by Robin Hobb
The folk of the Mountain Kingdom will tell you that that ancient race is responsible for some of the more peculiar monuments that one may chance upon in their forests. They are also credited with lesser achievements, such as some of the games of strategy that Mountain children still play, and for a very peculiar wind instrument, powered not by a man’s lungs, but by breath trapped in an inflated bladder. Tales are also told of ancient cities far back in the mountains that were once the dwelling of these beings. But nowhere in all their literature, spoken or written, have I found any account of how these people ceased to be.
Three days later we reached the quarry. We had had three days of hiking through suddenly hot weather. The air had been full of the scents of opening leaves and flowers and the whistles of birds and the drones of insects. To either side of the Skill road, life burgeoned. I walked through it, senses keen, more aware of being alive than I had ever been. The Fool had spoken no more about whatever he had foreseen for me. For that I was grateful. I had found Nighteyes was right. Knowing it was hard enough. I would not dwell on it.
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Then we came to the quarry. At first it seemed to us that we had simply come to a dead end. The road ramped down into a worked gorge of bare stone, an area twice the size of Buckkeep Castle. The walls of the valley were vertically straight and bare, scarred where immense blocks of black stone had been quarried from it. In a few places, cascading greenery from the earth at the edge of the quarry covered the sheared rock sides. At the lower end of the pit, rainwater had collected and stagnated greenly. There was little other vegetation, for there was precious little soil. Beneath our feet, past the end of the Skill road, we stood on the raw black stone the road had been wrought from. When we looked up at the looming cliff across from us, black stone veined with silver met our eyes. On the floor of the quarry a number of immense blocks had been abandoned amidst piles of rubble and dust. The huge blocks were bigger than buildings. I could not imagine how they had been cut, let alone how they would have been hauled away. Beside them were the remains of great machines, reminding me somewhat of siege engines. Their wood had rotted, their metal rusted. Their remains hunched together like moldering bones. Silence brimmed the quarry.
Two things about the place immediately caught my attention. The first was the black pillar that reared up in our pathway, incised with the same ancient runes we had encountered before. The second was the absolute absence of animal life.
I came to a halt by the pillar. I quested out, and the wolf shared my searching. Cold stone.
Perhaps we shall learn to eat rocks, now? The wolf suggested.
“We shall have to do our hunting elsewhere tonight,” I agreed.
“And find clean water,” added the Fool.
Kettricken had stopped by the pillar. The jeppas were already straying away, searching disconsolately for anything green. Possessing the Skill and the Wit sharpened my perceptions of other folk. But for the moment, I sensed nothing from her. Her face was still and empty. A slackness came over it, as if she aged before my eyes. Her eyes wandered over the lifeless stone, and by chance turned to me. A sickly smile spread over her mouth.
“He’s not here,” she said. “We’ve come all this way, and he isn’t here. ”
I could think of nothing to say to her. Of all the things I might have expected at the end of our quest, an abandoned stone quarry seemed unlikeliest. I tried to think of something optimistic to say. There was nothing. This was the last location marked on our map, and evidently the final destination of the Skill road as well. She sank down slowly to sit flat on the stone at the pillar’s base. She just sat there, too weary and discouraged to weep. When I looked to Kettle and Starling, I found them staring at me as if I were supposed to have an answer. I did not. The heat of the warm day pressed down on me. For this, we had come so far.
I smell carrion.
I don’t. It was the last thing I wanted to think about just now.
I didn’t expect you would, with your nose. But there is something very dead not far from here.
“So go roll in it and have done with it,” I told him with some asperity.
“Fitz,” Kettle rebuked me as Nighteyes trotted purposefully away.
“I was talking to the wolf,” I told her lamely. The Fool nodded, almost vacantly. He had not been at all himself. Kettle had insisted that he continue taking the elfbark, though our small supply limited him to a very weak dose of the same bark brewed over again. From time to time, I thought I caught a brief hint of the Skill-bond between us. If I looked at him, he would sometimes turn and return my look, even across camp. It was little more than that. When I spoke of it to him, he said he sometimes felt something, but was not sure what it was. Of what the wolf had told me, I made no mention. Elfbark tea or no, he remained solemn and lethargic. His sleep at night did not seem to rest him; he moaned or muttered through his dreams. He reminded me of a man recovering from a long illness. He hoarded his strength in many small ways. He spoke little; even his bitter merriment had vanished. It was but one more worry for me to bear.
It’s a man!
The stench of the corpse was thick in Nighteyes’ nostrils. I nearly retched with it. Then, “Verity,” I whispered to myself in horror. I set out at a run in the direction the wolf had taken. The Fool followed more slowly in my wake, drifting like down on the wind. The women watched us go without comprehension.
The body was wedged between two immense blocks of stone. It was huddled as if even in death it sought to hide. The wolf circled it restlessly, hackles up. I halted at some distance, then tugged the cuff of my shirt down over my hand. I lifted it to cover my nose and mouth. It helped a bit, but nothing could have completely drowned that stink. I walked closer, steeling myself to what I knew I must do. When I got close to the body, I reached down, seized hold of its rich cloak, and dragged it out into the open.
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“No flies,” the Fool observed almost dreamily.
He was right. There were no flies and no maggots. Only the silent rot of death had been at work on the man’s features. They were dark, like a plowman’s tan, only darker. Fear had contorted them, but I knew it was not Verity. Yet I had stared at him for some moments before I recognized him. “Carrod,” I said quietly.
“A member of Regal’s coterie?” the Fool asked, as if there could be another Carrod about.
I nodded. I kept my shirt cuff over my nose and mouth as I knelt beside him.
“How did he die?” the Fool asked. The smell did not seem to bother him, but I did not think I could speak without gagging. I shrugged. To answer I would have had to take a breath. I reached gingerly to tug at his clothes. The body was both stiff and softening. It was hard to examine it, but I could find no sign of any violence on him. I took a shallow breath and held it, then used both hands to unbuckle his belt. I pulled it free of the body with his purse and knife still on it, and hastily retreated with it.
Kettricken, Kettle, and Starling came up on us as I was coaxing the mouth of his purse open. I did not know what I had hoped to find, but I was disappointed. A handful of coins, a flint, and a small whetstone were all he carried. I tossed it to the ground, and rubbed my hand down my trouser leg. The stench of death clung to it.
“It was Carrod,” the Fool told the others. “He must have come by the pillar. ”
“What killed him?” Kettle asked.
I met her gaze. “I don’t know. I believe it was the Skill. Whatever it was, he tried to hide from it. Between those rocks. Let’s get away from this smell,” I suggested. We retreated back to the pillar. Nighteyes and I came last and more slowly. I was puzzled. I realized I was putting everything I could into keeping my Skill walls strong. Seeing Carrod dead had shocked me. One less coterie member, I told myself. But he was here, right here in the quarry when he died. If Verity had killed him with the Skill, perhaps that meant Verity had been here as well. I
wondered if we would stumble across Burl and Will somewhere in the quarry, if they too had come here to attack Verity. Colder was my suspicion that it was more likely we would find Verity’s body. But I said nothing to Kettricken of these thoughts.
I think the wolf and I sensed it at the same time. “There’s something alive back there,” I said quietly. “Deeper in the quarry. ”
“What is it?” The Fool asked me.
“I don’t know. ” A shivering ran all over me. My Wit-sense of whatever was back there ebbed and flowed. The more I tried for a feel of what it was, the more it eluded me.
“Verity?” Kettricken asked. It broke my heart to see hope quicken once more in her eyes.
“No,” I told her gently. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel like a human. It’s like nothing I’ve ever sensed before. ” I paused and added, “I think you should all wait here while the wolf and I go see what it is. ”
“No. ” Kettle spoke, not Kettricken, but when I glanced back at my queen, I saw her complete agreement.
“If anything, I should have you and the Fool hang back while we investigate,” she told me severely. “You are the ones at risk here. If Carrod has been here, Burl and Will could be back there. ”
In the end it was decided we would all approach, but with great caution. We spread out in a fan and moved forward across the quarry floor. I could not tell them specifically where I sensed the creature, and so we were all on edge. The quarry was like a nursery floor with some immense child’s blocks and toys scattered across it. We passed one partially carved block of stone. It had none of the finesse of the carvings we had seen in the stone garden. It was lumpish and crude, and somehow obscene. It reminded me of the fetus of a miscarried foal. It repulsed me and I slipped past it as swiftly as I could to my next vantage point.
The others were doing likewise, moving from cover to cover, all of us endeavoring to keep at least one other of our party in sight. I had thought I could see nothing more disturbing than that crude stone carving, but the next one we passed wrenched at me. Someone had carved, in heartbreaking detail, a mired dragon. The thing’s wings were half spread and its half-lidded eyes were rolled up in agony. A human rider, a young woman, bestrode it. She clutched the undulant neck and leaned her cheek against it. Her face was a mask of agony, her mouth open and the lines of her face taut, the muscles of her throat standing out like cords. Both the girl and the dragon had been worked in detailed colors and lines. I could see the woman’s eyelashes, the individual hairs on her golden head, the fine green scales about the dragon’s eyes, even the droplets of saliva that clung to the dragon’s writhing lips. But where the dragon’s mighty feet and lashing tail should have been, there was only puddled black stone, as if the two had landed in a tar pit and been unable to escape it.
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Just as a statue, it was wrenching. I saw Kettle turn her face aside from it, tears starting in her eyes. But what unnerved Nighteyes and me was the writhing of Wit-sense that it gave off. It was fainter than what we had sensed in the statues back in the garden, but all the more poignant for that. It was like the final death throes of a trapped creature. I wondered what talent had been used to infuse such a living nuance into a statue. Even as I appreciated the artistry of what had been done, I was not sure I approved it. But that was true of much that this ancient Skilled race had wrought. As I crept past the statue, I wondered if this was what the wolf and I had sensed. It prickled my skin to see the Fool turn and stare back at it, his brow furrowed in discomfort. Plainly he sensed it, though not as well. Perhaps this is what we sensed, Nighteyes. Perhaps there is no living creature in the quarry after all, only this monument to slow death.
No. I smell something.
I widened my nostrils, cleared them with a silent snort, then took in a deep slow breath of air. My nose was not as keen as Nighteyes’, but the wolf’s senses augmented my own. I smelled sweat and the faint tang of blood. Both were fresh. Suddenly the wolf pressed close to me and as one we slunk around the end of a block of stone the size of two huts.
I peered around the corner, then cautiously crept forth. Nighteyes slipped past me. I saw the Fool round the other end of the stone, and felt the others drawing near as well. No one spoke.
It was another dragon. This one was the size of a ship. It was all of black stone, and it sprawled sleeping upon the block of stone it was emerging from. Chips and chunks and grindings of rock dust surrounded the ground around the block. Even from a distance, it impressed me. Despite its sleep, every line of the creature spoke of both strength and nobility. The wings folded alongside it were like furled sails while the arch of the powerful neck put me in mind of a battle charger. I had looked at it for some moments before I saw the small gray figure that sprawled alongside it. I stared at him and tried to decide if the flickering life I sensed came from him or the stone dragon.
The discarded fragments of stone were almost a ramp up to the block the dragon was emerging from. I thought the figure would stir to my crunching footsteps, but he did not move. Nor could I detect any small motions of breath. The others hung back, watching my ascent. Only Nighteyes accompanied me, and he came hackles abristle. I was within arm’s reach of the figure when he jerkily arose and faced me.
He was old and thin, gray of both hair and beard. His ragged garments were gray with stone-dust, and a smear of gray coated one of his cheeks. The knees that showed through the legs of his trousers were scabbed and bloody from kneeling on broken stone. His feet were wrapped in rags. He gripped a much-notched sword in a gray gauntleted hand, but he did not bring it up to the ready. I felt it taxed his strength to hold the blade at all. Some instinct made me lift my arms wide of my body, to show him I held no weapon. He looked at me dully for a bit; then he slowly lifted his eyes to my face. For a time we stared at one another. His peering, near-blind gaze reminded me of Harper Josh. Then his mouth gapped wide in his beard, baring surprisingly white teeth. “Fitz?” he said hesitantly.
I knew his voice, despite the rust. He had to be Verity. But all I was cried out aghast that he could have come to this, this wreckage of a man. Behind me I heard the swift crunching of footsteps and turned in time to see Kettricken charging up the ramp of crumbling stone. Hope and dismay battled in her face, yet, “Verity!” she cried, and there was only love in the word. She charged, arms reaching for him, and I was barely able to catch her as she hurtled past me.
“No!” I cried aloud to her. “No, don’t touch him!”
“Verity!” she cried again, and then struggled against my grip, crying out, “Let me go, let me go to him. ” It was all I could do to hold her back.
“No,” I told her quietly. As sometimes happens, the softness of my command made her stop struggling. She looked her question at me.
“His hands and arms are covered with magic. I do not know what would happen to you, were he to touch you. ”
She turned her head in my rough embrace to stare at her husband. He stood watching us, a kindly, rather confused smile on his face. He tilted his head to one side as if considering us, then stooped carefully to set down his sword. Kettricken saw then what I had glimpsed before. The betraying shimmer of silver crawled over his forearms and fingers. Verity wore no gauntlets; the flesh of his arms and hands were impregnated with raw power. The smudge on his face was not dust, but a smear of power where he had touched himself.
I heard the others come up behind us, their footsteps crunching slowly over the stone. I did not need to turn to feel them staring. Finally the Fool said softly, “Verity, my prince, we have come. ”
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I heard a sound between a gasp and a sob. That turned my head, and I saw Kettle slowly settling, going down like a holed ship. She clasped one hand to her chest and one to her mouth as she sank to her knees. Her eyes goggled as she stared at Verity’s hands. Starling was instantly beside her. In my arms, I felt Kettricken calmly push against me.
I looked at her stricken face, then let her go. She advanced to Verity a slow step at a time and he watched her come. His face was not impassive, but neither did he show any sign of special recognition. An arm’s length away from him, she stopped. All was silence. She stared at him for a time, then slowly shook her head, as if to answer the question she voiced. “My lord husband, do you not know me?”
“Husband,” he said faintly. His brow creased deeper, his demeanor that of a man who recalls something once learned by rote. “Princess Kettricken of the Mountain Kingdom. She was given me to wife. Just a little slip of a girl, a wild little mountain cat, yellow-haired. That was all I could recall of her, until they brought her to me. ” A faint smile eased his face. “That night, I unbound golden hair like a flowing stream, finer than silk. So fine I durst not touch it, lest it snag in my callused hands. ”
Kettricken’s hands rose to her hair. When word had reached her of Verity’s death, she had cut her hair to no more than a brush on her skull. It now reached almost to her shoulders, but the fine silk of it was gone, roughened by sun and rain and road dust. But she freed it from the fat braid that confined it and shook it loose around her face. “My lord,” she said softly. She glanced from me to Verity. “May I not touch you?” she begged.
“Oh—” He seemed to consider the request. He glanced down at his arms and hands, flexing his silvery fingers. “Oh, I think not, I’m afraid. No. No, it were better not. ” He spoke regretfully, but I had the sense that it was only that he must refuse her request, not that he regretted being unable to touch her.
Kettricken drew a ragged breath. “My lord,” she began, and then her voice broke. “Verity, I lost our child. Our son died. ”
I did not understand until then what a burden it had been for her, seeking for her husband, knowing she must tell him this news. She dropped her proud head as if expecting his wrath. What she got was worse.
“Oh,” he said. Then, “Had we a son? I do not recall . . . ”