by Robin Hobb
But the aroma of the food mollified the resentment and wariness Soldier’s Boy felt. I was shocked at how his hunger roared back to life at the sight of it. The quality of the food offered to us from Kinrove’s table made our earlier feast seem a crude meal indeed. The style of preparation and the spices used were foreign to me, as was the way the dishes were presented, but I could not quibble with the result. The flavors brought back rich memories to Soldier’s Boy of when Lisana had been alive and had dined as grandly as this every day. This lavishing of attention and catering to needs were how the Specks rewarded their Great Ones. For some years Kinrove had been the Greatest of the Great, but Jodoli and every other Great One anticipated that as they grew in size and mightiness, their kin-clans would pay this sort of homage to them. To sample this lifestyle now was a foretaste of what might come. Likari’s beaming little face betrayed that he was very much enjoying himself. Olikea looked around with greedy eyes, storing up her memories of this wonderful night. This was what she aspired to; she would live as Galea did, waited on hand and foot and accorded all the respect due to the favored feeder of a Great One.
There was little conversation; talking would have interfered with the eating. Olikea asserted her right to be the one to serve food to Soldier’s Boy, and this she did so assiduously that my mouth was scarcely ever empty. Firada was there to tend to Jodoli’s needs. She appeared to compete with her younger sister to be even more attentive to Jodoli than Olikea was to me. A moment later, I realized there was competition there, not for the food but for how much of it each of us could consume. Soldier’s Boy was sated and more than sated, but Olikea kept pressing him to eat, enticing him to try a bite of this or to have just one more mouthful of that. Behavior that had been shameful at my brother’s wedding less than two years ago was now hailed as the height of manners. Not only did Soldier’s Boy honor Kinrove with enjoyment of his food, he achieved status for himself as he continued to eat long after Jodoli had turned his face away from Firada’s entreaties.
The only competition was the young female Great One who had earlier expressed the desire to kill me. Between bites, Soldier’s Boy watched her from the corner of my eye and tried to overhear the few words that were spoken by her. I gleaned that her name was Dasie and that her people lived to the north of my Specks. Soldier’s Boy searched the recollections Lisana had shared with him. In summer, the two kin-clans had little to do with each other. It was only in winter when they came to the coast and shared the same hunting grounds under the eaves of the evergreen forest that the kin-clans crossed paths. But they shared with our kin-clan what we shared with every Speck kin-clan: the Valley of the Ancestor Trees. Their Great Ones were entombed there, living in the kaembra trees just as ours were. The two trees that had been the first to fall had been their eldest elders. My kin-clan mourned them as a loss to the People, but Dasie and her kin-clan mourned them as murdered relatives. It did not matter that the people embodied in the trees had died generations ago; if anything, it made their lingering awareness and wisdom all the more precious. The Gernians had destroyed their deepest link to their past. Their hatred burned hot. And so she watched as Soldier’s Boy ate, and I watched her. Her primary feeders were two men, one about my age and the other a man of about forty years. They conferred with each other as they fed her, and several times Soldier’s Boy caught the younger man staring at him with extreme dislike.
This was not at all the initial meeting that I had expected with Kinrove, and I wondered again what his strategy was in inviting us here. That his feeder hoped to win the use of the fertility image I understood. But looking at the man and feeling the sense of command that he exuded, I doubted that was the whole of why we had been summoned. The tension between him and Dasie was palpable. Why was she here? What did she hope to gain? I suspected that Kinrove played a deeper political game than we knew. It worried me.
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I began to wish that Soldier’s Boy had not eaten earlier. My belly was uncomfortably distended now. He no longer ate with pleasure. Instead, he watched Dasie and matched her bite for bite. She was slowing; her feeders bent over her, urging her to continue eating. She accepted another bite.
It was only then that I became aware of Olikea’s role. She was showing a substantial portion of food each time she held it to Soldier’s Boy’s mouth, but a good part of it she was palming, making it appear that he was eating a lot more than he actually was. A flush of anger and frustration passed over Dasie’s face, and she abruptly turned away from her feeders. Olikea made a mime of feeding him not just one, but two more mouthfuls of food before she warned Soldier’s Boy, loud enough to be overheard, “I think you should stop for now, Great One. Later, I promise you, I will find more food for you. ”
We had won. Soldier’s Boy breathed a soft sigh of relief. His gut ached, but as he looked slowly from Dasie’s sulky countenance to a chastened Jodoli, he knew it had been worth it. He had established himself in the order. He lifted his gaze to Kinrove. His feeder was starting a pipe for him. The Great Man gave no sign he was aware of what had just happened, but Soldier’s Boy was smugly certain that he was. Kinrove spoke.
“We have eaten together, and I trust you took pleasure in my food. Now let us speak to one another, for I would hear what is happening with the People, both far and near. Jodoli has told me of the kin-clan you share, Nevare. His words have saddened me. It is a great loss for us to know that yet more of our ancestor trees have fallen. And yet I savor my triumph as well. Many have spoken against my dance, saying that it costs our people too much. But what cost is too high to pay for keeping our ancestor trees? If the dance stops and the Jhernians flood forward with their iron blades to fell our ancestral groves, what good does it do that we are still alive here?” His hands moved as he asked each question. They spoke as eloquently as his words. “Does the leaf outlive the branch? The dance continues to protect our forest. Without it, I believe that all our ancestors would have been slaughtered by now. Without my dance, by now the Jhernians would be standing right here, and our magic would be lost. The People would be ended. But my great dance makes the fear that holds them at bay. My great dance sends weariness and despair rolling down on them. Against my dance, they have not prevailed and they will not prevail. Only my dance has saved us. ”
He smiled down on us, as if inviting us to agree with him. Jodoli nodded slowly, but Dasie only looked at him with narrowed eyes. Soldier’s Boy was very still, waiting and watching. I noticed what he apparently did not; Olikea looked at Kinrove with stark horror. Kinrove looked at Soldier’s Boy, still smiling with his lips, but his eyes were waiting for his response and weighing his value as he did so.
Soldier’s Boy finally spoke. “The intruders are still there, Great One Kinrove. They still intend to cut the trees and to build a road that will bring them to our winter grounds. The Trading Place is full of their goods, and iron is traded without regard for the well-being of our magic. Our own people bring the most dangerous parts of the intruders among us. Simply holding them back will not prevail. I do not speak against your dance, but I do not think it is enough to save us. ”
Next to me, Olikea jumped as Dasie suddenly spoke. “The intruder at least speaks the truth! The dance isn’t enough, Kinrove! The dance is not enough to protect us! And at the same time, the dance is too much. It is too much of a price for the People to pay. You sit on your throne and call yourself the Greatest of the Great! You smile and say you have saved us, that our trees still stand, as if we should forget the ones who have fallen. As if we should forget those who dance and dance and dance to work your magic. Six years ago, before the magic touched me and I became a Great One, do you know what I was, Kinrove? I was a child weeping for my kin-clan. For that was the year that you sent the magic on us, sent it on your own people, to command those that it touched to come and be part of your dance. Sixteen of my kin-clan came to answer your call. Sixteen: two old men, nine young women, four young men, and one boy. Th
at boy was my brother, just a year older than I was. ”
She paused as if waiting for him to deny it. Kinrove just looked down at her quietly. His words, when they came, were without mercy. “Every kin-clan has sent dancers. Your kin-clan has not contributed in any greater way than any other. We must have dancers for the dance. ”
“How many of those taken from my clan six years ago still live? How many still dance for you?” She paused, but did not really give him a chance to respond. Soldier’s Boy was listening intently. I shared his focus; I sensed we were close to the heart of a mystery. Olikea had been standing behind him, her hands resting possessively on his shoulders. At Dasie’s words, her fingers had slowly closed until she gripped his robe with knotted fists. He could hear her tension in her breathing and feel it in her stance. What was this?
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“I will tell you, Kinrove. For before I came into your grand pavilion this evening, I stood and watched your dancers pass. I watched them make three circuits. I studied each face as each one passed. I saw no joy in any of them. Only fear. Or despair. Many wore the look of one who knows that death is soon to come. A few hate you, Kinrove. Did you know that? Do you ever go outside and look at the faces of those you have called to dance? Have you forgotten that once your dancers were the People?”
The pavilion had grown quiet. Serving folk still moved, but they had slowed, as if they lingered to hear an answer. The importance of her question sang silently in the air around us. The drumming and horns and the endless shuffling of the dancers seemed to grow louder in that stillness.
Kinrove’s answer was not as strong as it could have been. “The magic calls the dancers. I but send it out. Every year, in rotation, it goes to a different kin-clan. It goes forth and it summons, and some answer that summons. I cannot control who is called. I do only what is needed. And those who are called and come here to dance, dance for all of us. It is not a shameful calling. When they die, they are buried with respect. Their lives have served us all well. ”
“They have not had lives!” Dasie asserted in response. “Especially not those who answer the call when they are little more than children. Their lives stop on the day they come to you. What do they do from that day hence, Great One? Do they laugh or take mates? Do they have children or hunt or talk around the fire in the evening with their neighbors? Do they have any life of their own? NO! They dance. Endlessly. They dance until they drop, and then they are dragged away from the chain for a brief rest, fed the herbs and foods that will fill their bodies with energy again, and then they are taken back to the dance. They dance until they are mindless, nothing more than bodies in motion, like spindles weaving your dance of magic. And then they die. Why are their deaths so unimportant to you? Why are their deaths worth so much less than the death of a person who left his body a hundred years ago?”
I felt the same shiver that ran up Soldier’s Boy’s back. I knew what the magic’s call to me had done to my life. I thought of all the dancers I had glimpsed so briefly on my way into the pavilion.
I tried to imagine what it would be like to serve the magic in an endless dance. I knew how the magic had commanded me. I’d seen what it had done to Hitch. But what if it had demanded of me that I dance, endlessly, in a circle? What if I’d known that the dance would be the final sum of all my life? What would it be to rise daily from brief rest, knowing that all that day I would dance until weariness dropped me? Was the fear they had worn on their faces real? Did they dance in terror or black despair as a way to generate the waves of magic that rolled over the King’s Road and through Gettys? I could not imagine such an existence, nor the leader who would condemn his people to live it. Even the prisoners who labored on the King’s Road always knew there was eventually an end to their task. Some died before they reached that end, true, but those deaths were not inevitable. Many reached their freedom and even realized the King’s promise of land and a home of their own. Kinrove’s dancers were expected to dance their lives away, in the name of keeping the ancestral forest safe. And apparently he saw no eventual end to the dance, no final solution. To keep the intruders at bay, the dance would have to go on forever.
It appalled me. I was shocked that any leader could use his people so. I tried to break into Soldier’s Boy’s thoughts: “And I’m not the only one who thinks it’s monstrous. Look at Dasie, Soldier’s Boy. She and others like her are why Kinrove has a magical barrier around his encampment. He may call himself Greatest of the Great, but not all believe he should wear that title. ” As before, I received no acknowledgment from the other half of myself. I retired to seethe quietly to myself.
At last Kinrove spoke. “I do not undervalue my dancers, Dasie. Without them, I could not weave the magic that protects us all. I spend them only because I must, just as I spend myself. They and I are part of a greater magic, one that you do not comprehend. You ask if their lives are not worth as much as those of our elders. No. They are not. Each elder in a tree was a Great One in his time, chosen not by man but by the magic. And in the years they have existed since then, they have acquired ever more knowledge. They hold our past for us and guide us toward a future. Those who must die to protect them should feel honored to do so. They are honored by us while they live and dance. We give to each the best care we can—”
“Except to give them back their lives!” Dasie cut in angrily. I could feel her anger. I do not know if she meant to expend magic, but she did. The fury rolled off her in waves; Soldier’s Boy felt it as a surge of unfriendly warmth against my skin. Her feeders were leaning forward, whispering to her urgently, but she paid them no mind. “For years you have used them, Kinrove. Used them, and claimed the magic they made as your own. You have styled yourself the ‘Greatest of the Great’ on the heaps of their bones. You say you do it to save us from the Jhernians. But you take from us more than we can replace. Yearly the dancers die, and we do not bear enough children to replace them. You are dancing your own people to death in the name of saving them. ”
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Kinrove looked aggrieved and angered. “You criticize what I do, Dasie. You tell me to do it differently. But you, what do you do to protect your people and our ancestor trees? You want to end my dance, but what will replace it? You have been a Great One less than a hand of years, but you will tell us what we must do to drive the intruders back?”
She was not daunted. She took a step toward him. “I will tell you what you must do to keep from killing our own people! Let them live in their homes, find mates, and have children. If after I have been a Great One for twenty years, I forget that, as you seem to have done, then I hope some youngster will come before me and remind me of it. What good is it to save the trees of our ancestors if they have no descendants left to honor them and seek their wisdom? And as to the intruders, yes, I have an answer to that. We must kill them. Kill them, and kill any who come after them, and keep killing them until no more of them come. ”
“You are a child. ” Kinrove said the belittling words flatly, but in a tone that made them more statement than insult. “You cannot recall what has gone before, because you were not born then. We tried to use the magic against the intruders, to take it right to their homes. Their iron confounds us. Within their village, our magic is weak. Our mages struggle to wake a spark from wood, cannot bid the earth comfort us, cannot even warm our own bodies. The only magic we have found that will work within their walls is the Dust Dance. And no one knows why it works when all other magic fails. By itself, it is not enough. It kills them, but they only call for more of their brethren from the west. Before you were a Great One, when first they threatened our forest of ancients, we tried to fight them as we have seen others fight. We rose against them and went to battle, protected by the magic of the Great Ones who came with us. But they fired their guns at us, and the iron passed through our magic and then our flesh, tearing as it went, flesh and bone and organ. The Great Ones who had thought to protect our wa
rriors died that day. Many of our young men died. So many. A generation, Dasie. Shall we speak of how many children were not born because there were not men to father them? You say that over the years my dance has devoured the People. And what you say is true. But what my dance has devoured over all the years we have danced it is still less than the number of warriors who fell in that day. ”
Dasie opened her mouth to speak, but a sharp gesture from Kinrove cut off her words. I do not know if he used magic or merely the force of his personality to silence her. There was power in this man, in every nod of his head or flick of his fingers. Great power. I felt there was something more there, something I was missing, but his words caught me up and distracted me.
“I was there, Dasie. I saw them fall, my father and my two elder brothers among them. I was not a Great Man then, though I had begun to grow fat with magic. No one else had noticed it in me, and I scarcely dared to believe it myself. But what I saw that day taught me the one thing that I still know is true. We cannot take the magic as a weapon and use it within their walls. The iron thwarts us. But the magic can be our wall that holds back the swelling tide of the intruders and keeps us safe. And as soon as I was large enough to implement such a plan, I did so. And because I did so, you were able to grow up, in relative peace, in our own forest and mountains. You say you want to bring war to the intruders and death? Dasie, I am your war!”