by Robin Hobb
A strange look came to her face, as one who steels oneself to a dare. She started to speak, paused, and then could not resist. Her eyes were avid on my face as she announced, ‘The Fool is a woman, and she is in love with you.’
For a moment it was as if she had spoken in a foreign language. I stood looking down on her and trying to puzzle out what she had meant. Had she not begun to laugh, I might have thought of a reply. But something in her laughter offended me so deeply that I turned my back on her and continued making my way across the steep slope.
‘You’re blushing!’ she called from behind me. Merriment choked her voice. ‘I can tell from the back of your neck! All these years, and you never even knew? Never even suspected?’
‘I think it’s a ridiculous idea,’ I said without even looking back.
‘Really? What part of it?’
‘All of it,’ I said coldly.
‘Tell me you absolutely know that I’m wrong.’
I didn’t dignify her taunt with an answer. I did forge through a patch of thick brush without pausing to hold the branches back for her. I know she knew I was getting angry because she was laughing. I pushed my way clear of the last of the trees and stood looking out over a nearly-sheer rockface. There was almost no brush, and cracked grey stone pushed up in icy ridges through the snow. ‘Stay back!’ I warned Starling as she pushed up beside me. She looked around me and sucked in her breath.
I looked up the steep hillside to where the road was scored across the mountain’s face like a gouge in a piece of wood. It was the only safe way across that sheer mountain face. Above us was the steep boulder-strewn mountainside. It was not quite sheer enough to call it a cliff. There was a scattering of wind-warped trees and bushes, some with roots straggling over the rocky soil as much as in it. Snow frosted it unevenly. Climbing up to the road would be a challenge. The slope we traversed had been getting steeper all morning. I should not have been surprised, but I had been so intent on picking the best path that it had been some time since I had looked up to the road.
‘We’ll have to return to the road,’ I told Starling and she nodded mutely.
It was easier said than done. In several places I felt rock and scree slew under my feet, and more than once I went on all fours. I could hear Starling panting behind me. ‘Only a little further!’ I called back to her as Nighteyes came toiling up the slope beside us. He passed us effortlessly, moving by leaps up the slope until he reached the edge of the road. He disappeared over the edge of it, and then returned to stand on the lip looking down at us. In a moment the Fool appeared beside him, to gaze down at us anxiously. ‘Need any help?’ he called down.
‘No. We’ll make it!’ I called back up to him. I paused, crouching and clinging to the trunk of a stunted tree, to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my eyes. Starling halted behind me. And suddenly I felt the road above me. It had a current like a river, and as the current of a river stirs the air to wind over it, so did the road. It was a wind not of winter cold, but of lives, both distant and near. The Fool’s strange essence floated on it, and Kettle’s close-mouthed fear and Kettricken’s sad determination. They were as separate and recognizable as the bouquets of different wines.
‘FitzChivalry!’ Starling emphasized my name by hitting me between the shoulder blades.
‘What?’ I asked her absently.
‘Keep moving! I can’t cling here much longer, my calves are cramping!’
‘Oh.’ I found my body and climbed the remaining distance to the lip of the road. The flowing Skill made me effortlessly aware of Starling behind me. I could feel her placing her feet and gripping the scraggly mountain willow at the edge of the cliff. I stood for an instant on the lip of the road’s edge. Then I stepped down, onto the smooth surface of the road, slipping into its pull like a child slipping into a river.
The Fool had waited for us. Kettricken was at the head of the line of jeppas, looking back anxiously to watch us join them. I took a deep breath and felt as if I were gathering myself together. Beside me, Nighteyes suddenly flipped my hand with his nose.
Stay with me, he suggested. I felt him groping for a firmer grip on our bond. That I could not help him alarmed me. I looked down into his deep eyes and suddenly found a question.
You’re on the road. I didn’t think animals could come on the road.
He gave a sneeze of disgust. There’s a difference between thinking an action is wise and doing it. And you might have noticed that the jeppas have been travelling on the road for some days.
It was too obvious. Why do the wild animals avoid it then?
Because we still depend on ourselves for survival. The jeppas depend on humans, and will follow them into any danger, no matter how foolish it seems to them. Thus they have not the sense to run from a wolf, either. Instead they flee back to you humans when I scare them. It’s a lot like horses or cattle and rivers. Left to themselves, they swim them only if death is right behind them, from predators or starvation. But humans convince them to swim rivers any time the human wishes to be on the other side. I think they are rather stupid.
So why are you on this road? I asked him with a smile.
Do not question friendship, he told me seriously.
‘Fitz!’
I startled, and turned to Kettle. ‘I’m fine,’ I told her, even as I knew I was not. My Wit-sense usually made me very aware of others around me. But Kettle had walked up right behind me and I’d not noticed until she spoke to me. Something about the Skill road was dulling my Wit. When I did not think specifically of Nighteyes, he faded into a vague shadow in my mind.
I’d be less than that, were I not striving to stay with you, he pointed out worriedly.
‘It will be all right. I just have to pay attention,’ I told him.
Kettle assumed I was speaking to her. ‘Yes, you do.’ Pointedly she took my arm and started me walking. The others had gone ahead. Starling was walking with the Fool, and singing some love ditty as she walked, but he was looking over his shoulder worriedly at me. I gave him a nod and he nodded back uneasily. Beside me, Kettle pinched my arm. ‘Pay attention to me. Talk to me. Tell me. Have you solved the game problem I gave you?’
‘Not yet,’ I admitted. The days were warmer, but the wind that blew past us now still brought the threat of ice on the higher mountain peaks. If I thought about it, I could feel the cold on my cheeks, but the Skill road bade me ignore it. The road was steadily climbing now. Even so, I seemed to walk effortlessly on its surface. My eyes told me that we were going uphill, but I strode along as easily as if it were down.
Another pinch from Kettle. ‘Think about the problem,’ she bade me curtly. ‘And do not be deceived. Your body labours and is cold. Simply because you are not constantly aware of it does not mean you can ignore it. Pace yourself.’
Her words seemed both foolish and wise. I realized that by hanging onto my arm, she was not only supporting herself but was forcing me to walk more slowly. I shortened and slowed my stride to match hers. ‘The others seem to take no harm from it,’ I observed to her.
‘True. But they are neither old nor Skill-sensitive. They will ache tonight, and tomorrow they will slow their pace. This road was built with the assumption that those who used it would be either unaware of its more subtle influences, or trained in how to manage them.’
‘How do you know so much about it?’ I demanded.
‘Do you want to know about me, or about this road?’ she snapped angrily.
‘Both, actually,’ I told her.
She didn’t answer th
at. After a time she asked me, ‘Do you know your nursery rhymes?’
I don’t know why it made me so angry. ‘I don’t know!’ I retorted. ‘I don’t recall my earliest childhood, when most children learn them. I suppose you could say I learned stable rhymes instead. Shall I recite for you the fifteen points of a good horse?’
‘Recite for me instead “Six Wisemen went to Jhaampe-town”!’ she snarled. ‘In my days, children were not only taught their learning rhymes, they knew what they meant. This is the hill in the poem, you ignorant pup! The one no wise man goes up and expects to come down again!’
A shiver walked down my spine. There have been a few times in my life when I have recognized some symbolic truth in a way that stripped it down to its most frightening bones. This was one. Kettle had brought to the forefront of my mind a thing I had known for days. ‘The Wisemen were Skilled ones, weren’t they?’ I asked softly. ‘Six, and five, and four … coteries, and the remains of coteries …’ My mind skipped up the stair of logic, substituting intuition for most of the steps. ‘So that’s what became of the Skilled ones, the old ones we could not find. When Galen’s coterie did not work well, and Verity needed more help to defend Buck, Verity and I sought for older Skilled ones, folk who had been trained by Solicity before Galen became Skillmaster,’ I explained to Kettle. ‘We could find few records of names. And they had all either died, or disappeared. We suspected treachery.’
Kettle snorted. ‘Treachery would be nothing new to coteries. But what more commonly happened is that as people grew in the Skill, they became more and more attuned to it. Eventually the Skill called them. If one were strong enough in the Skill, one could survive the trip up this road. But if she were not, she perished.’
‘And if one succeeded?’ I asked.
Kettle gave me a sidelong glance, but said nothing.
‘What is at the end of this road? Who built it, and where does it lead?’
‘Verity,’ she said quietly at last. ‘It leads to Verity. You and I need know no more than that.’
‘But you know more than that!’ I accused her. ‘As do I. It leads to the source of all Skill as well.’
Her glance became worried, then opaque. ‘I know nothing,’ she told me sourly. Then, as conscience smote her, ‘There is much I suspect, and many half-truths have I heard. Legends, prophecies, rumours. Those are what I know.’
‘And how do you know them?’ I pressed.
She turned to regard me levelly. ‘Because I am fated to do so. Even as you are.’
And not another word on the subject would she say. Instead, she set up hypothetical game boards and demanded to know what moves I would make, given a black, red or white stone. I tried to focus on the tasks, knowing that she gave them to me to keep my mind my own. But ignoring the Skill-force of that road was rather like ignoring a strong wind or a current of icy water. I could choose not to pay attention to it, but that did not make it stop. In the midst of puzzling out game strategy, I would wonder at the pattern of my own thoughts and believe them not my own at all, but those of another whom I had somehow tapped. While I could keep the game puzzle in front of me, it did not stop the gallery of voices whispering in the back of my mind.
The road wound up and up. The mountain itself rose nearly sheer on our left, and dropped off as abruptly on our right. This road went where no sane builders would have placed it. Most trade routes meandered between hills and over passes. This one traversed the face of a mountain, carrying us ever higher. By the time the day was fading, we had fallen far behind the others. Nighteyes raced ahead of us and then came trotting back to report that they had come to a resting-place, wide and level, where they were setting up the tent. With the coming of night, the mountain winds bit more fiercely. I was glad to think of warmth and rest, and persuaded Kettle to try to hurry.
‘Hurry?’ she asked. ‘You are the one who keeps slowing. Keep up, now.’
The last march before rest always seems longest. So the soldiers of Buckkeep always told me. But that night I felt we waded through cold syrup, so heavy did my feet seem. I think I kept pausing. I know that several times Kettle tugged at my arm and told me to come along. Even when we rounded a fold in the mountainside and saw the lit tent ahead of us, I could not seem to make myself move faster. Like a fever dream, my eyes brought the tent closer to me, and then set it afar. I plodded on. Multitudes whispered around me. The night dimmed my eyes. I had to squint to see in the cold wind. A crowd streamed past us on the road, laden donkeys, laughing girls carrying baskets of bright yarn. I turned to watch a bell merchant pass us. He carried a rack high on his shoulder, and dozens of brass bells of every shape and tone jingled and rang as he walked along. I tugged at Kettle’s arm to bid her turn and see it, but she only seized my hand in a grip of iron and hurried me on. A boy strode past us, going down to the village with a basketful of bright mountain flowers. Their fragrance was intoxicating. I pulled free of Kettle’s grip. I hurried after him, to buy a few for Molly to scent her candles.
‘Help me!’ Kettle called. I looked to see what was the matter, but she was not by me. I couldn’t find her in the crowd.
‘Kettle!’ I called. I glanced back but then realized I was losing the flower-monger. ‘Wait!’ I called to him.
‘He’s getting away!’ she cried, and there was fear and desperation in her voice.
Nighteyes suddenly hit me from behind, his front paws striking my shoulders. His weight and speed threw me face first on the thin layer of snow covering the road’s smooth surface. Despite my mittens, I skinned the palms of my hands and the pain in my knees was like fire. ‘Idiot!’ I snarled at him and tried to rise, but he caught me by one ankle and flipped me down onto the road again. This time I could look down over the edge into the abyss below. My pain and astonishment had stilled the night, the folk had all vanished, leaving me alone with the wolf.
‘Nighteyes!’ I protested. ‘Let me up!’
Instead he seized my wrist in his jaws, clamped his teeth down and began to drag me on my knees away from the road’s edge. I had not known he had such strength, or rather, I had never supposed it would be turned on me. I swatted at him ineffectually with my free hand, all the while yelling and trying to get to my feet. I could feel blood running on my arm where one tooth had sunk in.
Kettricken and the Fool suddenly flanked me, seizing me by my upper arms and hoisting me to my feet. ‘He’s gone mad!’ I exclaimed as Starling raced up behind them. Her face was white, her eyes huge.
‘Oh, wolf,’ she exclaimed, and dropped to one knee to give him a hug. Nighteyes sat panting, obviously enjoying her embrace.
‘What is the matter with you?’ I demanded of him. He looked up at me, but did not reply.
My first reaction was a stupid one. I lifted my hands to my ears. But that had never been how I had heard Nighteyes. He whined as I did so, and I heard that clearly. It was just a dog’s whine. ‘Nighteyes!’ I cried. He reared up to stand on his hind legs, his front paws on my chest. He was so big he could almost look me in the eye. I caught an echo of his worry and desperation, but no more than that. I quested out toward him with my Wit-sense. I could not find him. I could not sense any of them. It was as if they had all been Forged.
I looked around at their frightened faces and realized they were talking, no, almost shouting, something about the edge of the road and the black column and what was the matter, what was the matter? For the first time it struck me how ungainly speech was. All of those separate words, strung together, every voice mouthing them differently, and this was how we communicated with eac
h other. ‘Fitz, fitz, fitz,’ they shouted, my name, meaning me, I suppose, but each voice sounding the word differently, and each with a different image of whom they spoke to and why they needed to speak to me. The words were such awkward things, I could not concentrate on what they were trying to convey by them. It was like dealing with foreign traders, pointing and holding up fingers, smiling or frowning, and guessing, always guessing at what the other truly meant.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Hush. Please!’ I only wanted them to be silent, to stop their noises and mouthings. But the sound of my own words caught my attention. ‘Please,’ I said again, marvelling at all the ways my mouth must move to make that inexact sound. ‘Hush!’ I said again, and realized the word meant too many things to have any real meaning at all.
Once, when I was very new to Burrich, he had told me to unharness a team. It was when we were still getting a measure of one another, and no task any sane man would give a child. But I managed, climbing all over the docile beasts, and unfastening every shining buckle and clasp until the harness lay in pieces on the ground. When he came to see what was taking me so long, Burrich had been mutely astounded but unable to fault that I had done what he had told me to do. As for me, I had been amazed at how many pieces there were to something that had seemed to be all one thing when I had started in on it.
So it was for me then. All these sounds to make a word, all these words to frame a thought. Language came apart in my hands. I had never stopped to consider it before. I stood before them, so drenched in the Skill-essence on that road that speech seemed as childishly awkward as eating porridge with one’s fingers. Words were slow and inexact, hiding as much meaning as they revealed. ‘Fitz, please, you have to …’ began Kettricken, and so engrossed did I become in considering every possible meaning those five words might have that I never heard the rest of what she said.