Forest Mage

Yet the food I chewed flooded my mouth with keen pleasure. The starchiness of the core became a mild sweetness in contrast to the peppery skin. There were two textures—the fibrous skin and the crisper inner vegetable. The sensation of swallowing a bulky mouthful of food after my long deprivation was an ecstasy in itself. The taking in of food, I suddenly knew, was not only my consumption of life but a victory of the continuation of life. I had once more survived, and my physical body rejoiced in that even as tears filled my eyes at my loss.

Duril was staring at me. “Aren’t you going to go to him?” he asked me at last.

I shook my head slowly. My voice creaked when I spoke. “Give me some time, Sergeant. I’ve been days with no food or water. Let me eat and regain some strength before I have to face him.”

A shadow of disapproval passed across his face, but he did not argue with me. Instead he waited as I ate all the turnips. I offered him some, but he shook his head wordlessly. When the turnips were gone, I found a crock of raisins and sat down to devour them one sticky, chewy handful after another. They tasted wonderful. Yet the more food filled me, the keener became my awareness of my loss.

That sensation of duality flooded me again. There was the Speck me who gloried in survival, and there was Nevare who had just lost most of his world. I looked up at Duril. “Please tell me all you know. I’ve been isolated for days. No food or water, no news.”

“So I see,” he said gravely. “It’s soon told, for all that has happened. The sickness came from Franner’s Bend. So I think, anyway. It happened so fast. Your da and brother went to investigate when Doc Reynolds first sent them a message about a dying family. It alarmed your da enough that he and Rosse came back here to plan the quarantine. But by the next morning, it was too late.” He shook his head. “It spread through the Landing like a wildfire. Somehow it jumped the river. Your brother Rosse came down with it the next day. Your mother caught it nursing him. By then, anyone who could still move was running away from it. I done the best I could, Nevare. I turned out the stock to graze and put the stable beasts out in the fields. It was the most I could do for them. I got sick right after your mother did, so I don’t know too much else until today. I finally decided I was going to live and crawled out of bed and staggered up here. I saw four covered corpses in the yard outside—I don’t know whose, or even how long they’ve been there. Stink is something terrible. Most everyone seems to be gone; at least, I hope they are, and not dead in their beds or something. I haven’t gone room to room—I came to find you first. Had no idea your da had locked you up like that, lad. It’s a miracle you survived. A miracle. What did you eat or drink up there?”

“Nothing.”

He looked at me skeptically.

“Nothing. I’ve had nothing to eat or drink for days!” I shook my head at his doubts and gave it up. “I’ve no time to convince you of it, Duril. But it’s true. Whatever magic Dewara exposed me to is strong. I slept a lot. And deeply, like a bear hibernating, I suppose. And I still feel hungry enough to eat a horse. But—”

“But you haven’t got any thinner. Your skin’s strange, though. Dusky. Dusky as a dead man’s.”

“I know.” I hadn’t, but I’d suspected it. I rubbed at my forearm. It felt odd to my touch, thick and rubbery. I shook my head, pushing the strangeness away. “I have to go to my father, Duril. Then I have to do what you said—go room to room and see what I find.”

I still cringe when I recall my father’s first words on seeing me. He was sitting on a straight-backed chair outside Rosse’s door. He turned his head at the sound of my footsteps.

“You,” he said. “Still alive. Still fat as a hog. And my son Rosse dead. Why? Why would the good god spare you and take Rosse? Why would he serve me so?”

I had no answer for him then or now. He looked terrible, thin, haggard, and unkempt. I set his words aside.

“Have you had the sickness?” I asked him stiffly. He slowly shook his head.

“What should I do now, Father?”

He bit his lower lip. Then as he stood, his mouth worked suddenly, his lower lip trembling like a frightened baby’s. “They’re all dead! All of them!” He suddenly wailed. He staggered forward a few steps, but it was Duril he sought for comfort, not me. The old sergeant caught him and held him as he sobbed. I stood alone, excluded even from his grief.

“Yaril?” I asked him when he took a breath and seemed to be easing.

“I don’t know!” He cried out the words as if I had inflicted a fresh wound on him. “When Elisi sickened, I feared I would lose all my children. I sent Yaril and Cecile away. I told them to ride to Poronte’s holdings. I sent my little girl away, all but alone. There were no servants left who would come to the bell. I had to send them off alone. The good god alone knows what has become of her. All sorts of folk are on the road. I pray she reached there safely, I pray the Porontes took them in.” He burst into open sobs, and then, to my horror, he sank slowly to the floor and collapsed there.