by Robin Hobb
As the bridge parted, unravelling, I heard my other self shriek. I turned back to him, my iron magic heavy and cold in my hand. He sagged like an emptying wine-skin, a pale vapour exiting from the spot where his scalp lock had been. My features faded from his softening face. Tree Woman screamed and strained toward him, but could not reach him. She could not leave the line of living trees. He sagged into a mound of clay and leaves. I felt oddly stronger. Something that had been missing from me for a long time had been restored.
Epiny clung desperately to Spink, her slender, diaphanous arms locked around his neck. “Nevare!” She looked from me to the heap on the ground and back again. I saw her struggle to understand and then discard that for a more immediate fear. “The bridge is gone. What will become of us?” she wailed. Spink’s face remained impassive.
“Hold tight to him!” I told her. Sword at the ready, I toiled up the hill toward her. As I advanced on Tree Woman, I warned her, “Send them back!”
She laughed at me. Her laugh was earthy, musical and rich. To my dismay, I loved it. I loved it, and I loved all she represented. The wilds lands and the forests and the great trees were in her eyes. I loved all of her. I suddenly perceived that she was not old, but eternal. She held out her arms to me, and I longed to rush into her embrace. Tears came to my eyes as I spoke. “Let my friends go. Or I’ll kill you.”
She shook her head, and wind rustled through leafy treetops. “Do you think you can kill me here, in my own world? With what, soldier’s boy? That little twig of iron? You stand in my world, in the heart of my magic!” She bent down toward me, and suddenly she was tree and woman, all in one. Her leaves rustled as she swayed down at me. Her branches reached to draw me to her.
“You said it yourself!” My voice came shrill. “‘Magic touches back.’ You brought my magic here, through me, and used it. Used it just as I used the magic of your kind. Just as you gained a hold on me when you used my magic, so I think mine has taken power over you!”
On my final word, I sprang to my attack. A sabre is not an axe. It has a cutting edge, but for flesh, not bark and wood. I put all I had into the swing, expecting the shock of hard contact. I thought I had a chance of hurting her. Instead, it was like cutting butter. My sabre slid through her, and then caught and stuck. I let go of it. It had opened a horizontal gash in her soft belly, in her trunk, in all that she was. She screamed, and it cracked the sky. Golden sap, warm as blood, flowed from her wound and onto the earth. She fell backwards from me, just as a tree would have fallen if chopped through the trunk. When she hit the ground, the earth split. Light burst up from it. The goddess of the world had fallen at my feet, my sabre still stuck in the stump of her body. I stood over her, looking down in shock at what I had wrought. I had triumphed. My heart was breaking.
Her eyes, deep as the forest, flickered open. She made a final gesture at me. As her hand fell, I was flung from her world.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Vindication
I returned to my life slowly, almost reluctantly, over a period not of days, but of weeks. Dr Amicas told me that my case of the plague was unique; that I had passed from the Speck plague into a brain fever that had sent me into a coma. I did not one day ‘awake’ from it. Rather, I slowly drifted out of it and back into my life. The doctor was surprised to see me live, let alone slowly recover my faculties. By the time I was aware of myself, I found I had been moved to a comfortable room in the guest wing of my uncle’s house. Nonetheless, the good doctor came to visit me often during the days of my convalescence. I think he enjoyed seeing me, for I was one of his few successes in a season of terrible failures.
A hired nurse cared for me at first. Either she did not know anything or she had been told to say nothing that I might find distressing. I know that some days of awareness passed before I came to myself enough to know that I should worry about my family and friends. To my halting questions she would only reply that I should not fret, soon I would be better and be able to get about and discover things for myself. If I’d been able to get out of bed, I think I would have throttled her.
But I could not. I suffered a general weakness in my limbs and an aggravating confusion with my speech. When the doctor visited me, I was able to convey both my frustration and my fear to him. He patted my hand condescendingly and told me that I was fortunate, that after a fever such as mine, some men awoke half-wits. He told me to work on my speech, perhaps by reading aloud or reciting familiar poetry. Then he left me and I had to deal with the hired nurse again.
I did not see much of my uncle. Considering the trouble I had brought into his life, I was surprised that he took me into his home at all. My aunt never visited me. Uncle Sefert did not visit me often, and his visits were short. I could not blame him. He was still kind to me, but in the new lines in his face I could see that Epiny’s impulsive act had cost him much in sleep and worry, not to mention heartbreak. Under the circumstances, I kept my concerns to myself., He had enough burdens of his own. I would not tell him that I had been culled, and that as soon as I was well enough to travel, I’d be taking Sirlofty and heading home. I tried several times to write to my father, but my wandering handwriting looked like the scrawl of an irresponsible boy or a depraved old man, and my hand always grew too weary to hold a pen long before I found the words to explain to my father how I had fallen. My nurse often exhorted me to take hope for the future in how the good god had preserved me, but most days it seemed to me that continuing my life was the cruellest jest the good god could have played upon me. Whenever I looked at the days of my life that stretched before me, I felt discouraged. What was I to do with them all, now that I’d ruined my prospects?
Epiny herself came at least once a day, to chatter at me until I was exhausted. She herself had been ill for several days with a much milder case of the plague. During recovery, when she had still been too weak to resist him, the doctor had sternly and firmly returned her to her family home. Her mother had reluctantly received her, she claimed.
To me, she seemed completely recovered now. She read the worried letters that my family had sent to me, and took it upon herself to send replies to them, assuring them of my steady recovery and fond thoughts of them. She did not comment that there were no letters from Carsina. That was a small mercy. She told me that during the days of my coma, she had sat by my bedside and read poetry to me for hours on end, hoping that I would take comfort from the sound of a familiar voice and that it would help me to recover. I don’t know that it aided my recovery, but it possibly accounted for several rather peculiar dreams from that haunted wandering of my mind.
In her own careless way, she tried to be considerate of me. She made an effort to always be cheery and pleasant in the time she spent with me, but sometimes the rims of her eyes were pink, as if she had been crying, and she now seemed older than her years rather than younger. She wore sedate women’s clothing, and kept her hair up and pinned in a style so tidy that it bordered on severe. I think the conflict with her parents over the choice she had made weighed on her more than she wished me to know.
Epiny waited some time before she judged me well enough to have news. She was worse than the hired nurse. She nearly drove me mad by changing the subject whenever I asked for tidings of my friends. One day, when she had provoked me to a coughing fit by refusing to answer my repeated questions, she relented. She shut the door, sat down by my bedside, took my hand in hers and proceeded to sketch in the ten days that had vanished from my life.
She began with what she called ‘the mundane’. Spink had survived and was recovering, but the plague had taken its toll on him. He was thin, wasted to bones, and still so weak that he could not stand. He remained in the infirmary. She had not been able to see him, but was able to send and receive letters from him. Her father had forbidden her mother from blocking them. The letters he sent to her were short. His joints were swollen, and even small movements were painful to him. Dr Amicas had told him regretfully that he would probably never have a military ca
reer of any kind, for even after full recovery, he doubted that Spink would have much stamina. My friend could look forward to life as an invalid, depending on his brother for sustenance and keep.
Epiny, of course, did not put it that way. She blithely informed me that as soon as Spink felt well enough for the ceremony, they would have a small wedding, and she would then join him for the journey to his home. She had already been in correspondence with his mother and sisters and found them, “Delightfully modern. They are capable women, Nevare, and I cannot tell you how I will welcome being in their company. It is a great pity that his family cannot afford the journey to witness our wedding. I am sure it would do my mother great good to see that women can do more than gossip, snipe, and plot their daughters’ marriages to their best political advantage. And I am sure it would reassure Papa greatly if he could see that I am going to a worthwhile productive life, rather than being sentenced to endless embroidery, small talk, and child-bearing.”
“Epiny,” I ventured to ask her. “Are you certain you will be happy in such a situation? You will not truly be mistress of your own household. Rather, you and Spink will have to live on his brother’s charity. You speak of his mother and sisters doing useful work. I am sure that the harsh demands of frontier life will be taxing to you. And your circumstances will be far reduced from what you are accustomed to. Perhaps you should think carefully before you plunge yourself and Spink into a life of unhappiness.”
I meant my words well, but she wilted before them. She shook her head at me and tears welled in her eyes. “Must everyone harp on what I already know? I know it will be hard, Nevare, far harder than I first imagined when I cast my lot with Spink’s. But I think I can do it. No. I know that I must do it, and therefore I will find the strength to do it.” She clenched her hands together in her lap. “I know you think I am impulsive and will live to regret my decision. I know you think I am weak. Perhaps I am, and perhaps I will be miserable. But I know that no matter how hard it is, I will never return here and beg my parents to take me back under their roof.” She lifted her eyes to meet mine and I saw an angry determination burning there.
“The times are changing, Nevare. It is time for men as well as women to assert that they will make the decisions that forever change their lives for themselves. I know that no matter how hard this goes with me, Purissa will see what I have done, and perhaps take strength from it when her time comes to defy tradition and live her own life.”
“Will you tell her if you are unhappy?” I asked cautiously. I was not certain that what she was doing was a good example to set for her young sister.
Epiny straightened her back and squared her shoulders. “I take responsibility for my own happiness or unhappiness, Nevare. Every morning, when I look at Spink, I will see the man I chose above all others. And he will know the same of me. Will you have that comfort when you look at Carsina after a quarrel or a difficult day? Or will you have to wonder if she would be there if her parents hadn’t decided for her?”
She was edging too close to a subject I had lately found painful. I had no future with Carsina. Slowly I was admitting that to myself. When I’d been discharged from the academy, I’d forfeited her. I shifted the topic abruptly. “Can you tell me about my friends at the Academy besides Spink? How are they doing?”
“Are you sure you are well enough for such news?” she asked me. I immediately knew it would be far worse than I had thought.
“Perhaps you should let me be responsible for my own happiness or unhappiness and just tell me,” I said, speaking more sharply than I intended.
She looked at the floor and then back at me. “Spink knew you would want to know. He told me so the last time I visited him. So he told me the names of the boys in your patrol who died and of some others you would want to know about. I wrote them down because I knew I could never remember all those names.” She reached into her dress pocket and took out a much-folded slip of paper. As she opened it, my heart sank. “Are you ready?” she asked me.
I clenched my teeth to refrain from shouting at her. “Yes. Please, Epiny, just tell me.”
“Very well.” She cleared her throat, coughed, and then cleared it again. When she read the names, her voice was tight and choked. Tears brimmed and then ran down her cheeks as she recited the names. “Natred. Oron. Caleb. Sergeant Rufet. Corporal Dent. Cadet Captain Jeffers. Captain Maw. Captain Infal. Lieutenant Wurtam.”
The first three names stunned me. I lay back on my pillows, and as she went on, I felt each name like a fist blow to my heart. So many dead! So many!
“I’ll get you some water,” Epiny said abruptly. “I’ve been a fool. Father said you were too weak yet for such tidings. I judged that knowing these things would be less trying for you than living in suspense. I was wrong, and now you shall have a relapse and undo all your healing and my father will once more berate me about acting on my own with too little experience of the real world.”
I sipped from the glass she had poured from my bedside ewer. When I could speak, I said, “No. You were right, Epiny. Like you, I hate it when people try to make decisions for me. Tell me the rest. Now.”
“Are you certain?” She took the glass from my shaking hand and set it on my sick table.
“Very certain. Tell me.”
She again consulted the page she held. “Of your other fellows, Kort never caught the plague. Rory had only a mild case. Trist took sick and recovered, but like Spink, he will never be as hearty as he was. Spink thinks they will send him home. Gord and his family have still not returned to the city, so they have missed the plague. Colonel Stiet and his son Caulder were both sick for days. Both will recover but the colonel has given up commanding the Academy. Control of it has passed back to Colonel Rebin. Spink has heard rumours that Rebin is glad to have it back and intends to ‘put his house in order’ as soon as most of his cadets have recovered. There were deaths throughout the city from plague, but it was worst within the Academy walls. My father says that it has depleted the ranks of up-and-coming officers substantially. He thinks that many soldier sons will now forego the Academy and simply purchase commissions as they used to, for the competition for positions will not be as fierce as it was.” She cleared her throat.
“Spink spoke about that, too. He says that the distinctions between old nobles’ and new nobles’ sons have worn thin, for the sickness made all of them comrades for a time. And he also says that politically, the Academy can no longer afford to be choosy about students. He has already heard rumours that Rebin will recall many of the culled cadets from previous years, to try to rebuild a corps of officers for the future. Spink says there is talk around the Academy that if it does not take action to demonstrate that Academy-trained officers are superior to those who buy their positions, the existence of the Academy itself may be called into question. It is not a cheap institution to run.”
I was silent for a time, absorbing that. It was strange to hear Epiny speak so knowledgably of the Academy and the long-term effects of the plague upon our military structure. I reflected regretfully that she would have made a good cavalla wife. “Spink must be heartbroken to have his career cut short before it started,” I said to myself.
“It might be easier for all of us if he were,” Epiny said. “No. He is not heartbroken. He is furious whenever anyone suggests that he will not recover enough to serve. He will go home, as he has small choice in that. But he says that he will recover his health, and when he does, he is determined to return to the Academy. He is a soldier son and will be a soldier, despite what others may do in this difficult time.”
“What others do?” I asked.
“Oh. I forget that you have been isolated. The Academy suffered, but so did Old Thares. A number of noble families lost their heir sons. In some cases, the lord died as well. The hole that creates in the Council of Lords is a gaping one. With the support of the priesthood, many families are naming a younger son as heir rather than bringing in a cousin to inherit. It has caused quite a bit of di
scord, for many a hopeful cousin is seeing an inheritance snatched right out of their jaws. But in every case that has been challenged, the priests have supported the families in naming a younger son as first son.”
“That’s insane!” I could not believe what I was hearing. “It flies in the face of the good god’s will! How can the priests allow it?”
“My father says we must trust that the priests know the will of the good god. But I think—‘ Epiny halted suddenly, and looked uncomfortable.
“What do you think?” I prodded her.
“I think that, perhaps, large donations were made to various priestly orders. And in a number of cases, priest sons have been elevated to the status of heirs. They will, by a special allowance, serve in both capacities in their lifetimes.” She frowned to herself for a moment. Thoughtfully she took up her whistle and put it in her mouth, much as a cogitating man might light his pipe. She breathed through it, whistling softly, and then spoke around it, “I think it might be a matter of influence and power and wealth. Even priests are human, Nevare.”
I did not like to think about the implications of that. I gestured at the whistle. “I thought you had given that annoying thing to Spink.”
She gave another long low whistle through it, and then spat it out. She smiled at me oddly and then leaned closer to my bed. “And why did you think that?” she whispered to me.
“Because I saw him wearing it,” I replied in annoyance at her sudden air of mystery, and then suddenly recalled where I had seen him wearing it.