Forest Mage (82 page)

And with that, he left me.

F
or the rest of that morning, I laid on my pallet and wondered exactly what Spink would think he must do. It was good to know that he would stand by me as a friend, even when I chose to give up, but it was intolerable that he should defy me, for if he chose to betray my real name and then speak of my involvement with the Specks, he would ruin my family’s name. Even if he won clemency for me that way, I thought grimly, I would emerge from my cell into a life I preferred not to face.

I reined my mind away from such thoughts and began to make my plans, feeble as they were. At the very first opportunity after I came into the courtroom, I would attack whoever was presiding. I’d have to make it a real effort, not just a dramatic show. I wanted to force them to kill me. I wondered if I’d be moved from my cell to the courtroom by armed guards. If so, a simple escape attempt might win me what I hoped for. Now that the magic had forsaken me, a bullet or two in the back should end it all. I shifted on my
bunk, and the abused planks beneath me gave a final protesting crack before they collapsed onto the floor. I sighed, but did not bother getting up. After a time, I closed my eyes.

Sleep opened under me like a trap door.

I fell to my knees in the deep moss. Around me, the summer forest hummed with life. I blinked, for even the leaf-dappled sunlight was a shock to my eyes after the dimness of my cell. The rich, earthy smells of moss and earth filled my nostrils. A pale green butterfly came to dance around me, perplexed, and then suddenly lifted and wafted away on the foliage-filtered breeze. Slowly I stood and looked around me, then turned my feet to the path that led up the ridge to Tree Woman’s stump.

I felt a difference in my presence in this place. I was not there under my own power but at her command. I was as footless as a ghost, as if I drifted over a path where before I would have felt the mossy earth beneath my feet. The cool breeze touched my face but did not move my hair or stir my clothing. When I came in sight of Tree Woman’s stump, I halted, perplexed.

“And here he is,” I heard Tree Woman say. But not to me. Epiny stood there beside her, leaning on Tree Woman’s trunk, looking pale and sweaty and disturbingly real. She had been wearing a straw sun hat; she had pushed it off and it dangled down her back by the ribbon around her neck. Her hair had been pinned up as befitted a married woman, but it had come down messily in tendrils around her face. The dark blue dress she wore struck me as peculiarly shapeless and unflattering. Then I abruptly realized it had been cut to accommodate the growing child inside her.

“You cannot be here,” I said to her. She peered at me, her eyes widening. “You can’t be here,” I said more loudly, and then she seemed to hear me.

“I
am
here,” she asserted, an edge of anger in her voice. She squinted at me and then, with a small gasp, lifted her hand to her mouth. “You are the one who cannot be here. Nevare. You are
rippling
.”

“It is only by her pleading that you are here,” Tree Woman rebuked me as she wavered into view. She sat on top of her stump, looking older and wearier than I had ever seen her. She was thin
ner, I realized. Depleted of her fat. That was disturbing. “You see what you have reduced me to!” Tree Woman rebuked me. “This is your own fault, Soldier’s Boy, that I have so little strength to help you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He never understands anything,” Tree Woman observed to Epiny in the voice of an older woman advising a much younger one.

“I know,” Epiny replied. She sounded both exhausted and fearful. She was breathing heavily, and when she set her hand to the top of her belly, my heart tightened.

“You shouldn’t be here. How did you get here?”

“I walked.” She took a breath. “Uphill. And against the fear.”

“I am surprised she managed it,” Tree Woman observed. “She came into the forest calling for Olikea. She is fortunate that I answered instead of that one.
She
is still very angry with you, Soldier’s Boy. I can imagine too well how she would have vented that anger.”

“I don’t understand how any of this can be,” I repeated. “Isn’t this the
other
place? Aren’t I dreamwalking?”

“Yes. You are. And you have dreamwalked to a real place, just as your cousin has hiked here. So. Here we all are. And she tells me she would do anything, give us anything, if the magic will help her find a way for you to live.” Tree Woman cocked her head at me and her eyes went cold. “Perhaps I should ask for her firstborn child.”

“No!” I roared, but my roar had the strength of a cat’s hiss.

Epiny had gone paler, but she said nothing. She looked at me and her eyes filled with tears. She bowed her head.

“She is going back to her husband right now,” I announced.

“Oh, is she?” Tree Woman laughed humorlessly. “Stop giving commands. You are powerless here. And you are powerless by your own choice. Again and again, you refused to serve the magic. Repeatedly, you refused to answer Olikea’s summons so that she could build you up with the correct foods. You have been like a small boy refusing to do his chores. With your willfulness you have tangled the magic until I begin to wonder if anyone can make it work again. But some tasks must be done, and if the proper
person will not do them, another will be found. Your cousin has come here of her own will. I do not know why the magic did not choose someone like her to begin with. I think she will serve it far better than you have.”

“You can’t do this! You can’t take her instead of me!”

“Do you think not? She has strength, and a natural affinity for this world.” The woman on the stump looked down on Epiny, and her smiled narrowed. “I recall the first time that she and I fought over you. I was surprised at her strength then. And on the day you cut me, she came into my world and dared to challenge me for a life the magic had already claimed. She took him back with her, and a man who should have fed the magic has instead fathered her child. It would suit me very well, Soldier’s Boy, to see her bow her head to the magic. It would be fitting if she lost what I lost.”

I looked at Tree Woman. I still felt my love for her, but I also felt the gulf between us that she could even threaten Epiny so. “What can I do to persuade you to let her go free?” I asked bluntly. “I’ll give you anything to see her safely home.”

“That’s the wrong bargain,” Tree Woman replied. “She has already told me several things she is willing to do to win your life back for you. The only thing that is left for me to decide is if we have any use for you.”

“Let Epiny go. Help me to live and I will come to you and serve the magic. Even if it means going against my own people to do so.”

Tree Woman cocked her head. She was quiet for a time, but it was more as if she were listening than thinking. I stood beside Epiny and tried to take her hand. She watched owlishly as my phantom hand swept through hers. I put my arm around her. She gave me a pale, tired smile and then turned her worried glance back to Tree Woman. I looked past the meditating woman to the new tree sprouting from her prone trunk. Its leaves hung limp and motionless in the summer breeze.

Lisana focused her gaze on us again. “The magic will take both of you,” she announced, obviously pleased.

“That wasn’t offered!” I retorted angrily.

“Of course it was,” she replied. “Epiny said she’d give anything
to save you. You said you’d do anything to see her safely home. The magic agrees to both.”

“That isn’t fair!” I cried.

“What
would
be fair, Soldier’s Boy? Shall we let her go, let you die, let the intruders cut down the ancestor trees? Let the road gash through the forest like your blade cut through my trunk? Cut the People loose from their roots as you severed me from mine?
That
would be fair?”

“I’m sorry I did that,” I said again. I suddenly understood that Epiny’s venture into the forest had reawakened all of Tree Woman’s hurt and anger. Lisana and I had set our great battle behind us; we had even seen ourselves as victims of our own conflict. Epiny’s presence tipped the scales a different way. She was my ally who had aided me in Tree Woman’s defeat. Tree Woman felt afresh the ignominy of her defeat. Epiny was the living embodiment of my other life and my loyalty to it. She represented everything that kept me away from the magic. “Please, Lisana. Please let her go,” I said simply at last.

“You ask that as if you think it were in my power. She came here howling out Olikea’s name like a she-cat in heat. She is lucky that one did not come to her. Olikea and the others have fled into the mountains. They fear what is to come. When the magic is angered, all suffer. The People are converging on Kinrove’s folk now. They fear his magic has ceased to work. The Fear his dancers make no longer holds the intruders at bay; the ancestor trees have begun to fall again. Kinrove is the oldest and fattest of our Great Ones. They will petition him to stop the dancing, and begin a war such as your folk will understand.”

“There is no need for that!” Epiny broke in. She gave me a single sideways glance and then said, “I can do what you have asked of me. I can stop the men from cutting down your ancestor trees. And I will do it, if you find a way for Nevare to live.”

For a long time Tree Woman regarded Epiny silently. Then she said, “I told you. The magic has accepted. It is up to the magic now, not me.”

“But what are we supposed to do?” I asked.

“Whatever the magic wants you to do,” Tree Woman replied.

“Lisana,” I begged. “I have told you over and over again. I do not know what the magic wants of me. If I knew, I would have done it by now.”

“You are the only one who can possibly know. I suggest you listen more closely to it,” she replied stiffly. I suspected I had offended her by calling her by name in front of Epiny. She turned her back on both of us, and then, suddenly, she wasn’t there. In the instant she vanished, I suddenly felt frail, a shadow blowing in a black wind. Then Epiny looked at me and set her hand on top of mine, which rested on her shoulder. Her fingers went through my hand; she clasped her own shoulder but I felt more stable.

“You’re holding me here.” I said, amazed.

“I’m trying to. I don’t quite know how any of this works.” She looked around fearfully. “Do you know the way home?”

“I might. It’s a long trek through the woods. Do you think you’re strong enough?”

She gave a strained laugh. “What choice do I have? I’ve read that phrase over and over in your journal, Nevare. That the magic leaves you no choices. Now I think I understand what it means.” She turned away from Lisana’s stump and walked back along the ridge and I drifted with her, a child’s toy on a string.

“Why did you come here? Why were you looking for Olikea?”

“I thought…I don’t know what I thought. That perhaps she would know a way to save you. Spink came home heartsick that you had decided to plead guilty and be done with it. I waited until he left the house. And then I borrowed a horse…”

“From whom?” I cut in.

She was unfazed. “Very well. I stole a horse and cart and drove out to the cemetery and walked into the new woods behind your spring. The fear wasn’t so bad there. So I thought I could do it. And I pushed on up into the old forest. But I could barely make myself go under those trees. So I stood there, and I called for Olikea. I think my shouts stirred something up, because then the fear flooded over me. Nevare, I have never been so frightened. My heart was racing and I couldn’t get my breath. My legs just turned to jelly and I sank down where I was. I was so terrified I
couldn’t even run away. And it made me, well, angry. So I screamed for Olikea again. And then something happened. I was still very scared, but I felt I had to get up and walk. So I did. I walked and I walked, up steep hills and through brambles, and I was so tired I knew I couldn’t keep going. But I had to. And finally I got to that stump. And when I saw your sword sticking out of it, the fear came on me so strong that I thought I would die of it. Because I knew that somehow I’d come to a place that we had all dreamed together.”

She stopped walking. I halted, too, not because I willed it but because I was somehow fastened to her. She drew a deep and shuddering breath. “How did you stand it?”

“What?”

“The fear. Even though I know that it’s something being done to me, I can’t ignore it.” She put a free hand to her chest as if to calm the pounding of her heart.

“Epiny, I didn’t. The magic took it away, or I never could have ventured so freely through the forest. I don’t know how you forced yourself to come here. Keep walking. I want to see you safely home.”

“I wish you were really here. I wish you could protect me.”

Those words stabbed deeper than any knife could. It took a little time before I could speak. “Epiny, I don’t think you’re in any real danger right now, other than exhaustion. Go down that way, to the left. See that little rabbit trail in the moss? Follow it. There’s a stream down there. Drink some water and rest for a bit before we go on. I’m amazed that a woman in your condition could make this hike at all.”

She followed my suggestion, but as she worked her way down the steep path, she asked me, “So you are one of those men who think pregnancy is a ‘diseased state’? You can’t even bring yourself to say ‘pregnant,’ can you?”

“I was afraid you’d consider it rude.” Even to myself, I sounded priggish.

Tired and scared as she was, she still managed a small laugh. “It’s only rude because you think how I got this way is somewhat shameful. Well-bred women shouldn’t be pregnant. Isn’t that true?”

I thought over her words, and then had to laugh with her. “You make me think about how I think about things, Epiny. You’re one of the few people in my life who can make me do that.”

“If we both live through this, I intend to do a lot more of it. At this rate, I fear I will never have time to scold you properly for how badly you treated me by concealing that you were still alive. I want you to know I’m just putting it off until it’s more convenient. I have not forgiven you.”

“There, through those trees—see it? That’s the stream.” I forced myself to add, “I probably don’t deserve to be forgiven for that. I don’t expect it.”