Forest Mage

“It wasn’t you, Never. It was the magic. You can’t hold yourself responsible for what it makes you do.”

I winced. He had confided much to me. He had done things that shamed him, though nothing so foul as what I had done. Nevertheless, although I did not utter the thought aloud, I thought his sentiment a cowardly one. “I think I have a duty to my own people to resist it,” was all I said.

“Do you?” he asked me quietly. “Do you believe that Gernians are the most important people in the world? Or do you think so only because you were born one? If you’d been born anywhere else, would you still think that you had a duty to protect the interest of Gernia, no matter what it cost other people?”

“I don’t see anything wrong with being a patriot. I love my country and I respect my king. As soldiers, should we do less?” I felt pushed by his words.

“As soldiers, that is very admirable. It’s only when we are being more than soldiers that it comes into question.”

I let a silence fall. I considered all he had said. Realization dawned on me. “You pretend to be common-bred. But you’re not.”

“I never said I was.”

“But you talk like it. Sometimes you sound like an ill-bred, ignorant man, but I think you do that on purpose. There are moments when your thoughts are too exact, too concisely phrased. I believe you were nobly born.”

“And?”

“So why do you deceive people?”

He lifted one shoulder. He didn’t look at me. “Isn’t that what we scouts are supposed to do? We blend. We cross borders. We live in the space between peoples.”

“Did you want to be a scout? It doesn’t sound as if you admire what you do.”

“Did you want to be a soldier? Pass me more meat, please.”

I did as he asked. “I had no choice in being a soldier. I’m a second son. It’s what I am destined to be.” I took another skewer of meat off the fire for myself. “But that doesn’t mean I’m opposed to being a soldier. On the contrary. It’s what I always dreamed of doing.”

“You took your father’s ambition for you and made it your own.”

“No. I think that my father’s ambition for me and my ambition for myself happened to be the same thing.” I said the words firmly, perhaps to cover that I suddenly wondered if they were true.

“So you did consider other careers. Poet, engineer, potter?”

“Nothing else appealed to me,” I replied staunchly.

“Of course it didn’t,” he replied agreeably.

Stung, I demanded, “What do you want of me, Hitch?”

“Me? Nothing at all. But I’m not what you have to worry about.” He shifted, grunting as he did so. His injuries were improved, but they still pained him. “I don’t know why I’m even badgering you about it. Listen, Never. I know a bit about this, but not everything. And maybe all I’m trying to do is offer you my knowledge in exchange for yours. So I’ll go first, and you tell me if anything I say goes counter to what you know.”

I nodded tersely, and tossed my toasting stick into the fire. “Very well, then.” He cleared his throat, paused, and then laughed. It was the first honest laugh I’d heard from him. “Damn. I still feel like a boy, telling ghost stories by the fire. There’s a part of me that can’t let go of everything I learned growing up, a part of me that just can’t believe this is real, let alone happening to me.”

I suddenly felt a loosening in my shoulders. Quietly I said, “That lines up exactly with what has bothered me the most about this. When I try to talk about it, people think I’m crazy. My father was furious with me. He just about starved me to death, trying to prove I was lying about it.”

“I’m surprised you even tried to tell him. Did anyone believe you?”

“My cousin. And Sergeant Duril, an old fellow who was my tutor. And Dewara. He believed me.”

He squinted his eyes at me. “I’m not sure you should have told him. It seems dangerous to me.”

“How?” I hadn’t told him Dewara was dead.

“I’m not certain. It just does.” He smiled grimly. “The magic has had me for a long time, Never. A good ten years. I’ve grown accustomed to it, just as a horse learns to wear his harness, no matter how much he might resent it at first. And I’ve come to have a feel for it. I know a little of what it can do for me. But I know a lot of what it can make me do. It’s ruthless. Always remember that. Always remember that you are just a tool to it.”