by Robin Hobb
The boy halted. My words transformed him. He lifted his head, squared his shoulders, and his eyes sparkled as he smiled up at me. “I am honored to serve you, Great One,” he replied, taking the water skin. The words were a standard courtesy among the Speck when they addressed a Great One, but the boy uttered them with absolute sincerity.
Olikea folded her lips tightly, and then briskly added, “Bring firewood, too, when you come back with the water. And see that it is dry, so that it will burn hot to cook the fish quickly.”
If she meant her words to sting, she failed. The boy scarcely noticed that she was giving the command. He bobbed acquiescence and raced off to his task.
Soldier’s Boy watched Olikea as she scoured the area for kindling and twigs to get the fire started. She pushed the newly fallen leaves away to bare a place on the forest’s mossy floor, and then peeled the moss away to reveal damp black earth. There she arranged her kindling. She untied one of the pouches from her belt and took out her fire-making supplies. When she did so, I felt a tingly itch spread over my skin. Soldier’s Boy shifted uncomfortably. Idly, I noted that the steel she used to strike sparks from the flint was of Gernian make. She had set to one side a handful of sulfur matches. For all her professed hatred of the intruders, she did not despise the technology and conveniences they had brought. I smiled cynically but Solder’s Boy’s lips did not move. He seemed to be thinking something else, wondering how many other Specks now carried steel so casually, even knowing the iron in it was dangerous to magic. He ignored my thoughts. Was I a small voice in the back of his mind, a vague sensation of unease, or nothing at all to him? All I could do was wonder.
Olikea built the fire efficiently. I considered her as she moved about the area, gathering twigs to feed the tiny flame, stooping down to blow on the fire, and then as she began to cut up the roots and clean the fish from Likari’s basket. I could not compare her to Gernian women at all, I realized. She moved with ease and confidence, as completely unaware of her nudity as Soldier’s Boy was. That was odd to consider. He felt no surge of lust for her. Perhaps it was that I’d spent so much of his magic he felt as if he could barely stand, let alone mate with a woman. I stood at the edge of his flowing thoughts; he was not thinking of sex, but of the food she was preparing. He was gauging how much he could rebuild his strength by nightfall and how much of his magic he would have to burn to quick-walk all three of them back to the People.
Quick-walk. One could travel that way, seeming to stride along at an ordinary pace, but covering the ground much more swiftly. A mage could carry others along with him, one or two or even three if he was powerfully fat with magic. But it took an effort to get the magic started, and stamina to sustain it. It would not be easy for him, and he was reluctant to burn what little reserves he had restored. Nevertheless, he would have to do it. He had said that he would, in front of Jodoli. A Great Man never backed away from a feat of magic he claimed he would do. He would lose all status with the People if he did.
Likari came back with an armful of firewood. Olikea thanked him brusquely and sent him for more water. I suspected she was trying to keep him at a distance from Soldier’s Boy while she carried out the more obvious tasks of a feeder. She seemed to feel my gaze on her and turned to look at me. As our eyes met, I felt as if she could still see me, the Gernian, buried inside Soldier’s Boy. Did she notice that he had changed in his demeanor toward her? She dropped her eyes and appraised me as if she were looking at a horse she might buy. Then she shook her head.
“Fish and roots will help but what you need is grease if we are to rebuild you quickly. Likari will not find that in this part of the forest at this time of year. Even if he could, he is too small to kill anything. Once we have rejoined the People, you will have to do the hunter’s dance for us, and summon a bear before it goes to its winter rest. Slabs of bear meat thick with fat will build you quickly. I will cook it with mushrooms and leeks and red salt. It will take time, Nevare, but I will restore you to your power.”
Her mere description of the food made my mouth run with saliva. She was right. The body craved fat. The fish and roots suddenly seemed meager and unsatisfying. Soldier’s Boy sat up and rubbed the loose folds of his belly. Moving slowly and cautiously, he got to his feet. The whole body felt peculiar. It was strange to be so light. I had built muscle to carry the fat that was now gone. My skin sagged all around me, wrinkling in unexpected places. He held my arms out from my body, looked down on my wasted form, and shook my head in disgust. He’d have to begin all over again.
“I can restore you,” Olikea promised me as if she’d heard his thoughts. “I can be a very good feeder to you.”
“If I allow it,” he reminded her.
“What choice do you have?” she asked me reasonably. “Likari cannot even cook for you. He certainly cannot give you children to help care for you when you are old. You are angry with me now. I was angry with you before. Perhaps I am still angry with you, but I am smart enough to know this: anger will not get me what I want, so I will set it aside. Anger will not get you what you want and need. You should be wise enough to set it aside and let things go back to the way they were. The People will have enough reasons to mock you and doubt you. Do not give them any more by having a mere boy tending you. Let me be by your side when we return. I can explain that you spent all your magic in making a great tangle of forest that will protect our ancestor trees through the winter. I can make them see you as a hero who spent all he had in an effort to protect that which is most important to all of us, rather than as a fool who depleted himself yet found no glory or power in doing it.”
I was beginning to perceive the Specks in an entirely different way. I’d always been told they were childlike and naïve, a primitive folk with simple ways, and so I had treated Olikea. I’d imagined she was passionately in love with me, and actually flogged myself with guilt over taking advantage of the infatuated young maiden. Plying me with food and sex had been her tactic to win me, and to enjoy the effects of bringing a man of power and girth into her kin-clan. She competed with her sister far more savagely than I’d ever striven to outdo either of my brothers. But, far from being enthralled by me, she had seen me as a tool for her ambition and used me accordingly. She spoke now, not out of love or affection, but only to point out that anger was keeping both of us from what we wanted. Even our potential children were not the fruit of our affections for each other, but my insurance against feeble old age. She was hard, hard as whipcord, hard as tempered steel, and Soldier’s Boy had known that about her all the time. He finally smiled at her.
“I can set my anger aside, Olikea. But it does not mean that I set aside my memory of what caused my anger. It is very clear to both of us how my power may benefit you. Less clear to me is why I need you, or indeed why your kin-clan is the only one I should consider for my own. While you cook for me, perhaps you could explain to me why you are the best choice to be my feeder, and why your kin-clan, folk who already have a Great One in their midst, would be my best home among the People. There are kin-clans that have no Great Ones, where a feeder would have all the gathering skills of a kin-clan to aid her in caring for me. Why should I choose you?”
She narrowed her eyes and folded her lips. She had wrapped the fish and roots in well-moistened leaves and put them to steam in her fire. She poked vindictively at them with her cooking stick; I was sure she would rather have jabbed me with it. Soldier’s Boy watched her coolly, and I could feel him speculating on which would win out, her anger or her ambition. She kept her gaze on her cooking and spoke to the fire.
“You know that I can prepare food well, and that I gather food efficiently. You know that my son, Likari, is an energetic gatherer. Name me as your feeder, and I will put him in your service as well. You will have the benefit of two of us bringing you food and seeing to your needs. And I will continue to give you pleasure and seek to become pregnant with your child. That is not an easy task, you know. It is hard to catch the seed of a Great Man and hard
er still to carry his child to term. Few of the Great have children of their own. But I already have a son that I can put in service to you.
“If you wish to have two of us serving you, before you have become fat and worthy again, then this is the only way it can be so. If you choose Likari over me, then I will have nothing more to do with either of you. And if you choose to leave my kin-clan when we reach the Wintering Place to find a feeder among some other clan, well, I will see to it that all hear of how faithless you are, how clumsy with your magic, and how you wasted a wealth of it to very little success. Do you think that every woman wants to be a feeder? You will find, perhaps, that there are not that many of us willing to give up our lives to serve one such as you.”
Soldier’s Boy had let her have her say without interruption. When he held his silence after she had finished, she glanced up at him once, her annoyance plain. He made her wait, but I noticed she did not prod him. Finally he said, “I do not like your threats, Olikea. And I believe that yes, actually there will be many women at the Wintering Place who would want to become my feeder and share in my glory and power, without making threats or sour faces at me. You still have not given me a powerful reason to choose your kin-clan. Do Jodoli and Firada support the notion of another Great Man sustained by your kin-clan?”
She didn’t answer directly, but the way she lowered her head and scowled told me much. At that very moment we heard their voices through the trees, and in a moment more they came into sight. Jodoli looked clean and well rested. His hair was freshly plaited, and his skin had been rubbed with fragrant oil. “Like a piece of prize livestock,” the Nevare portion of me thought wryly, but I felt Soldier’s Boy keen jealousy cut through me. In contrast to Jodoli, he felt grubby, unkempt, and skinny. He glanced at Olikea; she likewise burned with frustration. She spoke louder than necessary.
“The boy has done well at finding food for me to prepare for you. After you have eaten, I think I will help you bathe. And then perhaps you should sleep again.”
Jodoli gave a huge, contented yawn. “That sounds a good plan, Nevare, if we are to quick-walk tonight. Ah. That food smells good.”
A remarkable thing happened. Firada bristled at his compliment to Olikea. Olikea looked at her sister and said almost sharply, “I have prepared all this for Nevare. He will need his strength.” Then, with a sideways glance at me, she added to Jodoli, “But perhaps we can spare enough for you to have a taste.”
“We will share it with Jodoli and Firada,” Soldier’s Boy suddenly decreed. “I owe them thanks for bringing you here. Sharing food to replace the magic the Jodoli spent on me is called for, I think.”
He took command of the situation that easily, and presided over the meal that ensued. I was pleased that he did not forget Likari. The boy had made trip after trip at Olikea’s request, bringing firewood, cooking water, the wide flat leaves of a water plant to wrap the fish, and so on. He sat at a respectful distance from the adults, looking as if he could barely keep his eyes open, but eyeing the food all the same. Soldier’s Boy’s announcement that he would share food had brought out hospitality in Jodoli as well. He asked Firada what supplies she had brought with her. She had meal cakes seasoned with a peppery herb and little balls made of suet, dried berries, and honey. These were combined with the food Olikea had prepared to make a delicious and generous meal for all of us. Likari seemed very conscious of the honor of being given Great Man’s food to eat. He ate it slowly, in tiny nibbles that reminded me of my days locked in my room under my father’s jurisdiction, and he seemed to savor each morsel as carefully as I had then.
There was little talk. Jodoli and Soldier’s Boy concentrated on their food as only Great Ones know how to do, while Firada and Olikea regarded one another in wary rivalry. Soldier’s Boy did more than eat; he considered each mouthful as he chewed it, enjoying flavor and texture, but also calculating how much of it his body could store for later use as magic and how much he must keep ready for the simple business of living. He was not pleased with his results. What he ate today he would almost certainly have to use tonight to quick-walk them back to the People. He couldn’t begin to rebuild his resources until they reached the Wintering Place. The fat and easy days of summer were past; he wondered if the People would be generous with their winter supplies when it came to feeding an unproven Great One.
After the meal, Jodoli announced that he planned to visit the Vale of the Ancestor Trees until the cool of the evening. “Magic is always easier when the sun no longer beats down on us,” he observed, and I knew it was so without knowing how I knew it. “We will meet again at the Wintering Place?” he asked me, and Soldier’s Boy nodded gravely and thanked him once more for his aid. I watched them depart, Jodoli moving unhurriedly while Firada gently chivied him along.
Olikea was as good as her word. She even made a show of helping Soldier’s Boy to stand and then guiding him down to the stream’s edge. Likari came with us, and she put him to work, bringing fine sand to scrub my feet and handfuls of horsetail ferns to scrub my back. Nevare would have felt embarrassed to have a young boy and a lovely woman wash his body while he sat idly in the shallows and let them. Soldier’s Boy not only allowed it, he accepted it as his due.
Olikea tsked over the sagging folds of skin, but served me well. I had never known that having someone scrub my feet and then massage them could feel so delightful. I think she realized that she nearly paralyzed me with pleasure, for after I was washed, she had me rest on the clean moss beside the stream while she rubbed my back, my shoulders, my hands, and my neck. It felt so good Soldier’s Boy did not want to fall asleep and miss the sensations, but of course he did.
I slept when Soldier’s Boy did that time. The physical weariness and needs of the body were his to bear, but I think there is a soul weariness that one can feel, and I felt it. Less than two days had passed since my life had profoundly changed. I’d been a condemned man escaping execution one night, and a mage who had spent all his magic the next. Those were two giant strides away from the boy who had been a second son, raised to be a cavalla soldier. I think my awareness needed to retreat, and it did.
When next I noticed the world, I was looking up through Soldier’s Boy’s blinking eyes at the interlacing tree branches overhead. The leaves were shivering, rustling so hard against one another that many of those loosened by autumn’s bite were breaking loose from their weakened grips on twigs and falling. A few falling leaves became a flurry of yellow and orange, and then a blizzard. I stared up at them, befuddled. The sound of their falling was unearthly; there was a rhythm to the trembling of the leaves that sounded like people whispering in the distance, a rhythm that had nothing to do with the wind.
There was no wind.
And the voices were there, whispering.
There were dozens of voices, all whispering. Soldier’s Boy strained to pick out a single thread of sound.
“Lisana says—”
“Tell him, tell him to come now!”
“Hurry. She’s mad with grief, she’s threatening—”
“Fire fears no magic. Hurry.”
“Soldier’s Boy, Nevare, tell him, wake him, tell him to hurry—”
The air was thick with falling leaves. The rustling whispering filled the air. Soldier’s Boy rolled to his belly and scrabbled to his feet. He swayed and then steadied himself against the trunk of a nearby tree. His stirring had awakened Olikea. She had been sleeping against his back. He spoke to her. “I have to go to Lisana right now. She’s in danger. The mad Gernian woman is threatening her.”
CHAPTER 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 unfami
liar 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 labored 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.”