by Robin Hobb
‘I would.’
‘Why?’ I demanded.
‘Because,’ he began, and then stopped in frustration. ‘I don’t know. Too many things converge. Perhaps if I pluck one thread loose, the knot will not form.’
I was suddenly tired, and the earlier elation of my triumph collapsed before his dour warnings. My irritability won and I snapped, ‘If you cannot speak clearly, why do you speak at all?’
He was as silent as if I had struck him. ‘That’s another thing I don’t know,’ he said at last. He rose to go.
‘Fool,’ I began.
‘Yes. I am that,’ he said, and left.
And so I persevered, growing stronger. I grew impatient with our slow pace of instruction. We went over the same practices each day, and gradually the others began to master what seemed so natural to me. How could they have been so closed off from the rest of the world, I wondered? How could it be so hard for them to open their minds to Galen’s Skill? My own task was not to open, but rather to keep closed to him what I did not wish to share. Often, as he gave me a perfunctory touch of the Skill, I sensed a tendril of seeking slinking into my mind. But I evaded it.
‘You are ready,’ he announced one chill day. It was afternoon, but the brightest stars were already showing in the blue darkness of the sky. I missed the clouds that had yesterday snowed upon us, but had at least kept this deeper cold at bay. I flexed my toes inside the leather shoes that Galen permitted us, trying to warm them to life again. ‘Before I have touched you with the Skill, to accustom you to it. Now, today, we will attempt a full joining. You will each reach out to me as I reach out to you. But beware! Most of you have coped with resisting the distractions of the Skill touch, but the power of what you felt was the lightest brush. Today will be stronger. Resist it, but stay open to the Skill.’
And again he began his slow circuit amongst us. I waited, enervated but unafraid. I had looked forward to attempting this. I was ready.
Some clearly failed, and were rebuked for laziness or stupidity. August was praised. Serene was slapped for reaching forth too eagerly. And then he came to me.
I braced as if for a wrestling contest. I felt the brush of his mind against mine, and offered him a cautious reaching of thought. Like this?
Yes, bastard. Like this.
And for a moment we were in balance, hovering like children on a see-saw. I felt him steady our contact. Then, abruptly, he slammed into me. It felt exactly as if the air had been knocked out of me, but in a mental rather than physical way. Instead of being unable to get my breath, I was unable to master my thoughts. He rifled through my mind, ransacking my privacy, and I was powerless before him. He had won and he knew it. But in that moment of his careless triumph I found an opening. I grasped at him, trying to seize his mind as he had mine. I gripped him and held him, and knew for a dizzying instant that I was stronger than he, that I could force into his mind any thought I chose to put there. ‘No!’ he shrieked, and dimly I knew that, at some former time, he had struggled like this with someone he had despised. Someone else who had also won as I intended to. ‘Yes!’ I insisted. ‘Die!’ he commanded me, but I knew I would not. I knew I would win, and I focused my will and bore down on my grip.
The Skill does not care who wins. It does not allow anyone to surrender to any one thought, even for a moment. But I did. And when I did, I forgot to guard against the ecstasy that is both the honey and the sting of the Skill. The euphoria rushed over me, drowning me, and Galen, too, sank below it, no longer exploring my mind, but seeking only to return to his.
I had never felt the like of that moment.
Galen had called it pleasure, and I had expected a pleasant sensation, like warmth in winter, or the fragrance of a rose or a sweet taste in my mouth. This was none of these. Pleasure is too physical a word to describe what I felt. It had nothing to do with the skin or body. It suffused me, it washed over me in a wave that I could not repulse. Elation filled me and flowed through me. I forgot Galen and all else. I felt him escape me, and knew it mattered, but could not care. I forgot all except exploring this sensation.
‘Bastard!’ Galen bellowed, and struck me with his fist on the side of my head. I fell, helpless, for the pain was not enough to jolt me from the entrancement of the Skill. I felt him kick me, I knew the cold of the stones under me that bruised and scraped me, and yet I felt I was held, smothered in a blanket of euphoria that would not let me pay attention to the beating. My mind assured me, despite the pain, that all was well, that there was no need to fight or flee.
Somewhere a tide was ebbing, leaving me beached and gasping. Galen stood over me, dishevelled and sweating. His breath smoked in the cold air as he leaned close over me. ‘Die!’ he said, but I did not hear the words. I felt them. He let go of my throat and I fell.
And in the wake of the devouring elation of the Skill came now a bleakness of failure and guilt that made my physical pain as nothing. My nose was bleeding, it was painful to breathe, and the force of the kicks he had dealt me had scraped skin from my body as I had slid across the tower stones. The different pains contradicted one another, each clamouring for attention so that I couldn’t assess what damage had been done to me. I could not even gather myself together to stand up. Looming over all was the knowledge that I had failed. I was defeated and unworthy and Galen had proven it.
As if from a distance, I heard him shouting at the others, telling them to beware, for this was how he would deal with those so undisciplined that they could not turn their minds from pleasure of the Skill. And he warned them all of what befell such a man, who strove to use the Skill and instead fell under the spell of the pleasure it bore with it. Such a man would become mindless, a great infant, speechless, sightless, soiling himself, forgetting thought, forgetting even food and drink, until he died. Such a one was beyond disgust.
And such a one was I. I sank into my shame. Helplessly, I began to sob. I merited such treatment as he had given me. I deserved worse. Only a misplaced pity had kept Galen from killing me. I had wasted his time, had taken his painstaking instruction and turned it all to selfish indulgence. I fled myself, going deeper and deeper within, but finding only disgust and hatred for myself layered throughout my thoughts. I would be better off dead. Were I to throw myself from the tower roof, it would still not be enough to destroy my shame, but at least I need no longer be aware of it. I lay still and wept.
The others left. As each one passed, they had a word, a gobbet of spittle, a kick or a blow for me. I scarcely noticed. I rejected myself more completely than they could. Then they were gone, and Galen alone stood over me. He nudged me with his foot, but I was incapable of response. Suddenly, he was everywhere, over, under, around and inside me, and I could not deny him. ‘You see, bastard,’ he said archly, calmly. ‘I tried to tell them you were not worthy. I tried to tell them the training would kill you. But you would not listen. You strove to usurp that which had been given to another. Again, I am right. Well. This has not been time wasted if it has done away with you.’
I don’t know when he left me. After a time, I was aware that it was the moon looking down on me, and not Galen. I rolled onto my belly. I could not stand, but I could crawl. Not quickly, not even lifting my stomach completely off the ground, but I could scuffle and scrape myself along. With a singleness of purpose, I began to make my way towards the low wall. I thought that I could drag myself up onto a bench, and from there to the top of the wall. And from there. Down. End it.
It was a long journey, in the cold and the dark. Somewhere I could hear a whimpering, and I despised myself for that, too. But as I scraped myself along, it grew, as a spark in the distance becomes a fire as one approaches. It refused to be ignored. It grew louder in my mind, a whining against my fate, a tiny voice of resistance that forbade that I should die, that denied my failure. It was warmth and light, too, and it grew stronger and stronger as I tried to find its source.
I stopped.
I lay still.
It was inside me.
The more I sought it, the stronger it grew. It loved me. Loved me even if I couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t love myself. Loved me even if I hated it. It set its tiny teeth in my soul and braced and held so that I couldn’t crawl any further. And when I tried, a howl of despair burst from it, searing me, forbidding me to break so sacred a trust.
It was Smithy.
He cried with my pains, physical and mental. And when I stopped struggling toward the wall, he went into a paroxysm of joy, a celebration of triumph for us. And all I could do to reward him was to lie still and no longer attempt to destroy myself. And he assured me it was enough, it was a plenitude, it was a joy. I closed my eyes.
The moon was high when Burrich rolled me gently over. The Fool held the torch and Smithy capered and danced about his feet. Burrich gathered me up and stood, as if I were still a child just given into his care. I had a glimpse of his dark face, but read nothing there. He carried me down the long stone staircase, the Fool bearing the torch to light the way. And he took me out of the keep, back to the stables and up to his room. There the Fool left Burrich and Smithy and me, and I do not recall that there had been one word spoken. Burrich set me down on his own bed, and then dragged it, bedstead and all, closer to the fire. With returning warmth came great pain, and I gave my body over to Burrich, my soul to Smithy, and let go of my mind for a long while.
I opened my eyes to night. I knew not which one. Burrich sat next to me still, undozing, not even slumped in his chair. I felt the strictures of bandaging on my ribs. I lifted a hand to touch it, but was baffled by two splinted fingers. Burrich’s eyes followed my motion. ‘They were swollen with more than cold. Too swollen for me to tell if it were breaks, or just sprains. I splinted them in case. I suspect it’s just a sprain. I think if they were broken, the pain of my working on them would have wakened even you.’
He spoke calmly, as if telling me that he had purged a new dog for worms as a preventative against contagion. And just as his steady voice and calm touch had worked on a frantic animal, so it worked on me. I relaxed, thinking that if he were calm, not much could be wrong. He slipped a finger under the bandages supporting my ribs, checking the tightness. ‘What happened?’ he asked, and turned aside from me to pick up a cup of tea as he spoke, as if the question and my answer were of no great import.
I pushed my mind back over the last few weeks, tried to find a way to explain. Events danced in my mind, slipped away from me. I remembered only defeat. ‘Galen tested me,’ I said slowly. ‘I failed. And he punished me for it.’ And with my words, a wave of dejection, shame and guilt swept over me, washing away the brief comfort I had taken in the familiar surroundings. On the hearth, a sleeping Smithy abruptly waked and sat up. Reflexively, I quieted him before he could whine. Lie down. Rest. It’s all right. To my relief, he did so. And to my greater relief, Burrich seemed unaware of what had passed between us. He offered me the cup.
‘Drink this. You need water in you, and the herbs will deaden the pain and let you sleep. Drink it all, now.’
‘It stinks,’ I told him, and he nodded, and held the cup my hands were too bruised to curl around. I drank it all and then lay back.
‘That was all?’ he asked carefully, and I knew what he referred to. ‘He tested you on a thing he had taught you, and you did not know it. So he did this to you?’
‘I could not do it. I didn’t have the … self-discipline. So he punished me.’ Details eluded me. Shame washed over me, drowning me in misery.
‘No one is taught self-discipline by beating him half to death.’ Burrich spoke carefully, stating the truth for an idiot. His movements were very precise as he set the cup back on the table.
‘It was not to teach me … I don’t think he believes I can be taught. It was to show the others what would happen if they failed.’
‘Very little worth knowing is taught by fear,’ Burrich said stubbornly. And, more warmly, ‘It’s a poor teacher who tries to instruct by blows and threats. Imagine taming a horse that way. Or a dog. Even the most knot-headed dog learns better from an open hand than a stick.’
‘You’ve struck me before, when trying to teach me something.’
‘Yes. Yes, I have. But to jolt, or warn, or awaken. Not to damage. Never to break a bone or blind an eye or cripple a hand. Never. Never say to anyone that I’ve struck you, or any creature in my care that way, for it’s not true.’ He was indignant that I could even have suggested it.
‘No. You’re right about that.’ I tried to think how I could make Burrich understand why I had been punished. ‘But this was different, Burrich. A different kind of learning, a different kind of teaching.’ I felt compelled to defend Galen’s justice. I tried to explain. ‘I deserved this, Burrich. The fault was not with his teaching. I failed to learn. I tried. I did try. But like Galen, I believe there is a reason the Skill is not taught to bastards. There is a taint in me, a fatal weakness.’
‘Horseshit.’
‘No. Think on it, Burrich. If you breed a scrub-mare to a fine stud, the colt you get is as likely to get the weakness of the mother as the fineness of the father.’
The silence was long. Then, ‘I doubt much that your father would have lain down beside a woman that was a “scrub”. Without some fineness, some sign of spirit or intelligence, he would not. He could not.’
‘I’ve heard it said he was tranced by a mountain witch-woman.’ For the first time I repeated a tale I’d heard whispered often.
‘Chivalry was not a man to fall for such magickry. And his son is not some snivelling, weak-spirited fool that lies about and whines that he deserved a beating.’ He leaned closer, gently prodded just below my temple. A blast of pain rocked my consciousness. ‘That’s how near you were to losing an eye to this “teaching”.’ His temper was rising, and I kept my mouth closed. He took a quick turn around the room, then spun to face me.
‘That puppy. He’s from Patience’s bitch, isn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you haven’t … oh, Fitz, please tell me that it wasn’t your using the Wit that brought this on you. If he did this to you for that, there’s not a word I can say to anyone, or an eye I can meet anywhere in the keep or the whole kingdom.’
‘No, Burrich. I promise you, this had nothing to do with the pup. It was my failure to learn what I had been taught. My weakness.’
‘Quiet,’ he ordered me impatiently. ‘Your word is enough. I know you well enough to know your promise will always be true. But for the rest, you’re making no sense at all. Go back to sleep. I’m going out, but I’ll be back soon enough. Get some rest. It’s the real healer.’
A purpose had settled on Burrich. My words seemed to have satisfied him finally, settled something for him. He dressed quickly, pulling on boots, changing his shirt for a loose one, and putting only a leather jerkin over it. Smithy stood and whined anxiously as Burrich went out, but could not convey his worry to me. Instead, he came to the bedside and scrabbled up, to burrow into the covers beside me and comfort me with his trust. In the bleak despair that settled over me, he was my only light. I closed my eyes and Burrich’s herbs sank me into a dreamless sleep.
I awoke later that afternoon. A gust of cold air preceded Burrich’s entry into the room. He checked me over, casually prising open my eyes and then running competent hands down my ribs and over my other bruises. He grunted his satisfaction, then changed his torn and muddied shirt for a fresh one. He hummed as he did so, seeming in a fine mood much at odds with my bruises and depression. It was almost a relief when he left again. Below, I heard him whistling and calling orders to the stable-boys. It all sounded so normal and workaday and I longed for it with an intensity that surprised me. I wanted that back, the warm smell of the horses and dogs and straw, the simple tasks, done well and completely, and the good sleep of exhaustion at the end of a day. I longed for it, but the worthlessness that filled me now predicted that, even at that, I would fail. Galen had often sneered at those who worked such simple jobs about the keep. He had only conte
mpt for the kitchen-maids and cooks, derision for the stable-boys, and the men-at-arms who guarded us with sword and bow, were, in his words, ‘ruffians and dolts, doomed to flail away at the world, and control with a sword what they can’t master with their minds’. So now I was strangely torn. I longed to return to being what Galen had convinced me was contemptible, yet doubt and despair filled me that I could even do so much as that.
I was abed for two days. A jovial Burrich tended me with banter and good nature that I could not fathom. There was a briskness to his step and a sureness to him that made him seem a much younger man. It added to my dispiritedness that my injuries put him in such fine fettle. But after two days of bed rest, Burrich informed me that only so much stillness was good for a man, and it was time I was up and moving if I wished to heal well. He proceeded to find me many minor chores to perform, none heavy enough to tax my strength, but more than enough to keep me busy, for I had to rest often. I believe that the busyness was what he was after rather than any exercise for me, for all I had done was to lie in bed and look at the wall and despise myself. Faced with my unrelenting depression, even Smithy had begun to turn aside from his food. Despite this, he remained my only real source of comfort. Following me about the stable was the purest enjoyment he’d ever had. Every scent and sight he relayed to me with an intensity that, despite my bleakness, renewed in me the wonder I had first felt when I’d plunged into Burrich’s world. Smithy was savagely possessive of me as well, challenging even Sooty’s right to sniff me, and earning himself a snap from Vixen that sent him yipping and cowering to my heels.
I begged the next day free for myself, and went into Buckkeep Town. The walk took me longer than it had ever taken me before, but Smithy rejoiced in my slow pace, for it gave him time to snuff his way around every clump of grass and tree on the way. I had thought that seeing Molly would lift my spirits, and give me some sense of my own life again. But when I got to the chandlery she was busy, filling three large orders for outbound ships. I sat by the hearth in the shop. Her father sat opposite me, drinking and glaring at me. Although his illness had weakened him, it had not changed his temperament, and on days when he was well enough to sit up, he was well enough to drink. After a while, I gave up all pretence at conversation, and simply watched him drink and disparage his daughter as Molly bustled frantically about, trying to be both efficient and hospitable to her customers. The dreary pettiness of it all depressed me.