by Robin Hobb
“Mage’s honey,” Olikea named it proudly. “Very nourishing to the magic. Never before have I seen it growing in such quantity. It was on the wooden lip of the spill for the fish trap, all growing in a fringe. This will replenish your strength and put you on your feet.”
Both Likari and Olikea were still hungry, yet neither of them showed any desire to share this food. Instead they watched intently as Soldier’s Boy picked up one of the gelatinous structures and set it on my tongue. My physical reaction to it was immediate. I felt a shiver run over my whole body; my skin stood up in gooseflesh and the hair rose on my head and on the backs of my arms. An instant later, I actually tasted the mage’s honey. It was named for its color, not its flavor. The taste was not unpleasant, but it was not memorable either, offering only a faintly musky flavor. As Soldier’s Boy chewed it, it had the texture of an overcooked jelly. It was not appetizing. But when he swallowed it, the shiver that I had experienced on my skin was repeated, but as a quivering throughout my entire body. The sensation was so intense that I was not sure he enjoyed it. Yet he picked up another of the fungi and put it on my tongue.
The sensations were sharper and more prolonged with each one. At the fifth one, I thought I heard Olikea mutter, “See how he glows with power now!” but I did not pay much attention to her, so completely did the sensations absorb me.
When every bit of it was gone, I sat shivering. My senses were painfully alert to every sort of stimulus, but my awareness of touch was overwhelming. It seemed to extend beyond my skin like a cat’s quivering whiskers. I noticed the movement of air currents in the cavern, felt the striations in the rock beneath me, and even sensed the disturbance of the air caused by an insect flying past me. As I sat there, the acuity of my senses only increased. I could see in the darkness with a clarity of vision that surpassed my ordinary sight in daylight. At the same time, a restless energy crawled through me and over my skin, demanding that I be up and doing something, anything. Soldier’s Boy rose abruptly. “It is time to travel,” he announced, and my own words sounded like trumpets in my ears, not just when he uttered them, but when their previously faint echoes returned to me.
“Fill up the water skin, roll the blanket, and gather our things,” Olikea urged Likari in an excited voice. “We will quick-walk now, I’ll wager.”
So charged with energy was he that it was difficult to wait for them. I think Olikea sensed his restlessness, for she caught at my arm as I rose and clung to it, bidding Likari, “Come, come quickly, and take his other hand.”
The boy came at a run and seized my free hand as if his life depended on it. Perhaps it did. The magic rippled through me like fire in my veins.
In four steps we burst forth from the dark and dank cavern into daylight and a brisk wind. The day was heavily overcast with fat gray clouds, but the light was still shocking. Soldier’s Boy halted, dazzled, and only when both Olikea and Likari tugged hard at my hands before stopping did I realize the momentum we had had.
When Soldier’s Boy glanced back, I could see the opening of the cavern we had left as a tall crack in a jagged rock face. We stood on a beaten pathway on a hillside covered in tall, yellowed grass and fading gorse. Ahead of us, the trail wended its way down into a sheltered valley thick with evergreens. In half a dozen places, plumes of smoke drifted up past the treetops, only to be quickly swept away by the fresh breeze. A swift-flowing river from the mountains behind us divided the valley; even at this distance, I could hear the river’s voice, deep and greedy. It ran a steep course downhill, and stones moved with it, grinding and grumbling. Its waters were white with rock dust. It cut through the valley like a cleaver. In the distance, the sun was coming up over a sparkling bay at the river’s mouth. I had never seen such a dazzling vista. “Is that the ocean?” Soldier’s Boy asked dazedly. I shared his question, wondering if I were beholding the final destination of the King’s Road.
Olikea glanced at the distant water and shrugged. “It is a great water. No one has ever gone around it, though if you travel north far enough, it is said there are islands one can visit. They are cold and rocky places, good for birds and seals that eat fish, but not a place for the People. This valley is the best place for us. It has always been our Wintering Place.”
“Why?”
“By now the leaves will have fallen in the forest on the other side of the mountains. There will be no shelter from that light, or the deep cold. Here, the trees never lose their needles; it is always dim and gentle beneath their canopy. Snow falls in the valley here perhaps one year in five, and when it does come, it does not linger. It rains here, sometimes a great deal, but rain is kinder than snow and freezing, I think. In both late autumn and early spring, fish are thick in the river, and deer in the woods. In winter, we can live in plenty here.”
“Why don’t you stay here year-round?”
She looked at Soldier’s Boy as if he were daft. “The ancestor trees are not here, nor will they grow here, even when we have planted seedlings here. And in the summers, this is a place of fog and rains and floods. Sometimes people have tried to stay here, thinking they were too old to make the journey or that they would prefer to summer here. They do not prosper; sometimes they do not survive.”
Soldier’s Boy had bowed his head. Her words tickled at his mind, waking memories that Lisana had shared. He lifted his head and looked out over the valley. Then he pointed and said, “There. Those rising columns of smoke over there. That is our village, isn’t it?”
His eyesight was as shockingly keen as his sense of touch. His gaze picked out glimpses of mossy roofs and then small figures moving nearby. The thick foliage of the prevalent evergreen trees obscured most of the village scene. I could not tell how large a settlement it was. As he watched, a flock of croaker birds rose suddenly from their perches in the trees. They circled once over the village and then flew toward us, cawing loudly.
“Yes. And from the amount of smoke, most of our kin-clan have already returned there. I thought they would still be at the gathering place at the river’s mouth, trading.” She shook her head in disappointment. “We are too late. All our folk have gone to the Trading Place and returned already. What a shame! All the others will have new jewelry and winter robes, but I shall have to make do with what I have left from last year.”
“I did not think you cared for robes and pretty clothes.” Soldier’s Boy gestured at her near nakedness.
“In the Summer Place, there is no need to be hampered by such things. But now?” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “One must be warm. And if a woman is prosperous, she chooses to be warm in beautiful garments.”
“We have missed the trading time?” Likari asked dolefully. The distress on his small face was heartbreaking.
“There may be a few of the clans gathered there still. But the best of the trading will be done. Look at the valley and see the rising smoke. The People have returned to their traditional spaces for the winter. Trading is over.” Olikea pronounced the words like a doom.
Likari’s face fell and he sank into a morose silence.
Soldier’s Boy was perhaps trying to be practical when he reminded them, “We have nothing to trade anyway. We would have gone that extra distance only to be taunted by the pretty things we could not obtain.”
Olikea gave him a sideways glance. “You have nothing to trade. I had plenty in my pack; I gave it to my father to carry it here for me, when I was called away to care for you. I had my trading all planned. Last year, the Spolsin kin-clan had lovely sealskin capes to trade. Warm, sleek spotted fur that sheds water! That was what I meant to get for myself at the trading time. Now I shall have to do with my old wolfskin coat. I hope the mites have not got into it over the summer! Last year, maggots devored Firada’s sealskin boots; she would have been barefoot for the winter, had not Jodoli traded magic for her to have new boots of elk hide with fox trim.” There was no mistaking the envy in her voice. Obviously her sister had the better bargain in a Great Man.
“And did you think of what I would wear, when you discarded my old clothing?”
She looked at him in consternation. “Better to go naked than to wear those disgusting Gernian rags. It would shame me to have you go about the People in such garb! I would beg my father’s old clothes from him first!”
Soldier’s Boy grimaced and I felt the tingling in his blood grow dim. The cold wind chilled him. He’d shut the magic down. I had a glimpse of his thoughts. He was conserving the magic, saving up every bit of it that he could hoard.
My arm itched. Soldier’s Boy scratched it, glancing down at it as he did so. I was horrified at what I saw, but Soldier’s Boy looked at Olikea and changed the subject, asking, “How do I look? Did the pattern stay in place? I like my arms. I am glad I did not scratch them too much and spoil them.”
I could sense his satisfaction and pride, but I felt only horror and dismay. The result of wounding himself with the crystal and the slime was now clear. My skin bore a pattern of blotchy scars from the injuries and the subsequent infections. I was a Speck.
I had never suspected that Speck children were born with unblemished skin. I had thought the dapples that marked their people were inherent to their race, a defining difference that set them apart from both the Gernians and the Plainspeople. To discover that it was a deliberate marking, a cultural rather than a biological difference, disturbed me. Soldier’s Boy had irrevocably marked my body in a way that proclaimed I was no longer Gernian. The fat had been an extreme enough departure from my image of myself. This was worse. Even if by some miracle I discovered a way to regain control of my body and return to my previous level of fitness, my skin would be forever scarred with the dapples of a Speck. I felt helplessly suspended as I watched my own life drift even further from my reach. Soldier’s Boy’s satisfaction was, I suspected, twofold. He had marked himself as a Speck, to further his own cause. And by doing so he had dealt me a crippling blow, claiming the body even more as his own. I suspected he could feel my despair and rejoiced in it.
Olikea looked at his face critically. Then she walked slowly around him as if he were a horse at the fair and she were considering buying him. When she came back to face him, her eyes were approving. “I have marked babes before; Likari is my work, and you can see that I patterned him tightly, so that when he grew, his pattern would still be attractive. With you, it was more difficult, for you are a man grown, and yet you have lost so much fat that your skin was slack. Even now, it is possible that when you are full again, your pattern will not be entirely pleasing. But I do not think it is likely. Your back is dappled like a brook trout, but I looked to the mountain cat for your shoulders. I wish you had let me mark your face. Even so, it looks very good. You have the camouflage of both hunter and prey, a very strong marking. That they have turned out so well is very auspicious.”
She smiled as she spoke, well pleased with her work. But then the pleasure faded from her face and she folded her lips. “But it is a shame that you must show yourself so to our kin-clan, let alone to Kinrove at the winter gathering. Nevare, we must fatten you as quickly as possible. That is all there is to it.”
“Such is my intent also,” Soldier’s Boy replied. I was unsurprised to hear him say so, and yet my spirits sank again.
“Shall we go on to the village, then? If you quick-walk us, we can be there in just a few moments.” She frowned, squinting. “I wish to be out of the light. Even at this time of year, when the clouds are thick as good furs, the light still dizzies me.”
Soldier’s Boy was silent. Plainly he was thinking, but his thoughts were inaccessible to me, and I lacked the spirit to pry my way into them. When he spoke aloud, it sounded as if he had reached a hard decision. “I will send you on soon. But I cannot show myself to the People this way.”
“This way?” Olikea asked, puzzled.
“Thin. Poor. With my markings barely healed. This is not how I wish them to see me, not how I wish them to think of me.” Distress was suddenly evident in his voice. “If I present myself to them like this, I will never attain the standing I must have. They won’t listen to me at all.”
“And so I have warned you, over and over! But you would not listen to me!”
Olikea sounded both satisfied and angry at having her opinion so completely vindicated. But I felt they were talking at cross-purposes. Olikea was thinking of status and honors and gifts. I could not discern Soldier’s Boy’s thoughts clearly, but I suspected he was thinking of strategy. His next words chilled me, for they were words I had often heard from my father’s lips.
“If I wish to command, I must appear to be in command already when I am first seen. Even if I must delay my arrival at the village. When we get there, I must be well fed. All of us must appear prosperous. If I go to our kin-clan now, they will see me as a needy beggar and an embarrassment to them.”
“But what can we do about that?”
“Not go,” he said abruptly. “Not go until I am ready. Not go until you are ready.”
“Until I am ready? I am ready now. I am more than ready to seek my lodge and be comfortable again. My father will have food, and he will share with me. There is much to do to prepare my lodge for the winter. I must take down my sleeping skins and shake them out, and air my winter furs.” She looked at me suddenly in a very odd way. “As I am your feeder, I suppose you will live with me now.” She ran her eyes over me as if I were a large piece of furniture that might not fit in her parlor.
“Does Likari live with you?” Soldier’s Boy asked her.
“Sometimes. As much as a child lives with one person. He seems to prefer my aunt’s lodge to mine, and often he is at my father’s or with Firada. He is a child. He lives where he pleases. No one denies a child a meal and a place by the fire.”
“Of course,” I replied, but I sensed that Soldier’s Boy was as surprised as I was. And as oddly pleased. It seemed a wonderful idea to me, that a child could choose where he lived and no one would think of turning him out. That a child could expect food and a warm place to sleep from anyone in his village. Amzil’s children came to my mind; well, such had they found at Spink’s home.
“I am his feeder, too!” the boy suddenly but stoutly insisted. “I will live where the Great One does.”
“Do you think I will put up with having both of you underfoot?” she demanded. “I will have work enough to take care of him!”
“I will not be underfoot. And I will be taking care of him, too. Did not I stay and guard him while you went to get the fish? Have not I brought food often, and carried the water and the blanket all this way? It is my place and I will have it.”
“Very well,” she conceded, but not graciously. “My lodge will be small for the three of us, but I am sure that somehow we will manage.”
“If need be, I will build it bigger,” Soldier’s Boy suddenly asserted. “But I shall not go to it today. You will, Olikea. Go home, to your lodge, and find your trade goods. Then set out for the trading meet right away.”
“But—but the best of the trading is done. And the walk to my lodge will take me half the day, and then there will be two, perhaps three more days to walk to the Trading Place. Everyone will be gone. And what will you be doing?” This last she asked suspiciously, as if she expected him to somehow trick her.
“I will keep the boy with me. And we will also be journeying toward that place, to meet you there. So when you set out, bring extra sleeping skins for us. Winter comes on quickly. I do not wish to sleep cold.”
“Your plans make no sense to me. I am weary of journeying, and you have no supplies. Let us go to my lodge now, and have a good rest and a hot meal. Then, when you are recovered a bit, you can quick-walk us to the Trading Place.” She ran her hand over her head and then glanced up at the overcast sky, obviously bothered by the light and impatient to be on her way.
He considered. I think he was tempted by the idea of a hot meal and a restful night in a warm place. But then he shook his head. It was a Gernian gesture, I suddenly
realized. He was incorporating more of me into himself. I wondered fearfully if that meant I was losing myself to him. He spoke.
“No. I will not show myself to our kin-clan again until I can do so with pride. I am determined that when next Jodoli sees me, I will have put on flesh and appear as a prosperous man.”
“And how will you do this?” Olikea demanded. “What will the others think of me, returning without you?”
“I am not entirely sure. But it is not for you to worry about. If anyone asks about me, tell them that I sent you on ahead. For now, think only that you will be getting what you want, time at the trading fair. Go on, go now. Likari and I will find you there.”
“There will be many questions for me when I arrive at my home village without either of you!”
“Just smile and promise them a surprise. Tell them the boy is safe with me. And then start off for the Trading Place. Four days hence, we will find you there.”
“Four days?”
“You said you might need to sleep. You will arrive before we do. Brag of the Great Man you have found. Trade with abandon, as if you have no need to strike the best bargain, as if you know you have untold wealth.”
Her brow had furrowed and her eyes shifted with uncertainty. She wanted to go to her home, she wanted to rest and then to journey to the Trading Place for the last days of trading. But curiosity was biting her like an insatiable flea. “What are you planning?” she demanded.
“I am planning to arrive at the Trading Place four days hence and impress everyone. Including you.”
“But if I go and I brag of you and trade my goods recklessly, and you do not come, I shall look a fool!”
“But if you do, and I do arrive, then you shall be celebrated and honored as a woman of great foresight.”
She was silent, staring at him.
“I know it’s a gamble, Olikea. Only you can decide if you will wager or not.”
A moment longer she stood, debating, and then she turned on her heel and walked away toward her village. We watched her go. Soldier’s Boy then glanced down, to find Likari looking up at him uncertainly. Olikea had departed without even a farewell to the boy, let alone a list of cautions for taking care of him. I thought of how wary Amzil had been about letting me take care of her youngsters for even a few minutes. Yet plainly Olikea regarded Likari as an independent entity, one capable of making his own decisions or objections to the decisions of others. I was not sure that I approved, but the system seemed to work for this boy.
