Assassin's Quest tft-3

by Robin Hobb

  As if that thought had opened a breach in my walls, I suddenly thought of Molly. And Nettle, both in danger because of me. Without warning, my heart was in my throat. I must not think of them, I warned myself, and reminded myself that there was nothing I could do. There was no way I could warn them without betraying them. There was no possible way I could reach them before Regal's henchmen did. All I could do was trust to Burrich's strong right arm, and cling to the hope that Regal did not truly know where they were.

  I jumped over a trickling creek and found the Fool waiting for me on the other side. He said nothing as he fell into pace beside me. His merriment seemed to have deserted him.

  I reminded myself that I scarcely knew where Molly and Burrich were. Oh, I knew the name of a nearby village, but as long as I kept that to myself, they were safe.

  "What you know, I can know."

  "What did you say?" I asked the Fool uneasily. His words had replied so exactly to my thoughts that it sent a chill up my spine.

  "I said, what you know, I can know," he repeated absently.

  "Why?"

  "Exactly my thought. Why would I wish to know what you know?"

  "No. I mean, why did you say that?"

  "In truth, Fitz, I've no idea. The words popped into my head and I said them. I often say things I have not well considered." The last he said almost as an apology.

  "As do I," I agreed. I said no more to him, but it bothered me. He seemed, since the incident at the pillar, to be much more of the Fool I remembered from Buckkeep. I welcomed his sudden growth in confidence and spirits but I also worried that he might have too much faith in events flowing as they should. I also recalled that his sharp tongue was more prone to bare conflicts than resolve them. I myself had felt its edge more than once, but in the context of King Shrewd's court, I had expected it. Here, in such a small company, it seemed to cut more sharply. I wondered if there were any way I could soften his razor humor. I shook my head to myself, then resolutely dredged up Kettle's latest game problem and kept it before my mind even as I clambered over-forest debris and sidestepped hanging branches.

  As late afternoon wore on, our path led us deeper and deeper into a valley. At one point the ancient trail afforded a view of what lay below us. I glimpsed the green-beaded, trailing branches of willows coming into leaf and the rose-tinged trunks of paper birches presiding over a deeply grassed meadow. Beyond I saw the brown standing husks of last year's cattails deeper in the vale. Toe lush rankness of the grasses and ferns foretold swampland as surely as the green smell of standing water did. When the ranging wolf came back wet to his flanks, I knew I was right.

  Before long we came to where an energetic stream had long ago washed out a bridge and devoured the road to either side of it. Now it trickled shining and silver in a gravelly bed, but the fallen trees on either bank attested to its flood time fury. A chorus of frogs stilled suddenly at our approach. I went rock to rock to get past it with dry feet. We had not gone far before a second stream crossed our path. Given a choice of wet feet or wet boots, I chose the former. The water was icy. The only kindness was that it numbed my feet from the stones in its bed. On the far side I put my boots back on. Our small company had closed its ranks as the trail grew more difficult. Now we continued to march silently together. Blackbirds called and early insects hummed.

  "So much life here," Kettricken said softly. Her words seemed to hang in the still sweet air. I found myself nodding in agreement. So much life around us, both green and animal. It filled my Wit-sense and seemed to hang in the air like a mist. After the barren stones of the mountains and the deserted Skill road, this abundance of life was heady.

  Then I saw the dragon.

  I halted in my tracks and lifted my arms out in a sudden gesture for both stillness and silence that all seemed to recognize. All of my companions' gazes followed mine. Starling gasped and the hackles on the wolf stood up. We stared at it, as unmoving as it was.

  Golden and green, he sprawled under the trees in their dappled shade. He was far enough off the trail that I could only see patches of him through the trees, but those were impressive enough. His immense head, as long as a horse's body, rested deep in the moss. His single eye that I could see was closed. A great crest of feather-scales, rainbow hued, lay lax about his throat.

  Similar tufts above each eye looked almost comical, save that there could be nothing comical about a creature so immense and so strange. I saw a scaled shoulder, and winding between two trees, a length of tail. Old leaves were heaped about it like a sort of nest.

  After a long breathless moment, we exchanged glances. Kettricken raised her eyebrows at me, but I deferred to her with a tiny shrug. I had no concept of what dangers it might present, or how to face them. Very slowly and silently I drew my sword. It suddenly looked like a very silly weapon. As well face a bear with a table knife. I don't know how long our tableau held. It seemed an endless time. My muscles were beginning to ache with the strain of remaining motionless. The jeppas shifted impatiently, but held their places in line as long as Kettricken kept their leader still. At last Kettricken made a small silent motion, and slowly started our party forward again.

  When I could no longer see the slumbering beast, I began to breathe a bit easier. Just as quickly, reaction set in. My hand ached from gripping my sword hilt and all my muscles suddenly went rubbery. I wiped my sweaty hair back from my face. I turned to exchange a relieved look with the Fool, only to find him staring beyond me with unbelieving eyes. I turned hastily, and like flocking birds, the others mimed my gesture. Yet again we halted, silently transfixed, to stare at a sleeping dragon.

  This one sprawled in the deep shade of evergreen trees. Like the first, she nestled deep in moss and forest debris. But there the resemblance ended. Her long sinuous tail was coiled and wrapped around her like a garland, and her smoothly scaled hide shone a rich, coppery brown. I could see wings folded tight to her narrow body. Her long neck was craned over her back like a sleeping goose's and the shape of her head was birdlike also, even to a hawklike beak. From the creature's brow spiraled up a shining horn, wickedly sharp at the tip. The four limbs folded beneath her put me more in mind of a hind than a lizard. To call both these creatures dragons seemed a contradiction, yet I had no other word for beings such as these.

  Again we stood silent and staring while the jeppas shifted restlessly. Abruptly Kettricken spoke. "I do not think they are living beings. I think they are clever carvings of stone."

  My Wit-sense told me otherwise. "They are alive!" I cautioned her in a whisper. I started to quest toward one, but Nighteyes near panicked. I drew my mind-touch back. "They sleep very deeply, as if still hibernating from the cold weather. But I know they are alive."

  While Kettricken and I were speaking, Kettle went to decide it for herself. I saw Kettricken's eyes widen, and turned to look back at the dragon, fearing it was awakening. Instead I saw Kettle place her withered hand on the creature's still brow. Her hand seemed to tremble as she touched it, but then she smiled, almost sadly, and stroked her hand up the spiraling horn. "So beautiful," she mused. "So cunningly wrought."

  She turned back to us all. "Mark how last year's vine twined about her tail tip. See how deeply she lies in the fallen leaves of a score of years. Or perhaps a score of scores. Yet each tiny scale still gleams, so perfectly fashioned is she!"

  Starling and Kettricken started forward with exclamations of wonder and delight, and were soon crouched by the sculpture, calling each other's attention to crafted detail after detail. The individual scales of each wing, the fluidly graceful looping of the tail coils and every other marvel of the artist's design were admired. Yet while they pointed and touched so avidly, the wolf and I held back. Hackles stood up all along Nighteyes' back. He did not growl; instead he gave a whine so high it was almost like a whistle. After a moment, I realized the Fool had not joined the others. I turned to find him regarding it from afar, as a miser might look on a pile of gold larger even than his dreams. There wa
s the same sort of wideness to his eyes. Even his pale cheeks seemed to hold a rosy flush.

  "Fitz, come and see! It is only cold stone, carved so well as to appear alive. And look! There is another, with the antlers of a stag and the face of a man!" Kettricken lifted a hand to point and I glimpsed yet another figure sprawled sleeping on the forest floor. They all departed the first effigy to regard this new one, exclaiming anew over the beauty and details of it.

  I moved myself forward on leaden feet, the wolf pressed tightly to my side. When I stood next to the horned one, I could see for myself the fuzzy sac of spiderwebs affixed in the hollow of one hoofed foot. The creature's ribs did not move with the pumping of any lungs, nor did I feel any body warmth at all. I finally forced myself to set a hand to the cold, carved stone. "It's a statue," I said aloud, as if to force myself to believe what my Witsense denied. I looked around me, past the stagman that Starling still admired, to where Kettle and Kettricken stood smiling by yet another sculpture. Its boarlike body sprawled on its side, and the tusks that protruded from its snout were as long as I was tall. In all ways it resembled the forest pig that Nighteyes had killed, save for its immense size and the wings tucked close to its side.

  "I spy at least a dozen of these things," the Fool announced. "And, behind those trees, I found another carved column such as we have seen before." He set a curious hand to the skin of the sculpture, then almost winced away at the cold contact.

  "I cannot believe they are lifeless stone," I told him.

  "I, too, have never seen such realistic detail in a carving," he agreed.

  I did not try to tell him he had misunderstood me. Instead, I stood pondering a thing. Here, I sensed life, but there was only cold stone under my hand. It had been the opposite with Forged ones; savage life obviously motivated their bodies, yet my Witsense regarded them as but cold stone. I groped for some sort of connection but found only the odd comparison.

  I glanced about me but found my companions scattered throughout the forest, moving from sculpture to sculpture, and calling to one another in delight as they discovered new ones under clambering ivy or engulfed in fallen leaves. I drifted after them slowly. It seemed to me that this might be the destination marked on the map. It almost certainly was, if the old mapmaker had had his scale correct. And yet, why? What was important about these statues? The significance of the city I had seen at once; it might have been the original habitation of the Elderlings. But this?

  I hastened after Kettricken. I found her by a winged bull. He slept, legs folded under him, powerful shoulders bunched, heavy muzzle dropped to his knees. It was a perfect replica of a bull in every way, from its wide sweep of horns to its tufted tail. His cloven hooves were buried beneath the forest loam, but I did not doubt they were there. She had stretched her arms wide to span the sweep of his horns. Like all the others, he had wings, folded in repose on his wide black back.

  "May I see the map?" I asked her, and she started out of her reverie.

  "I've already checked it," she told me quietly. "I am convinced this is the marked area. We passed the remains of two stone bridges. That corresponds to what is shown on the map. And the marking on the column the Fool found corresponds to one you copied in the city for this destination. I think we are on what was once the shore of a lake. That is how I've been reading the map, anyway."

  "The shores of a lake." I nodded to myself as I considered what Verity's map had shown me. "Perhaps. Perhaps it silted in and became swamp. But then, what do all these statues signify?"

  She made a vague gesture around at the forest. "A garden or park of some kind, perhaps?"

  I looked around us and shook my head. "Not like any garden I've ever seen. The statues seem random. Should not a garden possess unity and theme? At least, so Patience taught me. Here I see only sprawled statues, with no sign of paths or beds or… Kettricken? Are all the statues of sleeping creatures?"

  She frowned to herself for a moment. "I believe so. And I think that all are winged."

  "Perhaps it is a graveyard," I ventured. "Perhaps there are tombs beneath these creatures. Perhaps this is some strange heraldry, marking the burial places for different families."

  Kettricken looked about us, considering. "Perhaps it is so. But why would that be marked on the map?"

  "Why would a garden?" I countered.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the area. We found a great many more animals. There were all kinds and a variety of styles, but all were winged and sleeping. And they had been here a very long time. A closer examination showed me that these great trees had grown around the statues, the statues had not been placed around them. Some were almost captured by the encroaching moss and leaf mold. Of one, little remained to be seen save a great toothed snout projecting from a boggy bit of ground. The bared teeth shone silver and the tips were sharp.

  "Yet I found not a single one with a chip or a crack. Everyone looks as perfect as the day it was created. Nor can I decide how the colors were put to the stone. It does not feel like paint or stain, nor does it appear weathered by the years."

  I was expounding my thoughts slowly to the others as we sat about our campfire that evening. I was trying to work Kettricken's comb through my wet hair. In the late afternoon, I had slipped away from the others, to wash thoroughly for the first time since we had left Jhaampe. I had also attempted to wash out some of my clothes. When I returned to camp, I had found that all of the others had had much the same ideas. Kettle was moodily draping wet laundry on a dragon to dry. Kettricken's cheeks were pinker than usual and she had rebraided her wet hair into a tight queue. Starling seemed to have forgotten her earlier anger at me. Indeed, she seemed to have forgotten entirely about the rest of us. She stared at the flames of the campfire, a musing look on her face, and I could almost see the tumbling words and notes as she fit them together. I wondered what it was like, if it was like solving the game puzzles that Kettle set for me. It seemed odd to watch her face, knowing a song was unfolding in her mind.

  Nighteyes came to lean his head against my knee. I do not like denning in the midst of these living stones, he confided to me.

  "It does seem as if at any moment they might awaken," I observed.

  Kettle had settled with a sigh to the earth beside me. She shook her old head slowly. "I do not think so," she said quietly. She almost sounded as if she grieved.

  "Well, as we cannot fathom their mystery, and what remains of the road has ended here, we shall leave them tomorrow and resume our journey," Kettricken announced.

  "What will you do," the Fool asked quietly, "if Verity is not at the last map destination?"

  "I do not know," Kettricken confided to us quietly. "Nor shall I worry about it until it happens. I still have an action left to take; until I have exhausted it, I shall not despair."

  It struck me then that she spoke as if considering a game, with one final move left that might yet lead to victory. Then I decided that I had spent too much time focusing on Kettle's game problems. I yanked a last snarl from my hair and pulled it back into a tail.

  Come hunt with me before the last light is gone, the wolf suggested.

  "I think I shall hunt with Nighteyes tonight," I announced as I stood and stretched. I raised one eyebrow at the Fool, but he seemed lost in thought and made no response. As I stepped, away from the fire, Kettricken asked me, "Are you safe, alone?"

  "We are far from the Skill road. This has been the most peaceful day I've known in some time. In some ways."

  "We may be far from the Skill road, but we are still in the heart of a land once occupied by Skill users. They have left their touch everywhere. You cannot say, while you walk these hills, that you are safe. You should not go alone."

  Nighteyes whined low in his throat, anxious to be gone. I longed to go hunt with him, to stalk and chase, to move through the night with no human thoughts. But I would not discount Kettle's warning.

  "I'll go' with him," Starling offered suddenly. She rose, dusting her hands on h
er hips. If anyone besides myself thought it was strange, no one made sign of it. I expected at least a mocking farewell from the Fool, but he continued to gaze off into the darkness. I hoped he was not getting sick again.

  Do you mind if she goes with us? I asked Nighteyes.

  In reply he gave a small sigh of resignation, and trotted away from the fire. I followed him more slowly and Starling followed me.

  "Shouldn't we catch up with him?" she asked me several moments later. The forest and the deepening dusk were closing in around us. Nighteyes was nowhere to be seen, but then, I did not need to see him.

  I spoke, not in a whisper, but very low. "When we hunt, we move independently of one another. When one of us starts up some game, the other comes swiftly, either to intercept, or to join in the chase."

  My eyes had adjusted to the dark. Our quest led us away from the statues, into a forest night innocent of man's workings. Spring smells were strong, and the songs of frogs and insects were all around us. I soon struck a game trail and began to move along it. Starling came behind me, not silently, but not awkwardly either. When one moves through the forest by day or by night, one can either move with it or against it. Some people know how to do it instinctively; others never learn. Starling moved with the forest, ducking under hanging branches and sidestepping others as we wove our way through the night. She did not try to force her way through the thickets we encountered, but turned her body to avoid being caught on the twiggy branches.