Shaman's Crossing

My brother had risen and followed my father to the sideboard. “Then you don’t believe”-and I heard the caution in my brother’s voice, as if he feared my father would think him foolish-“that it could be a Speck curse, a sort of evil magic they use against us?” Almost defensively, he added, “I heard the tale from an itinerant priest who had tried to take the word of the good god to the Specks. He was passing through the Landing on his way back west. He told me that the Specks drove him away, and one of their old women threatened that if we did not leave them in peace, their magic would loose disease among us.”

I, too, thought my father would laugh at him or rebuke him. But my father replied solemnly, “I’ve heard tales of Speck magic, just as you have, I’m sure. Most of those stories are nonsense, son, or the foolish beliefs of a natural people. Yet at the bottom of each there may be some small nugget of truth. The good god who keeps us left pockets of strangeness and shadow in the world he inherited from the old gods. Certainly I’ve seen enough of Plainspeople sorcery to tell you that, yes, they have wind wizards who can make rugs float upon the wind and smoke flow where they command it, regardless of how the wind blows, and I myself have seen a garrote fly across a crowded tavern and wrap around the throat of a soldier who had insulted a wind wizard’s woman. When the old gods left this world, they left bits of their magic behind for the folk who preferred to dwell in their dark rather than accept the good god’s light. But bits of it are all that they have left. Cold iron defeats and contains it. Shoot a Plainsman with an iron pellet, and his charms are worthless against us. The magic of the Plainspeople worked for generations, but in the end, it was just magic. Its time is past. It wasn’t strong enough to stand against the forces of civilization and technology. We are coming up on a new age, son. Like it or not, all of us must move into it, or be churned into the muck under the wheels of progress. The introduction of Shir bloodlines to our plow horses coupled with the new split-iron plows has doubled what a farmer can keep under cultivation. Half of Old Thares has pipe drains now, and almost every street in the city is cobbled now. King Troven has put mail and passenger coaches on a schedule and regulated the flow of trade on all the great rivers. It has become quite the fashion to travel up the Soudana River to Canby and then enjoy the swift ride down on the elegant passenger jankships. As travelers and tourists venture east, population will follow. Towns will become cities in your lifetime. Times are changing, Rosse. I intend that Widevale change with them. A disease like this Speck plague is just a disease. Nothing more. Eventually some doctor will get to the root of it, and it will be like shaking fever or throat rot. For the one, it was powdered kenzer bark, for the other, gargling with gin. Medicine has come a long way in the last twenty years. Eventually a cure will be found for this Speck plague, or a way to avoid catching it. Until then we mustn’t imagine it is anything more than an illness, or like a child turning a stray sock into a bugaboo under his cot, we’ll become too frightened of it to look at it closely.” Almost as an aside, he added, “I wish our monarch had chosen a mate a bit less prone to flights of fancy. Her majesty’s fascination with hocus-pocus and ‘messages from beyond’ has done much to spur the popular interest in such nonsense.”

I heard my brother’s lighter tread as he approached the window. He spoke carefully, well aware that my father tolerated no treasonous criticism of our king. “I am sure that you are right, Father. Disease must be fought with science, not charms and amulets. But I fear that some of the guilt for the conditions that welcome disease must be laid at our own door. Some say that our frontier towns have become foul places since the king decreed that debtors and criminals might redeem themselves by becoming settlers. I’ve heard that they are places of crime and vice and filth where men live like rats amid their own waste and garbage.”

My father was silent for a time, and I’ve no doubt that my brother held his breath, awaiting a paternal rebuke. But instead my father replied reluctantly, “It may be that our king has erred on the side of mercy with them. You would think that given the opportunity to begin anew, in a new land, all past sins and crimes erased, they would choose to build homes and raise families and leave their dirty ways behind. Some do, perhaps, and perhaps those few are worth the trouble and expense of the coffles. If one man in ten can rise above a sordid past, perhaps we should be willing to accept failure with the other nine as the price of saving the one. After all, can we expect King Troven to succeed with scum who will not heed even the teachings of the good god? What can one do with a man who will not reach out to save himself?”