Renegade’s Magic

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 that 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 combined with the food Olikea had prepared to make a delicious and generous meal for all of us. Likari seemed very conscious of the honour 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 savour 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 knew 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 flavour 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 chivvied 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 tsk’ed 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 paralysed 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.’

SEVEN (#ulink_0074ec17-72b1-5961-ac40-ba7dae059f5d)

Epiny’s Ultimatum (#ulink_0074ec17-72b1-5961-ac40-ba7dae059f5d)

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 unfamiliar 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 laboured 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.’

Despite his weakened condition, she was having a hard time keeping up with him. I realized he was doing a quick-walk, making the distance between himself and Lisana contract. He was not using a great deal of magic, but it made the trees blur slightly and the ground seemed less solid under his feet. Olikea and Likari were pulled along in his wake. When he caught the first whiff of smoke, he suddenly redoubled his efforts, consuming the magic as if he had infinite reserves. In two strides, we stood beside Tree Woman’s stump.

Epiny had heaped leaves, some dry and some freshly fallen, in a large mound against the stump. My cousin stood, her teeth bared with satisfaction, watching thick white smoke rising from the tiny fire she had kindled at the base of Lisana’s stump. She had a ready supply of dry branches next to her, to feed the fire once she had it established.

Epiny herself looked a fright. Her hair was pulling out of braids that looked as if they’d been plaited days ago. She wore a shapeless green dress, cut to allow for her growing pregnancy and round her middle, above her growing belly, a battered leather belt with tool loops on it. A canteen hung from one side of it. She’d snagged her dress on something; there was a long rent in the skirt, and it was obvious she’d simply let it drag behind her as she trekked through the forest to get here. Brambles and dead leaves clung to it like a dirty train. She’d unbuttoned the cuffs of her sleeves and turned them up to bare her forearms. Her face gleamed with sweat, and the throat and back of her dress were damp with it. Her hands were smudged with dirt and soot from her fire-making efforts. As I approached, she drew the back of her forearm across her brow, wiping sweat and leaving a streak of dirt in its wake. An open leather pack rested on the earth behind her. Despite her dishevelled appearance, she seemed to seethe with energy.

‘Burn!’ she cried in a low, mad voice. She gritted her teeth and I heard them grind together. ‘Burn, you cheat, you whore of magic. Burn, and be dead forever. As dead as Nevare. I did what you asked! I did all you asked; you promised you’d save him if I did! But you didn’t! You let Nevare die! You lying, cheating bitch!’ The words poured out of her like thick acid. She stooped awkwardly over her belly to snatch up an armload of the firewood and flung it onto the smouldering leaves. They compacted under the weight of the fuel. For a moment, I thought she had smothered the fire. Then the smoke thickened and a tiny tongue of flame wavered up among the heaped wood. It licked the bark of Lisana’s tree stump longingly.

And all the while, Lisana herself manifested as a fat old woman with grey-streaked hair standing with her back against her stump and her arms spread protectively behind her. Her incorporeal presence could do nothing. Her bare feet and her long dress of bark fabric and moss lace dangled down into the lapping flames. I do not think she felt the fire but she still screamed as the flames ran up the trunk.

It had been weeks since it had last rained. The forest was dry. I suddenly understood what the whispered words had meant. Fire fears no magic. Tiny sparks whirled aloft on an updraught of heat, floating on bits of blackened leaves. It was not just Lisana that was in danger. If this fire spread, it could engulf the entire mountainside and the Vale of the Ancestor Trees below.

Soldier’s Boy had my memories. He knew her name and our language. ‘Epiny! Stop! Stop that! You’ll kill us all.’ He rushed forward and kicked barefoot at the fire. He scattered it, letting air into the smouldering mass, and the flames gushed up, crackling like laughter. Epiny, startled, made no move to stop him. She stared at him, her mouth hanging open.

‘Put it out, put it out!’ Lisana shrieked.

I do not think Olikea and Likari heard her, but they recognized the danger all the same. Heedless of burns, Soldier’s Boy was stamping at the edges of the burning fire. Olikea had taken the food pouch from her belt and was using it to beat the flames down. But it was Likari who unshouldered the heavy waterskin he had been carrying. Opening it, he squeezed the bag, directing the stream into the heart of the fire. Epiny had retreated when the three had rushed up on her. Now she stood transfixed, watching as they tore her fire apart and poured water onto it and then stamped and smothered the remaining flames. In a few moments, the danger was past. Olikea was near sobbing with terror, but Likari was capering with joy. Soldier’s Boy sank down. He saw another glowing ember, and lifted a handful of the wet leaves and quenched it. All three of them were streaked with smoke and soot.

‘I told you!’ Lisana shouted angrily at Epiny. ‘I told you I’d kept my word. Even if I hadn’t, the magic would have. The magic doesn’t lie and cheat. There, you see him? You see? Nevare is alive. What you bargained for, you got. Nevare lives!’

Soldier’s Boy turned towards her. Epiny stared at him. Her eyes ran over his dwindled body, but I think his nakedness was just as shocking to her. To her, he was a piebald thing, tanned face and hands, skin pale white and sagging where it was not sun-burned scarlet. She blushed, then deliberately fixed her eyes on my face. I burned with shame but Soldier’s Boy scarcely noticed his nakedness before her. With great hesitancy Epiny asked, ‘Nevare? Can that be you?’

‘It’s me,’ he lied. And for the first time, I fully realized my position. This other entity was controlling my body. Completely. Using it as he willed without regard for me at all. I flung myself against his walls, and battled hard to take back control of my body. I could feel his contempt for Epiny, and recalled that she had been instrumental in defeating him the first time we had battled. He looked at her and saw his old enemy, come back to give him more trouble. I saw my cousin, ravaged by grief, dirty, tired, thirsty and miles from where she should be. She was heavy with her first pregnancy, and I knew that it was a difficult one. She should have been home, safe in her house, with Spink and Amzil and her children. I thought I had arranged all that. When I’d changed the memory of every witness to the mob, when I’d sent Spink and Amzil home relatively unscathed, I thought I’d bought that for her. I knew that if I’d tried to stay, if I’d even planned to make some sort of a return to the people I knew and loved, the magic would have found a way to take them all away from me.

Two nights ago, it had nearly done it. If I hadn’t surrendered to it, if I hadn’t used it and allowed it to make me its own, Amzil would have been gang-raped on the streets of Gettys. Spink, I knew, would have died fighting to save her and to protect me from the mob. What would have become of Epiny, her unborn child and Amzil’s little children then? Unchanging grief for Epiny, loss and poverty for Amzil’s children. That was why I’d made that sacrifice. Everything I’d done, I’d done to save them.

Yet here she was, wild-eyed and dishevelled, miles from home in a hostile forest. And a man wearing my flesh was pretending to be me. She goggled at me, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. ‘You’re naked,’ she pointed out in distress. ‘And you’re … you’re not fat any more. What happened to you? How could that happen in one night? How can you be alive? Spink and Amzil saw you killed. Spink saw you beaten to death on the streets, by his own fellows, his own regiment. Do you know what that’s done to him? Do you know how that’s made him hate everything he was once so proud of? Amzil saw the end of everything that she had just begun to hope for. But here you are. Alive. I don’t understand, Nevare! I don’t understand anything!’

She took two hesitant steps towards me. If I had opened my arms, she would have rushed into them. But Soldier’s Boy did not. He stood before her, naked and unlovely, my arms folded on my chest and asked her solemnly, ‘Why did you come here? What do you want?’

‘Why did I—what? I came to avenge you, you great idiot! To make her suffer for your death as we were all suffering. I came to make her sorry for betraying you, to punish the magic for not keeping its word! And what do I want? I want my life back! I want my husband to see me when he looks at me instead of looking through me. I want Amzil to stop scowling and snapping at the children. I want her to stop weeping at night. I want my baby to be born healthy and happy, not into a house where daily we endure floods of desolation or tides of panic. That’s what I want. That’s what I came for. I knew I wouldn’t get it, but I thought I could at least kill one of those who had taken it from me.’

I felt as if I was dying. I threw myself against Soldier’s Boy’s awareness, trying to break through. I wanted to take her in my arms and comfort her; I wanted something for Epiny. It seemed that everything I’d thought I’d purchased for her by turning my back on Gettys was hollow and sordid by the light of day. I hadn’t solved anything when I’d given way to the magic. I’d only left them to muddle through grief burdened by guilt that none of them deserved.

‘I won’t let you kill her.’ He spoke flatly to Epiny. ‘You should just go home. Pretend you never saw me here. Accept that I’m dead. Then leave Gettys. Go back west where you and your kind belong.’ He lifted his eyes to Lisana as he spoke, but I had the oddest sensation that he could not see her. The strangest part was that I felt Lisana definitely could see me. I stared through his eyes at her, begging her for some kind of mercy, for some splinter of kindness for my cousin. What had she ever done to them save try to protect me and stand by me? Why did she have to suffer so for the magic?