by Robin Hobb
We are coming to you, I told him needlessly.
I know. Hurry. And do this no more, think of them no more, and give no thought at all to the names of those who would do us harm. Every whisper here is a shout. They have powers you do not imagine, in strengths you cannot defy. Where you go, your enemies may follow. So leave no trail.
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But where are you? I demanded as he thrust me away from him.
Find me! he commanded me, and slammed me back into my own body and life.
I sat up in my blankets, convulsively gasping for air. It reminded me of wrestling and being slammed down on the flat of my back. For a moment I made tiny sounds as I sought to fill my lungs. Finally I drew a full breath. I looked about me in the darkness. Outside the tent, the windstorm howled. The brazier was a small red glow in the center that illuminated little more than Kettle’s huddled form sleeping close to it.
“Are you all right?” the Fool asked me quietly.
“No,” I said softly. I lay back down beside him. I was suddenly too tired to think, too tired to say another word. The sweat on my body chilled and I began to shiver. The Fool surprised me by putting an arm around me. I moved closer to him gratefully, sharing warmth. The sympathy of my wolf wrapped me. I waited for the Fool to say something comforting. He was too wise to try. I fell asleep longing for words that did not exist.
25
Strategy
Six Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town
Climbed a hill, and never came down
Found their flesh and lost their skins
Flew away on stony wings.
Five Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town
Walked a road not up nor down
Were torn to many and turned to one
In the end, left a task half-done.
Four Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town
They spoke in words without a sound
They begged their Queen to let them go
And what became of them, no one can know.
Three Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town
They’d helped a king to keep his crown.
But when they tried to climb the hill
Down they came in a terrible spill.
Two Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town
Gentle women there they found.
Forgot their quest and lived in love
Perhaps were wiser than ones above.
One Wiseman came to Jhaampe-town.
He set aside both Queen and Crown
Did his task and fell asleep
Gave his bones to the stones to keep.
No wise men go to Jhaampe-town
To climb the hill and never come down.
’Tis wiser far and much more brave
To stay at home and face the grave.
“Fitz? Are you awake?” The Fool was bending over me, his face very close to mine. He seemed anxious.
“I think so. ” I shut my eyes. Images and thoughts flickered through my mind. I could not decide which of them were mine. I tried to remember if it was important to know that.
“Fitz!” This was Kettricken, shaking me.
“Make him sit up,” Starling suggested. Kettricken promptly gripped me by my shirtfront and hauled me into a sitting position. The sudden change dizzied me. I could not understand why they wanted me to be awake in the middle of the night. I said so.
“It’s midday,” Kettricken said tersely. “The storm hasn’t let up since last night. ” She peered at me closely. “Are you hungry? Would you like a cup of tea?”
While I was trying to decide, I forgot what she had asked me. There were so many people talking softly, I could not sort my thoughts from theirs. “I beg your pardon,” I told the woman politely. “What did you ask me?”
“Fitz!” the pale man hissed in exasperation. He reached behind me and dragged a pack over to him. “He has elfbark in here, for tea. Chade left it with him. It should bring him back to himself. ”
“He doesn’t need that,” an old woman said sharply. She crawled closer to me, reached up, and gripped my ear. She pinched it tightly.
“Ouch! Kettle!” I rebuked her, and tried to pull away. She kept her painful hold. “Wake up!” she told me sternly. “Right now!”
“I’m awake!” I promised her, and after a scowl at me, she let go of my ear. While I looked about me in some confusion, she muttered angrily, “We’re too close to that damnable road. ”
“It’s still stormy outside?” I asked bewilderedly.
“You’ve only been told that six times,” Starling retorted, but I could hear the worry that underlay her words.
“I had . . . nightmares last night. I didn’t sleep well. ” I looked around at the circle of folk clustered around the small brazier. Someone had braved the wind for a fresh supply of wood. A kettle hung on a tripod over the brazier, heaped full of melting snow. “Where’s Nighteyes?” I asked as soon as I missed him.
“Hunting,” Kettricken said and, With very little luck, came the echo from the hillside above us. I could feel the wind past his eyes. He had folded his ears back from it. Nothing is moving in this storm. I don’t know why I bother.
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Come back and stay warm, I suggested. At that moment, Kettle leaned over and pinched my arm savagely. I jerked back from it with a cry.
“Pay attention to us!” she snapped at me.
“What are we doing?” I demanded as I sat rubbing my arm. No one’s behavior made any sense to me today.
“Waiting for the storm to pass,” Starling told me. She leaned closer to me, peering into my face. “Fitz, what is the matter with you? I feel as if you’re not really here. ”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I feel caught in a dream. And if I don’t concentrate on staying awake, I start to fall right back to sleep. ”
“Then concentrate,” Kettle advised me roughly. I could not understand why she seemed so angry with me.
“Maybe he should just sleep,” the Fool suggested. “He seems tired, and from all the leaping and yelping he did in his sleep last night, his dreams were scarcely restful. ”
“So he will get more rest staying awake now than from going back to dreams like that,” Kettle insisted mercilessly. She poked me suddenly in the ribs. “Talk to us, Fitz. ”
“About what?” I hedged.
Kettricken moved quickly to the attack. “Did you dream of Verity last night?” she demanded. “Is Skilling last night what has left you so dazed today?”
I sighed. One does not answer a direct question from one’s queen with a lie. “Yes,” I told her, but as her eyes lit I had to add, “But it was a dream that will bring you small comfort. He is alive, in a cold, windy place. He would let me see no more than that, and when I asked where he was, he simply told me to find him. ”
“Why would he behave so?” Kettricken asked. The hurt on her face was as if Verity himself had shoved her away.
“He warned me severely against all Skilling. I had been . . . watching Molly and Burrich. ” It was so hard to admit this, for I wanted to speak nothing of what I had seen there. “Verity came and took me away from there, and warned me that our enemies might find them through me and hurt them. I believe that is why he concealed his surroundings from me. Because he feared that if I knew them, somehow Regal or his coterie might come to know them. ”
“Does he fear that they seek for him also?” Kettricken asked wonderingly.
“So it seems to me. Though I have felt no tremor of their presence, he seems to believe they will seek him out, either by the Skill or in the flesh. ”
“Why should Regal bother to do so, when all believe Verity dead?” Kettricken asked me.
I shrugged. “Perhaps to make certain that he never returns to prove them all wrong. I do not truly know, my queen. I sense that my king conceals much from me. He warned me that the powers of the coterie are many and st
rong. ”
“But surely Verity is as strong?” Kettricken asked with a child’s faith.
“He masters a storm of power such as I have never witnessed, my lady. But it takes all his will to control it. ”
“All such control is an illusion,” Kettle mumbled to herself. “A trap to deceive the unwary. ”
“King Verity is scarcely unwary, Dame Kettle!” Kettricken retorted angrily.
“No, he is not,” I agreed in a conciliatory tone. “And the words were mine, not Ver . . . King Verity’s, my lady. I only seek to make you understand that what he now does is beyond my comprehension. All I can do is trust that he knows what he is about. And do as he has ordered me. ”
“To find him,” Kettricken agreed. She sighed. “Would that we could leave now, this very minute. But only a fool defies a storm such as this one. ”
“While we bide here, FitzChivalry is in constant danger,” Kettle informed us. All eyes turned to her.
“What makes you say so, Kettle?” Kettricken asked.
She hesitated. “Anyone can see it is so. Unless he is kept talking, his thoughts drift, his eyes become empty. He cannot sleep at night without the Skill coming upon him. It is obvious that the road is at fault. ”
“While these things are so, it is not at all obvious to me that the road is the problem. A lingering fever from his injury could be at fault, or . . . ”
“No. ” I risked interrupting my queen. “It is the road. I have no fever. And I did not feel this way before I traveled on it. ”
“Explain this to me,” Kettricken commanded.
“I don’t understand it myself. I can only suppose that Skill was somehow used to construct that road. It runs straighter and more level than any road I have ever known. No tree intrudes upon it, despite how little it is used. There are no animal tracks upon it. And did you mark the one tree we passed yesterday, the log that had fallen across the road? The stump and the uppermost branches were still almost sound . . . but all of the trunk that had fallen upon the road itself was rotted away to almost nothing. Some force moves still in that road, to keep it so clear and true. And I think whatever it is, it is related to the Skill. ”
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Kettricken sat a moment considering this. “What do you suggest we do?” she asked me.
I shrugged. “Nothing. For now. The tent is well pitched here. We’d be foolish to try to move it in this wind. I must simply be aware of the danger to myself, and endeavor to avoid it. And tomorrow, or whenever the wind falls, I should walk beside the road instead of upon it. ”
“That will be little better for you,” Kettle grumbled.
“Perhaps. But as the road is our guide to Verity, it would be foolish to leave it. Verity survived this path, and he walked it alone. ” I paused, thinking that I now understood better some of the fragmented Skill dreams I had had of him. “I will manage, somehow. ”
The circle of faces doubtfully regarding me were not reassuring. “You must, I suppose,” Kettricken concluded dolefully. “If there is any way we can assist you, FitzChivalry . . . ”
“There is none that I can think of,” I admitted.
“Save to keep his mind occupied as best we can,” Kettle offered. “Do not let him sit idly, nor sleep overmuch. Starling, you have your harp, have you not? Could not you play and sing for us?”
“I have a harp,” Starling corrected her sourly. “It’s a poor thing compared to my old one that was taken from me at Moonseye. ” For a moment her face emptied and her eyes turned inward. I wondered if that was how I looked when the Skill pulled at me. Kettle reached to pat her softly on one knee, but Starling flinched to the touch. “Still, it’s what I have, and I’ll play it, if you think it will help. ” She reached behind her for her pack and drew from it a bundled harp. As she drew the harp from its wrappings, I could see that it was little more than a framework of raw wood with strings stretched across it. It had the essential shape of her old harp, but with none of its grace and polish. It was to Starling’s old harp what one of Hod’s practice blades was to a fine sword; a thing of utility and function, no more than that. But she settled it on her lap and began tuning it. She began the opening notes of an old Buck ballad when she was interrupted by a snowy nose poking its way into the tent door.
“Nighteyes!” The Fool welcomed him.
I’ve meat to share. This came as a proud announcement. More than enough to gorge well on.
It was not an exaggeration. When I crawled out of the tent to see his kill, it was a sort of boar. The tusks and coarse hair were much the same as those I had hunted before, but this creature had larger ears and the coarse hair was mottled black and white. When Kettricken joined me, she exclaimed over it, saying she had seen few of them before, but they were known to roam the forests and had a reputation as vicious game best left alone. She scratched the wolf behind the ear with a mittened hand and praised him overmuch for his bravery and skill, until he fell over in the snow overcome with pride in himself. I looked at him, lolling near on his back in the snow and wind, and could not help but grin. In an instant he had flipped to his feet, to give me a nasty pinch on the leg and demand that I open its belly for him.
The meat was fat and rich. Kettricken and I did most of the butchering, for the cold savaged the Fool and Kettle mercilessly and Starling begged off for the sake of a harpist’s hands. Cold and damp were not the best things for her still-healing fingers. I did not much mind. Both the task and the harsh conditions kept my mind from wandering as I worked, and there was an odd pleasure to being alone with Kettricken, even under such circumstances, for in sharing this humble work, we both forgot station and past and became but two people in the cold rejoicing in a richness of meat. We cut off long skewering strips that would cook swiftly over the little brazier in sufficient quantity for all of us to gorge. Nighteyes took the entrails for himself, reveling in the heart and liver and guts and then a front leg with the satisfaction of bones to crack. He brought this gristly prize into the tent with him, but no one made comment on the snowy, bloody wolf that lay along one side of the tent wall and noisily chewed his meat save to praise him. I thought him insufferably satisfied with himself and told him so; he but informed me that I had never made so difficult a kill alone, let alone dragged it back intact to share. All the while the Fool scratched his ears.
Soon the rich smell of cooking filled the tent. It had been some days since we had had fresh meat of any kind, and the cold we had endured made the fat taste doubly rich to us. It brought our spirits up and we could almost forget the howling of the wind outside and the cold that pressed so fiercely against our small shelter. After we were all sated with meat, Kettle made tea for us. I know of nothing more warming than hot meat and tea and good fellowship.
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This is pack, Nighteyes observed in contentment from his corner. And I could do no more than agree.
Starling cleansed her fingers of grease and took her harp back from the Fool, who had asked to see it. To my surprise, he leaned over it with her, and traced down the frame with a pale fingernail, saying, “Had I my tools here, I could shave the wood here, and here, and smooth a curve like so along this side. I think it might fit your hands better. ”
Starling looked at him hard, caught between suspicion and hesitancy. She studied his face for mockery, but found none. Carefully she observed, as if she spoke to us all, “My master who taught me harping was good at the making of harps as well. Too good, perhaps. He tried to teach me, and I learned the basics, but he could not stand to watch me “fumble and scrape at fine wood,’ as he put it. So I never learned for myself the finer points of shaping the frame. And with this hand still stiff . . . ”
“Were we back at Jhaampe, I could let you fumble and scrape as much as you wanted. To do is truly the only way to learn. But for here, for now, even with such knives as we have, I think I might bring a more graceful shape out of this wood.
” The Fool spoke openly.
“If you would,” she accepted quietly. I wondered when they had set aside their hostilities and realized I had not, for some days, paid much attention to anyone save myself. I had accepted that Starling wanted little more to do with me than to be present if I did something of vast import. I had not made any of friendship’s demands upon her. Both Kettricken’s rank and her grief had imposed a barrier between us that I had not ventured to breach. Kettle’s reticence about herself made any true conversation difficult. But I could think of no excuse for how I had excluded the Fool and the wolf from my thoughts lately.
When you throw up walls against those who would use Skill against you, you lock more than your Skill-sense inside, Nighteyes observed.
I sat pondering that. It seemed to me that my Wit and my feeling for people had dimmed somewhat of late. Perhaps my companion was right. Kettle poked me suddenly, sharply. “Don’t wander!” she chided me.
“I was just thinking,” I said defensively.
“Well, think aloud then. ”
“I’ve no thoughts worth sharing just now. ”
Kettle glowered at me for being uncooperative.
“Recite then,” commanded the Fool. “Or sing something. Anything to keep yourself focused here. ”
“That’s a good idea,” Kettle agreed, and it was my turn to glower at the Fool. But all eyes were on me. I took a breath and tried to think of something to recite. Almost everyone had a favorite story or bit of poetry memorized. But most of what I had possessed had to do with the poisoning herbs or others of the assassin’s arts. “I know one song,” I finally admitted. “ “Crossfire’s Sacrifice. ’ ”
Now Kettle scowled, but Starling struck up the opening notes with an amused smile on her face. After one false start, I launched into it, and carried it off fairly well, though I saw Starling flinch a time or two at a soured note. For whatever reason, my choice of song displeased Kettle, who sat grim and staring at me defiantly. When I had finished, the turn was passed to Kettricken, who sang a hunting ballad from the Mountains. Then it was the Fool’s turn, and he humored us with a ribald folk song about courting a milkmaid. I believe I saw grudging admiration from Starling for that performance. That left Kettle, and I had expected her to beg off. Instead, she sang the old children’s nursery rhyme about “Six Wise Men went to Jhaampe-town, climbed a hill and never came down,” all the time eyeing me as if each word from her cracked old voice were a barb meant just for me. But if there was a veiled insult there, I missed it, as well as the reason for her ill will.