on what he has been told the good god desires of him. Always, I had held back from that commitment. I had always believed, I discovered, that when I was an old man I could become devout and make up for my heedless youth. Age would be a good time to practice self-discipline and charity and patience. When I was old, I would give generous alms and spend hours in meditation while watching the sweet smoke of my daily offerings rise to the good god. When I was old, and my blood no longer bubbled with ambition and lust and wild curiosity, then I could settle down and be content in my good god.
Foolishly, I had believed that I would always have the opportunity to be a better man, later. Obviously, a man’s life could end at any time. A fall down the stairs, a chill or a fever, a stray bullet; youth was no armour against such fates. A man could lose his life by accident, at any moment. Some part of me, perhaps, had known that, but I’d never believed it at a gut level.
And I’d certainly never considered that at any moment, an old god could materialize and demand my life of me.
I didn’t merit the good god’s intervention and worse, I feared his judgment. The old gods, I knew, had been able to plunge men into endless torment or perpetual labour, and often did solely for their own amusement. Such anguish on a whim suddenly seemed preferable to facing a just banishment.
My cry of supplication died in me unuttered. I looked up at Orandula, the old god of balances and felt myself quiver with resignation and then grow still. The feathers on his head quirked up in surprise.
‘What? No shrieks for rescue? No pleas for mercy? Eh. Not very amusing for me. You’re a bad bargain, Nevare. Looks like half of you is the most I can get, and it isn’t even the interesting half. Yet, being as I am the god of balances, something in that appeals to me.’
‘Do what you will to me!’ I hissed at him, weary already of teetering on that brink.
He fluttered his feathers up, gaining almost a third in size as he did so. ‘Oh, I shall,’ he muttered as he eased them down. He leisurely groomed two wing plumes, pulling them through his beak and then settling them into order. For a moment, he seemed to have forgotten me. Then he pierced me with his stare again. ‘At my leisure. When I decide to take what you owe me, then I’ll come for it, and you’ll pay me.’
‘Which do I owe you?’ I was suddenly moved to ask him. ‘My death? Or my life?’
He yawned, his pointed tongue wagging in his mouth as he did so. ‘Whichever I please, of course. I am the god of balances, you know. I can choose from either end of the scales.’ He cocked a head at me. ‘Tell me, Nevare. Which do you think an old god such as me would find most pleasing? To demand your death of you? Or insist that you pay me with your life?’
I didn’t know the answer and I didn’t wish to give him any ideas. My fears toiled and rumbled inside me. Which did I most fear? What did he mean when he said those words? That he would kill me and I’d become nothing? Or that he’d take me in death and keep me as his plaything? What if he demanded my life from me, and I became a puppet of the old god? All paths seemed dark. I stared up at him hopelessly.
He fluttered his feathers again, then suddenly opened his wings. He lifted from the branch as effortlessly as if he weighed nothing. Then he was gone. Literally gone. I didn’t see him fly away. Only the swaying of the relieved branch testified that he had been there.
‘Do not wake him!’
Olikea’s warning hissed at Likari did precisely what she had told the boy not to do. Soldier Son stirred, grunted and opened his eyes. He drew a deeper breath, and then rubbed his face. ‘Water,’ he requested, and both his feeders reached for the waterskin that lay beside him. Olikea was a shade faster and a bit stronger. She had her hands on it first, with the better grip and snatched it from Likari. The boy’s eyes widened with disappointment and outrage.
‘But I was the one who went and refilled it!’ he protested.
‘He needs help to drink from it. You don’t know how. You’ll get it all over him.’
They sounded for all the world like squabbling siblings rather than a mother and her son. Soldier’s Boy ignored both of them, but took the waterskin away from Olikea to drink from it. He nearly drained it before he handed it back to the boy with a nod of thanks. He yawned and then carefully stretched, noting with displeasure how the limp skin dangled from his arms. He lowered them back to his side. ‘I feel better. But I need to eat more before we quick-walk tonight. I would like cooked food to warm me; the world will cool as night comes on.’
He groaned as he sat up, but it was the groan of a man who has eaten well, slept heavily, and looked forward to doing the same again. How could he be so unaware of all that had befallen me while he slept? Did he even sense that I still existed within him? How could he have been so blithely unaware of Orandula’s visit to me and how it had terrified me? Yet so he seemed. How had it been for him, submerged within me for the better part of a year? I recalled the moments when he had broken through and into my awareness, and the times when he had forced me to take actions. What had it taken, there at the Dancing Spindle, for him to push me aside while he both stole and then destroyed the magic of the plainspeople? Had it been a burst of passion, or had he simply gathered his strength and waited for a moment when he desired to use it? I needed to learn how he had manipulated me and to discover why he was now ascendant over me if I were to survive and ever re-capture control of the life we shared. I was not certain that I wished to be the one in command of our life, but I did know that I was reluctant to cede full control to my Speck self. I refused the notion that I might never again control my own body. The strangeness of the situation suspended my judgment of it. The terror I should have felt hovered, unacknowledged.
Likari had anticipated Soldier’s Boy’s appetite. In his basket, there were several fat roots from a water plant and two bright yellow fish that were just now gasping their last breaths. The boy presented the basket expectantly. Soldier’s Boy nodded at it, pleased, but Olikea scowled.
‘I will cook these things for you. The boy does not know how.’
Likari opened his mouth to protest, and then shut it with a snap. Evidently his mother had spoken true. Nonetheless, his lower jaw and lip quivered with disappointment. Soldier’s Son looked at him dispassionately, but I felt for the boy. ‘Give him something!’ I urged my other self. ‘At least acknowledge what he has done for you.’
I could sense his awareness of me, just as I had once been the one to feel his hidden influences on my thoughts and actions. He scowled to himself, and then looked at the boy again. His shoulders had fallen and he was withdrawing. Soldier’s Son lifted the waterskin. ‘My young feeder will fill this again for me. The cool water was very good to have when I awoke.’
The boy halted. My words transformed him. He lifted his head, squared his shoulders and his eyes sparkled as he smiled up at me. ‘I am honoured to serve you, Great One,’ he replied, taking the waterskin. The words were a standard courtesy among the Speck when they addressed a Great One, but the boy uttered them with absolute sincerity.
Olikea folded her lips tightly, and then briskly added, ‘Bring firewood, too, when you come back with the water. And see that it is dry, so that it will burn hot to cook the fish quickly.’
If she meant her words to sting, she failed. The boy scarcely noticed that it was her giving the command. He bobbed acquiescence and raced off to his task.
Soldier’s Boy watched Olikea as she scoured the area for kindling and twigs to get the fire started. She pushed the newly fallen leaves away to bare a place on the forest’s mossy floor, and then peeled the moss away to reveal damp black earth. There she arranged her kindling.
