Renegades Magic by Robin Hobb
“But that will only be the beginning. ”
He had them now. He smiled at them as he gave the arrow back to Likari. He saw there were only a dozen in the boy’s bundle, but kept his disappointment from showing as he turned back to his audience.
“Kinrove has always been right about one thing. Killing alone will not drive them away. And you have been right about another thing, Dasie. We must bring war to them in terms they understand. ” He smiled, first at the one Great One and then at the other, and I admired how he drew them closer with his acknowledgment of them. “The intruders must know, without mistake, that the deaths come from us. And we must not kill ALL of them. Some few must be allowed to survive. Perhaps only one, if he is the right one. Someone of rank, of power, among them. ”
Outrage returned to Dasie’s face. He ignored it. “That one becomes our messenger. We send him back to his king, with our ultimatum. A treaty. We offer not to kill them if they abide by the rules we give them. ”
“And what rules would those be?” Dasie demanded.
“That,” Soldier’s Boy said quietly, “we will determine. Certainly one rule would be that no one might cut any tree that we say must be protected. But it might be better, perhaps, to say that they may not even venture into those parts of the forest. ”
“And they will leave their wooden fort forever and never come back!” Dasie added with satisfaction.
Soldier’s Boy shrugged slightly. “We could say such a thing to them. But if we did, it would make them less likely to abide by our treaty. And it might foster discontent among the People. ”
“Discontent? To know that we were finally safe from the intruders? To know that our lives could resume peace and order?”
Soldier’s Boy smiled unpleasantly. “To know that the trade goods that so profit us each autumn would no longer flow through our hands. ” He reached out casually and set his hand on the back of Olikea’s neck, as if in a caress. “Let alone to bedeck ourselves. ” About Olikea’s neck were several strands of bright glass beads that I had given her. Strange, I thought, that Soldier’s Boy noticed her ornaments when I myself scarcely gave them a second glance.
Dasie refuted him with disdain. “We had trade with the West long before we had Gettys like a scab on the land. Long before they tried to cut a way into our forest, we had trade. ”
“And we welcomed it!” Soldier’s Boy agreed affably. “But after we massacre every Gernian and tell them they must never build a home near Gettys again, nor enter our forest, how many traders do you think will come to us? What do we have that they must get from us and only us? For what will they risk their lives?”
Dasie was silent and sullen, pondering this. Then she burst out with “They have nothing that we need! Nothing. Better to drive them from the land and make ourselves free of their evil and greed. ”
“It is true that they have nothing that we need. ” Soldier’s Boy put the slightest emphasis on the word. “I am sure that no one here carries a flint-and-steel for fire-making. No one here has tools of iron in his home lodge. A few wear beads and gewgaws, garments or fabrics from the west. But you are right, Dasie. We do not need them for ourselves. All the garments that my feeder brought with her to the Trading Place she quickly traded away to those other traders who came from across the salt water. They seemed to think they needed what she had brought. She made many excellent trades with them, for things that she thought that she needed. But I am sure you are right. Once we have left behind the trade goods of the intruders, we will find other trade goods, of our own making, and trade just as profitably as ever with those who come from across the salt water. They will not ask us, ‘Where is the bright cloth that we came so far to obtain?’ Doubtless they will be happy to trade only for furs. ”
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Silence did not follow his words. Dasie was still, but whispered words ran like mice along the edges of the room. Hands furtively touched earrings or fabric skirts. No one dared to raise a voice to tell Dasie she was wrong, but that torrent of whispering told her what everyone knew she didn’t want to hear. Trade with the intruders was essential if the People wished to continue trading with those who came from across the sea. Game meats and hides, leather and furs, lovely objects carved from wood would buy them some things, but the traders from beyond the salt water were most eager for the trade goods from the west.
Soldier’s Boy delivered the killing blow. “I am sure that few among us would miss tobacco. And we will find other things to trade with the other folk who come to the Trading Place. When they discover we no longer have tobacco from Gernia, they will not sail away in disappointment; we will find something else they desire. ” He spoke in an offhand voice, as if this would be the simplest thing in the world to do.
Dasie’s scowl deepened. One of the feeders had placed a stack of crisply browned cakes at her elbow. She seized one and bit into it as if biting off the head of an enemy. When she had finished chewing and swallowed, she demanded, “What are you suggesting, then? Why bother to attack them if we are not going to drive them away forever?”
I felt the muscles in Soldier’s Boy’s face twitch but he didn’t smile. “We attack them and kill enough of them to let them know that we could have killed them all. And we attack them in an organized way that makes them think that we are like them. ”
“Like them?” Dasie was getting offended again.
“Like them enough that they can understand us. Right now, they treat us as we treat rabbits. ”
Dasie made a sound in her throat. Yet another simile she didn’t appreciate.
Soldier’s Boy spoke on implacably. “We do not think that we should go to the Great One of the rabbits and ask his permission to hunt his people. We do not say to ourselves, ‘There are the lodges of the rabbit folk. I will stand here and call to them before I walk among them, so they know I come peacefully. ’ No. When we want meat, we hunt the rabbits and kill them and eat them. If we wish to walk past the burrow of a rabbit, we do. If we wish to build a lodge where the rabbit burrow is, we do not ask the rabbit’s permission or expect him to take offense if we do so. We do not care if he takes offense. Let him go somewhere else, we think. And we do as we please with the place where he was. ”
“But they are just rabbits,” Dasie said.
“Until you see a rabbit with a sword. Until rabbits come in the night to burn down the lodge you have built. Until the Great One of the rabbits stands before you and says, ‘You will respect my people and the territory of my people now. ’”
Dasie was still frowning. I suspected that Soldier’s Boy had chosen a poor technique for presenting his idea. “Rabbits do not have Great Ones,” she pointed out ponderously. “They have no magic. They do not follow a leader and take a common action. They cannot make fires, or talk to us and demand our respect. ” She spoke scornfully as if pointing this out to a slow child.
Soldier’s Boy let half a dozen heartbeats pass. Then he said, very softly, “And that is exactly what the intruders say of us. That we have no rulers, and our magic is not real. That we have no potent weapons, nor the will to use them. They do not imagine that we will ever demand that they respect our territories, because they do not think that we have territory. ”
“Then they are stupid!” Dasie declared with great confidence in her opinion.
Soldier’s Boy gave a small sigh. I think he wished that he could agree with her. Instead, he said, “They are not stupid. They are, in fact, very clever in a way that goes in a different direction from what we think of as clever. While our young men go forth to hunt, to build lodges, to begin their lives, their young men are sent to a place where they spend all their time learning how to make all of the world their territory. ”
Dasie narrowed her eyes. Obviously, she didn’t believe him.
“I have been there,” Soldier’s Boy said into the skeptical silence. “I learned there what they teach their warriors. And I learned how it could
Cold fury welled in me. Would he turn what he had learned at the Academy against us? Two, I thought, could play at this game. I hardened my heart to his treachery and listened to every word he uttered.
“They do not respect a people who do not live in a fixed place. They do not respect a people who follow their own wills instead of living by the commands of a single ruler. They will not treat with us or believe that we claim the territory we claim until we convince them that they have been deceived, that we are, in fact, very much like them. ”
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Dasie shook her head. “I will not waste time with these deceptions. I wish simply to go down to them and kill them. Slaughter them all. ”
“If all we do is slaughter them, then more will simply come after them. ” He held up a pleading hand to halt her objection. “First, of course, will come the slaughter. But in the wake of that, the few who survive must be told that we have a ‘king’ of our own. Or a ‘queen. ’ They must believe that there is one person who can speak for us. And with that one person, they will make a treaty, like the treaty they made with the far queen who defeated them. Boundaries will be set, new boundaries that fence them out of our lands. And rules of trade. ”
“Rules of trade?” Dasie was listening to him now.
“To make them greedy,” Soldier’s Boy said. “And to assure us of the tobacco we need for the trade. With only one intruder will we trade. That one we will make wealthy. It will be in his best interests to remain the only one we trade with. We will choose someone strong, someone who will hold the others at bay for us, and will obey our rules for the sake of keeping a monopoly on trade with us. Greed will protect us better than fear. ” He paused and smiled at her grim face.
“But first, there must be fear. ”
She slowly returned his smile. “I think I begin to understand. Their weakness becomes our strength. Their greed will be the leash that holds them back. It is, I think, a good idea. Together we will plan this. ” Her smile grew colder, wider. “And the first part we will plan is the slaughter. ”
Soldier’s Boy gestured to Likari and the boy filled his plate. Olikea appeared with a flagon of beer. He scarcely noticed that they tended him. I was a mote of despair, suspended inside him. He had considered his plan well. If he could carry it out, I judged that it would work. He ate some of the meat and then said to Dasie, “The massacre is actually our simplest task. The intruders have long ago lost all wariness of us. They deem us no more threat than the mice that scamper through the stable, and pay as little attention to us. Kinrove’s dancers will strive to keep them demoralized and fearful. It is a pity that more of them did not stay to create a stronger magic”—and he paused delicately—“but Kinrove will have to make do with those he has. In the days and nights before our attack, we will have him increase the power of his magic; when we attack, the intruders will already be exhausted and dispirited. They will almost welcome our killing them. ” He smiled and drank.
It was too much for me. I gathered all my awareness and fury, sharpened it into a point, and with all my strength, tried to unseat Soldier’s Boy from my body. I know he felt my attack, for he choked briefly on his beer. He set his mug down firmly on the tabletop. He spoke internally, to me only.
“Your time is past. I do what I must. In the long run, it is for the best, for both peoples. There will be a slaughter, yes, but after that, the war will be over. Better one massacre than year after year of eroding one another. I have weighed this long, Nevare. I think it is a decision that even Father would understand. And I cannot permit you to interfere. If you will not willingly join me, then I must at least keep you from hindering me. ”
He boxed me.
That is how I thought of it then and how I recall it now. Imagine being imprisoned in a box with no light, yet no dark, no sound, no sensation against your skin, no body, nothing except your own presence. I’d experienced it once before, briefly, when he had been unconscious. The experience had not prepared me to endure it again; rather, it had only increased my dread. At first I did not believe what he had done. I held myself in stillness, waiting for the absence of all things to pass. Surely there would come some glimmer of light, or dimming of shadow, some whisper of sound, some whiff of scent. How long could he completely suppress half of himself?
That brought an unpleasant thought to me. Had I ever done this to him? When I thought I had absorbed him and integrated him back into myself, had he hung in this senseless internal dungeon? I did not think so, I decided. This, I felt, was a very deliberate act on his part. He sought to render me harmless. Down here I could not distract him. Did he suspect that I’d slipped away from him before and dream-walked on my own? Was that what he feared? He should. Because if ever I was in a position to do so again, I would immediately get to Epiny to warn her of the impending attack on Gettys.
Time, as I have mentioned before, is a slippery thing in such a place. Are hours moments or moments hours? I had no way of knowing. When my first period of internal ranting and shrieking passed, I tried to calm myself. The measuring of passing time seemed to me to be of the utmost importance, and I tried to give myself that comfort in any number of ways. Counting only led to despair. The mind counts faster than the lips, and even when I deliberately slowed my count, I realized that reciting an eternity of numbers only deepened my hopelessness.
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It was the most solitary of solitary confinements that could exist. Men went mad from isolation; I knew that. Despite the suffocating lack of otherness that surrounded me, I held grimly to my sanity. He could not, I told myself, suppress me forever. He needed me. I was part of him, as surely as he was part of me. And a time would come when I could slip free of him and dream-walk to warn Epiny. Unless the time for such a warning had passed all usefulness. I veered away from that thought. I would not think what I would do if I emerged from this only to find Gettys destroyed and everyone I cared for slaughtered.
I found other ways to anchor myself in time. I recited poetry I’d memorized for various tutors. I worked math problems in my head. I designed, in excruciating detail, the inn I would have built at Dead Town if I’d stayed there with Amzil. I walked through every step of it, sparing myself nothing. I forced myself to raze old buildings. Mentally, I moved the old lumber out of the way, one load at a time. With a shovel and a pick, using string and sticks, I leveled a building site. I built myself a crude wheelbarrow and with it hauled gravel for a sturdy foundation. I mentally computed the number of cubic feet of gravel my foundation would require, estimated the size of a barrow I could push, and relentlessly forced myself to imagine each trip, down to the shoveling in of each load, the pushing of the barrow, the dumping of it, and even how I would spread it with my shovel. Such was my obsession, and my effort to stay anchored in the world.
And when my inn was built, I thought of how I would bring Amzil and the children there and surprise them with a snug, clean home of their own. I’m afraid I imagined an entire life there with her, gaining her trust, building our love, watching her children grow, adding our own to the brood. It was mawkish, a schoolboy fancy that I embroidered over and over, yet when all other diversions failed, I could taunt myself with thinking of her and pretending a life of shared love.
Not all the time, of course. No one could have lingered in that endless emptiness and stayed completely rational. There were times when I railed and threatened, times when I prayed, times when I cursed every god I could name. I would have wept if I’d had eyes to weep, I would have taken my own life if it had been within my power to do so. I tried every way that there was for a man to escape himself, but in the end, I was all that there was, and so I had to come back to myself.
I plotted a hundred revenges. I shouted to his unlistening ears that I would surrender myself if only he would allow me to stop existing in this vacuum. I found a deep faith in the good god and lost it again. I sang
I did all those things not for a hundred years, but for a hundred centuries. I became certain that Soldier’s Boy had died long ago, but that somehow I continued to exist among his slowly decaying bones. I lived in a place beyond despair. I became stillness.
I do not know if it was because I stopped trying to exist or because he forgot to fear me. Tiny bits of sensory information began to drift down to me. It did not happen often; I could not conceive what “often” would mean anymore. A sour taste. A brief scent of wood smoke. Likari’s giggle. Pain from a cut finger. Each tiny bit of sensation was something to be pondered. I did not rise to them like a fish snapping at bait. I was too worn down for that. I let them drift down to me, where I considered them without haste.
One brick at a time, a wall can rise. One small experience at a time, life and awareness came back to me. I felt like a toad emerging from hibernation, or a pinched limb slowly tingling back to life. A conversation was falling all around me in disconnected bits.
“The horses are essential. ”
“Then they’ll have to learn, won’t they?”
“Find a way to carry fire, then. Clay pots nested inside of one another, perhaps. And carry the oil separately. That would be less showy than torches. ”
For the first time, I caught a soft mumble that could have been another voice. I savored it. Soldier’s Boy spoke again.