Robin Hobb - Shaman's Crossing

Epiny clung desperately to Spink, her slender, diaphanous arms locked around his neck. “Nevare!” She looked from me to the heap on the ground and back again. I saw her struggle to understand and then discard that for a more immediate fear. “The bridge is gone. What will become of us?” she wailed. Spink’s face remained impassive.

“Hold tight to him!” I told her. Sword at the ready, I toiled up the hill toward her. As I advanced on Tree Woman, I warned her, “Send them back!”

She laughed at me. Her laugh was earthy, musical and rich. To my dismay, I loved it. I loved it, and I loved all she represented. The wilds lands and the forests and the great trees were in her eyes. I loved all of her. I suddenly perceived that she was not old, but eternal. She held out her arms to me, and I longed to rush into her embrace. Tears came to my eyes as I spoke. “Let my friends go. Or I’ll kill you.”

She shook her head, and wind rustled through leafy treetops. “Do you think you can kill me here, in my own world? With what, soldier’s boy? That little twig of iron? You stand in my world, in the heart of my magic!” She bent down toward me, and suddenly she was tree and woman, all in one. Her leaves rustled as she swayed down at me. Her branches reached to draw me to her.

“You said it yourself!” My voice came shrill. “‘Magic touches back.’ You brought my magic here, through me, and used it. Used it just as I used the magic of your kind. Just as you gained a hold on me when you used my magic, so I think mine has taken power over you!”

On my final word, I sprang to my attack. A sabre is not an axe. It has a cutting edge, but for flesh, not bark and wood. I put all I had into the swing, expecting the shock of hard contact. I thought I had a chance of hurting her. Instead, it was like cutting butter. My sabre slid through her, and then caught and stuck. I let go of it. It had opened a horizontal gash in her soft belly, in her trunk, in all that she was. She screamed, and it cracked the sky. Golden sap, warm as blood, flowed from her wound and onto the earth. She fell backwards from me, just as a tree would have fallen if chopped through the trunk. When she hit the ground, the earth split. Light burst up from it. The goddess of the world had fallen at my feet, my sabre still stuck in the stump of her body. I stood over her, looking down in shock at what I had wrought. I had triumphed. My heart was breaking.

Her eyes, deep as the forest, flickered open. She made a final gesture at me. As her hand fell, I was flung from her world.

I returned to my life slowly, almost reluctantly, over a period not of days, but of weeks. Dr Amicas told me that my case of the plague was unique; that I had passed from the Speck plague into a brain fever that had sent me into a coma. I did not one day ‘awake’ from it. Rather, I slowly drifted out of it and back into my life. The doctor was surprised to see me live, let alone slowly recover my faculties. By the time I was aware of myself, I found I had been moved to a comfortable room in the guest wing of my uncle’s house. Nonetheless, the good doctor came to visit me often during the days of my convalescence. I think he enjoyed seeing me, for I was one of his few successes in a season of terrible failures.

A hired nurse cared for me at first. Either she did not know anything or she had been told to say nothing that I might find distressing. I know that some days of awareness passed before I came to myself enough to know that I should worry about my family and friends. To my halting questions she would only reply that I should not fret, soon I would be better and be able to get about and discover things for myself. If I’d been able to get out of bed, I think I would have throttled her.

But I could not. I suffered a general weakness in my limbs and an aggravating confusion with my speech. When the doctor visited me, I was able to convey both my frustration and my fear to him. He patted my hand condescendingly and told me that I was fortunate, that after a fever such as mine, some men awoke half-wits. He told me to work on my speech, perhaps by reading aloud or reciting familiar poetry. Then he left me and I had to deal with the hired nurse again.

I did not see much of my uncle. Considering the trouble I had brought into his life, I was surprised that he took me into his home at all. My aunt never visited me. Uncle Sefert did not visit me often, and his visits were short. I could not blame him. He was still kind to me, but in the new lines in his face I could see that Epiny’s impulsive act had cost him much in sleep and worry, not to mention heartbreak. Under the circumstances, I kept my concerns to myself., He had enough burdens of his own. I would not tell him that I had been culled, and that as soon as I was well enough to travel, I’d be taking Sirlofty and heading home. I tried several times to write to my father, but my wandering handwriting looked like the scrawl of an irresponsible boy or a depraved old man, and my hand always grew too weary to hold a pen long before I found the words to explain to my father how I had fallen. My nurse often exhorted me to take hope for the future in how the good god had preserved me, but most days it seemed to me that continuing my life was the cruellest jest the good god could have played upon me. Whenever I looked at the days of my life that stretched before me, I felt discouraged. What was I to do with them all, now that I’d ruined my prospects?

Epiny herself came at least once a day, to chatter at me until I was exhausted. She herself had been ill for several days with a much milder case of the plague. During recovery, when she had still been too weak to resist him, the doctor had sternly and firmly returned her to her family home. Her mother had reluctantly received her, she claimed.

To me, she seemed completely recovered now. She read the worried letters that my family had sent to me, and took it upon herself to send replies to them, assuring them of my steady recovery and fond thoughts of them. She did not comment that there were no letters from Carsina. That was a small mercy. She told me that during the days of my coma, she had sat by my bedside and read poetry to me for hours on end, hoping that I would take comfort from the sound of a familiar voice and that it would help me to recover. I don’t know that it aided my recovery, but it possibly accounted for several rather peculiar dreams from that haunted wandering of my mind.

In her own careless way, she tried to be considerate of me. She made an effort to always be cheery and pleasant in the time she spent with me, but sometimes the rims of her eyes were pink, as if she had been crying, and she now seemed older than her years rather than younger. She wore sedate women’s clothing, and kept her hair up and pinned in a style so tidy that it bordered on severe. I think the conflict with her parents over the choice she had made weighed on her more than she wished me to know.

Epiny waited some time before she judged me well enough to have news. She was worse than the hired nurse. She nearly drove me mad by changing the subject whenever I asked for tidings of my friends. One day, when she had provoked me to a coughing fit by refusing to answer my repeated questions, she relented. She shut the door, sat down by my bedside, took my hand in hers and proceeded to sketch in the ten days that had vanished from my life.

She began with what she called ‘the mundane’. Spink had survived and was recovering, but the plague had taken its toll on him. He was thin, wasted to bones, and still so weak that he could not stand. He remained in the infirmary. She had not been able to see him, but was able to send and receive letters from him. Her father had forbidden her mother from blocking them. The letters he sent to her were short. His joints were swollen, and even small movements were painful to him. Dr Amicas had told him regretfully that he would probably never have a military career of any kind, for even after full recovery, he doubted that Spink would have much stamina. My friend could look forward to life as an invalid, depending on his brother for sustenance and keep.