“Burn!” she cried in a low, mad voice. She gritted her teeth and I heard them grind together. “Burn, you cheat, you whore of magic. Burn, and be dead forever. As dead as Nevare. I did what you asked! I did all you asked; you promised you’d save him if I did! But you didn’t! You let Nevare die! You lying, cheating bitch!” The words poured out of her like thick acid. She stooped awkwardly over her belly to snatch up an armload of the firewood and flung it onto the smoldering leaves. They compacted under the weight of the fuel. For a moment, I thought she had smothered the fire. Then the smoke thickened and a tiny tongue of flame wavered up among the heaped wood. It licked the bark of Lisana’s tree stump longingly.
And all the while, Lisana herself manifested as a fat old woman with gray-streaked hair standing with her back against her stump and her arms spread protectively behind her. Her incorporeal presence could do nothing. Her bare feet and her long dress of bark fabric and moss lace dangled down into the lapping flames. I do not think she felt the fire but she still screamed as the flames ran up the trunk.
It had been weeks since it had last rained. The forest was dry. I suddenly understood what the whispered words had meant. Fire fears no magic. Tiny sparks whirled aloft on an updraft of heat, floating on bits of blackened leaves. It was not just Lisana that was in danger. If this fire spread, it could engulf the entire mountainside and the Vale of the Ancestor Trees below.
Soldier’s Boy had my memories. He knew her name and our language. “Epiny! Stop! Stop that! You’ll kill us all.” He rushed forward and kicked barefoot at the fire. He scattered it, letting air into the smoldering mass, and the flames gushed up, crackling like laughter. Epiny, startled, made no move to stop him. She stared at him, her mouth hanging open.
“Put it out, put it out!” Lisana shrieked.
I do not think Olikea and Likari heard her, but they recognized the danger all the same. Heedless of burns, Soldier’s Boy was stamping at the edges of the burning fire. Olikea had taken the food pouch from her belt and was using it to beat the flames down. But it was Likari who unshouldered the heavy water skin he had been carrying. Opening it, he squeezed the bag, directing the stream into the heart of the fire. Epiny had retreated when the three had rushed up on her. Now she stood transfixed, watching as they tore her fire apart and poured water onto it and then stamped and smothered the remaining flames. In a few moments, the danger was past. Olikea was near sobbing with terror, but Likari was capering with joy. Soldier’s Boy sank down. He saw another glowing ember, and lifted a handful of the wet leaves and quenched it. All three of them were streaked with smoke and soot.
“I told you!” Lisana shouted angrily at Epiny. “I told you I’d kept my word. Even if I hadn’t, the magic would have. The magic doesn’t lie and cheat. There, you see him? You see? Nevare is alive. What you bargained for, you got. Nevare lives!”
Soldier’s Boy turned toward her. Epiny stared at him. Her eyes ran over his dwindled body, but I think his nakedness was just as shocking to her. To her, he was a piebald thing, tanned face and hands, skin pale white and sagging where it was not sunburned scarlet. She blushed, then deliberately fixed her eyes on my face. I burned with shame but Soldier’s Boy scarcely noticed his nakedness before her. With great hesitancy Epiny asked, “Nevare? Can that be you?”
“It’s me,” he lied. And for the first time, I fully realized my position. This other entity was controlling my body. Completely. Using it as he willed without regard for me at all. I flung myself against his walls, and battled hard to take back control of my body. I could feel his contempt for Epiny, and recalled that she had been instrumental in defeating him the first time we had battled. He looked at her and saw his old enemy, come back to give him more trouble. I saw my cousin, ravaged by grief, dirty, tired, thirsty, and miles from where she should be. She was heavy with her first pregnancy, and I knew that it was a difficult one. She should have been home, safe in her house, with Spink and Amzil and Amzil’s children. I thought I had arranged all that. When I’d changed the memory of every witness to the mob, when I’d sent Spink and Amzil home relatively unscathed, I thought I’d bought that for her. I knew that if I’d tried to stay, if I’d even planned to make some sort of a return to the people I knew and loved, the magic would have found a way to take them all away from me.
Two nights ago, it had nearly done it. If I hadn’t surrendered to it, if I hadn’t used it and allowed it to make me its own, Amzil would have been gang-raped on the streets of Gettys. Spink, I knew, would have died fighting to save her and to protect me from the mob. What would have become of Epiny, her unborn child, and Amzil’s little children then? Unchanging grief for Epiny, loss and poverty for Amzil’s children. That was why I’d made that sacrifice. Everything I’d done, I’d done to save them.