Forest Mage (79 page)

I couldn’t think of a response. A slight breeze or a ghost hand stirred my hair. I lifted my eyes to look into hers and asked, “What do you think I should do, then?”

“You know what I think. You have known from the beginning what I think.”

“You say I should do what the magic wants me to do. And
you say I should have done it by now. You’ve told me that over and over. But I truly don’t know what that means.”

“Perhaps the magic does not speak to you more clearly because you have avoided it so earnestly. Perhaps if you had not resisted its efforts to fill you, perhaps if you had come more promptly to its calling, you would know what you were to do. Now, I fear, it is too late for you to seek the magic.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I feel the magic reaching out to take you, Soldier’s Boy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said! Always you ask me,
what do you mean
? You hear my words. When you don’t understand them, it is because you do not wish to understand them. It is the same way that you resist the magic. Why?”

I didn’t even have to think of a reply. “Perhaps I want to have my own life, the way I envisioned it, the way it was promised to me! Lisana, from the time I was small, I was raised to be a soldier. I expected to go to the academy, to be well educated, to become an officer and distinguish myself in battle, to have a lovely wife and children, and eventually to return to my home and retire with honor. The magic took all of that away from me. And what has it given me? A fat body that is awkward and ugly to live in. A power that comes and goes, that I don’t know how to use or control. What good has it done me?”

She looked at me sadly for a moment. She lifted her arms as if to display her body to me. “Awkward and ugly,” she said, and when she took the words to herself, it cut like a knife that I had uttered them.

“I didn’t mean—” I cried out, but “Hush!” she scolded me. “I do not pretend that I don’t understand what you say! I know what you meant. What good has the magic done you, you asked. I could say that through it, you came to know me. And that you have come to know the forest in a way you never could have before. But the real answer is that the magic is not for your good, and so it does not matter if it does things that make you happy or not.” She cocked her head at me slightly. “Don’t you remember, Soldier’s
Boy? I held you over the abyss and told you that you must choose. I told you that you must say you wished to be taken up to this life. And you said you did, and I brought you here.”

“But I did not know what I was choosing. I only knew that I feared to die.”

“None of us ever know what we are choosing when we choose life. If certainty is so important to you, than you should have chosen to be dead. That is a certain thing.”

“Look at the life I am leading, Lisana. I’m a soldier in name only; what I truly am is a gravedigger. Tomorrow I am going to bury the woman I was once supposed to marry. Did you know that? How cruel a fate is that? For her, as well as for me, because if the magic had not intervened in my life, I am sure Carsina would be safe at her home and awaiting me still. I am lonely and alone, my body hampers me, I am always hungry—”

“And those are the things
you
chose instead of the magic.” She cut into my diatribe. She sounded angry.

“What am I going to do?”

I meant the question to be rhetorical. I’d asked it of myself thousands of times with no answers. Lisana had one.

“You are going to do what the magic wants you to do. It would have been easier by far for you to have lived with the choice you made instead of fighting it. Now it comes for you, Nevare. And no one can protect you anymore.”

“You called me Nevare,” I said.

“Nevare.”

I was sitting up in my bed in my cabin. The echo of her voice saying my name was still in my ears. It was such a physical memory that it was hard to convince myself it had been part of my dreamwalking. I rubbed my eyes and sighed. Only darkness showed through the crack in my shutters. It was still night. I groaned. I doubted I would find sleep again that night.

My fire was nearly out. I forced myself to get out of bed and pad across the room to give it another stick of wood. Feeding it now was easier than trying to start another fire in the morning. I was getting back into my bed when I thought I heard a noise outside. I swung my feet back onto the floor.

Soft as the wind, someone spoke outside my door. “Nevare?”

“Who’s there?” I asked. I stood up and took two steps.

My cabin door opened soundlessly.

I saw her nightdress first, a long confection of lace and white linen. Expensive and elegant, I thought inanely to myself. Doubtless her trousseau had been purchased in Old Thares from the most exclusive merchants. A flirtation of veiling pretended to hide the cleavage of her breasts, and a high collar of soft lace maintained a mockery of virginal modesty.

I was trembling. I lifted my eyes to her face. She had always been plump, with rounded cheeks. The disease had sculpted her face to sharper lines, and her lips were chapped. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Our gazes met. She entered the room, came to me, and took both my hands in hers. I couldn’t move or speak. I was caught between horror and hope for her. Slowly, she sank down in a graceful curtsy. She bowed her head, and her flaxen hair fell forward to hide her face. I found my voice.

“Carsina?” I croaked.

She moved closer and rested her forehead against my knees. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Her voice was husky and low. “I’ve come to beg your forgiveness, Nevare. Just as you said I must. I apologize for how cruel I was to you at your brother’s wedding.”

I took a step backward. I felt faint. Our quarrel at Rosse’s wedding seemed to have happened a century ago. Yet at her words, my angry prediction to her came back to me, and I recalled too well the tingle of power that had rushed through me as I had uttered my harsh words. “Carsina. Please get up. Please.” My mind was reeling. Carsina was a “walker.” Could her life be saved? I’d failed with Hitch. Epiny had told me that most walkers died. But not all of them. I stooped down to offer her my hands to assist her in standing. She remained on her knees, her head bowed.

“You have not said that you forgive me.” Her voice was low and hoarse.

“Carsina, I should be begging you to forgive me. I spoke angrily, never thinking that I would bind you to this. I am the one who is sorry.”

Her voice was muffled. “I cannot rise from my knees until you forgive me.”

“I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you a hundred times.” I all but babbled the words. It went against everything I’d ever been taught as a gentleman to have her on her knees before me. “Please, please, let me help you get up.”

Despite my offer, she tried to get up by herself. She swayed, and I barely managed to catch her before she fell over. I lifted her gently to her feet and helped her to a chair. “Sit there and rest. What a nightmare for you, to wake alone in a winding cloth in the cemetery among the dead. But you’re safe now. Just sit and rest. I have medicine from the infirmary in town. Let me put the water to boil for it. It’s feverfew and willow bark and, and I forget what else, but the doctors in Gettys are giving it to the plague victims there and they believe it helps. Just rest while I prepare it for you.”

I moved swiftly as I spoke, putting fresh water in the kettle and setting it on to boil. I added more sticks of dry wood to the fire to send the flames lapping against the kettle’s bottom. I found the little tisanes that Epiny had given me, wiped my mug clean, and put one in it. “Do you think you could eat a little something? Broth would be best for you, but I’m afraid I don’t have any. I’ve some bread, though, and a bit of cheese, I think.”

She looked pathetically grateful. “Water,” she managed to say.

I hurried to my water cask and came back with a dripping ladle. She clasped it with both hands and drank so greedily that it ran down her chin. When it was empty, I brought her more, and she drank again. Where the water had fallen on her nightdress, the fine linen became nearly transparent. I tried not to stare. I tipped my water barrel to fill the ladle a last time. She drank it down, and then handed the ladle back to me with a small gasp. “Thank you,” she managed to say.

“Sit still and rest. As soon as the water boils, I’ll have a healing tea for you.” All the anger I had ever felt at her had fled. I could not look at her without thinking of all the times she had been my sister’s playmate and companion.

She covered her face with her hands for a moment, and then
let them drop limply into her lap. “Tea won’t help me, Nevare. You know that. I’ve only come back from the dead to beg your forgiveness. Because you said I must.” Her eyes flooded with sudden tears. “And now I have to die again.” She sounded terrified.

All pretense fled before her words. “Carsina, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing. Truly I didn’t. And I won’t let you die. Listen to me. Listen. I know you feel weak, but your fever has passed. Let me take care of you.”

“You don’t hate me?” She sounded puzzled. “After what I did to you in the street in Gettys? You forgive me for that, too?”

I am not as noble as others might be. I felt a flash of anger as I recalled that scene. A suddenly selfish thought quenched it. Just as she had accused me publicly, so could she also clear my name. If she lived, and if she felt kindly toward me. I chose my words. “You thought you had reason to fear me. You don’t. At one time, Carsina, I think you loved me. I know I loved you. You are beyond my reach now, and in many ways I am beneath your notice. But I do not think we have to hate or fear one another. Look. The water is boiling. Let me brew you that tisane.”

“Oh, Nevare, you are too good. And I am so ashamed now of what I said and did. But I
was
afraid. I hated coming to Gettys, but my father said it was my last chance to make a good match for myself. He did not want to send me to stay with my cousin, for he feared for my reputation. He was so stern. He said I must not flirt or do anything that might invite a scandal, and that if I did, he would disown me. He was still angry because he had found Remwar kissing me when we both knew that Remwar had been promised to Essilee Cummors. But Remwar had said that he truly loved me and that the engagement was something his father had forced on him. We were going to run away…or so he said. Oh, Nevare, I have been a fool, over and over again. I lost your sister’s friendship over Remwar, and he wasn’t worth it. But you must admit that most of that was your fault. I still do not understand how you could have chosen to get so fat, and then to embarrass me like that at Rosse’s wedding when I had been dreaming and planning for months about how fine we would look together, and how my green skirts would stand out when you spun me on the
dance floor. I had so looked forward to that, and then you dashed all my hopes!”

I had forgotten how much Carsina could talk. “None of it was my choosing, Carsina. On that, you will just have to believe me.” I had poured the boiling water for the little sachet of herbs. The sulfur in it immediately betrayed its presence. It reeked. “I’m afraid this isn’t going to taste very good, but it’s what the doctors at the infirmary are prescribing. Do you think you can drink it?”

“I want to live, Nevare. I’d do anything to live.” Her eyes shone with the intensity of her desire. A moment later, I interpreted that glitter a different way. Fever. Her fever was coming back. As I handed her the cup, our fingers touched briefly. Mine were warm from holding the hot cup, but so were hers. I watched her put the cup to her lips, wince, and blow on the hot liquid and then sip from the edge. She wrinkled her nose and pursed her mouth at the foul taste but swallowed it down determinedly.

“That’s right,” I encouraged her. “But you need to drink it all, Carsina.”

She tried another sip. I saw her grip on the cup begin to loosen and managed to take it from her before it fell. She looked at me with a gaze both desperate and unfocused. “My mother died of the plague, Nevare. I didn’t get to say good-bye to her. My father wouldn’t let me go near her once she got sick. Only the servants tended to her. And I had to wonder if they really did. She could have died alone.” She blinked her eyes at me and then said unsteadily, “I’m married now. Did you know? My husband took care of me until I died. He kept saying, ‘I’ll be right here, Carsina, my sweet. I won’t let you die alone.’”

“He sounds like a very good man. I think you need to rest now, Carsina. Do you want to lie down?”

“I…” She looked up at me, suddenly puzzled. “I want Jof. I want my husband. Where is he?”

“He’s probably at home, Carsina. Let’s put you to bed, shall we?”

“But…where am I? How did I get here? Please, can’t you get Jof? He promised he would stay right by me.” Her lips were a darker red, and two spots of color had begun to show on her
cheeks. I did not think it would be a good time to tell her that she’d come here on the corpse cart, or to point out to her that Jof probably thought he had stayed by her side.

“Lie down and I’ll see what I can do.”

“I want Jof,” she repeated, and she suddenly looked very young, a child asking for her daddy.

“I’ll go and get him,” I said reluctantly. I feared to leave her, lest she die as Hitch had. On the other hand, I could see that she was working herself up over her missing husband. “Can you drink the rest of your tea?” I asked her, and was tremendously relieved when she nodded. I handed her the cup, and she bravely drank it down. “I want you to lie down now,” I told her firmly, and was rather surprised when she took the arm I offered and accompanied me to my bed.

“Lie down, Carsina,” I suggested to her. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at me. She was breathing through her mouth. “You look like my first fiancé. Only fatter,” she said. Before I could reply, she commanded me imperiously. “Fetch me a drink of water, and then please tell my husband to come in to me.” Of her own volition, she lay down. I helped her lift her feet onto the bed and tried to put my blanket over her. She angrily kicked it away.

“Very well.” I saw no sense in upsetting her.