Forest Mage (The Soldier Son Trilogy #2)

Forest Mage (The Soldier Son Trilogy #2) Page 229

When I returned to my cemetery that evening, I went to Fala’s grave and paused there for a moment of prayer. It pleased me to see that her grave had been strewn thickly with flowers from those who had attended her funeral. I fervently hoped that whoever had ended her life in such a brutal fashion suffered similarly at his own end. What sort of a man could murder such a slight woman so cruelly and then so heartlessly dispose of her body under a heap of soiled straw? Her fate weighed on my mind as I cooked my simple meal, and it was probably why I sought my bed that night rather than seeking Olikea on the edges of the forest.

I had hoped to spend a night asleep if not at peace in my own bed. Yet sleep eluded me, and when finally I wrestled my way into it, I dreamed not of Olikea or of Fala, but rather of Orandula, the old god of balances. I stood beside him, helping him to balance scales that were fixed, not with two bowls, but half a dozen in a circle, very similar to the carrion carousel I had seen at Rosse’s wedding. The cruel hooks impaled not doves, but people, and worse, they were folk I knew. Dewara was gaffed on one, Tree Woman on another, poor Fala on yet a third, and my mother on a fourth. Around me in a circle, dully awaiting my choice, were Epiny and Spink, Colonel Haren and Olikea, my sister Yaril and even Carsina.

“Choose,” the old god insisted in a caw as hoarse as a croaker bird’s, and indeed he wore the head of a great croaker bird on his man’s body. His red wattles wobbled when he spoke. “You unbalanced it. Now you must make it balance again, Never. You owe me a death. Choose who next feels the talons of death. Or shall it be you?”

It was not an idle question. When I tried to protest that I could not possibly choose, he swung a tool like a hay hook as if he would gather them all. I leaped forward to try to stop him, and felt the cold iron sink into my sternum.

I came awake with a gasp and a jerk. I was trembling all over, with cold as well as fright, and I took a second shock at finding myself standing on the rocky ridge near Tree Woman’s stump. I was facing the edge, gazing down on the violation of the road visible to me as a streak of darkness in the silver-leafed bowl of trees that the full moon showed me.

Of late, I had almost become accustomed to sleepwalking. I took several deep breaths and had almost calmed myself to the point of wondering how I would find my way home through the deeply shadowed forest when a man’s voice spoke beside me. “So. Which would you choose?”

I gave an involuntary cry and sprang back from the dark figure that suddenly stood beside me. It was too accurate an echo of my nightmare. “I cannot choose!” I cried out, and it was my answer to Orandula that I gave him.

I blinked, and my eyes adjusted to the dimness of the moonlit night. It was not the old god who stood beside me, but Jodoli, the Great Man who had bested me in the Speck village. His eyes shone oddly in the mask of pigment that barred his face. He grinned, and I caught a glimpse of his white teeth. “That is the first sensible thing I have heard you say, Plain-skin. You are right. You cannot choose, because the choice has already been made for you. Yet you swing from side to side, delaying and dawdling, careless of the hurt that you do to everyone. Look down there. Tell me what you see.”

I didn’t have to look. “I see the road pushing deeper into the forest.”

“Yes. I walked down there tonight. I found many sticks driven into the earth, marked with bright cloths. And I found the marks where cold iron has bitten into the trees of our ancestors. The last time I saw such marks, it meant those trees were marked for death. As I walked among them tonight, they cried out to me, ‘Save us! Save us!’ But I do not think I can. I think that magic is for you to do, if anyone is to work it. Why do you delay? Is it because, as Kinrove has said, that the Endless Dance has failed, and only bloodshed will save us now?”

“Jodoli, you speak of things I do not understand. I do not know this Kinrove, nor of the Endless Dance. Over and over, I have been told that the magic has claimed me, and that something I have done or will do will doom my people and save yours. The idea that I will be the bane of the Gernians gives me great pain. Why must there be this conflict? What do you fear? Our people have come together in trade. I see that the People bring furs down to us, and I see you enjoy honey and fabric and ornaments that you otherwise would not have. What is evil in this? Why must our people be set against one another?”

Jodoli did an odd thing. He reached out a cautious hand and patted my belly firmly. When I lifted my fists, affronted, he stepped back quickly. “I meant no offense. I do not know how you can be so much larger than I am, so filled with the magic, and profess not to know anything. When last we met, I could not grasp how easily I defeated you. I pondered it for many days afterward, and finally I thought that you had mocked me, or used me for your own ends. All these days, I have waited for your vengeance to fall upon me, and it has filled me with anxiety. I thought of running away, but Firada threatened to disgrace me if I fled. Firada said that you were a false Great One and that you had chosen to go back to your own kind. I knew that was not so. I felt the magic running through you when last we met. I dreaded you. Then tonight I was called by the magic, and when I saw that you, too, had been summoned, I dared to speak to you.”