Renegade’s Magic. Robin HobbЧитать онлайн книгу.
that it is for him, when the time comes. I’m preparing a tree for him. Please tell him.’
‘Look for another little tree, near the end of her fallen trunk,’ I said. I pushed the words as hard as I could. But he did not hear me. After a pause, he spoke aloud to her. ‘I’m tired, Lisana. Tired and hungry and empty of magic. I need to find sustenance. And as soon as I can, I must leave for the Wintering Place. I haven’t forgotten what you told me. Believe me. What you taught me, I will live.’ He was very still, as if listening for me or for Lisana, but after a time he closed his eyes, puffed his cheeks and turned away from the little tree.
He started to follow the fading trail that led back down the ridge and eventually into a valley where a small stream flowed. Weariness dragged at us. He muttered as we walked and after a time, I realized he was speaking to me. I listened more closely to his rambling words. ‘You used it all. Did you hate us that much or were you just stupid? I saved that magic, hoarded it all thinking that I might get one chance. And now it’s all gone. Gone. You always complained to everyone who would listen that I’d stolen your beautiful wonderful future. Is that why you destroyed mine? Was it vengeance? Or stupidity?’
I had no way of responding. I was little more than a spark inside him now, clinging desperately to my self-awareness. The idea of letting go came to me. I shook myself free of it. What would happen to me if I did? Would I cease to be entirely, or would all my ideas, thoughts, and knowledge suddenly be merged with Soldier’s Boy? Would he consume me as I had tried to consume him? If he integrated me into his being, would I have any awareness of it? Would I live on only as odd bits of dreams that sometimes haunted the Speck Mage I would become?
The thought of merging my awareness with Soldier’s Boy and becoming merely a part of him held no appeal for me. Instead it filled me with loathing, and I struggled against it. ‘I am Nevare Burvelle,’ I told myself. ‘Soldier son of a New Noble lord. Destined to be a cavalla officer, to serve my king with courage, to distinguish myself on a field of battle. I will prevail. I will keep faith with Epiny and I will prevail.’ I would not become a set of disconnected memories inside some hulking forest mage. I would not.
And so I wearily clung to my identity and did little more than that for the next two days. I was an observer as Soldier’s Boy hiked wearily down to the stream. He found Likari dozing on the shady bank while Olikea scavenged in the shallows for a greyish-brown leggy creature that looked more like an insect than a fish to me. As she caught each one, she popped its head off with her thumbnail and then added it to the catch heaped on a lily leaf on the stream bank. The animals were small; two would fill her palm. She already had a small fire burning. As Soldier’s Boy approached, he greeted her with, ‘It is good that you are already finding food for me.’
She didn’t look up from her hunting. ‘I already know what you are going to say. That you have used up what magic you had, and we must stay another night here. Did you kill her?’
‘No. I let her go. She is no threat to us. And you are right that we must stay here, not one night, but three. I have decided that before I travel, I will rebuild some of my reserves. I will not be the Great Man I was when we rejoin the People, but I will not be this skeleton either. I will eat for three days. And then we will quick-walk to the people.’
‘By then, almost everyone will have returned to the Wintering Place! The best trading will be done, and all that will be left there are the things that are not quite perfect or have no newness to them!’
‘There will be other trading days in years to come. You will have to miss this one.’
Olikea filled her cheeks and then puffed the air out explosively. She had caught two more of the creatures, and she flung them down on those already heaped on the stream bank so hard that I heard the crack of their small shells as they hit. She was not pleased, and I was dimly surprised by how easily Soldier’s Boy dismissed her feelings on the matter.
She looked at him at last and surprise almost overcame her sullen glance. ‘What happened to your forehead?’
‘Never mind that,’ he said brusquely. ‘We need food. Busy yourself with that.’ With his foot, he stirred the sleeping Likari. ‘Up, boy. Gather food. Lots of it. I need to fill myself.’
Likari sat up, blinking, and knuckled his eyes. ‘What sort of food, Great One?’
‘Any food that you can get in quantity. Go now.’
The boy scuttled off. Olikea spoke from behind me. ‘Do not blame him if he cannot find much that is good. The time for the best harvesting is past. That is why we go to the Wintering Place.’
‘I know that.’ Soldier’s Boy turned and walked to the stream’s edge, upstream of Olikea. With a grunt and a sigh, he hunkered down and then sat on the ground. He reached over, pulled up a handful of water-grass, rinsed the muddy roots off in the flowing stream and then peeled the slimy outer skin off them. He bit off the thick white roots and as he chewed them, uprooted another handful of the stuff. The flavour was vaguely like onions.
By the time Likari returned with an armload of shrivelled plums, Soldier’s Boy had cleared a substantial patch of water-grass. He ate as methodically as a grazing cow. Olikea was busy with her own task; she had steamed the leggy creatures in layers of leaves and was now stripping them of legs and carapaces. The curl of meat from each one was scarcely the size of my little finger, but they smelled wonderful.
They ate together, with Soldier’s Boy taking the lion’s share of the food. The plums had dried in the sun’s heat; their flesh was thick and chewy and sweet, and contrasted pleasantly with the little crustaceans. When the food was gone, Soldier’s Boy commanded them both to find more, and then lay down to sleep. When they woke him, they had roasted a pile of yellow roots that had little flavour other than starch, and a porcupine was cooking on the fire. Likari had killed the creature with a club. Divested of its fur and quills, it showed a thick layer of fat. ‘You can see the kind of weather that soon will come!’ Olikea warned him.
‘Let me worry about such things,’ Soldier’s Boy dismissed her.
Night was deepening when that meal was gone. They slept in a huddle, Olikea against his belly and Likari cuddled against his back. Soldier’s Boy used a tiny bit of magic to hummock the moss into a nest around them while Likari had gathered armloads of fallen leaves to cover them. Over the leaves, he spread the winter blanket from my cemetery hut, even though both Olikea and Likari complained that it smelled odd. He had discovered that they had disposed of the clothing he had worn when they found him. Olikea had cut the shining brass buttons from his uniform and kept them, but the rest of it was gone, dropped somewhere in the forest when they were moving him. So all that he carried forward from my life was a winter blanket and a handful of buttons. It seemed fitting.
As they settled together in their bed with Olikea’s warm back to his chest and her firm buttocks resting on his thighs, Soldier’s Boy felt an insistent stirring of lust for the woman, but set it firmly aside. Later, after he had regained some of his flesh, he could enjoy her. For now, he must not expend any effort save to gather and eat food. As for Olikea, she showed no such interest in him at all, and Likari seemed blissfully unaware of any tension between the adults.
For the next two days, that was the pattern. As long as there was enough light to see, Olikea and Likari gathered food and Soldier’s Boy consumed it. They moved twice, following the stream, as Soldier’s Boy systematically harvested and ate every edible item that it could provide for him.
There was a freeze on the third night. There had been twinges of frost before, enough to hasten the turning of the leaves, but that night, the cold reached beneath the forest eaves. Despite the mossy nest and deep blanket of leaves, they all shivered through the night. Soldier’s Boy awoke aching, and Olikea and Likari were both grumpy. In response to Olikea’s complaints, Soldier’s Boy told her, ‘We will travel tonight. I have regained enough reserves that we will go swiftly. For now, go about your gathering. I will return shortly.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I go to the road’s end. I will not stay there long; have food ready for me when I return.’