Forest Mage (22 page)

His voice had gone gentler, ever since he had said the word
“son.” I so wanted to simply agree with him, to put him back in charge of my life and let there be some sort of peace between us, even if it was a peace born of deception.

I couldn’t do it. Was I finally finding what he had once sent me out with Dewara to seek, the courage to make my own decisions when I knew my commander was less informed than I was?

“I’ll do as you say, Father. I’ll confine myself to my room and subsist on whatever you judge is right for me. If that is what it takes to prove to you that I am correct and you are wrong, I will do it. But in the end, I think we will both have to admit that when you entrusted me to Dewara, you began the chain of events that did this to me. If anyone bears the fault for what I have become, Father, it is you, not me.”

He slapped me. He didn’t hit me with his fist. I think if he had, I would have struck him back. He slapped me as if I were an upstart child, and I knew I was not that, and so I let him. I felt it as a small triumph when he shakily told me, “Yes. We will prove which one of us is right. Go to your room and stay there, Nevare, until I myself come to your door. And that is an order.”

I went, but not in obedience. I went with defiance, determined to let him regulate me as he wished and so prove to him that I was correct. I went to my room and shut the door firmly behind me. I seethed as I stripped off my bloodied clothes.
I should have shown them to him
, I thought furiously, and then realized that the dried blood on the dark fabrics could have been nearly any dark liquid. I lifted the side of my belly and pulled hard at where the wound had been, halfway hoping that it would suddenly open and gush blood that I could present to him as evidence of the night’s adventures. It didn’t. There wasn’t even a mark there. I prodded it with my fingers and woke only a vague pain inside me. My body told me that nothing had happened tonight. I thought of getting up and going to Duril, but suspected that if I stirred out of my room, my wakeful father would descend, accusing me of more deceptions. The only thing that would possibly convince my father was allowing him to control my life and seeing that not even he could take the fat from me. I was not resigned to it. I was eager for it, in the way a warlike man is hungry for a confrontation.

I lay down to sleep on my bed. As I closed my eyes, I told myself that only the outside of my body had changed, that within I was still Nevare, and if my father could not see that, then he was both blind and stupid. But before I drifted off to sleep, I finally admitted that I had changed. My body had healed itself tonight of a potentially fatal wound. The fat and the shape of my body were an external change, but internally, I had changed also. The Nevare he had sent away to the academy would never have stood up to him as I had tonight. It was ironic that my father had finally got what he wanted out of me. He was not enjoying it very much.

And so began our battle of wills. The next morning, I awoke early, as I always did, and dressed and sat down on my bed wondering what the day would bring. Several hours later, my father entered my room, a very burly man at his heels. He didn’t address me, but spoke to the servant. “He’s to chop wood all day. He can have three water breaks. No food. At the end of the day, you’re to bring him back up here. That’s all.”

The man knit his brows. “That’s all I’m supposed to do? Watch him and make sure he chops wood and only drinks three times and doesn’t eat anything?”

My father spoke in a flat voice. “If you don’t think that will tax your abilities too much, Narl.”

The servant scowled. “I can do that. Just seems like you’d want me to do more.”

“No. That’s all.” My father turned on his heel and left the room.

I pulled on my boots and stood up. “Let’s go chop wood,” I suggested.

The man scowled so that his forehead stood up on ridges. “You want to go? I don’t have to force you or nothing?”

“I assure you, I’m as eager to do this as my father is. Let’s go.”

“He’s your father?”

I gave up trying to converse with Narl. “I’m going downstairs and outside to chop wood now,” I told him. I started out the door and he followed me like an obedient dog.

I chopped wood all that day. No one spoke to me or paid me much attention. Once, Sergeant Duril wandered casually by and
then walked away again. I suspected he had some thought or news he wanted to share with me, but I wouldn’t acknowledge him in front of my guard. Blisters came up and broke on my hands and were torn away. Knowing that I could only ask for water three times, I schooled myself to wait until my body demanded it. Then I drank deeply. Evidently my father had not given the man any limit for how much water I could have.

It must have been boring duty for Narl. He sat on a section of log and watched me. He wore a floppy brimmed hat, and as the shade of the woodshed moved, he scooted his log section along to stay within it. Most of our wood was either skinny pole wood that I could chop with almost one blow or long heavy logs of spond wood salvaged from the river.

At the end of the day, Narl escorted me back to my room. As I entered, I noticed that a large, new hasp had been fitted to the outside of my door. So I was to be locked in at night, to prevent any midnight kitchen visits.
Thank you, Father
. My room was stuffy when I entered it. The window was shut, and a quick glance showed me that it, too, had been fastened closed from outside. My father wasn’t taking any chances, not even that I would risk a drop from my upstairs window to the gardens below. I could vividly imagine what that would do to my knees and ankles.

My guard shut the door behind me, and I sat down on my bed. I waited to hear the hasp secured in some way, but all I heard was the guard’s departing footfalls. The maid had refilled my water ewer. I noticed with distaste that a chamber pot had been added to my room. The wash water was welcome, though I would have preferred a bath or even a dip in the river shallows.

I did not wait long until I heard a different step on the stair. There was a tap on my door, and when I opened it, my father himself entered with a covered tray. He didn’t look at me. I think even he was somewhat embarrassed by what he was doing to me. “This is your food,” he announced, as if I could have mistaken it for something else. I could smell meat, and instantly my mouth began to water. My hunger, which I could somewhat ignore in the absence of food, became an obsession the moment I could smell or see anything edible. I was glad that he set the tray down without
uncovering it. I feared that if he had shown me what he carried, I could not have focused on his words.

He spoke stiffly. “I hope you realize that I’m doing this for your own good, Nevare. Trust me, and I promise you that by the end of the week, those clothes will be hanging on you. I will prove to you that your fat is a result of your greed, not some ‘magic spell.’”

“Sir,” I said, confirming that I’d heard his words but offering no comment on what I thought of them. He decided that was rude, and left my room. He shut the door smartly and this time I did hear him fasten the hasp shut. Fine. I wasted no time in sitting down to my meal.

In a way, he was fair. I suppose he could have fed me bread and water. Instead, there was a meager portion of everything that my family was enjoying downstairs, even half a glass of wine. The cloth that had covered the tray became my napkin. I did not allow myself a morsel until I had divided every food on my plate into meticulously carved small bites. Then I began, eating each bite as if it were my last and trying to savor the taste in an attempt to make the small quantity satisfying. I had cut the meat so fine that I had reduced it to tiny bundles of fibers. I ground them between my back teeth and let them linger in my mouth until the flavor faded. I ate the peas individually, squeezing the tender insides out of their tiny jackets and savoring the difference in texture. I chewed the bread endlessly, delighted to discover that each tiny square somehow became sweet when it lingered on my tongue.

My father, perhaps from some sense of fairness, had even provided me with a tiny portion of a sweet pudding with three tart cherries in it. This I ate in bits that scarcely covered the tips of the fork’s tines. Had I ever before been so aware of the sharp contrast between sweet and sour, ever mapped so clearly what portions of my tongue responded to each? My deprivation became an exercise in sensory exploration.

And when the last trace of stickiness had been scraped from the dish, I savored the half glass of wine. I wet my lips with it and then ran my tongue over them. I breathed the taste and then, drop by drop, consumed the rest of the glass. A meal I would have de
voured in a few minutes at the academy lasted more than an hour in the privacy of my room.

Do not mistake me. I was not satisfied. Hunger opened its maw and roared within me, demanding more. If there had been anything remotely edible in my room, I would have eaten it. I longed for bulk, for large mouthfuls of food that I could masticate and swallow in huge gulps. If I had allowed myself to dwell on my hunger, I would have gone mad. Instead, I reminded myself that I had gone for days on far less in the time when I had traveled with Dewara. I was deprived but not starving. I set each dish back on the tray and covered it with my napkin. I took out my neglected schoolbooks.

I set myself a lesson from each text and doggedly completed it. I read and took notes from Gernia’s military history. I studied a chapter of math, working each exercise and diligently checking my answers. I translated several pages of Varnian from Bellock’s
Warfare.

And when I was finished, I took out my soldier’s journal and made a complete and unvarnished entry about the entire day. Afterward, I put out my lamp and went to bed in my stuffy little room.

The next morning I was awake and dressed when my guard unlocked my door. That day I worked on whitewashing several outbuildings. The work was not heavy, but it was constant. My shoulders ached and my raw hands could scarcely close around the brush. Nevertheless, I set my teeth and toiled on. I saw my mother once. She came out and stood silently at a distance, watching my toil. When she saw she had caught my eye, she lifted her hand, as if she pleaded with me to understand there was nothing she could do. I nodded to her and turned away. I did not wish her to interfere. This was between my father and me.

My guard allowed me to bathe that day before returning me to my cell. My room was stuffier than ever, for all the smells of my occupation of it were trapped inside it. My evening was a repetition of the previous one. My father himself brought me a small meal that I savored obsessively, and I set myself another night of lessons. If, against all my expectations, my father’s plan worked and
I managed to return to the academy, I did not intend to be behind my classmates. My hopes were torn. I desperately wanted to return to my old life. But I was equally obsessed with finally proving to my father that he was wrong and I was right. I tried to tell myself that either outcome would have its reward, but I found I longed for the former rather than the latter.

I don’t recall how many days I passed with that routine. Every Sixday, I had a small reprieve. My father released me to attend his prayers with my elder brother, and then returned me to my solitude for an afternoon of meditation. But every other day followed the pattern of the first. I rose, I worked all day, I returned to my confinement and my meal and my lessons. My father shifted me from task to task. I gained muscle in my arms, so that my shirt strained more than ever at my shoulders. If my belt notch was any indication, I lost no girth. My guard was a man of few words, and I had even less to say to him.

There were few events of any note during those days of my life. One evening I asked my father for more paper and ink. I think he was shocked to discover that I was continuing my education. He brought me paper and ink, and, as a reward I think, a letter that had come from Epiny and Spink.

It was a welcome distraction. In her letter, my cousin told me that she and Spink were both recovered well from their most recent bout with the plague. Spink in particular showed marked improvement from when they had last seen me. He was much more like his old self, full of energy and ideas. Unfortunately, she wrote, it made him restless and more prone to being dissatisfied with living as a dependent on his brother’s goodwill. He had too many ideas about how the family holding could be improved, and how tasks should be done. He and his older brother often quarreled, which made everyone miserable. Epiny wished there was some way Spink could return to the academy, but the expense was presently too great, especially since she would also need to be housed in the city while Spink was at school.

She thanked me belatedly for sharing her letters to me with her father. After a dearth of communication for several months, they were now corresponding regularly. Without stating it plainly,
she implied that perhaps her mother had somehow blocked earlier letters between them. Lady Burvelle seemed to have lost all interest in Epiny and was focusing her efforts on grooming Purissa to be a consort fit for the very young prince. Epiny thought it disgraceful and heartless. But she also believed that her father was now far less disappointed in her than she had feared. I sensed a great relief in her penned words.

I wrote her a long reply in which I told her all that had befallen me, including my meeting with Dewara. Then, as I decided it was extremely likely my father would read all my mail before he posted it, I tore that letter up. The next one was very circumspect. I said only that my return to the academy was delayed due to some health difficulties that I hoped to resolve soon. I filled up the rest of two pages with generalities about life at home and best wishes for her and Spink.

Having started writing letters, I decided I would also answer the missive from Caulder and his uncle. I tried to describe the area in which I’d “found” the stone that Caulder had stolen from me. I recalled only too well how I’d come by that rock. It had dug its way into my flesh when Dewara had dragged me home. I even made a rough sketch that didn’t merit being dignified with the name “map” and sent it with my letter. With that final, grudging courtesy, I resolved that I was now finished with Caulder and all his kin forever.