Shaman's Crossing ss-1

by Robin Hobb

  “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 added 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 dishonour, 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 Women 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 in 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 mad man, 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.

  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 that 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 the 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 the 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 the 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, the 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 after-life 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. After a moment or two of staring at me, recognition and purpose faded from Spink’s expression. 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 spectres 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 harboured 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 and 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 spectre stirred, turned, and began that 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 sabre that anchored it to that place. I looked up at the Tree Woman. She returned my gaze with equanimity. As surely as I knew anything, I knew that she waited 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 that 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 used 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.

  I reached for the earlier connection I’d felt with my other self. I could feel the magic he’d consumed swelling inside him. He had grown in power and ability and knowledge under Tree Woman’s tutelage. I despised what she had made of that part of me. He was her creature, a traitor to me and mine. He loved what she loved, and would do anything within his power to protect it, with no thought of what it would cost me.

  But I was not her creature. And in some strange way, the two parts of me were still bound. I dared not leave the bridge to help them. If I did so, Tree Woman could eject me from this world, and then deal with my friends with no interference.

  I focused all my being on that other part of myself. Awareness of him slipped and squirmed through my mind. In flashes, I saw through his eyes, tasted the sweetness that still lingered in his mouth, and felt, too, that eagerness that made him grope toward Spink. My tongue licked his lips. My fingers felt the coolness that was evanescent Epiny as his hands passed through her vaporous form. I could share his awareness but I could not control him.

  Epiny battered at Spink, trying to push him back from that world, back onto the bridge. They fought like colliding shadows, darkening and merging where they touched. She raged and wept as she struggled to turn him back, the reality of her cries too harsh and loud in the ethereal place. My other self beckoned imperiously to Spink, and he wavered forward another step, moving right through Epiny. She screamed then, a sound of despair such as I’d never heard before.

  I do not know if the sound moved me to greater strength, or if it unnerved that other me enough to break his focus. For a moment, my awareness of my other self was complete. I knew him totally, and as he recognized that, he committed a fatal mistake. His hands moved to protect his weakness from me. His hands covered his waxed and braided scalp lock.

  He fought me for control of his hands. I tried to grab the ridiculous tail of hair, but he closed the hands into fists. Frustrated, I pounded at his head with the hands, but could not deal him a blow of any strength, nor force the fingers to open. Spink had drifted past us now, moving toward a tree stump. Epiny floated after him. She fluttered her hands at his face but could not halt him. His eyes seemed sorrowful, as if he sensed her, but the expression on his face didn’t change. Sudden inspiration struck me. My other self controlled the hands, but he had done nothing to guard his voice from me. I made him speak.

  “Epiny!” I cried. “Pull out my hair! It will free me. Rip out this top knot!”

  She heard what I said. I feared that she would think it odd that I bade her attack me, but without hesitation she obeyed me. Or attempted to obey. She flew at my other self. Her assault on him was as damaging as a flickering light. She seized at his topknot of hair, but it d
id not even stir as her hands passed through it. In this world, she was the insubstantial spirit, powerless against what was physical here. He laughed then, loud and delighted, and reached through Epiny for Spink.

  Futile as it was, I knew I would challenge him. The only weapon to hand was the cavalla sabre thrust into the earth and securing the footrope of the bridge. It was the same weapon Dewara had once bid me use on Tree Woman. How I wished I had heeded him! I set my hand to it and with a tremendous pull, tore it free of the earth and stone that clasped it. I intended to make a futile charge at my other self. I did not doubt that Tree Woman would effortlessly fling me back, but I had to try.

  The moment my hand jerked the blade from the ground, a peculiar thing happened. As Tree Woman gave a great shout of dismay, I felt strength shoot through me. Iron magic. The magic of my people was in my hand. Tree Woman had let me bring it here, for her own ends. Now I would use it for mine. As the secured rope sprang free, my other self gave a cry of dismay. He lifted his hands to his scalp lock, for it had come loose and was unbraiding itself.

  In that second, I perceived all. I turned back to the bridge. The golden threads of my hair that had twined around the Tree Woman’s vines were coming free. They looked almost alive as they uncoiled from the greenery and drifted away in the abyss below. The bridge began to fail from this end. Almost all of the spirits that had turned back had now safely reached the other side. I did not know what they would do there; I did not know if they would return to life or seek the peaceful pool that the other spirits had entered. All I knew was that I would destroy the crossing I had inadvertently created. No others of my fellows would be doomed to come to Tree Woman’s world. I turned back to the bridge and swung the sabre furiously, hacking through the vines that made up the other supports. Tree woman screamed, in pain or fury.