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I heard birdsong, the sound of the breeze in the needled trees, and the very light rattle of falling leaves whenever a gust of breeze was strong enough to dislodge them. I could hear them cascading down, ricocheting through the twigs and branches until they finally reached the forest floor. The Speck were right. Summer was over, autumn was strong, and winter would be on its heels. Real cold would descend, followed by the snows and harsh winds of winter. Last winter I’d had a snug little cabin to shelter me. This winter I would face that weather with not even the clothes on my back. A tide of dread started to rise in me, but again I turned it back with the simple demurral: it was not my problem. Specks seemed to have survived well through the ages. Whatever their tactic was, even if it was simply the stoic endurance of cold and privation, Soldier’s Boy would learn it and last the winter.
A bird sang again, loudly, a warning, and then I heard the crack of its wings as it took hasty flight. A moment later I heard something heavy settle into the branches overhead. A shower of broken twigs rattled against my face, followed by the slower fall of leaves. I looked up in annoyance. A huge croaker bird had settled in the tree above me. I grimaced in distaste. Fleshy orange-red wattles hung about his beak, reminding me both of dangling meat and cancerous growths. His feathers rattled when he shook them and it seemed as if I could smell the stench of carrion on them. His long black toes gripped the branch tightly as he leaned down to peer at me. His eyes were very bright.
“Nevare! You owe me a death. ”
The croaked words shot ice down my spine. I arced as if I’d been hit by an arrow, and then peered up at the creature in the branches overhead. He was no longer a bird. He wasn’t a man, either. Orandula, the god of balances, teetered on the branch over my head. His long black feet gripped the branch with horny toenails. His nose was a carrion bird’s hooked beak, and the red wattles dangled from his throat now. His hair was a thicket of unruly feathers, and feathers cloaked his body and dangled from his arms. Unchanged were his piercing bird-bright eyes. He cocked his head and stared down at me. He smiled, his beak stretching horribly as he did so. As I stared, fixed with terror, his little black tongue came out of his mouth, dabbing at the edges of his beak, and then retreated again.
It wasn’t real. It was too horrible to be real. Every prayer I knew to the good god bubbled to the top of my mind. I tried to form the words, but Soldier’s Boy slept on, his mouth closed, oblivious to my terror. I tried to close my eyes, to block out the sight of the old god, to make him a dream. I could not. My eyes were not open. I did not know how I was seeing him. I struggled desperately to lift an arm and put it across my eyes, but my body did not belong to Nevare. Soldier’s Boy slumbered on. I could not look away from the old god’s piercing gaze. It was horrid to experience such terror, and to feel at the same time the slow and steady breathing of deep sleep and the calm heartbeat of a man contentedly at rest. Soldier’s Boy could sleep but Nevare could not flee from the god in the tree above me. A whimper tried to escape me; it could not. I tried to look away; I could not.
“Why do they always do that?” Orandula asked rhetorically. “Why do men think that if they cannot see a thing, it goes away or stops existing? I should think any sane creature would want to keep its eyes fixed on something as dangerous as me!” He opened his arm-wings and rattled the pinions at me menacingly, and the whimper inside me tried to be a scream. His smile grew broader. “Yet, without exception, when I pay a visit such as this, men try to avert their eyes from me. It’s useless, Nevare. Look on me. You are mine, you know. Neither your good god nor your forest magic will dispute my claim. You took that which was intended for me. Your life is forfeit. You owe me a death in payment. Look at me, Nevare Burvelle!” When he commanded me to look on him, a strange thing happened. A chill calm welled up in me, just like the cool air over the water within a deep well. I recognized something in him, or perhaps something in my situation. Inevitability. I still feared him with a heart-stopping intensity but I knew I could not escape him. Struggle was pointless. The calm of despair filled me. I could look on the god I had cheated. I found a voice to speak to him, one that did not use my lips or tongue or lungs. I met his gaze, even though it was like pressing my palm against the tip of a sword.
“A death? You demand a death? You had a hundred deaths, a glut of deaths. How many did I bury at the end of the summer? Strong soldiers, little children. Strangers. Enemies of mine. Friends. Buel Hitch. Carsina. ” My voice broke on the name of my former fiancée.
Orandula laughed like a crow cawing. “You tell me what I took, not what you gave me. You gave me nothing! You stole from me, Nevare Burvelle. ”
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“All I did was free a suffering bird from its impalement on a sacrificial carousel. I lifted it from the hook and released it. How is that so great a trespass that I must pay for it with my life? Or my death. ”
“You wronged me, man. The bird was mine, both its life and its death. Who were you to say it should not suffer? Who were you to pick it free and put life back into it and let it fly away?”
“I put life back into it?”
“Hah!” His exclamation was a harsh croak. “There speaks a man! First you will pretend you did not know how grave a thing you did. Then you will deny you did it. Then you will say—”
“It’s not fair!”
“Of course. Exactly that. And then finally, each and every one will claim—”
If I had had lungs, I would have drawn a breath. I invoked the strength of the words with the full force of my fear. “I am a follower of the good god. I was dedicated to him as a soldier son when I was born, and I was raised in his teachings. You have no power over me!” The last I uttered with conviction. Or attempted to. My words were drowned in the caws of his laughter.
“Oh, yes, the final denial. I can’t be your god; you already have a god. You keep him in your pouch and let him out on occasions such as this. Calling on your good god is so much more effective than, say, pissing yourself in terror. Or at least it has a bit more dignity. ” He spread his tail feathers and leaned back, rocking so hard with laughter that the big branch shook. I looked up at him, unable to avert my eyes. He took his time getting his hilarity under control. Finally, he stopped laughing, and wiped his feathered arm across his eyes. He leaned forward, turning his bird’s head sideways to look at me more closely. “Call him,” he suggested to me. “Shout for the good god to come and rescue you. I want to see what happens. Go ahead. Yell for help, man. It’s the only thing you haven’t done yet. ”
I couldn’t do it. I wanted to. I wanted desperately to be able to cry out to some benign presence that would sweep in and rescue me. It wasn’t a lack of faith in the good god’s existence. I think I feared to call on my god lest he come to me, and find me lacking and unworthy. I knew in my heart, as most men do, that I’d never really given myself fully to his service. I do not speak of the way that a priest resigns his life to the service of a god, but rather to how a man suspends his own judgment and desires and relies 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 armor 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 c
ertainly 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 labor, 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. ”
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“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’s 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 water skin 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 the all the world like squabbling siblings rather than a mother and her son. Soldier’s Boy ignored both of them, but took the water skin 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 first 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 recapture 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 water skin. “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 honored to serve you, Great One,” he replied, taking the water skin. The words were a standard courtesy among the Speck when they addressed a Great One, but the boy uttered them with absolute sincerity.
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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 she was 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. She untied one of the pouches from her belt and took out her fire-making supplies. When she did so, I felt a tingly itch spread over my skin. Soldier’s Boy shifted uncomfortably. Idly, I noted that the steel she used to strike sparks from the flint was of Gernian make. She had set to one side a handful of sulfur matches. For all her professed hatred of the intruders, she did not despise the technology and conveniences they had brought. I smiled cynically but Solder’s Boy’s lips did not move. He seemed to be thinking something else, wondering how many other Specks now carried steel so casually, even knowing the iron in it was dangerous to magic. He ignored my thoughts. Was I a small voice in the back of his mind, a vague sensation of unease, or nothing at all to him? All I could do was wonder.
Olikea built the fire efficiently. I considered her as she moved about the area, gathering twigs to feed the tiny flame, stooping down to blow on the fire, and then as she began to cut up the roots and clean the fish from Likari’s basket. I could not compare her to Gernian women at all, I realized. She moved with ease and confidence, as completely unaware of her nudity as Soldier’s Boy was. That was odd to consider. He felt no surge of lust for her. Perhaps i
t was that I’d spent so much of his magic he felt as if he could barely stand, let alone mate with a woman. I stood at the edge of his flowing thoughts; he was not thinking of sex, but of the food she was preparing. He was gauging how much he could rebuild his strength by nightfall and how much of his magic he would have to burn to quick-walk all three of them back to the People.
Quick-walk. One could travel that way, seeming to stride along at an ordinary pace, but covering the ground much more swiftly. A mage could carry others along with him, one or two or even three if he was powerfully fat with magic. But it took an effort to get the magic started, and stamina to sustain it. It would not be easy for him, and he was reluctant to burn what little reserves he had restored. Nevertheless, he would have to do it. He had said that he would, in front of Jodoli. A Great Man never backed away from a feat of magic he claimed he would do. He would lose all status with the People if he did.
Likari came back with an armful of firewood. Olikea thanked him brusquely and sent him for more water. I suspected she was trying to keep him at a distance from Soldier’s Boy while she carried out the more obvious tasks of a feeder. She seemed to feel my gaze on her and turned to look at me. As our eyes met, I felt as if she could still see me, the Gernian, buried inside Soldier’s Boy. Did she notice that he had changed in his demeanor toward her? She dropped her eyes and appraised me as if she were looking at a horse she might buy. Then she shook her head.