a branch on her. It might kill her.’
Sweat broke out on Soldier’s Boy’s back and trickled over his body, finding new wrinkles to settle in and new places to chafe. He laboured on. His body was lighter and his muscles strong, but every part of him felt strained and old and creaky. His heart flopped wildly in his chest. His half-digested meal seemed to slosh inside him miserably. Nonetheless, he forced himself to hurry.
Behind him, Olikea kept up a string of reminders and warnings that made it hard for him to listen to the whispering. She did not seem to hear it, or perhaps she just dismissed it as wind in the trees. ‘You are being foolish. Why do you need to go to Lisana? What can she need from you? You will use up all your strength, and then what will happen to us tonight? Must we spend another full day here while you rest and eat before we can rejoin the people? Most of the kin-clans have already reached their winter settlements and will soon go on to the trading beaches. I want to be with them when they reach the Trading Place. Always, there is much talk, feasting, dancing, music and trade when all the kin-clans come together for the winter. We will want to enjoy it, not arrive there exhausted. And I do not wish to first show you there as a skeletal man with no energy. As it is, we must spend a few days at my lodge before we go on to the Trading Place. I must prepare you so that you command respect. Nevare! You are not listening to me! Slow down.’
Despite his weakened condition, she was having a hard time keeping up with him. I realized he was doing a quick-walk, making the distance between himself and Lisana contract. He was not using a great deal of magic, but it made the trees blur slightly and the ground seemed less solid under his feet. Olikea and Likari were pulled along in his wake. When he caught the first whiff of smoke, he suddenly redoubled his efforts, consuming the magic as if he had infinite reserves. In two strides, we stood beside Tree Woman’s stump.
Epiny had heaped leaves, some dry and some freshly fallen, in a large mound against the stump. My cousin stood, her teeth bared with satisfaction, watching thick white smoke rising from the tiny fire she had kindled at the base of Lisana’s stump. She had a ready supply of dry branches next to her, to feed the fire once she had it established.
Epiny herself looked a fright. Her hair was pulling out of braids that looked as if they’d been plaited days ago. She wore a shapeless green dress, cut to allow for her growing pregnancy and round her middle, above her growing belly, a battered leather belt with tool loops on it. A canteen hung from one side of it. She’d snagged her dress on something; there was a long rent in the skirt, and it was obvious she’d simply let it drag behind her as she trekked through the forest to get here. Brambles and dead leaves clung to it like a dirty train. She’d unbuttoned the cuffs of her sleeves and turned them up to bare her forearms. Her face gleamed with sweat, and the throat and back of her dress were damp with it. Her hands were smudged with dirt and soot from her fire-making efforts. As I approached, she drew the back of her forearm across her brow, wiping sweat and leaving a streak of dirt in its wake. An open leather pack rested on the earth behind her. Despite her dishevelled appearance, she seemed to seethe with energy.
‘Burn!’ she cried in a low, mad voice. She gritted her teeth and I heard them grind together. ‘Burn, you cheat, you whore of magic. Burn, and be dead forever. As dead as Nevare. I did what you asked! I did all you asked; you promised you’d save him if I did! But you didn’t! You let Nevare die! You lying, cheating bitch!’ The words poured out of her like thick acid. She stooped awkwardly over her belly to snatch up an armload of the firewood and flung it onto the smouldering leaves. They compacted under the weight of the fuel. For a moment, I thought she had smothered the fire. Then the smoke thickened and a tiny tongue of flame wavered up among the heaped wood. It licked the bark of Lisana’s tree stump longingly.
And all the while, Lisana herself manifested as a fat old woman with grey-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 updraught 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 smouldering 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 waterskin 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 towards 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 sun-burned 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 her 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 dishevelled, miles from home in a hostile forest. And a man wearing my flesh was pretending to be me. She goggled at me, trying to
