It was the most solitary of solitary confinements that could exist. Men went mad from isolation; I knew that. Despite the suffocating lack of otherness that surrounded me, I held grimly to my sanity. He could not, I told myself, suppress me forever. He needed me. I was part of him, as surely as he was part of me. And a time would come when I could slip free of him and dream-walk to warn Epiny. Unless the time for such a warning had passed all usefulness. I veered away from that thought. I would not think what I would do if I emerged from this only to find Gettys destroyed and everyone I cared for slaughtered.
I found other ways to anchor myself in time. I recited poetry I’d memorized for various tutors. I worked math problems in my head. I designed, in excruciating detail, the inn I would have built at Dead Town if I’d stayed there with Amzil. I walked through every step of it, sparing myself nothing. I forced myself to raze old buildings. Mentally, I moved the old lumber out of the way, one load at a time. With a shovel and a pick, using string and sticks, I leveled a building site. I built myself a crude wheelbarrow and with it hauled gravel for a sturdy foundation. I mentally computed the number of cubic feet of gravel my foundation would require, estimated the size of a barrow I could push, and relentlessly forced myself to imagine each trip, down to the shoveling in of each load, the pushing of the barrow, the dumping of it, and even how I would spread it with my shovel. Such was my obsession, and my effort to stay anchored in the world.
And when my inn was built, I thought of how I would bring Amzil and the children there and surprise them with a snug, clean home of their own. I’m afraid I imagined an entire life there with her, gaining her trust, building our love, watching her children grow, adding our own to the brood. It was mawkish, a schoolboy fancy that I embroidered over and over, yet when all other diversions failed, I could taunt myself with thinking of her and pretending a life of shared love.
Not all the time, of course. No one could have lingered in that endless emptiness and stayed completely rational. There were times when I railed and threatened, times when I prayed, times when I cursed every god I could name. I would have wept if I’d had eyes to weep, I would have taken my own life if it had been within my power to do so. I tried every way that there was for a man to escape himself, but in the end, I was all that there was, and so I had to come back to myself.
I plotted a hundred revenges. I shouted to his unlistening ears that I would surrender myself if only he would allow me to stop existing in this vacuum. I found a deep faith in the good god and lost it again. I sang inane songs and made up new verses for them.
I did all those things not for a hundred years, but for a hundred centuries. I became certain that Soldier’s Boy had died long ago, but that somehow I continued to exist among his slowly decaying bones. I lived in a place beyond despair. I became stillness.
I do not know if it was because I stopped trying to exist or because he forgot to fear me. Tiny bits of sensory information began to drift down to me. It did not happen often; I could not conceive what “often” would mean anymore. A sour taste. A brief scent of wood smoke. Likari’s giggle. Pain from a cut finger. Each tiny bit of sensation was something to be pondered. I did not rise to them like a fish snapping at bait. I was too worn down for that. I let them drift down to me, where I considered them without haste.
One brick at a time, a wall can rise. One small experience at a time, life and awareness came back to me. I felt like a toad emerging from hibernation, or a pinched limb slowly tingling back to life. A conversation was falling all around me in disconnected bits.
“The horses are essential.”
“Then they’ll have to learn, won’t they?”
“Find a way to carry fire, then. Clay pots nested inside of one another, perhaps. And carry the oil separately. That would be less showy than torches.”
For the first time, I caught a soft mumble that could have been another voice. I savored it. Soldier’s Boy spoke again.
“No. Find someone else to do that. These men must remain here. They have to concentrate on what they are doing.”
“I know it’s heavier. Aim it higher than the target you want it to hit. But be careful. It must hit the wall high, not arch over it. We don’t have many. We will give three to each of our four best archers.”
“Drill is essential. It’s boring, but it’s essential. If we attack as you suggest, then the intruders will still see us as a disorganized horde. Ranks and precision will convince them that they have finally incurred the wrath of the Great Queen of the Specks, and that she has sent her army against them.”