by Robin Hobb
Nettle had explained to me what little she knew of the process. Once, it seemed, ageing coteries from the Six Duchies had made their way here, to carve dragons and go into them. They had learned the custom from the Elderlings. It offered one a limited immortality. ‘The vitality of the stone does not seem to last long. Verity fought as a dragon until the Red Ships were defeated. Da was able to rouse the sleeping dragons and win them to Verity’s cause, but how he did that has never been fully discovered. Some of the coteries I have founded have said that, when they are aged, perhaps they will attempt this feat. Da once told me that the old children’s song “Six Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town” is actually about a coterie going up into the Mountains to carve their dragon.’
‘Did they all die in such an ugly and painful way?’
‘I do not think so. But any records of how it was done were lost when Regal sold off the Skill-scroll library. I hope we may find information in the memory-cubes from Aslevjal. But as yet, we have not.’
I took no comfort from anything she had told me. My father’s worm-ridden body was on display like that of a caged criminal in a Chalcedean town. If die he must, I wanted him to do it in a comfortable bed in a well-appointed chamber. Or to be like my mother, and simply fall down in the midst of doing something he loved to do. I wanted to be able to take his hand and offer him comfort. I sighed and shifted my feet.
‘You do not have to watch this. I can ask one of my Skill-users to take you back to Buckkeep Castle.’
‘You have already explained to me why I cannot.’
‘True.’
Night fell and we built up the fire, and he still had not died. I felt I might die of this before he did. There was a terrible tension in the air. We wanted him to die now, and hated that we wanted that.
His real family, as I thought of us, sat in a tight circle by the fire, our backs to the quarry. ‘Can we help him?’ Per asked suddenly. ‘Could each of us put something into his wolf?’ He told the first lie I’d ever heard from him. ‘I’m not afraid to try it.’
He stood up. ‘Per!’ Nettle warned him but he slapped his hand onto the wolf. ‘I don’t know how to do this. But I’ll give you my mother forgetting me and turning me from her door. I don’t need that memory. I don’t need to feel that.’
My father’s human hand twitched slightly. Per stood, waiting. Then he lifted his hand. ‘I don’t think anything happened,’ he admitted.
‘Don’t feel bad,’ Nettle told him. ‘I think you must have a bit of the Skill to be able to do it. But I think it’s a good idea. And he’s in no position to prevent us from doing it.’ She stood, graceful as she always was. She put her hand on the wolf’s muzzle. ‘Dream Wolf, take something sweet from my memories of you.’ She did not say what it was, but I could tell by how she stood that she gave him something.
When she sat down, Lant stood. ‘I want to try,’ he said. ‘I’d like him to take my first meeting with him. I was terrified.’ He set his hand to the wolf’s shoulder. He stood for a very long time. Then he put his finger on my father’s fleshly hand. ‘You take it, Fitz,’ he said, and perhaps he did.
Spark tried but failed. Kettricken gave a small smile. ‘I already gave him what I wished him to put into our wolf,’ she said. She left us all wondering.
‘No,’ Hap said. ‘I’m keeping every memory and emotion I have about him. I need them. How else do you think minstrels make up songs? He knows that. He wouldn’t want me to give them up.’
Dutiful stood, and motioned his two sons back. ‘Lads, you need to hold tight what little you knew of him. But I have something. There was a night we fought, and I hated him. I’ve always regretted that. Perhaps it will be useful now.’
When he was finished, he wiped tears from his cheeks and sat down. I glowered at the Fool. For he was the Fool now, all of Lord Chance and Lady Amber and Lord Golden scraped away by sorrow. He was no one’s Beloved now. He was a sad little man, a broken jester. But he did not stand and say he would give anything to my father. I was very still. I needed a strategy, for I knew they would drag me away before I could succeed. I hung my head as if I feared to try, and after a moment, people shifted and Spark offered to bring tea for us all.
‘And some cool water,’ Kettricken requested. ‘I’d like to try to at least moisten his mouth. He looks so uncomfortable.’
Not now. I must not do it while there were onlookers. They were accustomed to me sleeping near my father’s wolf. Some of them, at least, would fall asleep. Don’t die just yet, I thought fiercely at my father. I dared not Skill the thought, and I kept my walls tight lest Nettle hear what I intended.
Night had never deepened so slowly. We shared tea, and Kettricken wiped my father’s broken lips with a wet cloth. His eyes were closed and likely to remain so. His bony back rose and fell with his slow breaths. Spark persuaded Kettricken to lie down and sleep. Then she and Lant went to the upper lip of the quarry to keep watch. Dutiful and Nettle had withdrawn a small distance to have an intense conversation. The princes sat back to back, leaning on one another and drowsing. Hap sat at a distance, his fingers wandering on the strings of his instrument. I knew he played his memories and I wondered if the sound could sink into the wolf.
I curled up and pretended to sleep. After a very long time, I opened my eyes. All quiet. I edged closer to the wolf, moving as if I shifted in my sleep. I slid my hand along the gritty stone toward his leg. As I lifted my hand and opened my fingers to clutch the wolf’s leg, the Fool spoke. ‘Bee, don’t do it. You know I can’t allow it.’
He did not leap to stop me but leaned forward to put two more pieces of wood on the fire. I drew my hand back a little. ‘Someone has to do it,’ I told him. ‘He’s holding on, experiencing the pain so he has something more to put into the stone. Because he doesn’t have enough to fill it.’
‘He would not want you to pour yourself into his wolf!’
I stared at him, refusing to look away from his eyes. I knew the most terrible truth. My father would not want me to join him in the stone. He would want his Fool. I nearly said the words aloud. Nearly. Instead I asked a question. ‘Why don’t you go, then?’
I wanted to hear him say that he wanted to live, that he had important things still to do with his life. That he was afraid. Instead he said very calmly, ‘We both know why, Bee. You wrote it, and he said as much to me. It’s his decision to make, and finally it’s his own decision. Your dreams spoke of it. You wrote it all down for me to read. A black-and-white rat that runs away from him. His final letter to me saying that he wished I’d never come back, wished that he could reach his own decisions without me. That he knew how I had used him, so very many times.’ He took a sudden gasping breath and covered his face. A terrible sob shook him. ‘If he ever wanted vengeance on me for all I did, he has it now. This is the worst thing he could do to me. Now I know how it feels to be left behind. As I left him.’
What had I done?
Old words came into my mind. I’d heard them from my father, read them, heard them from others. ‘Never do a thing until you consider what you can’t do once you’ve done it.’
Slowly he lifted his face. ‘Not a perfect quote, but close.’ He looked ill and dwindled. ‘“Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.” The words I dreamed so long ago. The words I came so far to say to King Shrewd, so that he would not let Prince Regal kill Chivalry’s bastard. I knew if I could but say those words to him, I could keep Fitz alive. The first time.’ He shook his head. ‘The first time of many that I intervened, to push him through a tiny hole in his fate. To keep him alive, to be a lever I could use to alter how the future might unfold.’
And the world re-ordered itself around me. I spoke each word carefully. ‘You are so stupid.’
Astonishment broke through his pain.
Could I still undo what I had done? So that he could do what he should? ‘I lied!’ I spat my whisper at him. ‘I knew you read my journal. I knew you read my dre
ams. I wrote there what I thought would hurt you most! I lied to hurt you. For letting him be dead while you lived. For being loved by him more than he loved me!’ I took a breath. ‘He loved you more than he ever loved any of the rest of us!’
‘What?’ His mouth hung open after that word, his eyes wide. He made a stupid face of astonishment.
As if he hadn’t always known he was loved the best. That he was the Beloved.
‘Stupid again! Asking stupid questions. Go with him. Go now. It’s you he wants, not me. Go!’
When had my voice risen to a shout? I did not know, I did not care. Let it be a spectacle, let all the camp be roused and folk stare at me. For that was what was happening. Dutiful had come to his feet, a sword in his hand, looking around for an enemy. They were all half-awake, roused by my shouts. Hap was staring with his mouth hanging open, Nettle’s hands clutched her face in horror at the truth I had shouted.
And my father lifted a hand. His face was so ravaged, it was like looking at death itself. Except for the smooth, silvered part of it. By creeping degrees, his human hand lifted. He turned it over, showing a bloody palm. His cracked lips moved.
Beloved.
He could not say the word, but I knew it.
So did his Fool.
He rose, the blanket that had draped his shoulders falling to the earth. He pulled the glove from his hand and let it fall. He walked uncertainly, like a puppet with his strings pulled by an apprentice puppeteer. He reached my father. So tenderly, he set his hand into my father’s. Then he leaned down until he lay upon the wolf, his face turned to my father’s face. He put his arm across my father’s bony back. He drew him close and then set his silver fingers to the wolf.
For a moment, all was still. Then I saw Beloved’s fingers stir the soft fur of the wolf’s back. The firelit bodies of my father and Beloved softened and merged. I felt something I could not describe. Like the whoosh of air when a door opens, and then closes again, but it was in the Skill-current, and so strong that I saw Nettle flinch at it, too. Briefer than an instant, I saw light striate out from them. A nexus, a node on the path of fate. Then it was finished. Something finally complete, as it should have been.
Their colours dimmed and the wolf’s eyes gleamed. It was slow and it was sudden, that they were gone and only the wolf remained. The snarl faded. The wolf’s ears pricked and swivelled. His broad head turned slowly. He lifted his muzzle and snuffed the night air. Such eyes he had! They were a darkness full of the brilliance of life. For one brief instant, light caught in them and glowed green. We were all as motionless as if a huge predator faced us. Then, like a wet dog, the wolf shook himself and tiny fragments of stone flew in all directions, as if he had rolled in them.
His slow look roved over us, pausing at each in turn. His gaze lingered on me the last. His eyes were both hard and amused. Those were astounding lies, cub. And the very last one the most inspired of all. You have your father’s talent for it. He gave a final shake of his coat. I go to the hunt!
His claws left deep scratches on the stone as he leapt, not only over the fire but over all of us. For a moment, he was motion in the darkness. Then gone.
‘He did it!’ Dutiful shouted. ‘He did it!’ He seized Nettle in his arms and whirled her round.
Hap rose to his feet and in his minstrel’s voice, he declaimed to the half-roused camp, ‘And so the Wolf of the West rose from the stone! And so he will rise again if ever the folk of the Six Duchies call to him in need.’
‘Seven Duchies,’ Kettricken corrected him.
FIFTY
* * *
The Mountains
I think the Skill-road through the Mountains will remain long after humans, Elderlings and dragons are gone. Stone remembers. That is what the Elderlings learned, so long ago, and the lesson they have left us. Humans die and the memories of who they were and what they did fade. But stone remembers its task.
From the writings of FitzChivalry Farseer
‘This is a bad idea,’ Nettle said again.
‘It is an excellent idea,’ Kettricken replied. ‘And Fitz gave her to me. Do not fear I will be too indulgent with her. You know I will not.’
Less than a day had passed. All the tents had been struck. Dutiful had already surrendered to his mother’s wishes, taking Prosper, Lant and his coterie with him and hastening back to Queen Elliania’s side.
Integrity and Hap remained. As did Per, Spark and I. Nettle’s coterie stood in a huddle, awaiting her. Everybody was anxious to return to Buckkeep, to share their versions of what they had seen. I had already felt a flurry of Skilling from them to other coteries.
Dutiful had looked from his sons to me, and then at his mother. ‘I don’t fear you will be too indulgent with either of them. I have known you too many years to fear that. But I will speak plainly. Even with you using our horses, this will not be an easy journey for you.’
Kettricken sat well on a grey mare. ‘My dear, the journey home is always easier than any other. For me, at least. Now, you must let us go. We have daylight still, and I would use it well.’
My sister opened her mouth to speak. Kettricken nudged her horse. ‘Farewell, Nettle! Give our love to Riddle and Hope.’
Spark, not too comfortable on her bay mount, fell in behind her. Integrity moved his horse up beside her. I heard him say, ‘You’ll get used to it.’
Hap moved to flank her other side. ‘Don’t listen to him,’ he warned her. ‘Likely you will be horribly sore tonight. If we are not eaten by bears before then.’
‘Lying minstrel,’ Integrity observed, and they all laughed, Spark nervously. Motley had claimed a perch on Hap’s shoulder, and she chortled along with the others. The minstrel had been pleased that she had chosen him. I knew she was waiting for a chance to steal one of his gaudy earrings.
Per stood nearby, holding the reins of both our horses.
Nettle hugged me and I allowed it. Then I demanded better of myself and hugged her back. ‘I am going to try much harder,’ I told her.
‘I know you will. Now go, before you are left behind.’
Per stepped forward, but it was my sister who boosted me onto my horse. ‘Behave!’ she admonished me sternly.
‘I will try,’ I replied.
‘Watch over her,’ she told Per and turned away from us. She was not crying. I don’t think any of us had any tears left. She walked toward her coterie. ‘We’re leaving,’ she told them.
And so we parted.
I rode side by side with Per. I had the smallest horse. He was brown with a black mane and tail, and a star on his brow. We had already discovered that he liked to bite. Per said he could teach him better. Per rode a gelding the colour of creek mud. The fox pin glittered on his breast.
I was thinking about things like that: biting horses and fox pins. Thieving crows. How soon we could send for our own horses to be brought to the Mountains. What Spark and Lant felt for each other and what they might do about it. Hap was trying out lines and rhymes. ‘Nothing rhymes with wolf!’ we heard him exclaim in annoyance.
‘There must be something,’ Integrity insisted, and began to suggest nonsense words.
As we left the quarry behind, I was astonished to find that we were on a smooth road, with little encroachment from the forest. The Skill-road. I lowered my walls slightly and heard whispers of the many travellers who had once come this way. It was annoying. I closed my walls again.
‘Did you hear something?’ Per asked us suddenly.
That startled me. He had no magic. Of that we were now certain.
‘The crow isn’t worried,’ Hap observed and then ‘Ow!’ as she made her first try for the earring.
Per was serious. ‘Stay close beside me,’ he warned me and urged his horse to a faster walk. He looked all about us as we moved through the dappling shade of the forest. When we were closer to Kettricken, he said worriedly, ‘There’s something stalking us. Off to the side of the road, moving through the forest.’
Kettricken smiled.<
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BY ROBIN HOBB
THE FARSEER TRILOGY
Assassin’s Apprentice
Royal Assassin
Assassin’s Quest
THE LIVESHIP TRADERS
Ship of Magic
The Mad Ship
Ship of Destiny
THE TAWNY MAN
Fool’s Errand
The Golden Fool
Fool’s Fate
THE RAIN WILD CHRONICLES
The Dragon Keeper
Dragon Haven
City of Dragons
Blood of Dragons
FITZ AND THE FOOL
Fool’s Assassin
Fool’s Quest
The Inheritance
The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince
THE SOLDIER SON
Shaman’s Crossing
Forest Mage
Renegade’s Magic
WRITING AS MEGAN LINDHOLM
The Reindeer People
Wolf’s Brother
Harpy’s Flight
The Windsingers
The Limbreth Gate
Luck of the Wheels
Wizard of the Pigeons
Cloven Hooves
Alien Earth
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