The Sharing Knife: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold

Dag is a Lakewalker, a set of people who live mostly off the land, moving from camp to camp in search of magical blights to the land, called Malices. Unlike the farmers, who settle in one place and are tied to the land, the Lakewalkers have mystic senses the farmers do not, and also magic. Their greatest magic is to imbue a bone blade with the death of one of their own people, and drive that blade into a malice, instantly killing it.

Because the Lakewalkers have this magic, and the farmers don't, most Lakewalkers look down on farmers. But they also realize that because of their more dangerous lifestyle, that the farmers are slowly out-breeding them, something they aren't happy about at all, but must live with. The farmers, in turn, despise and fear the Lakewalkers for their magic, thinking that the Lakewalkers eat babies for breakfast and the like. But since the Lakewalkers destroy Malices, the farmers reluctantly put up with them.

Dag, a Lakewalker, met and fell in love with Fawn, a farmer girl who had run away from home when she got pregnant, and the father denied that the baby was his. Rather than put up with the humiliation of bearing a baby unwed, she ran away, and ran into Dag, as well as a Malice. Fawn got abducted for the baby growing inside her by the Malice, but with the help of Dag, and the two bonded knives he carried, she ended up killing the Malice. She and Dag fell in love, and the two of them got married, much to the horror of each of their families. She and Dag first tried living with Dag's family, then with the farmers, but the outright scorn from some of their kin soured the arrangement for each of them.

In fact, they ended up getting married twice, once by the farmer ritual, and once by that of the Lakewalkers, to assure both families that they were actually married. But rejected by both sides of their heritage, and with Dag growing increasingly concerned by the powers he was now manifesting, Dag offered to show Fawn the ocean, which she had never seen before. With them came one of Fawn's brothers, Whit, and they travelled down the river on Flatboat under Boss Berry, and rescued a number of Lakewalker boys fleeing from their own kin along the way.

Berry had her own reasons for coming: she'd lost both her father and Fianceé on the river and wanted to look for them. During the trip, they were attacked by pirates, headed by a former Lakewalker, and the truth of what happened to Berry's father and fianceé came out. Dag defeated the former Lakewalker, but gave him a chance to redeem himself by putting his death into a bonded blade, and therefore becoming of service to his people. He agreed, and Dag now holds his spirit in a bonded blade.

The blade-making being a power Dag didn't think he had, and with his experiments on the river, Dag wants to see a maker or a healer, one of the Lakewalkers who knows more about Lakewalker magic than he does. In short, he's afraid that the powers he is exhibiting are the same as those of a malice, and he doesn't want to become one.

Now in the south, Berry and Whit get married, while Dag seeks among the southern Lakewalkers for someone to help him and hopefully calm his fears. He seeks out a healer named Arkady, who is at first hesitant to help him, but when he hears the whole story, can't help but be at least a little impressed. He wonders that Dag wasn't seen for having more power than a patroller from the first, but Dag's background as a "troublesome youth" explains that. He was made into a patroller to keep him out of trouble, and Dag never wanted to be anything else before. Now, though, he doesn't have a choice.

Fawn's presence, and Dag's unwillingness to give her up, is a sticking point for both Dag and Fawn and the tribe, but Arkady accepts her, and persuades the rest of the tribe to let her stay, but that she be kept out of the way. That works until she runs out of things to do, and eventually, she is allowed to help out in the infirmary, as another pair of hands, where she finds acceptance.

As Arkady teaches Dag to use his new powers gently, he still cannot see a way to let Dag accomplish his dearest wish: to use his healing powers on Farmers as well as Lakewalkers. When a Lakewalker heals a farmer, the farmer becomes entranced by the healing, and addicted to the feeling, eventually wanting constant contact with the healer. Arkady once wanted to do so as well, but one of the Farmers he healed became entranced, and a great tragedy nearly resulted. But Dag has worked out how *not* to entrance farmers, and he shares the secret (such as it is) with Arkady. But the council still bar him from doing so while he is with the tribe.

Dag and Arkady continue to work in the Infirmary, and Arkady teaches Dag much of what he knows. But when a farmer comes to the Lakewalkers for help with his son, who has Lockjaw, an invariably fatal disease, Dag cannot do anything but agree to help. But while he heals the son of the farmer, the Council of the Lakewalker group throws him out of the tribe when Dag won't leave the farmer boy to die. What's surprising to Dag is that Arkady decides to go with him, to keep on teaching him.

Their journey home leads to them encountering Dag's niece Sumac, who ends up falling in love with Arkady, and he with her. Lakewalkers from Arkady's tribe come back to bring him home, but he will not go, and they end up joining the group, along with a caravan of farmers that Arkady and Dag are travelling with. But their journey is fraught with danger, and when they kill a Malice fleeing along the road south, they wonder what could make a Malice take to its heels?

The answer is chilling: an even worse Malice, much stronger and more advanced, with minions that are based on bats, and still capable of flying. When Dag, a small child, and one of the other Lakewalkers are carried off and injured, Dag with the only sharing knife, now carried by Fawn, who is pregnant with Dag's child. But Dag has been busily seeking a way to protect Farmers from the Malice, trying to ground their auras so that the Malice doesn't notice them. He's had some success, tying their grounds to specially prepared acorns that make their grounds less permeable. This enables Fawn, Whit and Berry to escape the Malice. But while Dag tries to keep the farmer child safe with his injured leg, and save another Lakewalker who also ran into the Malice's minions and broke his back, Fawn and Whit must take out the Malice on their own: two farmers without Lakewalker help. But can they do it?

I'll be honest here and say that Lois McMaster Bujold is one of my favorite authors. I have read many of her books, including the Miles Vorkosigan saga, The Chalion books, and this series, the Sharing Knife series. I like them all, and no one is my favorite over any other. Many of her books read like romances, and this one is no exception. The affection and love between Fawn and Dag, and vice-versa, is a powerful and tangible thing, present in every page, and every scene where they interact. Their love scenes are short, but affecting. Though mostly the details are passed over, the feelings in them are palpable.

The rest of the book is very good, too, conveying the menace of the Malices, and even making the readers fear them as much of the characters. But where Bujold really shines is in her characters, turning them into real people with very few words, so that even though you might not particularly like a character, you still understand where they are coming from. Irritating characters abound in this one, from a family in the caravan who believe the worst about the Lakewalkers, including all the child-eating rumors, to a Lakewalker who hero-worships Dag and seems to want to make him a notch on her belt, even though Dag makes it very clear that he loves his wife and won't betray her, even if she was a farmer and "would never know" through their marriage bindings. Happily, that last character gets her comeuppance, and the family eventually realize that the stories aren't true, but this isn't until nearly the very end.

And even though Dag and Fawn are married and happy, they both continue to grow in other ways. Fawn may never have the magic and the control over it that Dag has, but she is equally capable of heroic acts to help and save him. And Dag is looking to help his people evolve beyond their current roles, because as the Malices grow less, and the farmers lands expand and grow more settled, the Lakewalkers will have to find another way to live or grow extinct. Dag wants to help find that way for his people, and for his children, who will always be half-breeds, with magic of their own. He doesn't succeed right away, not even right now, but the start he makes will, hopefully, eventually make a difference for his people.

As the last novel in this series, this book brings the story of Dag and Fawn to a close. But I'm a sucker and hope for more stories set in this world, which I love and find too good to abandon. Hopefully, we can get a prequel or sequel someday- I'd love to see either one. A wonderful ending to magnificant series, I can't recommend this series, and its writer, enough. Read her, if you haven't already!