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But I’d still be alive. And the people I loved would go on with their lives. I’d had a glimpse, when the mob seized me, of a far worse future, a future in which Amzil’s best hope was that the gang rape would leave her alive and Spink’s that he would survive having his troops turn on him. My own death paled in comparison. No. I’d made the best choice, for all of us. Now it was up to me to move on, keeping whatever shreds of my integrity remained. I wished I wasn’t going into my new life so empty-handed. I looked longingly at my knife and my axe. No. Iron was not my friend any more. But my winter blanket, folded on the shelf, I would take. One final glance around the cabin, and then I left, shutting the door firmly behind me on Kesey’s rattling snore.
As I came out Clove lifted his head and gave me a rebuking stare. Why hadn’t I freed him from his harness to graze? I glanced at the sun. I’d leave him here, I decided. It was believable that if the big horse had got loose in Gettys, he’d come back to his stall. I couldn’t take off his tack; someone would wonder who had done that for him. I hoped whoever took him over would treat him well. ‘Stay here, old chum. Kesey will look after you. Or someone will.’ I gave him a pat on the shoulder and left him there.
I walked across the cemetery grounds that I knew so well. I passed the butchered remains of my hedge. I shuddered as I recalled it as I’d last seen it, with the bodies jerking and twitching as the rootlets thrust into them seeking nutrients and for a moment I was plunged back into that torchlit night.
It was rare but not unknown for a person who died of Speck plague to be a ‘walker’. One of the doctors at Gettys believed that such persons fell into a deep coma that mimicked death, to rouse hours later for a final attempt at life. Few survived. The other doctor, an aficionado of the superstitions and psychic phenomena that so fascinated our Queen, believed that such ‘walkers’ were not truly the folk who had died, but only bodies reanimated by magic to bring messages to the living from the beyond. Having been a ‘walker’ myself, I had my own opinions. In my year at the King’s Cavalla Academy, I’d contracted the Speck plague just as my fellow cadets had. Once I’d ‘died’, I’d found myself in the Speck’s spirit world. There I’d done battle with my ‘Speck self’ and Tree Woman, only returning to life after I had defeated them.
My erstwhile fiancée Carsina had also been a ‘walker’. In my final night as cemetery guard she had left her coffin and come to beg my forgiveness before she could rest in death. I’d wanted to save her. I’d left my cabin, intending to ride to town and get help. Instead, I’d seen an unimaginable sight. Other plague victims had risen and sought out the trees I’d inadvertently planted. I’d known they were kaembra trees, the same sort of trees that the Specks claimed as their ancestor trees. I’d known that when I’d seen the poles leaf out. How could I not have realized the danger? Had the magic blinded me to it?
Each ‘walker’ had sought out a tree, had sat down, backs to the trunks, and then cried out in agony as the hungry little trees had sent rootlets thrusting into flesh. I’d never forget what I’d seen that night. A boy had cried out wildly, his head and arms and legs jerking spasmodically as the tree claimed his flesh and bound his body tightly to its trunk. I’d been unable to do anything for him. But the worst had been the woman who cried out for help and held her hands out beseechingly. I had clasped those hands and tried with all my might to pull her back, not from death, but from an extended life that made no sense to a Gernian soul.
I’d failed.
I remembered well which tree had seized her so irrevocably, thrusting roots into her back, roots that would burst into a network of spreading filaments inside her, sucking into the young tree not just the nutrients in her body but her spirit as well. That was how the Specks created their ancestor trees. Those the magic found worthy were rewarded with such trees.
As I passed the hacked stump of the woman’s tree, I noticed that it had already sent up a questing new sprout. On the stump next to hers, a red-wattled croaker bird perched, watching me intently. It opened its wings and thrust its ugly head at me. Its wattles shook as it croaked accusingly at me. I shuddered. Croaker birds were the emblem of Orandula, the old god of death and of balances. I did not wish another encounter with him. As I fled from it, I realized that Clove was following me. Well, he’d soon turn back. I entered the forest and felt it take me in. It was like a curtain swishing closed behind me, signalling that the first act of my life was over.
This part of the forest was young, a regrowth after a fire. Occasionally, I passed a blackened stump overgrown with moss and ferns, or strode through the shade of a scorched giant who had survived that blaze. Bushes and wildflowers grew here in the sunlight that filtered down between the trees. Birds sang and darted from branch to branch in the early morning light. The sweet scents of the forest rose up to surround me. Tension drained from me. For a time I walked without thought, listening to Clove’s hooves thud dully on the deep forest soil as he trailed after me.
It was a pleasant summer day. I passed two white butterflies dancing together above a small patch of wildflowers. Beyond them, I came to a mounded tangle of blackberry vines competing for light in a small clearing. I stopped and gathered a double handful of the lush, black summer fruit. They burst in my fingers and stained my hands as I picked them. I filled my mouth with them, rejoicing in the sweetness that was both taste and aroma. I ground the tiny seeds between my back teeth, savouring them. Fruit such as this could take the edge off my hunger, but it could not satisfy me. No. As the magic had come to dominate my flesh and blood, I had learned to crave the foods that fed it. That was what I wanted now. I left the berry patch, hastening uphill.
The burnt-over forest gave way to ancient forest with shocking suddenness. I paused at the edge, standing in the dappling sunlight among the younger trees and looked into a dark cavern. The roof was a thick mass of intertwining branches. Ranks and columns of immense trunks marched off into the dimness. The dense overhead canopy absorbed and defeated the summer sunlight. There was very little underbrush. Thick moss floored the world, indented with a seemingly random pattern of animal trails.
I sighed and glanced back at the big horse. ‘This is where we part company, my friend,’ I told Clove. ‘Go back to the graveyard.’
He regarded me with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance. ‘Go home,’ I told him. He flicked his ears and swished his badly bobbed tail. I sighed. Soon enough, he’d figure it out for himself. I turned and walked away from him.
He followed me for a short way. I didn’t look back at him or speak to him. That was harder than I thought it would be. I tried not to listen for the dull thud of his hooves. He’d go back to where the grazing was good. Kesey would take him in and use him to pull the corpse cart. He’d be fine. Better off than me. At least he’d know what the world expected of him.
There were no human pathways in this part of the forest. I felt as if I walked through an alien abode, richly carpeted in thick green, beneath an elaborate ceiling of translucent green mosaic, all supported by towering columns of rich wood. I was a tiny figurine set down in a giant’s home. I was too small to matter here; the quiet alone was enough to muffle me out of existence.
But as I hiked on, the quiet reinterpreted itself to me. The noises of men were not here, but it was not silent. I became more aware of the birds that flitted and sang challenges to one another over my head. I heard the sharp warning thud of his hind feet and the muffled scamper of a startled hare. A deer regarded me with wide eyes and spread ears as I passed its resting place. I heard its soft snuff as I passed it.
The day was warm and humid beneath the trees. I paused to unbutton my jacket and the top two buttons of my shirt. It was not too long before I was carrying my uniform jacket slung over my shoulder. Amzil had pieced the cavalla-green coat together for me from several old uniforms to fit my enlarged body. One of the tribulations of my magic-induced weight was that I was constantly uncomfortable in my clothing. Trousers had to be fastened under my gut rather than round my waist. Collars, cuffs and sleeves chafed me. Socks stretched out and puddled around my ankles, and wore out swiftly at the heel from my excessive weight. Even boots and shoes were a difficulty. I’d gained size all over my body, even down to my feet. Right now, my clothing hung slightly loose on me. I’d used a lot of magic last night, and lost bulk proportionately. For a moment I considered disrobing and simply going naked as a Speck, but I had not left civilization quite that far behind.
My way led me ever upwards, over the gently rising foothills. Ahead loomed the densely-forested Barrier Mountains and the elusive Speck people who roamed them. I’d been told that the Specks had decided to retreat early to their winter grounds high in the mountains. I’d seek them there. They were not just my last possible refuge. That was also what the magic commanded me to do. I’d resisted it to no avail. Now I would go to it, and try to discover what it wanted of me. Was there any way to satisfy it, any way to win free of it and resume a life of my own choosing? I doubted it, but I would find out.
The magic had infected me when I was fifteen. I had, I thought, been a good son, obedient, hard-working, courteous and respectful. But my father, unbeknownst to me, had been looking for that spark of defiance, that insistence on following my own path that he believed was the hallmark of a good officer. He’d decided to place me in a position where ultimately I must rebel against the authority over me. He had given me over to a Kidona plainsman, a ‘respected enemy’ from the days when the King’s cavalla had battled the former occupants of the Midlands. He told me that Dewara would instruct me in Kidona survival and fighting tactics. Instead, he had terrorized me, starved me, notched my ear and then, just when I’d found the will to defy both him and my father, endeavoured to befriend me. I could never look back on those days without wondering what he had done to my thinking. Only recently had I begun to see the parallels between how Dewara had broken me and brought me into his world and the way the Academy harassed and overburdened the new cadets to press them into a military mould. At the end of my time with Dewara, he had tried to induct me into the Kidona magic. He had both succeeded and failed.
I had crossed into the Kidona spirit world to do battle with their ancient enemy. Instead, Tree Woman had captured me and claimed me. From that day forth, the magic had taken over my life. It had dragged, spurred and coerced me to the frontier. In Gettys, I’d made one last attempt to claim my life as my own. I’d signed my enlistment papers as Nevare Burve, and taken up the only position the regiment offered, guarding the cemetery. Even so, I’d put my heart into my task, doing all I could to see that our dead were buried respectfully and left undisturbed. I’d begun to have a life again; Ebrooks and Kesey had become my friends, and Spink, my cousin’s husband and my best friend from our Academy days had renewed our friendship. Amzil had come to live in Gettys; I’d dared to hope she felt something for me. I had begun to make something of myself, even believing I could provide a refuge for my sister from my father’s tyranny.
That life did not serve the magic’s purpose for me, and as Scout Hitch had once warned me, the magic would not tolerate anything that ran counter to its plan for me. It had destroyed Hitch’s life to make him its servant. I knew I had to choose death or serve the magic. Before Hitch died, he’d confessed all to me. Under the magic’s influence, he’d killed Fala, one of Sarla Moggam’s working girls, and left the evidence that would implicate me. He’d done that, despite being my friend, despite being an otherwise upright man. I still could not imagine Hitch strangling poor Fala, let alone betraying me so treacherously. But he had.
I didn’t want to discover what the magic could make me do if I continued to defy it.
THREE
Lisana
My path led me ever upward. Somewhere, I knew, the sun shone and the wind stirred lightly in a soft summer day. But here, beneath the trees, a soft green twilight reigned and the air was still. My footfalls were deadened by decades of leaf mould. Great trees, roots braced and humped against the rise of the hills, surrounded and shaded me, making the forest a many-pillared palace. Sweat ran down my face and my back. The calves of my legs ached from the steady climb.
And I was still hungry.
I’d had little to eat for the last ten days. My jail rations had been bread and water and a disgusting greyish pudding that was supposed to be porridge. Epiny had smuggled a tiny fruit tart to me, precious because it contained berries picked in this forest. When Tree Woman had sent her roots to break the walls of my cell, she had brought me the mushrooms that had given me strength for my magic. Those, and the hard tack and the handful of berries I’d picked in the morning were all I’d had. Belatedly, I recalled that Amzil had told me she’d packed food in my panniers. Well, that last act of affection was gone now, carried off by Clove with my saddle. Strange to tell, the loss of that food did not distress me. I was hungry for the foods that would feed my magic rather than the ones that sustained my flesh.
I had early realized that restricting my food and even fasting wrought little noticeable change in me. The only thing that consumed my fat was using the magic. In the last day and night, I’d used the magic more than I ever had before, and my appetite for the foods that would feed the magic now raged proportionately.
‘I’m hungry,’ I said aloud to the forest. I half-expected some sort of response: that mushrooms would spring up underfoot or a bush of berries would sprout nearby. But there was nothing. I heaved a sigh of disappointment, then paused and took a deeper lungful of air, breathing in through my nose. There. The faintest scent hung in the still forest air – I followed it, snuffing like a hound on a trail and came to a bank of deep blue flowers nestled against the underside of a fallen log. I could not recall that Olikea had ever fed me anything like them, but the fragrance from them enflamed my appetite. I lowered myself to the forest floor to sit beside them. What was I doing, thinking of eating something I’d never even seen before? I could poison myself. I picked one, smelled it, and then tasted it. It was like eating perfume, and the flavour was too strong to be appetizing. I chose a leaf instead. It was fat-stemmed and fuzzy-edged. Cautiously, I put it to my tongue. There was a tang to the foliage that counteracted the sweetness of the flowers. I picked and ate a handful of the leaves, and then abruptly felt that although I was still hungry, I’d had enough of them. Was this the magic finally speaking clearly to me, as Tree Woman had told me it would? I couldn’t decide if that were true or if I were deceiving myself. With a grunt, I heaved myself to my feet and walked on. I reached the rounded top of a hill and the walking became easier.
I found and ate a cluster of bright yellow mushrooms growing in the moss on top of a tree root. I came to a place where parasitic vines had attacked on older tree. The tree was losing its leaves and patches of its bark had fallen away, revealing the holes and tracks of insects intent on rendering it down into soil. But the vine that cloaked the dying tree was lush with thick foliage and large teardrop-shaped fruit, so purple they shone black in the filtered sunlight. Some of the fruit was so ripe that it had cracked and lightly fermented. Purple juice dripped from them. Bees and other insects hummed ecstatically round the vine, while over my head I could hear the competitive twittering of small birds. Some of the fruit had fallen to the forest floor. There was a busy trail of large black ants carrying off gobbets of fruit.
The other happy feasters convinced me that the fruit was edible. I picked one, sniffed it and tried a small bite. It was so ripe that juice and soft flesh gushed into my mouth as my teeth pierced the skin. It was far sweeter than a sun-ripened plum, almost sickeningly so. Then the flavour of it flooded my mouth and I nearly swooned with delight. I discarded the large round seed and reached for another.
I don’t know how many I ate. When I finally stopped, the skin of my belly was tight against the waistband of my trousers, and my arms were sticky to the elbow with juice. I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and came back a little to myself. The pile of seeds at my feet numbered at least a score. Instead of feeling queasy, I felt only blissful satiation.
As I walked slowly away, I tingled with well-being. I became aware of the music of the forest, a symphony made by the subtle buzzing of insects, the calls of birds, the flutter of leaves in an unseen breeze over head. Even my deadened footfalls were a part of the whole. It was not a symphony of sound alone. The scents of loam and moss, leaf and fruit, meshed with the sounds I heard, and the physical sensations of walking, of brushing past a low branch or sinking deep into moss. The muted colours in the gentled light were a part of it. It was all an amazing whole, an experience that involved me more completely than anything I’d ever felt in my life.
‘I’m drunk,’ I said aloud, and even those words intertwined with the sudden spiralling fall of a leaf and the soft snag of a cobweb across my face at the same moment. ‘No. Not drunk. But intoxicated.’
I liked speaking aloud in the forest, for it made me more intimately a part of it. I walked on, marvelling at everything, and after a time, I began to sing wordlessly, letting my voice be guided by all my senses. I spread wide my arms, heedless that my coat fell to the forest floor. I walked away from it, singing with my whole heart, with every bit of breath I could draw into my lungs. I was transported with joy simply to be me travelling into the depths of the forest.
Simply to be who I was.
Who was I?
The question was like recalling a forgotten errand. I was someone, going somewhere, on my way to do something. My steps slowed, and for a long moment I was intrigued with the idea. I was centred and certain, confident of myself, but I could not quite define with a name who I was.
Nevare. Soldier’s Boy. Like a slow waltz of two halves that have joined to be a whole and then spin apart again, I felt that sundering. And with Soldier’s Boy’s departure from my awareness, I suddenly felt the gap he left in me. I had been a whole creature, peacefully content in that wholeness. And now I was less than whole, and I thought I could understand how an amputee felt. My keen pleasure in the forest dwindled to my ordinary awareness of its pleasant smells and gentle light. The communion I had felt with it became a handful of threads rather than a complex network. I could not recall the song I had been singing. I’d lost track of my place in this world. I was diminished.
I blinked slowly and looked around me, gradually becoming aware that this part of the forest was familiar. If I climbed the ridge before me and veered to the east, I’d come to Tree Woman’s stump. I suddenly knew that was the destination I’d been walking towards all day. Home, I thought, and that was like an echo of someone else’s thought. Soldier’s Boy considered her his home. I wasn’t sure what Nevare considered her.
When I’d first encountered Tree Woman in Dewara’s spirit world I saw a fat old woman with grey hair leaning up against a tree instead of the warrior-guardian I’d expected to battle. Challenging her would have gone against everything my father had ever taught his soldier son about chivalry. And so I had hesitated, and spoken to her, and before I recognized her power, she had defeated me and made me hers.
I became her apprentice mage. And then her lover.
My heart remembered those days with her. My head did not. My head had gone to the Cavalla Academy, taken courses, made friends and done all that a loyal soldier son should. And when the opportunity came for me to challenge Tree Woman as an adversary, I had not hesitated. I’d destroyed that other self who had been her acolyte, taking him back inside me. And then I’d done my best to kill her as well.
Yet at both those tasks, I’d failed. The Speck self I’d taken back inside me lurked there still, like a speckled trout in the deep shade under a grassy riverbank. From time to time I glimpsed him, but never could I seize and hold him. And the Tree Woman I’d slain? I’d only partially severed her trunk with a cavalla sword. That deed, impossible in what I considered the real world, had left its evidence here. Upon the ridge ahead of me was the stump of her tree. The rusting blade of my sword was still embedded in it. I’d toppled her. But I had not severed her trunk completely. The ruin of her tree sprawled on the mossy hillside, in the swathe of sunlight that now broke through the canopy of the forest there.
But she was not dead. From the fallen trunk, a new young tree was rising. And near her stump, I’d encountered her ghostly form. My adversary was still as alive as I was and the hidden Speck self inside me loved her still.
As Tree Woman, she was an enemy to my people. She was frank in her hope that something I would do would turn back the tide of ‘intruders’ and send the Gernians away forever from the forest and mountain world of the Specks. At her behest, Speck plague had been spread throughout Gernia and still continued to afflict my country. Thousands had sickened and died. The King’s great project, his road to the east, had come to a standstill. By all I had ever been taught, I should hate her as my enemy.
But I loved her. And I knew that I loved her with a fierce tenderness unlike anything I’d ever felt for any other woman. I had no conscious reason to feel that passion toward her, but feel it I did.
I toiled up the last steep stretch and reached the ridge. I hurried towards her, the anticipation of my hidden self rising with every step I took. But as I approached her stump, I halted, dismayed.
The stump of her tree had silvered and deadened. Even the unsevered piece that had bent with her falling trunk and kept the branches of it alive had gone grey and dull. I could not see her; I could not feel her. The young tree, a branch that had begun to grow upright after her trunk had fallen, still stood, but barely.
I waded through her fallen and dead branches to reach the supine trunk and the small tree that grew from it. When Tree Woman had crashed to the earth, her passing had torn a rent in the canopy overhead. Light poured down in straight yellow shafts piercing the usual dimness of the forest and illuminating the small tree. When I fingered the little tree’s green leaves, they were flaccid and limp. A few leaves at the ends of the branches had begun to brown at the edges. The little tree was dying. I put my hands on her trunk. My two hands could just span its diameter. Once before, in a dream, I had touched this little tree and felt how it surged with her life and being. Now I felt only dry, sun-warmed bark under my hands.
‘Lisana,’ I prayed softly. I called her by her true name and held my breath waiting for some response. I felt nothing.
A wandering breeze ventured in through the hole in the forest’s roof. It stirred my hair and made pollen dance in the shaft of light where I stood.
‘Lisana, please,’ I begged. ‘What happened? Why is your tree dying?’
The answer came to me as clearly as if she had spoken. Last night, I’d been able to escape my cell because the roots of a tree had broken through the mortar and stones. As I’d climbed those roots to escape, I’d felt Lisana’s presence there. Had the roots of her tree grown all that way, from here to Gettys, and then torn down the walls to free me? It was impossible.
