Forest Mage

When I awoke, the sun had gone down. I’d slept the rest of the day away. I got up quietly and crept down the stairs. At the bottom, I paused to listen. I heard my father’s strident voice in his study. Rosse was gone; I wondered whom he was lecturing. After a moment, I heard my mother’s soft response. Ah. I walked quickly past that door, and past the music room where Elisi drew a melancholy melody from her harp. The young fellow at Rosse’s wedding had made no offer for her. Was that my fault? The house was a pool of unhappiness and I was the source of it. I reached the door and strode out into the night.

I wandered through the dark familiar garden and sat down on a bench. I tried to grasp that my future was gone. I could think of nowhere to go tonight and nothing to do. The ferry stopped at night, so I couldn’t cross the river to Burvelle’s Landing. I’d long ago read most of the books in our family library. I had no projects. I had no friends to visit. This was a foretaste of the rest of my life. I could do manual labour on the holdings and then wander aimlessly about at night. I’d be a shadow in my old home, a useless extra son and nothing more.

I gave myself a shake to rid my head of melancholy foolishness. I hitched up my trousers, left the garden and walked over to the menservants’ quarters. My father had built them as a structure separate from the house, and my mother still complained that it looked more like a military barracks than servants’ quarters. She was right, and I was sure that it was deliberately so. One door led into a long open bunkroom for seasonal workers. At the other end of the structure, there were private apartments for married servants and rooms for our permanent help. I went to Sergeant Duril’s door. Strange to say, in all the years he’d taught me, I’d only rapped on it half a dozen times.

For a moment I hesitated before it. For all I knew of the man who had taught me, there was much I didn’t know. I wondered if he was even awake or if he was off in the Landing. At last I damned myself for a foolish coward, and knocked firmly on the door.

Silence from within. Then I heard the scrape of a chair and footsteps. The door opened to me, spilling lamplight into the night. Duril’s eyebrows shot up at the sight of me. ‘Nevare, is it? What brings you here?’

He was in his undershirt and trousers, with no boots on. I’d caught him getting ready for bed. I realized that I’d grown taller than Sergeant Duril. I was so accustomed to him in his boots or on horseback. He had no hat on; the substantial bald spot on his pate surprised me. I tried not to stare at it while he tried not to stare at my stomach. I groped for something to say other than that I was horribly lonely and would never be able to go back to the Academy.

‘Has your saddle cinch been coming loose lately?’ I asked him.

He squinted at me for a second, and then I saw his jaw loosen, as if he’d just realized something. ‘Come in, Nevare,’ he invited me, and stood back from the door.

His room revealed him. There was a potbellied stove in one corner of the room, but no fire at this time of year. A disassembled long gun dominated the table in the room. He had shelves, but instead of books they held the clutter of his life. Interesting rocks were mixed with cheap medical remedies for backache and sore feet, a good-luck carving of a frog jostled up against a large seashell and a stuffed owl, and a wadded shirt awaited mending next to a spool of thread. Through an open door, I glimpsed his neatly made up bed in the next room. A bare room for a bare life, I thought to myself, and then grimaced as I realized that his room had more character than mine did. I imagined myself as Sergeant Duril years from now, no wife or children of my own, teaching a soldier son not mine, a solitary man.

The two of us filled the small room and I felt more uncomfortable with my bulk than ever. ‘Sit down,’ he invited me, drawing out one of his chairs. I placed myself carefully on it, testing my weight against it. He pulled out the other chair and sat down. With no awkwardness at all, he launched into talk.

‘My cinch has come loose three times in the last month. And yesterday, when I was helping the crew jerk some big rocks out, a line I knew I’d tied and made the “hold fast” sign over came loose. Now, I can’t remember that ever happening to me before. I’m getting old, and thought maybe I wasn’t making the sign or maybe I was making it sloppy. Not a big thing to worry about, I told myself. But you seem to think it is. Why? Has your cinch been coming loose lately?’

I nodded. ‘Ever since the Dancing Spindle stopped dancing. I think the plains magic is failing, Sergeant. But I also think that,’ and here I stopped, to slap my chest and then gestured at my belly, ‘that somehow this is a result of it.’

He knit his brow. ‘You’re fat because of magic.’ He enunciated the words as if to be sure that he hadn’t mistaken what I’d said.

Stated baldly, it sounded worse than silly. It sounded like a child’s feeble excuse, a cry of ‘look what you made me do!’ when a stack of blocks toppled. I looked down at the edge of his table and wished I hadn’t come and asked my foolish question. ‘Never mind,’ I said quickly, and stood to go.

‘Sit down.’ He didn’t speak the words as a command, but they were stronger than an invitation. His gaze met my eyes squarely. ‘Any explanation might be better than none, which is what I’ve got right now. And I’d like to know what you mean when you say the Spindle stopped dancing.’

Slowly I took my seat again. That story was as good a place to begin as any. ‘Have you ever seen the Dancing Spindle?’

He shrugged as he took his seat across the table from me. He picked up a rag and started cleaning gun parts. ‘Twice. It’s impressive, isn’t it?’

‘Did you think it moved when you saw it?’

‘Oh, yes. Well, no, I mean I didn’t believe it was moving when I saw it, but it sure looked like it was, from a distance.’

‘I got up close to it and it still seemed to me like it was moving. And then some idiot with a knife and a desire to carve his initials on something stopped it.’

I expected him to snort in disbelief, or laugh. Instead he nodded. ‘Iron. Cold iron could stop it. But what’s that got to do with my cinch coming undone?’

‘I don’t know, exactly. It seemed to me that… well, I guessed that maybe if iron stopped the Spindle, the plains magic might all go away, too.’

He took a little breath of dismay. After a moment, he wet his lips and then asked me carefully, ‘Nevare. What do you know?’

I sat for a time and didn’t say anything. Then I said, ‘It started with Dewara.’

He nodded to himself. ‘I’m not surprised. Go on.’ And so, for the first time, I told someone the whole tale of how I’d been captured by the plains magic, and how it had affected me at the Academy and the plague, and how I thought I had freed myself and then how the Spindle had swept me up and showed me the power it held before a boy’s mischief and an other self I could not control had stopped the Spindle’s dancing.

Duril was a good listener. He didn’t ask questions, but he grunted in the right places and looked properly impressed when I told him about Epiny’s séance. Most important to me, as I told my story, he never once looked as if he thought I was lying.

He only stopped me once in my telling, and that was when I spoke of the Dust Dance at the Dark Evening carnival. ‘Your hand lifted and gave the signal? You were the one who told them to start?’

I hung my head in shame but I didn’t lie. ‘Yes. I did. Or the Speck part of me did. It’s hard to explain.’

‘Oh, Nevare. To be used against your own folk like that. This is bad, boy, much worse than I’d feared. If you’ve got the right of it at all, it has to be stopped. Or you could be the downfall of us all.’

To hear him speak the true magnitude of what I’d done froze me. I sat, staring through him, to a horrible future in which everyone knew I’d betrayed Gernia. Wittingly or unwittingly didn’t matter when one contemplated that sort of treachery.

Duril leaned forward and jabbed me lightly with his finger. ‘Finish the story, Nevare. Then we’ll think what we can do.’

When I had finished the whole telling, he nodded sagely and leaned back in his chair. ‘Actually, I’ve heard about those Speck wizards, the big fat ones. They call them Great Men. Or Great Women, I guess, though I never heard of a female one. Fellow that spent most of his soldiering days out at Gettys told me. He claimed he’d seen one, and to hear him tell it, the man was the size of a horse, and proud as could be of it. That soldier told me that a Great Man is supposed to be all filled up with magic, and that’s why he’s so big.’

I thought that over. ‘The Fat Man in the freak show claimed he got so fat because he’d had Speck plague. And the doctor at the Academy, Dr Amicas, said that putting on weight like this is a very rare side-effect of the plague, but not completely unknown. So how could that have anything to do with magic?’

Sergeant Duril shrugged. ‘What is magic anyway? Do you understand it? I don’t. I know I’ve seen a few things that I can’t explain any way that makes sense or can be proved. And maybe that’s why I say that they were magic. Look at the “keep fast” charm. I don’t know how it works or why it should work. All I know is that for a lot of years, it worked and it worked well. And lately it doesn’t seem to work as well. So, somehow that magic is broken now. Maybe. Or maybe I’m not as strong as I used to be when I tighten a cinch, or maybe my cinch strap is getting old and worn. You could explain it away a thousand ways, Nevare. Or maybe you can just say, “it was magic and it doesn’t work any more”. Or maybe you could go to someone who believes in magic and thinks he knows how it works and ask him.’

That last seemed a real proposal from him. ‘Who?’ I asked him.

He crossed his arms on the table. ‘It all started with Dewara, didn’t it?’

‘Ah, well.’ I leaned back in his chair; it creaked a warning at me. I sat up straight. ‘It’s useless to try and find him. My father tried for months, right after he sent me home in shreds. Either none of his people knew where he was, or they weren’t telling. My father offered rewards and made threats. No one told him anything.’

‘Maybe I know a different way of asking,’ Duril suggested. ‘Sometimes coin isn’t the best way to buy something. Sometimes you have to offer more.’

‘Such as what?’ I demanded, but he shook his head and grinned, enjoying that he knew more than I did. Looking back on it, I suspect the old soldier had liked being my teacher. Supervising men clearing a field of rocks was no task for an old trooper like him. ‘Let me try a few things, Nevare. I’ll let you know if I have any success.’

I nodded, refusing to hope. ‘Thanks for listening to me, Sergeant Duril. I don’t think anyone else would have believed me.’

‘Well, sometimes it’s flattering to have someone want to tell you something. And you know, Nevare, I haven’t said I believed a word of any of this. You have to admit it’s pretty far-fetched.’

‘But—’

‘And I haven’t said I disbelieve any of it, either.’ He shook his head, smiling at my confusion. ‘Nevare, I’ll tell you something. There’s more than one way to look at the world. That’s what I was getting at, about the magic. To us, it’s magic. Maybe to someone else, it’s as natural as rain falling from clouds. And maybe to them, some of what we do is magic because it doesn’t make reasonable sense in their world. Do you get what I’m trying to tell you?’

‘Not really. But I’m trying.’ I attempted a smile. ‘I’m ready to try anything. My only other idea was to run away east on Sirlofty. To the mountains.’

He snorted a laugh. ‘Run away to the mountains. And then what? Don’t be a fool, Nevare. You stay here and you keep on trying. And let me try a few things, too. Meanwhile, I suggest you do things your da’s way. Get out and move. Show him you’re still Nevare, if you can. Don’t make him angrier than he already is. In his own way, he’s a fair man. Try it his way, and if it doesn’t work, maybe he’ll concede it’s not your fault.’

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘You know I am.’

I looked at him and nodded slowly. A spark had come back into his eyes. Purpose burned there. Perhaps I had done as much for him by coming to him as he had done for me by simply listening.

I thanked him and there we left it, for that night.

SEVEN (#ulink_8526b872-c41e-5137-aa20-1bf9eef3f007)