by Robin Hobb
He stared up at me, his face gone slack with astonishment. Then a sickly smile of disbelief spread over his face. ‘You’re asking me to do this?’
‘Of course. Yes. Let’s find out how bad it is. If you can still reach me, then perhaps my Skill will come back to me as the herb wears off. Let’s try it.’ I sat down beside him, and set my forearm, wrist up, on top of his knee. He looked at his faded fingerprints on my wrist and then gave me a sideways look.
‘No.’ He drew back from me. ‘You are not yourself tonight. Fitz. This is not something you would ordinarily allow, let alone request. No.’
‘What, are you scared?’ I challenged him. ‘Go ahead. What can we lose?’
‘Respect for one another. That I would do such a thing when you were as good as drunk. No, Fitz. Stop tempting me.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll remember, tomorrow, that I suggested this. I need to know. Is my magic dead in me?’ In some isolated corner of my soul, I felt alarm. I wanted to stop and think, but the anxiety wouldn’t let me. Do it now, do something now, do anything now. The drive to be doing, doing anything was a pressing need that could not be denied.
I reached out and took hold of his slender wrist. His hand was ungloved and unresisting. As if fitting together a wooden puzzle, I set his hand to my wrist. His cool fingertips fell into alignment with the scars he had left on me. I waited. I felt nothing. I looked at him quizzically.
He had closed his eyes. A moment later, he opened them. They were deep gold and devastated as he said in disbelief. ‘Nothing. I feel the warmth of your wrist under my fingers. I reach for you, but you are not there. And that is all.’
My heart lurched sideways in my chest. I instantly tried to deny what we had just established. ‘Well. Doesn’t prove anything, I suppose. We’ve never tried this before, so what do we know of what to expect? Nothing. Nothing at all. Tomorrow, I may awaken and find the Skill as strong in me as ever.’
‘Or not,’ the Fool suggested quietly, watching my face. His fingers still rested on my wrist. ‘Perhaps we shall never connect in this way again.’
‘Or not,’ I agreed. ‘Perhaps I shall wake just as isolated and deaf as I am at this moment. Perhaps.’ I stood up, pulling my wrist from his loose clasp. ‘Well. It’s no use thinking about it and worrying about it, is it? As well to fret over whether it will be wet or dry tomorrow. What will be will be.’ I paused, thinking I should keep still, but then the question burst out anyway. ‘Do you think Peottre did this to me purposely? Do you think he knew that elfbark can destroy the Skill? And how does he know that I have the magic at all? And, if he wants me to help the Prince kill the dragon, why would he disable me? Unless he doesn’t really want us to kill Icefyre. Maybe he’s lured us here so the Prince will fail. But that makes no sense. Does it?’
He looked battered by my onslaught of questions. ‘Can you be quiet, Fitz?’ he asked me earnestly, and after a moment’s thought, I shook my head.
‘I don’t think so.’ I shifted restively as I spoke. I was suddenly miserable. I could not find a comfortable position in which to be still. I was aware that I was sleepy but could not recall how to let go of wakefulness. I suddenly wanted all of it to go away and leave me in peace. I dropped my head into my hands and covered my eyes. ‘All my life, I’ve done everything wrong.’
‘It’s going to be a long night,’ the Fool observed woefully.
SEVENTEEN
Icefyre
Now, this is the tale of Yysal Sealshoes and the dragon Icefyre, and what befell her in the years when Wisal was the Great Mother of her mothershouse. Wisal took a dislike to a young man that Yysal had brought home to her bedding, and she gave her reasons three: he was bandy-legged and hollow-chested, and all know those are traits that may be passed on to children, and Wisal did not wish her mothershouse to be full of his bandy-legged weaklings. His hair was red, which Wisal also did not desire in her descendants; and whenever spring came to the islands and the willow trees drooped with tiny furry tails, the man sneezed and wept and coughed and was no use at all for the spring chores. And so, when Yysal went forth one summer day to gather crowberries from the upper slopes of their mountain, Wisal told the other women to gather clods of earth and rocks small enough to sting but not cause major injury and drive Yysal’s bedmate away. This her sisters and mother and aunts did with a good will, for none of them liked the way he simpered at them whenever Yysal was absent.
When Yysal returned and found her bedmate fled, she wept and she ranted and finally she vowed she would go to the dragon and ask for vengeance on her own kin. All know that is a great sin against a mothershouse, and yet she was so wroth, she would not listen to reason, nor accept the hearty, black-haired young warrior they offered her in place of her pale, scrawny stripling. And so she went to Aslevjal, and waited for the tide of the year, and then slipped under the icy shelves of the glacier to go deep within its heart and beg of the dragon her evil wish.
Deep beneath the icy cap that domes the island, she beached her tiny boat on a silty shore. She lifted her torch but did not pause to wonder at the beauties of Icefyre’s blue ice tomb. Instead, she climbed out immediately and made her way through the twisting blue tunnels to where she might look up at the dragon encased in the ice. And there she melted a hollow in the ice with the blood of the lamb she had brought with her, and begged him to make barren all the women who had driven her bedmate away from her side.
Badgerlock’s translation of an Out Island bard’s song
I recall the rest of that night and the following day and night as one recalls fever dreams. My mind shies away from remembering the misery I endured. ‘It was all in your mind,’ Chade told me some time later, and it stung that he dismissed so lightly all that I had endured. All of life, I wanted to tell him, is in our minds. Where else does it take place, where else do we add up what it means to us and subtract what we have lost? An event is just an event until some person attaches meaning to it.
I survived it. Anyone who makes a difference between such a herb and a poison has never been plunged into such depths as I sounded. At some point that night, Chade sent Riddle looking for me. He draped a blanket around me and hurried me, barefoot and clad in the ridiculous Elderling robe, back to the Prince’s tent. There, if I recall correctly, I spent several hours telling Chade just how much I despised myself. Dutiful later told me that he had never lived through such a tiresome recounting of any man’s imagined sins. I recall that several times he tried to reason with me. I spoke openly of killing myself, a fleeting notion that I had often considered but never before uttered. Dutiful was disgusted at such a maudlin fancy and Chade pointed out to me that it would be a selfish act that would not correct any of my stupidity. I think he was more than a bit weary of me by then.
And yet, it was not my fault. It was the despondency of the drug, not any rational consideration by me that kept me talking through the night and on into dawn. By morning, Dutiful knew far more of my youthful excesses than I had ever planned on divulging to him. If he had ever been tempted to experiment with elfbark or carris seed, I am sure that long evening cured him of his curiosity.
When Thick could stand no more of my over-emotional account, Riddle was summoned to escort him to the Witted coterie’s tent, where Web took him in hand and settled him for the night. Chade and Dutiful had planned to attempt to contact Nettle with the Skill that night, but my indisposition made it impossible for them to focus. Before Thick fled, they made an attempt as a coterie to reach me with the Skill. They had no more luck than the Fool had. When I told Chade about that encounter, his face darkened and I knew he disapproved that I had even attempted that experiment with the tawny man.
The next day, both Riddle and Web walked with Thick and me. I am sure that Riddle was assigned the task by Chade, but I think Web came for me. To this day, I wonder what Thick told him to make him think it necessary that he attend me. I walked in a silent black despair, through an endless torment of bright ice and gently blowing snow. Riddle and Thi
ck walked ahead of us, speaking little. Web came right behind me, and said not a word all day. Summer had regained its grip and the wind that sculpted the dunes into fantastic forms was gentle and almost warm. I remember that Web’s bird circled over us twice, crying forlornly, and then went back to the sea. The presence of his Wit-beast reminded me savagely of the absence of mine, and sent me into a fresh pit of mourning. I did not sob but the tears ran down my face in a steady flow.
Emotion can be more exhausting than physical endeavour. By the time Peottre announced that we would set our tents, I no longer cared about anything. I was without volition as I stood and watched them put up the tents. Vaguely, I remember that Peottre apologized to Chade that his ‘courage rations’ had so incapacitated me. Chade accepted the apology in an off-hand way, replying that I had always had an unpredictable temperament and been prone to abusing herbs. I knew why he said such words, yet they struck to my heart like a dagger. I could not bring myself to eat the bowl of porridge that Web eventually brought me. I went to my blankets while everyone else was still awake. I did not sleep, but stared up at the shadows of the tent’s recesses and tried to imagine why my father had ever lain with my mother. It seemed an evil thing they had done. I heard Web playing his little instrument for Thick outside the tent, and I suddenly missed the funny little man’s Skill-music. Eventually, I must have slept, and heavily.
When I awoke, it was late in the day. All around me were the tousled pallets of the men-at-arms, empty. I wondered why they had not wakened me and why we had not struck camp and begun our day’s march. I crawled shivering from my blankets, grimaced at the robe I still wore and hastily pulled on my coat and outer trousers. I stuffed the robe into my pack, still wondering at the silence of the camp. I dreaded that some threat of the weather had forced us to delay our journey.
I emerged from the tent into a steady sweep of mild wind, laden with tiny crystals of snow swept down from the bulging shoulder of glacier that loomed over us. Around me, the camp seemed almost deserted. Web was tending a kettle of food on a tripod over a tiny fire in a clay pot. The pot was settling into the snow as its heat melted the ice around it. ‘Ah, you’re awake,’ Web said with a welcoming smile. ‘I trust you’re feeling better.’
‘I … yes, I am,’ I replied, somewhat surprised to find it was true. The unreasoning blackness of yesterday’s mood had lifted. I did not feel cheery; the loss of my Skill still weighted me heavily and the task before us daunted me, but the deep despair that had led me to wishing to end my life had lifted. Slowly, a dull anger began to rise in me. I hated Peottre for what he had put me through. I knew that Chade’s strategy with the man required me to refrain from any vengeance, but I refused to believe that those ‘rations’ held an ordinary amount of elfbark that his comrades could consume without devastating effects. I’d been deliberately poisoned. Again. I hoped that sometime before I returned to the Six Duchies, fate would afford me the chance to even things with Peottre. All my training as an assassin forbade me the luxury of vengeance. Ever since King Shrewd had first made me his, I had been taught that my talents were used at the will of the crown, not at my personal judgment or for private vengeance. Once or twice I’d strayed outside those guidelines, with devastating results. I reminded myself of that several times as I surveyed the area around me.
Our camp was pitched on a gentle slope of snow. Not far away, a ridge of black rock broke jaggedly through the snow’s crust. Above me towered a steep mountain. It was like a cup with a piece broken out of its lip. Here and there, black stone outcropped from the snow crust. Its bowl cupped ice and snow, a frozen cascade that sloped down toward us. We were camped on the final, flattest spread of the spill.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Web observed gently. ‘Are you in pain?’
‘No. Thank you for your concern. I’ve just been given a great deal to think about.’
‘And your Skill-magic has been stolen from you.’
At the glance I gave him, he held up a fending hand. ‘No one else has deciphered that secret. Thick was the one who accidentally explained it to me. He was quite distressed for you. Annoyed by you, too, but worried for you. Last night, he tried to explain to me that it wasn’t just your bleak mood and constant talking and fidgeting that alarmed him, but that you were gone from his mind. He told me a story from when he was small. His mother let go of his hand one night on a crowded street during a fair. He was lost for hours, and he could not find her, not with his eyes or his mind. From the way he told his tale, I think she abandoned him, and then thought better of it later that night and came back for him. But he took a long time to explain to me that he knew his mother was there, but she wouldn’t let him touch her thoughts. With you, he says, you are just gone. As if you were dead, as his mother is dead now. And yet you walk around and he sees you. You frighten him, now.’
‘Like a Forged one I must seem to him.’
Web winced sympathetically. I knew then that he had experienced the chilling presence of Forged ones, but then said, ‘No, my friend. I feel you still, with my Wit. You have not lost that magic.’
‘And yet what use is it to me, without a partner?’ I asked the question bitterly.
He was silent for a moment, then spoke resignedly. ‘And that is yet another thing I could teach you, if ever you have the time to sit and learn.’
There seemed little I could say to that. So I asked a question. ‘Why haven’t we moved on yet today?’
He gave me a quizzical look, then smiled. ‘We are here, my friend. This is as close a camping site as we shall find. Peottre says the dragon used to be hazily visible in the ice near here. Prince Dutiful and Chade and the others are following Peottre and the Narcheska up to the dragon. The Hetgurd witnesses have gone with them. Up there.’ He pointed.
The glacier’s polished and sculpted surface was deceptive. Where it appeared smooth and continuous, there were actually many falls and rises in its surface. Now, as I watched, our people emerged in a long line like a trail of ants higher on the icy hillside. I spotted Peottre in his furs leading them, with the Narcheska at his heels. Everyone was there, following Peottre up the hillside immediately above us. Only Web and I had remained in camp. I commented on that.
‘I didn’t want you to wake alone. Riddle said you had spoken of ending your own life.’ He shook his head sternly. ‘I believed better of you. And yet, having seen your black mood yesterday, I did not want to take the chance.’
‘I would not kill myself. That was a passing madness, the herb’s toxin speaking rather than any true thought of mine,’ I excused myself. In truth, looking back on the wild words I had uttered the night before, I was ashamed that I had even spoken such a thought aloud. Suicide has always been deemed a coward’s act in the Six Duchies.
‘And why would you use such a herb, knowing it would affect you so?’ He asked severely.
I bit my tongue, wishing that I knew what Chade had said of my debilitation. ‘I’ve used it in the past, for great pain or weariness,’ I said quietly. ‘This time, the dose was far stronger than I thought.’
Web sighed in a great breath. ‘I see,’ he said, and no more than that, but his disapproval was strong.
I ate the congealing mass in the kettle. It was Outislander food, stinking of oily fish. They made a soup from sticky dry cubes of cooked fish mashed with oil to bind it. Heated with snow water, it made a greasy chowder. Despite the foul flavour, I felt more myself after I had eaten it. There was still a strange absence all around me. It was more than Thick’s music silenced. I had grown accustomed to threads of awareness that extended to Dutiful, Chade, the Fool and Nettle. I had been torn free of that web of contact.
Web watched me eat, and then clean the kettle. I banked the tiny fire in the clay pot with small hope it would survive. Then, ‘Shall we join them?’ he invited me, and I nodded grimly.
Peottre had marked a trail with bright scraps of red fabric on sticks driven into the snow both to the left and right. Web and I followed the meandering pat
h up the face of the glacier. At first, we spoke little. Then, as we walked, Web began to speak to me, and finally, I listened.
‘You asked what the use of the Wit is, when you do not have a companion. I understand that you mourn your wolf still, and that is only fitting. I’d think less of you if you rushed into another bonding simply for the sake of assuaging your own loneliness. That is not the Old Blood way, any more than a widowed man should wed someone simply to provide a mother for his bereaved children and someone to warm his bed. So, you are right to wait. But in the meantime, you should not turn your back on your magic.
‘You speak little to the rest of us Witted ones. Those who do not know you share our magic think you avoid us because you despise it, Swift included. Even if you do not wish to let them know you, too, are Old Blood, I think you should correct that impression. I do not understand, fully, why you keep both your magics a secret. The Queen has said she will no longer allow persecution of the Witted, and I have seen that you fall under her protection in any case. And if you have the Farseer magic, the Skill, as I believe you do, well, that has always been an honourable and well-regarded magic in the Six Duchies. Why cloak that you serve your queen and prince with it?’
I pretended that I was too winded to answer immediately. The climb was steep and steady, but I was not that taxed by it. Finally, I surrendered to his silence. ‘I’d be giving away too many pieces of who I am. Someone will put them all together, look at me, and say, The Witted Bastard lives. The killer of King Shrewd, the ungrateful bastard who turned on the old man who sheltered him. I do not think our queen’s policy of tolerance toward the Witted is ready for that yet.’