by Robin Hobb
He took a breath and said shortly, ‘I chose not to.’ I thought that was all he would say, but a short time later, he cleared his throat and said, ‘But it is as Nighteyes said long ago. I could choose not to reply, but I could not choose to be deaf to them. I know what the hounds called me. I’ve even heard it from your own lips. Heart of the Pack. I knew what they called me and I was aware of their … regard for me. I could not conceal from them that I was aware of them, when they cried back to me of the joy of the hunt as they gave tongue to the chase. I shared that joy, and they knew it.
‘Long ago, you told me you did not choose Nighteyes. That he chose you and bonded to you and gave you little choice in the matter. So it was with Vixen and me. She was a sickly pup, the runt of an otherwise hearty litter. But she had … something about her. Tenacity. And a mind to find a way around every obstacle. It was not to her mother that she whimpered when her brothers pushed her aside from the nipple, but to me. What was I to do? Pretend I could not hear her plea for a fair share, for a chance at life? So, I saw that she had a chance at the milk. But by the time she was large enough to fend for herself, she had attached herself to me. And in time, I admit, I came to rely on her.’
On some level, I had known it. I don’t know why I wanted him to admit it. ‘Then you did forbid me what you yourself did.’
‘I suppose I did.’
‘Have you any idea how unhappy you made me?’
He didn’t flinch. ‘About as unhappy as you made me when you didn’t obey me. But, then, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. Doubtless you never forbade anything to your Hap that you yourself were guilty of. And I’m sure he always listens to your wisdom.’ He was very good. The sarcasm was there only if I looked for it.
That silenced me, for a time. But there was still one more question. ‘But why, Burrich? Why did you, why do you still so despise the Wit? Web, a man I much admire, sees no harm or danger in his magic. How could your own magic disgust you?’
He smoothed his hair back from his face and then rubbed his eyes. He spoke reluctantly. ‘Ah, Fitz, it’s a long, old tale. My grandmother, when she discovered I had the taint, was horrified. Her father had it. And when he was faced with the choice of saving his wife and small children from slavers or getting his Wit-partner out of a burning stable, he chose his Wit-partner. And because of that, slavers took them. My great-grandmother lived a short, miserable time after that. My grandmother said she was a very beautiful woman. There are few worse traits for a slave to have. Her masters used her and her mistresses abused her out of jealousy. My grandmother and her two sisters witnessed it all. And grew up as slaves, used and abused. Because the man who should have made his primary bond to his wife instead chose a horse over her and his children.’
‘One man, Burrich. One man making a bad decision. Or who knows what went through his head? Did he think that if he got to the horse, it could carry his wife and children to safety? Or help him battle the slavers? We can’t know. But he was only one man. That seems a small foundation upon which to condemn all the Wit.’
He exhaled a short breath through his nose. ‘Fitz. His decision condemned three generations of his family. It did not seem small to anyone who bore that burden. And my grandmother feared that if I were allowed to go on as I had begun, I would do the same. Find an animal, bond to it, and put it above all other considerations. And after she died, for a time, she was right. I did exactly that. As did you. Have you never looked at your own life and said, “take the Wit away, and what changes?” Think on it. If Nosey had not come between you and me, would not we have been closer when you were a boy? If you had not bonded to Smithy, would you have done better with your Skill-lessons? If Nighteyes had not been in your life, could Regal have found excuse to condemn you?’
For a moment, I was stymied. Then I replied, ‘But if the Wit had not been held a shameful thing, none of that would have been true. If you had spoken of it as Old Blood and taught me why I must not bond, if the Wit had been held in esteem as the Skill is, then all would have been well.’
His face darkened with rising blood, and for a moment I glimpsed Burrich’s old temper. Then, with a patience that only time could have taught him, he said quietly, ‘Fitz. It is a thing I was taught from the time my grandmother first discovered the taint in me. The Wit is shameful magic, and it shames a man to practise it. Now, you talk of people who practise it openly and find no disgrace in it. Well, I have heard of places where men marry their sisters and have children, where women go about with their breasts showing, where it is not accounted shameful to discard your mate simply because her youth has faded. Yet, would you teach your children that these behaviours are good? Or would you teach them to live as you yourself were taught?’
Chade startled me when he spoke. ‘There are unspoken rules to every society. Most of us never question them. But surely, Burrich, you must have some time wondered about what you were taught. Did you never decide that you would determine for yourself if the magic was worth having?’
Burrich turned to regard Chade with his clouded eyes. What did he see? A shape, a shadow, or only his Wit-sense of the old man?
‘I always knew it was worth having, Lord Chade. But I was an adult, and I knew the cost of it. Your prince out there; what price would he have to pay for his useful, worthwhile magic if it became known that he was Witted? You deny he has it to shield him from hatred and prejudice. Do you fault me that I tried to shield Chivalry’s son?’
Chade looked down at the work of his hands and didn’t answer. He had finished. Six containers, everything from flasks to saltboxes, were filled with his explosive powder and resting in kettles or pots. ‘I’m ready,’ he said. He lifted his gaze to me and smiled a strange smile. ‘Let’s go and free the dragon.’
I could not read his green eyes. I could not decide if he truly intended to free the dragon from the ice or meant to blast it to pieces. Perhaps he himself didn’t know. But as if his resolve were contagious, I suddenly felt tight with the need to end this.
‘How dangerous is this?’ Burrich asked.
‘Just as dangerous as it was last night,’ Chade replied testily.
Burrich put out a hand and ran his fingertips lightly across the pots. ‘Not six times as dangerous?’ he asked. ‘How will you do it? Will one man set them all, or six?’
Chade thought a moment. ‘Six men, each to get a kettle fire going. And then Fitz, to go down the line putting the containers in each pot.’
I nodded to the wisdom of that. Six men each judging their own time to put the powder in and flee might end up running into one another. ‘I’ll do it.’
I carried three of the pots and Chade carried the other three. Burrich brought the sack of fuel and a smaller kettle of coals from the guards’ hoarded night fire. The day seemed very bright to me as we walked up the hill. It was warm, for that place, and the sun glinted off the glistening ice. As we walked up the hill together, Burrich asked me, ‘Are you sure Nettle is safe now? I do not understand the risk she took, but it seems to have frightened all of you.’
I swallowed and admitted my guilt. ‘I asked her to go into the dragon’s dream and wake him. Her strongest Skill-talent is the manipulation of dreams. I never paused to consider that it might be dangerous, that the dreams of a dragon might be a far different challenge than the dreams of a man.’
‘Yet still she went?’ There was quiet pride in Burrich’s voice.
‘Yes, she did. Because I asked her. I’m ashamed that I risked her.’
He was silent for several strides then said, ‘So. She knows you, and knows you well enough to trust you. For how long?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s a hard thing to explain, Burrich.’ I felt a flush rise but forced myself to speak on. ‘I used to … look in on you. Not often. Only when it got so … It was wrong of me.’
His silence was long. Then he said, ‘That must have been a special torment for you. For the most part, we have been happy.’
I took a deep breat
h. ‘Yes. It was. Yet I never realized I was involving Nettle to do it. She was my … I don’t know, my focus point, I suppose. After a time, she became aware of me. She knew me through her dreams of me, as a, as a wolf man.’ I halted, flustered.
Burrich almost kept the amusement out of his voice as he said, ‘Well. That accounts for some very odd nightmares, when she was small.’
‘I didn’t know I was doing it. Then, after a time, I became aware of her. In my dreams. We talked there, in the dream worlds she made. It took me a while to realize that she was manifesting the Skill, in a way I’d never seen it used before her. But I never … She doesn’t, that is, she doesn’t know –’ And suddenly I couldn’t go any further. My throat had crushed the words unsaid.
‘I know. If you had told her I wasn’t her father, I’d have known.’
I nodded wordlessly. It was strange to see how he would perceive such a telling. I thought only of telling her who her father was; Burrich saw it as telling her who was not her father.
He cleared his throat and changed the subject. ‘She will have to be taught how to manage her magic, or the Skill can steal her mind. I know that is so, from what Chivalry taught me of it.’
‘Nettle should be taught,’ I conceded. ‘It has become dangerous for her to go further without being taught. But she will, if we don’t intervene. She must be taught.’
‘By you?’ he asked quickly.
‘By someone,’ I amended. And there we left it. I listened to the sound of tools crunching into snow and ice and the ever present whooshing of the wind over the glacier. It was like a strange music, one interspersed with the upraised voices of the workers as they exhorted one another. But when we arrived at the lip of the ice quarry, work ceased almost immediately.
Chade stood at the edge of our excavation and spoke to them all, explaining his exploding powder and what he intended to do with it. I felt oddly apart from all of it. I looked from face to uplifted face, seeing concern on Web’s and intrigue on Cockle’s. Some of the men reverted to being boys immediately, with boyish enthusiasm for testing the unknown. Chade went down the ramp with his kettles and I followed with mine. He inspected the holes that Dutiful and Longwick had caused to be dug. One he wanted deepened and another he declined, requesting that a new hole be dug close to the mouth of the caved-in tunnel. All would be in a row, along the deepest fractures that the dragon had made in the ice. Here Chade judged the ice to be weakest and that the powder would have the most efficacy. He chose six men to build the fires in the pots, and Burrich walked slowly down the line of them, giving each kindling and fuel and coals from his fire kettle. Then Chade sent him out of the pit. Chade remained, moving slowly from fire pot to fire pot, making sure that each was set well in its hole in the ice and that the fire would have a deep foundation of coals for the powder vessels to nestle into. Several times as his chosen men were kindling the fires in their pots, he repeated how these were actually rather small doses of the powder, not enough to do harm to the dragon, only enough to further crack the ice around him so that we might move it more swiftly.
Each man stood as he judged that his pot was burning well enough. In each case, Chade moved down the line, added more fuel, and then sent the man up to stand with the others at the edge of the excavation. Each container of powder was left sitting on the ice, two spans away from the fire. When Chade and I alone remained in the hole, he came to me and spoke quietly. ‘I will join the others at the edge of the pit. When I nod to you, move swiftly down the kettles. Drop each container of powder into the kettle that matches it. Then come quickly to join me. It will take some little time for the fire to burn through to the powder, but I judge it best that you do not linger here.’
‘And I.’
He paused as if he would say something more, then shook his head wordlessly at me. I wondered again if his will warred with his action. Then I watched him climb up the ramp and join the row of men standing at the edge of the pit looking down at me. It struck me that the walls that had first divided us were gone. Hetgurd, guardsmen and Wit-coterie mingled. Burrich stood beside Chade. Swift was next to Web. Civil’s Wit-cat was belly down on the ice, peering down at me curiously.
I took a deep breath, walked to the end of the row, and lifted the first powder vessel. I dropped it into the first burning kettle and sparks flew up around it. The second likewise; the third landed badly and had to be nudged deeper into the flames. I heard the watchers mutter as I did so. The fourth was easy. The fifth stuck to the ice and it seemed to take a year before it gave way to my tugging. Its lid came loose as it did so, and a small quantity of powder leapt from the mouth of it. I put the top back on and brushed it clean. As I set it into its firepot, the flames licked eagerly at the powder-smeared side, sparking and burning white. I reminded myself that quite a lot of time had elapsed before Chade’s original flask had exploded in my fireplace. The sixth was as easy as the first, and then I gave in to my impulse and burst into a run. I fled up the ramp and joined the others on the edge of the pit. The fifth pot suddenly burst into a fountaining roar of flames, sparks and sulphurous fumes. I heard gasps of amazement and fear from the watchers, but as I gained the lip of the pit, the leaping white fire grew less and subsided. The pot that had held it cracked loudly and we heard a hiss as melted water met fire.
When I reached Chade’s side, he was shaking his head. ‘That is one wasted,’ he said tersely. ‘El’s balls! I wish I’d had more time to test the powder and devise the right sort of container for it. But again, consider how the flame travelled up the powder to reach the main dose of it. Could we use that? I had believed that the powder had to be inside a vessel for it to …’
And then the first explosion went off. It wasn’t in the first pot. I think it was the second, that perhaps that container had burned through more swiftly. It was hard to tell, for as shards and lumps of ice burst up from the floor of the pit and rained down around us, one of the other pots, or perhaps two, burst simultaneously.
The second blast was much louder than the first, deafening me. I had never experienced anything like it. The very air seemed to slap my skin and my ears felt as if they had been boxed. Fine ice stung my face. I blinked, thinking I’d been blinded, but it was a mist of impossibly fine snow hanging in the air.
Around me, men were yelling, deep-voiced cries of anger and dismay as they retreated from the lip of the pit. Civil’s terrified cat bolted past me, his master in frantic pursuit. From the buried dragon, I felt a wave of outrage. We’re trying to free you! I Skilled at him, but felt no response. Beside me, Burrich gripped my shoulder and stared about frantically, his face twisted with panic.
I seized Burrich’s arm to guide him back from the lip of the pit but he twisted free of me, crying, ‘Swift! Where is my son?’ as the next explosion slapped the earth against our feet. I found myself driven to my knees and Burrich prone beside me. The air was thick with drifting crystalline ice, and Burrich choked and spat and shouted out, ‘Swift! Swift, where are you, boy?’
‘I’m here, Papa!’ the boy cried out, and he came bounding to us through the hanging fog, hurtling into Burrich’s embrace. His eyes were huge.
‘Thank Eda, you’re safe! Stay close by me, now. Damn my eyes. Fitz, what is happening? I expected flame and sparks and smoke, not this! What has that mad man done?’
‘It’s like a log bursting apart in the fire, Burrich, no more than that. The powder has burst, breaking the ice that surrounded it. I did not think it would be like this, but it’s over now. Be calm.’ But even as I spoke the words, seeking to reassure myself as much as him, the earth heaved a second time under our feet. At the same moment, I felt a furious mental onslaught.
You will pay, you puny treacherous grubs! Your blood will be shed, a bucket for every loosened scale on his flesh. I come! Tintaglia’s wrath is upon you! All of you will die!
‘We’re trying to help him, not harm him!’ I flung the words wide, voice, Wit and Skill. She made no reply.
But as I blinke
d the clinging mist of ice from my lashes and peered down into the pit, something stirred there. The settling flurry of ice crystals concealed it, but within that haze, something dark bucked and heaved, showing above the settling mist like a breaching whale. I heard the squeal and crack of breaking ice, and a smell came to me, a stench of trapped and scabrous flesh, a reptilian stench. I scrabbled to my feet and then ventured closer to the edge of the pit, peering down.
A slow and mammoth struggle was taking place down there. Parts of the dragon’s emaciated back were exposed. His tail humped and twitched, almost a separate creature as it strove to free its lashing tip from the ice. One immense hind leg was free, the overgrown claws of the long-captive dragon scoring deep gashes in the ice as it strove to free the rest of his body. Then a wing unfolded, clumps of ice flung wide as it lifted like the tattered canvas of a derelict ship. It flapped desperately, and the waft of unhealthy animal gagged me. Icefyre struggled there, his head and neck still encased in ice. As the mist of ice crystals settled, the humans straggled back to the edge of the pit and stared down, some gawking, some transfixed with horror. Chade’s face was a picture. I could not decide if his awe was for the destruction his powder had wrought or for the size of the creature he had partially bared.
Burrich spoke first. ‘That poor beast.’ He lifted both his hands, the fingers wide, and pushed gently at the air before him. So often I had seen him gesture as he approached an uneasy horse. Now I wondered if quelling calm emanated from his hands. He raised his voice suddenly. ‘He needs our help. Shovels and picks, but I want you all to go carefully. It would be as easy to harm him now as to help him. Don’t encourage him to struggle.’ One hand clamped onto Swift’s shoulder, and the other stretched out a little before him as he stumbled toward the edge of the pit. ‘Easy, easy down there,’ he was already calling, and his words, freighted with soothing Wit, were for the dragon. ‘We’re coming. Still your struggles, you’ll only hurt yourself. Or us. Be easy now. We’ll help you.’