Jodoli had told me to go back to my tree. Coincidence or an unconscious intention led me back to Lisana’s ridge overlooking the Valley of Ancestor Trees. I stood for a time looking down on it before the silence intruded on my brooding thoughts. I squinted, peering at the King’s Road in the distance. All was silent there. No. Not silent. Merely bereft of the sounds that men always bring to the forest. Neither shouts nor axes rang, no wheels ground along over a rough roadbed, no shovels bit into the forest turf. Birds sang and swooped through the afternoon light. I could hear the wind blowing lightly through the trees. The leaves whispered softly to one another, but the voice of mankind had been muted.
Curiosity picked at me. Then I wondered what day of the week it was. The thought rattled oddly in my brain. It had been so long since I’d thought of days fitting on a calendar and having names. But if today was a Gernian Sixday that would explain the quiet. Not even the prisoners were made to work on the Sixday. I turned away from the Vale of the Ancient Ones and made myself walk toward Lisana and my tree.
I felt a strange antipathy to both of them. In the end, it seemed that Soldier’s Boy had stolen all that he wanted from me, and managed to keep it and Lisana, too. I felt spurned by Lisana. I had loved her, I thought, just as truly as Soldier’s Boy. But in the end, she had taken part of me, and left this part to wander. Could she have done that to me if she loved me? Or was the me who walked the earth now the parts that she had found unlovable, even useless? I opened my hands and looked down on them. How could I ever even know what she had chosen to hold fast to? Those parts of me were gone now, lost to a self I’d never know.
I thought of all the things I’d always imagined I lacked during my years at the Academy and afterward: courage under duress and the aggression needed to seize control of leadership and wield it. I’d seen other men fueled by anger or ambition, but had never glimpsed those fires in myself. Soldier’s Boy possessed a ruthlessness that had horrified me. I recalled the sentry’s warm blood running over my hands and guiltily, reflexively, wiped them on my cloak. Had he taken those things with him when he left?
Oh, useless to wonder what I had or didn’t have in me. This self was what I had left. Could I make anything of it?
I walked past my tree with its sodden pile of rotting flesh at the base of it. It hardly even stank anymore. A few flies buzzed, but I had no desire to walk closer or poke at the maggots rendering my former body down into compost. A vengeful man, I thought, would have girdled the bark around the tree. I had no knife or tool to cut it, but even more, I had no will to do it. Such vengeance would bring me no joy.
I did walk up to Lisana’s tree. Like my tree, hers had taken on new life with spring. It was noticeably larger, with glossy green leaves, and the flush of moving sap in the new tips of her branches. Gingerly, I reached out and put my palm to the bark of her trunk. I waited. It felt like a tree. Nothing more. No surge of connection. A memory stung me suddenly and I snatched my palm away from her bark. But no questing roots sought to suck the nutrients from my body. The tree was probably fully occupied with the rich soil and the warm sun of the spring day.
“Lisana?” I said aloud. I don’t know what sort of response I hoped for. Silence was what I received. I followed the fallen trunk her tree had sprung from back to where a wide strip of bark and wood still attached it to her old stump. Soot still blackened one side of the trunk, but the ashes and burned wood of Epiny’s fire had been cloaked over by spring grass. I looked down at the fallen trunk of her tree, to where she and my other self reached welcoming arms up to the day’s light.
I sighed. “You both got what you wanted. I don’t suppose it matters to either of you that you left me wandering this world as a ghost.” A light breeze moved through the treetops, and when it reached the two trees, their leaves rippled in the sunlight. The leaves were deep green, glossy with health. Their trees were beautiful. I felt a moment of hate-edged envy. Then it passed. “For what it’s worth to you, I wish you well. I hope you live for centuries. I hope the memories of my family live with you.”
Tears stung my eyes. Foolish tears. The trees had no reason to hear me or heed me. They were alive and growing. I was more like Lisana’s old stump. I looked at the weathered and rusted cavalla blade still wedged there in her wood. Idly I took hold of the sword’s hilt and gave a sharp tug. It didn’t come free, but the corroded blade snapped off. I looked at the hilt and the few inches of pitted and broken blade attached to it. Well, now I had a weapon, of sorts. Peculiarly appropriate. Half of a rusted sword for half of a ruined man.