by Robin Hobb
‘No. I told you. It scattered them like chaff in a wind.’
‘And I told you. They may have destroyed themselves in trying to kill you.’
I had thought that Kettricken would chide her, but both she and Starling stared wide-eyed in astonishment at Kettle’s sudden professing of Skill knowledge. ‘How kind of you both to have warned me so well,’ the Fool said with acid courtesy.
‘I didn’t know …’ I began my protest, but again Kettle overrode me.
‘It would have done no good to warn you, save to put your mind to dwelling on it. We can make this comparison. It has taken all our combined effort to keep Fitz both focused and sane on the Skill road. He would never have survived his journey into the city, had not his senses been numbed with elfbark first. Yet these others travel the road and use the Skill beacons freely. Obviously their strength overmatches his by much. Ah, what to do, what to do?’
No one replied to her questioning of herself. She looked up suddenly at the Fool and me accusingly. ‘This cannot be right. It simply cannot be right. The Prophet and the Catalyst, and you are scarcely more than boys. Green to manhood, untrained in Skill, full of pranks and lovesick woes. These are the ones sent to save the world?’
The Fool and I exchanged glances, and I saw him take a breath to reply to her. But at that moment, Starling snapped her fingers. ‘And that is what makes the song!’ she exclaimed suddenly, her face transfigured with delight. ‘Not a song of heroic strength and mighty-thewed warriors. No. A song of two, graced only with friendship’s strength. Each possessed of a loyalty to a king that would not be denied. And that in the refrain … “Green of manhood”, something, ah …’
The Fool caught my eye, glanced meaningfully down at himself. ‘Green manhood? I really should have showed her,’ he said quietly. And despite everything, despite even the glowering of my queen, I burst out laughing.
‘Oh, stop it,’ Kettle rebuked us, with such discouragement in her voice that I was instantly sober. ‘It is neither the time for songs nor knavery. Are you both too foolish to see the danger you are in? The danger you put all of us in with your vulnerability?’ I watched her as she reluctantly took my elfbark out of her pack again and put her kettle back to boil. ‘It is the only thing I can think of to do,’ she apologized to Kettricken.
‘What is that?’ she asked.
‘To drug the Fool at least with elfbark. It will deafen him to them, and hide his thoughts from them.’
‘Elfbark doesn’t work like that!’ I objected indignantly.
‘Doesn’t it?’ Kettle turned on me fiercely. ‘Then why was it used traditionally for years for just that purpose? Given to a royal bastard young enough, it could destroy any potential for Skill use. Often enough was that done.’
I shook my head defiantly. ‘I’ve used it for years, to restore my strength after Skilling. So has Verity. And it has never …’
‘Sweet Eda’s mercy!’ Kettle exclaimed. ‘Tell me you are lying, please!’
‘Why should I lie about this? Elfbark revives a man’s strength, though it may bring on melancholy spirits following use. Often I would carry elfbark tea up to Verity in his Skill-tower, to sustain him.’ My telling faltered. The dismay on Kettle’s face was too sincere. ‘What?’ I asked softly.
‘Elfbark is well known among Skilled ones as a thing to avoid,’ she said quietly. I heard every word, for no one in the tent even seemed to be breathing. ‘It deadens a man to Skill, so that he can neither use the Skill himself, nor may others reach through its fog to Skill to him. It is said to stunt or destroy Skill talent in the young, and to impede its development in older Skill-users.’ She looked at me with pity in her eyes. ‘You must have been strongly talented, once, to retain even a semblance of Skilling.’
‘It cannot be …’ I said faintly.
‘Think,’ she bade me. ‘Did ever you feel your Skill-strength wax strong after using it?’
‘What of my lord Verity?’ Kettricken suddenly demanded.
Kettle shrugged reluctantly. She turned to me. ‘When did he start using it?’
It was hard for me to focus my mind on her words. So many things were suddenly in a different light. Elfbark had always cleared my head of the pounding that heavy Skilling brought on. But I had never tried to Skill immediately after I had used elfbark. Verity had, I knew that. But how successfully, I did not know. My erratic talent for Skilling … could that have been my elfbark use? Like a lightning bolt was the immense knowledge that Chade had made a mistake in giving it to Verity and me. Chade had made a mistake. It had never occurred to me, somehow, that Chade could be wrong or mistaken. Chade was my master, Chade read and studied and knew all the old lore. But he had never been taught to Skill. A bastard like myself, he had never been taught to Skill.
‘FitzChivalry!’ Kettricken’s command jerked me back to myself.
‘Uh, so far as I know, Verity began to use it in the early years of the war. When he was the only Skill-user to stand between us and the Red Ships. I believe he had never used the Skill so intensely as then, nor been as exhausted by it. So Chade began to give him elfbark. To keep up his strength.’
Kettle blinked a few times. ‘Unused, the Skill does not develop,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Used, it grows, and begins to assert itself, and one learns, almost instinctively, the many uses to which it may be put.’ I found myself nodding faintly to her soft words. Her old eyes came up suddenly to meet mine. She spoke without reservation. ‘You are most likely stunted, both of you. By the elfbark. Verity, as a man grown, may have recovered. He may have seen his Skill grow in the time he has spent away from the herb. As you seem to have. Certainly he seems to have mastered the road alone.’ She sighed. ‘But I suspect those others had not used it, and their talents and usage of Skill had grown and outstripped what yours is. So now you have a choice, FitzChivalry, and only you can make it. The Fool has nothing to lose by using the drug. He cannot Skill, and by using it, he may keep the coterie from finding him again. But you … I can give you this, and it will deaden you to the Skill. It will be harder for them to reach you, and much harder for you to reach out. You might be safer that way. But you will be once more thwarting your talent. Enough elfbark may kill it off completely. And only you can choose.’
I looked down at my hands. Then I looked up at the Fool. Once more, our eyes met. Hesitantly, I groped toward him with my Skill. I felt nothing. Perhaps it was only my own erratic talent cheating me again. But it seemed likely to me that Kettle had been right; the elfbark the Fool had just drunk had deadened him to me.
As Kettle spoke, she had been taking the kettle from the fire. The Fool held his cup out to her wordlessly. She gave him a pinch more of the bitter bark and filled it again with water. Then she looked at me, quietly waiting. I looked at the faces watching me, but found no help there. I picked up a mug from the stacked crockery. I saw Kettle’s old face darken and her lips tightened, but she said nothing to me. She simply reached into the pouch of elfbark, working her fingers to get to the bottom where the bark had crushed itself into powder. I looked into the empty mug, waiting. I glanced back up at Kettle. ‘You said the Skill blast might have destroyed them?’
Kettle shook her head slowly. ‘It is not a thing to count on.’
There was nothing I could count on. Nothing that was certain.
Then I set the mug down and crawled over to my blankets. I was suddenly tremendously weary. And frightened. I knew Will was out there somewhere, seeking me. I could hide myself in elfbark, but it might not be enough to stave him off. It might only weaken
my already-stunted defences against him. Abruptly I knew I would sleep not at all that night. ‘I’ll take the watch,’ I offered and stood again.
‘He should not stand alone,’ Kettle said grumpily.
‘His wolf watches with him,’ Kettricken told her confidently. ‘He can aid Fitz against this false coterie as no one else can.’
I wondered how she knew that, but dared not ask her. Instead I took up my cloak and went to stand outside by the dwindling fire, watching and waiting like a condemned man.
THIRTY-TWO
Capelin Beach
The Wit is held in much disdain. In many areas it is regarded as a perversion, with tales told of Witted ones coupling with beasts to gain this magic, or offering blood sacrifice of human children to gain the gift of the tongues of beasts and birds. Some tale-tellers speak of bargains struck with ancient demons of the earth. In truth, I believe the Wit is as natural a magic as a man can claim. It is the Wit that lets a flock of birds in flight suddenly wheel as one, or a school of fingerlings hold place together in a swiftly flowing stream. It is also the Wit that sends a mother to her child’s bedside just as the babe is awakening. I believe it is at the heart of all wordless communication, and that all humans possess some small aptitude for it, recognized or not.
The next day we once more reached the Skill road. As we trailed past the forbidding pillar of stone, I felt myself drawn to it. ‘Verity may be but one stride away for me,’ I said quietly.
Kettle snorted. ‘Or your death. Have you taken complete leave of your senses? Do you think any one Skill-user could stand against a trained coterie?’
‘Verity did,’ I replied, thinking of Tradeford and how he had saved me. The rest of that morning, she walked with a thoughtful look on her face.
I did not endeavour to get her to speak, for I carried a burden of my own. I felt within me a nagging sense of loss. It was almost the irritating sensation of knowing one had forgotten something, but was unable to recall what. I had left something behind. Or I had forgotten to do something important, something I had been intending to do. By late afternoon, with a sinking feeling, I grasped what was missing.
Verity.
When he had been with me, I had seldom been sure of his presence. Like a hidden seed waiting to unfurl was how I had thought of him. The many times I had sought him within myself and failed to find him suddenly meant nothing. This was not a doubt or a wondering. This was a growing certainty. Verity had been with me for over a year. And now he was gone.
Did it mean he was dead? I could not be certain. That immense wave of Skill I had felt could have been him. Or something else, something that had forced him to withdraw into himself. That was probably all it was. It was a miracle that his Skill touch upon me had lasted as long as it had. Several times I started to speak of it to Kettle or Kettricken. Each time, I could not justify it. What would I say: Before this, I could not tell if Verity was with me, and now I cannot feel him at all? At night by our fires, I studied the lines in Kettricken’s face and asked myself what point there was in increasing her worry. So I pushed my worries down and kept silent.
Continuous hardship makes for monotony and days that run together in the telling. The weather was rainy, in a fitful, windy way. Our supplies were precariously low, so that the greens we could gather as we walked and whatever meat Nighteyes and I could bring down at night became important to us. I walked beside the road instead of on it, but remained constantly aware of its Skill-murmur, like the muttering of a river of water beside me. The Fool was kept well dosed with elfbark tea. Very soon he began to exhibit both the boundless energy and bleak spirits that were elfbark’s properties. In the Fool’s case, it meant endless cavorting and tumbling tricks as we made our way along the Skill road, and a cruelly bitter edge to his wits and tongue. He jested all too often of the futility of our quest, and to any encouraging remark he riposted with savage sarcasm. By the end of the second day, he reminded me of nothing so much as an ill-mannered child. He heeded no one’s rebukes, not even Kettricken’s, nor did he recall that silence could be a virtue. It was not so much that I feared his endless prattle and edged songs would bring the coterie down on us as that I worried his constant noise might mask their approach. Pleading with him to be quiet did me as little good as roaring at him to shut up. He wore on my nerves until I dreamed of throttling him, nor do I think I was alone in that impulse.
The kinder weather was the only way in which our lot improved on those long days as we followed the Skill road. The rain became lighter and more intermittent. The leaves opened on the deciduous trees that flanked the road and the hills about us greened almost overnight. The health of the jeppas improved with the browse, and Nighteyes found plentiful small game. The shorter hours of sleep told on me, but letting the wolf hunt alone would not have solved it. I feared to sleep any more. Worse, Kettle feared to let me sleep.
Of her own accord, the old woman took charge of my mind. I resented it, but was not so stupid as to resist. Both Kettricken and Starling had accepted her knowledge of the Skill. I was no longer permitted to go off alone, or in the sole company of the Fool. When the wolf and I hunted at night, Kettricken went with us. Starling and I shared a watch, during which, at Kettle’s urging, she kept my mind busy with learning to recite both songs and stories from Starling’s repertoire. During my brief hours of sleep Kettle watched over me, a dark stewing of elfbark at her elbow where, if need be, she could pour it down my throat and douse my Skill. All of this was annoying, but worst was during the day when we walked together. I was not allowed to speak of Verity, or the coterie, or anything that might touch upon them. Instead, we worked at game problems, or gathered wayside herbs for the evening meal, or I recited Starling’s stories for her. At any time when she suspected my mind was not fully with her, she might give me a sharp rap with her walking stick. The few times I tried to direct our talk with questions about her past, she loftily informed me that it might lead to the very topics we must avoid.
There is no more slippery task than to refrain from thinking of something. In the midst of my busywork, the fragrance of a wayside flower would bring Molly to my mind, and from thence to Verity who had called me away from her was but a skip of thought. Or some chance nattering of the Fool would call to my thoughts King Shrewd’s tolerance for his mockery, and recall to me how my king had died and at whose hands. Worst of all was Kettricken’s silence. She could no longer speak to me of her anxiety over Verity. I could not see her without feeling how she longed to find him, and then rebuking myself for thinking of him. And so the long days of our travelling passed for me.
Gradually the countryside around us changed. We found ourselves descending deeper and deeper into valley after winding valley. For a time our road paralleled that of a milky grey river. In places its rising and fallings had gnawed the road at its side to no more than a footpath. We came at length to an immense bridge. When we first glimpsed it from a distance, the spider web delicacy of its span reminded me of bones, and I feared that we would find it reduced to splintered fragments of reaching timbers. Instead we crossed on a creation that arched over the river needlessly high, as if in joy that it could. The road we crossed on shone black and shining, while the archwork that graced above and below the span was a powdery grey. I could not identify what it was wrought from, whether true metal or strange stone, for it had more the look of a spun thread than hammered metal or chiselled rock. The elegance and grace of it stilled even the Fool for a
time.
After the bridge, we climbed a series of small hills, only to begin another descent. This time the valley was narrow and deep, a steep-sided cleft in the earth as if some giant had long ago cleaved it with a war-axe. The road clung to one side of it and followed it inexorably down. We could see little of where we were going, for the valley itself seemed full of clouds and greenery. This puzzled me until the first rivulet of warm water cut our pathway. It bubbled up steamily from a spring right beside the road, but had long ago disdained the ornately carved stone walls and drainage channel some vanished engineer had placed to contain it. The Fool made great show of considering its stench and whether it should be attributed to rotten eggs or some flatulence of the earth itself. For once not even his rudeness could make me smile. It was for me as if his knavery had gone on too long, the merriment fled and only the crudity and cruelty left.
We came in early afternoon to a region of steaming pools. The lure of hot water was too much to resist, and Kettricken let us make camp early. We had the long-missed comfort of hot water for soaking our weary bodies in, though the Fool disdained it because of its smell. To me it smelled no worse than the steaming waters that rose to feed the baths in Jhaampe, but for once I was just as glad to forgo his company. He went off in search of more potable water, while the women took over the largest pool and I sought out the relative privacy of a smaller one at some distance. I soaked for a time, and then decided to pound some of the dirt from my clothing. The mineral stink of the water was far less than the odour my own body had left on them. That done, I spread my garments on the grass to dry and went to lie once more in the water. Nighteyes came to sit on the bank and watch me in puzzlement, his tail tucked neatly around his feet.