by Robin Hobb
There was a freeze on the third night. There had been twinges of frost before, enough to hasten the turning of the leaves, but that night, the cold reached beneath the forest eaves. Despite the mossy nest and deep blanket of leaves, they all shivered through the night. Soldier’s Boy awoke aching, and Olikea and Likari were both grumpy. In response to Olikea’s complaints, Soldier’s Boy told her, “We will travel tonight. I have regained enough reserves that we will go swiftly. For now, go about your gathering. I will return shortly. ”
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“Where are you going?”
“I go to the road’s end. I will not stay there long; have food ready for me when I return. ”
“This is a foolish risk you take. There will be workers there; they may attack you. ”
“They will not see me,” Soldier’s Boy said firmly. And with that as his farewell, he set out.
As Soldier’s Boy had recovered his reserves and strength, so had I. He was still not as immense as he had been, but he had regained flesh and energy. He moved purposefully through the forest. The fallen leaves carpeted the moss. They rustled as he strode through them. As he approached the road’s end, Soldier’s Boy slowed and went more cautiously. For a large man, he moved very quietly, and he paused often to listen.
He heard only birdcalls and, once, the thump and rustle of a disturbed rabbit. Emboldened, he ventured closer to what had been the road. Stillness reigned.
By this hour of the day, workers should have arrived, but there were no signs of them. He moved cautiously along the edge of the road. The greenery I had sent out across it had browned, but the vines and crawling brambles had survived and looked undisturbed. Where I had sent plants to block the culverts, swamps had formed on either side of the road. Insects buzzed and hummed near them.
He came to the shed where the men had been keeping watch that night. It was deserted. He walked through it and found the dice still out on the rough table just as the men had abandoned them. No one had been back here since that night.
“Perhaps it was not a total waste of magic,” he conceded reluctantly. “It looks as if the intruders are discouraged. I do not think they will come back before spring. ”
He had turned back into the forest before I realized that he had deliberately spoken to me.
“I thought I was doing what the magic wanted me to do. ” I could not decide if I wanted to apologize to him or not. It seemed strange to apologize to myself, and even more so to have to apologize for an action I’d been pushed into taking. I wasn’t even certain that he was aware of what I’d tried to say to him. I thought of the times when I’d thought I’d felt Soldier’s Boy stir inside me, the moments when my thoughts had seemed more Speckish than Gernian. Always, I’d felt that he deliberately concealed himself from me. Now I wondered if he had tried to share his views, only to feel as smothered as I did.
He spoke again, almost grudgingly, as if reluctant to acknowledge me. “The magic was mine, not yours to spend. And the magic speaks to me, not you. You should not have tampered with it. ”
He seemed to resent me as much as I did him. It scarcely seemed fair. He was the one who had invaded my life. I reined in my resentment and asked my most pressing question.
“Do you know what the magic wants you to do?”
He grinned hard. I sensed him weighing whether or not to reply. When he did, I felt it was because he could not resist the urge to brag. “Several times, I have acted on what the magic wished me to do. ”
“When? What did you do?”
“You don’t remember the Dancing Spindle?”
“Of course I do. ” At the Dancing Spindle, actions I had taken had ended the Spindle’s dance forever, and dispersed the magic of the Plainspeople. I knew now that Soldier’s Boy had taken into himself as much of their magic as he could hold and had hoarded it. “But what else? When else did you obey the magic?”
His grin grew wider. “You don’t know, do you? That amuses me. Because at the time, I thought I felt you resisting me. And even now, I do not think I would be wise to tell you the things the magic prompted me to do. There were small things that I did, things that made no sense to me. But I did them. And I kept them from you, lest you try to undo them. You thought you had pushed me down; you thought you had absorbed me and made me a part of you. But I won then. And I’ve won now, Gernian. I will prevail. ”
I nearly warned him not to be too certain of that. Then I decided not to provoke him to keep his guard up against me. He spoke no more to me but found and followed the stream to rejoin Likari and Olikea. She was sitting close by the fire, her arms wrapped around her naked body. The day had warmed, but not much.
“Finding food would keep you warmer,” he told her. “This is the last day we shall spend here. We’ll eat, and then sleep until nightfall. ”
“There isn’t much left to find here!” Olikea protested, but just then Likari made a lie of her words.
He ran up to me, proudly displaying six silver fish hung from a willow wand through their gills. “I caught them all myself!” he exclaimed. His hands and forearms were bright red from exposure to the icy waters.
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“Wonderful!” Soldier’s Boy praised him and rumpled the boy’s hair. The child wriggled like a happy puppy. Olikea took the fish with a sour expression on her face and went to work cleaning them of guts and scales. Soldier’s Boy went back to the stream and began eating water-grass stems. He would have preferred to eat the foods richest in magic potential, but lacking those, he would fill my belly with anything that was edible.
When Olikea returned from her gathering, a hastily woven carry sack held big mushrooms and a quantity of prickly cones. She gave the cones to Likari, and he pounded them on a rock by the stream to shake loose the fat seeds inside them. The mushrooms were thick and dense, with ranks of tubes rather than gills on the undersides of their orange caps. Olikea cut them into fat slices to toast over the fire with the fish.
After everyone had eaten, they all arranged themselves in the moss-and-leaves nest to sleep for the rest of the day. I felt no need for such rest. Instead, trapped behind the darkness of Soldier Boy’s closed eyes, my thoughts chased their own tails in endless circles. What had he done for the magic that I hadn’t even known about, and when had he done it? In dread, I thought of the times I had awakened from sleep-walking to find myself outside my cabin. Had it happened then? Or had it occurred when I was home in Widevale, or even while I was still at the Academy? I recalled how the Speck dancers had come to Old Thares with the traveling carnival. When I had seen them, I had lifted my hand and given them the sign to release the dreaded Speck plague on our capital city. Yes. I could see now that that had been the work of Soldier’s Boy. But what else had he done that I’d scarcely been aware of? Had he influenced my thoughts about my father? Had he precipitated my quarrel with Carsina?
When I decided that wondering about it was futile, my thoughts turned to Epiny, Spink, and Amzil. I wondered if Epiny had reached her home safely, and if she had been able to convince both Spink and Amzil that I was still alive and that they had not failed me. I wondered about the rest of Gettys as well. I was fairly certain that my death would be dismissed easily. I doubted that there would be any serious inquiry into it. Gettys was a town composed of soldiers, penal workers, and former penal workers and their families. The Speck magic flooded the town with alternating tides of fear and despair. It was a place where violence and crime were as common as the dust blowing through the streets. A man beaten to death by a mob would only briefly shock the inhabitants, and no one else would ever know of it. I imagined that the official report, if there were one, would say that a condemned prisoner, Nevare Burv, had been shot to death while attempting to escape.
The knowledge that I was actually the son of Lord Burvelle of the East would have died with Colonel Haren. I was fairly certain that he would not have confided it to anyone else.
So there would be no formal notification of my father. I wondered how Spink and Epiny would explain my death to my sister, and if she would pass the news on to my father and Sergeant Duril, my old mentor. I hoped that Yaril would have the strength of will to keep the news to herself. My father had disowned me; to hear that I had died while escaping a death sentence would only vindicate his poor opinion of me. As for Sergeant Duril, he knew how easy it was for soldiers to lose contact with families and friends. Let me simply fade out of his life and his memories, without any knowledge of my shame. I didn’t want the old soldier to think that somehow his teaching had failed me or that I had turned my back on all I had learned from him. Let me be forgotten by them.
And what did I hope for myself? Hope. It seemed a bitter word now. What hope could I have, imprisoned in my own flesh and about to be borne off to the Speck Wintering Place? I had no idea where that was, nor could I begin to guess what Soldier’s Boy planned for the future. Obviously he was committed to the magic. He would do whatever he thought he must to drive the Gernians back west into our own lands. How far would he go?
I’d heard rumors of another Speck Great Man, the most powerful one of all. I racked my memory for his name and then had it. Kinrove. Olikea had mentioned him as someone she hoped I would surpass; I imagined that she hoped Soldier’s Boy would supplant him as the most powerful Great One. Lisana had mentioned him in another way, as had Jodoli. Kinrove was the source of the dance, whatever that was. For years, he had maintained a magic with it, a magic that was supposed to hold the intruders at bay, maybe even drive the Gernians away completely. But it had not, and now the younger men were becoming restless, and talking of bringing war to the Gernians in a way they would understand. No, I corrected myself. In a way “we” would understand. I was still a Gernian, wasn’t I?
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It was hard to pin down what I was anymore. I could not even decide whether to think of myself as “I” or “he. ”
My other self was a frightening mystery to me. I didn’t know what he had already done in obedience to the magic or what he was capable of doing. Well, that wasn’t exactly true, I abruptly realized. He had been capable of turning the Speck plague loose on the Gernian capital city. He’d deliberately infected my fellow cadets of the King’s Cavalla Academy, successfully wiping out half of a future generation of officers. If he could do that, what would he not do? Was this ruthless creature truly a part of myself, an aspect of Nevare Burvelle that Tree Woman had peeled away and infected with the magic? If he had stayed a part of me, would I have been capable of such deadly, traitorous acts? Or would the self that I was now have ameliorated him, balanced his warlike nature with more ethics and philosophy? Was he a better soldier than I was in that he was burdened only with loyalty to “his” people and cause?
Was he the sort of soldier my father had wished me to be?
Such thoughts were not cheering, especially confined as I was to the sleeping body of my enemy. For a short time, I tried to pretend that I had options. I’d stopped him from killing Epiny, hadn’t I? That meant I had some control over him. And I’d been successful in making him hear my thoughts. Did that mean I could influence him? Or, as Epiny had believed, eventually master him again?
I tried to feel my body as I had once felt it, to be aware of tickling leaves against my skin, of Olikea’s hair tangled across my face, of the ball of warmth that was Likari curled against my back. I could sense those things, but when I tried to move a hand or lift my foot, nothing happened. My only achievement in that long afternoon of their nap was to focus my attention on Olikea’s hair on my face. It tickled. It itched. I wanted to move my face away from it. It annoyed me. I nattered and nagged at the sleeping Soldier’s Boy with such thoughts until, with a grunt and a sigh, he lifted a hand to brush her hair away from his face. I had done it!
Or had he, of his own will, simply moved an annoyance away? I had no way of knowing.
As night descended, they stirred, first the boy, and then Soldier’s Boy and Olikea. They had little to do to prepare to travel. Olikea and Likari had left the migrating People in a hurry, rushing to rescue me. She had her hip belt of tools and pouches. The boy filled his water skin for us. We had my winter blanket from my hut. Olikea had saved some cooked fish and water-grass roots in a carry-net. Soldier’s Boy yawned, stretched, and rubbed his face, scratching irritably at his unshaven cheeks. Then he told them, “It’s time to go. Come with me. ”
He took the boy’s hand, but seemed to judge that Olikea could follow on her own. I wondered how he determined who would quick-walk with him. How did he extend the magic to include them? How did he do the magic at all? I sensed nothing, only his desire to travel swiftly now. Perhaps that was all it took. For a time, they walked in what seemed a very ordinary fashion, threading their way quietly through the dusky forest. They came to a faint path through the trees, and Soldier’s Boy grunted and nodded as if pleased at finding something.
After that, we traveled swiftly. His pace didn’t quicken. It seemed to me that he walked as he had before, and the sensations I experienced with him were little different from any walk I’d ever taken. Occasionally I felt a dizzying lurch, or stumbled as if the path had suddenly risen under my feet. That was disconcerting. The trees and brush did not rush past us, yet it took only three steps to climb a steep hill, half a dozen to follow a long ridge, and then in a few strides we dipped down into a valley, crossed a river, and climbed the opposite side. After that, our path led us ever upward. Despite the deepening night, we walked in a brief gray twilight that extended only a few steps ahead of us.
We climbed the flank of a mountain, traversing the steep side, followed a pass, and then crossed yet another mountainside. And always we went higher.
As we climbed, the night grew colder around us. The others hugged themselves and their breath showed white in the moonlight. We were above the tree line now. The ground was hard and cold underfoot. I winced for my unshod feet tramping along such harsh terrain but Soldier’s Boy appeared not to notice.
We came to the mouth of a pass. To either side of us, towering mountains gave us no other option. There was a campsite at the mouth of the pass, an area where many small fires had burned. There was plenty of evidence that a large group or several large groups of people had passed through the area recently. “Are we stopping here until tomorrow?” Olikea asked.
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Soldier’s Boy simply walked on. We followed the pass as it wound its way between two steep-sided mountains. The air was dry and cold and we were soon glad that Likari had filled the water skin. As we trekked on, I became aware of how Soldier’s Boy used the magic in a steady stream. Olikea and Likari kept pace with him. I could sense their weariness. The magic might mean that they covered ground much faster, but hours of walking in the cold at a swift and steady pace were telling on them. “How much farther are we going tonight?” Olikea almost wailed at one point.
“We’ll stop and rest at dawn,” Soldier’s Boy deigned to tell her. “But we’ve passed the best stopping place,” she complained. “I did not prepare for Stone Passage. I thought I would have a chance to gather firewood and more food before we entered it. ”
“Wherever we are at dawn is where we will rest,” he said, ending the discussion.
Soldier’s Boy pushed ruthlessly on. Scowling, Olikea began to salvage items left behind by other migrants. She darted from side to side, picking up ends of torches and bits of firewood that had not completely burned to ash. Soldier’s Boy appeared not to notice, but slowed the pace slightly. When Likari began to lag behind, he gruffly ordered the child to keep up. I felt pity for the boy; he could not have been more than six or seven, and to compel him on this forced march on such a long, cold night seemed cruel to me. If Soldier’s Boy thought about it at all, I could not sense it. The pass grew narrower and narrower and the mountains ever steeper and more sheer. It seemed to me that this path might simply com
e to a dead end, but they all pushed on as if following a familiar way.
By the time dawn began to gray the sky, it was only a stripe of light over our heads. The way we traversed was more like a cavern with a crack in the roof than a pass. I had never even imagined such a place. The filtered light showed me that many folk had passed this way and recently. To either side of us was the detritus of a busy trail: discarded rags, a frayed basket, scraps of food waste, and other litter. Olikea seized the basket and put her wood into it without losing the pace. The light grew stronger, but still Soldier’s Boy walked on. Jodoli had been correct when he said that the magic was harder to summon in the light of day than at night. Soldier’s Boy began to weary and to feel queasy from the way the landscape lurched and jumped as he passed it. Quite abruptly, he came to a halt. “We’ll rest here,” he announced.
“Here?” Likari asked in surprise. “This isn’t a stopping place. ”
“It is now,” Soldier’s Boy replied grumpily. Olikea didn’t say anything. At a gesture from Soldier’s Boy, the water skin was passed around. Olikea dumped her trove of salvaged fuel on the ground in a heap. She stared pointedly at Soldier’s Boy. He puffed his cheeks in refusal.
“Making fire uses too much magic. You light it. ”
For an instant, her lip curled up to bare her teeth. Then she turned her back on him, took out a Gernian-made flint-and-steel set, and set to work. Soldier’s Boy gritted his teeth to the unpleasant buzz of the exposed metal. She used part of the basket as tinder to catch the sparks, and the charred wood caught swiftly. It was not a large fire, but it pushed back the shadows and offered a little warmth. They shared the food Olikea had brought. On this rocky trail, there was no moss for Soldier’s Boy to command and no leaves to blanket them. Soldier’s Boy chose a spot along the edge of the trail wall and lay down. The ground was hard and cold. Olikea circled him, looking unhappy, and then took her place at his side. Likari lay along his back. The one blanket did not cover all their bodies. The dwindling warmth from the dying fire was almost meaningless in such a cold and stony place.