Forest Mage. Robin Hobb

      Cadet specifically mentions a female Speck. “Beautiful”.

       Did you have any contact with any Speck that evening?

      Cadet evasive.

       Did your contact include sexual congress?

      Cadet denied. Continued questioning. Cadet evasive. Cadet eventually admitted sexual contact.’

      I stared at the damning words. But I had not. I did not. I hadn’t had sexual contact with a Speck on Dark Evening, and I certainly hadn’t confessed that I had to the aide. I remembered him now, vaguely, as a dark shape silhouetted against a window that was too bright with light. I remembered him badgering me for an answer when my mouth was dry and sticky and my head pounded with pain.

      ‘Yes or no, Cadet. Answer yes or no. Did you have sexual contact with a Speck?’

      I had told him something to make him go away. I didn’t remember what. But I’d never had sexual contact with a Speck. At least, not in real life. Only in my fever dreams had I lain with Tree Woman. And that had been only a dream.

      Hadn’t it?

      I shook my head at myself. It was becoming more and more difficult for me to draw a firm line between my real life and the strange experiences that had befallen me ever since the Kidona Dewara had exposed me to plains magic. In her medium’s trance, Epiny had confirmed that I had indeed been split into two persons, and one of me had sojourned in another world. I had been willing to accept that. I’d been able to accept it because I thought it was over. I’d recovered the lost part of my self and made it mine again. I had believed that my Speckself would merge with my real self, and the contradictions would cease troubling me.

      Yet time after time, that strange other self intruded into my life, in ways that were becoming more and more destructive to me. I recognized him when I’d lain beside the farm girl, and he’d triumphed at Dancing Spindle. That Nevare, I felt, that ‘Soldier’s Boy’ had been the one to spout anger so drastically at Carsina. I’d known him by the anger pulsing in my blood. He’d had the courage to free the dove from the sacrificial hook. I’d felt him again whenever I’d found words to confront my father in the days since the wedding. He wasn’t a wise influence on me. But he could rally my courage and foolhardiness and suddenly push me to assert myself. He relished confrontation in a way I did not. I shook my head. In that, he was a truer son to my father than this Nevare was. Yet I had to admit there had been times when I’d valued his insight. He had been with me the first time I glimpsed a true forest on my river journey to Old Thares, and it had been his anger I’d felt over the slain birds at Rosse’s wedding. In quieter moments, his vision of the natural world replaced mine. I would see a tree sway or hear the call of a bird, and for the passing instant of his influence, those things would mesh with my being in a way my father’s son would not understand. I no longer denied the existence of my Speckself, but I did all I could to prevent him controlling my day-to-day existence.

      But this change to my body was something I could not ignore nor exclude from my daily reality. As part of my ‘real’ life, it made no sense. The rigours of my journey home and my fast should have made me lose weight. Instead, I’d grown fatter. Had I caught the plague because I’d dreamed of congress with a Speck woman? Was my fat a consequence of the plague? If so, then I could no longer deny that the magic permeated every part of my life now. For a dizzying instant, I perceived that the magic was completely in control.

      I snatched my thoughts back from that precipice. It was too terrifying to consider. Why had this befallen me? As logically as a mathematical proof, I perceived the beginning of these changes in me, the place where my path had diverged from the future I had been promised and into this nightmarish present. I knew when my life had been snatched out of my control. An instant later, I knew whom to blame for it.

      My father.

      At that thought, I felt the milling guilt in me stop just as the Dancing Spindle had ground to a halt. That single thought, that pinning of blame made all events since my experience with Dewara fall into a new order. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ I said quietly, and the words were like cool balm on a burning wound. I looked at the door to the parlour. It was closed, my father no longer there. Childishly, I still addressed him. ‘It was never my fault. You did it. You put me on this path, Father.’

      My satisfaction in finding someone to blame was very shortlived. Blaming him solved nothing. Dejected, I leaned back in my chair. It didn’t matter who had put me in this situation. Here I was. I looked down at my ungainly body. I filled the chair. The waistband of my trousers dug into me. With a grunt and a sigh, I shoved at it, easing it down under my belly. I’d seen fat old soldiers hang their beer guts out over their trouser tops this way. Now I understood why. It was more comfortable.

      I sat up in my chair and gathered my papers together. When I tried to fit them all back into the envelope I discovered another letter among them. I tugged it out.

      This last enclosure was addressed to me in the doctor’s hand. I threw it on the floor in childish pique. What worse thing could he send to me than what he already had?

      But after a few moments of looking at it there, I bent down laboriously, picked it up and opened it.

      ‘Dear Nevare,’ he had written. Not Cadet Nevare. Simply Nevare. I clenched my teeth for a moment and then read on.

      ‘‘With great regret, I have done what was necessary. Please remember that your discharge from the Academy is an honourable one, without stigma. Nonetheless, I imagine you hate me at this moment. Or perhaps, in the weeks since I have seen you, you have finally come to accept that something is terribly wrong with your body, and that it is a crippling flaw that you will have to learn to manage. It is unfortunately a flaw that renders you completely unfit for the military.

      ‘You were able to accept that those of your fellows whose health was broken by the plague had to give up their hopes of being active cavalla officers. I now ask you to see your own affliction in the same light. You are just as physically unfit for duty as Spinrek Kester.

      ‘You may feel that your life is over at this moment, or no longer worth living. I pray to the good god that you will have the strength to see that there are other worthwhile paths that you can tread. I have seen that you have a bright mind. The exercise of that intelligence does not always demand a fit body to support it. Turn your thoughts to how you can still lead a useful life, and focus your will towards it.

      ‘It has not been easy for me to reach this decision. I hope you appreciate that I delayed it as long as I possibly could, hoping against hope that I was wrong. My research and reading has led me to discover at least three other cases, which, although poorly documented, indicate that your reaction to the plague is a rare but not unique phenomenon.

      ‘Although I am sure you are little inclined to do so at this time, I urge you to remain in contact with me. You have the opportunity to turn your misfortune into a benefit for the medical profession. If you will continue to chart weekly your increases in weight and girth, while keeping a record of your consumption of food, and if you will send me that information every two months, it would be of great benefit to my study of the plague and its manifestations after the disease stage has passed. In this, you could serve your king and the military, for I am certain that every bit of information we gather about this pestilence will eventually become the ammunition we use to defeat it.

      In the good god’s light,

      Dr Jakib Amicas’

      I folded his letter carefully, though my strongest impulse was to rip it to pieces. The gall of the man, to dash my hopes and then suggest that I pass my idle time in helping him to further his ambitions by graphing and charting my misfortune! I moved very slowly as I put