by Robin Hobb
He agreed grudgingly, and we quartered out again. On an open hillside still warm from the sun, Nighteyes spotted the flick of an ear and the glint of a bright eye. In two bounds he was on top of the rabbit. His spring started another rabbit that fled toward the top of the hill. I gave chase, but the Fool called out he was going back now. Halfway up the hill, I knew I would not catch him. I was tired from the long day of walking and the rabbit was in fear of its life. By the time I reached the top of the hill, it was nowhere in sight. I halted, panting. The night wind moved lightly through the trees. On it I caught a scent, at once strange and oddly familiar. I could not identify it, but all the connotations to it were unpleasant. While I stood, nostrils flared, trying to place it, Nighteyes raced soundlessly up to me. Be small! he ordered me.
I didn’t pause to think, but obeyed, crouching where I was and peering about for danger.
No! Be small in your mind.
This time I instantly grasped what he meant, and threw my Skill walls up in a panic. His keener nose had instantly associated the faint scent on the air with the scent of Burl’s clothing in his saddlebags. I crouched as small as I could make myself and set and reset my boundaries about my mind, even as I pleaded with reality that it was next to impossible that he be here.
Fear can be a powerful spur to the mind. I suddenly grasped what should always have been obvious. We were not that far from the crossroads plaza and the black guidepost there. The symbols carved on the guidepost columns did not merely indicate where the adjacent roads led; they also indicated where the signposts could transport one. Anywhere there was a column, one could be transported to the next column. From the ancient city to any marked location was no more than a step away. All three of them could be but steps away from me right now.
No. There is only the one, and he is not even close to us. Use your nose, if not your brain, Nighteyes scathingly reassured me. Shall I kill him for you? he offered casually.
Please. But be careful of yourself.
Nighteyes snorted softly in disdain. He is fatter far than that wild pig I killed. He puffs and sweats just to walk down the trail. Lie still, little brother, while I get rid of him. Silent as death, the wolf moved off through the forest.
I crouched an eternity, waiting to hear something, a snarl, a scream, the noises of someone running through the brush. There was nothing. I flared my nostrils but could catch no trace of the elusive scent. Suddenly I could no longer stand to crouch and wait. I surged to my feet and followed the wolf, as silently lethal as he. Before, when we had been hunting, I had not paid much attention to where we had gone. Now I perceived that we had approached closer to the Skill road than I had suspected; that our campsite was not that far from it at all.
Like a strain of distant music, I was suddenly aware of their Skilling. I halted where I stood. I willed my mind to stillness, and let their Skill brush my senses while I made no response.
I’m close. Burl, breathless with both excitement and fear. I sensed him poised and waiting. I feel him, he draws near. A pause. Oh, I like not this place. I like it not at all.
Be calm. A touch is all it will take. Touch him as I showed you, and his walls will come down. Will spoke, master to apprentice.
And if he has a knife?
He won’t have time to use it. Believe me. No man’s walls can stand before that touch, I promise you. All you need do is touch him. I will come through you and do the rest.
Why me? Why not you or Carrod?
Would you really rather have Carrod’s task? Besides. You are the one who had the Bastard in your power and was stupid enough to try to hold him in a cage. Go and complete the task you should have finished long ago. Or would you care to feel our king’s wrath again?
I felt Burl shiver. And I trembled, too, for I felt him. Regal. The thoughts were Will’s, but somehow, somewhere, Regal heard them, too. I wondered if Burl knew as plainly as I did that no matter whether he killed the Bastard or not, Regal would enjoy giving him pain again. That the memory of torturing him was so pleasurable a one that Regal could no longer think of him at all without being reminded of how completely it had satiated him. Briefly.
I was glad I was not Burl.
There! That was the Bastard! Find him!
I should have died then, by all rights. Will had found me, had found my careless thought floating in the air. My brief sympathy for Burl was all it had taken. He bayed on my trail like a hound. I have him!
There was a moment of poised tension. My heart hammered against my ribs as I sent the Wit questing out all around me. Nothing bigger than a mouse was close by. I found Nighteyes down the hill from me, moving with swift stealth. Yet Burl had said he drew near to me. Had he found a way to shield himself from my Wit-sense? The thought made my knees weak.
Somewhere far down the hill, I heard the crash of a body through brush and a man’s shout. The wolf was on him, I thought.
No, brother, not I.
I could scarcely understand the wolf’s thought. I reeled with a Skill-impact, yet could feel no source for it. My senses contradicted each other, as if I plunged into water and felt it as sand. With no clear idea of what I did, I began a shambling run down the hill.
This is not him! Will, in great anger and agitation. What is this? Who is this?
A pause of consternation. It’s that freak thing, the Fool! Then vast anger. Where is the Bastard? Burl, you clumsy moron! You have betrayed us all to him.
But it was not I, but Nighteyes who charged down on Burl. Even at my distance, I could hear his snarls. In the dark woods below, a wolf launched himself at Burl, and the Skill-shriek he sent up at the sight of those ravening jaws coming toward his face was such that Will was distracted. In that instant, I slammed up my walls, and raced to join my wolf in the physical attack on Burl.
I was doomed to disappointment. They were much farther away than I had thought them. I never even got a glimpse of Burl, save through the wolf’s eyes. Fat and clumsy as the wolf might think Burl, he proved an excellent runner when the wolf was at his heels. Even so, Nighteyes would have pulled him down if he had had any farther to go than he did. At his first spring, Nighteyes got only his cloak as Burl spun. His second attack tore legging and flesh, but Burl fled as if uninjured. Nighteyes saw him reach the edge of the black flagged plaza and race up to the column, one hand outstretched pleadingly. His palm slapped the shining stone, and Burl suddenly vanished into the column. The wolf braced his legs to halt, his feet skittering on the slick stone. He cowered back from the standing stone as if Burl had leaped into a blazing bonfire. He halted a handspan from it, snarling furiously, not only in anger but in savage fear. All this I knew, although I was a hillside away, running and stumbling in the dark.
Suddenly there was a wave of Skill. It made no physical manifestation, yet the impact flung me to the ground and drove the breath out of me. It left me dazed, ears ringing, helplessly open to anyone who might wish to possess me. I lay there, sick and stunned. Perhaps that was what saved me, that at that moment I felt absolutely no trace of Skill within myself.
But I heard the others. There was no sense to their Skilling, only awestruck fear. Then they faded in the distance, as if the Skill river itself washed them away. I almost went reaching after them, in my amazement at what I sensed. They seemed to have been shattered to fragments. Their dwindling bewilderment washed against me. I closed my eyes.
Then I heard Kettle frantically calling my name. Panic stained her voice.
Nighteyes!
I’m already on my way. Catch up! the wolf told me grimly. I did as I was told.
I was s
cratched, dirty, and one trouser leg was torn at the knee when I reached the yurt. Kettle was standing outside it, waiting for me. The fire had been built up as a beacon. At the sight of her the pounding of my heart lessened somewhat. I had half-believed that they were being attacked. ‘What’s wrong?’ I demanded as I charged up to her.
‘The Fool,’ she said, and added, ‘We heard an outcry and raced outside. Then I heard the wolf snarling. We went toward the sound and found the Fool.’ She shook her head. ‘I am not sure what has happened to him.’
I started to push past her into the tent, but she caught me by the arm. She was surprisingly strong for an old woman. She halted me to face her. ‘You were attacked?’ she demanded.
‘In a way.’ Briefly I told her what had happened. Her eyes widened as I spoke of that Skill-wave.
When I was finished, she nodded to herself, grimly confirming her suspicions. ‘They reached for you and seized him instead. He has not the faintest idea of how to protect himself. For all I know, they have him still.’
‘What? How?’ I asked numbly.
‘Back there at the plaza. You two were Skill-linked, however briefly, by the strength of the stone and the strength of who you are. It leaves a … sort of a path. The more often two are linked, the stronger it becomes. With frequency it becomes a bond, like a coterie bond. Others who are Skilled can see such bonds, if they look for them. Often they are like back doors, unguarded ways into a Skilled one’s mind. This time, however, I would say they found the Fool in your stead.’
The look on my face made her let go of my arm. I pushed my way into the tent. There was a tiny fire burning in the brazier. Kettricken knelt by the Fool, speaking to him low and earnestly. Starling sat unmoving in her bedding, pale and staring at him, while the wolf restlessly prowled the crowded interior of the tent. His hackles still stood high.
I went quickly to kneel by the Fool. At first glimpse of him, I recoiled. I had expected him to lie limply unconscious. Instead he was rigid, his eyes open and his eyeballs twitching about as if he watched some terrible struggle we could not witness. I touched his arm. The rigidity of his muscles and the coolness of his body reminded me of a corpse. ‘Fool?’ I asked him. He gave no sign at all of hearing me. ‘Fool!’ I cried louder, and leaned over him. I shook him, lightly at first and then more violently. It had no effect.
‘Touch him and Skill to him,’ Kettle instructed me gruffly. ‘But be careful. If they still have him, you put yourself at risk as well.’
It shames me to say that I froze for an instant. As much as I loved the Fool, I feared Will still. I reached at last, a second and an eternity later, to put my hand on his brow.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ Kettle told me uselessly. And then added that which almost paralysed me: ‘If they have him and hold him still, it is only a matter of time before they use the link between you to take you as well. Your only choice is to battle them from his mind. Go on, now.’
She set her hand to my shoulder, and for one eerie moment, it was Shrewd’s hand on my shoulder, drawing Skill-strength from me. Then she gave me a reassuring little pat. I closed my eyes, felt the Fool’s brow under my hand. I dropped my Skill walls.
The Skill river flowed, full to floodtime, and I fell into it. A moment to gain orientation. I knew an instant of terror as I sensed Will and Burl at the very edges of my perception. They were in great agitation about something. I recoiled from them as if I had brushed a hot stove, and narrowed my focus. The Fool, the Fool, only the Fool. I sought for him, I almost found him. Oh, he was passing strange, and surpassing strange. He darted and eluded me, like a bright gold carp in a weedy pool, like the motes that dance before one’s eyes after being dazzled by the sun. As well to clutch at the moon’s reflection in a still midnight pond as to seek a grip on that bright mind. I knew his beauty and his power in the briefest flashes of insight. In a moment I understood and marvelled at all that he was, and in the next I had forgotten that understanding.
Then, with an insight worthy of the stone game, I knew what to do. Rather than attempt to seize him, I surrounded him. I made no effort to invade or capture, but simply to encompass all that I saw of him and hold it separate from harm. It reminded me of when I had first been learning to Skill. Often Verity had done this for me, helping me contain myself when the current of the Skill threatened to spill me wide to the world. I steadied the Fool as he gathered himself back into himself.
I suddenly felt a cool clasping of my wrist. ‘Stop it,’ he begged gently. ‘Please,’ he added, and it smote me that he thought he needed that word. I withdrew from my seeking and opened my eyes. I blinked a few times, and then was surprised to find myself shivering with the cold sweat that cloaked me. It was impossible for the Fool to look any paler than he always was, but there was a tentative look to his eyes and mouth, as if he were not sure he was awake. My eyes met his, and I felt almost a jolt of awareness of him. A Skill-bond, thin as a thread, but there. Had not my nerves been so raw from reaching after him, I probably would not have felt it at all.
‘I did not like that,’ he said quietly.
‘I am sorry,’ I told him gently. ‘I thought they had hold of you, so I went seeking you.’
He waved a hand feebly. ‘Oh, not you. I meant the others.’ He swallowed as if sickened. ‘They were within me. In my mind, in my memories. Smashing and befouling like evil, lawless children. They …’ His eyes went glassy.
‘Was it Burl?’ I suggested gently.
‘Ah. Yes. That is his name, though he scarce remembers it himself these days. Will and Regal have taken him over for their own uses. They came through him into me, thinking they had found you …’ His voice dwindled off. ‘Or so it seems. How could I know such a thing?’
‘The Skill brings strange insights. They cannot overcome your mind without showing much of their own,’ Kettle informed him grudgingly. She took a small pot of steaming water off the brazier. To me she added, ‘Give me your elfbark.’
I immediately reached for my pack to dig it out, but I could not resist asking her chidingly, ‘I thought you said this herb was not beneficial.’
‘It isn’t,’ she said tersely. ‘For Skill-users. But for him, it may give him the protection he cannot provide for himself. They will try this again, I do not doubt. If they can invade him, even for a moment, they will use him to find you. It is an old trick.’
‘One I have never heard of,’ I pointed out as I handed her my bag of elfbark. She shook some into a cup, and added boiling water. Then she calmly put my bag of herbs into her pack. It was obviously not an oversight, and I dismissed as useless asking for them back.
‘How do you know so much about Skill matters?’ the Fool asked her pointedly. He was recovering some of his spirit.
‘Perhaps I learned by listening instead of asking personal questions all the time,’ she snapped at him. ‘Now, you are going to drink this,’ she added, as if she regarded the topic as settled. If I had not been so anxious, it would have been humorous to see the Fool so deftly quelled.
The Fool took the cup but looked over at me. ‘What was that, that happened at the last? They held me, and then suddenly, it was all earthquake and flood and fire at once.’ He knitted his brow. ‘And then I was gone, scattered. I could not find myself. Then you came …’
‘Would anyone care to explain to me what has happened this night?’ Kettricken asked a bit testily.
I half expected Kettle to answer but she kept silent.
The Fool lowered his mug of tea. ‘It is a hard thing to explain, my queen. Like two ruffians bursti
ng into your bedchamber, dragging you from your bed and shaking you, all the while calling you by another’s name. And when they discovered I was not the Fitz, they were very angry with me. Then came the earthquake and I was dropped. Down several flights of stairs. Metaphorically speaking, of course.’
‘They let you go?’ I asked delightedly. I instantly turned to Kettle. ‘They are not as clever as you feared, then!’
Kettle scowled at me. ‘Nor you as clever as I had hoped,’ she muttered darkly. ‘Did they let him go? Or did a Skill blast shake them loose? And if so, whose power was that?’
‘Verity,’ I said with sudden certainty. Comprehension washed over me. ‘They attacked Verity tonight as well! And he defeated them!’
‘Of what do you speak?’ Kettricken demanded in her Queen’s voice. ‘Who attacked my king? What knowledge of these others who attack the Fool does Kettle have?’
‘No personal knowledge, my lady, I assure you!’ I declared hastily.
‘Oh, do shut up!’ Kettle snapped at me. ‘My queen, I have a scholar’s knowledge, if you will, of one who has studied but cannot do a thing. Since Fool and Catalyst were joined for that moment back in the plaza, I feared they might share a bond the Skill-users could turn against them. But either the coterie does not know this, or something distracted them tonight. Perhaps the Skill wave that Fitz spoke of.’
‘This Skill wave … you believe it was Verity’s doing?’ Kettricken’s breath was suddenly swift, her colour heightened.
‘Only from him have I ever felt such strength,’ I told her.
‘Then he lives,’ she said softly. ‘He lives.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Kettle sourly. ‘To blast with Skill like that can kill a man. And it may not have been Verity at all. It may have been a failed effort by Will and Regal to get at Fitz.’