Fool's Fate ttm-3

by Robin Hobb

  Or perhaps an imprisonment. What happened to a stone dragon that did not have enough memories to take life and flight? I had seen what had happened to Girl-on-a-Dragon. She had remained there in the quarry, mired in unformed stone. In her case, I did not think it had been lack of memories, but her creator's lack of willingness to surrender individuality to the whole. The leader of the coterie who had carved her had tried to hold back, and isolate her memories into the figure of the Girl astride the dragon rather than release them into the sculpture as a whole. Or so Kettle had told me, when I asked her why that statue had not taken life and flown away. She had told me the tale to warn me away from Verity's dragon, I think; to help me understand that the dragon would not be content with any less than all of me.

  I wished Kettle stood beside me now, to tell me this dragon's story. But I suspected I knew it. The stone had not been shaped as a whole, but worked in blocks. Nor had the carvers put their own memories into the stone. Instead, I suspected that I stood by a dark memorial to the Red Ship War. What had become of the memories and emotions of the Forged folk? The disjointed clues came together in this disjointed creature. Blocks of memory stone had been ballast in the holds of White Ships. Had the Pale Woman and Kebal Rawbread learned the magic of waking a stone dragon from a purloined and sold Skill scroll? What had stopped them, then, from creating an Out Island dragon to ravage the coast of the Six Duchies? Had they lacked the willingness to sacrifice their own lives to give life to their creation? Had they thought they could create a dragon from the memories they had stolen from the Six Duchies folk?

  Here before me was the evidence of their failure to grasp the fundamental reason why a coterie might journey to Jhaampe and beyond to create a stone dragon. They could steal the memories of Six Duchies folk and imprison them in stone forever. But they could not Forge from those memories the singleness of purpose that was required to breathe life into a dragon. Not even all the coteries that set out for the Mountains succeeded in that goal. Some had taken Mountain women as wives and settled down to end their lives in love. Others who had gone to carve their dragons had failed. It was not an easy task, even for a single-minded Skill coterie. A dragon filled with the memories of divergent folk forced into a single stone, a dragon born of terror and anger and hopelessness, would have been an insane creature if ever they'd managed to wake it. Had that been what Kebal Rawbread and the Pale Woman had intended?

  There had been a time when plunging myself into a stone dragon had been very tempting, indeed. I could still recall my hurt that Verity had excluded me from the creation of his. In retrospect, as a man grown, I could understand why. Sometimes, when Nighteyes had still been alive, I had toyed with the idea. What sort of a dragon could we two have made? I had wondered. And now, willing or no, I was part of a coterie again. Yet I had never considered that at some time Dutiful, Thick, Chade, and I might wish to make a dragon of ourselves. We were a coterie born more of chance than intent. I could not imagine us finding the devotion and purpose to carve a dragon, let alone the will to simultaneously end our human lives and memorialize our joining in a dragon.

  I turned and slowly walked away from the shaped stone. I tried not to wonder about the Forged memories imprisoned in it. Was awareness imprisoned in the rock? If not, exactly what was it?

  I reached again for Dutiful and Chade. I think I've found some of the memories and feelings Forged away from Six Duchies folk during the war. What? Chade was incredulous.

  When I had explained, a long moment of aghast horror lingered between us. Then Dutiful asked hesitantly, Can we free them?

  For what purpose? Most of the people they belonged to are long dead. Some may have died at my hand, for all I know. Besides, I have no idea whether it can be done, let alone how. The more I thought on it, the uneasier I became.

  Chade's thought was full of calm resignation. For now, we must leave it as it is. Perhaps after we have dealt with this dragon, Peottre will be more willing to share what he knows. Or perhaps we can arrange for a Six Duchies ship to come here, quietly, and take home what is ours. I felt his mental shrug. Whatever it is.

  The cook fire near our tent had burned down to a faded red eye in the night. I poked at it a bit, pushing in the last nub ends of the firewood, and woke a pale flame or two. There was lukewarm tea in my weary kettle and a scraping of porridge in the bottom of the pot. Riddle himself had gone, either to watch duty or to his own blankets. I crawled into the tent's low entry and found my sea chest by touch in the dark. Thick was a shape huddled beneath blankets. I tried not to wake him as I rummaged for my cup. I was startled when he spoke into the darkness. "This is a bad place. I didn't want to be here."

  Privately, I agreed with him. Aloud I said, "It seems wild and barren to me, but no worse than many a place I've been. None of us really wanted to come here. But we'll make the best of it and do what we must."

  He coughed, and then said, "This is the worst place I've ever been. And you brought me here." He coughed again, and I could feel how weary he was of coughing.

  "Are you warm enough?" I asked guiltily. "Do you want one of my blankets?"

  "I'm cold. I'm cold inside and outside, just like this place. The cold is eating me. The cold will eat us all to bones."

  "I'm going to warm up the tea. Do you want some?"

  "Maybe. If there was honey?"

  "No." Then, I gave way to temptation. "There might be. Here's my blanket. I'll put the tea on to get warm again while I see if anyone has any honey."

  "I suppose," he said dubiously.

  I tucked the blanket around him. It was the closest we had been to one another in days. "I don't like it when you're angry at me, Thick. I didn't want to come here, or to bring you here. It was just a thing we had to do. To help our prince."

  He made no reply and I sensed no lessening in his coldness toward me, but at least he didn't strike out at me. I knew who might have honey. I left the tent and headed up the hill to where the larger tents for the Narcheska and the Prince had been pitched. Between them, and slightly above them, the Fool's multicolored dwelling billowed softly in the wind. Amid the deepening darkness, it seemed to gleam from within. I hesitated outside it. The flap was tied securely shut. Once before, when I was a boy, I had entered the Fool's private chambers, uninvited. I had lived to regret that intrusion, not only because it posed more mysteries than it solved, but also because it had made a small crack in the trust we had shared. Without ever uttering them, the Fool had taught me well the rules that governed retaining his friendship. He answered only the questions he wished to answer about himself, and any prying by me was regarded as an infringement of his privacy. This included efforts by me to find out anything about him other than what he had chosen to tell me himself. And so, I paused there, in the wind sweeping past me from the island's ice pack, and wondered if I wanted to take this chance. Were there not already too many cracks in our much-tested friendship? Then I stooped and untied the door flap and slipped inside.

  The tent was made from a fabric I didn't know, some sort of silk perhaps, but so tightly woven that no breath of air stirred inside it. The glow had come from a tiny brazier, set in a small pit dug in the floor of the chamber. The silk walls caught the heat it generated and held it well, while the light seemed multiplied by the sheen of the fabric. Even so, it was not bright inside the tent: rather it was lit warmly and intimately. A thin rug covered the rest of the floor, and a simple sleeping pallet of wool blankets was in one corner. To my wolf's nose, it smelled of the Fool's perfumes. In another corner was a small kit of clothing and a few significant items. I saw that he had brought the featherless Rooster Crown. Somehow it did not surprise me. The feathers from Others Island, the ones I had thought would fit in the crown, were in my sea chest. Some things are too significant to leave unattended.

  He had a meager supply of foodstuffs and a single cooking pot; obviously he had relied on our arrival for his long-term survival. I saw no sort of weapon amongst his things; the only knives were ones sui
table for cooking. I wondered what ship he had found that had dropped him off here, and why he had not supplied himself better. Among his victuals I found a small pot of honey. I took it.

  There was no scrap of paper to leave him a note. All I had wanted to say to him was that I had not wanted him to come here to die, and that was why I had done what I could to thwart him. In the end, I moved the Rooster Crown into the middle of his bed. I turned the simple wooden circlet in my hands, the dim light catching for an instant in one rooster's sparkling gem eye. The Fool would know that I had set it there, and why. I did not want him to think, even for a moment, that I had tried to conceal this visit. As I left, I retied the tent flap with my knots.

  Thick had almost dozed off, but when I poured tea and added sweetening to it, he sat up to take the mug from me. I had been generous with the honey. He drank off half of it, and sighed heavily. "That's better."

  "Do you want more?" It would leave little for me, but I wouldn't lose any opportunity to regain his favor. "A little bit. Please."

  I sensed a lowering of the wall. "Give me your mug, then." As I poured and sweetened the brew, I said, "You know, Thick, I've missed us being friends. I'm really tired of your being angry with me."

  "I am, too," he admitted as he took the mug from me. "And it's harder than I thought it would be."

  "Is it? Then why do it?"

  "To help Nettle be angry with you."

  "Ah." I did not let myself dwell on that, but only commented, "She probably made it sound like a very good idea."

  "Ya," he drawled sadly.

  I nodded slowly. "But she's all right, isn't she? She's not hurt or in danger?"

  "She's angry. 'Cause she had to leave her home. Because of the dragon. So that was scary for me, and I told her she could come here, because we're going to cut a dragon's head off. But she said, don't worry; my papa will kill the dragon for me. So, she's safe."

  My head swam. It was definite then. The message bird had reached Buckkeep, and the Queen had acted swiftly to take Nettle into shelter. And someone, Kettricken or Burrich, had told her that she was my daughter. Why they had done it now or how they had phrased the words suddenly did not matter. Nettle knew. And she was angry with me, but had still found a way to send me a message through Thick, that told me that she knew who I was, and that I had believed I had done what I did to protect her. All the things I felt seemed to conflict with one another. I wondered if she knew all of what I was, or only that there was another man who had fathered her, and by his bloodline exposed her to danger. Had anyone explained the Skill to her? Did she know I was Witted? I had wanted to tell her myself that I was her father, if I had ever decided that she must know. Would it have been easier for her, or harder? I did not know. There was so much I did not know, and so much that she did not know about me.

  Then another aspect of it washed over me like a wave. If Nettle was in Buckkeep, and if she would open her mind to our Skilling, we could communicate with the Queen and tell her all that was going on. A strange little thrill washed through me. Prince Dutiful had a working coterie now.

  I came out of my reverie when Thick handed the mug back to me. It was empty. "Are you a little warmer now?" I asked him. "A little," he admitted.

  "So am I," I told him, but it had nothing to do with how cold the night was. There are moments that leave a man's heart pumping so strong and free that no chill can touch him. I felt alive and completed, vindicated in all I had done. Thick huddled back into his bed, my blanket still clutched around his shoulders. I didn't mind. I spoke cautiously. "If Nettle comes to your dreams tonight, will you tell her—" That I love her. No. It was far too soon to say such words, and when I spoke them, she should hear them first from me. Now they would be empty utterances from a shadow father she had never met. No. "Will you tell her to let the Queen know we are all well, and safely arrived at the island?" Deliberately I kept the message a general one. I had no assurance that the dragon Tintaglia could not listen in on what passed between Thick and Nettle.

  "Nettle doesn't like the Queen. She is too nice, with lots of pretty skirts for Nettle and pretty smells and shiny things. She isn't Nettle's mother! But she makes her stay close and only lets her out with a guard. Nettle hates that. And she's had enough of lessons, thank you very much!"

  Despite my worries, I smiled. I did not like to think that Nettle would clash with Kettricken, but in retrospect I saw it as inevitable. It was the way Nettle's words came out in Thick's voice. And it was a relief that too many skirts and lessons were Nettle's greatest threat right now. I felt almost fatuously happy despite all the ways it would complicate my life.

  Thick was going to sleep but I wished to think awhile longer. I went out to the dying fire, closing the tent flap behind me. I scraped the leftover porridge from the kettle and ate it. As last man to eat, it fell to me to clean the pot for tomorrow. I scrubbed it out with sand and seawater and never once felt the cold water or the rough sand. My thoughts were elsewhere. Would Kettricken have put her in my old room? Did my daughter now wear the jewels and garb of a princess? I poured what was left of the tea into my cup and dumped out the dregs from the pot. But when I went to sweeten my brew, I could not find the pot of honey in the dark. So I drank it as it was, thick and bitter and delicious with the change that had visited my life that night.

  Chapter 14

  The Black Man

  Just as a Skill coterie may use its talents to influence the waking mind of others and persuade their target that certain things are true, so a Skill dreamer uses his Skill upon his own sleeping mind to create a world which is, to him, as real as our waking one. The Skill dreamer in a sense turns the Skill against his own thoughts. Whereas most of us have no control over what we dream at night, the Skill dreamer is more likely never to have experienced random dreams and may even have difficulty in perceiving what one would be like or that other people dream in such a fashion.

  "Skill Dreaming" — Skillmaster Solicity

  I slept well, without dreams of any kind, and woke to the sound of the waves against the beach. Dawn had barely found us, but already both guardsmen and Hetgurd warriors were up and about. I splashed my face in the icy stream. The incoming tide had covered the carved dragon, but now that I knew it was there, I could feel it as a sort of Wit-humming from beneath the waves. I glanced out toward the anchored ships. I wanted to ask Web what he thought of the dragon, and yet I felt guilty at the thought. I hadn't kept faith with him; I hadn't come to allow him to teach me. Did I have the right to ask him to use his knowledge for my benefit, when I would not learn it for myself? I knew how I would react to Swift's behaving so. I grimly reminded myself that there was only so much time in a day, and of late every moment in mine seemed to have been spoken for. I checked on the tent where Thick slept on. Coward that I was, I decided to leave him in peace. I wandered over to the guards' cook fire, where the porridge was just beginning to boil. Longwick had no immediate task for me. I glanced out at the anchored ships, but saw no signs of life there. They had probably stayed up late talking. I visited the quarry again. By the light of day, I thought I glimpsed bones and the round of a human skull under the rainwater, but the sides of the quarry were steep and I had no desire to investigate. Whatever had happened there had happened long ago. My own problems were more immediate. I drifted over to where the Hetgurd men had their tents. They were gathered outside them, and at first I thought they were having breakfast from a stone table. Then, as I ventured closer, I realized that the sporadic conversation was an ongoing argument. I halted where I was, making a show of scratching and stretching while gazing seaward. Then I went down on one knee as if adjusting my shoe, all the while listening closely. They were muttering their complaints to one another, so it was not easy to understand them. When I had heard enough to realize that they had left an offering for the Black Man at the traditional spot, on this stone table, and that it had not been taken, I stood up and ventured near.

  With an oafish smile on my face and using my broadest
Six Duchies accent, I asked them brokenly if they knew when the Narcheska's party might come ashore. A broad man with a stylized bear on his cheek told me that they would arrive when they arrived. I nodded pleasantly with the slightly unfocused look of a man who is not certain of what has just been said to him. Then, nodding at the stone table, I asked what they were having for dinner. I took three steps toward it before two men stepped in between the table and me to block my access to it.

  The Bear explained to me that this was not a meal, but an offering, and that I should probably go down to my own fellows and eat with them, as they had no use for beggars here. I peered at him, my mouth movements echoing his as if puzzling out his words, and then smiled broadly and wished them all a good evening and left. I'd had my glimpse of the stone table. On it was a clay pot, a small loaf of dark bread, and a dish of salted fish doused in oil. It had not looked appetizing, even to my morning hunger, and I scarcely blamed the Black Man for leaving it untouched. Their distress over this apparent rejection was interesting to me. From their words, they had expected some island denizen to come and stealthily take the offering. That he had not worried them. These were hardened warriors, selected by the Hetgurd to be single-minded in their task. Most warriors I had been around were pragmatic about matters of religion and superstition. They might make a "good luck" toss of the salt, but only a few cared much for omens such as the wind catching it and blowing it aside. My evaluation was that these men had expected the Black Man to accept their gifts and, by that acceptance, signal his permission for them to be here. He had not, and that unsettled them. I wondered how much that would affect their attitude toward our quest.