She cocked her head to one side and smiled at me as if I were very young. Her voice rebuked me gently, as a kindly old woman might recall manners to a youngster. ‘That is not your proper name, nor any way to introduce yourself. What is the name your father gave you?’
I took a breath and found a truth I had not previously known. ‘I do not think I can say that name here. I came here to be Kidona. But as of yet, I have no name in Kidona.’ After I spoke, I felt suddenly childishly foolish, to have confided this information to my enemy. I hardened my muscles and brought my blade up to readiness again.
She seemed singularly unimpressed with my sabre. She leaned closer, and as she did so, I perceived that her loose hair was snagged on the tree’s trunk, as if binding her to it. She peered at me and I felt that she looked deep inside me. In a quiet, almost confidential voice, she informed me, ‘I see your difficulty. He thinks to use you to force his way past me. He has made you believe that you must kill me to gain a man’s respect and standing. That is not true. Killing is only killing. The respect that Kidona will give you if you kill me is real only to him. No one else believes in it, least of all you. And you don’t have to kill me to earn true respect. My blood will only buy you that fool’s regard. I will pay a high price for you to be respected by a churl. Nothing bought with blood is worth having, young man.’
I thought about what she said. They were an idealist’s words that made sense as a lofty philosophy. But on a day-to-day level, I knew that much of my world had been bought with blood. My father often spoke of that, that our soldiers, especially the cavalla officers, had ‘bought the new Gernia with their lives, made these lands ours when the soils of them were watered with the blood of our soldier sons.’
‘I don’t agree with you!’ I called out to her, and then realized I need not have spoken so loud. Somehow I had drawn much closer to her without being aware of it. I wondered if the root path had drawn me closer, unperceived by me. I glanced around but had no way to tell.
She smiled then, an elder’s smile. ‘The truth doesn’t need you to recognize it, young man, for it to be so. You need the truth to recognize you. Until you do, you are not real. But let us set aside the truth of the worthlessness of things bought with blood. Let us try to recall who you are in another way. We are not defined by what we die for, but by what we live for. Will you acknowledge that truth?’
Somehow, the whole situation had changed. She was testing me now, rather than meeting my warrior’s challenge. I felt that she guarded the bridge, demanding that I prove myself worthy to cross. If I earned her regard, she would permit me passage. I did not have to be Kidona to cross.
Distant as a bird’s call on a hot summer day, Dewara’s voice reached me. ‘Do not talk with her! She will twist your thoughts like a twining vine. Ignore her words. Rush forward and kill her! It is your only hope!’
She did not lift her voice to reply to him. She spoke almost quietly as she said, ‘Be quiet, Kidona man. Let your “warrior” speak for himself.’
‘Kill her now, soldier’s son! She seeks to possess you!’
But like a distant birdcall, the sound of his voice seemed a territorial challenge that did not apply to me. I let his words go by me, my mind mulling over the tree woman’s words. Defined by what we live for. Was that how I defined myself? Should a soldier ponder such things?
‘The same things I live for are the things I would die for,’ I said, thinking of my king, my country and my family.
She nodded slowly, like the canopy of a tree swaying in a flurry of wind.
‘I see that. There is much in you that wants to live for those things. More of you wishes to live for them than to die for the Kidona man’s respect. He is the one who sends you to kill me. You do not have that quest in your true heart, but only in the heart he has tried to give you. He thinks he cannot lose. You are, still, the son of his enemy. If I die, you have served him well. If you die, he takes no real loss. But I think either death would be a loss for you. What was your real quest, soldier’s son? Why have the gods sent you to me, why have you managed to come past every trap unscathed? I do not think you are meant to die trying to kill me. There is more to you than that. You come as a weapon. Are you a weapon from the gods given as a gift to me?’
‘I do not understand.’
‘It’s a simple question.’ She leaned toward me, studying me intently. ‘Did you make the crossing to this world to take life or to give it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do I mean? Isn’t it clear? I ask you to make a choice: life or death. Which do you worship?’
‘I don’t … that is … I want … I don’t know! I don’t know what you mean!’ I groped within myself but found no good answer to her question. I suddenly knew that I was in very great danger, the sort of danger that lasts not a moment, but an eternity, and threatens not the body but the soul. All I wanted was to go back to my own world, to be my father’s son and live to be a soldier for my king. The answer came to me too late. I had no chance to utter a syllable.
‘I shall have to find out for you, I think. Live or die, soldier’s son.’
The roots parted and the bridge opened under me. The twining tendrils did not break; they opened their network to allow me to plunge through. As they gave way, I desperately lunged forward, running over roots that gave way beneath my feet, hoping against hope to reach solid ground.
I fell short. Suddenly there was nothing under my feet. My left hand scrabbled at roots that squirmed away from my touch, refusing me a grip. All the roots had fled, opening wide a gap in their web, leaving only bare stone cliff before me. In a stupidly futile act I jabbed my sabre toward the ground that the tip of the blade could barely reach.
It sank in, with a jolt that sent a shock up my arm, gripped unnaturally by the stone that had given way before it. It defied all physical laws I knew, and the fright of that was stunning. The tree woman gasped, in surprise or pain, I don’t know which. But I was still falling, and in foolish desperation, I grabbed the blade of my sabre with my left hand as my right came free of the hilt. The blade cut into my fingers, but that pain was nothing compared to the terror I felt at falling into that abyss. In an instant, I’d wrapped my right hand around the blade as well. I clung there, the weight of my body suspended from my hands gripping that carefully honed edge, the toes of my boots scrabbling against the undercut cliff. I knew it would soon be over. My mind’s command to my hands to grip would either give way to pain or be futile when I’d severed my own fingers from my hands.
‘Help me!’ I cried, neither to the tree woman who stood looking down at me mercilessly nor to Dewara who had sent me to this doom. Rather, I shouted to the uncaring universe, a desperate plea that something would take pity on this dangling bit of life.
The pain was agonizing and the blade was slippery with my own blood. I wanted to let go with one hand and try for a handhold on the bluish stone, but it was smooth and featureless. I closed my eyes, not wishing to see my fingers fall from my hands before I plunged to my doom.
‘Shall I take you up?’ the tree woman asked me.
‘Help me! Please!’ I begged suddenly, no longer caring if she was friend or foe. She was my sole chance for survival. My eyes flew open. She had come closer but was still out of reach. She stood, looking down at me curiously. I could see the fronds of ferns growing from her mossy dress.
‘Please, what?’ she asked me, gently, implacably.
‘Please help me up!’ I gasped.
‘Please take you up?’ she asked, as if she had to be certain she