Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [91]
“How can you stand the noise?” Remo asked, pressing his hands to his head in a gesture of pained dismay. He didn’t, of course, mean the sounds of the actually quite peaceful autumn night that came to their ears. Silver Shoals had to be the largest collection of unveiled humanity he’d encountered in all his short life.
Dag considered him, then gestured friendly-like to the space on the roof edge beside him. Remo clambered up easily. He’d pretty much fully healed from his beating, due to a combination of Verel’s earlier ground treatments, plenty of good food, and simple outdoor exercise, although mostly, Dag suspected glumly, due to youth.
“Farmer ground’s a bit noisy,” Dag said, “but you can get used to it. It’s good ground, just a lot of it. It’s blighted ground that hurts. Malice ground, now that hurts like nothing else in the wide green world.”
Remo looked appropriately daunted by this reminiscence; Dag went on, “Still, it’s a lot to take in. Even for townsfolk. If you study them, you’ll notice that they pass by each other in the street with a lot less looking or talking than village or hamlet farmers do. They have to learn not to look, because there’s no way they can stop and deal with everyone when there’s thousands. It’s not ground-veiling, but it’s something like, in their heads, I think. In a way, it makes big towns saf—more comfortable for Lakewalkers alone than tiny ones. Townsmen are more used to ignoring odd folks.”
“But there’s more of them to gang up on you if there’s trouble,” said Remo doubtfully.
“Also true,” Dag conceded. “Try opening up to the limit of your groundsense range, just once, to see what happens. I promise it won’t kill you.”
“Not instantly, maybe,” muttered Remo, but he obeyed. Brows rather clenched, he opened himself, wider and wider; the water-shadow of his ground gradually thickened and became perceptible to Dag in all its dense complexity.
The boy’s got a groundsense range of a good half-mile, Dag thought in satisfaction. Remo was clearly well-placed as a patroller, maybe a future patrol leader, if he could be lured away from wrecking himself on the rocks of his own mistakes.
With a muttered Oof!, Remo let his groundsense recoil. But not, Dag noted, all the way; it was still open to perhaps the dimensions of the Fetch and its residents. And to Dag. Remo rubbed his forehead. “That’s…something.”
“Town like this has a tremendous ground-roil,” Dag agreed. “It’s life, though—the opposite of blight, as much as any woods or swamp. More. If our long war is meant to hold back the blight and sustain the world’s ground, if you look at it rightways, a place like this”—he nodded at the slopes, the lamplights spread across them like fireflies out of season—“is our greatest success.”
Remo blinked as this odd thought nudged into his brain. Dag hoped it would stir things up a bit in there.
Dag drew breath, leaned forward. “The fact that this town is also a vast ground-banquet for any malice that chances to emerge too close troubles me hugely. What all had you heard down at Pearl Riffle Camp about the losses in our summer’s campaign over in Raintree?”
Remo replied seriously, “It was bad, I heard. A place called Bonemarsh Camp was wholly blighted, and they lost seventy or a hundred folks in the retreat.”
“Did the name of Greenspring even come up?”
“Wasn’t that some farmer village the malice first came up near?”
“Praise Fairbolt, at least that much got in. Yes. Had you heard their losses?”
“I didn’t read the circular myself, just heard