by Robin Hobb
I danced around her while she looked at the journal. Then she opened the drawer of her desk, took out good heavy paper, textured thick as cream, and her own mother-of-pearl pen. She uncapped her inkwell, dipped her pen, and began to take notes. I smiled, danced around her a final time, and then danced away.
Away from Old Thares, following the river and the King’s Road. As I went, I could see how the road had changed everything. Wherever the road had gone, little trails and paths and byways had sprouted out from it and spread their roots. Cabins and cottages, hamlets and new noble holdings, bustling towns and ambitious little villages seemed to spring up wherever there was a crossroads or wherever the road kissed the river’s shore. There was good in that, and there was bad, but of itself it was neither; only change. People had to live somewhere, and population pushed from one area flowed into another just as surely as water flows downhill. There was nothing evil about it; change was only change.
To make people move, I saw, they had to be pushed or pulled. The Landsingers had pushed the Gernians, and the Gernians had pushed the Plainspeople. That push from the Landsingers taking our coastal provinces had propelled the Gernians all the way to the Barrier Mountains, just as a wave of water from a stone dropped in a still pond eventually laps against the far shore. The King’s Road wasn’t really the problem. The road was only the spear’s point that led the way. The People had tried to push back against the Gernians. But their impact hadn’t been strong enough; the People could not muster a large enough push to repel the Gernians.
No. But something might pull them back.
I danced to the Midlands, to my father’s holdings of Widevale. Evening was falling there. I danced up the graveled road to his house, and as I went, I saw changes there, too. The signs of neglect were small, but I saw them. Winter-broken limbs had not been pruned from the line of trees that edged the driveway. Potholes that should have been filled instead held rainwater. The circular drive for carriages and wagons was developing ruts. Small things now, but untended, they would only worsen. They all suggested to me that my father had still not resumed the day-to-day management of his estate, and that Yaril, although doing the best she could, would not see such tasks until they urgently demanded attention. But Sergeant Duril should; why had not he spoken to her?
I danced into the house; the neatness and order I saw there comforted me. Here, at least, Yaril was in her element and still in command. Spring fires burned brightly in each neatly swept hearth, and sweet bouquets of early anemones, tulips, and daffodils filled the vases. The breath of hyacinth was in Yaril’s room; she sat at her small white desk, writing a letter. I danced as I looked over her shoulder. It was a note to Carsina, asking why she had not replied to her earlier missive and asking her if she had news of me. I breathed by her ear: “Remind her that once she loved me, that once we were to be wed. Remind her of that.” I did not know why I asked her to do such a thing; her letter was to a woman months dead. The magic suggested it to me and so I did it.
I said no more to her than that. Somewhere, I felt something give way inside my body. It is hard to describe the sensation. If my body had been a house, then it would have been the sensation of a weight-bearing wall starting to crack. For a moment, I was in that body again. I felt what the dance was doing to it. Every shock of my foot against the earth was translated up through my flesh, muscle, and bone. Like rhythmic earthquakes, they shook and tore at my body, fraying tendons, tearing blood vessels that in turn leaked blood into the cavities of my flesh. The pounding of my feet against the earth might as well have been tiny hammer blows against my body. Each step of the dance did damage.
It could not be helped. The damage was part of the dance.
I put my mind back to the magic and found myself in my father’s study. A fire burned in the hearth. My father sat next to it in a cushioned chair, a robe across his knees. Caulder’s uncle was seated on the other side of the hearth. I had never met the man, but I knew him by his resemblance to Colonel Stiet, his brother. He fairly trembled with eagerness as he showed my father the crudely sketched map I had drawn so many months ago. Folding and much handling had not improved my rough sketch. “This,” he said, tracing the ravine I had drawn. “What do you suppose he meant this to be? Do you recognize the terrain?”
My father had grown older; his hair was whitening, and veins and tendons stood out on the back of his hands. As before, I could see the ravages of the magic. But I thought I could also see some healing of the damage, like scar tissue knitting together what remained of sound flesh. My father would never be the man he had been, but he might heal, and at least be himself rather than what the magic had made of him. It need not have him if it had all of me.
Stiet did not allow my father to hold the map he was showing him; he kept possession of it, merely pointing at the part he wished my father to study. My father glanced at it with polite interest, then turned aside with a vague scowl. “I’ve told you three times, I don’t know what that is. If you are so keen to know, ask Nevare. You say that he drew it.”
“He did draw it! But I cannot ask your son. You sent him away. Do not you remember that you did that? You spent most of yesterday weeping over it!” Stiet flung himself back suddenly in his chair. “Oh, you are useless!” he exploded. “The smallest, simplest bit of information stands between me and a fortune. And no one has it.”
Frustration vied with cruelty in the man’s words. My father’s face crumpled, as if he’d been dealt a blow to the stomach. His mouth worked, trembled, and then with an effort he firmed his jaw. Seeing my father weakened and uncertain and treated so abusively by a man who was taking full advantage of my family’s hospitality washed away the final dregs of my anger and resentment toward my father. Stiet’s callous mockery of him made me furious. I danced around my father, sealing him off from Stiet’s cruel words. I danced strength of will and pride for him. “Tell him to leave you alone! Tell him to ask Sergeant Duril. Duril will know what my scribble meant.”
My father drew himself up taller in his chair. “Ask Sergeant Duril. He knows the boy best; he’s been as much a father to him as I have. He’ll recognize what Nevare’s scribble means.”
Stiet clenched his jaw. Nervously, he refolded the map, smoothing the creases ever deeper. “But can we trust him?” he demanded of my father. “I’ve told you, there is a fortune at stake here. And I do not know if we can wait until he returns from Gettys. Spring grows stronger every day. At any time now, someone else may find the place we seek and claim it for his own. And all, all will be for naught. Why did you have to send the sergeant away?”
My father folded his knobby hands on his blanketed knees. His gaze seemed clearer as he stared at Stiet. “Why, to help my niece Epiny. Yaril had word from her; the winter has been quite harsh at Gettys, with skirmishes with the Speck. Duril set out with the high-wheeled cart full of supplies. He’ll look into what has become of Nevare as well. Seems there’s reason to believe the boy made it that far east and enlisted at the fort there. Plucky lad. Can’t keep a Burvelle down for long.”
“Plucky lad? You disowned him! He’d become fat as a pig. He was kicked out of the Academy, came home in disgrace, and you disowned him!” With difficulty, Stiet calmed himself. He took a breath and leaned toward my father, speaking as if with sympathy for a poor old man. “He’s gone, Lord Burvelle. Your last living son is gone. It’s a shame he disappointed you so, but he’s gone. All your sons are gone. Your last best hope is for your daughter to marry well, stay here, and take care of you. My adopted son is a good match for her; he’s from a good family. Unfortunately, I have little fortune to leave to him. But if only we could establish where the mineral sample came from, I feel it would be of interest to certain other geologists. I could provide handsomely for the boy then. And he in turn could provide for your daughter. It could do us all a good turn.”
“I want to see the rock.” My father spoke with sudden strength. “I want to know what is so unique about it. Let me see the rock.”
As I danced, I shook my head. The man was lying. He had no scholarly interest in that stone. There was something else about that rock, something of monetary value. I was sure of it, though I did not know enough geology to say what it might be. Then, unnervingly, my father’s eyes met mine. He did not stare through me; he seemed to really see me. In response to the shaking of my head, he slowly shook his own. “No,” he said, and swung his gaze to Stiet. “No. You are not telling me the full story. And even when Sergeant Duril returns, he will not help you. Not until you are honest with us. And if my son lives”—his voice grew stronger—“if my son lives, he will come home. Don’t dangle that pale little boy before me like bait. He’s barely out of short trousers, and my daughter has told me she does not wish to marry so young. She’ll tell you so herself.” He lifted his voice suddenly. “Yaril! Yaril, I want you!” And for a moment he sounded like the father I recalled from my youth rather than the man crazed by my failure at the Academy and broken by the grief of his plague losses.
I heard the sound of a chair pushed back, and then the hurrying patter of Yaril’s feet down the corridor. “Never mind, never mind,” Stiet was saying hastily. “Send her away; you’ve no need of her. Don’t make yourself upset. I only asked a simple question.”
“I need her,” the old man replied testily. Again, he looked directly at me, and I would have sworn he could see me. “I need her to do the things that I cannot do. The things I no longer have the strength to do for myself.” He kept his gaze on my face as he spoke, and I had the strangest sensation of an interchange between us, as if the magic I had infected him with was now returning to me. I felt more whole for it coming back to me, and I could almost see it leaving my father and allowing him to become more himself again. How much magic had I spread, and to how many people? I knew that it had touched Epiny strongly, and Spink. Carsina, it had forced to come to me after her death, to beg my forgiveness. Yaril? I’d touched Caulder with it, when I turned him back on the bridge. Who else? How many? A part of me wished to feel guilt over what I had done. Another part effortlessly recognized that it was not me, but the magic that had acted so. It would not accept or tolerate the guilt.
The dancing of my distant body intruded again in my thoughts. Kinrove knew how to express the magic only as dance, and at his bidding, at his summons, I danced. How had I expressed the magic? I suddenly wondered, and then speculated that perhaps words had been my strongest manifestation of it. The journal, the hastily sketched map, even the letters that had flown between Carsina and Yaril and Epiny and myself. I felt something in the distant physicality. Water flowing down my back. Feeders were pouring cooling water over me. I felt it trickle and flow. Somewhere, I thirsted. I did not stop dancing, but opened my mouth and someone trickled water into it. Olikea? Perhaps.
But I could not think of her now, could not think of anything except stitching up the holes in my magical tasks. All that my separate halves could not accomplish was coming together for me. It takes two hands to weave, and that was what I was doing.
When Yaril entered the room, I knew what I had to do. A furrow creased her brow and she suddenly clasped herself in an embrace. “Is there a draft in here?” she demanded, and then hurried about the room, drawing curtains and checking to be sure that the casement windows were securely closed and latched. That done, she hurried up to my father, her skirts rustling and her feet tapping on the floor. Those simple sounds, so often ignored, suddenly seemed a part of the music and I danced with her. Her words seemed a song when she said, “Here I am, Father. What did you need?”
“I need an answer!” Abruptly my father slapped his palm against his leg, as if somehow Yaril had been deceiving him and he was upbraiding her for it.
It broke my heart to see the quiver that passed through her. But she drew herself up straight and met his gaze. “An answer to what question, Father?” she asked him. Her voice was grave, without impertinence. I saw how she used her own demeanor to recall him to his.
“This man’s son—his adopted son, this Caulder. Do you wish to be engaged to him?”
She glanced down but spoke strongly for all her averted gaze. “You gave me to understand that the decision was not mine to make.”
“Nor is it now!” he shouted. His voice was louder, but it lacked the timbre of his old thunder. Yaril stood firm before it. “But you can have an opinion on it, can’t you, and I’m asking you that opinion. What is it?”
She lifted her chin. “Do you wish me to speak it in front of Professor Stiet?”
“Would I ask you while he was sitting here if I did not?”
“Very well.” The new edge in her voice rose to meet my father’s old steel. “I do not know enough about him yet to completely judge his character. I have seen him only as a guest in our home, rather than as a man about his business in the world. If I must take him, then I will make the best of it. It is what women do, Father.”
My father stared at her for a moment. Then he gave a cracked laugh. “And doubtless it is what your mother did with me. So there. You hear the girl, Stiet. I don’t think you’ve got anything we want just now. I think you can keep your damned rock and your damned slip of paper and your damned ‘son.’ I don’t think my daughter and I need any of them.”
I saw something then. I saw how my father sensed and defied the magic. It writhed through him like a squirming parasite, seeking to bend him to its will. The magic did not want Professor Stiet to leave. My father lifted a bony hand and rubbed at his chest as if trying to ease an old pain. I had a glimpse of his set teeth when his lips writhed back, but he mastered it. He fought the magic, just as I had. I recalled suddenly the day I had made that map, how I had dashed it off furiously, a deliberately sloppy rendering simply to be able to say I had done it and be finished with it. That Nevare had almost instinctively defied the magic, just as my father did now. I saw him twitch again.
“Wait!” I cried the word aloud, from my body in the distance. “Leave him. Leave him be. There is another way, a better way. Let me guide the magic in this, and I swear you will have your way. But only let the old man alone.”
Without hands, I reached; without fingers, I gripped. I drew the magic out of his body as if I were pulling out a snake that had tunneled into his flesh. He cried out as I did so, and clutched at his chest. I knew it gave him pain, and worried that his body would not be able to withstand the strain. But that was uncertainty; what I knew was that if I left the magic in control of him, he would either capitulate to its will or die. I suspected he would choose death.
His face was white, his lips darker than scarlet when at last the magic came free of him. With a cry, he curled forward, clutching his chest. Yaril rushed to his side, crying, “No! No, Father, you must not die. Breathe. Breathe, Father, breathe.” She turned to Stiet and barked, “Do not stand there! Call the servants, send someone to fetch the doctor from the Landing.”
Stiet didn’t move. Cold calculations were totted up in his eyes.
“Send for the doctor!” she shrieked at him.
“I’ll go myself.” The voice came from the doorway. Caulder Stiet stood there. He had become bookish, to put it kindly. If I had seen him on the streets of a city, I probably would not have known him. His hair had grown out of its military cut, and he wore low shoes on his feet, gray trousers, and a white shirt with a soft gray cravat. In one hand, he held a book, his finger marking his place. He did not look a man of action and the eyes he fixed on Yaril were puppyish with affection.
“Yes! Go!” she cried. Still, he took three steps into the room, set the book down on a side table, and then turned and hurried off.
I had considered using Caulder. That
glimpse of him decided me. No. Father was right. Yaril must do what he was no longer strong enough to do. The old man was looking directly at me. His lips moved. “Thank you, son. Thank you.” His head sagged to one side on his neck.
The magic squirmed against me, flailing and then wrapping around my ghost fists as it sought to escape. I danced harder, caught in the magic and yet battling with it. My heart rattled in my chest like an empty wagon hitched to a runaway team. I was the magic and I fought the magic, trying to master it, trying to force it into a channel that would not destroy all of the Burvelle family. I clenched it tightly, looked at my helpless little sister as she knelt by my father’s failing body, and then doubled the magic into a loop. I pressed it to my brow, imprinting it with an old memory, searing an image into it, and adding to it a message. “This is where the stone came from. But do not give this knowledge to Stiet. Use it for the good of the Burvelle family. Gift whatever it is to the King and Queen. It is the only way.”
I froze my heart. “I am sorry,” I said to Yaril. “Sorry to make you serve us so. But there is no one else.” And then I took my coronet of magic and knowledge and crammed it onto my sister’s bowed head.
At the touch of it, she flung her head back, like a horse refusing a bridle. But the magic was there, and the knowledge, and yes, my memory of telling her all that had befallen me that summer my father had given me over to the Kidona warrior Dewara. The magic brought it back to her vividly. And she knew now, as clearly as I did, how to get to the place where Dewara had built his fire and conducted me over to his spirit world. There, I believed, was the source of the rock that I had carried with me as a reminder of that encounter, the same rock that Caulder had stolen from me during my year at the Academy.