Robin Hobb - Shaman's Crossing

I told myself that I was growing stronger, but as the sun faded into night, my fever returned. I plunged back into a sleep that was neither rest nor true sleep. My dreams swirled like winged demons round my bed, and I could not escape them. I woke from a dream in which I was trapped in the freak tent to the find myself in dimmed ward. I sat up and discovered that Spink had no hands or arms, only flippers. When I tried to get out of my bed, I found that I had no legs. “I’m dreaming!” I shouted at the orderly who came to hold me down. “I’m dreaming. My legs are fine. I’m dreaming.”

I woke from that nightmare, shivering with cold, to find that my head was resting on a pillow full of snow. I tried to throw it off my bed, but Dr Amicas came and scolded me, saying, “It will cool your hot head. It may break the fever. Lie back, Burvelle, lie back.”

“I didn’t give liquor to Caulder. I didn’t! You have to make the colonel understand. It wasn’t me.”

“Of course not, of course not. Lie back. Cool your head. Your fever is burning your brain. Lie still.”

The doctor pushed me back into the cold softness of the fat man’s embrace. “I used to be in the cavalla!” he told me. “Too bad you can’t be a ranker like me. You can’t be anything now. Not even a scout. Maybe you can be a fat man in a sideshow. All you have to do is eat. You like to eat, don’t you?”

I sat up suddenly. The softness of the cold pillow had wakened a brief connection of memory. It was night in the ward. Dim lanterns burned and in the beds, shadowy figures tossed. I held tight to what I knew, desperate to share it, to avert my future betrayal of my people. “Doctor!” I shouted. “Dr Amicas!”

Someone in a doctor’s apron hurried to my bedside. It wasn’t Amicas. “What is it? Are you thirsty?”

“Yes. No. It was the dust, doctor. The dust they used. Dried and powdered shit from a sick man. To make us all sick. To kill us all.”

“Drink some water, Cadet. You’re raving.”

“Tell Dr Amicas,” I insisted.

“Of course. Drink this.”

He held a cup to my mouth. It was pure, cool water and I gulped it down. It soothed my mouth and throat. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.” And I fell back, through fever dreams of an endless carriage ride into that other world.

Tree Woman shook her head at me. We were seated together in a little bower of flowering bushes, not far from the edge of the world. She smiled kindly at me as she warned me, “You are not strong enough yet. Be patient. You need to consume more of their magic to walk with strength in their world. If you try too soon to cross back with him, you cannot master him. He will betray you.”

We were sitting together in the eaves of a forest. A soft rain was falling. She had brought me a leaf, folded like a cup. In it was a thick, sweet soup, warm and delicious. I drank it and licked the residue from the leaf as she looked on approvingly.

She had a leaf of her own, laden with the same gooey substance. She lapped it slowly from the cup, licking her lips and smiling. Watching her eat made me hungry for her. There was such plenitude to her, such completeness. She was generosity and richness, indulgence and luxury. In her, nothing was denied. I wanted her again. I wanted to be her, full and rich with magic. She saw me watching her and smiled coquettishly.

“Eat more!” she urged me. “Soon, I will show you how to get it for yourself.” She handed me another leaf of the stuff. “Let it fill you. It’s their magic. Isn’t it delicious? Fill yourself with it. Eat and grow full of magic.” She leaned closer to me, offering it, and suddenly it was not sweet. It was foul and thick, congealed like blood, sweet in the rotten way of carrion that draws flies. I jerked back from it.

“I don’t want to be full of magic! I want to be an officer in the King’s Cavalla. I want to serve my king, and marry Carsina and send my journals home to my family. Please. Let me just be what I am supposed to be. Let me go.”

“Easy, Burvelle. Easy. Orderly! More water, here, right away. Drink this, Burvelle. Drink it down.”

My teeth chattered against the rim of a glass. Cold water spilled and dripped on my chest. I pried open my gummy eyes. Dr Amicas was easing me back onto my pillows. He had two days’ growth of grey and black stubble on his chin and his eyes were bloodshot. I tried to make him understand. “I didn’t give Caulder liquor, Doctor. All I did was bring him home. You have to talk to Colonel Stiet.

Or it’s all over for me.”

He stared at me distractedly, then said, “It’s the least of your worries, Cadet. But men seldom lie in fevers. I’ll put in a word for you with the colonel. If he survives. Rest now. Get some rest.”

“The dust!” I blurted. “Did he tell you about the dust? The dung. Dung from a sick child.”

The doctor was pushing me back into my bed. I caught at his hands. “I betrayed us, doctor. I made the ‘loose’ sign, and by it the Specks knew it was I. They knew they had reached the place where cavalla officers are taught. They loosed the dust and the death upon us. They were waiting for me, waiting for the sign. I’m a traitor, Doctor. Don’t let him become me. He means to kill everyone here, every soldier’s son. And everyone in Old Thares, even the King and Queen.” I struggled to push his hands away, to escape the bed.

“Easy, Nevare. Rest. You aren’t yourself. Orderly! I need some straps here.”

An old man in a spattered smock hurried to my bedside. As the doctor held me, he tied a strip of linen around my wrist. “Not too tight,” the doctor rebuked him. “I just want him kept in his bed until the delirium passes.”

“Loose!” I said, and made the sign. The strip fell away from my wrist.

“Not that loose!” the doctor chided him.

“I tied it, sir. Swear I did.” The orderly was indignant.

“Just do it again.”

“Loose,” I said, but I was losing my strength rapidly. I let the doctor push me back into my blankets. I did not try to sit up again.

“That’s better,” he said. “We may not need the restraints after all.”

I tried to hold onto his words, but they were slippery. I slid back into ordinary nightmares. When I awoke, mid-morning, I felt relief at escaping them, and exhausted as if I had battled all night long. An orderly brought me water and I drank, relieved to find it pure water with no medicines fouling its clean taste. Dr Amicas was nowhere to be seen. The bed to my right was empty and an old woman, her face ravaged by drink, was stripping off the linens. I rolled my head the other way. Spink was there, but he slept on, oblivious to the day’s light or the muted bustle around us. Several times I asked after Nate and Oron, but the nurses seemed to know no names.

“They come and go too fast,” one man told me. He scratched his whiskery cheek. “The beds aren’t even cold before we’re moving someone else into them. Everyone who went to that pagan Dark Evening festival is sick. Whole city has it now, I’ve heard. ’Cept for me. I’ve always had a strong constitution, I have. And I’m a good man, blessed by the good god. I stayed at home with my own wife that night, yes I did. Let this be a lesson to you, young fellow. Those that give credence to the dark gods get paid in the dark gods’ coin.”

His words rattled me. The feverish mind is susceptible to suggestion. The words danced around in my brain, eventually colliding with something Epiny had said. Or was it something I had dreamed.

Something about not being able to use the magic of an older god without making ourselves vulnerable to it. I wondered if I had sinned by going to Dark Evening, and if this was the good god’s punishment of me. Weak as I was, I became maudlin and tried to say my prayers, only to keep losing my place in the verses.