“Not my doing, for the most part,” I said, and again I felt it was Soldier’s Boy speaking through me. I let him. I was hearing what I most wished to know. I didn’t like what I was learning, but it was what I needed to know. In the next moment, I liked it even less. “Nevare spent the magic we had so painstakingly gathered. All the magic I had harvested from the Spindle, gone in three short breaths. I still cannot believe it.”
She was quiet for a time. Then she concurred with, “Neither can I. Oh, Soldier’s Boy, are we any closer to a solution? Is your task nearly done?”
He let go of her soft hand and made angry fists of his hands. “That is precisely the problem, Lisana. All that I must do for the magic, I did. Everything that it asked me to do, I accomplished. I gave the rock. I stopped the Spindle. I kept and left the book. All these things I have done, yet the magic has not worked. I do not know any more what it wants of me. Only those three things were clear to me, and I have done them. When I do my tasks and the magic does nothing, what am I to do?”
For a long time, there was silence between them. They reclined together in the loose leaves, and her touch against him was sweet, but it could not free him from his torment. Finally she asked in a soft, low voice, “What will you do?”
He had picked up a red leaf and been considering it. Now he crushed it in his hand and let the pieces fall. “I had thought to gather a great deal of magic, and use it to unite all of the People under one Great One. I had thought that then I would move against the Gernians in a way they would understand. I went to their schools. I know how the Landsingers drove the Gernians from their territory and claimed it back from them. What has worked once, I thought, might well work again. Let them see us as a mighty people with weapons they cannot copy or prevail against.”
“A mighty people?”
He rubbed his face with both hands. “Do you remember the story you told me of the children and the bear? The bear wished to have the fish the children had caught. They knew if they ran, the bear would chase them down.”
“So they spread their cloak between them, to make themselves appear as if they were a single creature larger than the bear. And they shouted and threw stones and ran at the bear. And he fled.”
“Exactly,” Soldier’s Boy told her. “If we can perhaps appear to be a greater force than we are, if we can confront them with a size and a power they don’t expect, then perhaps they will turn and run.”
“That would take time. For years, Kinrove has tried to gather the People into a single unit. With all of his magic, he could not.”
“And I do not have time. This young Great One, Dasie, has forced my hand. She is the one who destroyed Kinrove’s dance, in the name of freeing our own people. Lisana, she brought iron among the People, used iron against a Great One to get her way. She has threatened me with iron if I try to oppose her. All I can do is take my plan and try to make her a part of it. She is the one, the ‘queen’ that the intruders will see opposing them. And I have told her that we must allow Kinrove to restore his dance. Without it, we have no hope of success in our attack against the intruders.”
She had been watching his face as he spoke, and now her eyes were wide with alarm. “You will attack them?”
“Yes.” He spoke the word in a harsh voice that made it plain it was not his desire but that he would do it. “As soon as we are ready. Kinrove is going to make a summons to restore his dance. I do not know how swiftly the dance magic will be restored. But it must work against the Gernians for some time before we attack; men do not fight well when their morale is damaged.”
She turned her head, looking at him, but I felt she was actually looking for me in his eyes. She confirmed it when she spoke. “This is not something you learned from me, Soldier’s Boy. This comes from Nevare, and the school in the west. Almost I wish you had not taken him into you.”
He gave a harsh laugh. “Yes. It does. We will turn their own tactics against them.”
She looked stricken. “How can you defeat the enemy when you have become the enemy? Soldier’s Boy, this is not our way. And it is not the magic’s way. You cannot say the magic prompts you to do this.”
He looked at her, and then away. I could feel something building in him. His voice was hard when he spoke. “No. I’ve told you. It isn’t the magic’s way. It’s my way. It’s what I am forced to do when I have done all the magic has commanded me, and none of it has worked. Many a night have I lain awake, thinking and thinking, until my brain pounds inside my skull. If the magic will not tell me what it wants, it must be because I already know what I must do. Why, then, did the magic choose me? Because it knew I would go to that school and learn these things, and that I could then turn their own teachings against them.”