by Robin Hobb
She looked startled, then smiled. She turned away from me and reached out her hand to touch his face. “Such a dear little lie. It probably cost him a great deal to lie to you to protect my ‘honor.’ He thinks quite highly of you, you know. He wants our first son to be named for you. We intend to be married as soon as we can, and to start our family immediately.” And with that sentence, she suddenly sounded as girlishly domestic as any of my sisters. “We will share a wonderful life. I can’t wait. I hope we are posted on the frontier.”
“If he lives,” I said huskily. I had seen past her to the lax body in the next bed. The boyish roundness was gone from Spink’s face. His mouth hung ajar and his breath came and went unevenly. Yellow crust caked around his nostrils and eyelids. He was as unlovely as anything I had ever seen.
Yet Epiny looked down at him with her heart in her eyes. She took his limp hand in hers. “He must,” she said decidedly. “I have gambled everything for him. If he dies and leaves me alone”—she looked at me and tried to hide her fear—“I will have lost it all.”
I turned my head on my hot pillow. “Uncle Sefert?”
“He isn’t here.”
“But…how are you here, then?” The effort of that string of words set me coughing. With a practiced touch that told me she had done this before, she braced my shoulders to sit me up while she offered me water from a cup. She did not answer until she let me down again.
“I came here when the reports began to reach my father of how bad things were at the Academy. Your letter came…the one about Dark Evening and Caulder, and being culled with only a future as a scout now. Father was wroth. He set out immediately to the Academy, but at the gates he saw a yellow banner and guards turned him back. By the time he got back to the house, my mother had had messengers from her friends, warning of sickness in the city that was spreading fast. My mother declared that none of us would budge from the house until the contagion was past. She lived through the black-pox when she was a girl, and still remembers those days.
“I stood it for three days, being shut up in the house with her. When she was not prophesying that we would all die of the plague, she was scolding me for my shameless behavior, or weeping over how I had ruined my chances and soiled the family name. She vowed she’d never let me marry Spink. She said I’d have to live at home with her the rest of my life, a disgraced old maid. You cannot imagine how awful that future would be, Nevare. I tried to explain to her that she was treating me as her mother had treated her, disposing of her like a commodity, for it has become obvious to me that women are most responsible for the oppression of women in our culture. And when I tried to speak rationally to her, and point out that she was only angry because I had seized control of my own worth and traded my ‘respectability’ for a future I wanted instead of letting her sell me off for a bride-price and a political connection, she slapped me! Oh, she was furious when I said that. Only because she recognized it was true, of course.”
She lifted a hand to her cheek, remembering the blow. “It’s her own fault for educating me,” she said regretfully. “If she had kept me at home and ignorant as your family keeps your sisters, I’d probably have been quite tractable.”
Epiny’s words washed over me like waves against a beach. The sense of them faded in and out of my mind. It took me a time to realize she had stopped talking, without, of course, answering my question. I summoned my strength. “Why?”
“Why did I come here? I had to! There were dreadful reports that the infirmary here was overcome with so many sick cadets. After the first scare of plague passed, people began to venture out and the newspapers to print again. The Academy is still quarantined. The plague still rages here, as if it has taken root and will not be satisfied until it has consumed all of you. The city leaders decided to send everyone with the plague here, to keep it away from the general populace. The papers spoke of rows of bodies laid out on the lawns, draped only with sheets and a light fall of snow. They are burying the corpses on the grounds, with quicklime to try to control the smell.
“I came when the paper said that the doctors were allowing the bodies to simply pile up in the halls of the infirmary, and hiring beggars off the streets to fill in for the nursing assistants, who themselves had fallen to the plague. I could not stand the thought of you and Spink here and sick, with no one to look after you. And I knew you were sick because no more letters came. So I left the house in the middle of the night. It took me most of the night to walk here, and then I had to get past the quarantine guards. Luckily, I found a tree with its branches leaning over the wall. I was up and over in no time. And of course, once I was inside, Dr. Amicas had no choice but to let me stay. I’m as quarantined as anyone now. When I pointed out to him that there was no sense in refusing to let me help, he gave me a smock. He told me I could help until I, too, dropped dead of the plague. He’s a sensible man but not a very optimistic physician, is he?”
“Go home,” I told her bluntly. This was no place for her.
“I can’t,” she said simply. “My mother would not let me back in the door, for fear I would bring the plague with me. And under the circumstances, there is nowhere else I could go. I’m not only a disgraced woman, I’m probably a plague carrier now.” She seemed quite cheery about both fates. Then her voice dropped, and she said soberly, “Besides. You need me here. Both of you, but especially you. Whatever it was that hovered over you the last time I saw you has grown more powerful. When I thought you were dead…that was what horrified me. You had no breath I could detect, no pulse at all. You—now do not laugh at me—your aura had faded to where I could not detect it. But the aura of that, that other that is within you had grown stronger. It raged about you like fire devouring a log. I was so frightened for you. You need me to protect you from it.”
No I didn’t. That was the one thing I was sure of. For Epiny to come here, at risk to herself, was the only thing that could have made me feel worse. Bad enough that helping Caulder had condemned me to disgrace. I could die, and my shame would die with me. She would have to live with her dishonor, as would my uncle. A lingering memory of myself as I was in that other world wafted through my mind, like half-recalled perfume. I was suddenly certain that whatever Tree Woman was, I did not want Epiny near her.
She was staring at me, round-eyed. I saw then that she was not well. Little crusts were starting at the corners of her eyes. I should have known from her cracked lips and her red cheeks. She already burned with the fever of the plague. Dr. Amicas had been right again.
She reached timorously to touch my head, and then jerked back her fingers as if scalded. “It comes and goes,” she whispered. “It shimmers around you, weak and then strong. Now it glows above your head. Like flame shows through a sheet of paper before it bursts through and consumes it.”
As she spoke those words, I could feel him. The other self had grown strong. I suddenly saw with his eyes. Epiny was a sorceress, a mistress of the iron magic. He looked at her and gloated, for powerful as she was, she was doomed. As clearly as I could see Epiny herself, I saw the tie of green vine that bound her wrist to Spink’s. I recognized Tree Woman’s “keep fast” charm.
As my true self, I mustered my will. I reached for Epiny’s free wrist and seized it. I pulled on her as she pulled back from me with a little squeak of alarm. “I have to free you!” I whispered hoarsely. “Before it’s too late.” With my other hand, I tried to make the “loose” sign over the twist of vine that bound her. Once the making of that sign had been my betrayal of my people. Now it would free Epiny. But my other self was too strong for me. I could lift my hand, but my fingers would not move as I commanded. He laughed with my mouth, cracking my dry lips.
“Nevare! Let me go! You’re hurting me!”
At Epiny’s cry, Spink took an uneven gasp of air. Then he sighed it out. Distracted, Epiny turned to him. “Spink? Spink!”
I waited. The moments ticked past. He made no indrawn breath. Then, as he gave a final sigh, I heard the death rattle in
Spink’s throat. Epiny sank to her knees on the floor between our beds. I still gripped her wrist. She didn’t seem to notice. “No,” she said quietly. “Oh, please, Spink, no! Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”
He is on the bridge now, I thought faintly. My mouth was no longer mine to speak with. My other self had that now. I wanted to call to Epiny for help. Now that his taking of my body was real, I would have claimed help from anyone who could offer it.
But Epiny did not even look at me. She had begun to rock back and forth, her free hand cupped over her mouth. Her keening still escaped between her fingers. Tears flowed down her face and over her fingers.
I knew when Spink’s spirit left his body. I did not see it go. But I saw Epiny suddenly sit up straight and look at her free hand. I saw the vine tighten on her wrist. Then, as the vine disappeared as if pulled through an invisible wall, Epiny went white. Her mouth gaped and did not close. Linked to Spink by Tree Woman’s “keep fast” charm, her spirit was being pulled into death along with his.
Slowly she collapsed to the floor and became still.
I fought my other self then. Fought him, as I had not before, with fury and hatred and disgust for all he had made me. I tried over and over to make the “loose” sign over their bodies. He kept me from it. To the nurses running toward us, I must have appeared a madman, holding tight to Epiny’s wrist as if I could hold her back from death, all the while grunting and shaking my free hand in the air as I tried to force my fingers to move as I wished them to.
I suddenly recalled the scout’s bluff, all those many years ago. I let my control of the hand go lax, as if surrendering. And when my other self lowered his guard against me, I made a sign over my own grip on Epiny’s wrist. Not “loose.”
“Keep fast!” I managed to say through my cracked lips. And then my body, too, crumpled to the floor as Epiny’s departing spirit pulled me after her.
Closing my eyes in this world was opening them to the bridge and its moving morass of the dying. Spink was on the bridge and had nearly completed his crossing. Epiny floated above him like a tethered bird. She was terrified, and she fought the bond that joined them. Spink did not even notice her. He moved forward, a step at a time.
The bond that linked me to Epiny was thinner and more tenuous. My charm did not have the strength of Tree Woman’s spell. Here, at least, my actions were my own. “Loose!” I said, and made the sign. I found myself free of Epiny, but dead all the same. I was suddenly on the bridge myself. The gathered crowd hemmed me in and blocked my progress. It edged forward, a slow step at a time. I fought the stolid detachment that wished to take me, fought the magic of the disease that had wasted my body. I had come here to do something. Unlike these others, I had willed myself here. I elbowed and shoved my way through the clustering souls.
It seemed monstrous to me that a plague could be a summoning, that Tree Woman had sent this sickness upon us to work magic against us. Bad enough that we should die of it; far worse that our deaths should bring us to a place that our beliefs had not made! This was not the sweet rest the good god promised his followers. It seemed cruel that those who had faithfully believed should be deprived of it.
Determinedly I tried to push my way forward through the crowding souls. “Stop!” I called aloud. “Spink! Come back!” He did not heed me. Over his head, Epiny floated, moaning and tugging at the binding on her wrist. Spink left the bridge, stepped into Tree Woman’s domain, and began his slow drift up the desecrated hillside. But at my cry, other spectral faces had turned to me, halting on the bridge to look back at me. I pleaded with them, “Come back. That place is not for you. Return to your bodies. Go back to your loved ones.”
A few wraiths paused, looking puzzled, as if my words had stirred their already fading memories. But after their brief consideration of me, they turned back to their sluggish passage. I had no patience with their delaying me. Heedless of the emptiness below me, I pushed around and past the trudging souls. On the far side, from her post at the top of the hill near the line of trees, Tree Woman pointed at me. I feared she would fling me back into my body, and only let me return to death after Spink and Epiny had perished forever. I seized the guide ropes of the bridge with both my hands and held on tightly, determined to resist.
A strange thing happened to me then. I could feel the magic coursing through the bridge, and recalled that it was made as much from me as it was from Tree Woman. I recognized the yellow strands that were part of its weaving; they were my own hair. I sensed I could draw strength from it, if I only knew how. That other self would have known how. But I did not, and so I could only hold tight to it and resist her in that way. I did sense that while I held to the bridge, she could not expel me from her realm. I began to make my torturous way across the bridge, slowly moving my grip, hand over hand, to cross it. I barely noticed the evanescent beings who gave way to my determined crossing. I passed them, and crept ever closer to my nemesis. “Spink!” I shouted again to my friend as I saw him toiling up the hill, ever closer to Tree Woman. “Turn back! Bring Epiny back with you, to life! Don’t drag her into death with you.”
Spink halted. He turned. Light flickered a moment in his hollow eyes, and for the first time, I saw something that sparkled silver on his chest. Her silly whistle hung there, the lover’s token that he would take even into the afterlife with him. He took a step back toward the bridge and my heart soared.
My other self suddenly reappeared on Tree Woman’s hilltop. He did not move slowly at all. He strode deliberately down the hill, closing the distance between him and Spink. His jaw was clenched, his eyes furious. Tree Woman shouted at him.
“Go back! I can deal with him! Go back! You must keep the body. You must inhabit it to keep it alive.”
He was as stubborn as I was. I had angered him. I could feel within my own breast the echo of his anger. He ignored Tree Woman as he hurried down the hill to take his personal revenge on me. First, he would devour my friends.
I shouted frantically at Spink as I pushed my way through the slowly moving spirits on the bridge. It was useless. Recognition and purpose faded from Spink’s expression after a moment or two of staring at me. He turned as if he had heard someone calling him and began to make his way up the hill toward my traitor self. Spink walked as if captured by deep thought, not even appearing to see where he was going. Epiny was towed along with him. Her face was clenched in irrational terror. “Epiny!” I finally thought to shout at her. “Epiny, hold Spink back. Pull him back; go back over the bridge.”
My words seemed to reach her. Her frightened eyes darted to me and then down to Spink. She was as insubstantial as a butterfly here, a spirit caught between two worlds and belonging to neither. Yet she struggled. She called his name and pulled on the vine that bound them together, trying to gain his attention and bring him back.
My other self scowled. He lifted his eyes to me and our gazes locked. He hated me. He lifted a hand and made a sign, a sign I knew well. “Keep fast,” he signed at the other specters on the bridge, and they halted where they were, blocking me.
Caught between life and death, on the bridge between the worlds, the phantoms froze still, unyielding to my shoving, and trapping me in their midst. I pushed at them, frantically struggling, yet ever mindful that I must keep one hand touching that hellish bridge. Ironically, it was Caulder who immediately blocked my way. His features were as sullen in death as they had been in life. With my free hand I seized him and shook him. “Get out of my way! Go back!” I shouted at him.
And to my horror, a glint of awareness came to his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak to me, but no words came. Terror filled his childish face, and insubstantial tears welled in his eyes, to trickle down his translucent face. It horrified me and drove from me all the hatred and dislike I’d harbored for him. I lifted my hand. “Loose!” I said to him as I made the sign. “Go back. Go back to your life.”
His gaze met mine, and he blinked as if waking from a dream. Then, with a soundless sob, he turned a
nd tried to push past me, to get back across the bridge. The spirit behind me blocked his way. I turned to him. He was a craggy old man in ragged clothes, probably a cavalla veteran living out his last days on the streets of Old Thares. “Loose,” I told him gently, and signed the charm. The old man turned back. I lifted my hand higher and waved it, making the charm over all the spirits halted on the bridge. “Loose!” I shouted at them. “Go back.” At my word, every specter stirred, turned, and began the journey back. I fought my way forward past those who now sought to go the other way. Like a fish battling its way upstream, I shoved a passage through them until I reached the other side.
I came to the end of the bridge, to the saber that anchored it to that place. I looked up at Tree Woman. She returned my gaze with equanimity. As surely as I knew anything, I knew that she was waiting for me to step off the bridge. Once my feet touched her world, I would be in her power. She would be rid of me. And that piece of me that she had stolen, my other self, was still intent on devouring my friend.
Spink was walking steadily toward his doom, trudging up the muddy and ravaged slope, unmindful of what he left behind. Epiny had come to her senses. She spoke to him and fought him, but he moved inexorably on. Somehow that made it more terrible, not less. My other self moved forward to meet him. His hands were already cupped, ready to receive Spink’s essence.
Epiny stepped between them. She no longer fought her bond. She used it to hold herself in place, between Spink and the being who threatened him.
She looked strange in this place. She was a flickering flame of a girl, less substantial than the ghost she tried to protect. I saw my other self snatch at her, and then turn in surprise to his mentor when his hands passed right through her. I understood. Epiny had known the “keep fast” charm, but she had not use it daily as Spink and I had. Their magic did not hold her here; only her attachment to Spink. My cousin seemed unaware of me as I hesitated on the bridge. Instead, she shrieked “Nevare! Please, be yourself! Help us!” at that other creature who wore my features. The look of betrayal on her face as he again snatched at her burned me. She could do nothing here for Spink or me. She would end her existence thinking I had betrayed her.
