Forest Mage

by Robin Hobb

  I was hungry, cold, and weary. Thick clouds had been gathering all day and were starting to darken, promising rain by nightfall. If it had been otherwise, I think I would have mounted up and ridden off. The rising wind tugged at my cloak. If all I could buy myself was a dry night’s sleep, I was resolved to have it. At the next cottage with chimney smoke rising from its stack, I gathered up my courage and knocked at a rough wooden door.

  It was slow to open. I stood still before it, smiling, for I suspected that someone was peering out at me through one of the numerous chinks in the wall. The small woman who finally opened the door held a large pistol in both her hands. I stepped back. The muzzle of it pointed squarely at my midsection. She could not possibly miss me at this range. I lifted my hands to show they were empty. “I’d just like to buy a night’s lodging and food, ma’am,” I said with great respect.

  A small towheaded boy suddenly shoved his head out past his mother’s skirts. “Who’s that?” he demanded. And then, almost with admiration, “He’s really fat!”

  “Hush, Sem. Get back inside. ” She looked at me speculatively. I could almost see her decide that I wasn’t much of a threat. She was small but stocky. She had to use both hands to steady the pistol. She lowered the heavy gun, but now the barrel menaced my legs. “I don’t have much to spare. ”

  “I’d be content with anything hot, and a dry place to spend the night,” I said humbly. “I can pay. ”

  She laughed in a sour way. “And where would I spend it? I’ve got no use for money. Can’t eat it. Can’t burn it. ” Her blue eyes were hard. I didn’t doubt the truth of her words. She looked as worn as her clothing. Her dark hair was knotted back in a no-nonsense way that spoke only of practicality, not attractiveness or even neatness. The skin of her hands was rough. The boy’s eyes looked too large in his thin face.

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  I could think of nothing else to offer. “Please,” I begged.

  She tightened her mouth and narrowed her eyes. It made her look like a thoughtful cat. I stood humbly before her, hoping. Two more children peeped out around the door frame. One was an older girl of about five, the other a curly-headed toddler. The woman shooed them back, then looked me up and down skeptically. “Can you work?” she asked me coldly.

  “That I can,” I promised her. “What do you need done?”

  Her smile was tight. “What don’t I need done? Winter’s coming. Look at this place! I’ll be lucky if it stands through the first storm. ” She sighed and then said, “You can put your horse in that house over there. We use it for a shed. The roof doesn’t leak much. ”

  “Thank you, ma’am. ”

  She almost winced. “I’m not ma’am. I’m not that old. I’m Amzil. ”

  I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening chopping wood. She had an old ax with a splintery handle. I put an edge on it with a stone. She had been turning the adjacent buildings into firewood, but the ax was big for her and the house timbers too heavy. She’d been limited by the size of log she could chop through. “The little ones burn up too fast. I can’t build a fire that lasts the night,” she told me.

  I worked steadily in the chill wind. I selected a small house that was mostly collapsed, and worked at turning it into firewood, cutting the timbers into chunks and then splitting them. One at a time, her scattered neighbors made excuses to drop by. I felt their eyes on me, but as none of them spoke to me, I ignored them and labored on. Their attempts at conversation with Amzil were brief. I heard one man say to her, “I only come to see if he had something to trade. It’s nothing to do with you at all, woman!” I sensed no community there, only a sour rivalry for the diminishing resources of the failed settlement. The old woman did not come to Amzil’s door but grimly eyed me from a distance, scowling as I pulled logs free and then chopped them into firewood.

  I had been aware of Amzil’s children spying on me all day. The muffled giggles of the older two had betrayed them as they hid around the corner of her house and took turns peeking at me. Only the smallest child, a tiny girl, was honest in her complete curiosity. She stood squarely in the open doorway to gawk at me. I had not thought I remembered much of Yaril’s babyhood. But looking at the child, I found I did. Yaril had stood like that, her babyish tummy thrust out before her. Yaril had turned her head and smiled shyly like that. When I stopped to wipe sweat from my neck, I smiled back at her. She squeaked and darted out of sight around the door. A moment later, she emerged again. I waved at her, winning a high-pitched giggle. As the sun was setting, the first threatened drops of rain came pelting down. Amzil emerged suddenly from her house, scooping the baby up in passing. She called out stiffly to me, “The food is ready. ”

  It was the first time I’d been inside her home. There wasn’t much to it. It was a single room, with log walls and a dirt floor. The hearth was rock plastered together with river clay. Their bed was a shelf across one side of the room. Other than the door, there was a single window with a crude wooden shutter. No glass. The only freestanding furniture was a bench by the hearth. The only table was a shelf in the corner with a washbasin on top of it and a water pitcher beside it. Clothing hung from pegs in the wall. Sacks on hooks and a few rough shelves held the food stores. There wasn’t much.

  I ate standing. The children sat on the floor, and Amzil sat on the bench. She ladled thin soup from a kettle hung over the fire. She served me first, the thin broth off the top and a single scoop of vegetables from the depths of the pot. She served herself the same, and then measured out a scoop for each child that left the ladle scraping the bottom of the kettle. The children got most of the bits of food; I didn’t complain. She had a single mound of hearth bread. She broke it into five equal pieces and handed me one. We ate.

  I savored the first spoonful of the warm broth. I tasted potatoes, cabbage, onion, and little else. As I had schooled myself to do, I ate slowly and enjoyed what I had. The bread was coarse, but good, for the flavor of the badly ground grain was stronger than if it had been made from fine flour. The texture was a good contrast to the thin soup. I saved the last bit of bread to wipe the final trace of soup from my bowl. Empty. I sighed and looked up to find Amzil regarding me curiously.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked her. I was not unaware that her pistol rested on the bench beside her hip.

  Her brow furrowed. “You’re smiling. ”

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  I gave a small shrug. “Good food. ”

  She scowled at me as if I were mocking her. “It wasn’t good soup before I added enough water to stretch it for five. ” Little spots of anger danced in her brown eyes.

  “Any food is better than none. And any food tastes good after a time of privation. ”

  “Privation?”

  “Hard times,” I clarified.

  Her eyes narrowed again. “You don’t look like you’ve ever known ‘privation. ’”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said gently.

  “Maybe. Here, we’ve eaten the same thing for so long, I don’t even taste it anymore. ” She rose abruptly, picking up the pistol as she did so. “Children, stack your bowls. You, you can sleep in the shed with your horse. The roof doesn’t leak much. ” It was a clear request that I now leave her house.

  I cast my thoughts desperately for an excuse to stay a bit longer in the light and warmth of the small home. “I’ve no real food to share. But I still have tea left in my panniers. ”

  “Tea?” Her eyes were distant. “I haven’t tasted tea since…well, since we left Old Thares to follow Rig’s coffle. ”

  “I’ll get it,” I offered instantly. I rose, moving my bulk carefully through the flimsy furnishings of the small room and out the rattly door into the chill night.

  I’d left Clove picketed in an alley to get whatever graze he could on the coarse grass and weeds there. Now I moved him into what had once been someone’s home. He barely fit through the door, but he s
eemed grateful to be out of the wind and rain. I’d stowed my panniers and tack there earlier. Now, considering the desperate poverty of Amzil’s neighbors, I decided to take my panniers with me into the house.

  I set them on the floor in the middle of her room, and knelt down beside them. Her children crowded close as I opened them and rummaged inside. Amzil stood back but looked no less curious. I found the block of black tea. As I opened its wrapper, Amzil caught her breath as if I were unveiling treasure. She had already put a kettle of water to heat, and it seemed a year before the water bubbled to a boil. She had no teapot, so we used my own small kettle to brew the tea. The children huddled around it as if they were worshipping it as Amzil poured the boiling water over the shriveled leaves. The delightful aroma of brewing tea blossomed with the steam. “The leaves are unrolling!” her son, Sem, exclaimed in wonder. We waited in silent anticipation for the tea to brew. Then Amzil ladled out bowls for each of us. I lowered myself carefully to the dirt floor, to join the children in their half-circle around the fire. I cupped the bowl in my hands, feeling the warmth of the liquid though the rough pottery.

  Even the baby, Dia, had a small bowl of tea. She sampled it, scowled at its dark taste, and then watched the rest of us sipping. She sipped again, pursing pink baby lips over its bitterness. I smiled at her solemn expression as she imitated us. The child wore a simple robe, obviously sewn from the remnants of an adult’s garment. It was well made, but the rough cloth looked more suited to a man’s trousers than a little girl’s robe. Amzil cleared her throat. I looked away from her baby to find Amzil frowning at me warily.

  “So. You came here from Old Thares,” I said, when the silence began to feel awkward.

  “That we did. ” She didn’t sound inclined to talk.

  “You’re a long way from home, then. It must be very different for you here. ” I prodded her with words, trying to start a conversation. She turned the tactic against me.

  “Have you ever been to Old Thares?”

  “I have. I went to school there for a season. ” I would not mention the academy. I had no desire to tell the long tale of why I was no longer there.

  “School. Ah. Never been myself. And if you were in a school, you never saw my city. ” She was adamant.

  “I didn’t?” I asked cautiously.

  “Do you know the part of town down by the river docks? Some folk call it the Rats’ Nests?”

  I shook my head, inviting her to go on.

  “Well, that’s where I come from. I lived all my life there, until I come here. My father was a ragpicker. My mother sewed. She could take old rags my father gathered, wash and press them, and turn them into the best things you ever saw. She taught me. A lot of folks throw away stuff that just needs a good washing and a bit of mending to be fine again. Some will throw out a whole shirt for a stain down the sleeve, as if you couldn’t make something nice out of the part that was good. Rich people waste a lot of things. ” She said it self-righteously, as if challenging me to disagree. I said nothing.

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  She sipped from her tea, then admitted, “My husband was a thief. ” Her mouth twisted on the word. “He was a thief like his father and grandfather before him. He used to laugh and say that it was the good god’s will that he follow in his father’s footsteps. When our boy was born, he even talked about how he would teach him to cut purses when he was older. But then Rig was caught and the choice was put to him—lose his hand or come east to work on the King’s Road. ”

  She sighed. “It’s my fault we’re here. I talked him into coming east. They made it sound so good. Hard work for my husband for two years, but then our own home in the town that they’d build along the King’s Road. They made it sound so good. We’d have own little house and garden in town, and land of our own outside of town. They told us any man could learn to hunt and that made meat free, and with what we’d grow in our garden, we’d never be short of food again. And they said the King’s Road would flow golden with travelers and trade, right past our door. I imagined that we would have a wonderful new life. ”

  She pursed her lips and stared into the fire. For a moment, caught in that old dream, she looked much younger, and with a jolt I realized she probably wasn’t much older than I was. Her musing look changed to a scowl. “It’s getting late,” she warned me without looking at me.

  It wasn’t just that I feared she would send me away from the fireside. I truly wanted to hear the rest of her tale. I steeled myself to the loss and then said, “I’ve a tiny bit of sugar left in my panniers. Shall we have one last cup of sweet tea to end the night?”

  “Sugar!” the elder girl said in wonder. The other two children looked puzzled.

  Thus I bought myself a longer stay by the fire. Amzil pulled her chair closer to the hearth and told out her sad tale: the long miserable journey east, camping each night by the road, the callousness of the guards who forced them on each day, the primitive conditions in the camps. I’d seen the shackled lines of prisoners moved past our home in Widevale. Summer after summer, the coffles of convict workers and their military guards had passed my home. I’d always suspected it was a miserable journey, but Amzil’s tale of hardship made it real. As she spoke, her elder daughter’s face grew grave, obviously reliving those memories with her mother.

  “We traveled to the end of the road. There was just a work camp here, with other men working off their crimes. There was no town with little houses and gardens for us! Just canvas stretched over boards and rough huts and dirt and work. Tents to sleep in, ditches to piss in, and the river for hauling water. Some new life! But they told us we were ‘home’ now, that it was up to us to make it into a town. They gave each household some canvas and some basic food and tools, and my husband and I put up what shelter we could. And the next morning, they put the men to work on the King’s Road, and left the families to cope as best we could. ”

  By day, the men left their families to go to work on the road. By night, they returned, too tired to do anything more than sleep. “Or curse,” Amzil said wearily. “My husband often cursed the liars who’d brought us here. Toward the end, Rig cursed me, too, for believing their lies and wanting to come. It was all my fault, he said. He said that even with one hand, he could have provided better for us in Old Thares.

  “While they were building this stretch of road, it wasn’t too bad. It was noisy and dusty, of course. Heavy wagons and big horses everywhere. They dug and scraped and leveled and measured the land over and over. It seemed silly to me, the way they dug down into the earth to set down big stones, and then filled up between them with smaller stuff. And the amount of time they spent tamping it down! Why the road couldn’t just be a wide path, I don’t know. But they built it up in what everyone started calling an agger, with a lot of gravel, and all sorts of men with measuring sticks, always worrying about leveling things and making drains. I never knew what all went into a road before then. ” Amzil’s dark hair had pulled free of the string she used to tie it back. It was feathering around her face, blending her features with the shadows behind her.

  “But at least there were lots of folks here then. There was a big kitchen set up to feed everyone, and we could all go there for a meal once a day. The food was plain and not very good, but as you said, any food is better than none. And there were more people here, families as well as the other workers and the guards. There were other women to talk to while I did the wash at the river, and other women to help me when my baby came. The women who were already here when we arrived had learned a bit of how to manage, and they taught us. But most of us didn’t know a thing about how to live outside a city. We tried. Most of the houses you see around here, women built. And some fell down faster than we put them up, but we had each other to help. ” She shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment. “Then it all went bad at once. ”

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  Without asking her I added the last of the
hot water to the uncoiled tea leaves in the bottom of the pot. It made a final pale tea. I divided what remained of my sugar equally among the five bowls and carefully dippered the weak tea over it. The children watched me as if I were stirring molten gold.

  “What happened?” I asked as I put Amzil’s cup into her hands.

  “Rig had an accident. A heavy stone fell off a wagon and crushed his foot. He couldn’t work anymore. So even though his time wasn’t up, they let him stay at home here with us all day. I was glad to have him here at first. I thought he could help me a bit, could mind the children while I tried to make things better for us. But he didn’t know how to do anything around a house and his foot wouldn’t heal. It only got more painful, and he had a fever that came and went. The pain made him mean, and not just with me. ” She glanced at her elder daughter and old anger flashed in her eyes. She shook her head. “I didn’t know what to do for him. And he hated me by then anyway. ” Her eyes went past me to the fire and all feeling emptied out of them.

  “Two days before he died, the guards said it was time to move camp. The prisoners who had worked off their time and their families could stay here and build a new life, they said. A lot of them decided to move on with the work crew anyway. But those who stayed got a shovel, an ax, a saw, and six bags of different kinds of seed. And they gave us what they said was two months of flour, oil, and oats. But it didn’t last our family more than twenty days. ” She shook her head again.

  “I did my best. I dug holes and planted those seeds. But maybe it was the wrong time or maybe the seed was bad or maybe I did something wrong. Not many plants came up, and a lot of the ones that grew got eaten by rabbits or just died off. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to grow vegetables. Before too long, people just started to leave. Nothing here to hold them, I guess. Some of them lasted the first winter. Others didn’t, and we buried them. When spring came, pretty much everyone who could got up and left, heading back west, trying to get back to a place where they knew how to live. Some of us couldn’t go. Kara might be able to walk a full day, but Sem and Dia are too small to walk that far, and I couldn’t carry them both. I knew that if I started walking, at least one of them would die on the way. But maybe that would have been better than staying here. Here we are, winter’s closing in again, and we have even less this time than we had last year. ”