by Robin Hobb
She made an amused sound. ‘That is true. I expect he will make his own decision in that regard. It surprises me that he has not already.’ Then she leaned forward and fearlessly kissed my cheek. ‘In case it is my last opportunity,’ she explained. ‘Tomorrow, I am taking Spark with me to go visit Verity-as-Dragon. Try not to leave before I get back.’
I nodded. She rose with creaking knees. I listened to the swishing of her skirts as she walked away. Then I leaned forward and carefully put the kiss into the wolf. I knew it was actually his.
‘I would just like to finish this,’ I said to the Fool. I stroked the wolf’s rough stone coat. He still had no colour. The fur of his tail looked lumpy to me. His eyes needed work, and his bared teeth. The tendons in his hind legs. I closed my eyes. I needed to stop numbering what was missing.
It was relatively quiet now. Dark had come and the cool of the Mountains night was descending. The shelter helped but the chill still reached in. I was sitting in the open front of it, leaning back on my wolf. I felt as if I must always be touching him now. For safety.
The Fool was sitting on the ground next to me, hugging his knees and drinking a cup of tea. He set it down carefully. ‘You did not really think you would be allowed to die privately, did you?’ He flapped a long, narrow hand at the encampment that had sprung up in the quarry. There were multiple campfires and tents softly billowing in the night breeze. At the forest’s edge, someone kept watch on the picketed horses. How many people? I could not guess. More than thirty. More had arrived today. All come to watch me die.
Dutiful had come with his Skill-coterie. Over their mother’s objections, both Integrity and Prosper had come as well. Shun had wanted to come but still had a terrible fear of Skill-pillars. Hap had talked them into bringing him, and was now lying in a tent feeling disoriented and nauseated. He had even suggested he might ride a horse home through the Mountain Kingdom rather than brave a Skill-pillar again. Integrity had liked the idea and proposed to accompany him ‘since I am soon bound for the Mountain Kingdom anyway’. Dutiful was uncertain. They were waiting for Kettricken to return from visiting Verity-as-Dragon to discuss it. I could sense Dutiful’s impatience. His wife would soon be brought to bed with their child. He should be there, not here to watch me die. Earlier I had promised, ‘I will go into the wolf as soon as I can. For now, you should just go home. There is nothing you can do here. Be with the woman you love, while you can.’
He had looked troubled, but had not left yet.
I did not want to ponder any of it. My body was beginning to feel like a rickety shed on a sea cliff’s edge. I still ate but there was no pleasure in it. My gums were bleeding and my nose was continually crusted with blood. The world tasted and smelled like blood. And I itched everywhere, inside and out, as new pustules erupted. I had a terrible itch in the back of my throat, and one high inside my nose. They were maddening. I felt regret for the sturdy body I had taken for granted. With my fingers and thumb, I worked a lump from Nighteyes’ tail.
‘What did Dutiful say to you?’ the Fool asked.
‘The usual. He promised to care for Nettle and Bee. He said he would miss me. That he wished I could see his third child born. Fool, I know that what he says is so important to him. It should be to me. I know that I loved him and his boys. But … there is not enough left of me to feel those things.’ I shook my weary head. ‘All of the memories that kept those connections, the wolf has taken. I fear I hurt him. I wish he would just go home and take his coterie with him.’
He nodded slowly and took another sip of his tea. ‘So it was with Verity at the end of his days. It was hard to reach him. Did that hurt you?’
‘Yes. But I understood.’
‘And so does Dutiful. And Kettricken.’ He looked away from me. ‘So do we all.’
He lifted his gloved hand and considered it. The first time he had silvered his fingers, it had been an accident. He had been acting as Verity’s manservant and had accidentally touched his silvered hands. ‘Fitz,’ he said suddenly. ‘Is there enough of you to fill this wolf?’
I considered my wolf. It was a small block of memory-stone compared to what Verity had chosen, but much larger than a real wolf. The top of his shoulders was level with my chest. But somehow the size of the stone did not seem related to how much I needed to fill it. ‘I think so. I won’t know until I go into him.’
‘When will that be?’
I scratched the back of my neck. My nails came back bloody. I wiped them on my thigh. ‘When I have no more to give him, I suppose. Or when I am so close to dying that I must go.’
‘Oh, Fitz,’ he said mournfully, as if it were the first time he had considered the idea.
‘It will all be for the best,’ I told him, and tried to believe it. ‘Nighteyes will be a wolf again. As will I. And Bee will have you to watch over her and—’
‘She doesn’t like me, I fear.’
‘There have been many times when Nettle or Hap disliked me, Fool.’
‘I might feel better if she disliked me. I don’t think she feels much one way or the other.’ In a lower voice he added, ‘I was so sure that she would love me, as I love her. I thought it would just happen, once we were near each other. It has not.’
‘Being loved by your children isn’t really what being a parent is about.’
‘I loved my parents. I loved them so terribly much.’
‘I have no basis of comparison,’ I pointed out to him quietly.
‘You had Burrich.’
‘Oh, yes. I had Burrich.’ I laughed grimly. ‘And eventually, we realized we loved one another. But it took some years.’
‘Years,’ he repeated dolefully.
‘Be patient,’ I counselled him. I touched one of the wolf’s toenails. They were smooth. That wasn’t right. They should be ridged. I remembered the smell of a buck’s blood on a winter dawn, and how it had clotted into tiny pink balls in the ice. I corrected the toenail.
‘Fitz?’
‘Yes?’
‘You were gone again.’
‘I was,’ I admitted.
‘Have you put much of me into him?’
I thought about it. ‘I put in your room in the tower at Buckkeep, the time I climbed those broken stairs, and you were not there and I stared around in surprise at what I found. I put in the day we had the water fight in the stream, not so far from here. And that horrid song you sang to me to embarrass me in the halls of Buckkeep. And Ratsy. Ratsy is in there. And I put in treating your wounds the day Regal’s thugs put a bag over your head and beat you. And you carrying me on your back through the snow, when you did not know me.’ I smiled. ‘I know what else. I put in how you looked at me that time King Shrewd gave me his pin. I was under the table and there had been a feast. The keep dogs and I were sharing all the leftovers. And then Shrewd came in, with Regal. And you.’
An uncertain smile had dawned on his face. ‘So you will remember me. When you are a stone wolf.’
‘We will remember you, Nighteyes and I.’
He sighed. ‘Well. There is that.’
I had to cough. I turned my head aside from him and coughed. Blood spattered the wolf, and just for an instant, before it sank in, I saw his colours as they would be. I coughed again, drew breath and coughed some more. I put my arm on the wolf and leaned my forehead on it as I coughed. If I must cough blood, let not a drop be wasted. When I could finally draw a wheezing breath, my nose was bleeding.
Not long now, Nighteyes whispered.
‘Not long now,’ I agreed.
It had been quiet for a time. Then the Fool spoke beside me. ‘Fitz. I’ve brought you something. It’s cold tea. With valerian in it. And carryme.’
I sipped it. ‘There’s not enough carryme in there to do anything. I need more.’
‘I don’t dare make it stronger than it is.’
‘I don’t care what you dare. Add more carryme!’
He looked shocked and for a moment, I jolted back to being Fitz as I once was. ‘Fool
, I’m so sorry. But they are gnawing on every part of me, inside and out. I itch in places I can never scratch. I feel them rattle in my lungs when I draw breath. The inside of my throat is raw and all I can taste is blood.’
He said nothing but took the cup away. I felt ashamed of myself. I put it into the wolf, enough to define the lift of his lip. I startled when the Fool spoke. ‘Careful. It’s hot now. I had to use hot water to make the carryme blend.’
‘Thank you.’ I took it from him and drained it. The hot tea mixed with the blood in my mouth. I swallowed it. He took the cup quickly from my shaky hand.
‘Fool. What were we?’ It wasn’t an idle question. I needed to know it. I needed to finally understand it to put it in the wolf.
‘I don’t know.’ His reply was guarded. ‘Friends. But also Prophet and Catalyst. And in that relationship, I did use you, Fitz. You know it and I know it. I’ve told you how sorry I was to do it. I hope you believe that. And that you can forgive me.’
His words were so intense, but that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. I waved them away. ‘Yes, yes. But there was something else there. Always. You were dead, and I called you back. For that moment, when we returned to our proper bodies, as we passed one another, we …’
We were one thing. Whole.
He was waiting for me to continue. It seemed ridiculous that he could not hear the wolf. ‘We were one thing. A whole thing. You and I and Nighteyes. I felt a strange sort of peace. As if all the parts of me were finally in one place. All the missing bits that would make me a complete … thing.’ I shook my head. ‘Words don’t reach that far.’
He set his gloved hand on my sleeved arm. The layers of fabric deadened that touch but it still sang in me. It was not the stunning touch he had shared with me once in Verity’s Skill-tower. I recalled that well. I’d been left huddled in a ball, for it had been too much, too overwhelming to know, so completely, another living entity. Nighteyes and I, we were simple creatures and our bonding was a simple thing. The Fool was complex, full of secrets and shadows and convoluted ideas. Even now, insulated from it, I felt that unfurling landscape of his being. It was endless, reaching to a distant horizon. But in some way, I knew it. Owned it. Had created it.
He lifted his hand.
‘Did you feel that?’ I asked him.
He smiled sadly. ‘Fitz, I have never needed to touch you to feel that. It was always there. No limits.’
Some part of me knew that was important. That once it would have mattered terribly to me. I tried to find words. ‘I will put that in my wolf,’ I said, and he turned sadly away from me.
‘Da?’
I tried to lift my head.
‘He’s still alive,’ someone said in a wondering voice and someone else shushed him.
‘I brought you tea. There’s a strong painkiller in it. Do you want it?’
‘Gods, yes!’ That was what I meant to say. I had draped myself over my wolf. I had feared I would die in the night and worried that if I were unconscious I could not slip away into him. I opened my eyes and saw the world through a pink sheen. Blood in my eyes. Like the messenger. I blinked and my vision cleared slightly. Nettle was there. Bee was beside her. Nettle held a cup to my lips. She tipped it and liquid lapped against my mouth. I sucked some in and tried to swallow. Some went down. Some ran down my chin.
I looked beyond her. Kettricken, weeping. Dutiful had his arm around her. His sons were with him. The Fool and Lant, Spark and Per. And beyond them the ranks of the curious. The Skill-coteries and those who had come with them. All gathered to watch my final spectacle. I would do at last what the Witted had long been rumoured able to do. I would transform into a wolf.
It reminded me of my final days in Regal’s dungeon. They had tormented me there, trying to force me to reveal my Witted nature so they could justify killing me.
Was this so different?
I wished they would all go away.
Except the Fool. I wished he would join me. Somehow, I had always thought he would join me. Now, I could not recall why. Perhaps I had buried that in the stone.
I heard music. It was strange. I cast my eyes to one side and saw Hap with a strange stringed instrument. He played a handful of notes and then began to softly sing ‘Crossfire’s Coterie’. I had taught him that, years ago. For a time, I was carried away by the music. I recalled teaching him the song, and then how he had sung it with Starling. I recalled the minstrel who had taught it to me. I let the memories seep into the wolf, and I felt them lose their colour and vibrancy within me. Hap’s song became only a song. Hap became only a singer.
I was dying. And I had never been enough for anything.
It’s time to ask him. Or time to let go.
It’s not the sort of thing one asks of a friend. He hasn’t offered, and I will not ask it. I will not tear him that way. I am trying to let go. I don’t know how.
Do not you recall how you shed your body in Regal’s dungeon?
That was long ago. Then, I feared to live and face what they would do to me. Now I fear to die. I fear that we will simply stop, like a bubble popping.
We may. But this is excruciating.
Better than being bored to death.
I do not think so. Why don’t you ask him?
Because I already asked him to look after Bee.
That one needs little looking after.
I’m letting go. Right now. I’m letting go.
But I could not.
FORTY-NINE
* * *
Lies and Truths
I have endeavoured to record the events of my father’s life as he has put them into his wolf-dragon. I can tell that when I am near and writing, he selects what he will share with great caution. I accept that he must have many memories that are too private to share with his daughter.
Today he spoke mostly of his times with the one he calls the Fool. It is a ridiculous name, but perhaps if my name were Beloved, I would consider Fool an improvement. Whatever were his parents thinking? Did they truly imagine everyone he ever encountered would wish to call him Beloved?
I have observed a thing. When my father speaks of my mother, he is absolutely confident that she loved him. I recall my mother well. She could be prickly and exacting, critical and demanding. But she was like that in the confidence that they shared a love that could withstand such things. Even her angers at him were usually founded on her taking offence that he could doubt her at all. That comes through when he speaks of her.
But when he speaks of his long and deep friendship with the Fool, there is always an element of hesitation. Of doubt. A mocking song, a flash of anger, and my father would feel the bewilderment of one who is rebuffed and cannot decide how deep the rebuke goes. I see a Catalyst that was used by his Prophet, and used ruthlessly. Can one do so to one he loves? That, I think, is the question my father ponders now. My father gave, and yet often felt that what he gave was not considered sufficient, that the Fool always desired more of him, and that what he desired was beyond what my father could give. And when the Fool left and seemingly never even glanced back, that was a dagger blow to my father that never fully healed.
It changed what he thought their relationship was. When the Fool returned so abruptly to my father’s life, my father never trusted his full weight to that friendship. He always wondered if the Fool might once more use him for what he needed, and then leave him alone again.
And apparently he has.
Bee Farseer’s journal
‘They should leave,’ I whispered to Nettle. ‘He’s our father. I don’t think he’d want even us seeing him like this.’ I didn’t want to see my father like this, draped on the stone wolf like laundry drying on a fence. He looked terrible, a patchwork man of smooth silver and worm-eaten flesh. He smelled worse than he looked. The clean robe we’d put on him yesterday was now soiled with spilled tea and other waste. Lines of crusted dried blood stretched from his ears down his neck. Bloody saliva collected at one corner of his mouth. Yet the silver
half of his face was smooth and sleek, unlined, a reminder of the man he’d been so recently.
Last night I had watched a grim-faced Nettle bathe the parts of his face that were flesh. He had tried to object, but she had insisted and he’d been too weak to fight her off. She’d been careful, dipping the cloth and folding the soiled part away from her, never directly touching his skin. Little writhing creatures had come away from his sores. She had thrown the cloths into the fire.
‘They don’t care for him. They simply want to be here if the wolf comes to life.’
‘I know that. They know that. Da knows that.’ She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It would matter to me. I would want to die privately. Not like that.’
‘He’s a Farseer. Royalty. Nothing is private. Learn that now, Bee. Kettricken has it right. Servants to all, and they take from us what they need. Or want.’
‘You should go home to your baby.’
‘If that decision were solely mine, I would. I miss her and Riddle terribly. But I cannot be seen to leave my father and sister now, in these circumstances. Do you understand?’ She looked at me with my mother’s eyes. ‘I’m not doing this to you, Bee. I will try to protect you from it. But to protect you, I must ask that you be as unremarkable as possible. If you disobey me, if you are defiant or wild, all eyes will be drawn to you. Appear to be mild and uninteresting, and you may have a little bit of a life that is all yours.’ She gave me a tired smile. ‘Even if your sister will always know you are anything but mild and uninteresting.’
‘Oh.’ I didn’t say that I wished someone had told me all this before I’d made it so difficult for her. I did take her hand.
‘Nice walls,’ she said. ‘Thick taught you well.’
I nodded.
The day grew brighter. The drapery of my father’s shelter had been tied open to let in the early warmth of the day, and to let out the smell of death. I sat by his wolf, clutching the book I’d been keeping of his memories. It had been two days since he’d spoken coherently enough for me to understand him. But still I’d stayed beside him, adding illustrations to the memories he had spoken aloud.