by Robin Hobb
“I wouldn’t call it an illusion. Isn’t it what you would choose if you could? A tree’s life to be with someone you love with all your senses?”
“I suppose I would.” I considered it for a moment, and wondered if Amzil would still want to spend even an ordinary life with me. Useless to wonder. I did not even have that sort of a life to offer her. “But I sense there is more. What else did Lisana tell you?”
“What we have both known for some time. That divided as we are, you and I are useless to anyone. The magic isn’t working, or at best works only halfway. When Lisana divided us so that I could stay with her and be taught, she never anticipated that we would remain divided.”
“No. As I recall, she intended that I would die of the plague.”
“I was to have the body and you were to become part of me,” he corrected me.
“I don’t see the difference. Isn’t that what we are now?”
“No. You oppose me. Just as I opposed you when you sought to be fully in command.” For a moment, he seemed invisible to me, caught in thoughts of his own. Then, reluctantly, he said, “We were supposed to become one. I was to absorb you, your knowledge, your attributes of character, your understanding of your people. We would have been one merged person, completely integrated. And the magic would have had access to both of us, and it would have been able to achieve its goals.”
“But I killed you instead.”
“You thought you did. And I resisted being absorbed by you, just as you have resisted becoming part of me. But until we are one, the magic cannot work. It moves by half measures, more destructive than if it did nothing at all. Lisana is convinced of this.”
“She knows this?” It seemed to me there was a difference between being convinced and knowing.
“She knows it,” he replied, but his words had taken too long in coming. I didn’t believe that Tree Woman was certain of this. We had crossed the bridge. He sat down again on the same rock where we had spent so much time the night before. It was just as uncomfortable now as it had been then. A thin spring sunlight filtered down through the trees. He closed his eyes and turned his face up to it, enjoying the warmth on his face.
“You’re guessing,” I accused him.
He gave a harsh sigh. “Yes. I am. So? Nothing else has worked. I think we both need to give way and accept it.”
“What are you proposing?”
“I’m proposing that we drop all walls. Become one. Completely.” The sunlight, feeble as it was, was already making his face tingle. With a grunt and a sigh, he stood and moved into the shelter of the trees. It was chilly there, but his skin was no longer exposed to direct sunlight. He found a mossed-over log and sat down on it.
I suddenly divined what had conquered him. “Lisana wants us to be one.”
“Yes.” He ground his teeth together and then said, “She sent me away. She told me that until we are one, I can no longer come to her. She…she rebuked me harshly that I had not yet made you a part of myself.”
“So I should drop my walls and let you absorb me. So that you’ll be able to use the magic fully, to kill or drive my people away so yours can live in peace. So that you can be with Lisana.”
“Yes.” He gritted out the word. “Become part of me. Let the magic work through us as it was meant to. Accept what we are, a man of both cultures. Neither side is innocent, Nevare.”
I could not argue with that.
Into my silence, he added, “Neither of us is innocent. In the names of our peoples, we have done great wrongs.”
And that, too, was true. I sat, the spring day all around me, and considered what he proposed.
“How do we know which one of us will retain the awareness?” I asked him bluntly. Privately, I wondered if he would offer this “merging” if he was not already confident it would be him.
“How do we know it will be only one of us? Perhaps, together, we become someone else. A person who has never existed before. Or the person the boy we were would have grown to be.” Idly he peeled a layer of moss from the rotting log. Beetles scattered, scuttling over the rotten wood and hiding again in the moss.
“I could become the person I was meant to be before I was sundered.” I spoke thoughtfully. My father’s soldier son. I’d take back the ruthlessness that Soldier’s Boy had stolen from me, the capacity to steel myself to do the awful things that war required of a soldier.
He laughed aloud, amused. “Could not I say exactly the same thing? Did not I feel the same sundering when you parted from me and went back to our father’s house and then off to that school? Do you think I don’t feel exactly as you do? I had a childhood. I was raised a Gernian and the son of a new noble. I remember our mother’s gentle words. I remember music and poetry, fine manners and dancing. I had a softer side once. Then I had an experience with Dewara that changed me profoundly. And Tree Woman took me under her guardianship. I watched someone else walk off with my body. But I never stopped being I and me to myself. I never became some other. You so obviously believe you are the legitimate owner of this body, Nevare, the only one who should determine what I do in this world. Can’t you grasp that I feel just the same way?”
I was silent for a time. Then I said stiffly, “I see no resolution to this.”
“Don’t you? It seems obvious to me. We let down our guards and stop resisting each other. We merge. We become one.”
I tried to think about it, but suddenly the answer was too clear before me. “No. I can’t do it.”
“Why won’t you at least try it?”
“Because no matter how it came out, it is intolerable for me to think about. If we become one, and you are dominant, I cease to exist. It would be a suicide for me.”
“I could say the same to you. But that might not happen. As I said, we might simply become a whole, a different person in which neither of us dominates.”
“It would still be intolerable. I cannot imagine a person who had any of my ethics and could tolerate the memory of what you did at Gettys. Those acts were completely reprehensible to me. I cannot accept them as a part of my past. I will not.”
He was silent for a time. Then he asked quietly, “What of your acts of war against the People? Your cutting of Lisana’s tree? You were the one who told the intruders how to overcome Kinrove’s magic and cut our ancestor trees. Was that not killing the People?”
They were trees, not people. The thought washed into my mind, but died, unuttered. It wasn’t true. When the trees had fallen, the spirits within them had moved on. My actions had been just as responsible for deaths as Soldier’s Boy’s had. Neither one of us had bloodied our hands; we had let others do that for us. But the deaths I had caused were just as unforgivable as the slaughter of the soldiers. The lurch of heart that gave me, as the acid realization ate into my soul! And Epiny had told me that the tree cutting would soon resume, if it had not already. I realized it was the result of two half measures of magic; I had told the commander at Gettys how to drug his laborers to get around the fear magic of the forest. And then Soldier’s Boy, with his bloody raid, had energized them with enough hate to make them decide to push on despite any fear or despair they felt. Together we had brought those deaths down on the People. And together we had made possible the slaughter at Gettys. If we had been one, could any of those events have happened? If Soldier’s Boy had had to feel my emotions, would he have been able to commit the atrocities that he had? If we had been one, would I have been better able to stand up for myself at Gettys and demand that I be heard?
Something changed in me at that moment. I had not realized that I had still held the People apart from myself, still regarded the ancestor trees as other than what they were, bodies for spirits of the ancestors to inhabit. The remorse and sorrow I felt over their deaths vibrated through me, suddenly in tune with what Soldier’s Boy felt. For that moment, we were closer to accord. For the blink of an eye, we were one. And then apart again. He let out a pent breath.
“Nevare,” Soldier’s Boy said
to me quietly, “separately or together, we must bear the guilt and the remorse for the things we have done. Separately or together, we cannot change the past. But together, we might be able to change the future.”
“But change it how?” I asked him bitterly. “Annihilate those who remain at Gettys? If I merge with you, you gain the knowledge that the magic will finally be able to work its will. But what do I gain? Only the knowledge that people I love may be slaughtered. I can see every reason why I should resist this, and none for why I should concede.”
For a time, he was silent. I looked with him out of our eyes at the world around us. Nearby, the stream spoke softly, rippling over stone, and overhead a slight morning wind stirred the treetops. There was peace here. Peace and solitude. Perhaps the only peace I’d ever know again was in solitude. I tried to imagine what I’d do if Soldier’s Boy and I merged, and I became the dominant one. I’d still be trapped in this body, now marked by him as a Speck. I couldn’t go back to Gettys. Could never go back to Amzil. Would I continue as a Speck Great One, with Olikea to attend to my comforts by day and Lisana to visit by night? I doubted it. I’d dismissed my feeders. With Likari lost to Kinrove’s dance, Olikea would never take me back, even if I had been able to bear the idea of going to her with the spectre of her lost son looming between us always. So what was there for me?
“If we became one, and you were dominant, what would you do?”
He answered me honestly, but for all that, his words chilled me. “Whatever the magic demanded of me. Because I think if we were one, it would speak clearly to us, and we, or I, would know what to do.”
“No.” It was the only possible decision I could make.
He sighed. “I feared that would be your answer.” He stood, and then stretched cautiously. His lower back ached. It almost always ached now, except when a feeder was massaging it. I suspected it was part of the price of being a Great One. An aching back. Sore, swollen feet. Knees that complained. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Nevare. Lisana asked me to give you the chance to accede to my request. She loves you, as you are part of me, and she did not wish to imagine you distressed by what must be done. So. I asked. I’ve done all I can. I’ve tried to force you to be one with me. I’ve tried to silence you and absorb you. I’ve tried to trick you into being part of me. All has failed. But until you join me, I cannot do what I am meant to do. And I cannot be with Lisana.” He paused and then informed me, “You had the chance to say yes, to join me willingly. I gave you that, as I promised Lisana I would. You said no. You are certain that is your decision?”
“I am certain.”
The thought was scarcely formed before he attacked me. Or tried. I felt his attempt. He seized me and held me tightly. I could not flee from his awareness of me, nor escape my awareness of him. I was held prisoner.
But it was all he could do. I spoke to him. “You can box me. You can take my senses away. You can ignore me. But you cannot destroy me. And you cannot force me to be part of you any more than I could force that on you.”
For a time longer he held me. And then he threw back his head and gave a great roar of frustration. “I hate you, Nevare! Hate you, hate you, hate you! I hate all you are, and still I must make you a part of me. I must!” The last words he bellowed at the sky.
“You cannot,” I said resolutely.
He began to make his way back through the forest toward the stream and the bridge that crossed it. He strode up the hill toward Lisana’s lodge.
“What now?” I asked him.
He gave a small, dismissive sigh. “I do what I must do. I humiliate myself. I go to Kinrove, to strike the best bargain I am capable of making.” He scratched his cheek and added thoughtfully, “And perhaps to keep a promise.”
Before I could ask any more of him, he cut me off from his thoughts again. Once more I rode in the body, unknowing of his intentions, bound for a fate I could not control.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
DECISIONS
He did not hurry. I think he had sent the others on so that he could be alone to speak with me. Perhaps he had believed that there would be some great struggle between us, a confrontation of his two selves that no one should witness. Now he moved with purpose, as if treading a road he had foreseen and dreaded. He returned to the lodge and went directly to the new hiding place that Olikea had devised. In a heavy cedar storage trunk, beneath the layers of wool blankets and fur coverings that he removed and carelessly piled on the earth floor, there was a false bottom. It was not easy to get it open, for it had no obvious handle or catch. But eventually he pried it up and sat for a moment, staring at what remained of Lisana’s treasure hoard. I imagined that he felt regret or reluctance, but could not be sure, for I was no longer privy to his feelings or emotions.
He spread one of the smaller blankets on the floor and loaded the treasure into the center. For some small time, he sat holding the ivory baby in his hands. With a fingertip, he traced the indistinct features of its face, the round cheeks, the closed eyes; then he returned it to the soft bag that Olikea always kept it in and added it resolutely to the pile. Once that was done, he tied up the four corners of the blanket to make it into a carry sack, tossed it over his shoulder, and left the lodge. He left the blankets scattered on the floor and the door wide open. Either he thought he’d never return, or he’d become so accustomed to having feeders pick up after him that he no longer noticed the messes he left.
The sun was already low, and soon the light would be lost to us. “You’re a fool, starting a journey at this time of day,” I said to him, but he paid me no heed. I doubt he even noticed the thought. For a time, he simply walked, following the well-trodden trail. I think he enjoyed the end of the spring day. Despite my trepidation, I did. There is nothing that smells quite like a forest in spring. The air was cool enough that walking was pleasant. Even for a heavy man, the first part of a walk can be a pleasant thing. But all too soon, my feet and knees began to complain, and my back reminded us that we’d spent far too much time sitting on a rock the night before. The blanket of swag on my shoulder began to seem heavy, and sweat began to trickle and chafe.
He took a deep breath, blew it out, and then with his next step began a quick-walk. It took me off guard and I did not enjoy the lurch from one place to another as he stepped. He had not fed as well that day as he was accustomed to, and soon he was using magic he had stored. I thought I sensed him grumbling to himself about that, but could not be sure. He strode quickly as well as quick-walked, so that the countryside flew past us. Night came on, and still we walked. He was very tired and his stomach roared with hunger before he saw fire ahead of us in the distance. He stopped his quick-walking then, and despite his aching back and muttering knees, forced himself to walk normally as he approached the campfires.
The trail ahead of us led uphill. To either side of it, firelight winked through the sheltering cover of the newly budded trees, like a string of glistening jewels scattered up the side of the mountain. As he approached, the cooking smells nearly made his knees buckle with hunger. Music floated on the night, drums and strings and the voices of the People upraised in shared song. Lisana’s memories of the westbound migration surfaced in his mind. The younger folk had always loved the trek back to the western side of the mountains. During the firelit nights of the migrations, they moved freely among the kin-clans, discovering friends new and old, taking lovers, trading with one another and comparing the trade goods that they were carrying west. It was a time as eagerly anticipated as the social season in Old Thares. The best storytellers of all the People would be performing, and there would be singing and shared food and shared blankets. A good time. Up ahead, someone gave a sudden whoop. Perhaps it was a storyteller ending a rendition of a favorite, for his cry was echoed with laughter and applause. If I had been a Speck child, I would have been racing up the trail to see what wonderful event was going on.
That thought brought Likari sharply to my mind. A moment later, Soldier’s Boy sighed and th
en paused on his upward trek. I wondered if the same thought had occurred to him. But his pause was momentary. He was soon laboring along, the calves of his legs screaming with the extra effort and stomach growling at the smells of the food.
His disappearance the night before had badly delayed the departure of his feeders, so it was no surprise that he found them around the first campfire he came to. Olikea was there with them, crouched by a pot of something simmering on the coals. At first glance, she seemed an old woman from the droop of her face and her untidy hair. She still wore a winter robe against the chill of the spring night, but it was a simple work robe, unlike the spring finery that some of the other women had donned. Grief had aged her. She was not the wild and flirtatious creature that had seduced me only a year ago. I thought of that, and marveled at all the changes that had been packed into such a short time.
While I pondered such things, Soldier’s Boy walked unannounced into the circle of their firelight. One of the other feeders noticed him first and gave a small squeak of surprise. Olikea started at the sight of him. She immediately put her gaze back on her cooking and said sourly, “So, here you are. You’ve come to your senses, then.” Her tone was not welcoming, but I thought I had detected a brief expression of relief on her face when she saw him.
“I suppose I have.” He lowered the sack of treasure to the ground beside him. At the sound of it, she looked back at him with a frown.
“What have you brought?”
“Lisana’s treasure.”
“But…but—” Her dismay and displeasure were equally evident. “Surely you can’t mean to trade them to the intruders! They will never give you what they are worth. And there are things there that you should never trade away, things of such value that—”
“I know.” His words cut her off. His tone was almost gentle as he said, “I don’t intend to trade them to the Gernians. I don’t think the Gernians will be doing any trade with us at all this year. If we are wise, we will stay deep in the forest and well hidden from them and their bullets. No. I’m taking these not to the Gernians but to Kinrove.”