didn’t answer directly, but the way she lowered her head and scowled told me much. At that very moment we heard their voices through the trees, and in a moment more they came into sight. Jodoli looked clean and well rested. His hair was freshly plaited, and his skin had been rubbed with fragrant oil. ‘Like a piece of prize livestock,’ the Nevare portion of me thought wryly, but I felt Soldier’s Boy’s keen jealousy cut through me. In contrast to Jodoli, he felt grubby, unkempt and skinny. He glanced at Olikea; she likewise burned with frustration. She spoke louder than necessary.
‘The boy has done well at finding food for me to prepare for you. After you have eaten, I think I will help you bathe. And then perhaps you should sleep again.’
Jodoli gave a huge, contented yawn. ‘That sounds a good plan, Nevare, if we are to quick-walk tonight. Ah. That food smells good.’
A remarkable thing happened. Firada bristled at his compliment to Olikea. Olikea looked at her sister and said almost sharply, ‘I have prepared all this for Nevare. He will need his strength.’ Then, with a sideways glance at me, she added to Jodoli, ‘But perhaps we can spare enough for you to have a taste.’
‘We will share it with Jodoli and Firada,’ Soldier’s Boy suddenly decreed. ‘I owe them thanks for bringing you here. Sharing food to replace the magic that Jodoli spent on me is called for, I think.’
He took command of the situation that easily, and presided over the meal that ensued. I was pleased that he did not forget Likari. The boy had made trip after trip at Olikea’s request, bringing firewood, cooking water, the wide flat leaves of a water plant to wrap the fish, and so on. He sat at a respectful distance from the adults, looking as if he could barely keep his eyes open, but eyeing the food all the same. Soldier’s Boy’s announcement that he would share food had brought out hospitality in Jodoli as well. He asked Firada what supplies she had brought with her. She had meal cakes seasoned with a peppery herb and little balls made of suet, dried berries and honey. These combined with the food Olikea had prepared to make a delicious and generous meal for all of us. Likari seemed very conscious of the honour of being given Great Man’s food to eat. He ate it slowly, in tiny nibbles that reminded me of my days locked in my room under my father’s jurisdiction and he seemed to savour each morsel as carefully as I had then.
There was little talk. Jodoli and Soldier’s Boy concentrated on their food as only Great Ones knew how to do, while Firada and Olikea regarded one another in wary rivalry. Soldier’s Boy did more than eat; he considered each mouthful as he chewed it, enjoying flavour and texture, but also calculating how much of it his body could store for later use as magic and how much he must keep ready for the simple business of living. He was not pleased with his results. What he ate today he would almost certainly have to use tonight to quick-walk them back to the People. He couldn’t begin to rebuild his resources until they reached the Wintering Place. The fat and easy days of summer were past; he wondered if the People would be generous with their winter supplies when it came to feeding an unproven Great One.
After the meal, Jodoli announced that he planned to visit the Vale of the Ancestor Trees until the cool of the evening. ‘Magic is always easier when the sun no longer beats down on us,’ he observed, and I knew it was so without knowing how I knew it. ‘We will meet again at the Wintering Place?’ he asked me, and Soldier’s Boy nodded gravely and thanked him once more for his aid. I watched them depart, Jodoli moving unhurriedly while Firada gently chivvied him along.
Olikea was as good as her word. She even made a show of helping Soldier’s Boy to stand and then guiding him down to the stream’s edge. Likari came with us, and she put him to work, bringing fine sand to scrub my feet and handfuls of horsetail ferns to scrub my back. Nevare would have felt embarrassed to have a young boy and a lovely woman wash his body while he sat idly in the shallows and let them. Soldier’s Boy not only allowed it, he accepted it as his due.
Olikea tsk’ed over the sagging folds of skin, but served me well. I had never known that having someone scrub my feet and then massage them could feel so delightful. I think she realized that she nearly paralysed me with pleasure, for after I was washed, she had me rest on the clean moss beside the stream while she rubbed my back, my shoulders, my hands and my neck. It felt so good Soldier’s Boy did not want to fall asleep and miss the sensations, but of course he did.
I slept when Soldier’s Boy did that time. The physical weariness and needs of the body were his to bear, but I think there is a soul weariness that one can feel, and I felt it. Less than two days had passed since my life had profoundly changed. I’d been a condemned man, escaping execution one night, and a mage who had spent all his magic the next. Those were two giant strides away from the boy who had been a second son, raised to be a cavalla soldier. I think my awareness needed to retreat, and it did.
When next I noticed the world, I was looking up through Soldier’s Boy’s blinking eyes at the interlacing tree branches overhead. The leaves were shivering, rustling so hard against one another that many of those loosened by autumn’s bite were breaking loose from their weakened grips on twigs and falling. A few falling leaves became a flurry of yellow and orange, and then a blizzard. I stared up at them, befuddled. The sound of their falling was unearthly; there was a rhythm to the trembling of the leaves that sounded like people whispering in the distance, a rhythm that had nothing to do with the wind.
There was no wind.
And the voices were there, whispering.
There were dozens of voices, all whispering. Soldier’s Boy strained to pick out a single thread of sound.
‘Lisana says—’
‘Tell him, tell him to come now!’
‘Hurry. She’s mad with grief, she’s threatening—’
‘Fire fears no magic. Hurry.’
‘Soldier’s Boy, Nevare, tell him, wake him, tell him to hurry—’
The air was thick with falling leaves. The rustling whispering filled the air. Soldier’s Boy rolled to his belly and scrabbled to his feet. He swayed and then steadied himself against the trunk of a nearby tree. His stirring had awakened Olikea. She had been sleeping against his back. He spoke to her. ‘I have to go to Lisana right now. She’s in danger. The mad Gernian woman is threatening her.’
Soldier’s Boy led the way. Olikea followed unwillingly and Likari, laden with the supplies, trailed after them. ‘What does she need of you?’ Olikea had demanded angrily as she sat up.
‘She’s in danger,’ Soldier’s Boy replied. ‘I have to help her.’
He did not wait for her to respond to that, but set off immediately. He was stiff and his body seemed unfamiliar after so many months as a very fat man. He ached, but he forced his legs to bend and he hurried. The trees whispered to him, urging him on in a flurry of leaves and a susurrus of voices.
‘He’ll be too late—’
‘All of us, not just Lisana—’
‘—her own fault for dividing him—’
‘Why didn’t the fear stop her? How did she get that far?’
‘Stolen
