The Soldier Son Trilogy Bundle

by Robin Hobb

  This was a different forest he moved through, as different as the forest on the other side of the mountain had been from my prairie home. That was a revelation to me. I had thought that all forests would be, well, forests. To discover that they differed as much as one city does from another was almost shocking. On this side of the mountains, evergreens predominated, cedar and spruce for the most part. Their fallen needles carpeted the earth and I tasted their resinous scent with every breath. I passed anthills that were waist high; at first glance they seemed to be merely heaps of rust-brown needles. Ferns were also plentiful, and mushrooms in astonishing variety. He recognized some as energizing for his magic and picked and ate them. Soldier’s Boy recognized them from Lisana’s memories. My reluctance to trust such a secondhand memory swayed him not at all from eating every last one of them. And when he had finished, the subtle humming of the magic in my blood rose. He walked on with a satisfied smile. He liked being able to take care of himself, I realized.

  The first hare he saw escaped him because he had foolishly not thought to gather stones for ammunition before he set out. He sought out a stream, and again I felt him pilfering my memories to select stones of the right size and heft for the sling. I resented that. He had his own secrets that he kept from me. Why should I share the skills I’d worked so hard to perfect? I clenched my mind shut to him.

  He paused a few moments by the stream to drink, and then to make several practice shots with the sling. He was not very good at first. He selected a tree trunk as his target. The first stone went wide, the second grazed the bark, and the third did not leave the sling at all but fell at his feet. I felt his frustration, and felt, too, the hunger that gnawed at him. He needed what I knew.

  I gave in, reasoning that if he did not eat, my body would suffer. When he reached again for my memories, I actively offered to him what he needed to know, not just how to stand and when to release the stone, but also the “feel” of the sling itself. The next two stones he launched each hit the tree trunk with a solid and satisfying “thwack!” He grinned, replenished his ammunition, and stalked on, suddenly a predator in these woods.

  He killed the next hare he saw with a single stone and lifted the limp carcass with satisfaction. It was a big one, and fat for winter. Satisfied, he headed back toward the cabin. They would have fresh meat tonight. It wouldn’t be enough to sate him; he felt as if he could eat four more just like it. But it would calm the hunger enough to let him sleep. Tomorrow he would send the boy out to forage as well. Tomorrow, he promised his growling belly, would be a day of plenty. For tonight, the single fat rabbit would have to do. He hurried through the gathering gloom.

  He smelled the smoke through the trees, and then saw flickering light through the cabin’s window. Winter, with short days and long nights, was venturing closer with every day. He felt a lurch of fear as he considered how poorly equipped he was to face the turn of the seasons, but then gritted his teeth. He had four days. Four days to fatten himself, to find trade goods and trade them. He needed winter clothing and a steady supply of food from a loyal kin-clan. But he wouldn’t get those things by going to the Trading Place looking like a skinny old beggar. “Power comes most easily to the man who appears powerful,” he said aloud. I felt a lurch of dismay. Another of my father’s teachings. Would all the harsh wisdom he had passed on to me in the hopes of making me a better officer now be turned against Gernia and my king? Traitor, I suddenly thought. Renegade.

  I was suddenly glad I was dead to my world. I wished with deep passion that Epiny didn’t know I was still alive, that no one did. I had the sudden sick conviction that all I’d ever learned was going to be used against my own people. Coward that I was, I did not want anyone to know that I was the one responsible. If I had had my own heart any longer, it would have felt heavy. As things stood, I had to endure Soldier’s Boy’s satisfaction as he strode up to the house.

  A croaker bird abruptly appeared, probably drawn by the smell of the dead hare. Cawing loudly, he swooped in to settle on the main roof beam of the little house. He perched there, looking down on the scene with bright and greedy eyes.

  Likari was crouched in front of the cabin by the small fire he’d kindled earlier. He looked miserable and alone, and at the sound of Soldier’s Boy’s approach, he looked up fearfully, the whites showing all around his eyes.

  “What are you doing out here?” Soldier’s Boy asked him severely.

  Likari squirmed. “Waiting for you.”

  “Then it has nothing to do with being afraid of bad luck? With doubting what I told you was true?”

  The small boy looked down at his bare feet as he crouched by the fire. Did Soldier’s Boy feel pity for him? His tone was gentler as he asked, “Did you do all I asked? Is there water and firewood? Did you clean the hearth stones of moss and earth?”

  “Yes, Great One. I did everything that you told me to do.”

  “Well. We are in luck. My hunting went well, and I have a nice hare for us to eat tonight. Do you know how to skin a hare and make it ready for the pot?”

  The boy hesitated. “I’ve seen Firada do it. I could try.”

  “Another time, perhaps. I’ll show you how it’s done tonight.” Privately he thought that he didn’t want any of the meat wasted by a clumsy skinning job.

  “We don’t have a pot to cook it in.”

  “You’re right. Perhaps. Come inside with me. Let’s see what we do have.”

  Lisana’s memories told him that she had had a stewing pot of fired clay. It had been a favorite of hers, glazed a creamy white on the inside and adorned with black frogs against a dark blue background on the outside. It had been just the right size for cooking. He went to the place where she had kept it. Beneath a rumpled carpet of thick moss, his seeking fingers found only fragments of fired pottery. He pulled one from beneath the moss and wiped it clean. Half of a leaping frog remained on the shard. Next to it, a greenish half-moon of badly corroded copper was all that remained of a once-gleaming pot.

  It saddened him unreasonably. What had he expected? How many generations ago had Lisana lived here? It was irrational of him to hope that her possessions had endured. I was surprised to find that her cabin and its contents had survived at all. How could he be so disappointed that a fired pot had not lasted?

  As he crouched outside alongside the boy and they gutted and skinned the hare for roasting, the answer came to me. He carried Lisana’s memories and the grief he felt now over the destroyed pot was as much her grief as his. It had been a cherished possession, and somehow it had been important to her that it still existed. As if, I slowly reasoned, the survival of her possessions was the continuation of her life.

  As the thought came to me, I could suddenly experience Soldier’s Boy’s emotions as he felt them. As if I were a traced overlay of a sketch, I came into synchronization with him. For a fractional moment, I was Soldier’s Boy. If I had relaxed, I would have merged with him, would have dissolved like salt stirred in water. For one paralyzed moment, I felt lured by that. In the next instant, I leapt like a hooked fish and tore myself free of him. I retreated from him, heedless of fleeing into darkness. I sank myself deep, beyond his reach, beyond Lisana’s memories. Or so I tried. I could not quite escape the sound of his voice.

  He smiled slowly and spoke softly. “Eventually I will win.”

  “Win what?” Likari asked him.

  “Everything,” Soldier’s Boy replied. “Everything.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TRADE GOODS

  Unwillingly, I was drawn back to watch them. The boy ate one hindquarter of the hare and Soldier’s Boy devoured the rest. He gnawed even the gristle off the ends of the bones, and the smaller bones he ground between his teeth and swallowed.

  I felt almost like myself as he scraped the small hide and pegged it out to dry. He’d hunted, fed himself, and now had the simple chores of a man responsible for himself. Scraping the hide put me in mind of how I had done such tasks for Amzil, and how that simple life
had once beckoned me. I suddenly missed them just as much as Soldier’s Boy missed Lisana. I wondered if he could feel my emotions as I did his, if he could understand that I loved Amzil as he loved his tree woman.

  Beside me, Likari watched me work on the hide in awe.

  “I never saw a Great One do work before,” he said innocently. “Jodoli does nothing for himself. He does not even pick a berry or wash his own body. Firada does it all. But you hunt and cook and scrape the skin.”

  Soldier’s Boy smiled at the lad’s amazement. “There are many things I can do. It is good for a man to know how to do things for himself.”

  “But you have magic in you. If you have magic, you don’t have to do hard work. I wish I had magic.”

  “Magic can be hard work in itself, Likari. But work, even hard work, can give a man pleasure if he does it willingly and well.”

  That, I thought to myself, smacked of Sergeant Duril. I wondered if that old Gernian value was one that the Specks shared with us, or if Soldier’s Boy was more Gernian than he knew.

  The meat was gone but the smell of it lingered sweetly in the air. The fire burned well on the cleaned hearth, and the smoke found the smoke hole effortlessly. Likari had done his tasks well. Soldier’s Boy mused on the hearthstones. Lisana had chosen them as much for their beauty as their imperviousness to heat. They were all the same deep green, smoothed by the valley’s river and hardened by her ancient fires. Looking down at them, Soldier’s Boy could pretend her lodge was as tidy and cozy as it had been when she was alive.

  He looked at the Speck boy staring so intently into the flames. Likari crouched close to the comfort of the fire, obviously still uneasy at being inside the Great One’s old lodge. The boy seemed to feel his gaze. He glanced up fearfully and looked back at the fire. Soldier’s Boy frowned, and then looked around the room, trying to see it as the boy might. The pale roots that hung down or roped over the walls reminded him of the hare’s bared entrails. Or perhaps of dangling snakes. The interior of the lodge was damp and musty. Beetles and insects were much in evidence.

  “Where will we sleep?” Likari asked.

  Soldier’s Boy glanced over his shoulder. For an instant, he saw with Lisana’s eyes. There was a wooden bedstead, stoutly built to be a Great One’s resting place. It was lush with furs, heaped with woolen trade blankets, a warm and comfortable retreat at day’s end. Then he blinked and there was only a rumpled carpet of moss and ancient debris on the floor. Soldier’s Boy stood up. An emotion rose in him, filling his chest and dimming his sight with tears.

  Then he extended his hands toward the collapsed bed and dangling roots.

  I had done magic: I thought I knew how it felt. But I had wielded the magic in much the same way that Soldier’s Boy had used my sling, without skill or efficiency. I had flung magic ruthlessly, profligately. The way Soldier’s Boy used it reminded me of my mother’s deft hands when she embroidered; stitch, stitch, stitch, stitch, stitch, and a green leaf appeared on a linen handkerchief. She never wasted a moment or an inch of floss. Soldier’s Boy used the magic in that way, with precision and economy. He gave no general command. Instead, he gestured at first this rootlet and then that hummock of moss. The root stirred, squirmed, and then braided itself neatly with three other roots before twisting upward and tucking itself back into the decaying roof beams. The moss clump crept over a fragment of old wood, devoured it, and then joined itself to a fellow hummock of moss. Root after root, moss clump after moss clump followed the examples of the others. I recognized what he was doing. He was drawing on my knowledge of engineering and structure. The dangling mat of roots over the old bed became ropes that wove themselves through the roof beams, reinforcing them. The moss devoured what little remained of Lisana’s old bed and bedding and fashioned itself into a plump green pallet.

  Likari’s hushed voice came from behind me. “I thought you were saving your magic.”

  Soldier’s Boy gave his head a shake as if awakening. “I didn’t use that much,” he said, almost apologizing to himself.

  “Will we sleep there?” the boy asked.

  “Yes,” Soldier’s Boy said decisively. “Where’s the blanket?”

  “Outside.” When Soldier’s Boy turned to look at him, the boy was staring stubbornly at his feet.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t want to sleep in here,” Likari admitted in a hoarse whisper.

  “But I do,” Soldier’s Boy said firmly. “So we shall. Bring my blanket here.”

  “Yes, Great One,” he replied in a subdued voice. He went outside.

  Soldier’s Boy gave a great sigh, perhaps of resignation. Then he walked slowly around the inside of the lodge, studying the walls and ceiling and the framing of the windows. The rolled-hide window covers that had once existed to be pegged in place against winter’s chill were long gone. I wondered why he was bothering about window coverings when there was an obvious bulge in one of the walls. Would this lodge stand for another winter? I felt he pushed the question at me. I tried to ignore him, but the engineer in me could not stand the unstable wall. I focused on it until he shared my impression of it. He nodded gravely, perhaps to me, and then with studied flicks of his fingers, he reinforced it with roots. The logs were too soft to be pulled back into alignment, but he could stabilize them. Dangling roots wove themselves into networks and attached themselves to the ceiling and the walls. The limber webbing strengthened the existing structure. By the time Likari returned with my old blanket, the ceiling of Lisana’s lodge was reinforced and tidied. Likari glanced about in surprise, then smiled gratefully at the change. The light from the hearth fire now lit the room evenly. I had not realized how intimidating the fingery shadows of the roots had been until they were gone.

  Soldier’s Boy took the old blanket from Likari and shook it vigorously. The wind of its passage fanned the fire and dust hung thick in the air afterward. Soldier’s Boy regarded it sternly. “Tomorrow,” he announced, “you will wash the blanket and hang it near the fire to dry. For tonight, shall we sleep on it or under it?”

  “Under it,” the boy replied decisively. Then he added carefully, “At least, you will. It is not a very large blanket. I wish there were more.”

  “We will get more when we go to trade. Lisana used to have many thick rugs and colorful blankets.” Soldier’s Boy spoke the words as if they were a spell. I suddenly knew that he said them out loud simply because he missed her so badly. Talking about her made her seem more present, even if his only audience was a small, sleepy boy.

  He spread the blanket on the bed of moss. Then he moved slowly around the room, carefully recalling it as it once had been. Likari remained by the hearth fire, sucking on a bone and regarding him curiously.

  Moss and mildew covered the cedar chest that he tried to drag closer to the firelight. It fell into splintered fragments when he tried to open it. He pushed aside the white webbed remnants of the lid. Insects had long ago loosened the lush fur from the hides. Even the leather was holed and green. Woven woolen blankets had been devoured by moths into threads and rags, the bright colors lost to decay. Their hearts had rotted into a solid, smelly mass. With a grunt of disgust, he dropped the corner he had tried to lift and wiped his hands on the floor.

  “You can go to sleep if you want to,” he told the watching boy. Likari was happy to scurry to the moss bed and crawl under the blanket. But he didn’t go to sleep. He regarded me with bright, curious eyes as Soldier’s Boy prowled the room, unearthing more remnants of Lisana’s possessions.

  A heavy copper bowl had gone green and black with verdigris; the pattern hammered into it had been lost forever. The few wooden artifacts that had not vanished were riddled with wormholes or spongy with age. The more decayed bits of Lisana’s life that he uncovered, the more sad and rotten the derelict lodge seemed. He could not pretend she had been here just yesterday. Decades, if not generations, had passed.

  Resignation and sorrow rose in him like a tide; I could not tell how much of the e
motion was his and how much belonged to Lisana’s shade. He put more wood on the fire. In that circle of light, he set out the few possessions he had salvaged as if he were arranging a memorial to her. Two glass bowls. The soapstone lamp. A tiny jade spoon for cosmetics. He put them in a row. It reminded me horribly of how we had set out the plague bodies to await burial.

  And all the while, he kept glancing back toward Likari as if waiting for something. Gradually the boy’s eyes sagged shut. Slowly his breathing deepened and steadied. Soldier’s Boy unearthed an ivory comb. He took it back to the fire’s light and spent a ridiculous amount of time cleaning it. When he was finished, he looked again at the lad.

  “Likari?” he asked softly.

  The boy didn’t stir. Satisfied that he was well and truly asleep, Soldier’s Boy gave a small sigh. He took a brand from the fire and went quietly to the far end of the lodge.

  I thought at first that he was reliving Lisana’s secretiveness as he slowly walked his fingers along the moss and root tendrils that coated the log wall. The pegs that had secured the hollow piece had long ago rotted away. The roots that had penetrated it held the concealed lid shut more securely than the pegs ever had. He pulled and tugged them away carefully, but the lid still came to pieces as he opened the hiding place. I knew then it was not secrecy but reverence that had made him wait for privacy.

  This had been Lisana’s secret. He lifted away the broken pieces of wood and revealed a hollowed space. Within it rested all that remained of her most treasured possessions. Here she had concealed her secret indulgences, the ornaments and jewelry that would have been appropriate to a woman of her people but not necessary to a Great One. They were, I realized, the trappings of her banished dream. For Lisana, it was not a cavalla saber or a set of spurs or a soldier-son journal. Soldier’s Boy drew from the niche a dozen heavy silver wrist bangles, gone black with tarnish, and then four wide torcs, three of silver and one of beaten gold. There were striated ivory bracelets made from some creature’s tusks and large hair ornaments of jade, hematite, and a blue stone that I didn’t know. The seams of the leather pouches beneath them had given way. He had to lift them carefully, cupping them to keep the contents from spilling out. These he carried one by one to the fire’s light. Woven gut strands were weakened or gone, but the polished beads remained, ivory, amber, jade, and pearl. Trip after trip he made from the cache to the hearth, setting out a king’s ransom of jewelry and carved ornaments. Layer after hoarded layer he took from the wall. I caught glimpses of Lisana’s memories of them. There were small trinkets, a bone fish and a jade leaf, that had been gifts from her father when she was a little girl. Some of the others were ornaments she had acquired by trading when she was a young woman seeking to draw a certain young man’s eyes to her. But most of it was the loot she had effortlessly gained as a Great One, gifts and offerings and treasures from a grateful kin-clan.