, her boots became a definite advantage.

As Olikea gasped, Epiny crawled frantically away. I thought she was trying to escape, but as Olikea recovered and went after Epiny, my cousin once more snatched up the fallen hatchet. Olikea, thinking herself threatened, grabbed the flint knife that still rested in Soldier’s Boy’s slack hand. But Epiny did not come at her; instead, she pressed the blade of her weapon to Soldier’s Boy’s throat. ‘Back off!’ she snarled. ‘Back off, or neither of us gets him. He’ll be dead.’ They did not share a language, but the threat was as obvious as the blade held to his throat.

In that moment, I suddenly realized that it was me they were fighting over. I was astounded.

Olikea froze. Epiny remained as she was, crouching over Soldier’s Boy, the cold iron of the hatchet not quite touching his throat. She looked feral and predatory, hunkered over my body. Then she caught her breath, gave a small grunt of pain and put her hand on her belly and rubbed it softly, almost reassuringly.

‘You won’t kill him,’ Olikea asserted after a moment. ‘He is your cousin.’

Epiny stared at her, and then looked at me. I translated for her. ‘She says you won’t kill me because I’m your cousin.’

‘No,’ Epiny retorted bluntly. ‘Right now, he isn’t. My cousin is over there.’ With her empty hand, she pointed to my disembodied essence hovering near Lisana. ‘This, this creature in his body is something that Tree Woman and the magic made. It might have been part of my cousin once, but she twisted it into something completely foreign to what Nevare is. And rather than see that creature masquerading as Nevare, I will kill him. Without compunction. I will not let this beast pretend he is Nevare Burvelle.’

I watched Olikea listen to the flood of foreign words. None of them were needed; she knew all she needed to know by the blade that hovered over my throat.

Lisana spoke. ‘Soldier’s Boy is as much your cousin is Nevare Burvelle is. When he came to me, sent by that old Kidona to be his warrior champion, I captured him and divided his soul. Deny it as you wish, but Soldier’s Boy is not a separate creature from your cousin. Both parts of him are needed to be a whole. You cannot cast him out of the body. Kill him, and you kill your cousin, the Nevare you know, just as surely. Have you the will to kill Nevare to keep Soldier’s Boy from using the body?’

Olikea could not hear Lisana’s words. She had risen and was slowly circling Epiny, her knife low and ready. ‘Now, what will you do, you skinny Gernian wretch? Kill him and I’ll kill you. I’m bigger than you, and stronger. You know I’ll win. How long can you crouch over him, threatening him? What will you do when he wakes up?’

‘I don’t know,’ Epiny replied, but she answered Lisana, not Olikea. ‘It seems we are at an impasse.’ After a moment, she added, ‘If my cousin Nevare is never to regain his body and his life, and I am to be attacked and killed anyway, then neither of us have anything to lose if I kill him now. Do you agree with that?’

I was silent, considering the question. I didn’t know what would become of me if Epiny killed my body. Did I care? Just the fact that I had no immediate answer to that question made me mute. For most of my life, I’d had goals that had driven me. What did I have now? Perhaps, like Epiny, I’d reached a dead end. Briefly, my cousin’s gaze met mine. I saw love in her eyes, but also resolution and resignation.

It did not look good for my body. Slowly, I nodded at her. She shifted her gaze to Lisana. ‘You see?’

Lisana was quiet for a time. Then she asked abruptly, ‘What do you want, Gernian? What will it take to make you leave this place and never return?’

Epiny was silent for a moment. I could see her hand trembling. I think the hatchet was getting heavy in her grip. ‘I assume you mean without killing him,’ she said after a pause.

‘Yes.’ Lisana bit off the word.

‘Talk to ME!’ Olikea abruptly demanded. ‘I am the one who is here. I am the one who can kill you!’ She made a menacing motion with her knife.

‘Shut up!’ Epiny barked at her, and touched the hatchet blade to Soldier’s Boy’s throat. He made a small sound in his throat. Olikea took a step back, glowering at her.

‘She’s dangerous, Epiny. Be very careful. She’ll kill you if she can.’

‘I know that,’ Epiny said hoarsely. ‘I may have to kill your body.’ Tears filled her eyes and spilled but only anger showed on her face. ‘How can it be any worse, Nevare? Shall I go down whimpering and begging for mercy? I doubt any would be shown. If I must lose it all, then at least I’ll extract a price from them. They’ll know I was here; I won’t be stepped on like an ant.’

The desperate courage in her words moved me. ‘You should have been your father’s soldier son,’ I told her quietly.

‘He’s waking up!’ Likari cried aloud. I’d almost forgotten the boy was there. He’d hovered at the outskirts, watching everything but saying and doing little. Now he pointed at my body. My eyelids fluttered and Soldier’s Boy’s hands twitched against the mossy ground.

Epiny might not have understood Likari’s words, but the tone alerted her. She lowered the hatchet until its blade rested against Soldier’s Boy’s throat. He made an incoherent sound. I did not know if he protested the bite of the sharp edge or the burn of cold iron against his throat. Epiny leaned forward over him, so close that all he could see was her face. I watched his eyes blink bewilderedly and then focus on her. She spoke in a low growl.

‘Don’t move. Listen to me. Tell that woman with the knife and the boy with the waterskin to go away. Tell them that you don’t want them to hurt me. Send them down to wait by the stream. Tell them to stay there until you come to them. Say only those words. I will know what you say. If you say any more than that, or any less than that, I’ll kill you. Do you understand me?’

He licked his lips and rolled his eyes to look at Olikea. Epiny didn’t hesitate. She pressed the blade more firmly to his throat. Distantly, I felt it slice my skin and more intensely, I felt the hot/cold kiss of iron against my flesh. It made my magic bleed, and that was more painful than the fine cut it scored on my skin. ‘Please, don’t!’ Soldier’s Boy croaked. Epiny eased up but didn’t move the blade.

‘Tell them,’ she said quietly.

‘Olikea. Likari. Go down the ridge to the stream. Wait for me there. Don’t do anything else right now, just wait down there until I come.’

Epiny’s glance flickered to me. I confirmed that she’d been obeyed. ‘He did as you told him. He’s ordered them to go down to the stream and wait.’

Olikea looked rebellious. Likari wriggled in an agony of curiosity, but then obediently turned and started away. ‘Shall I leave you here, at her mercy?’ Olikea began in protest, but Soldier’s Boy broke in on her words with, ‘Go. Just go now, or she’ll kill me. I can manage this situation better if you are not here, Olikea. Go down to the stream. Wait for me there.’

‘Oh, you look so much in control of the situation!’ Olikea snarled. She glared at Epiny and kept the obsidian blade at the ready as she backed away. ‘Some day, Gernian woman. Some day it will be just you and me.’ Then she turned angrily on Likari. ‘Why are you still standing there? He told us to go wait by the stream. And that is what we must do.’

‘He told her to go away, and she and the boy are leaving.’ I hastily interpreted before Epiny could look at me. I wanted her to keep her wary gaze on Olikea. ‘But she threatened that some day she’d get back at you.’

‘That’s fine,’ Epiny said, almost absently. There was strain in her voice. She kept her gaze fixed on Olikea and Likari, watching them until they were out of sight. Crouching over me, pressing the knife to my throat was uncomfortable for her. Her pregnant belly got in her way. I could see that it was hard for her to remain still, the hatchet blade pressed lightly to my throat, and all her weight on her bent knees.

‘And now what?’ Lisana asked in a low voice. ‘What will you do now? Do you think this is over? That Soldier’s Boy will let you just walk away after you have threatened the forest?’

Epiny blew the hair away from her eyes and then looked up at Lisana. ‘And do you think it’s a good idea to ask me that question while I’m in this position? The simplest way for me to resolve it would be to cut his throat and go my way. By the time they realize he’s not coming, I’ll be long gone.’

‘Do you think the forest would allow you to escape that easily?’ Lisana countered.

Epiny sighed. ‘No. I don’t think the forest or the magic will allow any of us to escape. It wants the impossible. It wants to reverse the flow of the years, it wants to go back to when Gernians came here only to trade for furs and then to leave. It won’t happen. It can’t happen. And as long as the magic demands that, there will never be a resolution. Not for any of us.’

I looked from Epiny’s bowed head to the sweat drops rolling slowly down my own face and then up at Lisana. Epiny was right. As the thought came to me, I felt as if my existence wavered. The magic was weakening. Lisana was weary and there was little magic left in my own body for me to draw on.

‘Epiny! I’m fading. I’m sorry. I did what I thought was wise, but it helped no one. Not even me. Farewell. I loved all of you the best that I could. Get away if you can. Get all of you away.’

Suddenly I was in my body, looking up at Epiny. I think she saw me in Soldier’s Boy’s eyes, because she said softly, ‘You stopped him from killing me. Remember that you could do that. Believe you’ll eventually find that strength again, that you’ll master him again. Until then, I’m sorry, Nevare. I’m sure you’d do the same thing in my place. And you know, you really deserve this.’

She lifted the hatchet from my throat, but before I could stir, she reversed her grip on it. The blunt end of it hit me squarely between the eyes, and I knew nothing more.