by Robin Hobb
It went on for a very long time. When Lisana could no longer hold on to my body because of the damage it had sustained, when I had sunk to my knees, moaning with pain, still she stood by me, weeping and gripping grimly the handful of hair on the top of my head.
The first time I had ever met her, when we had come together as adversaries, I as Dewara’s champion and she as the guardian of the dream bridge, she had seized me in the same way. And when I fell into the abyss, she had kept that grip, and jerked out of me a core of my person. She had kept that piece and it had grown to be Soldier’s Son. But what would happen to me this time, neither of us knew. I did not even know if I would be torn from her world. Perhaps, when Orandula was through with his torment of me, he would let me go, and I could heal and be with her.
A grimmer thought came to my pain-encrusted mind. Perhaps the torment would never end. Perhaps this was what the Old God meant by taking my death from me. That even after my life was over, I would know no peace. It seemed too cruel a fate to contemplate; could anyone, even a god, do such a thing?
For the first time since the torment began, Orandula spoke to me. “Of course I could. But that is not what we agreed upon. You told me I could take your death. And I will.”
“Please! Mercy,” I begged.
“But I am not the god of mercy. I am the god of balances.”
“By the good god, please stop!” I begged him.
“I do not know this good god. Truth to tell, I sometimes think he is whatever god is giving you what you think you want. And thus perhaps all of us take turns being your good god.”
“Then be the good god to me now,” I begged. All I could feel was pain. Sunlight on my leaves was gone, Lisana holding my hand was gone, even her grip on my hair had vanished. There remained only me and the eternal punishment of this god. “God of balances, balance this, this justice you claim from me with the mercy I beg.”
Another searing stripe of pain. Was this the flogging I’d escaped in that other life? Did this pain now balance the pain I hadn’t had then? It was a senseless question.
Orandula seemed detached from what he did to me. “Balance justice with mercy? But surely justice can be balanced only with injustice.” Words tumbled and bumped in my head. If mercy was not justice, was it an injustice when mercy was given?
Beaks were rummaging in my guts, snapping and snipping, pulling out bits of this and that, tugging them away.
“Please.” In all the world, there was only Orandula left to speak with. “Please, make it be over.”
I had not known I was going to beg for that. But there it was, the words were out of my mouth.
“Very well,” the god replied. And I knew darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
EMERGENCE
Darkness. Absolute darkness. But not peace. My body was bathed in pain. The skin of my face, my arms and legs, my back and belly, all stung as if badly burned. That was it. As thoughts re-formed in my head, I realized what had happened. I’d been sunburned. Dewara had left my body exposed to the sun and I was burned all over. I remembered it now. Soon I would open my eyes, and find myself back in my bed, at home. My mother would be weeping by my bedside while my father kept watch.
I was going back to the beginning of it all. Back to where I could choose differently, live my life over. I would not make the mistakes I’d made before. I’d be strong and more aggressive. My father would be proud of me. I’d be an officer in the King’s Cavalla. My mother and siblings would not die of a plague that I’d let loose upon Gernia. The old god had taken me back to where it had all begun, to when Dewara had sent me to do battle against Tree Woman and I had failed. Had that been a death? Was that the death the old god had taken?
“You are not even remotely correct,” Orandula observed. There was amusement in his voice. Overhead, I heard the shifting of a heavy body in a tree’s branches. Then it lifted off with a flapping of wings that faded almost immediately. I listened intently. He was gone. Where was I?
I could see nothing, but I could hear. The ringing silence resolved itself into night insects singing their endless songs. Cautiously, I explored my other senses. I smelled and tasted blood. Pain hummed all around me, but I had specific pains, too. I’d bitten my tongue badly. My head pounded. My innards felt wrong, as if my guts had settled into a new and strange arrangement. I sorted out my agonies and knew that I was sitting upright. I tried to move, to shift even my leg, and cried out at the fresh pain it woke. I went back to stillness.
The darkness was an overcast night. It passed very slowly, and it was some time before I realized that the blackness was nothing more terrifying and dreadful than night. The coming of the dim dawn as sunlight flickered down through the canopy of the forest brought its own terror, however. I could see, and what I saw sickened me.
I sat where the Specks had left me. The beaks of the carrion birds that had torn the flesh from my body had shredded my bindings as well. I was naked. Shreds of rotting flesh surrounded and enthroned me. My decomposed body was a slimy scum on the earth around me. Pale roots networked through it. But that was not what horrified me.
What remained of my body was a monstrous thing. The layer of skin that covered me was so thin that I could see through it. As the light grew stronger, what I could see became ever more horrifying. Red muscle, white tendons, dark veins. Knobs of bone and gristle showing through in my hands. My breath came and went in short, trembling bursts. I wondered for an instant what my face looked like and then was glad I could not know.
As the sun grew stronger, it brought light and color into the world. My body became even more hideous. I turned my eyes away from it and looked around me. There was Lisana’s tree, lush and healthy. And when I turned my eyes up, my own tree towered over me, twice the size it had been when last I saw it. I was grateful for its thick leafy shade, for I feared what the sun could do to my nearly skinless body. The surface of my body stung all over like a skinned knee.
I moved cautiously, lifting my hands, not wanting to look at them but looking all the same. After a time, I stood. My bare feet protested. They barely had skin, let alone calluses to protect them. I was very careful as I picked my way through the fallen branches and other forest debris to reach Lisana’s tree. I stood looking up at it. “Lisana?” I asked softly.
There was no response. But it was more profound than that. I sensed nothing that could have responded. I set both my hands to the trunk of her tree. I didn’t like the sensation. The skin on my palms and fingers was new and thin. I pressed my tender hands against the roughness of her bark and feared I would tear what little skin I had. Nevertheless, I put my brow to her bark as well. “Lisana?” I called aloud. “Lisana, please, reach for me. I cannot feel you.”
But there was nothing. I stood a long time, hoping there would be something. I would have welcomed it even if her tree had tried to root into my flesh. But there was not even that.
When I glanced back at my tree, I could see that its roots were rapidly diminishing the leftovers of what I had been. But from that tree I sensed nothing, no awareness, no kinship, nothing at all.
No magic.
I don’t know how long I would have stayed there if thirst had not begun to assail me. I knew my way to the nearest stream, and I went there, carefully descending from Lisana’s ridge, taking each step as if I were made of cobwebs and glass. My breath shivered in and out of me. When I reached the water, I had to kneel down and cup it into my hands. It was cold and wet, a painful shock to my barely cloaked nerves. I felt the coldness of it running down inside me, even into my belly. I drank a lot of water, and then sat shivering. I’d looked at my hands when I drank from them. The memory made me shudder.
By midday, I was thinking more clearly, but only because I had pushed aside every part of my experience that refused to make sense. I’d evaluated where I was and what I had. My situation was desperate. I was naked, hungry, and vulnerable to everything from a thorn to an insect bite. I needed help. I could think of only one
place and one person who would offer it. I stood up and left the stream.
I stumbled through the forest, moving with exaggerated caution lest I tear my new skin. Everything seemed too difficult. My legs were wobbly and sometimes I staggered unpredictably. Once, when I nearly fell and had to catch myself against a tree trunk, I ripped the thin skin on my palm. The sudden pain tore a shriek from me, and fresh blood ran from the cut, trickling down my wrist. In the distance, almost in response to my shriek, I heard birds caw raucously, as if laughing at me. I was so weakened and befuddled by all that I had been through that the sound brought tears to my eyes, and soon they were running down my cheeks as I tottered on through the forest. The salt tears stung my new skin.
It was luck and chance that took me where I wished to go. It was evening when I finally stumbled into the summer encampment of Olikea’s kin-clan. I was hungry, but worse, I was cold. My body had no defense at all and even the mild spring night seemed heartlessly chill to me. The burning campfires and the smell of cooking food drew me like a candle draws a moth. Limping and weeping afresh, I hurried as quickly as I was able toward their light and warmth.
Life in all its wonderful chaos filled that glen. People were cooking food together, and eating, or sitting around the fires, leaning on one another as they talked and laughed. As I approached, one group took up a song, and on the other side of the camp, a second group responded, with much laughter, with their own ribald version of it. The music and the sparks from the cook fires rose together into the night sky. On the side of the dell, above the others, a larger cook fire burned, and Jodoli reclined on the elevated couch he had summoned from the forest floor. Firada was standing at his side, offering him roasted meat from a skewer. I skirted the other groups and made directly for them. I needed help, and I did not think they would turn me away. Firada would know where her sister was, and surely they would send a runner for her. Olikea and Likari would come to tend me and all would be well again.
As I wound my way through the encampment, no one spoke to me. Occasionally a head turned abruptly in my direction and then slowly away. They ignored me, pretending not to see me. My mind worked slowly through it. They would have heard the news from Olikea that I had died, and my present form scarcely matched how they would recall me. Still, it seemed odd to me that no one issued challenge or gave greeting to a stranger walking into the encampment. I had no strength to wonder about it, let alone rebuke anyone for rudeness.
As I drew nearer to Firada’s fire, I realized that the woman sitting with her back to me was Olikea. She looked very different. She had lost some of the plumpness she had gained as my feeder, and her proud head was bowed now, a guest at her sister’s fireside rather than a woman presiding over her own hearth. Likari was there as well. He reclined on his side, his head cushioned on his arms. I was pleased to see that the boy had regained some flesh. As I watched, he sat up and tossed a bone into the fire and then lay down again.
“Olikea!” I called to her, and was astonished at the weakness of my voice. I tried to clear my throat and could not; my mouth was dry, and even the walk up the slight hill was taxing my lungs. “Olikea!” I called again. She did not even turn her head.
“Likari!” I cried, hoping his younger ears would be keener. I saw him shift his position on the ground. No one else in the whole encampment so much as turned toward me. I gathered all my strength for a final effort. “Likari!” I called, and the boy sat up slowly and looked all around. His gaze passed right over me.
“Did you hear that?” I heard him ask his mother.
“What?”
“Someone called my name.”
“I heard nothing but the singing. How can they be so merry, so soon after his death?”
“To them, it is not soon,” Firada replied without rancor. “A moon has waxed and waned since he walked among us. And they were not close to him. He kept himself a stranger to us, even when he lived among us and took feeders from our kin-clan. He came suddenly and left as suddenly. I know you are grieving still, sister, but you cannot expect everyone to share your sorrow. He is gone. And if Kinrove is right, he achieved his goal, and the magic is now unfettered. All will be well for the People.”
“They celebrate his triumph, not his death,” Jodoli added gravely. “I think it is as good a way to respect a man as weeping for him.”
His words warmed my heart. I had drawn closer to their fireside. I stood directly behind Olikea as I said jovially, “Except that the man is not dead. Not just yet. Though if I don’t eat soon, I may be!”
Olikea didn’t jump or shriek as I had expected she might. She continued to stare gloomily into the fire. There was no reaction from Firada, either. Jodoli gave me a brief, disapproving glance and then looked again at the fire. Only Likari stiffened at my words. He sat up and looked around again. “I thought I heard—” he began, but Jodoli cut in with, “It was nothing, boy. Just the crackling of the fire.”
At that moment, Likari’s questing glance met mine. I grinned at him. He let out a yell of absolute terror and leapt to his feet. Jodoli’s hand shot out and caught him by the shoulder. “Look at me!” he commanded the boy.
“But, but—”
“Look at me!” he repeated more sternly. And when the boy obeyed, Jodoli held his gaze and spoke sternly. “It is bad luck to look at a ghost. And worse luck for the ghost if you speak to him. He is just a strong memory, Likari. Great Ones have very intense memories. Do not look at it or try to speak to it. We must let it go so that he can become what he is meant to be.”
“A ghost? Where?” Firada demanded, looking right at me. Olikea, too, turned around and swung her gaze right past me.
“There is nothing there. A Great One goes into his tree, Likari. Nevare will not walk as a ghost. He left nothing unfinished.” He patted the boy reassuringly on the shoulder as he released him.
“I thought I saw…something.”
“It didn’t even look like Nevare, Likari. Don’t dwell on it, or try to see it again.”
“A Great One should not have a ghost,” Olikea said with great concern. “Unless…could the tree have refused him?”
“You said you saw the roots enter him. You said that he moved with them as you sang him his memories.”
“I did. They did!”
“Then all should be well. If you wish, tomorrow I will visit his tree and speak to him, to be sure he has been well received. He should be at home there by now.”
“If you would, please,” Olikea said gratefully.
“And I will go with you,” Likari announced as he sat down again.
“As his feeder, that is your right,” the Great Man confirmed.
I saw Likari start to roll his eyes toward me. Jodoli raised an eyebrow at him. Likari lowered his head.
“I’m not a ghost!” I said incredulously. “Is this a joke? Have I offended all of you in some way? I don’t understand! I’m hungry. I need help!”
I stepped closer into their circle. None of them reacted. Likari might have hunched his shoulders a little tighter. I reached toward the skewer of meat that Jodoli held. It had been a bird; I seized the wing and tore it free. If he felt or saw me take it, his face did not show it. I devoured the salty, greasy meat, chewed the gristle off the end of the bone and threw that tiny piece into the fire. The flames spat as they tasted it.
By the fire, Firada spoke to Olikea as if nothing were out of the ordinary. “So. What will you do now?”
“What I have always done. I’ll live.”
Firada shook her head. “It was wrong of Kinrove to keep all that treasure. He should have given at least some of it back to you. You tended Nevare well. Now, except for the lodge and what it holds, you are right back to where you were.”
Her sister sounded sympathetic but Olikea still bristled. “Perhaps the lodge holds more than you know. Perhaps it was not all of Lisana’s treasure that he threw at Kinrove’s feet.”
Firada lifted one eyebrow. “Truly?”
Olikea smiled smal
l. “I said perhaps.”
Firada made a small sound in her throat. “You have always known how to take care of yourself.”
“I’ve had to,” Olikea said.
There was a skin of water on the ground beside Jodoli’s couch. I picked it up and drank, but spat it out as hastily. The taste was familiar; the water was flavored with a bark that Olikea had often mixed with my water. It was an herb that amplified the magic. But now it made my gorge rise. I had no sooner dropped the skin than Jodoli picked it up. He drank thirstily, and then returned to tearing meat from the skewered bird.
“Olikea,” I begged suddenly. “Please. Please help me.”
She stretched out on the moss beside Likari and closed her eyes. A tear trickled down her cheek. I groaned and turned away from her.
I left their fireside and walked down the hill. A woman had set aside a stack of hearth cakes to cool. I took three from the top of the stack and ate them. No one noticed me.
I grew bolder in my efforts to make someone acknowledge me, and also to satisfy my needs. I took a man’s cup that he had just filled with hot soup and set aside to cool, drank it, and set it down in a different place. He merely scowled over his forgetfulness.
My hunger sated, I returned to Jodoli’s fire, in time to see Likari and Olikea settling for the night. The night was mild. Olikea spread out a blanket for both of them to share between the roots of a tree. They settled quickly and soon fell asleep. Olikea’s pack was nearby. Shamelessly, I ransacked it. When I saw that she had my winter cloak among her possessions, I boldly took it from her pack, shook it out, and put it on. It was too big for me. I lapped it around my body twice. My shoes were there, too. I put them on. They fell off. I dug into her pack again and found her knife and sewing tools. I crudely tightened the soft leather shoes to fit my feet and put them on. I cannot express the comfort of them; it was as if my body had forgotten how to keep itself warm.
