by Robin Hobb
“Do you think that was wise?” a shaky voice asked beside him. Soldier’s Boy turned to look at Olikea. She was offering him a mug of a steaming liquid. Her eyes were very large. Her lower lip trembled; then she firmed it into a pinched line. He took the mug from her.
“What choice did I have?” he muttered unhappily. “We must endure what we must endure. It is not forever.” Then, “Have you seen a summoning before? Tell me of it.”
Olikea looked grave. She spoke carefully, more carefully than she had ever spoken to me. Plainly her relationship with Soldier’s Boy was far different from how she had near-dominated Nevare. “I wish you had asked me what a summoning was like before you told Dasie they must be resumed. I would have urged you to try anything else before letting Kinrove call dancers from our kin-clan again.”
“Just tell me how a summoning comes,” he responded irritably. His anger covered a lurking fear that she was right. Small and silent, I rejoiced in my ability to once more read what he felt and know what he knew. Tiny as a sucking tick, and as secret, I clung to his mind.
Olikea spoke slowly and with reluctance. “The summoning has been a part of my life for as long as I can recall. Kinrove rotated them among the kin-clans. There are twelve kin-clans, so with good fortune, the summoning only fell on us once every eight years or so. He tried not to summon more than once a year, or so he said, but it is more often than that. He had to keep enough dancers, and—” She hesitated and then said bitterly, “And when people danced themselves to death, they had to be replaced.”
“What happens in a summoning?” he asked her uneasily.
She looked away from him. “No one knows just when it will come. The magic comes over everyone. It is like feeling sleepy or hungry. It comes and it plucks at you, asking you if you want to join the dance. It asks everyone. Some can say no. Last time, I said no. Part of me wanted to go, but a greater part did not. I do not know why I was able to say no to the dance, but I could.” She fell silent, staring into the flames of the fire. Her eyes narrowed and her voice went flat. “My mother could not. She left us and went to Kinrove’s dance.”
“Just like that? Just left?”
“Yes.” She sat down in Dasie’s empty chair. Her eyes had gone distant, and despite the warmth of the fire, her skin stood up in bumps on her arms. She rubbed at herself as if she were cold. “It was a summer night when the summoning came. It was—oh. I think it was eight years ago. My family was gathered around the fire. Our mother had been singing us a story-song, one that both Firada and I loved to hear, about a silly girl shaking a nut tree. In the middle of the song, the summoning came. We all felt it. It was like a chill up my back, or the crawling when your skin wishes you to scratch it, or perhaps thirst. One of those feelings that comes from the body, not the mind. My mother just stood up and began to dance. Then she danced away, down the path into the night. We watched her, and then I felt it coming over me. And I was just a little girl, and all I could do was stay near my father, saying, ‘No, no, I don’t want to dance, I won’t go.’ It took all I had within me to say I would not go. That summoning lasted a full night. It was like watching the wind tear leaves from a tree. The magic blew through our kin-clan, and some held tight, but others were torn away from it. And off they went. We called after them, begging them to come back, but none of them did. A little boy, no more than two, toddled after his mother, screaming. She didn’t even look back. I don’t think she heard him, or remembered that he existed.”
“And did you, did you ever see your mother again?” I knew he didn’t want to ask the question, and knew also that he felt he must.
Olikea snorted. “What good would it do?” She leaned toward the fire and pushed in a piece of firewood that was on the edge. Then she spoke quietly, as if confessing something foolish she had done. “I did see her, once.
“Wherever Kinrove goes, his dancers go with him, always dancing. It was during the autumn moving time, when all of us use the hidden way to come back to the ocean side of the mountains. Kinrove’s folk passed our kin-clan, and with them went his dancers. All were forced to give way to him. He called himself the Greatest of the Great, and before Dasie threatened him with iron, he could do as he wished. So all stepped aside for his kin-clan and his dancers to pass. And I sat and I watched, and I saw my mother. It was terrible. She danced fear, and it was all over her, like a stink clinging to a rotten fish. Her hair hung in mats and her body had gone to bones, but she still danced. Not for much longer, I do not believe, but that afternoon at least, she still danced. She danced past Firada and me, and never once let her eyes linger on us. She did not know us or remember us. She had become her dancing. She was like the road slaves that the intruders use to build their road, but at least they know they are slaves. She did not have even that.”
I felt Soldier’s Boy try to dismiss it, but there, at least, some of my sensibilities prevailed. He said quietly, “I am sad to know that you lost your mother that way.”
“It was hard,” Olikea admitted with a sigh. “Firada and I were both young still, with much to learn about being women of the People. The rest of our kin-clan took care of us; a child is always welcome at anyone’s hearth. But it was not the same. I listened to other mothers teach their daughters, telling stories of when they themselves were young. Firada and I lost all those stories when our mother danced away.” She paused. “I used to hate Kinrove. I did not think that anyone, not even a Great One, should have so much power over us. That day when Dasie held a sword to him and forced him to free the dancers, I hated her. Not because she did it, but because she did it too late for my mother and me.”
Did Soldier’s Boy wonder the same thing that I did? Why, if they had hated a Great One like Kinrove, had both Firada and Olikea sought out such men to become their feeders? She seemed to hear my unvoiced question.
“When I took you in and began to tend you, I thought that I would create a Great One of my own, one far greater than Kinrove. One greater than Jodoli, for Firada, I saw, did not have the same ambition that I did. I thought you would be the one to surpass Kinrove and become the Greatest of the Great. I believed you would find a way to drive the intruders away forever, and end Kinrove’s dance.” She hesitated, and then said quietly, “Before I met you I even dreamed it. I thought the magic sent me that dream, and when I first sought you out, I believed it was because the magic told me to do so.”
She left the chair and came to sink down to sit on a cushion near Soldier’s Boy’s chair. She leaned her head against my thigh. Soldier’s Boy stroked her hair. I wondered what had passed between them in the months that I had been gone. Olikea seemed milder and more tractable.
“What do you believe now?” he asked her gently.
She sighed. “I still believe the magic sent me to you. But I have come to see it differently. I believe that I am caught in the magic just as you are. It cares nothing for my ambitions. I will tend and serve you and you will tend and serve the magic.”
“I have said that Kinrove should send a summoning.”
“I heard you say it.”
“It will fall on our own kin-clan.”
“I know that also.”
He didn’t ask her what she thought of that or felt about it. That would have been a Gernian question. He waited for what she might decide to tell him. She sighed heavily. “I like what your power has brought me. I fear the summoning. But I know it has never taken a feeder, so I am safe. I do not want to see any of our kin-clan summoned. I do not like that you call for it. But it was the year for our kin-clan to endure the summoning. I think that, even if you had never existed, it would have come to this. So I do not blame you for it. But I feel a secret shame. I wonder if I am able to face the summoning because the magic has given me so much through you that I no longer care what it might take from someone else.”
I am not certain what Soldier’s Boy felt about her thoughts, but I had a definite twinge of uneasiness as I wondered what my presence here had done. I suddenly saw my coming as th
e trigger for a long chain of events, with distant results that I’d never be able to imagine, let alone compute. Was that what magic was? I wondered. Something that happened by such a convoluted chain of events that no human could have predicted it from the initial event? Was that the force that we called “magic”? The question twisted in my mind. Strike a steel against flint, and the first time a spark jumps, it seems like magic. But when the spark jumps every time, we add it to the list of things we can force the world to do. It became our science, our technology. A spark put to gunpowder would explode it. A lever could always levitate more than I could lift. But magic, I thought slowly, magic worked only when it suited magic to work. Like a badly trained dog or a strong-willed horse, it obeyed only when it wished to. Perhaps it rewarded only those who obeyed it. For some reason, that idea frightened me.
A stronger question rose in me. I wanted to push it at Soldier’s Boy but refrained. If he knew I was aware and stirring again, I suspected he would box me in once more. At the mere thought of that, cowardice overwhelmed me. I kept my question to myself. Had Lisana had a clear image of what would happen when she claimed me for the magic? Had the magic taken me and given me to her to train? Or had she taken me, thinking she could train me for the magic? I suddenly wanted a clear answer to that question. My mind whirled with questions. What had first put me in the path of the magic? Dewara. But my father would never have known Dewara if he had not shot him with an iron ball and destroyed his magic. Had that event also been the will of the Specks’ magic? Was I merely a link in a chain of events so intricate that no one recalled the beginning of it or foresaw the end? If that was true, where had it actually begun? Would it ever end?
Whilst I had been pondering, Soldier’s Boy’s life had gone on. Evening had descended, and the household was preparing itself for rest. The dishes had been cleared away. His feeders had brought him a long robe, a sort of nightshirt, and his body had been soothed with scented oils and then wiped clean. His bed was prepared for him. Where once only Olikea had tended him and Likari had aided her, now a full dozen serving folk came and went at their various tasks. Olikea presided over them and left no doubt as to her primacy. Likari mostly made a show of tending him; he was more pet than feeder, but no one seemed to resent that. The Great One obviously enjoyed the boy’s company, and the affection between them was mutual.
The bustle of the evening preparations faded. Soldier’s Boy was comfortably propped in his bed. Likari slept on a pallet at the foot of it and Olikea shared Soldier’s Boy’s bed, sleeping warm against his back. The lanterns in Lisana’s lodge had been blown out; the only light came from the fire in the central hearth. A feeder minding the fire and keeping it burning well through the night was a silhouette against it. Several others settled on pallets at the other end of the room. Outside the lodge, all was quiet. There was the sweep of wind, and the uneven pattering of rain that fell more from swaying branches than from the distant skies above. The central hearth kept the damp and the cold of the winter night at bay. All in all, it was the most comfortable night that I think I’d ever witnessed Soldier’s Boy enjoy in my body. His belly was full, he was warm, and danger was far away, on the other side of the mountains. I had expected him to settle in and slide immediately into sleep.
Instead, he lingered in wakefulness long after Likari’s and Olikea’s breathing had settled into deep slow rhythms. He was troubled. The part of him that recalled my schooling at the Academy knew that he must act based on the needs of the situation. Strategy demanded that Kinrove’s magical dance be strong. To dispense with it now would be like dismissing a third of his troops just before battle was joined. Kinrove’s magic of terror and depression was a steady onslaught against Gettys, wearing the soldiers down and eating away at morale. Soldier’s Boy did not undervalue it, but he dreaded the summoning and wondered uneasily when it would come. It would wreak havoc among the kin-clan and his household. That was inevitable.
He heaved a sigh. He did it for the good of his people. He was prepared to make that sacrifice, but he wondered how much of his willingness came from his drive to preserve the People and their ancestor trees and how much came from the military training of Nevare Burvelle. Would a full Speck, raised only among the People, be able to countenance such a sacrifice? Certain attitudes had infiltrated his thinking like poison in his bloodstream. He knew that what he did was a rational choice, but was it the rationality of a Gernian or a Speck?
Lisana would know.
I breathed the thought toward him. It was a distant whisper wafting against his ear. Lisana could advise him. She had enabled him to attain this position of power and authority. She had taught him all he knew of the People. She would know where that other Nevare began and he stopped.
I put his weary mind to thinking of her. I called up my most vivid memories of Lisana and focused on them until I found myself longing for her as much as he did. As he ventured toward sleep, I kept feeding his unwinding mind images and thoughts of her. My tactic worked. He drifted into a dream of her, one rich in sensory details. I joined him there and then, holding a breath I no longer controlled, I pushed us both out of his body and into a dream-walk.
I longed to go to Epiny. I also needed to speak to my sister, to know what was happening to her. I dared not try for those things. But I could focus on Lisana and anchor myself to my memories of her and then emerge from Soldier’s Boy’s dreams into hers.
I do not think she was sleeping. I doubt that she had need of sleep. But I joined her in a place where she was not Tree Woman, bound always to her tree and to her eternal vigilance in watching over the spirit bridge. She was recalling autumn. She sat on a hillside and looked down across a valley filled with trees. Through a hazy fall morning, she studied their changing foliage. A wind drifted through, trailing a train of dancing leaves in its wake.
“How many autumns have you seen?” I asked her as I sat down beside her.
She replied without looking at me. “I stopped counting long ago. This one was one of my favorites. That little birch down there had just become old enough to strike a yellow note among all the red from the alders.”
“She makes both colors brighter,” I said.
It pleased me to see a smile touch the corners of her mouth. She turned to me, and her eyes widened. “You are marked as one of the People now.”
That surprised me. I looked down at my arms and bared legs. She was right. I wore the dappling that Soldier’s Boy had pricked into his skin. I wanted to say something about that, but instead I said, “I’ve missed you so. You cannot imagine how I’ve missed you. Not just your knowledge and your guidance. Your presence. Your touch.” I took her hand. It was small and plump in contrast to mine. I leaned close to breathe the fragrance of her hair. A few moments before, it had been streaked with gray. Now it was a rich brown with only a few threads of silver in it. She closed her eyes and leaned closer to me, shivering as my breath touched her.
“How can you say I can’t imagine how you’ve missed me?” she murmured. “You move in the living world. You have the comfort of other people, the companionship of other women. I, I have only my memories. But now you are here. I do not know how you have managed to come to me, and I do not wish to waste whatever time we have in wondering. Oh, Soldier’s Boy. Just for a time, be here with me. Let me touch you and hold you. I fear it will be the last time.”
I did not hesitate to put my arms around her and draw her near. Lisana was the one place where my sentiments coincided exactly with Soldier’s Boy’s. I no longer cared what had first brought us together. I didn’t care that I could not recall as my own the memories of how we had come to love each other. It was good and simple and true to embrace her. This love I felt for her required no effort on my part. I kissed her pliant mouth and then buried my face in her hair, feeling as if I were finally home.
I had primed Soldier’s Boy to let me escape to her, and I had. Somehow I had brought shreds of his awareness with me. If he knew I was present, he did not struggle aga
inst me. Perhaps he thought he merely dreamed of his beloved. I know that the smell and taste and warmth of her drowned the question I had been so desperate to ask her. I was here with her, and now was the only time that mattered.
We were both large people. This was no frantic and athletic coupling. Between two such as we, lovemaking was a stately and regal dance, a slow process of give-and-take. Neither of us was coy nor were we shy. The size of our bodies did not permit those types of hesitation. We accommodated each other without awkwardness, and if flesh was sometimes a barrier, it was erotic as well. It forced us to move slowly; every contact was well considered. Her thighs were thick and soft as I pressed myself against her. The bounty of her breasts was a soft cushion between us. Each guided the other to what was most pleasurable, and I enjoyed Lisana’s arousal as fully as my own. In those moments, I could recall in flashes that she had been his teacher in these matters, and he had delighted in learning his lessons well. As I held her and loved her, I could glory in the soft wealth of her skin. Her fingers walked the dappling on my skin, and in her touch, I rejoiced that I had marked myself as one of her own kind.
All wonders must have an end. A drift of leaves had been our bed. Now we lay sprawled among them. Lisana’s eyes were closed but the smile on her face told me she was not even close to sleep. She was savoring our enjoyment of each other, and the touch of the weakened autumn sun and even the teasing wind that now chased a shiver across her. I laughed to see her shudder like a tickled cat and she opened her eyes. She sighed and lifted my hand to her lips, to kiss my palm again. With my hand still against her lips, she said softly, “I had a fancy the other day. Would you like to hear it?”
“Of course.”
“My trunk has fallen, you know. But I rise again as a sapling from the trunk.”
“I know that. Oh, my love, I am so sorry that I—”
