females into their households as maids for their wives or nursemaids for their children. No good can come of that mingling, neither to the Plainspeople nor us. It will make them hungry for all they don’t have, and envy can lead to an uprising. But even if it doesn’t come to that, the two races were never meant to traffic with one another in that way.”
My father was gathering momentum as he spoke. I am sure he did not realize that he had raised his voice. His words carried clearly to my ears.
“With the Specks, it is even more true. They are a slothful people, too lazy to even have a culture of their own. If they can find a dry spot to sleep at night and dig up enough bugs to fill their bellies by day, why, then they are well content. Their villages are little more than a few hammocks and a cook fire. Little wonder that they have all sorts of diseases among them. They pay them no more mind than they do to the shiny little parasites that cling to their necks. Some of their children die, the rest live, and they go on breeding as happily as a tree full of monkeys. But when their diseases cross over to our folk, well…Well, then you have just what you have heard from that scout: an entire regiment sickened, half of them like to die, and the plague now spreading among the women and children of the settlement. And likely all because some lowborn conscript wanted something a bit stranger or stronger than the honest whores at the fort brothel.”
My brother said something I could not quite hear, a query in his voice. My father gave a snort of laughter in reply. “Fat? Oh, I’ve heard those tales for years. Scare stories, I think, told to new troopers to keep them out of the forest edge of an evening. I’ve never seen one. And if the plague indeed works so, well, then good. Let them be marked by it so all may know or guess what they’ve been doing. Perhaps the good god in his wisdom chooses so to make an example of them, that all may know the wages of sin.”
My brother had risen and followed my father to the sideboard. “Then you don’t believe”—and I heard the caution in my brother’s voice, as if he feared my father would think him foolish—“that it could be a Speck curse, a sort of evil magic they use against us?” Almost defensively, he added, “I heard the tale from an itinerant priest who had tried to take the word of the good god to the Specks. He was passing through the Landing on his way back west. He told me that the Specks drove him away, and one of their old women threatened that if we did not leave them in peace, their magic would loose disease among us.”
I, too, thought my father would laugh at him or rebuke him. But my father replied solemnly, “I’ve heard tales of Speck magic, just as you have, I’m sure. Most of those stories are nonsense, son, or the foolish beliefs of a natural people. Yet at the bottom of each there may be some small nugget of truth. The good god who keeps us left pockets of strangeness and shadow in the world he inherited from the old gods. Certainly I’ve seen enough of Plainspeople sorcery to tell you that, yes, they have wind wizards who can make rugs float upon the wind and smoke flow where they command it, regardless of how the wind blows, and I myself have seen a garrote fly across a crowded tavern and wrap around the throat of a soldier who had insulted a wind wizard’s woman. When the old gods left this world, they left bits of their magic behind for the folk who preferred to dwell in their dark rather than accept the good god’s light. But bits of it are all that they have left. Cold iron defeats and contains it. Shoot a Plainsman with an iron pellet, and his charms are worthless against us. The magic of the Plainspeople worked for generations, but in the end, it was just magic. Its time is past. It wasn’t strong enough to stand against the forces of civilization and technology. We are coming up on a new age, son. Like it or not, all of us must move
My father was gathering momentum as he spoke. I am sure he did not realize that he had raised his voice. His words carried clearly to my ears.
“With the Specks, it is even more true. They are a slothful people, too lazy to even have a culture of their own. If they can find a dry spot to sleep at night and dig up enough bugs to fill their bellies by day, why, then they are well content. Their villages are little more than a few hammocks and a cook fire. Little wonder that they have all sorts of diseases among them. They pay them no more mind than they do to the shiny little parasites that cling to their necks. Some of their children die, the rest live, and they go on breeding as happily as a tree full of monkeys. But when their diseases cross over to our folk, well…Well, then you have just what you have heard from that scout: an entire regiment sickened, half of them like to die, and the plague now spreading among the women and children of the settlement. And likely all because some lowborn conscript wanted something a bit stranger or stronger than the honest whores at the fort brothel.”
My brother said something I could not quite hear, a query in his voice. My father gave a snort of laughter in reply. “Fat? Oh, I’ve heard those tales for years. Scare stories, I think, told to new troopers to keep them out of the forest edge of an evening. I’ve never seen one. And if the plague indeed works so, well, then good. Let them be marked by it so all may know or guess what they’ve been doing. Perhaps the good god in his wisdom chooses so to make an example of them, that all may know the wages of sin.”
My brother had risen and followed my father to the sideboard. “Then you don’t believe”—and I heard the caution in my brother’s voice, as if he feared my father would think him foolish—“that it could be a Speck curse, a sort of evil magic they use against us?” Almost defensively, he added, “I heard the tale from an itinerant priest who had tried to take the word of the good god to the Specks. He was passing through the Landing on his way back west. He told me that the Specks drove him away, and one of their old women threatened that if we did not leave them in peace, their magic would loose disease among us.”
I, too, thought my father would laugh at him or rebuke him. But my father replied solemnly, “I’ve heard tales of Speck magic, just as you have, I’m sure. Most of those stories are nonsense, son, or the foolish beliefs of a natural people. Yet at the bottom of each there may be some small nugget of truth. The good god who keeps us left pockets of strangeness and shadow in the world he inherited from the old gods. Certainly I’ve seen enough of Plainspeople sorcery to tell you that, yes, they have wind wizards who can make rugs float upon the wind and smoke flow where they command it, regardless of how the wind blows, and I myself have seen a garrote fly across a crowded tavern and wrap around the throat of a soldier who had insulted a wind wizard’s woman. When the old gods left this world, they left bits of their magic behind for the folk who preferred to dwell in their dark rather than accept the good god’s light. But bits of it are all that they have left. Cold iron defeats and contains it. Shoot a Plainsman with an iron pellet, and his charms are worthless against us. The magic of the Plainspeople worked for generations, but in the end, it was just magic. Its time is past. It wasn’t strong enough to stand against the forces of civilization and technology. We are coming up on a new age, son. Like it or not, all of us must move
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