by Robin Hobb
I think the Fool put her up to it. Certainly he had spent a great many hours in the tower-top garden with Kettricken, and his admiration for what she had accomplished there was unfeigned. Much goodwill can be won with a sincere compliment. By the end of the summer, not only was she laughing at his jests when he came up to entertain her and her ladies, but he had persuaded her to be a frequent caller in the King’s chambers. As Queen-in-Waiting, she was immune to Wallace’s humours. Kettricken herself undertook to mix King Shrewd strengthening tonics, and for a time the King did seem to rally under her care and attention. I think the Fool decided that he would accomplish through her what he had been unable to nag Verity and me into doing.
It was a wintry autumn evening when she first broached the subject to me. I was up on the tower top with her, helping her to tie bundles of straw about the more tender of the plants there, that they might withstand the winter snows better. This was something Patience had decreed must be done, and she and Lacey were performing the same task on a bed of windbower plants behind me. She had become a frequent advisor to Queen Kettricken in matters of growing things, albeit a very timid one. Little Rosemary was at my elbow, handing me twine as we needed it. One or two of Kettricken’s other ladies, well-bundled, had stayed, but they were at the other end of the garden, talking quietly together. The others she had dismissed back to their hearths when she had noted them shivering and blowing on their fingers. My bare hands were near numb, as were my ears, but Kettricken seemed perfectly comfortable. As was Verity, tucked away somewhere inside my skull. He had insisted that I start carrying him again after he had discovered that once more I was going out after Forged ones alone. I scarcely noticed his presence in the back of my mind any more. Yet I believe that I felt him startle when Kettricken asked me, as she knotted a string about a bundled plant I was supporting, what I knew of the Elderlings.
‘Little enough, my lady queen,’ I replied honestly, and once more made a promise to myself to go through the long neglected manuscripts and scrolls.
‘Why not?’ she demanded.
‘Well, little was actually written about them. I believe at one time a knowledge of them was so common as not to need writing down. And the bits that are written about them are scattered here and there, not gathered in one place. It would take a scholar to track down all the remnants that remain …’
‘A scholar like the Fool?’ she asked tartly. ‘He seems to know more of them than anyone else I have asked.’
‘Well. He is fond of reading, you know, and …’
‘Enough of the Fool. I wish to speak to you of the Elderlings,’ she said abruptly.
I startled at her tone, but found her staring, grey-eyed, out over the sea once more. She had not intended either a rebuke or a rudeness. She was simply intent upon her objective. I reflected that in my months away, she had become more certain of herself. More queenly.
‘I know a little bit,’ I offered hesitantly.
‘As do I. Let us see if what each of us knows agrees. I shall begin.’
‘As you wish, my queen.’
She cleared her throat. ‘Long ago, King Wisdom was bitterly besieged by Raiders from the sea. When all else had failed him, and he feared that the next summer of kind weather would bring the end of the Six Duchies and House Farseer, he resolved to spend the winter searching for a legendary folk. The Elderlings. Do we agree so far?’
‘Mostly. As I have heard it, the legends called them not a folk, but near-gods. And the folk of the Six Duchies had always believed Wisdom something of a religious fanatic, almost a madman where such things were concerned.’
‘Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad,’ she calmly informed me. ‘I shall continue. He left his castle one autumn, with no more information than that the Elderlings resided in the Rain Wilds beyond the tallest mountains of the Mountain Kingdom. Somehow, he found them, and he won their alliance. He returned to Buckkeep, and together they drove the Raiders and invaders away from the coasts of the Six Duchies. Peace and trade were re-established. And the Elderlings swore to him that if they were ever needed again, they would return. Do we still agree?’
‘As before, mostly. I have heard many minstrels say that the ending is a standard one in tales of heroes and quests. Always, they promise that if ever they are needed again, they will return. Some even pledge to return from beyond the grave if they must.’
‘Actually,’ Patience suddenly observed, rocking back on her heels, ‘Wisdom himself never returned to Buckkeep. The Elderlings came to his daughter, Princess Mindful, and it was to her they offered allegiance.’
‘Whence do you have that knowledge?’ Kettricken demanded.
Patience shrugged. ‘An old minstrel my father used to have always sang it that way.’ Unconcerned, she went back to knotting twine about a straw-bundled plant.
Kettricken considered a moment. The wind teased loose a long lock of her hair and blew it across her face like a net. She looked at me through the pale web. ‘It doesn’t matter what the tales say about their returning. If a king once sought them, and they gave aid, do you not think they might do so again, if a king again beseeched them? Or a queen?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said grudgingly. Privately I wondered if the Queen longed for her homeland and would make any excuse for a visit there. Folk were beginning to talk about her lack of pregnancy. While many ladies attended her now, she really had no favourites who were genuinely her friends. Lonely, I suspected. ‘I think,’ I began gently, pausing to consider how to frame a discouraging reply.
Tell her she should come to me and speak of it. I wish to know more of what she has gleaned. Verity’s thought quivered with excitement. It unsettled me.
‘I think you should take your idea to the King-in-Waiting, and discuss it with him,’ I dutifully suggested to her.
She was silent a long time. When she spoke, her voice was pitched very low, for my ears alone. ‘I think not. He will consider it another one of my foolishnesses. He will listen for a bit, and then begin to look at the maps on the wall, or move things about on his table as he waits for me to finish so he can smile and nod and send me on my way. Again.’ Her voice hoarsened on the last word. She brushed the hair back from her face, then brushed at her eyes again. She turned from me to look out over the sea again, as distant as Verity when he Skilled.
She’s crying?
I could not conceal from Verity my annoyance that this surprised him.
Bring her to me. Now, at once!
‘My queen?’
‘A moment.’ Kettricken looked aside from me. With her face away from me, she pretended to be scratching her nose. I knew she brushed at tears.
‘Kettricken?’ I ventured the familiarity as I had not for months. ‘Let us go to him now with this idea. At once. I will go with you.’
She spoke hesitantly, not turning to look at me. ‘You do not think it is foolish?’
I would not lie, I reminded myself. ‘I think that, as things stand, we must consider any possible sources of aid.’ As I spoke the words, I found I believed them. Had not both Chade and the Fool hinted, no, pleaded for this very idea? Perhaps Verity and I were the ones who were short-sighted.
She took a shuddering breath. ‘We shall do it, then. But … you must wait for me outside my chamber. I wish to fetch several scrolls to show him. I will be but a short time.’ She turned to Patience, spoke more loudly. ‘Lady Patience, might I ask you to finish these plants for me as well? I have something else I wish t
o attend to.’
‘Of course, my queen. I should be pleased to.’
We left the garden, and I followed her to her chambers. I waited for more than a short time. When she emerged, her little maid Rosemary was behind her, insisting on carrying the scrolls for her. Kettricken had washed the soil from her hands. And changed her gown, and added scent and dressed her hair and was wearing the jewellery Verity had sent to her when she was pledged to him. She smiled at me cautiously as I looked at her. ‘My lady queen, I am dazzled,’ I ventured.
‘You flatter me as wildly as Regal does,’ she proclaimed, and hastened away down the hall, but a blush warmed her cheeks.
She dresses so just to come to speak to me?
She dresses so to … attract you. How could a man so astute at reading men be so ignorant of women?
Perhaps he has had little time ever to learn much of their ways.
I clamped my mind shut on my thoughts and hastened after my queen. We arrived at Verity’s study just in time to see Charim leaving. He was carrying an armful of laundry. It seemed odd until we were admitted. Verity was wearing a soft shirt of pale-blue linen, and the mingled scents of lavender and cedar were lively in the air. It reminded me of a clothes chest. His hair and beard were freshly smoothed; well I knew that his hair never stayed that way for more than a few minutes. As Kettricken advanced shyly to curtsey to her lord, I saw Verity as I had not for months. The summer of Skilling had wasted him again. The fine shirt belled about his shoulders, and the smoothed hair was as much grey as black now. There were lines, too, about his eyes and mouth that I had never noticed before.
Do I look so poorly then?
Not to her, I reminded him.
As Verity took her hand and drew her to sit down beside him on a bench near the fire, she looked at him with a hunger as deep as his Skill drive. Her fingers clung to his hand, and I looked aside as he lifted her hand to kiss it. Perhaps Verity was right about a Skill sensitivity. What Kettricken felt battered at me as roughly as the fury of my fellow crew-mates during battle.
I felt a flutter of astonishment from Verity. Then, Shield yourself, he commanded me brusquely, and I was suddenly alone inside my skull. I stood still a moment, dizzied by the abruptness of his departure. He really had no idea, I found myself thinking, and felt glad the thought remained private.
‘My lord, I have come to ask a moment or two of your time for … an idea I have.’ Kettricken’s eyes searched his face as she spoke quietly.
‘Certainly,’ Verity agreed. He glanced up at me. ‘FitzChivalry, will you join us?’
‘If you will, my lord.’ I took a seat on a stool on the opposite side of the hearth. Rosemary came and stood at my elbow with her armload of scrolls. Probably filched from my room by the Fool, I suspected. But as Kettricken began to talk to Verity, she took up the scrolls one by one, in each case to illustrate her argument. Without exception, they were scrolls that dealt, not with the Elderlings, but with the Mountain Kingdom. ‘King Wisdom, you may recall, was the first of Six Duchies’ nobility to come to our land … to the land of the Mountain Kingdom, for anything other than the making of war upon us. So he is well-remembered in our histories. These scrolls, copied from ones made in his time, deal with his doings and travels in the Mountain Kingdom. And thus, indirectly, with the Elderlings.’ She unrolled the last scroll. Verity and I both leaned forward in amazement. A map. Faded with time, poorly copied probably, but a map – of the Mountain Kingdom, with passes and trails marked on it. And a few straggling lines leading into the lands beyond.
‘One of these paths, marked here, must lead to the Elderlings. For I know the trails of the mountains, and these are not trade routes, nor do they go to any village I know. Nor do they lie in conjunction with the trails as I know them now to be. These are older roads and paths. And why else would they be marked here, save that they go where King Wisdom went?’
‘Can it be that simple?’ Verity rose quickly, to return with a branch of candles to light the map better. He smoothed the vellum lovingly with his hands and leaned close over it.
‘There are several paths marked that go off into the Rain Wilds. If that is what all this green represents. None seem to have anything marked at the end. How would we know which one?’ I objected.
‘Perhaps they all go to the Elderlings,’ Kettricken ventured. ‘Why should they reside in but one place?’
‘No!’ Verity straightened up. ‘Two at least have something marked at the end. Or had something. The damned ink has faded. But there was something there. I intend to find out what.’
Even Kettricken looked astonished at the enthusiasm in his voice. I was shocked. I had expected him to hear her out politely, not to endorse her plan wholeheartedly.
He rose suddenly, paced a quick turn around the room. The Skill energy radiated off him like heat from a hearth. ‘The full storms of winter are upon the coast now. Or will be, any day now. If I leave quickly, in the next few days, I can be to the Mountain Kingdom while the passes can still be used. I can force my way through to … whatever is there. And return by spring. Perhaps with the help we need.’
I was speechless. Kettricken made it worse.
‘My lord, I had not intended that you should go. You should remain here. I must go. I know the mountains; I was born to their ways. You might not survive there. In this, I should be Sacrifice.’
It was a relief to see Verity as dumbfounded as I was. Perhaps, having heard it from her lips, he would now realize how impossible it was. He shook his head slowly. He took both her hands in his and looked solemnly at her. ‘My Queen-in-Waiting.’ He sighed. ‘I must do this. I. In so many other ways I have failed the Six Duchies. And you. When first you came here to be queen, I had no patience with your talk of Sacrifice. I thought it a girl’s idealistic notion. But it is not. We do not speak it here, but it is what is felt. It is what I learned from my parents. To put the Six Duchies always ahead of myself. I have tried to do that. But now I see that always I have sent others in my place. I sat and Skilled, it is true, and you have an inkling what it has cost me. But it has been sailors and soldiers who I have sent out to put down their lives for the Six Duchies. My own nephew, even, doing the crude and bloody work for me. And despite those I have sent to be sacrificed, our coast is still not safe. Now it comes to this last chance, to this hard thing. Shall I send my queen to do it for me?’
‘Perhaps.’ Kettricken’s voice had gone husky with uncertainty. She looked down at the fire as she suggested, ‘Perhaps we might go together?’
Verity considered. He actually earnestly considered it, and I saw Kettricken realize he had taken her request seriously. She began to smile, but it faded as he slowly shook his head. ‘I dare not,’ he said quietly. ‘Someone must remain here. Someone I trust. King Shrewd is … my father is not well. I fear for him. For his health. With myself away, and my father ill, there must be someone to stand in my stead.’
She looked aside. ‘I would rather go with you,’ she said fiercely.
I averted my eyes as he reached and took her chin in his fingers and lifted her face so he might see her eyes. ‘I know,’ he said evenly. ‘That is the sacrifice I must ask you to make. To stay here, when you would rather go. To be alone, yet again. For the sake of the Six Duchies.’
Something went out of her. Her shoulders sagged as she bowed her head to his will. As Verity gathered her to him, I rose silently. I took Rosemary with me and we left them alone.
I was in my room, poring belatedly over the scrolls and tablets there, when the page came to my door that afternoon.
‘You are summoned to the King’s chambers, in the hour after dinner,’ was the only message he gave me. Dismay rolled over me. It had been two weeks since my last visit to his chamber. I did not wish to confront the King again. If he were summoning me to say that he expected me to begin courting Celerity, I did not know what I would do or say. I feared I would lose control of myself. Resolutely I unrolled one of the Elderling scrolls and tried to study it. It was hopeless. I saw only Molly.
In the brief nights we had shared since our day on the beach, Molly had refused to discuss Celerity with me any further. In some ways it was a relief. But she had also stopped teasing me about all she would demand from me when I was truly her husband and all the future children we would have. She had quietly given up hope that we would ever be wed. If I stopped to think of it, it grieved me to the edge of madness. She did not rebuke me with it, as she knew it was not of my choosing. She did not even ask what was to become of us. Like Nighteyes, she seemed to live only in the present now. Each night of closeness we shared, she accepted as a thing complete, and did not question if there would be another. What I sensed from her was not despair, but containment: a fierce resolve that we would not lose what we had now to what we could not have tomorrow. I did not deserve the devotion of such a faithful heart.
When I dozed beside her in her bed, safe and warm amidst the perfume of her body and her herbs, it was her strength that protected us. She did not Skill, she had no Wit. Her magic was a stronger kind, and she worked it by her will alone. When she closed and bolted her door behind me late at night, she created within her chamber a world and a time that belonged to us. If she had blindly placed her life and happiness in my hands, it would have been intolerable. But this was even worse. She believed there would eventually be a terrible price to pay for her devotion to me. Still she refused to forsake me. And I was not man enough to turn away from her and bid her seek a happier life. In my most lonely hours, when I rode the trails around Buckkeep with my saddle-bags full of poisoned bread, I knew myself for a coward, and worse than a thief. I had once told Verity I could not draw off another man’s strength to feed my own, that I would not. Yet every day, that was what I did to Molly. The Elderling scroll fell from my lax fingers. My room was suddenly suffocating. I pushed aside the tablets and scrolls I had been attempting to study. In the hour before dinner, I sought out Patience’s chamber.