Renegade’s Magic

‘If you cannot speak to me here, at least hear what news I have. It may comfort you to know that both Spink and Amzil believed me when I told them that you lived. It was such a relief to them. Neither had wanted to admit to the other that the memories of that night were truncated and contradictory. Still, there have been repercussions. Spink can go about his daily tasks, knowing that he did not fail you. But it has still changed his heart towards the men he rode with that night. He cannot abide the sight of them. He knows how capable of evil they are. He avoids Captain Thayer, Carsina’s husband, but the man knows that Spink despises him. I fear he will take umbrage against Spink some day.

‘I fear for him, Nevare. He cannot hide what he knows about those men; it shows in his face and his eyes whenever we encounter any of them. And they, I think they feel they must be rid of him; perhaps it is the only way in which they will be able to forget that night. They believe they beat you to death, or at the least, witnessed their comrades doing so. But their memories are not clear on exactly how it happened. So when Spink looks at them with disgust, well, I do not think they know what to believe about themselves.

‘And Amzil does not make it better. I do not know what you said to her that night, but it has made her fearless. And when I gave her your message, that you loved her but had to leave her, it hardened something in her. Now she is worse than fearless whenever she encounters one of those men. She torments them. When she sees one of them on the streets or in the mercantile, she does not turn her eyes away or avoid him. Instead, she stalks him like a cat, meeting his gaze, walking up on him and staring him straight in the face. They flinch from her, Nevare. They look away, they try to avoid her, but she is making them hate her. The one that tried to stand up to her, who would not leave the store when she glared at him? When he looked at her with disdain, she returned his gaze and said aloud, loud enough for other customers to hear her, “Perhaps he has forgotten what happened the night a mob beat the grave-digger to death. I have not. You think you know what I am; I’ve heard you call me the Deadtown Whore. But I know what you are. I remember every detail. And I had far rather be a whore than a snivelling coward.” He fled from her then, convinced that what she recalls is what others recall of him as well.

‘Winter will close around us soon, Nevare, and winter is not a good season here in Gettys. It is a time when every injury festers, and the cold and the dark promise to hide every evil thing that is done. I am afraid. I bar the door at night, and Spink sleeps with his pistol cocked and ready on the bedside table. He has talked of resigning his commission; he no longer wishes to serve with these men. I think that if winter were not so close, he would do it, and we would flee, for the sake of the baby. Such cowardice would scald him and leave a scar that would never heal. Yet, when spring comes, if nothing has improved here, what else can he do? Better that he take us away from here than that he is shot in the back and I am left at the mercy of these wolves. So he has told me himself.’

Her words cut me like razors. I had thought I had been saving them all when I cut myself adrift. Instead I had not only plunged them into danger and torment, but then abandoned them all to take care of themselves. I did not deceive myself that I could have been of great use to them, but it seemed cowardly that I was not there at all. Most troubling to me was Amzil’s anger and the behaviour it prompted. I could not blame her for it. How must it be for her, to see walking on the streets the men that would have raped her, even to death? I wished she would flee to a safer place, but not if it meant leaving Epiny pregnant and without the comfort of another woman near. It was all too horrible to contemplate. I tried to reach my hands towards Epiny, but they were not mine to control, not even in a dream. I focused all my will on trying to say even one word to her.

That was a mistake. For while I devoted my strength to that, Soldier’s Boy tore us free of Epiny’s dream and fled with me. I looked back as we took flight, and saw Epiny looking up after us. She dwindled in the distance until she was gone.

‘They should just go away.’ Soldier’s Boy was speaking to me, but the words echoed and I knew that in the other world, he raved in his fever. If I reached, I could be aware of that body, burning inside and yet shivering with cold in the dank cave. I heard people whispering. Perhaps it was Olikea and Likari. Their voices sounded wavery and frightening.

‘A death. Or a life. Which do you owe me, Nevare? Which will you give me, Nevare?’

An immense croaker bird confronted us. The carrion bird was black and white, with brilliant red wattles around his beak. The wattles were thick and fat and somehow disgusting and threatening at the same time. He opened his beak wide and I saw how strangely his tongue was fastened into it, and how sharp his tongue looked.

‘I am not Nevare! I am Soldier’s Boy of the People. I owe you nothing.’

The bird opened his beak wide with amusement. He rattled his wing plumes, resettling them, and a sickening wave of carrion stench wafted against me. ‘Neither debts nor names are so easily shed, Nevare. You are who you are and you owe me what you owe me. Denying it does not change it.’

‘Nevare is not my name.’

Could a bird grin? ‘Nevare is a soldier’s boy, a soldier’s son. The name that you use was given to you only because you are Nevare, and the son of a soldier. And a soldier son. And that is as true as that you owe me a death. Or a life. However you wish to name it, it is what you owe to me.’

‘I owe you nothing!’ Soldier’s Boy shouted at him and his words echoed in a distant cave. He was braver than I was. His hands darted out to seize two great handfuls of the croaker bird’s plumage. He gripped the bird and shook him, shouting, ‘I owe you nothing! Not a life, not a death! I owe you nothing!’

Far away, someone shrieked and then the croaker bird took flight, laughing like a mad thing.

Cold water splashed Soldier’s Boy’s face. It was a shock, and with a shudder he opened our shared eyes. He blinked, trying to focus, and lifted a shaky hand to wipe at his eyes. Olikea was angrily untangling her hair from his fingers. A waterskin on the ground beside him gurgled out its contents. It took a moment for him to make sense of it, and then the unjustness of it broke his heart. ‘You threw water on me,’ he wailed accusingly, and he sounded like a weepy child. His voice shook with weakness.

‘You ripped out my hair when I was trying to give you a drink! And if you think you owe me nothing, then consider that I owe you less than nothing!’

I could barely make out her features. The fire had subsided to a dim red glow. The body was cold and ached badly. Olikea looked tired and haggard. I became aware that strands of her hair were still tangled in my fingers. I’d ripped them out of her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, aghast, and then was shocked when the words actually came out of my mouth.

‘Olikea!’ I began, but abruptly lost the power to speak. I could feel Soldier’s Boy’s anger at me thrumming through his body. He was weak and ill and tired. His strength was barely enough to confine me. I stopped struggling against him. I was listening to Olikea’s words.

‘We are out of food, and there is scarcely any firewood to be found. We must go on to the Wintering Place. Can you walk?’

It was hard for him even to think about it, his head ached so. ‘I can’t quick-walk. Give me water.’

She picked up the slack waterskin and held it for him. He drank, and was surprised at how thirsty he was. It cleared the thickness from his mouth and throat. He felt more alive. ‘You are right,’ he said when she took the water away. ‘We need to move on from here. Even if I cannot quick-walk, we should try to move on.’

She nodded grimly.

Likari suddenly loomed up out of the darkness behind her. He carried an armful of salvaged wood. ‘It’s hard to find anything in the dark – is he awake now? Are you better?’ He leaned unpleasantly close. Soldier’s Boy involuntarily drew back from the boy’s looming face and closed his eyes. ‘Did you find a name? When babies make this journey, it is often their naming journey. Did you find your name?’

‘Nevare,’ he croaked out, then angrily shook his head. Once. Shaking his head made the world spin. He lifted his hands to his face. The skin of it was hot and dry and tight. He rubbed his eyes; they were crusty.

‘Nevare is the name you had before,’ Olikea observed tartly. ‘And I do not think you were wise to do this. We are ill prepared to spend time here waiting for you to recover.’

‘I am not interested in whether you think I am wise or not.’ He placed his hands flat on the cavern floor. He turned onto his belly, got his knees under him and finally tottered to his feet. He tried not to let her see the effort it cost him, but when she took his arm and put it across her shoulders, he didn’t have the will to resist her.

‘Likari, bring our things and whatever you have scavenged that might be useful.’ Olikea sounded sceptical that we would get far but eager to try. Plainly she wished to be out of the dank cave. She and the boy had to be at least as hungry as Soldier’s Boy but neither complained.

‘I do not have the strength to make a light for you,’ Soldier’s Boy grudgingly admitted. ‘We will have to travel in the dark.’

‘There will be light enough for us to make our way, once we are away from the fire,’ Olikea asserted.

That puzzled me, but Soldier’s Boy seemed to accept her statement. Likari had gone to fill the waterskin and retrieve our blanket. He returned with it slung over his shoulder. He had also bundled together the bits of firewood he had scavenged and tied them with a leather thong so that he could carry them easily. He came to Soldier’s Boy’s other side and took his hand. Without ceremony, he set my hand to his shoulder, as if confident he could take some of my weight. With no more ado, we set forth.

The dim red glow of the fire quickly faded behind us and we walked forward in darkness. Soldier’s Boy was content to let Olikea lead him, and she seemed confident of the way. So many others had trodden this path for so many years that it was flat and smooth. Soldier’s Boy did not think of such things. He focused simply on moving his body along. Fever ran over his skin like licking flames. The places where he had pierced his skin with the crystal itched. He scratched the heads of the scabs off and fluid leaked from the swollen cuts. He decided that he had been foolish to use the crystal, yet in the same thought, doggedly determined that his act and the pain and fever that followed it were necessary. His joints ached, and his head pounded with pain. The desire to lie down and sleep soon became a pressing need, one that was even stronger than the hunger that assailed him. Yet both had to be ignored as he pressed on towards his journey’s end. All thought became a narrow focus on walking. Ghost light crawled and danced at the edges of his fevered vision. He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, and then blinked again, but could not banish the dots of sickly luminescence. He tottered on.

Gradually I became aware that the ghostly light was not an illusion. It occurred in patches and in tiny moving dots. It was a pale, creamy green and sometimes a white-blue. The blue lights were the ones that moved. When one hummed up to us, hovered near my face and then flittered away, I recognized that it was some sort of underground lightning bug. That knowledge helped me to resolve what I was seeing. The greenish patches became a glowing slime or moss on the cavern walls. The blue insects frequented such patches, eating or drinking perhaps, and adding their light to it until they were sated enough to take flight again. The softly lit patches of gentle green seemed to occur at almost regular intervals. I decided that whatever it was, moss or plant or slime, the Specks had deliberately marked their trail with it as a dim light to show the way for travellers. I admired their innovation at using such a natural material even as I wondered at their lack of planning in other regards. I thought of my own beloved cavalla, and knew that if this were a path we used frequently, there would have been caches of firewood and food. I wondered if the Specks did not care for one another in that way or if they had simply never thought of such things.

I became aware of something far more important to me. In his weariness and pain, Soldier’s Boy was focusing all of his resources on staying upright and walking.

He was not guarding against me.

My first impulse was to attempt a coup against my oppressor and regain control of the body. Luckily, I swiftly realized that it would leave me in the position he was now occupying: feverish, full of pain and battling hunger. But if I remained quiescent for now, it might be that he would lose even more of his wariness of me, and that when next he slept, I could at least dream-walk on my own. And so I curled small within the prison of my own body and awaited my opportunity.

TEN

Dream-walker

Soldier’s Boy did not last long. I do not know how far we had travelled in the darkness before he gave a sudden groan and sank down. Both Olikea and Likari did what they could to ease him gently to the stony floor of the cavern. Once there, he curled into a large miserable ball. For a time, it seemed all he could do was breathe. His eyes were closed tight.

Olikea speaking to Likari and the soft sounds they made were my only clues to what was transpiring. The boy set a small fire and Olikea kindled it. The tiny warmth was more a taunt than a comfort. They tucked the blanket around him.

‘Drink. Open your mouth. Your body burns with fever. You must drink.’

Soldier’s Boy obeyed her. The liquid in his mouth and running down his dry throat was a comfort, but the small amount that splashed him seemed horribly cold. Olikea wet her hands and wiped them over his eyes, rubbing gently at his sticky eyelids. Soldier’s Boy turned away from her ministrations but nevertheless felt the comfort of them. He sighed once, heavily, and then sank into a very deep sleep.

I worried at how wracked with fever my body was. That it weakened him and distracted him was an advantage to me, but I did not want to regain command of a body that was hopelessly crippled or dying. I was tempted to try to ask Olikea for more water. I was certain it would be good for me, but decided that such a bold act might call Soldier’s Boy’s attention to me. I would attempt a dream-walk first.

I felt almost a thief as I did so. His bodily resources were low. Consuming what little of his magic remained seemed a cruel trick. Even so, I gathered my strength and ventured out.

It is difficult to describe that experience. I had dream-walked before, but not deliberately and often at someone else’s summoning. It was the first time I had attempted to master the magic in such a way, and I soon discovered that I faced a challenge. While Olikea and Soldier’s Boy had tottered along, the sun had risen and the day begun. All the people I had hoped to visit via their dreams were up and about their lives. I could find them easily enough; it was not a distance I traversed. The thought of a beloved friend seemed to bring me to them, but their conscious minds were busy with other things and refused to see me.

Just as I had not been able to gain a real link with Gord the night before, so it was today with Spink and Epiny and Amzil. I was like a little buzzing fly. I could hover round their thoughts but not penetrate them. Their experience of their waking world was too strong to permit me entrance. Frustrated at trying to contact those three, I tried to think whom else I might find dozing. Yaril came to mind, and before I could decide if it were a wise course or not, I found myself inside her bedchamber at Widevale. She was napping after a hectic morning. I ventured into a dream that seemed not restful at all, for it was cluttered with things that she must do. Shimmering folds of a pale blue fabric vied with supervising the day’s washing. Something about cattle was troubling her, but most pressing of all was an image of Caulder Stiet staring at her as hopefully as an urchin staring at a store window full of sweets.

‘Tell him no,’ I suggested immediately. ‘Tell him to go away.’

‘He’s not that bad,’ she said wearily. ‘He can be demanding as a child, it’s true. But he is also so desperate that someone see him as manly and competent that I can steer him simply by suggesting things he must do for me to praise him in those lights. It is his uncle who wearies me the most. Rocks, rocks, rocks. They are all that man can think about. He pesters the help and asks a thousand questions a day, yet seems strangely secretive as to what it is that he is seeking. And he is most presumptuous. Yesterday, I discovered he had taken workers from repairing the drive and had them digging holes along the riverbank and bringing him buckets of rocks taken from the holes. As if he has the right to give orders on our land simply because I am betrothed to his nephew! Oh, how that man maddens me!’

I said nothing though I felt great concern. I could almost feel the press of her words, the tremendous need she had to speak of her problems to someone.

‘Duril brought the problem to me because he says the work on the drive must be finished before winter, or erosion will have its way with the carriageway. So I went to father, and he told me that women who worried about such things were usually much older and uglier than I was, and had no prospects. So I had to go to Caulder and fret and fuss about the road and how bumpy it made my carriage rides until he went to his uncle and said that he thought it best if they did not take Duril’s workforce off his project before it was finished. And his uncle said he would only need the workers for a few more days and then they could go back to working on the driveway. As if he had the right to decide what is most important for the estate!

‘I am beginning to hate that man. He is insidious, Nevare, absolutely insidious. He manipulates Caulder with such ease, and flatters Father into thinking that Professor Stiet is a very wise man, and someone to trust. I think not. I think he sees Caulder’s marriage to me as an opportunity for him to come into a nice lifestyle. It seems that every time I think I have control of my own life or at least some control, someone comes along to muck it up! If his uncle would only go away, I am perfectly confident that I could manage Caulder to my satisfaction. And to his, I might add. He asks little of me. All I have to do is be pretty and tell him flattering things about himself. But his uncle! I am convinced that the man plans that after I am wed to Caulder, he will settle in here and run things to his liking.

‘It makes me furious, Nevare. Furious. At you. Because it is entirely your fault that this has fallen on me. I should not be dealing with any of this. If you had not let Father chase you away, if you had sent for me or come back, then, then—’

‘Then everything would be all right?’ I asked her gently.

‘No,’ she said grudgingly. ‘But at least I would not be alone. Nevare, it meant so much to me to hear that you are alive. I was so shocked when your note fell out of Carsina’s letter, and then I had to laugh at what a reversal that was. How many times did a note for her come concealed in a letter to me? And what an amazing twist of fate that she would be in Gettys and would renew her friendship with you, even to helping you conceal a letter to me. I wrote back to her immediately, thanking her and reminding her of our wonderful days before we so stupidly ended our friendship over a man! What fools we were! Though, in my heart, I still have not forgiven her for her ill treatment of you, even if I was a party to it. I’ve told myself that if you have forgiven her enough to entrust her with a letter to me, then I have little reason to hold a grudge. It was such a relief to know you were alive, and that you had actually become a soldier, as you always dreamed you’d be. I long to tell Father, but I have not yet. I dream that some day you will come riding back up to the door, tall and brave in your uniform, to show him that he completely misjudged you. Oh, I miss you so much! When can you come home for a visit?’

I cursed myself for how unthinkingly I had wandered into her dream. She was not aware that she was asleep and dreaming me there, nor had she realized, as Epiny had immediately, that I had intruded into her dream in a very magical way. Epiny had been prepared to understand what was happening by reading my soldier-son journal. Yaril had only the most basic idea of what had befallen me. And with a lurch, I suddenly realized that, when the days were counted up, I had ‘died’ less than ten days ago. Neither news of my shameful conviction for rape, murder and unnatural acts nor news that I had been killed trying to escape would have reached her yet. The last word she would have had from me was the note I had hidden inside a letter I’d blackmailed Carsina into sending her. She had no idea that Carsina was dead of the plague, let alone that I’d been found guilty of taking liberties with her dead body. Had anyone written anything to her since I’d sent her that note? Had there been time for Spink or Epiny to send her a letter about what had become of me? I wished I’d asked Epiny, but I hadn’t, and she hadn’t mentioned it to me. A colder thought came to me. Yaril had replied to Carsina’s letter. Would Carsina’s husband think that he must respond to that note, to let his wife’s correspondent know of her sad end? I felt sickened at the thought of how he would paint me for her. I had to prepare her in case the worst happened.

‘Yaril. You’re asleep and dreaming. You know I’m not really here. But this is more than an idle dream. I’m using magic to travel to your dreams and talk to you. What I am telling you is real. I’m alive, but I can’t come to you or send for you. And, for now, you must not speak a word about me to Father. Or anyone else.’

‘What?’ A frown wrinkled her brow. The room suddenly wavered around us. Streaks of light broke through my image of it, as if someone had suddenly opened a curtain a crack. Or fluttered her eyelashes as she dreamed. My words had been too sudden, too startling. I was waking her up.

‘Yaril! Don’t wake up yet. Please. Keep your eyes closed. Stay calm and listen to me. You might receive word that I’ve disgraced myself, that I died for vicious crimes I’d committed. You might get a letter from Carsina’s husband. Don’t believe anything he says about me. It’s not true. I’m still alive. And eventually I’ll find a way to come home to you some day. Yaril? Yaril!’

The world disappeared around me, washed away in a sudden flood of light. I’d wakened her. And I had no way of knowing how much credence she’d give to the dream or even how much she would remember on awakening.

‘Yaril?’ I asked desperately of the empty light. There was no reply. Doubtless her waking thoughts filled her mind and excluded any touch I might make upon her senses. I hoped I had not given her too great a fright. Would she dismiss my visit as a bizarrely vivid dream?

I had nowhere to retreat from the light and it seemed painful to me. Magic, I reminded myself, worked best in the night. It was time to go back to my body.

I had used Soldier’s Boy’s magic; he would know that when he awakened, and I suspected he’d keep a tighter watch on me after this. I’d had one opportunity to use the power of dream-walking and I’d made a mare’s nest of it. I could feel my flesh pulling me back towards it and I let myself be drawn back into my body. Soldier’s Boy slumbered on, his eyes closed. I used my ears and nose to deduce what was happening around me. I could smell smoke and hear the tiny crackling of a small fire nearby. Olikea and Likari were speaking softly to one another. Some distance ahead of us on our path, there was another fish trap in the cavern stream. The traps were woven like a basket and set in the stream’s current. Fish could swim in, but finding a way out was more difficult, especially for large fish. There might be fish in it. They were both desperately hungry. They debated softly as to whether one of them should travel ahead to check the trap and then return with fish from it, and then argued as to which of them should go. It was a wearying thing to listen to, a battle between hunger and fear of the darkness.