He shook his head slowly. “There isn’t any help for me, Nevare. I made my choice a long time ago, or rather, the magic made its choice when it took me. After that, I had no choices. That’s one of the things I’ve come to tell you. You have to understand this. You don’t have choices when it comes to what the magic makes you do. It can turn you against your own people; it can make you do things you’d be ashamed to whisper to a demon. Sit down, Nevare. Please sit down.”

I knew that I should insist on getting help for him immediately. Instead, I slowly sank into my chair across from him. He smiled at me, and for a moment he looked more like his old self. Then he looked down at his feet. They were bare, I suddenly noticed. They’d sent him to his grave without his boots. He spoke without meeting my eyes. “I’m going to tell you one of those things I wouldn’t whisper to a demon, Nevare. Because I think it may be the only way to convince you that you have to do what the magic demands of you. And it’s the only way I can clear my conscience. You’ve been resisting the magic, haven’t you?”

“Hitch, I truly don’t know what you are talking about. Olikea says the same thing. So does Jodoli, and so did Tree Woman. They all tell me that I’m supposed to do something that will send the Gernians away. They act as if I know what it is I’m supposed to have done by now. But I have no idea what they are talking about. If that’s what the magic wants, then it should give me some clue of how I’m supposed to accomplish it. Because I don’t think there is any action one man could take that would suddenly cause King Troven to give up his road to the sea and the Kingdom of Gernia to retreat from its frontiers. Do you?”

He slowly shook his head. “Well, I don’t know of any. But then it isn’t my task. It’s yours.” He gave me a ghost of his old grin. “I’ll tell you one thing that was true of the magic for me. When it wanted me to do a thing, I knew clearly what it was. And I did it. It always seemed the most obvious choice to make. It made me want to do it more than anything else in the world. Even if it was something wrong, something that went completely against the grain, the magic made it easy, even desirable. Nothing ever made me feel better than just doing what it wanted me to do.” He coughed a dry little cough and added, “I’ll take that drink of water now, if you please.”

His request comforted me. I’d been toying with the idea that I’d somehow slipped into dream travel and was only speaking to him on that “other side.” To have him ask for something as simple as water made me more confident that we were still in my real world. I rose and went to fill my cup from my water barrel. When I brought it to him, he took it and drank it in long, smooth swallows. He lingered over that water as if it were nectar.

I spoke as he drank. “Your fever’s broken, Hitch. Let me find you some food. If you drink a lot of water and eat some bland food and get some good rest, you’ll be fine. You’ll live. I know how vivid fever dreams can be. But you’re back in the real world now. You’re safe. You’re going to live.”

As he handed the cup back to me, our eyes met. He looked sorrowful. “Thank you, Nevare. And not just for the water, but for hoping I’ll live. I won’t, not in this ‘real world’ of yours. In that other world, well, yes, I expect to live for a good long time. In fact, it has been promised to me. Especially if you do the task the magic has given you. But my time here is ticking away, even now. So let me talk while I can.

“You’re a good man, old son. You’d have been a good soldier, and I suspect you’d have been a damn fine officer, given the chance. But then, so would I, if the magic hadn’t taken me. I hope you’ll understand that what I did, I did because I didn’t have a choice. Soldiers kill in times of war, and sometimes they do even worse. They’re under orders. And everyone understands that a man under orders does things he wouldn’t otherwise do. When you think of me after this, think of that, please. ‘Hitch was under orders.’ Will you do that for me?”

A terrible foreboding rose in me. I moved the bubbling kettle off the hob and then slowly sat down in my chair again. “Tell me what you did,” I suggested quietly.

He shook his head, his lips pursed sourly. “You already know, don’t you?” He sighed. “I tried to warn you about it. ‘If you resist the magic, then bad things happen to you, things that force you to go the way it wants you to go.’ I told you that. Never say I didn’t. It’s like being a sheep herded by a big mean dog. Run where it wants you to, and you don’t get bit. I’ve been bitten by it a few times. Did I ever tell you that once I had a wife and a little girl? A real wife, I mean, a Gernian wife, one who dressed in ruffles and set a fine table, and played sweet little songs to me on her lap harp. Lalaina. And I loved her, Never. Loved her, and our little golden-haired girl. But that wasn’t what the magic wanted from me. It wanted me out riding the edges and doing its bidding, not sitting home listening to sweet little tunes with a child on my lap. I wouldn’t leave them, though, not for the magic, not for the world. So the magic took them away.