Shaman’s Crossing. Робин Хобб

their way of dress. Such men were said to have ‘gone native’. It was recognized that they were useful as go-betweens, but they were accorded little respect, less trust and almost no acceptance into gatherings of polite company, and their half-breed children could never venture into society at all. I wondered what had become of Scout Halloran and his half-breed daughter.

      I could never conceive what would prompt any man to go native, but now I began to understand. Living alongside Dewara, I sometimes felt the urge to do something that would impress him, according to his own standards. I even considered stealing something from him, in some clever way that would force him to admit I was not dull-witted. Theft ran against all the morality I had ever been taught, and yet I found myself thinking about it often, as a way to win Dewara’s respect. Sometimes I would snap out of such pondering with a jolt, surprised at myself. Then I began to wonder whether stealing something from Dewara would truly be an evil act, when he seemed to regard it as a sort of contest of wits. He made me want to cross that line. In Dewara’s world, only a Kidona warrior was a whole man. Only a Kidona warrior was tough, of body and mind, and brave past any instinct for self-preservation. Yet self-preservation was high on a warrior’s priority list, and no lie, theft, or cruelty was inexcusable if it was done with the goal of preserving one’s own life.

      Then one night he offered me the opportunity to cross over completely to his world.

      Each day of our hunting and wandering had carried us closer to my father’s lands. I more felt this than knew it. One night we camped on an outcropping of rocky plateau that fell away in gouged cliffs. The altitude gave us a wide view of the plains below us. In the distance, I saw the Tefa River carving its way through Widevale. I made our fire Kidona-style, as Dewara had taught me, with a strip of sinew and a curved stick as my fire-bow. I was much quicker at it than I had been. The narrow-leaved bushes that edged our campsite were resinous, but even though the branches were green they burned well. The fire crackled and popped and gave off a sweet smoke. Dewara leaned close to breathe in the fumes and then sat back, sighing them out in pleasure. ‘That is how the hunting grounds of Reshamel smells,’ he told me.

      I recognized the name of a minor deity in the Kidona pantheon. So I was a bit surprised when Dewara went on, ‘He was the founder of my house. Did I tell you that? His first wife had only daughters, so he put her aside. His second wife bore only sons. The daughters of his line wed the sons of his line, and thus I have the god’s blood in me twice.’ He thumped his chest proudly and waited for me to respond. He’d taught me this game of bragging, where each of us tried to top the other’s previous claim. I could think of no reply to his claim of divine descent.

      He leaned closer to the fire, breathed the sweet smoke and then said, ‘I know. Your “good god” lives far away, up past the stars. You are not the descendants of his loins but of his spirit. Too bad for you. You have no god’s blood in your veins. But,’ he leaned closer to me, and pinched me hard on the forearm, a physical gesture I’d become accustomed to. ‘But I could show you how to become part god. You are as much Kidona as I can make you, Gernian. It would be up to Reshamel to judge you and see if he wished to take you to be one of us. It would be a hard test. You might fail. Then you would die, and not just in this world. But if you passed the test, you would win glory. Glory. In all worlds.’ He spoke of it as another man might gloat over gold.

      ‘How?’ The word popped out of me, a query that he took as assent.

      He looked at me a long time. His grey eyes, unreadable even in the day, were a mystery in the twilight. Then he nodded, more to himself than to me, I think.

      ‘Come. Follow me where I will lead you.’

      I stood to obey him, but he did not seem in a hurry to go anywhere. Instead, he bid me gather more leafy branches and build the fire up until it burned like a beacon. Sparks rose on its smoke whenever I threw more fuel on, and the heat of it made the sweat run down my face and back while the resinous aroma wrapped me. Dewara sat and watched me while I worked. Then, when the fire was roaring like a beast, he slowly stood. Walking to a nearby bush, he tore a fresh branch free, and then wrapped the leafy ends of it in several smaller branches. He wove the smaller branches deftly in and out of the larger one until he had a stick with a dense wad of foliage on one end. When he thrust it into the fire, it kindled almost immediately. Bearing this torch, he led me to the edge of our rocky campsite. For a very brief time he paused at the drop-off, staring out over the plain. In the distance, the land slowly swallowed the sun. Then, as full inky blackness poured over the low lands before us, he turned to me. The torch made his face a shifting mask of shadow and highlights. He spoke in a singsong voice, very different from his usual tone.

      ‘Are you a man? Are you a warrior? Would Reshamel welcome you to his hunting grounds, or feed your flesh to his dogs? Have you courage and pride, stronger than your desire to live? For that is what makes a Kidona warrior. A Kidona warrior would rather be brave and proud than alive. Would you be a warrior?’

      He paused, awaiting my answer. I stepped into his world. ‘I would be a warrior.’ Around me, the wide plateaus and the prairie below seemed to catch their breath and wait.

      ‘Then follow me,’ he said. ‘I go to open a way for you.’ He lifted his free hand and seemed to touch his lips. For two breaths, he stood there, the flame-light etching his aquiline features into the night.

      He stepped off the cliff’s edge.

      In shock, I watched him fall, the flames of his torch streaming in the wind of his descent. Abruptly, he vanished. I saw the glow from the torch, but could not see the flame itself. Then even that faded to only a vague nimbus of light. Dewara was gone.

      I stood alone on the cliff’s edge. Night was black around me. The wind pushed at me gently but insistently, bringing the sweet scent and heat of the roaring bonfire. It urged me toward the edge of the cliff. What I did I cannot explain, save by saying that Dewara had led me slowly into his world and his way of thinking and his beliefs. What would have been insane and unthinkable a month earlier now seemed my only possible path. Better to fall to my death than be seen as a coward. I stepped off the cliff’s edge.

      I fell. I did not scream or even shout. I made that passage in silence, the wind ripping at my worn clothing as I fell. I cannot now judge how long or how far I fell. My feet struck something, and my knees buckled under the impact. I wind-milled my arms wildly, trying as much to fly as to catch my balance. In the darkness, a hand caught me by the front of my shirt and jerked me close. A voice I did not recognize as Dewara’s said, ‘You have passed the first gate. Open your mouth.’

      I did.

      He thrust something inside it, something small and flat and leathery hard. For a second, it tasted not at all, and then my saliva wet it, and a pungent taste filled my mouth. It was so strong that I smelled it as much as I tasted it. I felt it, too, a strange tingling that sent saliva cascading and made my nose run. An instant later, I heard the taste as well, as my ears began to ring. All my skin stood up in gooseflesh, and I felt the press of the night, not the air, but the darkness, touching my body. Darkness was not the absence of light, I suddenly knew. Darkness was an element that flowed in to fill spaces such as the one I now occupied. The hand that gripped my shirtfront pulled, and I stumbled forward. Somehow, I walked out of darkness and into another world. Light and the sweet scent of the burning torch overwhelmed my senses. I tasted light and heard the smell of the torch. I felt Dewara was there, but I could not see him. I could not see any distinct object. All distance around me faded to an equal blue. All of my senses were aware of every sensation.

      A god spoke to me. ‘Open your mouth.’

      Again, I obeyed.

      Fingers reached between my lips and took a frog from my mouth. The man who smelled like Dewara set the frog on the flames of the torch that was suddenly a tiny campfire on a hearth of seven flat black stones. The frog burned and sizzled, and sent fine threads of fiery red smoke up along with the sweet smoke. The man pushed my head forward, so that I leaned over the tiny fire, breathing the fumes. The smoke stung my eyes. I closed them.

      Again, I closed them.

      But the landscape that had opened up around me the moment I shut my eyes did not disappear. I could