by Robin Hobb
He grew very still. ‘My music?’ he said very softly. He was uncertain. Guarded.
I was quiet. Had I spoiled everything by asking for this?
He held out his hand to me. I hesitated, then I set my hand in it and his fingers closed around mine. His touch hummed with power. ‘We have to be very quiet,’ he told me. ‘I’m not supposed to let my music be loud.’ He did something to my walls and suddenly we were behind his in a very peculiar way. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘This is how to make the music.’ He smiled and said, ‘We will start with the cat’s purr.’
On that night, I gained a friend and a teacher.
I was back in my bedroom well before dawn. He had taught me a music made of cat purrs, the creak of a rocking chair and the low crackling of a fire. He had cloaked me in ‘See her not!’ before I crept back to my room. I was sleepy the next day. I didn’t care. He was waiting for me when I returned that night. I helped him build the ‘tent’ as he called it that was stouter than any Skill-wall I’d ever managed. He had saved some gingerbread from earlier in his day, for all his meals were brought to him now. We shared that, and shared our cat-purr music, adding more things to it. I felt honoured when he put in me laughing at the cat as he danced after a dropped spool. It was more fun than I’d ever had with anyone in my whole life.
Even better than the day my father had taken me to the market in Oaksbywater, for there were no slain dogs or stabbed beggars. We just played.
For someone who had never had a playmate, it was astonishing.
FORTY-SIX
* * *
The Quarry
The Six Duchies has many folk-tales about people vanishing into Skill-pillars. And many about people suddenly stepping out of one. In many of them, people are fleeing unjust punishment, and the stones give them sanctuary from their attackers. In ones in which foreign or peculiar folk appear, they grant wishes, such as improved health.
All those tales, I believe, are rooted in the inadvertent use of a Skill-pillar by someone who is untrained.
A history of the Skill-pillars in the Six Duchies and beyond,
Chade Fallstar
Something is wrong with the moon.
I blinked my eyes. Yes. There was a moon. A moon in the darkness meant we were not inside the Skill-pillar any more. Nor between Skill-pillars, wherever that ‘between’ was. We were on the ground somewhere and looking up at the moon. The crow was standing on my chest. As I stirred, she hopped off me and away. For an instant, moonlight ran down her scarlet feathers, then she was gone. Cool night air was soft against my skin. Hard stone was under my back. I lowered my eyes from the moon and saw the Skill-pillar that had dumped me out. Beyond it, forest.
This was not Kelsingra.
The moon, Nighteyes insisted.
I lifted my eyes to it. Oh. It was nearly full. It had been full when we entered the pillar. Either we had come out of the pillar before we had left, or we had been inside it close to a month.
Or longer?
‘Where are we?’ I asked aloud to avoid thinking about days lost. Or months. Years? There were legends of people vanishing into standing stones and emerging years later, either unchanged or very, very old. I wondered if I had aged. I certainly felt older. Weaker. I imagined Nettle an old woman, Bee a mother. I sat up with a shudder.
Where are we?
Where we need to be. The only place left for us to be.
It took an effort to rise from my sprawl. I rolled onto my hands and knees and stood up. Above me, stars and the almost full moon. I looked up at sheer, rocky walls, and beyond them the dark shapes of evergreen trees. I smelled water. I turned my head and followed the scent. My sandals gritted on sand and small pebbles. The ground sloped down slightly and I came to an immense square pond of standing water. It smelled green. I knelt at the edge, cupped water and drank. And drank some more.
I sat back. I was still hungry but having my thirst quenched also deadened a headache that I had simply been accepting. I looked around in slow recognition. The quarry. The place where the Elderlings had once cut and carved blocks of Skill-stone. I was not far from the place where Verity had ended his days as a man. He had carved his dragon from gleaming black-and-silver stone, and had risen as a dragon to defend the Six Duchies.
Exactly where we need to be.
No! I meant to touch the face of the pillar that would take us to Kelsingra.
I know. But this is where we need to be.
I pushed his words to the back of my mind. I had known this place, once. It had changed greatly, and not at all. I tried to recall where Verity’s shabby tent had been, where we had set a fire, where we had camped. The moonlight glinted on the thick silvery veins in the rock. My meandering path took me between and past rejected blocks of memory-stone. Once, Elderling Skill-coteries had come here to select a stone and carve the creature that would become the repository of their memories and bodies. I suspected that it had been an Elderling tradition then was somehow shared with a few Six Duchies coteries. Perhaps somewhere in the walls of Kelsingra or in the memory-blocks of Aslevjal, that tale was stored.
I found Verity’s old campsite. Next to nothing was left after all those years. I had hoped to find more, for we had left all behind when we had fled it. What might have been there? The remains of Kettricken’s bow, a knife, a blanket? The night was chill and I would have welcomed any additional covering. It was strange to have stepped from summer in a warm land to summer in the Mountains.
Not much left of summer, I fear. Lift your head and sniff, brother. I smell the end of summer, and leaves soon to fall.
Is it possible we were in the stone that long?
Do you remember nothing of our passage? The wolf seemed genuinely surprised.
Nothing at all.
Not Verity? Not Shrewd? Not our passing brush with Chade?
I was shocked. I stood very still, groping back. I remembered the rogues who had attacked us in the old city, and I remembered carelessly putting my hand on the wrong face of the Skill-pillar. I pushed at my memory.
There you are, my boy!
Leave him be. This is not his place, not his time for this. He has a task.
Present that pin and you will ever be welcome into my presence.
I had been lying on my back, looking up at a moon approaching full. Had I imagined those touches of minds against mine? Did I pretend it to myself, now? Weariness swept over me in a wave.
Something is very wrong with us. Something like a sickness, but not.
The pillar journey. I felt this way that time I left Aslevjal and was lost in the stones for a time.
No. This is something else, the wolf insisted.
I ignored that. How long? At least a month we had wandered between the pillars. It was likely that Bee and the others had reached Bingtown now.
It was like the slap of a cold wave. They would all think me dead! I had to let them know I lived. Then I could wait a few days to recover from my pillar journey. Then I would hike the old Skill-road to the abandoned market and its pillar. From there, I could enter that pillar and be back in Buck Duchy. How long before I was home? Before the next full moon! Time to let Dutiful know that I was alive, and as soon as Bee arrived, he would tell her.
I wrapped my arms around myself and stood very still, gathering and centring myself. But I was abruptly aware of how thin I was. I felt my own ribs. And I was chilled to the bone. Make a fire first. With what? The old way. Spinning a stick in a notch if I had to, but I suddenly felt I needed a fire. A light and a warmth to centre myself, and then I would Skill.
Verity suggested you not do that. Remember? Save that strength for your task. You will need it.
No. I remember nothing of our passage. What task? I recall nothing.
You would if you truly wanted to remember.
Such an odd and irksome thing for him to say to me. His sulky words dangled between us as I went looking for wood. The moon gave a ghostly light to the rocky, barren quarry. Rain and wind had deposited branches an
d dead leaves, but little grew on the stony bone of the earth. My hunger had its claws set in my belly.
Forest rimmed the quarry, and I moved along the edge of it, gathering dry wood. Insects chirred, and overhead bats frolicked in their pursuit of food.
Porcupine!
I sensed it at the same time Nighteyes’ excitement burst through to me. I had to smile. Never had he been able to control his fascination with the prickly creatures, and more than once I’d pulled quills from his nose and paws. I dropped my firewood, and then selected one hefty piece from it.
Porcupines rely on their quills for defence. They are slow-moving, one of the few game animals one can kill with a club. He kept his back and tail toward me as I tried to circle around him to where I could bash his head. By the time I killed him I was winded. My dread at the work ahead before I could eat him almost outweighed my hunger. Almost.
I made two trips to get my firewood and my dead porcupine to a place in the quarry near our old campsite. The woods around the quarry were dry as dust. I had no wish to set them alight with a careless spark. But I soon wished for any sort of a spark. My attacker’s knife was my only large tool. I sharpened a stick for a fire drill, and bored a hole in the driest piece of firewood. Then I began the endless task of spinning the stick between my palms, trying to build up enough warmth to make the wood smoulder. I kept having to stop and rest. My shoulders and elbows ached abysmally.
Try again! Nighteyes bade me softly and I realized I had dozed off hunched over my fire making. I took up the stick in my silvered hand and began to spin it. It suddenly seemed a hopeless task, and I stabbed the stick savagely into my drill bed, shouting, ‘I just want a fire! Is that so much to ask? Fire!’
It burst into flames. Not a spark, not a trickle of smoke. Flames leapt up from both pieces of wood and I scrabbled back and away from them. My heart was hammering in my throat.
I didn’t know we could do that!
Neither did I.
Don’t let it die!
No danger of that. I piled my wood onto it, and watched it catch. The blaze pushed back the shadows and set the silver in the black stone sparkling. And my silvered hand gleamed in the light as I examined it, caught between wonder and dread. Practicality asserted itself. I plodded back to the forest’s edge and came back with as much firewood as I could carry. Twice I did that, and then I turned to my meat.
Skinning a porcupine is as ticklish a job as one might expect. The best way is to hang them spread-eagled and work on them, but I had no string and there were no trees in the quarry. In the end, it was worth the work and nuisance. He was as fat as a fall hog, and as I cooked the meat over the fire, it sizzled and sent up a fine greasy smoke. I ate until I was full, and then slept rolled in a dead woman’s cloak. In the dawn’s light, I awoke under a wide blue sky. I built up my fire and ate more of my kill. I went back to the water caught in the low end of the quarry, washed my hands and drank deeply. With my belly full I felt as if I could face the day.
I recalled that there had been a stream not far from the quarry. A stream with fish. Starling. On the banks of that stream, I had told her that I did not love her, in an effort to be honest. Then we had joined our bodies in what had been little more than animal comfort, but had begun a strange and difficult relationship that would continue, on and off, for over a dozen years. Starling, in her fine striped stockings with her proud, wealthy husband listening as she sang the tale of our quest. Well, that was a verse she had omitted, I thought, and even smiled.
I returned to our fire. Motley was picking through the porcupine’s entrails. She looked up with a bit of gut dangling from her silver beak. ‘Home?’ she cawed hopefully.
I spoke aloud. ‘Today I sleep and catch fish. Some to eat and some to dry. I don’t plan to travel hungry again. Three days of resting and eating, and we continue our journey.’
It would be wiser to choose our piece of stone and begin now.
I crouched in stillness by my fire. I knew what the wolf was suggesting. I’m going home. Not into a stone.
Fitz. Long have we known it would come to this. How often did we dream of returning here and carving our dragon? Here we are, and it is time, and perhaps we have enough time and strength to do it. I would not wish to remain mired in stone like Girl-on-a-Dragon was.
I framed the thought sternly and spoke it aloud. ‘I do not think we have reached that time. I’m not old. Just tired. A bit of rest and—’
‘Home?’ Motley asked persistently. ‘Bee! Bee! Per! Fool! Lant! Spark!’
‘Lant is dead,’ I told her, more sharply than I meant to.
The wolf spoke more sharply. Persist in being so stubborn, and you will be dead. And me with you.
My mind froze.
‘Going home!’ Motley announced.
‘Soon,’ I told her.
‘Now,’ she parried. She ripped a last bit of gut from the porcupine. It wrapped around her silver beak. She deftly pulled it free with one foot, arranged it, and then gulped it down. She preened her feathers, blue-black and scarlet. ‘Goodbye!’ she added and lifted into the sky. I stared after her.
‘It’s a long flight!’ I shouted. Did she have any idea where we were?
She circled the old quarry, flying low over the blocks of rejected stone, and the piles of rubble from long ago works. At the low end was the rainwater pool. She skimmed it and I spun to follow her flight, she flew straight into the Skill-pillar. I feared I would run to a broken and flopping bird. But she vanished smoothly.
‘I didn’t know she could do that,’ I said. ‘I hope she emerges intact.’
Not her first journey through the stones. And she has Skill on her beak.
True.
I could not help her but my heart sank that I might never see her again. I reminded myself I had a plan of my own for my journey. I made several trips for firewood. I roasted the porcupine’s bones until they cracked and I could get at the marrow. Then it was time to fish. I had not tickled fish in a long time. I went to the creek and found a spot where I could lay on my belly, where dangling plants overshadowed an undercut bank, where the sun would not cast my shadow on the water. I was pleased that I remembered so well how it was done, and even more pleased with two fine, fat trout. I put a hooked willow wand through their gills and kept them in the water until I was rewarded with two more. Two to eat tonight, and two to smoke or dry for my journey. I felt very satisfied.
Are you sure you ‘don’t remember’ any of what Verity counselled you?
I stumbled into the stone and out of it again. I’ve no recall of our passage.
You were deep in the Skill. Verity found you. He is a large fish there now, swimming in those deep currents. He told you to carve your dragon and not delay. King Shrewd was there, smaller and thinner. Chade was with him. They wished you well in that effort.
I spoke eventually. ‘I don’t recall that at all. I truly wish I did.’
I recall it for you. He warned you not to delay it. He nearly failed. Had you not brought Kettle with you, and had she not been who and what she was, there would have been a half-finished dragon and a dead king. And probably the OutIslanders would hold Buckkeep Castle now.
We are not gambling for such high stakes as he was.
Only your life. And mine.
I will think well on it tonight.
Fitz. I do not want to cease being. Make us a dragon. Give me that vestige of life. Let me smell the night air again, let me hunt, let me feel the cold of night and the heat of the sun. There was such hunger in his words. I felt selfish. He experienced the world through me, but my senses were but a shadow of what his had been.
‘Nighteyes. What are you?’
He paused. I am a wolf. You need to be reminded of that?
‘You were a wolf. What are you now? A ghost that lives inside me? A mixture of my memories and me thinking what you might say or do?’
That seems unlikely. For I remember Verity, and you do not. And I sojourned with Bee, apart from you, and she
heard me.
I wish I’d had more time to speak of you to her. To tell her the tales I promised she would know.
I was not derelict in that. She knows much of our time together. Much of my life.
I am glad of that.
And I. So, you do not imagine me.
You live in me.
Yes. And if you die, I die with you.
‘I want to go home, wolf. I want to see Bee. I need to be with her, and I need to make reparations for the sort of father I was. I need a chance to do better with her.’
That is what you told Verity. I will repeat what he said. Someone else will do that for you. And you must trust that they will do it well. As he did, with his son. The son he never met.
What is this urgency to carve a stone?
My brother, something eats you. From within. I feel it. Stop hiding it from yourself.
I was too long in the stone. That is all. I ran my silvered hands down my ribs. Felt the jut of my hip-bones. You think I have worms?
I know you do. They are eating you faster than your body can heal itself.
I thought deeply as I left the stream and made my way back to the quarry. My fire had burned low. I raked coals out and rebuilt the rest of it. I baked two of the fish on the coals and ate them. I looked at the other two. I was still so hungry. I could catch more tomorrow for my journey. I raked out more coals and set the fish on them.
When will you decide?
Soon.
I almost heard his sigh, the same sigh he would give when he wished to go hunting at night and I would stay in, morosely writing on paper that I would burn before morning. I poked at the fish. Almost done. Eating raw fish could give me worms. I smiled bitterly. Would those worms eat the parasites that the wolf insisted I already had? With two sticks, I turned the fish over on the coal bed. Be patient.