by Robin Hobb
“I do,” Kettle replied as quietly. And it was settled.
I had watched this interchange with a sort of awe. I felt an increase in respect for both of the women afterward. I think I fully grasped then how Kettricken perceived herself. She was the Queen of the Six Duchies and she did not doubt it. But unlike many, she had not hidden behind a title or taken offense at Kettle’s quick reply to her. Instead, she had answered her, woman to woman, with respect but also authority. Once more I had glimpsed her mettle and found I could not fault it.
We all shared the yurt that night. Kettricken filled a small brazier with coals from our fire and brought it within. It made the shelter surprisingly comfortable. She posted a watch and included both Kettle and herself in that duty. The others slept well. I lay awake for a time. I was once more on my way to find Verity. That brought a tiny measure of release from the incessant Skill-command. But I was also on my way to the river where he had laved his hands in raw Skill. That seductive image lurked always at the edge of my mind now. Resolutely I pushed the temptation from my mind, but that night my dreams were full of it. We broke camp early, and were on our way before the day was fairly born. Kettricken bid us discard a second, smaller yurt that had been brought along to accommodate our original larger party. She left it carefully stowed at the stopping place where another might find and make use of it. The freed beast was loaded instead with the bulk of the packs the humans had carried. I was grateful, for the throbbing of my back was unceasing now.
For four days Kettricken held us to that pace. She did not say if she truly expected pursuit. I did not ask. There were no real opportunities for private talk with anyone. Kettricken always led, followed by the animals, the Fool and me, Starling, and often trailing us by quite a distance, Kettle. Both women kept their promises. Kettricken did not slow the pace for the old woman, and Kettle never complained of it. Each night she came into camp late, usually accompanied by Nighteyes. She was often just in time to share our food and shelter for the night. But she arose the moment Kettricken did the next day and never complained.
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The fourth night, when we were all within the tent and settling down to sleep, Kettricken suddenly addressed me. “FitzChivalry, I would have your thoughts on something,” she declared.
I sat up, intrigued by the formality of her request. “I am at your service, my queen. ”
Beside me, the Fool muffled a snicker. I suppose we both looked a bit odd, sitting in a welter of blankets and furs and addressing one another so formally. But I kept my demeanor.
Kettricken added a few bits of dry wood to the brazier to bring up a flame and light. She took out an enameled cylinder, removed the cap, and coaxed out a piece of vellum. As she gently unrolled it, I recognized the map that had inspired Verity to his quest. It seemed odd to look at the faded map in this setting. It belonged to a much more secure time in my life, when hot meals of good food were taken for granted, when my clothes were tailored to fit me and I knew where I would sleep each night. It seemed unfair that my whole world had changed so much since I had last seen the map, but that it remained unchanged, an aging flap of vellum with a worn tracery of lines on it. Kettricken held it flat on her lap and tapped a blank spot on it. “This is about where we are,” she told me. She took a breath as if bracing herself. She tapped another spot, likewise unmarked. “This is about where we found the signs of a battle. Where I found Verity’s cloak and . . . the bones. ” Her voice quavered a bit on the words. She looked up suddenly and her eyes met mine as they had not since Buckkeep. “You know, Fitz, it is hard for me. I gathered up those bones and thought they were his. For so many months, I believed him dead. And now, solely on your word of some magic that I do not possess or understand, I try to believe he is alive. That there is hope still. But . . . I have held those bones. And my hands cannot forget the weight and chill of them, nor my nose that smell. ”
“He lives, my lady,” I assured her quietly.
She sighed again. “Here is what I would ask you. Shall we go directly to where the trails are marked on this map, the ones that Verity said he would follow? Or do you wish to be taken to the battle site first?”
I thought for a time. “I am sure you gathered from that place all there was to gather, my queen. Time has passed, part of a summer and more than half of a winter since you were last there. No. I can think of nothing I might find there that your trackers did not when the ground was bared of snow. Verity lives, my queen, and he is not there. So let us not seek him there, but where he said he would go. ”
She nodded slowly, but if she took heart from my words, she did not show it. Instead, she tapped the map again. “This road here shown is known to us. It was a trade road once, and although no one even recalls what its destination was, it is still used. The more remote villages and the solitary trappers have their paths to it, and they then follow it down to Jhaampe. We could have been traveling on it all this time, but I did not wish to. It is too well used. We have come by the swiftest route, if not the widest. Tomorrow, however, we shall cross it. And when we do, we shall set our backs toward Jhaampe and follow it up into the Mountains. ” Her finger traced it on the map. “I have never been to that part of the Mountains,” she said simply. “Few have, other than trappers or occasional adventurers who go to see if the old tales are true. Usually they bring back tales of their own that are even stranger than the ones that prompted them to go adventuring. ”
I watched her pale fingers walk slowly across the map. The faint lines of the ancient road diverged into three separate trails with different destinations. It began and ended, that road, with no apparent source or destination. Whatever had once been marked at the end of those lines had faded away into inky ghosts. Neither of us had any way of knowing which destination Verity had chosen. Though they did not look far separated on the map, the terrain of the Mountains could mean they were days or even weeks apart. I also had small trust in such an old map being reliably to scale.
“Where are we going first?” I asked her.
She hesitated briefly, then her finger tapped one of the trail ends. “Here. I think this one would be closest. ”
“Then that is a wise choice. ”
She met my eyes again. “Fitz. Could not you simply Skill to him, and ask him where he is? Or bid him come to us? Or at least ask him why he has not returned to me?”
At each small shake of my head, her eyes grew wilder. “Why not?” she demanded in a shaking voice. “This great and secret magic of the Farseers cannot even call him to us in such need?”
I kept my eyes on her face, but wished there had been fewer listening ears. Despite all Kettricken knew of me, I still felt very uneasy speaking of the Skill with anyone save Verity. I chose my words carefully. “By Skilling to him, I might place him in great danger, my lady. Or draw trouble down on us. ”
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“How?” she demanded.
I briefly considered the Fool, Kettle, and Starling. It was hard to explain to myself the uneasiness I felt at speaking bluntly of a magic that had been guarded as a secret for so many generations. But this was my queen and she had asked me a question. I lowered my eyes and spoke. “The coterie Galen made was never loyal to the King. Not to King Shrewd, not to King Verity. Always they were the tool of a traitor, used to cast doubt on the King’s abilities and undermine his ability to defend his kingdom. ”
From Kettle came a small gasp of indrawn breath, while Kettricken’s blue eyes went steely gray with cold. I continued. “Even now, were I to openly Skill to Verity, they might find a way to listen. By such a Skilling, they might find him. Or us. They have grown strong in the Skill, and ferreted out ways of using it that I have never learned. They spy on other Skill users. They can, using only the Skill, inflict pain, or create illusion. I fear to Skill to my king, Queen Kettricken. That he has not chosen to Skill to me makes me believe my caution is the same as his. ”
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p; Kettricken had gone snow pale as she mulled my words. Softly she asked, “Always disloyal to him, Fitz? Speak plainly. Did not they aid in defending the Six Duchies at all?”
I weighed my words as if I were reporting to Verity himself. “I have no proof, my lady. But I would guess that Skill-messages of Red Ships were sometimes never relayed, or were deliberately delayed. I think the commands that Verity Skilled forth to the coterie members in the watchtowers were not passed on to the keeps they were to guard. They obeyed him enough that Verity could not tell his messages and commands had been delivered hours after he had sent them. To his dukes, his efforts would appear inept, his strategies untimely or foolish. ” My voice trailed away at the anger that blossomed in Kettricken’s face. Color came up in her cheeks, angry roses.
“How many lives?” she asked harshly. “How many towns? How many dead, or worse, Forged? All for a prince’s spite, all for a spoiled boy’s ambition for the throne? How could he have done it, Fitz? How could he have stood to let people die simply to make his brother look foolish and incompetent?”
I did not have any real answer to that. “Perhaps he did not think they were people and towns,” I heard myself say softly. “Perhaps to him they were only game pieces. Possessions of Verity’s to be destroyed if he could not win them for himself. ”
Kettricken closed her eyes. “This cannot be forgiven,” she said quietly to herself. She sounded ill with it. With an oddly gentle finality, she added, “You will have to kill him, FitzChivalry. ”
So odd, to be given that royal command at last. “I know that, my lady. I knew it when last I tried. ”
“No,” she corrected me. “When last you attempted it, it was for yourself. Did not you know that had angered me? This time, I tell you that you must kill him for the sake of the Six Duchies. ” She shook her head, almost surprised. “It is the only way in which he can be Sacrifice for his people. To be killed for them before he can hurt them any more. ”
She looked around abruptly at the circle of silent people huddled in bedding, staring at her. “Go to sleep,” she told all of us, as if we were willful children. “We must get up early again tomorrow and once more travel swiftly. Sleep while you can. ”
Starling went outside to take up her first night’s watch. The others lay back, and as the flames from the brazier fell and the light dimmed, I am sure they slept. But despite my weariness, I lay and stared into the darkness. About me were only the sounds of people breathing, of the night wind barely moving through the trees. If I quested out, I could sense Nighteyes prowling about, ever alert for the unwary mouse. The peace and stillness of the winterbound forest was all around us. They all slept deeply, save for Starling on watch.
No one else heard the rushing drive of the Skill-urge that grew stronger within me every day of our journeying. I had not spoken to the Queen of my other fear: that if I reached out to Verity with the Skill, I would never return, but would instead immerse myself in that Skill river I had glimpsed and be forever borne away on it. Even to think on that temptation brought me quivering to the edge of acquiescence. Fiercely I set my walls and boundaries, putting every guard between me and the Skill that I had ever been taught. But tonight I set them, not just to keep Regal and his coterie out of my mind, but to keep myself in it.
24
The Skill Road
WHAT IS THE true source of magic? Is one born with it in the blood, as some dogs are born to follow a scent while others are best at herding sheep? Or is it a thing that may be won by any with the determination to learn? Or rather are magics inherent to the stones and waters and earths of the world, so that a child imbibes abilities with the water he drinks or the air he breathes? I ask these questions with no concept of how to discover the answers. Did we know the source, could a wizard of great power be deliberately created by one desiring to do so? Could one breed for magic in a child as one breeds a horse for strength or speed? Or select a babe, and begin instruction before the child could even speak? Or build one’s house where one might tap the magic where the earth is richest with it? These questions so frighten me that I have almost no desire to pursue the answers, save that if I do not, another may.
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It was early afternoon when we came to the wide trail marked on the map. Our narrow path merged into it as a stream joins a river. For some days we were to follow it. Sometimes it led us past small villages tucked into sheltered folds of the Mountains, but Kettricken hastened us past them without stopping. We passed other travelers on the road, and these she greeted courteously, but firmly turned aside all efforts at conversation. If any recognized her as Eyod’s daughter, they gave no sign of it. There came a day, however, when we passed the entire day without so much as a glimpse of another traveler, let alone a village or hut. The trail grew narrower, and the only tracks upon it were old ones, blurred by fresh snow. When we rose the next day and set forth upon it, it soon dwindled to no more than a vague track through the trees. Several times Kettricken paused and cast about, and once she made us backtrack and then go on in a new direction. Whatever signs she was following were too subtle for me.
That night, when we camped, she again took out her map and studied it. I sensed her uncertainty, and came to sit beside her. I asked no questions and offered no advice, only gazing with her at the map’s worn markings. Finally she glanced up at me.
“I think we are here,” she said. Her finger showed me the end of the trade trail we had followed. “Somewhere north of us, we should find this other road. I had hoped there would be some ancient connecting trail between the two. It was an idea that made sense to me, that this old road would perhaps connect to one even more forgotten. But now . . . ” She sighed. “Tomorrow, I suppose we blunder on and hope for luck to aid us. ”
Her words did not put heart into any of us.
Nevertheless, the next day we moved on. We moved steadily north, through forest that seemed to have been forever untouched by an axe. Tree branches laced and intertwined high above us, while generations of leaves and needles lay deep beneath the uneven blanketing of snow that had filtered down to the forest floor. To my Wit-sense, these trees had a ghostly life that was almost animal, as if they had acquired some awareness simply by virtue of their age. But it was an awareness of the greater world of light and moisture, soil and air. They regarded our passage not at all, and by afternoon I felt no more significant than an ant. I had never thought to be disdained by a tree.
As we traveled on, hour after hour, I am sure I was not the only one to wonder if we had lost our way completely. A forest this old could have swallowed a road a generation ago. Roots would have lifted its cobbles, leaves and needles blanketed it. What we sought might no longer exist except as a line on an old map.
It was the wolf, ranging well ahead of us as always, who came upon it first.
I like this not at all, he announced.
“The road is that way,” I called to Kettricken ahead of me. My puny human voice seemed like a fly’s buzzing in a great hall. I was almost surprised when she heard me and looked back. She took in my pointing hand, then, with a shrug, led her pack sheep in a more westerly direction. We still walked for some time before I saw an arrow-straight break through the clustering trees ahead of us. A stripe of light penetrated the forest there. Kettricken led her pack sheep down onto its wide surface.
What is wrong with it?
He shook himself all over as if to rid his coat of water. It is too much of man. Like a fire to cook meat over.
I do not understand.
He lay back his ears. Like a great force made small and bent to a man’s will. Always fire seeks a way to escape containment. So does this road.
His answer made no sense to me. Then we came to the road. I watched Kettricken and the jeppas precede me. The wide road was a straight cut through the trees, its surface lower than that of the forest floor, as when a child drags a stick through sand and leaves a trough behind. The for
est trees grew alongside it and leaned over it, but none of them had sent roots thrusting out into the road, nor had any saplings sprouted up from it. Neither had the snow that covered the road’s surface been marred, not even by a bird’s track. There were not even the muted sign of old tracks covered with snow. No one had trodden this road since the winter snows had begun. As far as I could see, no game trails even crossed it.
I stepped down onto the road’s surface.
It was like walking into trailing cobwebs face-first. A piece of ice down the back. Stepping into a hot kitchen after being out in an icy wind. It was a physical sensation that seized me, as sharply as any of those others, and yet as indescribable as wet or dry is. I halted, transfixed. Yet none of the others showed any awareness of it as they hopped down from the lip of the forest onto the road surface. Starling’s only comment, to herself, was that at least here the snow was shallower and the walking better. She did not even ask herself why the snow should be shallower on the road, but only hurried after the trailing line of jeppas. I was still standing on the road, looking about me, some minutes later when Kettle stepped out of the trees and onto the road’s surface. She, too, halted. For an instant, she seemed startled and muttered something.
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“Did you say Skill-wrought?” I demanded of her.
Her eyes jumped to me as if she had been unaware of me standing right there before her. She glared. For a moment she didn’t speak. Then, “I said “Hell-rot!’ ” she declared. “Near twisted my ankle jumping down. These mountain boots are no stiffer than socks. ” She turned away from me and trudged off after the others. I followed her. For some reason, I felt as if I were wading in water, save without the resistance of water. It is a difficult sensation to describe. As if something flowed uphill around me and hurried me along with its current.
It seeks a way to escape containment, the wolf observed again sourly. I glanced up to find him trotting along beside me, but on the lip of the forest rather than on the smooth road surface. You’d be wiser to travel up here, with me.
I thought about it. I seem to be all right. Walking is easier here. Smoother.