Kinrove looked aggrieved and angered. “You criticize what I do, Dasie. You tell me to do it differently. But you, what do you do to protect your people and our ancestor trees? You want to end my dance, but what will replace it? You have been a Great One less than a hand of years, but you will tell us what we must do to drive the intruders back?”
She was not daunted. She took a step toward him. “I will tell you what you must do to keep from killing our own people! Let them live in their homes, find mates, and have children. If after I have been a Great One for twenty years, I forget that, as you seem to have done, then I hope some youngster will come before me and remind me of it. What good is it to save the trees of our ancestors if they have no descendants left to honor them and seek their wisdom? And as to the intruders, yes, I have an answer to that. We must kill them. Kill them, and kill any who come after them, and keep killing them until no more of them come.”
“You are a child.” Kinrove said the belittling words flatly, but in a tone that made them more statement than insult. “You cannot recall what has gone before, because you were not born then. We tried to use the magic against the intruders, to take it right to their homes. Their iron confounds us. Within their village, our magic is weak. Our mages struggle to wake a spark from wood, cannot bid the earth comfort us, cannot even warm our own bodies. The only magic we have found that will work within their walls is the Dust Dance. And no one knows why it works when all other magic fails. By itself, it is not enough. It kills them, but they only call for more of their brethren from the west. Before you were a Great One, when first they threatened our forest of ancients, we tried to fight them as we have seen others fight. We rose against them and went to battle, protected by the magic of the Great Ones who came with us. But they fired their guns at us, and the iron passed through our magic and then our flesh, tearing as it went, flesh and bone and organ. The Great Ones who had thought to protect our warriors died that day. Many of our young men died. So many. A generation, Dasie. Shall we speak of how many children were not born because there were not men to father them? You say that over the years my dance has devoured the People. And what you say is true. But what my dance has devoured over all the years we have danced it is still less than the number of warriors who fell in that day.”
Dasie opened her mouth to speak, but a sharp gesture from Kinrove cut off her words. I do not know if he used magic or merely the force of his personality to silence her. There was power in this man, in every nod of his head or flick of his fingers. Great power. I felt there was something more there, something I was missing, but his words caught me up and distracted me.
“I was there, Dasie. I saw them fall, my father and my two elder brothers among them. I was not a Great Man then, though I had begun to grow fat with magic. No one else had noticed it in me, and I scarcely dared to believe it myself. But what I saw that day taught me the one thing that I still know is true. We cannot take the magic as a weapon and use it within their walls. The iron thwarts us. But the magic can be our wall that holds back the swelling tide of the intruders and keeps us safe. And as soon as I was large enough to implement such a plan, I did so. And because I did so, you were able to grow up, in relative peace, in our own forest and mountains. You say you want to bring war to the intruders and death? Dasie, I am your war!”
His voice shook with passion. I was shocked when Kinrove’s eyes left her and came to rest on me. “Have you nothing to say to this, Soldier’s Boy—Nevare?”
There was a long moment of silence. I felt Soldier’s Boy draw his courage together. Then his cold words stunned me. “Kinrove, I think that Dasie is right. Indeed, you have worked a great magic, and it has held them at bay for years. All of the People should feel gratitude to you for that. But the wall has begun to crumble. And I will tell you a fearsome thing, Kinrove. The intruders do not understand that we are at war with them. They do not even recognize the magic of the Dust Dance, let alone the power of the magic that sends fear and sadness down upon them. I have walked among them as one of them. Do you want to know what they believe? They think we are simple, primitive people, living like beasts in the forest. They pity us and they despise us. They think they will help us to become like them, and that we will be grateful for that. They believe we long to be just like them, and they are very willing to help us forget how to be the People and become just like them.
“They believe that eventually they will cut our trees and build their road and that we will forget what it is to be the People. They say that they will trade with us, and come to this land to trade with the folk from across the salt water. Our Trading Place would become theirs. A city of intruders would rise here. They would come here, with their iron and tobacco, and in a generation or two, we would no longer be the People. You have slowed their advance, Kinrove, but you have not stopped them. The dance has done all it can. Now it is time to fight them in a way they understand.”