now, when she happened upon riders who sat tall in ornate saddles atop mighty horses, if they were soldiers, merchants, or priests, like those who had committed this latest act of near-murder: all such men (easily distinguished from the smaller tribe who inhabited the forest, and who had always shown deference to herself and her children, before their deaths and abduction) were representatives of the city that she had so often observed atop the lonely mountain to the northeast, the city that was outlined, at night, by flickering lights, and into which her last living offspring, along with the body of her eldest, had been taken that terrible day, as she, wounded by a spear to the thigh, tenaciously defended the only thing that she yet could: the two lifeless bodies of her other departed yet no less beloved young ones.
In this way did all citizens of Broken eventually become the warrior queen’s enemies, to be attacked and killed; and thus did she, in turn, become one of the most terrible of the many legends concerning Davon Wood with which those same citizens unnerved one another and attempted to curb any wayward behavior on the part of their children.
Yet on that night, she had approached the site of the old man’s mutilation carefully, and therefore too late to take the lives of the latest band of priests, attendants, and soldiers who had come to the edge of Davon Wood from the mountain. Why? It did not seem to the old man that she was motivated by fear, but rather by some larger purpose: what, then? To finish his suffering for him? Could she truly display such sympathy? He did not doubt it was possible: it was of a piece with his studies of all creatures to know that even inhabitants of the Wood could be moved by such sentiments. And his theory was confirmed yet again as she drew closer, and the old man detected with certainty the full complexity of her aspect: as she studied his mutilated half-legs, dangling awkwardly in the gap between the two trees from which he remained painfully suspended, her expression lost much of the vengefulness with which she had watched the retreating ritual party, and she eyed the old man instead with something very like compassionate curiosity. She detected something unusual in him, he could plainly see that much; and she heard, as well, something noteworthy in the forlorn, agonized sounds that continued to emerge weakly from deep within him.
The old man could not, at that moment, bend his mind to further speculation about her motives; he could only hope that she would end his suffering. That torment was rapidly mounting, in proportion to the steady decline of the effect of such powerful drugs as his acolytes had managed to place inside his cell in the dungeons of the Merchants’ Hall, prior to his being taken to the edge of the Wood. In the one loaf of coarse bread apportioned to the condemned by the dictates of the Halap-stahla, those brave, loyal adherents had concealed half a dozen small, compressed balls of highly potent drugs derived from both unusually pure opium and the resin of Cannabis indica;† but the old man had only consumed two doses, while hiding the others on his person, along with other crucial items: long cotton strips that could later serve as bandages were wrapped tight by the old man to hide medical needles and cotton thread soaked in spirits and oil, as well as the remaining doses of his medication, all against the slender possibility that he might survive the ordeal with the help of his acolytes. In the event that they were unable to secure more drugs before coming to his aid, he would need the remaining doses to tolerate his removal from the ritual site, as well as to endure the closure of his wounds with the needles and thread, a necessary means of preventing further bleeding during his no doubt hasty escape. (Later, of course, he would reopen the wounds, allowing all pus to drain from them as they healed, assisted by cleaning and treatment with honey, strong spirits, and the juices of whatever wild fruits he could find.)
This innocent little bundle he folded inside a longer cotton sheet, which could be strapped around his groin to serve as an undergarment, keeping his secret supplies safely tucked behind his scrotum where no priest would be anxious to search. Yet, despite these preparations, the deliverance that he had hoped might appear did not; or, rather, it did not take the form he had expected. Before his faithful students could effect the old man’s liberation, the silent, thoroughly wild, but still wise and regal queen had emerged from the Wood; yet, instead of delivering the dauthu-bleith† that the old man thought inevitable, she had extended her unusually long and supple body, like some feral child, so that she could bite through the thongs that bound the prisoner. In her subsequent gentle actions, the old man had indeed been able to detect compassion; and when he took the time to consume one dose of his medicines and then, after the drugs had taken effect, to meticulously stitch up his wounds, she exhibited great patience, as well. Only when he was ready had she helped him onto her back, and carried him to the cave in the mountains that had been her home long before it became his.
Yet why had she done it? the old man had wondered, all the years since that day — for on this as almost all subjects, she remained mute: the silence of those whose hearts have been rent almost past repair, and whose souls have thereby lost their voices. The old man had eventually formed notions about her reasons, and these had grown more detailed and accurate, during their time together; but whatever her past, the old man had never doubted that the agonies of flesh and spirit that had been inflicted on him when he had been cast out of the city of Broken would have utterly consumed him — would have driven him, eventually, to himself finish the job that the axe-wielding priests of Kafra had started — if his exile had not been graced by her sublime example.
But it had been so graced: she had not only rescued and nursed him, but taught him, as well — taught him the ways of survival in the Wood, both physical and spiritual. And perhaps the greatest miracle of their long forest idyll had been that her every lesson had continued to be embodied in example: brave, silent, instructive example. No member of any of the academies or museums in which the old man had studied and taught throughout the known world and beyond — great talkers, all — would ever have believed it possible; indeed, they would have called it sorcery, as the learned classes and the holy men of Broken had branded so much of the old man’s work. But if sorcery it was, he had long since concluded, then the moralizing of priests and the investigations of philosophers since the beginning of time had been incorrect; indeed, the entire development of human ethics had been absolutely wrong-headed, and so-called sorcery was, in fact, the most profound good that any creature could embody …
Yet we ought not think that the old man did not experience his own doubts, concerning both his sanity and the circumstances of his survival, during the first few of his ten years with the warrior queen; but the proofs and the reality of her care and her tutelage had quickly become so constant that such doubts, even had they persisted, would also have been speedily rendered moot. In the event, they had not persisted; still essentially a creature of adventurous curiosity, the old man had quickly taken all of her lessons and proofs to heart, learning their thousand vital details fairly quickly (especially given the many and considerable factors that could reasonably have been expected, in such a place as Davon Wood, to slow a legless and aging man’s progress), but above all paying heed to that initial quality he had seen in her: the bravery with which she tended to the business of her own life, as well as to the needs of his, while always plainly bearing a hurt that never healed, a tragedy that not only underlay the imperfectly mended wound in her right thigh (which caused a slight, imperfectly disguised limp when she walked, though never when she ran), but that kept the deeper wound to her spirit open and apparent. Even at its mildest, the old man could detect this inner pain tugging at the corners of her watchful eyes, and occasionally causing her shoulders to slacken. Slacken — but never submit. She labored through her grief to meet her new life’s demands, their new life’s demands, knowing (and, as always, demonstrating to the old man) that while some suffering could be instructive, a surfeit of heartsickness could kill; that such excess was far from the most profound manner in which to honor either the souls of the beloved dead or the memory of a life of wisdom destroyed by ignorance and spite; and that, even when apportioned its proper place, such sorrow, such repudiation of the world and one’s fellow creatures in it, was a thing not to be superficially indulged, as the old man had seen so many poets play at doing, but was one to be respected, and, finally, transcended …
