by Robin Hobb
The Fool snickered into his plate like a naughty child when Kettle glared at her. But I was getting tired of Kettle’s evasions. ‘What does it feel like?’ I asked the Fool.
He glanced down at his bandaged fingers. ‘Not pain. Very sensitive. I can feel the weave of the threads in the bandages.’ His eyes started to get distant. He smiled. ‘I can see the man who wove it, and I know the woman who spun it. The sheep on the hillside, rain falling on their thick wool, and the grass they ate … wool is from grass, Fitz. A shirt woven from grass. No, there is more. The soil, black and rich and …’
‘Stop it!’ Kettle said harshly. And she turned to me angrily. ‘And you stop asking him, Fitz. Unless you want him to follow it too far and be lost forever.’ She gave the Fool a sharp poke. ‘Eat your food.’
‘How is it you know so much about the Skill?’ Starling suddenly asked her.
‘Not you, too!’ Kettle angrily declared. ‘Is there nothing private any more?’
‘Among us? Not much,’ the Fool replied, but he was not looking at her. He was watching Kettricken, her face still puffy from weeping, as she dished up food for herself and Verity. Her worn and stained clothing, her rough hair and chapped hands and the simple, homely task she performed for her husband should have made her seem like any woman. But I looked at her and saw perhaps the strongest queen that Buckkeep had ever known.
I watched Verity wince slightly as he took from her hand the simple wooden dish and spoon. He shut his eyes a moment, struggling against the pull of the implement’s history. He composed his face and took a mouthful of food. Even across camp from him, I felt the sudden awakening of plain hunger. It was not just hot food he had been long without, it was solid sustenance of any kind. He took a shuddering breath and began to eat like a starved wolf.
Kettle was watching him. A look of pity crossed her face. ‘No. Very little privacy left for any of us,’ she said sadly.
‘The sooner we get him back to Jhaampe, the sooner he can get better,’ Starling said soothingly. ‘Should we start tomorrow, do you think? Or give him a few days of food and rest to rebuild his strength?’
‘We shall not be taking him back to Jhaampe,’ Kettle said, an undercurrent of sadness in her voice. ‘He has begun a dragon. He cannot leave it.’ She looked around at us levelly. ‘The only thing we can do for him now is stay here and help him finish it.’
‘With Red Ships torching the entire coastline of the Six Duchies and Farrow attacking the Mountains, we should stay here and help the King carve a dragon?’ Starling was incredulous.
‘Yes. If we want to save the Six Duchies and the Mountains, that is exactly what we should do. Now, you will excuse me. I think I shall put on more meat to cook. Our king looks as if he could use it.’
I set my empty plate aside. ‘We should probably cook it all. In this weather, meat will sour fast,’ I said unwisely.
I spent the next hour butchering the pig into portions that could dry-cook over the fire all night. Nighteyes awoke and helped dispose of scraps until his belly was distended. Kettricken and Verity sat talking quietly. I tried not to watch them, but even so, I was aware that his gaze frequently strayed from her to the dais where his dragon crouched over us. The low rumble of his voice was hesitant, and often died away altogether until prompted by another question from Kettricken.
The Fool was amusing himself by touching things with his Skill-fingers; a bowl, a knife, the cloth of his shirt. He met Kettle’s scowls with a benign smile. ‘I’m being careful,’ he told her once.
‘You have no idea of how to be careful,’ she complained. ‘You won’t know you’ve lost your way until you’re gone.’ She got up from our butchery with a grunt and insisted on rebandaging his fingers. After that, she and Starling left together to get more firewood. The wolf got up with a groan and followed them.
Kettricken helped Verity into the tent. After a moment she reappeared to go into the main tent. She emerged carrying her bedding. She caught my quick glance and abashed me by meeting my eyes squarely. ‘I have taken your long mittens from your pack, Fitz,’ she told me calmly. Then she joined Verity in the smaller tent. The Fool and I looked everywhere except at each other.
I went back to my cutting on the meat. I was tired of it. The smell of the pig was suddenly the smell of something dead rather than that of fresh meat and I had smears of sticky blood up to my elbows. The worn cuffs of my shirt were soaked with it. I continued doggedly with my task. The Fool came to crouch beside me.
‘When my fingers brushed Verity’s arm, I knew him,’ he said suddenly. ‘I knew he was a worthy king for me to follow, as worthy as his father before him. I know what he intends,’ he added in a lower voice. ‘It was too much for me to grasp at first, but I have been sitting and thinking. And it fits in with my dream about Realder.’
A shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with chill. ‘What?’ I demanded.
‘The dragons are the Elderlings,’ the Fool said softly. ‘But Verity could not wake them. So he carves his own dragon, and when it is finished, he will waken it, and then he will go forth to fight the Red Ships. Alone.’
Alone. That word struck me. Once again, Verity expected to fight the Red Ships alone. But there was too much I didn’t quite grasp. ‘All the Elderlings were dragons?’ I asked. My mind went back to all the fanciful drawings and weavings of Elderlings I had ever seen. Some had been dragon-like, but …
‘No. The Elderlings are dragons. Those carved creatures back in the stone garden. Those are the Elderlings. King Wisdom was able to wake them in his time, to rouse them and recruit them to his cause. They came to life for him. But now they either sleep too deeply or they are dead. Verity spent much of his strength trying to rouse them in every way he could think of. And when he could not, he decided that he would have to make his own Elderling, and quicken it, and use it to fight the Red Ships.’
I sat stunned. I thought of the Wit-life both the wolf and I had sensed crawling through those stones. With a sudden pang, I remembered the trapped anguish of the girl on a dragon statue in this very quarry. Living stone, trapped and flightless forever. I shuddered. It was a different kind of dungeon.
‘How is it done?’
The Fool shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think Verity himself knows. He blunders toward it, blind and groping. He shapes the stone, and gives it his memories. And when it is finished, it will come to life. I suppose.’
‘Do you hear what you are saying?’ I asked him. ‘Stone is going to rise and defend the Six Duchies from the Red Ships. And what of Regal’s troops and the border skirmishes with the Mountain Kingdom? Will this “dragon” drive them off as well?’ Slow anger was building in me. ‘This is what we have come all this way for? For a tale I would not expect a child to believe?’
The Fool looked mildly affronted. ‘Believe it or not as you choose. I but know that Verity believes it. Unless I am much mistaken, Kettle believes it as well. Why else would she insist we must stay here, and help Verity complete the dragon?’
For a time, I pondered this. Then I asked him, ‘Your dream about Realder’s dragon. What do you recall of it?’
He gave a helpless shrug. ‘The feelings of it, mostly. I was exuberant and joyful, for not only was I announcing Realder’s dragon, but he was going to fly me on it. I felt I was a bit in love with him, you know. That sort of lift to the heart. But …’ he faltered. ‘I cannot recall if I loved Realder or his dragon. In my dream, they are mingled … I think. Recalling dreams is so hard. One must seize them as soon as one awakes, and quickly repeat them to oneself, to harden the det
ails. Otherwise they fade so quickly.’
‘But in your dream, did a stone dragon fly?’
‘I was announcing the dragon in my dream, and knew I was to fly upon it. I had not yet seen it, in my dream.’
‘Then maybe it has nothing to do at all with what Verity does. Perhaps, in the time from which your dream came, there were real dragons, of flesh and blood.’
He looked at me curiously. ‘You do not believe there are real dragons, today?’
‘I have never seen one.’
‘In the city,’ he pointed out quietly.
‘That was a vision of a different time. You said today.’
He held one of his own pale hands up to the firelight. ‘I think they are like my kind. Rare, but not mythical. Besides, if there were no dragons of flesh and blood and fire, whence would come the idea for these stone carvings?’
I shook my head wearily. ‘This conversation goes in circles. I am tired of riddles and guesses and beliefs. I want to know what is real. I want to know why we came all this way, and what it is we must do.’
But the Fool had no answers to that. When Kettle and Starling got back with the wood, he helped me layer the fire and arrange the meat where the heat would drive the fat from it. What meat we could not set to cook, we bundled aside in the pigskin. There was a sizeable pile of bones and scraps. Despite how he had gorged earlier, Nighteyes settled down with a leg bone to gnaw. I surmised he had regurgitated part of his bellyful somewhere.
There is no such thing as having too much meat in reserve, he told me contentedly.
I made a few attempts to needle Kettle into talking to me, but somehow it evolved into a lecture on how much more aware of the Fool I must be now. He must be protected, not only from Regal’s coterie, but from the Skill-pull of objects that might take his mind wandering. For that reason, she wished us to stand our watches together. She insisted the Fool must sleep on his back, his bared fingers upturned so they touched nothing. As the Fool usually slept huddled in a ball, he was not overly pleased. But at last we settled for the night.
I was not due to take my watch until the hours before dawn. But it was short of that when the wolf came to push his nose under my cheek and jog my head until I opened my eyes.
‘What?’ I demanded tiredly.
Kettricken walks alone, weeping.
I doubted she would want my company. I also doubted that she should be alone. I rose noiselessly and followed the wolf out of the tent. Outside, Kettle sat by the fire, poking disconsolately at the meat. I knew she must have seen the Queen leave, so I did not dissemble.
‘I’m going to go find Kettricken.’
‘Probably a good idea,’ she said quietly. ‘She told me she was going to look at his dragon, but she has been gone longer than that.’
We needed to say no more about it. I followed Nighteyes as he trotted purposefully away from the fire. But he led me, not toward Verity’s dragon, but back through the quarry. There was little moonlight, and what there was the looming black blocks of stone seemed to drink away. Shadows seemed to fall in all different directions, altering perspective. The need for caution made the quarry vast as I picked my way along in the wolf’s wake.
My skin prickled as I realized we were going in the direction of the pillar. But we found her before we reached there. She was standing, motionless as the stone itself, by the girl on the dragon. She had clambered up onto the block of stone that mired the dragon, and reached up to lay a hand on the girl’s leg. A trick of the moonlight made it look as if the girl’s stone eyes looked down at her. Light sparkled silver on a stone tear, and glistened on the tears on Kettricken’s face. Nighteyes padded lightly up, leaped weightlessly upon the dais and leaned his head against Kettricken’s leg with a tiny whine.
‘Hush,’ she told him softly. ‘Listen. Can you hear her weeping? I can.’
I did not doubt it, for I could feel her questing out with the Wit, more strongly than I had ever sensed it from her before.
‘My lady,’ I said quietly.
She startled, her hand flying to her mouth as she turned to me.
‘I beg your pardon. I did not mean to frighten you. But you should not be out here alone. Kettle fears there may still be danger from the coterie, and we are not so far from the pillar.’
She smiled bitterly. ‘Wherever I am, I am alone. Nor can I think of anything they could do to me worse than what I have done to myself.’
‘That is only because you do not know them as well as I do. Please, my queen, come back to the camp with me.’
She moved and I thought she would step down to me. Instead she sat down and leaned back against the dragon. My Wit-sense of the dragon-girl’s misery was echoed by Kettricken’s. ‘I just wanted to lie beside him,’ she said quietly. ‘To hold him. And to be held. To be held, Fitz. To feel … not safe. I know none of us are safe. But to feel valued. Loved. I did not expect more than that. But he would not. He said he could not touch me. That he dared not touch anything live save his dragon.’ She turned her head aside. ‘Even with his hands and arms gloved, he would not touch me.’
I found myself clambering up the dais. I took her by the shoulders and drew her to her feet. ‘He would if he could,’ I told her. ‘This I know. He would if he could.’
She lifted her hands to cover her face, and her silent sliding tears suddenly became sobs. She spoke through them. ‘You … and your Skill. And him. You speak so easily of knowing what he feels. Of love. But I … I don’t have that. I am only … I need to feel it, Fitz. I need to feel his arms about me, to be close to him. To believe he loves me. As I love him. After I have failed him in so many ways. How can I believe … when he refuses to even …’ I put my arms about her and drew her head down on my shoulder, while Nighteyes leaned up against both of us and keened softly.
‘He loves you,’ I told her. ‘He does. But fate has laid this burden upon both of you. It must be borne.’
‘Sacrifice,’ she breathed, and I did not know if she named her child or defined her life. She continued to weep, and I held her, soothing her hair and telling her it would get better, it had to be better someday, there would be a life for them when all this was over, and children, children growing up safe from Red Ships or Regal’s evil ambitions. In time I felt her quiet, and realized it was Wit as much as words I had been giving her. The feeling I had for her had mingled with the wolf’s and joined us. Gentler than a Skill-bond, more warm and natural, I held her in my heart as much as in my arms. Nighteyes pressed up against her, telling her he would guard her, that his meat would ever be her meat, that she need fear nothing that had teeth, for we were pack, and always would be.
It was she who finally broke the embrace. She gave a final shuddering sigh, and then stepped apart from me. Her hand rose to smear the wetness on her cheeks. ‘Oh, Fitz,’ she said, simply, sadly. And that was all. I stood still, feeling the chill apartness where for a time we had been together. A sudden pang of loss assailed me. And then a shiver of fear as I realized its source. The girl on the dragon had shared our embrace, her Wit-misery briefly consoled by our closeness. Now, as we drew apart, the far, chill wailing of the stone rose up again, louder and stronger. I tried to leap lightly down from the dais, but as I landed I staggered and nearly fell. Somehow that joining had drawn strength from me. It was frightening, but I masked my uneasiness as I silently accompanied Kettricken back to the camp.
I was just in time to relieve Kettle on watch. She and Kettricken went to sleep, promising to send the Fool out to stand watch with me. The wolf gave me an apologetic glance and then followed Kettricken into the tent. I assured him I approved. A moment later the Fool emerged, rubbing his eye
s with his left hand and carrying his right lightly curled against his chest. He took a seat on a stone across from me as I looked over the meat to see which pieces needed turning. For a time he watched me silently. Then he stooped, and with his right hand, picked up a piece of firewood. I knew I should rebuke him, but instead I watched, as curious as he. After a moment, he tucked the wood into the fire and straightened. ‘Quiet and lovely,’ he told me. ‘Some forty years of growing, winter and summer, storm and fair weather. And before that, it was borne as a nut by another tree. And so the thread goes back, over and over. I do not think I need fear much from natural things, only those that have been wrought by man. Then the threads go ravelling out. But trees, I think, will be pleasant to touch.’
‘Kettle said you should touch no live things,’ I reminded him like a tattling child.
‘Kettle has not to live with this. I do. I must discover the limits it places on me. The sooner I find what I can and cannot do with my right hand, the better.’ He grinned wickedly, and made a suggestive gesture toward himself.
I shook my head at him, but could not keep from laughing.
He joined my laughter with my own. ‘Ah, Fitz,’ he said quietly a moment later, ‘you do not know how much it means to me that I can still make you laugh. If I can stir you to laughter, I can laugh myself.’
‘It surprises me that you can still jest at all,’ I replied.
‘When you can either laugh or cry, you might as well laugh,’ he replied. Abruptly he asked, ‘I heard you leave the tent earlier. Then, while you were gone … I could feel something of what happened. Where did you go? There was much I did not understand.’
I was silent, thinking. ‘The Skill-bond between us may be growing stronger instead of weaker. I do not think that is a good thing.’
‘There is no elfbark left. I had the last of it two days ago. Good or bad, it is as it is. Now explain to me what happened.’