We were sitting together in the eaves of a forest. A soft rain was falling. She had brought me a leaf, folded like a cup. In it was a thick, sweet soup, warm and delicious. I drank it and licked the residue from the leaf as she looked on approvingly.
She had a leaf of her own, laden with the same gooey substance. She lapped it slowly from the cup, licking her lips and smiling. Watching her eat made me hungry for her. There was such plenitude to her, such completeness. She was generosity and richness, indulgence and luxury. In her, nothing was denied. I wanted her again. I wanted to be her, full and rich with magic. She saw me watching her and smiled coquettishly.
“Eat more!” she urged me. “Soon I will show you how to get it for yourself.” She handed me another leaf of the stuff. “Let it fill you. It’s their magic. Isn’t it delicious? Fill yourself with it. Eat and grow full of magic.” She leaned closer to me, offering it, and suddenly it was not sweet. It was foul and thick, congealed like blood, sweet in the rotten way of carrion that draws flies. I jerked back from it.
“I don’t want to be full of magic! I want to be an officer in the king’s cavalla. I want to serve my king, and marry Carsina, and send my journals home to my family. Please. Let me just be what I am supposed to be. Let me go.”
“Easy, Burvelle. Easy. Orderly! More water, here, right away. Drink this, Burvelle. Drink it down.”
My teeth chattered against the rim of a glass. Cold water spilled and dripped on my chest. I pried open my gummy eyes. Dr. Amicas was easing me back onto my pillows. He had two days’ growth of gray and black stubble on his chin and his eyes were bloodshot. I tried to make him understand. “I didn’t give Caulder liquor, Doctor. All I did was bring him home. You have to talk to Colonel Stiet. Or it’s all over for me.”
He stared at me distractedly, then said, “It’s the least of your worries, Cadet. But men seldom lie in fevers. I’ll put in a word for you with the colonel. If he survives. Rest now. Get some rest.”
“The dust!” I blurted. “Did he tell you about the dust? The dung. Dung from a sick child.”
The doctor was pushing me back into my bed. I caught at his hands. “I betrayed us, Doctor. I made the ‘loose’ sign, and by it the Specks knew it was me. They knew they had reached the place where cavalla officers are taught. They loosed the dust and the death upon us. They were waiting for me, waiting for the sign. I’m a traitor, Doctor. Don’t let him become me. He means to kill everyone here, every soldier’s son. And everyone in Old Thares, even the king and queen.” I struggled to push his hands away, to escape the bed.
“Easy, Nevare. Rest. You aren’t yourself. Orderly! I need some straps here.”
An old man in a spattered smock hurried to my bedside. As the doctor held me, he tied a strip of linen around my wrist. “Not too tight,” the doctor rebuked him. “I just want him kept in his bed until the delirium passes.”
“Loose!” I said, and made the sign. The strip fell away from my wrist.
“Not that loose!” the doctor chided him.
“I tied it, sir. Swear I did.” The orderly was indignant.
“Just do it again.”
“Loose,” I said, but I was losing my strength rapidly. I let the doctor push me back into my blankets. I did not try to sit up again.
“That’s better,” he said. “We may not need the restraints after all.”
I tried to hold on to his words, but they were slippery. I slid back into ordinary nightmares. When I awoke, midmorning, I felt relief at escaping them, and exhausted as if I had battled all night long. An orderly brought me water and I drank, relieved to find it pure water with no medicines fouling its clean taste. Dr. Amicas was nowhere to be seen. The bed to my right was empty and an old woman, her face ravaged by drink, was stripping off the linens. I rolled my head the other way. Spink was there, but he slept on, oblivious to the day’s light or the muted bustle around us. Several times I asked after Nate and Oron, but the nurses seemed to know no names.
“They come and go too fast,” one man told me. He scratched his whiskery cheek. “The beds aren’t even cold before we’re moving someone else into them. Everyone who went to that pagan Dark Evening festival is sick. Whole city has it now, I’ve heard. ’Cept for me. I’ve always had a strong constitution, I have. And I’m a good man, blessed by the good god. I stayed at home with my own wife that night, yes I did. Let this be a lesson to you, young fellow. Those that give credence to the dark gods get paid in the dark gods’ coin.”
His words rattled me. The feverish mind is susceptible to suggestion. The words danced around in my brain, eventually colliding with something Epiny had said. Or was it something I had dreamed? Something about not being able to use the magic of an older god without making ourselves vulnerable to it. I wondered if I had sinned by going to Dark Evening, and if this was the good god’s punishment of me. Weak as I was, I became maudlin and tried to say my prayers, only to keep losing my place in the verses.
Later I realized that I never saw that man again. My fever-fuddled mind noticed that the people dumping the slop buckets and bringing water to the moaning cadets no longer moved with the precise air of those trained in the military. There were more women working in the infirmary than I would have expected, and some seemed of less than sterling character. At one point I saw one going through the pockets of a cadet’s jacket as he lay unconscious and groaning in his bed. I had not the strength to lift my hand or voice. When next I opened my eyes, the cadet was covered head to toe with a soiled sheet. The altercation between the doctor and two old men in earth-stained clothes had awakened me.
“But he’s dead!” one of the old men was insisting. “Ain’t right to let him lie there till he stinks, you know. Bad enough stink in here already.”
“Leave him!” Dr. Amicas spoke forcefully but without strength. He looked years older and far more frail. “No bodies are to be removed from this room unless I personally give the order. Cover them, if you feel you must, but let them be. I want at least twelve hours to pass between the time of death and the removal of the body.”
“But it’s not right! It’s not respectful!”
“I have my reasons. Leave it at that!”
The other man abruptly asked, “Is it true what I heard? That a woman was put alive in her coffin, and by the time they heard her pounding on the lid, it was too late? She died on the dead cart, there in the cemetery?”
The doctor looked haggard. “No body is to be removed from this ward without my consent,” he said quietly.
“Doctor,” I said hoarsely. When he did not turn to my voice, I tried to clear my throat. It did little good, but the next time I rasped out “Doctor!” he turned toward me.
“What is it, lad?” he asked, almost kindly.
“Did you speak to the colonel for me? Does he know that Caulder lied about me?”
He looked at me in a vague way that told me he had forgotten the matter that still obsessed me. He patted my shoulder absently. “Caulder is very ill, lad, and the colonel is not well himself. He fears he will lose his only son. This is not a good time to talk to him about anything.”
Then down the ward a man moaned loudly, and I heard a gush of fluid hit the floor. The doctor hurried away from me, taking all hope with him. Caulder would die. No one would ever be able to prove he had lied about me. Live or die, I was disgraced. If I died, my father could bury his shame. If I died, there could be no further dishonor for my father or me.
This time, as I sank into fever, I sank with a will. I turned my mouth determinedly from the cool cup that someone pressed to my lips. I would not drink.
I died.
I came to a place of blowing darkness and emptiness. I peered about me into a dull and perpetual evening. I wasn’t alone. Others milled there, as fortuneless and disinterested as I. It was hard to make out individual features. Faces were blurred and clothing merely shadows, but here and there a detail stood out. A woman recalled her wedding ring, and it shone golden still on an ethereal hand. A carpenter clutched his hammer. A soldier moved past me, the medals for bravery glinting on his chest. But most possessed no distinguishing features, no treasured memento of a life abandoned. I moved among them, with no destination or ambition other than to move. After an indeterminate time, I felt drawn in a certain direction and so I went, giving in to the summoning.
Like water seeking the path of least resistance, I joined the slow river of departing spirits. Eventually I became aware that we were approaching a precipice. Most of the spirits drifted to the edge, lingered, and then simply flowed over, vanishing from sight. I reached the perimeter and looked down. A pool of contained light, glimmering with rainbows, like oil floating on water, waited below. As I watched, a woman drew near. She looked down for a time and then stepped into the emptiness. She drifted slowly away from me, dwindling and losing
