Forest Mage (The Soldier Son Trilogy #2)

Forest Mage (The Soldier Son Trilogy #2) Page 280

“I know you think that your life is in shambles and not worth saving,” he said quietly. “But for a moment, I wish you’d stop being so selfish and look at what you are doing to Epiny and me. She loves you, Nevare. I can’t fail her and then spend the rest of my life with her. She has already said that if we have a boy, she’s going to name him Nevare. Does that mean nothing to you?”

“It means that as usual, Epiny is acting without a grain of sense. You should stop her. You have a duty to protect your son from his mother’s foolishness.”

There was a long, cold silence. He spoke formally at last. “Well. I will tolerate many things from you, but not insult to my wife. You may do as you please. I will put forth my best effort, and I will never have to apologize to my wife or anyone else for being derelict in my duties. Go to your death a coward if you must, Nevare. Good day.”

And with that, he left me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

LISANA

F or the rest of that morning, I laid on my pallet and wondered exactly what Spink would think he must do. It was good to know that he would stand by me as a friend, even when I chose to give up, but it was intolerable that he should defy me, for if he chose to betray my real name and then speak of my involvement with the Specks, he would ruin my family’s name. Even if he won clemency for me that way, I thought grimly, I would emerge from my cell into a life I preferred not to face.

I reined my mind away from such thoughts and began to make my plans, feeble as they were. At the very first opportunity after I came into the courtroom, I would attack whoever was presiding. I’d have to make it a real effort, not just a dramatic show. I wanted to force them to kill me. I wondered if I’d be moved from my cell to the courtroom by armed guards. If so, a simple escape attempt might win me what I hoped for. Now that the magic had forsaken me, a bullet or two in the back should end it all. I shifted on my bunk, and the abused planks beneath me gave a final protesting crack before they collapsed onto the floor. I sighed, but did not bother getting up. After a time, I closed my eyes.

Sleep opened under me like a trap door.

I fell to my knees in the deep moss. Around me, the summer forest hummed with life. I blinked, for even the leaf-dappled sunlight was a shock to my eyes after the dimness of my cell. The rich, earthy smells of moss and earth filled my nostrils. A pale green butterfly came to dance around me, perplexed, and then suddenly lifted and wafted away on the foliage-filtered breeze. Slowly I stood and looked around me, then turned my feet to the path that led up the ridge to Tree Woman’s stump.

I felt a difference in my presence in this place. I was not there under my own power but at her command. I was as footless as a ghost, as if I drifted over a path where before I would have felt the mossy earth beneath my feet. The cool breeze touched my face but did not move my hair or stir my clothing. When I came in sight of Tree Woman’s stump, I halted, perplexed.

“And here he is,” I heard Tree Woman say. But not to me. Epiny stood there beside her, leaning on Tree Woman’s trunk, looking pale and sweaty and disturbingly real. She had been wearing a straw sun hat; she had pushed it off and it dangled down her back by the ribbon around her neck. Her hair had been pinned up as befitted a married woman, but it had come down messily in tendrils around her face. The dark blue dress she wore struck me as peculiarly shapeless and unflattering. Then I abruptly realized it had been cut to accommodate the growing child inside her.

“You cannot be here,” I said to her. She peered at me, her eyes widening. “You can’t be here,” I said more loudly, and then she seemed to hear me.

“I am here,” she asserted, an edge of anger in her voice. She squinted at me and then, with a small gasp, lifted her hand to her mouth. “You are the one who cannot be here. Nevare. You are rippling.”

“It is only by her pleading that you are here,” Tree Woman rebuked me as she wavered into view. She sat on top of her stump, looking older and wearier than I had ever seen her. She was thinner, I realized. Depleted of her fat. That was disturbing. “You see what you have reduced me to!” Tree Woman rebuked me. “This is your own fault, Soldier’s Boy, that I have so little strength to help you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He never understands anything,” Tree Woman observed to Epiny in the voice of an older woman advising a much younger one.

“I know,” Epiny replied. She sounded both exhausted and fearful. She was breathing heavily, and when she set her hand to the top of her belly, my heart tightened.

“You shouldn’t be here. How did you get here?”