by Robin Hobb
“You are doomed to fulfill them,” Kettle told me gently.
I slammed my cup back onto the table. “Damned if I will!” I shouted. No one jumped or replied. In a terrible instant of crystalline recall, I heard Molly’s father’s voice from his chimney corner. “Damn you, girl!” Molly had flinched but ignored him. She had known there was no reasoning with a drunk. “Molly,” I moaned soddenly and put my head down on my arms to weep.
After a time, I felt Chade’s hands on my shoulders. “Come, boy, this avails you nothing. To bed with you. Tomorrow you must face your queen. ” There was far more patience in his voice than I deserved, and I suddenly knew the depths of my churlishness.
I rubbed my face on my sleeve and managed to lift my head. I did not resist as he helped me to my feet and steered me toward the cot in the corner. As I sat down on the edge of it, I said quietly, “You knew. You knew all along. ”
“Knew what?” he asked me tiredly.
“Knew all this about the Catalyst and the White Prophet. ”
He blew air out through his nose. “I “know’ nothing of that. I knew something of the writings about them. Recall that things were comparatively settled before your father abdicated. I had many long years after I had taken to my tower, when my king did not require my services for months at a time. I had much time for reading, and many sources for scrolls. So I had encountered some of the foreign tales and writings that deal with a Catalyst and a White Prophet. ” His voice became milder, as if he’d forgotten the anger in my question.
“It was only after the Fool had come to Buckkeep, and I had quietly discovered that he had a strong interest in such writings, that my own interest was piqued. You yourself once told me that he had referred to you as the Catalyst. So I began to wonder . . . but in truth, I give all prophecies small credence. ”
I lay back gingerly. I could almost sleep on my back again. I rolled to my side, kicked off my boots, and dragged a blanket up over me.
“Fitz?”
“What?” I asked Chade grudgingly.
“Kettricken is angry with you. Do not expect her patience tomorrow. But keep in mind that she is not only our queen. She is a woman who has lost a child and been kept in suspense over her husband’s fate for over a year, hounded away from her adopted country, only to have trouble dog her steps to her native land. Her father is understandably bitter. He turns a warrior’s eyes toward the Six Duchies and Regal, and has no time for quests to search for the brother of his enemy, even if he believed he lived. Kettricken is alone, more grievously alone than you or I can imagine. Find tolerance for the woman. And respect for your queen. ” He paused uncomfortably. “You will need both tomorrow. I can be of little help to you with her. ”
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I think he went on after that, but I had ceased to listen. Sleep soon dragged me under its waves.
It had been some time since Skill dreams had troubled me. I do not know if my physical weakness had finally banished my dreams of battle, or if my constant guard against Regal’s coterie had blocked them from my mind. That night my brief respite ended. The strength of the Skill dream that snatched me from my body was as if a great hand had reached inside me, seized me by the heart, and dragged me out of myself. I was suddenly in another place.
It was a city, in the sense that folk dwelt there in great number. But the folk were unlike any I had ever seen, nor had I ever seen such dwellings. The buildings soared and spiraled to airy heights. The stone of the walls seemed to have flowed into their forms. There were bridges of delicate tracery and gardens that both cascaded down and tendriled up the sides of the structures. There were fountains that danced and others that pooled silently. Everywhere brightly clad people moved through the city, as numerous as ants.
Yet all was silent and still. I sensed the flow of folk, the play of the fountains, the perfume of the unfolding blossoms in the gardens. All was there, but when I turned to behold it, it was gone. The mind could sense the delicate tracery of the bridge but the eye saw only the fallen rubble gone to rust and rot. Frescoed walls had been wind-polished away to roughly plastered bricks. A turn of the head changed a leaping fountain to weedy dust in a cracked basin. The hastening crowd in the market spoke only with the voice of a racing wind heavy with stinging sand. I moved through this ghost of a city, bodiless and seeking, unable to decipher why I was there or what was drawing me. It was neither light nor dark there, neither summer nor winter. I am outside time, I thought, and wondered if this was the ultimate hell of the Fool’s philosophy or the final freedom.
I saw at last, far ahead of me, a small figure plodding along one of the vast streets. His head was bowed to the wind and he held his cloak’s hem over his mouth and nose as he walked to shield him from the sand-laden wind. He was not a part of the ghostly crowd but moved through the rubble, skirting the places where some unrest in the earth had sunken or ridged the paved street. I knew in that instant of sighting him that this was Verity. I knew by the jerk of life I felt in my chest, and knew then that what had pulled me here was the tiny pebble of Verity’s Skill that hid still within my own consciousness. I sensed also that the danger to him was extreme. Yet I saw nothing to threaten him. He was at a great distance from me, seen through the hazy shadows of buildings that had been, veiled in the ghosts of a market-day crowd. He trudged heavily along, alone and immune to the ghost city, and yet entwined in it. I saw nothing, but danger loomed over him like a giant’s shadow.
I hastened after him and in the blinking of an eye was beside him. “Ah,” he greeted me. “So you have come at last, Fitz. Welcome. ” He did not pause as he walked, nor turn his head. Yet I felt a warmth as if he had clasped my hand in greeting, and I felt no need to reply. Instead I saw with his eyes the lure and the danger.
A river flowed ahead. It was not water. It was not glistening stone. It partook of both those things, but was neither. It sliced through the city like a gleaming blade, sliding out of the riven mountain behind us and continuing until it disappeared into a more ancient river of water. Like a seam of coal bared by a cutting tide, or gold veining quartz, it lay exposed on the earth’s body. It was magic. Purest ancient magic, inexorable and heedless of men, flowed there. The river of Skill I had so tediously learned to navigate was to this magic as the bouquet of wine is wine. That which I glimpsed with Verity’s eyes had a physical existence as concrete as my own. I was immediately drawn to it as a moth is drawn to a candle flame.
It was not just the beauty of that shining flow. The magic filled every one of Verity’s senses. The sound of its rushing was musical, a running of notes that kept one waiting and listening, in the certainty that the sound was building to something. The wind carried its scent, elusive and changeable, one moment the edge of lemon blossoms and the next a smoky coiling of spices. I tasted it on every breath, and longed to plunge myself into it. I was suddenly sure that it could quench every appetite I had ever suffered, not just those of my body but the vague yearnings of my soul as well. I longed for my body to be here as well, that I might experience it as completely as Verity did.
Verity paused, lifting his face. He drew in a deep breath, air laden with Skill as fog is laden with moisture. Suddenly I could taste in the back of Verity’s throat a hot metallic tang. The longing he had felt for it suddenly became an all-consuming desire. He thirsted for it. When he got to it, he would throw himself on his knees and drink his fill. He would be filled with all the consciousness of the world, he would partake of the whole and become the whole. At last he would know completion.
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But Verity himself would cease to exist.
I drew back in fascinated horror. I don’t think there is anything more frightening than to encounter the true will for self-destruction. Despite my own attraction to the river, it touched off an anger in me. This was not worthy of Verity. Neither the man nor the prince I had known could be capable of such a cowardly act. I loo
ked at him as if I had never seen him.
And realized how long it had been since I had seen him.
The bright blackness of his eyes had become a dull darkness. The cloak that the wind snapped about him was a rent rag of a thing. The leather of his boots had long ago cracked, the stitches of the seams giving way and gaping open. The steps he took were uncertain, uneven things. Even if the wind had not buffeted him, I doubted his stride would have been steady. His lips were pale and cracked and his flesh had a grayish overtone to it as if the very blood of his body had forsaken it. There had been summers when he Skilled against the Red Ships to such an extent that the flesh and muscle fell from his body, leaving him a gaunt skeleton of a man with no physical stamina. Now he was a man of stamina alone, ropy muscles stretched on a framework of bones that was scarcely cloaked in flesh at all. He was the embodiment of weary purpose. Only his will kept him upright and moving. Toward the magic flow.
I do not know where I found my own will to resist it. Possibly it was because I had paused and focused myself on Verity for an instant, and seen all the world would lose if he ceased to exist as himself. Whatever the source of my strength, I pitted it against his. I threw myself into his path but he walked through me. There was nothing to me, here. “Verity, please, stop, wait!” I cried and flung myself at him, a furious feather on the wind. I had no effect on him. He didn’t even pause.
“Someone has to do it,” he said quietly. Three steps later he added, “For a time, I hoped it would not be me. But over and over, I have asked myself, “Who else, then?’ ” He turned to look at me with those burnt-to-ashes eyes. “No other answer has ever come. It has to be me. ”
“Verity, stop,” I pleaded, but he continued to walk. Not hurrying, not lagging, but simply trudging along the way a man does when he has measured the distance he must go and matched his strength to it. He had the endurance to get there if he walked.
I withdrew a bit, feeling my strength ebbing. For a moment, I feared I would lose him by being drawn back to my sleeping body. Then I realized an equally potent fear. Linked so long, and even now being pulled along after him, I might find myself drowned alongside him in that vein of magic. If I had had a body in that realm, I probably would have seized onto something and held on. As I pleaded with Verity to stop and listen to me, I instead anchored myself in the only other way I could imagine. I reached with my Skill, grasping after those others whose lives touched mine: Molly, my daughter, Chade and the Fool, Burrich and Kettricken. I had no true Skill links with any of them so my grip was a tenuous one at best, lessened by my frantic fear that at any moment Will or Carrod or even Burl might somehow become aware of me. It seemed to me that it slowed Verity. “Please wait,” I said again.
“No,” he said quietly. “Don’t seek to dissuade me, Fitz. It’s what I have to do. ”
I had never thought to measure my Skill-strength against Verity’s. I had never imagined we could be opposed to each other. But as I proceeded to batter myself against him, I felt very much like a child kicking and screaming as his father calmly carried him off to bed. Verity not only ignored my attack, I sensed that his will and concentration were elsewhere. He moved implacably on toward the black flow, and my consciousness was borne along with him. Self-preservation lent a frantic new strength to my struggles. I strove to push him away, to drag him back, but it availed me nothing.
But there was a terrible duality to my struggle. I longed for him to win. If he overpowered me and dragged me down with him, then I need take no responsibility for it. I could open myself to that flow of power and be quenched in it. It would be an end to all torments, surcease at last. I was so tired of doubts and guilts, so weary of duties and debts. If Verity carried me into that flow of Skill with him I could finally surrender with no shame.
There came a moment when we stood on the brink of that iridescent flow of power. I stared down at it with his eyes. There was no gradual shore. Instead there was a knife’s-edge brink where solid earth gave way to a streaming otherness. I stared at it, seeing it as a foreign thing in our world, a warping of our very world’s nature. Ponderously Verity lowered himself to one knee. He stared into that black luminescence. I did not know if he hesitated to say farewell to our world, or if he paused to gather his will to destroy himself. My will to resist was suspended. This was a door to an otherness I could not even imagine. Hunger and curiosity drew us closer to the brink.
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In the next moment he plunged his hands and forearms into the magic.
I shared that sudden knowledge with him. So I screamed with him as the hot current ate the flesh and muscle from his arms. I swear I felt the acid lick of it across the bared bones of his fingers and wrist and forearm. I knew his pain. Yet it was crowded from his features by the rapturous smile that overwhelmed his face. My link with him was suddenly a clumsy thing that barred me from sensing in full what he felt. I longed to be beside him, to bare my own flesh to that magic river. I shared his conviction that he could end all pain if only he would give in and plunge the rest of himself into the stream. So easy. All he had to do was lean forward a bit and let go. He crouched over the stream on his knees, sweat dripping from his face only to disappear as tiny puffs of steam when it fell into the flow. His head was bowed, and his shoulders moved up and down with the strength of his panting. Then he begged me suddenly, in a tiny voice, “Pull me back. ”
I had not had the strength to oppose his determination. But when I joined my will to his and together we fought the terrible allure of the power, it was just enough. He was able to draw his forearms and hands free from the stuff, though it felt as if he drew them out of solid stone. It gave him up reluctantly and as he staggered back I sensed in full for a moment what he had shared. There was the oneness of the world flowing there, like a single sweet note drawn purely out. It was not the song of humanity but an older, greater song of vast balances and pure being. Had Verity surrendered to it, it would have ended all his torments.
Instead, he tottered to his feet and turned away from it. He carried his forearms stretched out before him, palms up, the fingers curled into cups as if he begged something. In shape they had not changed. But now arms and fingers gleamed silver with the power that had penetrated and fused with his flesh. As he began to walk away from the stream with the same studied purposefulness with which he had approached it, I felt how his arms and hands burned as if with frostbite.
“I don’t understand,” I said to him.
“I don’t want you to. Not yet. ” I felt a duality in him. The Skill burned in him like a forge-fire of incredible heat, but the strength of his body was only sufficient to keep him walking. It was effortless for him to shield my mind from the pull of that river now. But for him to move his own body up the path taxed both his flesh and his will. “Fitz. Come to me. Please. ” It was no Skill-order this time, not even the command of a prince, only the plea of a man to another. “I have no coterie, Fitz. Only you. If the coterie that Galen created for me had been true, then I would have more faith that what I must do is possible. Yet not only are they false to me, but they seek to defeat me. They peck at me like birds on a dying buck. I do not think their attacks can destroy me, but I fear they may weaken me enough that I do not succeed. Or worse yet, that they may distract me and succeed in my place. We cannot allow that, boy. You and I are all that stand between them and their triumph. You and I. The Farseers. ”
I was not there in any physical sense. Yet he smiled at me and lifted one terrible gleaming hand to cup my face. Did he intend what he did? I do not know. The jolt was as powerful as if a warrior had slammed his shield into my face. But not pain. Awareness. Like sunlight bursting through clouds to illuminate a clearing in the forest. Everything suddenly stood out clearly, and I saw all the hidden reasons and purposes for what we did, and I understood with a painful purity of enlightenment why it was necessary I follow the path before me.
Then all was gone, and I dwind
led off into blackness. Verity was gone and my understanding with him. But for one brief instant, I had glimpsed the completeness of it. Only I remained now, but my self was so tiny I could only exist if I held on with all my might. So I did.
From a world away I heard Starling cry out in fear, “What’s wrong with him?” And Chade replied gruffly, “It’s only a seizure, such as he has from time to time. His head, Fool, hold his head or he’ll dash his own brains out. ” Distantly I felt hands gripping and restraining me. I surrendered myself to their care and sank into the darkness. I came to, for a bit, some time later. I recall little of it. The Fool raised my shoulders and steadied my head that I could drink from a cup a concerned Chade held to my lips. The familiar bitterness of elfbark puckered my mouth. I had a glimpse of Kettle standing over me, lips folded in a tight line of disapproval. Starling stood away, her eyes huge as a cornered animal’s, not deigning to touch me. “That should bring him round,” I heard Chade say as I sank into a deep sleep.
The next morning I arose early despite my pounding head and sought the baths. I slipped out so silently that the Fool did not waken, but Nighteyes arose and ghosted out with me.
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Where did you go, last night? he demanded, but I had no answer for him. He sensed my reluctance to think about it. I go to hunt now, he informed me tartly. I advise you to drink but water after this. I assented humbly and he left me at the door of the bathhouse.
Within was the mineral stink of the hot water that bubbled up from the earth. The Mountain folk trapped it in great tanks, and channeled it through pipes to other tubs so that one might choose the heat and depth one wished. I scrubbed myself off in a washing tub, then submerged myself in the hottest water I could stand and tried not to recall the scalding of the Skill on Verity’s forearms. I emerged red as a boiled crab. At the cool end of the bath-hut there were several mirrors on the wall. I tried not to see my own face as I shaved. It reminded me too vividly of Verity’s. Some of the gauntness had left it in the last week or so, but the streak of white at my brow was back and showed even more plainly when I bound my hair back in a warrior’s tail. I would not have been surprised to see Verity’s handprint on my face, or to find my scar eradicated and my nose straightened, such had been the power of that touch. But Regal’s scar on my face stood out pallidly against my steam-reddened face. Nothing had improved the broken nose. There was no outward sign of my encounter last night at all. Again and again, my mind circled back to that moment, to that touch of purest power. I fumbled to recall it and almost could. But the absolute experience of it, like pain or pleasure, could not be recalled in full, but only in pale memory. I knew I had experienced something extraordinary. The pleasures of Skilling, which all Skill users were cautioned against, were like a tiny ember compared to the bonfire of knowing, feeling, and being that I had briefly shared last night.