Renegade's Magic ss-3 Read online

  And all the while, Lisana herself manifested as a fat old woman with gray-streaked hair standing with her back against her stump and her arms spread protectively behind her. Her incorporeal presence could do nothing. Her bare feet and her long dress of bark fabric and moss lace dangled down into the lapping flames. I do not think she felt the fire but she still screamed as the flames ran up the trunk.

  It had been weeks since it had last rained. The forest was dry. I suddenly understood what the whispered words had meant. Fire fears no magic. Tiny sparks whirled aloft on an updraft of heat, floating on bits of blackened leaves. It was not just Lisana that was in danger. If this fire spread, it could engulf the entire mountainside and the Vale of the Ancestor Trees below.

  Soldier’s Boy had my memories. He knew her name and our language. “Epiny! Stop! Stop that! You’ll kill us all.” He rushed forward and kicked barefoot at the fire. He scattered it, letting air into the smoldering mass, and the flames gushed up, crackling like laughter. Epiny, startled, made no move to stop him. She stared at him, her mouth hanging open.

  “Put it out, put it out!” Lisana shrieked.

  I do not think Olikea and Likari heard her, but they recognized the danger all the same. Heedless of burns, Soldier’s Boy was stamping at the edges of the burning fire. Olikea had taken the food pouch from her belt and was using it to beat the flames down. But it was Likari who unshouldered the heavy water skin he had been carrying. Opening it, he squeezed the bag, directing the stream into the heart of the fire. Epiny had retreated when the three had rushed up on her. Now she stood transfixed, watching as they tore her fire apart and poured water onto it and then stamped and smothered the remaining flames. In a few moments, the danger was past. Olikea was near sobbing with terror, but Likari was capering with joy. Soldier’s Boy sank down. He saw another glowing ember, and lifted a handful of the wet leaves and quenched it. All three of them were streaked with smoke and soot.

  “I told you!” Lisana shouted angrily at Epiny. “I told you I’d kept my word. Even if I hadn’t, the magic would have. The magic doesn’t lie and cheat. There, you see him? You see? Nevare is alive. What you bargained for, you got. Nevare lives!”

  Soldier’s Boy turned toward her. Epiny stared at him. Her eyes ran over his dwindled body, but I think his nakedness was just as shocking to her. To her, he was a piebald thing, tanned face and hands, skin pale white and sagging where it was not sunburned scarlet. She blushed, then deliberately fixed her eyes on my face. I burned with shame but Soldier’s Boy scarcely noticed his nakedness before her. With great hesitancy Epiny asked, “Nevare? Can that be you?”

  “It’s me,” he lied. And for the first time, I fully realized my position. This other entity was controlling my body. Completely. Using it as he willed without regard for me at all. I flung myself against his walls, and battled hard to take back control of my body. I could feel his contempt for Epiny, and recalled that she had been instrumental in defeating him the first time we had battled. He looked at her and saw his old enemy, come back to give him more trouble. I saw my cousin, ravaged by grief, dirty, tired, thirsty, and miles from where she should be. She was heavy with her first pregnancy, and I knew that it was a difficult one. She should have been home, safe in her house, with Spink and Amzil and Amzil’s children. I thought I had arranged all that. When I’d changed the memory of every witness to the mob, when I’d sent Spink and Amzil home relatively unscathed, I thought I’d bought that for her. I knew that if I’d tried to stay, if I’d even planned to make some sort of a return to the people I knew and loved, the magic would have found a way to take them all away from me.

  Two nights ago, it had nearly done it. If I hadn’t surrendered to it, if I hadn’t used it and allowed it to make me its own, Amzil would have been gang-raped on the streets of Gettys. Spink, I knew, would have died fighting to save her and to protect me from the mob. What would have become of Epiny, her unborn child, and Amzil’s little children then? Unchanging grief for Epiny, loss and poverty for Amzil’s children. That was why I’d made that sacrifice. Everything I’d done, I’d done to save them.

  Yet here she was, wild-eyed and disheveled, miles from home in a hostile forest. And a man wearing my flesh was pretending to be me. She goggled at me, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. “You’re naked,” she pointed out in distress. “And you’re…you’re not fat anymore. What happened to you? How could that happen in one night? How can you be alive? Spink and Amzil saw you killed. Spink saw you beaten to death on the streets, by his own fellows, his own regiment. Do you know what that’s done to him? Do you know how that’s made him hate everything he was once so proud of? Amzil saw the end of everything that she had just begun to hope for. But here you are. Alive. I don’t understand, Nevare! I don’t understand anything!”

  She took two hesitant steps toward me. Had I opened my arms, she would have rushed into them. But Soldier’s Boy did not. He stood before her, naked and unlovely, my arms folded across my chest, and asked her solemnly, “Why did you come here? What do you want?”

  “Why did I—what? I came to avenge you, you great idiot! To make her suffer for your death as we were all suffering. I came to make her sorry for betraying you, to punish the magic for not keeping its word! And what do I want? I want my life back! I want my husband to see me when he looks at me instead of looking through me. I want Amzil to stop scowling and snapping at the children. I want her to stop weeping at night. I want my baby to be born healthy and happy, not into a house where daily we endure floods of desolation or tides of panic. That’s what I want. That’s what I came for. I knew I wouldn’t get it, but I thought I could at least kill one of those who had taken it from me.”

  I felt as if I were dying. I threw myself against Soldier’s Boy’s awareness, trying to break through. I wanted to take her in my arms and comfort her; I wanted something for Epiny. It seemed that everything I’d thought I’d purchased for her by turning my back on Gettys was hollow and sordid by the light of day. I hadn’t solved anything when I’d given way to the magic. I’d only left them to muddle through grief burdened by guilt that none of them deserved.

  “I won’t let you kill her.” He spoke flatly to Epiny. “You should just go home. Pretend you never saw me here. Accept that I’m dead. Then leave Gettys. Go back west where you and your kind belong.” He lifted his eyes to Lisana as he spoke, but I had the oddest sensation that he could not see her. The strangest part was that I felt Lisana definitely could see me. I stared through his eyes at her, begging her for some kind of mercy, for some splinter of kindness for my cousin. What had she ever done to them save try to protect me and stand by me? Why did she have to suffer so for the magic?

  Lisana spoke softly to Epiny. “As you see, Jhernian, I spoke truth to you. The magic keeps its word. Nevare isn’t dead.”

  Epiny swung her head back to look at me. Her lips were parted and she swayed slightly. The whites showed all around her eyes. I’d once seen a horse that had been ridden near to death. She reminded me of that poor beast, as if she stayed on her feet more by sheer willpower than by physical strength. She stared at me for a long time, then looked back at Lisana. Her voice was flat. “Don’t try to deceive me. That’s not Nevare. I know Nevare and that’s not him. You forget that the magic touches me? You forget that I can look at his aura and see that something is very wrong? You can’t cheat me again, Tree Woman. I intend to kill you or die trying.” She stooped down. For the first time, I saw the small hatchet she had used to cut her firewood. Against Tree Woman’s thick stump, it looked ridiculous, a child’s toy. But it was a toy made of iron. Its presence burned against my skin. When Epiny raised it over her head, her teeth bared in a grimace of hatred, Soldier’s Boy acted, springing between her and the stump and catching her falling wrist. He squeezed hard and the hatchet fell from her grip. He caught her other wrist when she tried to rake his eyes with her nails. Despite his wasted condition, he held her easily. Epiny snarled and shrieked at him wordlessly. She kicked out
at him; he accepted the blows.

  “Her mind is gone,” Olikea opined. She sounded appalled, as if Epiny’s loss of dignity were shameful to her as well. “It would be a kindness to kill her.” She spoke in Speck, her words directed to Soldier’s Boy. The lack of malice in her voice chilled me. She meant it. She thought Soldier’s Boy should put Epiny down as one would a diseased dog. She ventured closer to pick up the hatchet. I feared she would do the deed herself, just sink the shining blade into Epiny’s spine.

  “No!” I bellowed. “Lisana, help me! Please! Don’t let Epiny be killed! It will be too much for me to bear!”

  I made no sound. I had no command of lips or lungs or tongue. I spoke not in words, but in a flow of thought that dismissed the need for words, just as Epiny and Lisana spoke to one another. They were the words of my heart, voiceless in the world. All I could do was to plead and threaten. I was helpless to stop what was happening. My hands held my cousin helpless and waiting to be slaughtered.

  Lisana looked at the scene before her. Epiny’s struggles against Soldier’s Boy had become increasingly feeble. His big hand trapped her thin wrists. She all but dangled in his grip. Behind Epiny’s back, Olikea had raised the hatchet. Likari watched the drama with the rapt attention of a small boy staring at the unintelligible behavior of adults. The hatchet began to fall.

  “Epiny!” I cried out mutely. A stray beam of sunlight moved on the blade as it traveled.

  My impotent threats had not moved Lisana. Soldier’s Boy looked at her stump; again, I had the feeling that I was seeing Lisana in a different way from him.

  “If I help kill my own cousin, I’ll go mad! My hatred for him will be unending. Can Soldier’s Boy serve the magic while a madman gibbers in the back of his mind?”

  When Tree Woman slowly shook her head at me, my heart sank. She spoke.

  “Stop.”

  Now that I knew what such magic cost, I saw the effort go out of her. Tree Woman’s presence dwindled when she spoke, but for me, it had the desired effect. Olikea’s resolve failed. She lost her grip on the hatchet. It tumbled to the ground behind Epiny. Soldier’s Boy did not release his grip on my cousin, but he set her back on her feet. She twisted one wrist free and folded that arm across her belly, in a gesture that was both supportive and protective. When he released her other wrist, she staggered a few steps away from him and then burst into tears. With both arms, she cradled her pregnancy. She didn’t look at him, but past him at Tree Woman’s stump. “Why?” she demanded of Lisana. “Why did you do this to Nevare? Why my cousin, why me? We were innocent of any crime against your people. Why did you reach all those miles to take him hostage to this fate? Why?”

  Lisana stiffened. Her presence wavered for a moment, then seemed to grow stronger as she gathered her reserves and retorted, “Blame the Kidona, not me! He is the one who took your cousin and tried to make him a warrior to use against me. I, I was the one who had mercy. I could have just stripped his soul from his body and he would have died in all worlds. If I had not thought to offer him to the magic, he would have been dead all these years. The magic chose to keep him. Not I. I didn’t know its reasons. But the magic chose him and now it has taken him. You’d best accept that, Jhernian woman. Just as he must accept and become whole to the magic. Nothing is going to change it. What the magic takes, it keeps.” Perhaps only I could hear the old resignation in her words. She, too, had been chosen and kept by the magic. She, too, had never lived the life she had imagined for herself.

  “Please,” I thought to Lisana, hoping she still had some influence with Soldier’s Boy. “Please. Let me talk to Epiny. Let me send her home. Let me have that small comfort before I must bend to the magic’s will.”

  Soldier’s Boy was staring intently at the stump. “Lisana?” he asked. There was a world of longing in his voice. He ignored the sobbing woman, and Olikea scowling in puzzlement at them. He stepped up to the stump and put his hands on it. “Lisana?” he said again. He glanced back at Epiny angrily. I felt the indignation in his heart that the Gernian woman could obviously see and speak to his beloved when all he could behold was the stump of her fallen tree.

  Lisana sighed heavily. “I’m a fool,” she said. “I know I’ll regret this. Speak to her, then. I’ll help you.”

  I had hoped she would do something to Soldier’s Boy, to give me control once more of the body. Either she could not, or she did not trust me that far. I felt the most peculiar sensation, a cold peeling as if I were being skinned away from my life. A moment later, I could see Lisana much more distinctly, and I once more had the disembodied sensation I’d felt when she’d called me from my cell. Speaking to Epiny had been my errand then. Now I looked at my cousin and suddenly didn’t know what to say to her. I could see Soldier’s Boy as Epiny saw him. It was a shock. He wore my naked, sunburned body differently. I would never have stood in that posture; I would never have been so completely unselfconscious of my nakedness before my cousin. Yet, with the fat stripped from my flesh, I saw my face almost as it had been when I had set out for the Academy. Despite the sagging of the emptied jowls, I looked more youthful than I had in the last year. My blond hair was an untidy tousle but with a sickening wrench I could recall that I had been a handsome young man once. The sudden mourning I felt for that lost attractiveness shocked me with its intensity. I had never thought myself vain, but I had enjoyed being a man that girls smiled at. It was a distorted glimpse of the tall, golden cadet that I’d been. It was like a knife in my heart.

  Epiny had lifted her eyes to Lisana, and when her gaze fell on my ephemeral self, she gasped. She lifted a seeking hand toward me, as if she would strive to touch me. “Nevare?” she asked.

  Soldier’s Boy glared at her and then leaned close to the tree stump. “Lisana?” he pleaded. We all ignored him.

  I found my words. I suddenly knew that only the truth could satisfy her, and I gave it to her. “Epiny. Epiny, my dear. Yes, it’s me. I’m here. I’m sorry. I did what I had to do. I used the magic to make Spink and Amzil believe I was dead. I made the entire mob in the street there believe that they’d achieved their goal and beaten me to death. Then I left. It was the only way for me to escape cleanly, the only way to break my life off from yours.”

  “But—” Her eyes were wide with shock. She looked from me to Soldier’s Boy in my body and back again.

  I spoke hastily, talking through her attempted interruption. I knew Epiny well. Once she started talking, I’d never get a word in edgeways. “The magic wouldn’t let me stay. Don’t you see? It boxed me in and gave me no choice. If I’d tried to stay, the mob would have beaten me to death. Amzil might have survived being raped by them, but I doubt it. And we both know that Spink would have forced them to kill him, too, before he would submit to simply witnessing something like that. The magic wanted to make it impossible for me to go back to Gettys, to force me to flee to the forest and do its will. The magic won.”

  Epiny was panting, both from the warmth of the day and her exertions. Her shoulders rose and fell with it. As I’d spoken, fresh tears had begun to stream down her dirty face. I thought they were for me. They were not.

  “We both know that Spink would never have allowed them to beat you to death without throwing himself into the fray. It runs counter to all that he is. And yet, Nevare, you have left him believing that somehow he allowed it to happen and emerged from it with only a few bruises. Amzil must believe that as well; she insists that he sacrificed you to save her. They are both miserable. Last night, for the first time, Spink decided that he needed Gettys Tonic. Rum and laudanum. It let him sleep, but when he awoke, he looked no better. So he took a half dose and went off to his duties. He left in a haze. Amzil dosed both herself and the children into oblivion; they were still sleeping when I left. I do not know what is to become of any of them.

  “Spink resisted both the gloom and the terror of the magic for so long. Now that he has crumbled twice, I fear his walls are breached. I do not think—”

  Her words
ran out as if her private fear were too terrible to utter aloud. She gave a half sob and, before I could speak, asked me angrily, “Do not you see, Nevare? What you have chosen for all of us saves none of us! The magic will still destroy us; it will just take longer to do it.” She swung her gaze to Lisana. “And so I will say it again. The ‘bargain’ you offered me was a cheat and a sham. I did as you asked, I did as the magic asked, and in return, all will be taken from me.”

  “I do not control the magic,” Lisana replied stiffly. “It does as befits the People.” Her words were cold but I suspected that she had been moved by what Epiny had said.

  “Can you see her? Can you speak to her?” Soldier’s Boy asked wildly.

  Epiny glared at him. “She’s right there. Cannot you see her?”

  Lisana answered her question. “As I told you. I cannot control the will of the magic. Soldier’s Boy does not see me, and I can speak only to the facet of him that is Nevare. Perhaps it is our punishment for failure. Perhaps it is simply the effect of dividing the soul. One half often acquires an ability at the expense of the other half.” She hesitated and added in a low voice, “I never foresaw that he would remain divided this long. Whole, I think he would succeed.”

  “I cannot see her. I cannot hear her. I cannot touch her.” The frustration in Soldier’s Boy’s voice was apparent. Olikea, behind him, looked affronted.

  I knew what it was, without understanding it. “I kept that part. I kept the part that lets me see and speak with Tree Woman in this world. Because—” I fumbled toward knowledge and guessed, “Because that part had always belonged mostly to me. When Soldier’s Boy was with you, he was in your world. I had to reach to speak to you from mine.”

  “Do you think so?” Lisana asked me, and it was a genuine question.