Passage

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Mama asked, in a more cautious tone, “So…how did things go with your new people at Hickory Lake, Fawn? With your new family?”

  Dag’s family. After a perhaps too-revealing hesitation, Fawn chose, “Mixed.”

  Dag glanced down at her and swallowed, not only to clear his mouth of his last bite, but said plainly enough: “Truth to tell, not well, ma’am. But that’s not why we’re on this road.”

  Nattie said anxiously, “Those Lakewalker wedding cords we made up—didn’t they work?”

  “They worked just fine, Aunt Nattie,” Dag assured her. He glanced up and down the table. “I should likely explain to the rest of you something that only Nattie knew when Fawn and I were wed here. Our binding strings”—he touched the dark braid above his left elbow and nodded to Fawn’s, wrapping her left wrist—“aren’t just fancy cords. Lakewalkers weave our grounds into them.”

  Five blank stares greeted this statement, and Fawn wondered how he was going to explain ground and groundsense in a way that would make them all understand when they hadn’t seen what she’d seen. When he also had to overcome a lifetime of deep reserve and the habit—no, imperative—of secrecy. It seemed by his long intake of breath that he was about to try.

  “Only you farmers use the term magic. Lakewalkers just call it groundwork. Or making. We don’t think it’s any more magic than, than planting seed to get pumpkins or spinning thread to get shirts. Ground is…it’s in everything, underlies everything. Live or un-live, but live ground is brightest, all knotty and shifting. Un-live sits and hums, mainly. You all have ground in you, but you don’t sense it. Lakewalkers perceive it direct. You can think of groundsense as like seeing double, except that seeing doesn’t quite cover—no.” He muttered to his lap, “Keep it simple, Dag.” His eyes and voice rose again. “Just think of it as like seeing double, all right?” He stared hopefully around.

  Taking the uncharacteristic quiet that had fallen for encouragement, he went on, “So, just as we can sense ground in things, we can, most of us—sometimes—move things through their grounds. Change them, augment them. That’s groundwork.”

  Mama wet her lips. “So…when you mended that glass bowl the twins broke, whistled it back together, was that what you’d call groundwork?”

  Stunning the entire Bluefield clan to silence at that time, too, as Fawn vividly recalled—now that had been magic.

  Dag, beaming, shot Mama a look of gratitude. “Yes, ma’am. Exactly! Well, it wasn’t the whistling that—well, close enough. That was probably the best groundwork I’d ever done.”

  Second best, now, thought Fawn, remembering Raintree. But Raintree had come later, and cost more: very nearly Dag’s life. Did they understand that this wasn’t trivial trickery?

  “Lakewalkers like to think that only we have groundsense, but I’ve met a lot of farmers with a trace. Sometimes more than a trace. Nattie’s one.” Dag nodded across the table at Nattie, who grinned in his general direction, though her pearl-colored eyes could not see him. Fletch and Clover and Whit looked startled; Mama, less so. “I don’t know if her blindness sharpened it, or what. But with Nattie’s helping, Fawn and I wove our grounds into our wedding cords as sound as any Lakewalker’s.”

  He left out the alarming part about the blood, Fawn noted. He was picking his way through the truth as cautiously as a blindfolded man crossing a floor studded with knives.

  Dag went on, “So when we got up to camp, every Lakewalker there could see that they were valid cords. Which threw everyone into a puzzle. Folks had been relying on the cord-weaving to make Lakewalker marriages to farmers impossible, d’you see. To keep bloodlines pure and our groundsense strong. They were still arguin’ about what it meant when we left.”

  Papa had been staring at Nattie, but this last drew his frown back to Dag. “Then did your people throw you out for marrying Fawn, patroller?”

  “Not exactly, sir.”

  “So…what? Exactly?”

  Dag hesitated. “I hardly know where to start.” A longer pause. “What all have you folks here in Oleana heard about the malice that emerged over in Raintree?”

  Papa said, “There was supposed to have been a blight bogle pop up somewheres north of Farmer’s Flats, that killed a lot of folks, or drove them mad.”

  Whit put in, “Or that it was a nerve-ague or brain-worms, that made folks there run around attacking one another. It’s bog country up that way, they say, bad for strange fevers.”

  Fletch added, “Down at Millerson’s alehouse, I heard someone say it was an excuse got up by the Lakewalkers to drive farmers back south out of their hunting country. That there never was any blight bogle, and it wasn’t bogle-maddened farmers attacking Lakewalkers, but the other way around.”

  Dag squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his mouth. “No,” he said into his hand, and lowered it.

  Clover sat back with a sort of flounce; she didn’t voice it, but her face said it for her: Well, you’d naturally say that, wouldn’t you? Mama and Nattie said nothing, but they seemed to be listening hard.

  Dag said, “There was a real malice. We first heard about it when the Raintree Lakewalkers, who were being overwhelmed, sent a courier to Hickory Lake Camp for help. My company was dispatched. We circled, managed to come up on the malice from behind while it was driving its mind-slaves and mud-men south to attack Farmer’s Flats. One of my patrol got a sharing knife into it—killed it. I saw it”—he held out his left arm—“that close. It was very advanced, very, um…advanced.” He paused, glanced around, and tried, “Strong, smart. Almost human-looking.”

  Leaving out how the malice had nearly slain him, or that he’d been captain of that company and source of its successful plan…Fawn bit her lip in impatience.

  “Here’s the thing, the important thing. No…back up a step, Dag.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. There’s too much all at once, and I’m explaining this all backwards, I’m sorry. Try this. Malices have groundsense too, only very much stronger than any human’s. They’re made of ground. They consume ground, to live, to make their—their magery, their mud-men, their own bodies, everything they do. They’re quite mad, in their way.” His face looked suddenly drawn in some memory Fawn did not share and could not guess at. “But that’s what blight is. It’s where some emergent malice has drawn all the ground out of the world, leaving, well, blight. It’s very distinctive.”

  “Well, what does it look like?” asked Whit reasonably.

  “It doesn’t look like anything else,” said Dag, which netted him some pretty dry looks from around the table.

  Fawn pitched in: “It’s not like burnt fields, or rust, or rot, or a killing frost, though it reminds you of all those things. It has a funny gray tinge, like all the color has been sucked out of things. First things die, if they’re alive, and then they fall apart at the seams, and then they dissolve all through. Once you’ve seen that drained-out gray, you can’t ever mistake it. It looks even worse to someone with groundsense, I gather.”

  “Yes,” said Dag gratefully.

  Mama said faintly, “You’ve seen it, then, Fawn?”

  “Yes, twice. Once at that malice’s lair near Glassforge, when Dag and I first met, and once in Raintree. I rode over, after. Dag was hurt on his patrol, which part he didn’t tell you, I notice.” She glowered at him in reproof. “He’d still be on sick leave if we were back at Hickory Lake.”

  “You got to go to Raintree?” said Whit, sounding indignantly envious.

  Fawn tossed her head. “I saw all that country the malice had torn through. I saw where it got started.” She glanced back to Dag, to check if he was ready to go on.

  He nodded at her and picked up his tangled thread again. “Here’s the thing. For the past twenty or thirty years, farmers have been breaking land in Raintree north of the old cleared line—that is, north of where the local Lakewalkers had deemed it safe. Or less unsafe, leastways. Lakewalker patrol records show malice emergences get thicker—more frequent—north toward the
Dead Lake, see, and thinner south and away. South of the Grace River, they’re very rare. Although unfortunately not all gone, so we can’t stop patrolling those regions. It was at a north Raintree squatter town named Greenspring that this latest malice emerged. Practically under it.”

  Fawn nodded. “It hatched out down in a ravine in the town woodlot, by the signs.”

  Dag went on, “See, there was a lot of bad blood between the local Lakewalkers and the Greenspring settlers, on account of the arguments about the old cleared line. So when the malice started, none of the squatters knew how to recognize the early signs, or to pick up and run, or how or where to ride for help. Or they’d been told but didn’t believe. Not that they wouldn’t have needed to be lucky as well, because by the time a farmer can see the blight near a lair, there’s a good chance he’s just about to be ground-ripped or mind-slaved anyway. Like stumbling into a spider web. But with that many folks, if they’d all known, someone might have got out to spread the warning. Instead, the malice pretty much ate them. And grew strong way too fast. I think that a whole lot more people died in north Raintree than needed to this summer just because Lakewalkers and farmers weren’t talking to each other.”

  “I hadn’t ever seen a mass grave before,” said Fawn quietly. “I don’t ever want to again.”

  Papa gave her a sharp glance from under his gray brows. “I did, once, long time ago,” he said unexpectedly. “It was after a flood.”

  Fawn looked at him in surprise. “I never knew that.”

  “I never talked about it.”

  “Hm,” said Aunt Nattie.

  Papa sat back and looked at Dag. “Your people aren’t exactly forthcomin’ about these things, you know. In Raintree or Oleana.”

  “I know.” Dag ducked his head. “Back when there were few farmers north of the Grace, it scarcely mattered. To the Lakewalkers in the hinterlands north of the Dead Lake—I’ve walked up that way, twice—there’s still no need to do anything differently, because there are no farmers there. Where it matters is in the border country, where things are changing out from under us—like Greenspring. And like West Blue.” He glanced around the table. The food on his plate had all gone cold, Fawn noticed.

  Fletch said, “I never got the sense Lakewalkers wanted farmer help.”

  “They don’t, mostly,” Dag admitted. “No farmer can fight a malice directly. You can’t close your grounds in defense, for one, you can’t make…certain tools.” He blinked, frowned, seemed to take aim like a rider trying to clear a fence on a balky horse, and blurted out, “Sharing knives. You can’t make sharing knives to kill malices.” Swallowing, he went on, “But even if you can’t be fighters, you might find better ways to avoid being fodder. Everyone alive should be taught how to recognize blight-sign, for one—as routinely as how to identify poison ivy or rattlesnakes or, or how not to stand on the wrong side of the tree you’re felling.”

  “How would you go about teaching everyone alive, patroller?” asked Aunt Nattie, in a curious voice.

  “I don’t know,” sighed Dag. “Laid out like that, it sounds pretty crazy. We came upon the Glassforge malice early, this past spring, only because of the chance of Chato’s patrol stopping there and gossiping with the local folks about their bandit problem enough for Chato to realize there was something strange going on. If I could only show folks, somehow…I wouldn’t have to talk.” Dag smiled wanly. “I never was much of a talkin’ man.”

  “Eat, Dag,” Fawn put in, and pointed to his plate. Everyone else’s was empty. He took an obedient bite.

  “Folks could show off that patch of blight you say is by Glassforge,” Whit suggested. “Then they’d all know what it looks like.”

  Clover eyed him. “Why would anybody want to go look at a thing like that? It just sounds ugly.”

  Whit sat back and rubbed his nose, then brightened. “Then you should charge ’em money.”

  Dag stopped chewing and stared. “What?”

  “Sure!” Whit sat up. “If they had to pay, they’d think it was something special. You could get up wagon excursions from Glassforge. Charge five copper crays for the ride, and ten for the box lunch. And the lecture for free. It would get folks talking when they got home, too—What did you see in Glassforge, dear? It could be a nice little business, driving the wagon, making the lunches—it would sure beat pulling stumps, anyways. If I had the cash I’d buy that blight, I would. It’d be better ’n a forty-acre field.”

  Fawn didn’t think she’d ever seen Dag look so flummoxed. It was all she could do not to giggle, though she mainly wanted to hit Whit.

  “Well, you don’t have any cash,” Fletch pointed out dauntingly.

  “Thank the stars,” added Clover, fanning herself with her hand.

  “You’d likely throw it down a well.”

  “Quit your fooling, Whit,” said Papa impatiently. “Nobody thinks it’s amusin’.”

  Whit shrugged, kicked back his chair, and rose to carry off his plate to the sink. Dag, slowly, started chewing again. His eyes, following Whit, had an odd look in them—not angry, though, which surprised Fawn, knowing how seriously Dag took all this. With afternoon chores looming, lunch broke up.

  Later, putting their things away in the twins’ old bedroom upstairs, Dag folded Fawn to him and sighed.

  “Well, I sure made a hash of that. Absent gods. If I can’t talk to my own tent-family and make them understand, how am I ever going to talk to strangers?”

  “I didn’t think you did so badly. It was a lot for them to get around, all at once like that.”

  “It was all out of order, I never explained sharing knives, they didn’t half believe me—or else half of ’em didn’t believe me, I wasn’t sure which—it was all—oh, Spark, I don’t know what I’m doing on this road. I’m just an old patroller. I’m surely not the man for this.”

  “It was your first try. Who gets everything right the first try?”

  “Anyone who wants to live for a second try.”

  “That’s for things that’ll kill you if you miss, like…like slaying malices, I suppose. People don’t die of stumbling over a few words.”

  “I thought I was going to strangle on my tongue.”

  About to hug him around the waist, she pushed off and looked up instead. She said shrewdly, “This isn’t just hard because it’s complicated, or new, is it? Lakewalkers aren’t supposed to talk about these secrets to farmers—are they?”

  “Indeed, we are not.”

  “How much trouble would you be in with your own folks, if they knew?”

  He shrugged. “Hard to say.”

  That wasn’t too helpful. Fawn narrowed her eyes in worry, but then just gave up and hugged him tight, because he’d never looked like he needed it more. The breath of his laugh stirred her curls as he dropped a kiss atop her head.

  2

  In the pressure of a short-handed harvest and a run of dry weather, Fawn and Dag lost their sitting-guest status almost immediately. Dag didn’t seem to mind, showing both willing and a keen and practical interest in the farm and all its doings. It was all as strange and new to him, Fawn realized, as the very different rhythms of a Lakewalker camp had been to her. She wondered if he was homesick yet.

  As usual, the Bluefields combined forces for the ingathering with the Ropers, Aunt Roper being Papa’s sister. The Ropers’ place lay just northwest of their own. Two of their sons and Fawn’s closest cousin, Ginger, were still at home to help out, and amongst them all, they cleared Uncle Roper’s big cornfield in three days. Next was the Bluefield late wheat. Dag proved unexpectedly adept with the long scythe. His arm harness held a wooden wrist-cap over his stump, and besides the hook he possessed an array of clever tools on bolts that he swapped in and out of it, including his specially adapted bow. The tool he usually used for clasping the paddle of a narrow boat on the lake also served to aid his grip on the scythe, and after a little experimentation he seemed to find his way into the swing of the task quite contentedly, so Papa left him
to it.

  Gleaning had been one of the first chores little hands had been put to, back when Fawn and Ginger and Whit had been only hip-high. They were all bigger now, but the gleaning still had to be done. Fawn crouched and shuffled her way across the bright gold stubble, and thought Clover and Fletch could well stand to be prompt in producing the next generation of shorter harvesters. Along the split-rail fence of the pasture, the farm’s horses lined up in mild-eyed curiosity to watch the strange behavior of their people.

  At the end of her row, Fawn stood up to stretch her back and check on Dag, working at the far end of the field with Papa, Uncle Roper and his boys, and Fletch to scythe and bundle sheaves and load them into a waiting cart. Dag looked very tall beside the others, though the sleeves of his homespun shirt were rolled up over a coppery suntan not that much deeper than the men’s, and the hat shading his head, woven of lake reeds, was fringed around the rim just like their straw ones. Whit rose beside her, adjusted the strap of the cloth bag across his shoulder, and followed her gaze.

  “I must warn Papa to watch and not let Dag overdo,” said Fawn in worry. “He won’t stop on his own.”

  “Just exactly how was he hurt, again?” said Whit. “’Cause when we went down to wash up in the river last night, all I saw new was that little bitty cut on his left thigh.”

  “It’s not long, but it’s deep,” said Fawn. “The knife blade that did it went straight to the bone and shattered. The Lakewalker medicine maker had an awful time getting all the pieces fished back out. But that’s not what’s dragging him down so.” Taking her lead from Dag, Fawn decided to stick with a much-simplified version of the truth. “The Raintree malice halfway ground-ripped him in the fight, tore up his ground all down his left arm and side. It nearly killed him. It’s like he’s walking around recovering from his own personal blight.”

  “Well, how long does that take?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m not sure he’s sure. Most folks who get ground-ripped just die on the spot. But Dag says when the Glassforge malice put these marks on my neck”—she rubbed at the ugly red dimples, one on the right side, four on the left—“it injured both flesh and ground. If the bruises had been just from a man’s hand, they’d have cleared up two or three months back, with nothing to show. Ground damage is nasty stuff.” Her hand crept to rub her belly as well, but she halted it, burying it in her skirt instead. Dag wasn’t the only one to carry the worst damage hidden inside.