by Robin Hobb
I bent over it, ignoring the phantoms, to retrace my steps. I located the map tower easily. As luck would have it that section of the map was much cracked, but I still was fairly certain of my path as my fingers walked where my feet had the night before. Once more I marveled at the straightness of the roads and the precise intersections where they met. I was not certain exactly where I had first “awakened” the night before, but I was able to select a section of the city that was not too large and say with certainty it was within that square. My eye returned to the tower and I carefully noted the number of intersections and the turns I must make to return to my starting point. Perhaps once there, if I cast about, I might find something that would awaken my memories of the missing days. I wished suddenly for a bit of paper and a quill to sketch out the surrounding area. When I did so, the meaning of the fire was instantly clear.
Verity had used a burnt stick to make his map. But upon what? I glanced around the room, but there were no hangings on these walls. Instead the walls between the windows were slabs of white stone, incised with . . . I stood up to get a closer look. Wonder overtook me. I put my hand on the cold white stone, and then peered out of the dirty window beside it. My fingers traced the river I could see in the distance, then found the smooth track of the road that crossed it. The view out of each window was represented by the panel beside it. Tiny glyphs and symbols might have been the names of towns or holdings. I scrubbed at the window, but most of the dirt was on the outside.
The significance of the broken window was suddenly clear. Verity had broken out that pane, for a clearer view of what lay beyond it. And then he had kindled that fire and used a burnt stick to copy something, probably to the map he had been carrying since Buckkeep. But what? I went to the broken window and studied the panels to either side of it. A hand had smeared the left one, wiping dust away from it. I set my own hand upon the print of Verity’s palm in the dust. He had cleared this panel and stared out the window, and then copied something down. I could not doubt that it was his destination. I wondered if what was marked on the panel somehow coordinated with the markings on the map he had carried. I wished in vain that I had Kettricken’s copy with me to compare the two.
Out of the window, I could see the Mountains to the north of me. I had come from there. I studied the view and then tried to relate it to the etched panel beside me. The flickering ghosts of the past were no help. One moment I looked out over a forested countryside; the next I was looking at vineyards and grainfields. The only feature that was in common to both views was the black ribbon of road that went straight as an arrow to the mountains. My fingers tracked the road up the panel. There in the distance it reached the mountains. Some glyphs were marked there, where the road diverged. And a tiny sparkle of crystal had been embedded in the panel there.
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I put my face close to the panel and tried to study the tiny glyphs there. Did they match the markings on Verity’s map? Were they symbols Kettricken would recognize? I left the tower room and hastened down the stairs, passing through phantoms that seemed to grow stronger and stronger. I heard their words clearly now and caught glimpses of the tapestries that had once graced the walls. There were many dragons depicted on them. “Elderlings?” I asked of the echoing stone walls, and heard my words shivering up and down the stairs.
I sought something to write upon. The tattered tapestries were damp rags that crumbled at a touch. What wood there was was old and rotten. I broke down the door to one inner chamber, hoping to find its contents well preserved. Inside, I found the interior walls lined with wooden racks of pigeonholes, each holding a scroll. They looked substantial, as did the writing implements on the table in the center of the room. But my groping fingers found little more than the ghosts of paper, crisp and fragile as ashes. My eyes showed me a stack of fresh vellums on a corner shelf. My groping fingers pushed away rotted debris, to find finally a usable fragment no bigger than my two hands. It was stiff and yellowed, but it might serve. A heavy stoppered glass pot held the dried remnants of an ink. The wooden handles of their writing implements were gone, but the metal tips had survived and they were long enough for me to grasp firmly. Armed with these supplies, I returned to the map room.
Spittle restored the ink to life and I honed the metal nib on the floor until it shone clean again. I rekindled the remnants of Verity’s fire, for the afternoon was becoming overcast and the light through the dusty windows was dimming. I knelt in front of the panel Verity’s hand had dusted and copied as much as I could of the road, mountains, and other features onto the scrap of stiffened leather. Painstakingly I squinted at the tiny glyphs and transferred as many of them as I could to the vellum. Perhaps Kettricken could make sense of them. Perhaps when we compared this clumsy map of mine to the map she carried, some common feature would make sense. It was all I had to go on. The sun was setting outside and my fire no more than embers when I finally finished. I looked down on my scratchings ruefully. Neither Verity nor Fedwren would have been impressed with my work. But it would have to do. When I was certain the ink was set and would not smear, I put the vellum inside my shirt to carry it. I would not chance rain or snow on it to blur my markings.
I left the tower as night was falling. My ghostly companions had long since gone home to hearth and supper. I walked the streets among scores of folk seeking their homes or venturing out for an evening’s pleasure. I passed inns and taverns that seemed to blaze with light and heard merry voices from within. It was becoming harder and harder for me to see the truth of the empty streets and abandoned buildings. It was a special misery to walk with my belly growling and my throat dry past inns where phantoms filled themselves with ghostly cheer and shouted aloud to one another in greeting.
My plans were simple. I would go to the river and drink. Then I would do my best to return to the first place I remembered in the city. I would find some sort of shelter in that vicinity for the night, and by morning light I would head back toward the mountains. I hoped if I went by the path I had probably used to come here, something would stimulate my memory.
I was kneeling by the river’s edge, one palm flat on the paving stone, drinking cold water when the dragon appeared. One moment the sky above me was empty. Then there was a golden light on everything and the noise of great wings beating, like the whirring of a pheasant’s wings in flight. About me folk cried out, some in startlement and some in delight. The creature dived down on us and circled low. The wake of wind it put out set the ships to rocking and the river to rippling. Once more it circled and then without warning it plunged completely out of sight in the river. The golden light it had shed was extinguished and the night seemed all the darker by comparison.
I jerked back reflexively from the dream wave that leaped against the shore as the river absorbed the dragon’s impact. All around me, people were staring expectantly at the water. I followed their gazes. At first I saw nothing. Then the water parted and a great head emerged from the river. Water dripped from it and ran gleaming down the golden serpentine neck that next appeared. All the tales I had ever been told had alluded to dragons as worms or lizards or snakes. But as this one emerged from the river, holding out its dripping wings, I found myself thinking of birds. Graceful cormorants rising out of the sea from a dive after fish, or brightly plumaged pheasants, came to my mind as the huge creature emerged. It was fully as large as one of the ships and the spread of its wings put the canvas sails to shame. It paused on the riverbank and preened the water from its scaled wings. The word “scale” does no justice to the ornate plates that sheathed its wings, yet “feather” is too airy a word to describe them. Could a feather be made of finely beaten gold, perhaps it might come close to the dragon’s plumage.
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I was transfixed with delight and wonder. The creature ignored me, emerging from the river so close to me that had it been real, I would have been soaked by the water that dripped from its outstre
tched wings. Every drop that fell back into the river carried the unmistakable shimmer of raw magic with it. The dragon paused on the riverbank, its four great clawed feet sinking deep in the damp earth as it carefully folded its wings and then preened its long, forked tail. Golden light bathed me and illuminated the gathering crowd. I turned away from the dragon to regard them. Welcome shone in their faces and great deference. The dragon had the bright eyes of a gyrfalcon and the carriage of a stallion as it strode up to them. The folk parted to make way for it, murmuring respectful greetings.
“Elderling,” I said aloud to myself. I followed it, my fingers trailing the building fronts, one with the entranced crowd, as it paraded slowly up the street. Folk poured from taverns to add their greetings and swelled the crowd that followed it. Obviously this was no common event. I do not know what I hoped to discover by following it. I do not think I really thought of anything at that time, save to follow this immense, charismatic creature. I understood now the reason why the main streets of this city had been built so wide. It was not to allow the passage of wagons, but so that nothing might impede one of these great visitors.
It paused once before a great stone basin. Folk rushed forward to vie for the honor of working a windlass of sorts. Bucket after bucket rose on a loop of chain, each spilling its cargo of liquid magic into the basin. When the basin brimmed with the shimmering stuff, the Elderling gracefully bowed its neck and drank. Ghost-Skill it might be, but even the sight of it awakened that insidious hunger in me. Twice more the basin was filled and twice more the Elderling drank it down before it proceeded on its way. I followed, marveling at what I had seen.
Ahead of us suddenly loomed that great gash of destruction that marred the city’s symmetrical form. I followed the ghostly procession to the lip of it, only to see everyone, man, woman, and Elderling, vanish completely as they strode unconcernedly out into the space. In a short time I stood alone on the edge of that gaping crevasse, hearing only the wind whispering over the still deep water. A few patches of stars showed through the overcast sky and were reflected in the black water. Whatever other secrets of the Elderlings I might have learned had been swallowed long ago in that great cataclysm.
I turned and walked slowly away, wondering where the Elderling had been bound and for what purpose. I shuddered again as I recalled how it had drunk down the silver gleaming power.
It took me some time to retrace my steps first to the river. Once there, I focused my mind on recalling what I had seen in the map room earlier that day. My hunger was a hollow thing that rattled against my ribs now, but I resolutely ignored it as I threaded my way through the streets. My strength of will carried me through a knot of brawling shadows but my resolution failed me when the City Guard came charging down the streets on their massive horses. I leaped to one side to let them pass, and winced as I heard the sounds of their falling truncheons. Unreal as it was, I was glad to leave the noisy discord behind me. I made a right turn up a slightly narrower street and walked on past three more intersections.
I halted. Here. This was the plaza where I had been kneeling in the snow the night before. There, that pillar standing at its center, I recalled some sort of monument or sculpture looming over me. I walked toward it. It was made of the same ubiquitous black stone veined with gleaming crystal. To my weary eyes it seemed to gleam brighter with the same mysterious unlight the other structures gave off. The faint shining outlined on its side glyphs cut deep into its surface. I walked slowly around it. Some, I was sure, were familiar and perhaps twin to those I had copied earlier in the day. Was this then some sort of guidepost, labeled with destinations according to compass headings? I reached out a hand to trace one of the familiar glyphs.
The night bent around me. A wave of vertigo swept over me. I clutched at the column for support, but somehow missed it and went stumbling forward. My outstretched hands found nothing and I fell face forward into crusted snow and ice. For a time I just lay there, my cheek against the icy road, blinking my useless eyes at the blackness of the night. Then a warm, solid weight hit me. My brother! Nighteyes greeted me joyously. He thrust his cold nose into my face and pawed at my head to rouse me. I knew you would come back. I knew it!
28
The Coterie
PART OF THE great mystery that surrounds the Elderlings is that the few images we have of them bear small resemblance to each other. This is true not only of tapestries and scrolls that are copies of older works and hence might contain errors, but also of the few images of Elderlings that have survived from King Wisdom’s time. Some of the images bear superficial resemblances to the legends of dragons, featuring wings, claws, scaly skin, and great size. But others do not. In at least one tapestry, the Elderling is depicted as similar to a human, but gold of skin and great of size. The images do not even agree in the number of limbs that benevolent race possessed. They may have as many as four legs and two wings also, or have no wings at all and walk upon two legs as a man.
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It has been theorized that so little was written about them because knowledge of the Elderlings at that time was regarded as common knowledge. Just as no one sees fit to create a scroll that deals with the most basic attributes of what a horse is, for it would serve no useful purpose, so no one thought that one day Elderlings would be the stuff of legends. To a certain degree, this makes sense. But one has only to look about at all the scrolls and tapestries in which horses are featured as the stuff of common life to find a flaw. Were Elderlings so accepted a part of life, surely they would have been more often depicted.
After a very confusing hour or two, I found myself back in the yurt with the others. The night seemed all the colder for my having spent an almost warm day in the city. We huddled in the tent in our blankets. They had told me I had vanished from the lip of the cliff only the night before; I had told them of all I had encountered in the city. There had been a certain amount of disbelief on everyone’s part. I had felt both moved and guilty to see how much anguish my disappearance had caused them. Starling had obviously been weeping, while both Kettle and Kettricken had the owly look of folks who had not slept. The Fool had been the worst, pale and silent with a slight trembling to his hands. It had taken a bit of time for all of us to recover. Kettle had cooked a meal twice the size of what we usually had and all save the Fool had eaten heartily. He had not seemed to have the energy. While the others sat in a circle around the brazier listening to my tale, he was already curled in his blankets, the wolf snug beside him. He seemed completely exhausted.
After I had been over the events of my adventure for the third time, Kettle commented cryptically, “Well, thank Eda you were dosed with elfbark before you were taken; otherwise you would never have kept your wits at all. ”
“You say “taken’?” I pressed immediately.
She scowled at me. “You know what I mean. ” She looked about at all of us staring at her. “Through the guidepost or whatever it is. They must have something to do with it. ” A silence met her words. “It seems obvious to me, that’s all. He left us at one, and arrived there at one. And returned to us the same way. ”
“But why didn’t they take anyone else?” I protested.
“Because you are the only Skill-sensitive one among us,” she pointed out.
“Are they Skill-wrought as well?” I asked her bluntly.
She met my glance. “I looked at the guidepost by daylight. It is hewn of black stone with wide threads of shining crystal in it. Like the walls of the city you describe. Did you touch both posts?”
I was silent a moment, thinking. “I believe so. ”
She shrugged. “Well, there you are. A Skill-imbued object can retain the intent of its maker. Those posts were erected to make travel easier for those who could master them. ”
“I’ve never heard of such things. How do you know them?”
“I am only speculating on what seems obvious to me,” she told me stubbornly. “An
d that is all I am going to say. I’m going to sleep. I’m exhausted. We all spent the entire night and most of the day looking for you and worrying about you. What hours we could rest, that wolf never stopped howling. ”
Howling?
I called you. You did not answer.
I did not hear you, or I would have tried.
I begin to fear, little brother. Forces pull at you, taking you to places I cannot follow, closing your mind to mine. This, right now, is as close as I have ever come to being accepted into a pack. But if I lost you, even it would be lost to me.
You will not lose me, I promised him, but I wondered if it was a promise I could keep. “Fitz?” Kettricken asked in a nudging voice.
“I am here,” I assured her.
“Let us look at the map you copied. ”
I took it out and she drew out her own map. We compared the two. It was hard to find any similarities, but the scales of the maps were different. At last we decided that the piece I had copied down in the city bore a superficial resemblance to the portion of trail that was drawn on Kettricken’s map. “This place,” I gestured to one destination marked on her map, “would seem to be the city. If that is so, then this corresponds to this, and this to this. ”
The map Verity had set out with had been a copy of this older, faded map. On that one the trail I now thought of as the Skill road had been marked, but oddly, as a path that began suddenly in the Mountains and ended abruptly at three separate destinations. The significance of those endpoints had once been marked on the map, but those markings had faded into inky smears. Now we had the map I had copied in the city, with those three endpoints on it also. One had been the city itself. The other two were now our concern.