Forest Mage. Robin Hobb

as will please him, rather than offering him things that might please a man. I, for one, am very grateful. Imagine a god who dealt as men do: what would he demand of a bride in exchange for future children? What might such a god ask of you as recompense to restore your lost beauty? Would you want to pay it?’

      She was trying to make me think, but her last words stung me. ‘Beauty? Lost beauty? This is not a matter of vanity, Mother! I am trapped in this bulky body and nothing I do seems to change it. I cannot put on my boots or get out of bed without being bound by it. How can you assume you can even imagine what it is like for me to be a prisoner in my own flesh.’

      She looked at me silently for a few moments. Then a small smile passed her lips. ‘You were too small to remember my pregnancies with Yaril and Vanze. Perhaps you cannot even remember what I looked like before my last two children were born.’ She lifted her arms as if inviting me to consider it. I glanced at her and away. Time and childbearing had thickened her body, but she was my mother. She was supposed to look that way. I could, vaguely, recall a younger, slender mother who had chased me laughing through the freshly planted garden in our early years at Widevale. And I did recall her last pregnancy with Vanze. I most recalled how she had lumbered through the rooms of the house on her painfully swollen feet.

      ‘But that’s not the same thing at all,’ I retorted. ‘The changes then and now, those are natural changes. What has befallen me is completely unnatural. I feel as if I am trapped in some Dark Evening costume that I cannot shed. You are so caught up in looking at my body that all of you, Father, Yaril and even you, cannot perceive that within I am still Nevare! The only thing that has changed is my body. But I am treated as if I am these walls of fat rather than the person trapped behind them.’

      My mother allowed a small silence to settle between us before she observed, ‘You seem very angry at us, Nevare.’

      ‘Well, of course I am! Who would not be, in these circumstances?’

      Again she made that quiet space before suggesting in a reasonable voice, ‘Perhaps you should direct that anger against your real enemy, to add greater strength to your will to change yourself.’

      ‘My will?’ My anger surged again. ‘Mother, it has nothing to do with my will. My discipline has not failed. I work from dawn to dusk. I eat less than I did as a child. And still, I continue to grow heavier. Did not Father speak to you about Dr Amicas’s letter? The doctor thinks that this unnatural weight gain is a result of the plague. If it is, what can I do about it? If I had survived a pox, no one would fault me for a scarred face. If the Speck plague had left me trembling and thin, people would offer me sympathy. This is exactly the same, yet I am despised for it.’ It was horribly depressing to know that not even my mother understood what I was going through. I had hoped that my father would have explained my fat as a medical condition to my family and to Carsina’s parents. But he had told no one. No wonder Yaril had no sympathy for me. If my mother, my oldest and staunchest ally, deserted me, I would be completely alone in facing my fate.

      She pulled out the last block of support, speaking to me as if I were seven and caught in an obvious falsehood.

      ‘Nevare. I watched you eat at Rosse’s wedding. How can you say that you eat less than you did as a child? You devoured enough food to sustain a man for a week.’

      ‘But—’ I felt as if she had knocked the breath from my lungs. Her calm eyes so gently pierced me as she met my gaze.

      ‘I don’t know what happened to you at the Academy, my son. But you cannot hide from it behind a wall of fat. I know nothing of the doctor’s letter to your father. But I do know that what I have seen of how you eat now would cause this change in any man.’

      ‘You can’t believe I eat like that at every meal!’

      She kept her calm. ‘Do not shout at me, Nevare. I am still your mother. And why else would you hide from your family at every meal if not because your gluttony shamed you? As it should. That shame is a positive sign. But instead of concealing your weakness, you must control it, my dear.’

      I rose abruptly. I towered over her and for the first time in my life, I saw alarm cross my mother’s face as she looked up at me. She knew that I could have crushed her.

      I spoke carefully, biting off each word. ‘I am not a glutton, Mother. I did nothing to deserve this fate. It’s a medical condition. You wrong me to think so poorly of me. I am insulted.’

      With what dignity I could muster, I turned and walked away from her.

      ‘Nevare.’

      It had been years since I had heard her speak my name in that tone. It was to my anger as iron was to magic. Despite my inclination, I turned back to her. Her eyes were bright with both tears and anger.

      ‘A moment ago, you said that nothing in this room could save you. You are wrong. You are my son, and I will save you. Whatever it is that has caused such a change in you, I will oppose it. I will not back down, I will not flee, and I will not give up on you. I am your mother, and for as long as we both live, that is so. Believe in me, son. I believe in you. And I will not let you ruin your life. No matter how often you turn away from me, I will still be here. I will not fail you. Believe that, son.’

      I looked at her. She held herself straight as a sword and despite the tears that now tracked down her cheeks, her strength radiated from her. I wanted to believe that she could save me. So often when I was small, she had swept in and stood between my father’s wrath and me. So often she had been the steadying influence, the true compass for me. There was only one answer I could give her. ‘I will try, Mother.’ I turned and left her there, with her incense and her smoke and her good god.

      As I left the room, I knew I was as alone as I had ever been. Regardless of my mother’s good intentions, my battle to regain my life would be a solitary one. She was my mother and she was strong but the magic was like an infection in my blood. Oppose it however she might, she could not cure me. The magic had taken me, and I would have to battle it alone. I sought my room.

      I found no solace there. The neglected letters still rested on the desk. I longed to sit down and immerse myself in them but I had no heart to answer them just now. My bed complained as I lay down on it. I stared around at the bare walls and simple furnishings and the single window. It had always been a severe room, a place of minimal comfort, a room that would train a boy to embrace a soldier’s life. Now it was a bare cell. In this room, I would live out the rest of my days. Every night I would lie down here alone to sleep. Every morning, I would rise to do my father’s bidding, and when he was gone, I would have to accept Rosse’s authority over me. What else was there for me? For a flashing moment, I thought of running away. I had a childish image of myself galloping away on Sirlofty, going east towards the end of the King’s Road and the mountains beyond. The thought lifted me and for an instant, I actually considered rising from my bed and leaving that night. My heart raced at the wild plan. Then I came to my senses and marvelled at my foolish impulse. No. I was not going to give up my dream just yet. As long as I had my mother’s belief to sustain me, I would stay here. I would resist the magic and try to reclaim my life. I closed my eyes to that thought and without intending to, drifted off into a deep sleep.

      I did not dream. The awareness that flowed through me was as unlike dreaming as waking is to sleeping. Magic worked in me, like yeast working in bread batter. I felt it quicken, and grow, swelling in my veins. It gathered strength from my body, roiling through my flesh, drawing on the resources it had gathered against this necessity. With growing trepidation, I recognized that I had felt this sensation before. The magic had moved in me before, and it had acted. What had it done, without my knowledge or consent? I recalled the young man on the jankship, and how he had fallen after my angry words with him. That was one time, but there had been others.

      The massed magic did something.

      The languages I knew did not have words to express it. Could my flesh shout out a word, voicelessly, soundlessly? Could the magic, a thing that resided elsewhere than the physical world, speak a command through me, so that somewhere, something it desired happened? That was what it felt like. Dimly I sensed