by Robin Hobb
‘While these things are so, it is not at all obvious to me that the road is the problem. A lingering fever from his injury could be at fault, or …’
‘No.’ I risked interrupting my queen. ‘It is the road. I have no fever. And I did not feel this way before I travelled on it.’
‘Explain this to me,’ Kettricken commanded.
‘I don’t understand it myself. I can only suppose that Skill was somehow used to construct that road. It runs straighter and more level than any road I have ever known. No tree intrudes upon it, despite how little it is used. There are no animal tracks upon it. And did you mark the one tree we passed yesterday, the log that had fallen across the road? The stump and the uppermost branches were still almost sound … but all of the trunk that had fallen upon the road itself was rotted away to almost nothing. Some force moves still in that road, to keep it so clear and true. And I think whatever it is, it is related to the Skill.’
Kettricken sat a moment considering this. ‘What do you suggest we do?’ she asked me.
I shrugged. ‘Nothing. For now. The tent is well pitched here. We’d be foolish to try to move it in this wind. I must simply be aware of the danger to myself, and endeavour to avoid it. And tomorrow, or whenever the wind falls, I should walk beside the road instead of upon it.’
‘That will be little better for you,’ Kettle grumbled.
‘Perhaps. But as the road is our guide to Verity, it would be foolish to leave it. Verity survived this path, and he walked it alone.’ I paused, thinking that I now understood better some of the fragmented Skill-dreams I had had of him. ‘I will manage, somehow.’
The circle of faces doubtfully regarding me were not reassuring. ‘You must, I suppose,’ Kettricken concluded dolefully. ‘If there is any way we can assist you, FitzChivalry …’
‘There is none that I can think of,’ I admitted.
‘Save to keep his mind occupied as best we can,’ Kettle offered. ‘Do not let him sit idly, nor sleep overmuch. Starling, you have your harp, have you not? Could not you play and sing for us?’
‘I have a harp,’ Starling corrected her sourly. ‘It’s a poor thing compared to my old one that was taken from me at Moonseye.’ For a moment her face emptied and her eyes turned inward. I wondered if that were how I looked when the Skill pulled at me. Kettle reached to pat her softly on one knee, but Starling flinched to the touch. ‘Still, it’s what I have, and I’ll play it, if you think it will help.’ She reached behind her for her pack and drew from it a bundled harp. As she drew the harp from its wrappings, I could see that it was little more than a framework of raw wood with strings stretched across it. It had the essential shape of her old harp, but with none of its grace and polish. It was to Starling’s old harp what one of Hod’s practice blades was to a fine sword: a thing of utility and function, no more than that. But she settled it on her lap and began tuning it. She began the opening notes of an old Buck ballad when she was interrupted by a snowy nose poking its way into the tent door.
‘Nighteyes!’ The Fool welcomed him.
I’ve meat to share. This came as a proud announcement. More than enough to gorge well on.
It was not an exaggeration. When I crawled out of the tent to see his kill, it was a sort of boar. The tusks and coarse hair were much the same as those I had hunted before, but this creature had larger ears and the coarse hair was mottled black and white. When Kettricken joined me, she exclaimed over it, saying she had seen few of them before, but they were known to roam the forests and had a reputation as vicious game best left alone. She scratched the wolf behind the ear with a mittened hand and praised him overmuch for his bravery and skill, until he fell over in the snow overcome with pride in himself. I looked at him, lolling near on his back in the snow and wind and could not help but grin. In an instant he had flipped to his feet, to give me a nasty pinch on the leg and demand that I open its belly for him.
The meat was fat and rich. Kettricken and I did most of the butchering, for the cold savaged the Fool and Kettle mercilessly and Starling begged off for the sake of a harpist’s hands. Cold and damp were not the best things for her still-healing fingers. I did not much mind. Both the task and the harsh conditions kept my mind from wandering as I worked, and there was an odd pleasure to being alone with Kettricken, even under such circumstances, for in sharing this humble work, we both forgot station and past and became but two people in the cold rejoicing in a richness of meat. We cut off long skewering strips that would cook swiftly over the little brazier in sufficient quantity for all of us to gorge. Nighteyes took the entrails for himself, revelling in the heart and liver and guts and then a front leg with the satisfaction of bones to crack. He brought this gristly prize into the tent with him, but no one made comment on the snowy, bloody wolf that lay along one side of the tent wall and noisily chewed his meat save to praise him. I thought him insufferably satisfied with himself and told him so; he but informed me that I had never made so difficult a kill alone, let alone dragged it back intact to share. All the while the Fool scratched his ears.
Soon the rich smell of cooking filled the tent. It had been some days since we had had fresh meat of any kind, and the cold we had endured made the fat taste doubly rich to us. It brought our spirits up and we could almost forget the howling of the wind outside and the cold that pressed so fiercely against our small shelter. After we were all sated with meat, Kettle made tea for us. I know of nothing more warming than hot meat and tea and good fellowship.
This is pack, Nighteyes observed in contentment from his corner. And I could do no more than agree.
Starling cleansed her fingers of grease and took her harp back from the Fool who had asked to see it. To my surprise, he leaned over it with her, and traced down the frame with a pale fingernail saying, ‘Had I my tools here, I could shave the wood here, and here, and smooth a curve like so along this side. I think it might fit your hands better.’
Starling looked at him hard, caught between suspicion and hesitancy. She studied his face for mockery, but found none. Carefully she observed, as if she spoke to us all, ‘My master who taught me harping was good at the making of harps as well. Too good, perhaps. He tried to teach me, and I learned the basics, but he could not stand to watch me “fumble and scrape at fine wood” as he put it. So I never learned for myself the finer points of shaping the frame. And with this hand still stiff …’
‘Were we back at Jhaampe, I could let you fumble and scrape as much as you wanted. To do so is truly the only way to learn. But for here, for now, even with such knives as we have, I think I might bring a more graceful shape out of this wood.’ The Fool spoke openly.
‘If you would,’ she accepted quietly. I wondered when they had set aside their hostilities and realized I had not, for some days, paid much attention to anyone save myself. I had accepted that Starling wanted little more to do with me than to be present if I did something of vast import. I had not made any of friendship’s demands upon her. Both Kettricken’s rank and her grief had imposed a barrier between us that I had not ventured to breach. Kettle’s reticence about herself made any true conversation difficult. But I could think of no excuse for how I had excluded the Fool and the wolf from my thoughts lately.
When you throw up waits against those who would use Skill against you, you lock more than your Skill-sense inside, Nighteyes observed.
I sat pondering that. It seemed to me that my Wit and my feeling for people had dimmed somewhat of late. Perhaps my companion was right. Kettle poked me suddenly, sharply. ‘Don’t wander!’ she chided me.
<
br /> ‘I was just thinking,’ I said defensively.
‘Well, think aloud then.’
‘I’ve no thoughts worth sharing just now.’
Kettle glowered at me for being unco-operative.
‘Recite then,’ commanded the Fool. ‘Or sing something. Anything to keep yourself focused here.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ Kettle agreed, and it was my turn to glower at the Fool. But all eyes were on me. I took a breath and tried to think of something to recite. Almost everyone had a favourite story or bit of poetry memorized. But most of what I had possessed had to do with the poisoning herbs or others of the assassin’s arts. ‘I know one song,’ I finally admitted. ‘“Crossfire’s Sacrifice”.’
Now Kettle scowled, but Starling struck up the opening notes with an amused smile on her face. After one false start, I launched into it, and carried it off fairly well, though I saw Starling flinch a time or two at a soured note. For whatever reason, my choice of song displeased Kettle, who sat grim and staring at me defiantly. When I had finished, the turn was passed to Kettricken, who sang a hunting ballad from the Mountains. Then it was the Fool’s turn, and he humoured us with a ribald folk song about courting a milk-maid. I believe I saw grudging admiration from Starling for that performance. That left Kettle, and I had expected her to beg off. Instead, she sang the old children’s nursery rhyme about ‘Six Wise Men went to Jhaampe-town, climbed a hill and never came down’, all the time eyeing me as if each word from her cracked old voice were a barb meant just for me. But if there was a veiled insult there, I missed it, as well as the reason for her ill-will.
Wolves sing together, Nighteyes observed, just as Kettricken suggested, ‘Play us something we all know, Starling. Something to give us heart.’ So Starling played that ancient song about gathering flowers for one’s beloved, and we all sang along, some with more heart than others.
As the last note died away, Kettle observed, ‘The wind’s dropping.’
We all listened, and then Kettricken crawled from the tent. I followed her, and we stood quiet for a time in a wind that had gone quieter. Dusk had stolen the colours from the world. In the wake of the wind, snow had begun thickly falling. ‘The storm has almost blown itself out,’ she observed. ‘We can be on our way tomorrow.’
‘None too soon for me,’ I said. Come to me, come to me still echoed in the beating of my heart. Somewhere up in those Mountains, or beyond them, was Verity.
And the river of Skill.
‘As for me,’ Kettricken said quietly, ‘would that I had followed my instincts a year ago, and gone to the ends of the map. But I reasoned that I could do no better than Verity had done. And I feared to risk his child. A child I lost anyway, and thus failed him both ways.’
‘Failed him?’ I exclaimed in horror. ‘By losing his child?’
‘His child, his crown, his kingdom. His father. What did he entrust me with that I did not lose, FitzChivalry? Even as I rush to be with him again, I wonder how I can meet his eyes.’
‘Oh, my queen, you are mistaken in this, I assure you. He would not perceive that you have failed him, but fears only that he abandoned you in the greatest of danger.’
‘He only went to do what he knew he must,’ Kettricken said quietly. And then added plaintively, ‘Oh, Fitz, how can you speak for what he feels, when you cannot even tell me where he is?’
‘Where he is, my queen, is but a bit of information, a spot on that map. But what he feels, and what he feels for you … that is what he breathes, and when we are together in the Skill, joined mind to mind, then I know such things, almost whether I would or no.’ I recalled the other times I had been privy unwillingly to Verity’s feelings for his queen, and was glad the night hid my face from her.
‘Would this Skill were a thing I could learn … do you know, how often and how angry I have felt with you, solely because you could reach forth to the one I longed for, and know his mind and heart so easily? Jealousy is an ugly thing, and always I have tried to set it aside from me. But sometimes it seems so monstrously unfair that you are joined to him in such a way, and I am not.’
It had never occurred to me that she might feel such a thing. Awkwardly, I pointed out, ‘The Skill is as much curse as it is gift. Or so it has been to me. Even if it were a thing I could gift you with, my lady, I do not know that is a thing one would do to a friend.’
‘To feel his presence and his love for even a moment, Fitz … for that I would accept any curse that rode with it. To know his touch again, in any form … can you imagine how I miss him?’
‘I think I can, my lady,’ I said quietly. Molly. Like a hand gripping my heart. Chopping hard winter turnips on the table-top. The knife was dull, she would ask Burrich to put an edge on it if he ever came in from the rain. He was cutting wood to take down to the village and sell tomorrow. The man worked too hard, his leg would be hurting him tonight.
‘Fitz? FitzChivalry!’
I snapped back to Kettricken shaking me by the shoulders.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly. I rubbed at my eyes and laughed. ‘Irony. All my life, it has been so difficult to use the Skill. It came and went like the wind in a ship’s sails. Now, I am here, and suddenly Skilling is as effortless as breathing. And I hunger to use it, to find out what is happening to those I love best. But Verity warns me I must not, and I must believe he knows best.’
As must I,’ she agreed wearily.
We stood a moment longer in the dimness, and I fought a sudden impulse to put my arm around her shoulders and tell her it would be all right, that we would find her husband and king. Briefly, she seemed that tall slender girl who had come from the Mountains to be Verity’s bride. But now she was the Queen of the Six Duchies, and I had seen her strength. Surely she needed no comfort from one such as I.
We cut more slices of meat from the freezing boar and then rejoined our companions in the tent. Nighteyes was sleeping contentedly. The Fool had Starling’s harp clutched between his knees and was using a skinning knife as a makeshift draw-knife to gentle some of the frame’s lines. Starling sat beside him, watching and trying not to look anxious. Kettle had taken off a little pouch she wore about her neck, opened it and was sorting out a handful of polished stones. As Kettricken and I built up the small fire in the brazier and prepared to cook the meat, Kettle insisted on explaining the rules of a game to me. Or attempting to. She finally gave up, exclaiming, ‘You’ll understand it when you’ve lost a few times.’
I lost more than a few times. She kept me at it for long hours after we had eaten. The Fool continued to shave wood from Starling’s harp, with many pauses to put a fresh edge on the knife. Kettricken was silent, almost moody, until the Fool noticed her melancholy mood and began to tell tales of Buckkeep life before she had come there. I listened with one ear, and even I was drawn back to those days when the Red Ships were no more than a tale and my life had been almost secure if not happy. Somehow the talk rounded into the various minstrels that had played at Buckkeep, both famous and lesser, and Starling plied the Fool with questions about them.
I soon found myself caught up in the play of the stones. It was strangely soothing: the stones themselves were red, black and white, smoothly polished and pleasant to hold. The game involved each player randomly drawing stones from the pouch and then placing them on the intersections of lines on a patterned cloth. It was a game at once simple and complex. Each time I won a game, Kettle immediately introduced me to more complicated strategies. It engrossed me and freed my mind from memories or ponderings. When finally all the others were already drow
sing in their sleeping skins, she set up a game on the board and bade me study it.
‘It can be won decisively in one move of a black stone,’ she told me. ‘But the solution is not easy to see.’
I stared at the game layout and shook my head. ‘How long did it take you to learn to play?’
She smiled to herself. ‘As a child, I was a fast learner. But I will admit you are faster.’
‘I thought this game came from some far land.’
‘No, it is an old Buck game.’
‘I’ve never seen it played before.’
‘It was not uncommon when I was a girl, but it was not taught to everyone. But that is of no matter now. Study the layout of the pieces. In the morning, tell me the solution.’
She left the pieces set up on the cloth by the brazier. Chade’s long training of my memory served me well. When I lay down, I visualized the board and gave myself one black stone with which to win. There was quite a variety of possible moves, as a black stone could also claim the place of a red stone and force it to another intersection, and a red stone had similar powers over a white. I closed my eyes, but held onto the game, playing the stone in various ways until I finally fell asleep. Either I dreamed of the game, or of nothing at all. It kept the Skill-dreams safely at bay but when I awoke in the morning, I still had no solution to the puzzle she had set me.
I was the first one awake. I crawled out of the tent and returned with a pot packed full of new wet snow to melt for morning tea. It was substantially warmer outside than it had been in days. It cheered me, even as it made me wonder if spring were already a reality in the lowlands. Before my mind could start wandering, I returned to puzzling about the game. Nighteyes came to rest his head on my shoulder where I sat.
I’m tired of dreaming of rocks. Lift up your eyes and see the whole thing, little brother. It is a hunting pack, not isolated hunters. See. That one. Put the black there, and do not use the red to displace a white, but set it there to close the trap. That is all.