by Robin Hobb
‘I had been hoping. I could not help hoping. But I have seen today what must be put into a dragon so it can fly.’ He shook his head more forcefully. ‘And even if I had the Skill to give it, I do not have it to give. Even were she to consume all of me, it would not be enough.’
I did not say that I knew that. I did not even say that I had suspected it all along. I had finally learned something from Starling Birdsong. I let him have a silence for a time. Then I said, ‘Nighteyes and I are going to go get two jeppas. When I come back, we had better pack swiftly and be gone. I did not see Verity give chase to anything. Perhaps that means Regal’s troops are still far away. But I don’t want to take any chances.’
He drew a deep breath. ‘That is wise. It is time for this Fool to be wise. When you come back, I shall help you pack.’
I realized then I was still gripping Verity’s sword in its sheath. I took off the plain short sword and replaced it with the blade Hod had made for Verity. It weighed strangely against me. I offered the short sword to the Fool. ‘Want this?’
He glanced at me, a puzzled look. ‘What for? I’m a Fool, not a killer. I’ve never even learned to use one.’
I left him there, to say his farewells. As we wended our way out of the quarry and toward the woods where we had been pasturing the jeppas, the wolf lifted his nose and snuffed.
Nothing left of Carrod but a bad smell, he noted as we passed the vicinity of the body.
‘I suppose I should have buried him,’ I said as much to myself as him.
No sense in burying meat that is already rotten, he noted with puzzlement.
I passed the black pillar, but not without a small shudder. I found our straying jeppas on a hillside meadow. They were more reluctant to be caught than I had expected. Nighteyes enjoyed rounding them up considerably more than they or I did. I chose the lead jeppa and one other, but as I led them away, the others decided to trail along after us as well. I should have expected it. I had rather hoped the rest would stay and go wild. I did not relish the idea of six jeppas at my heels all the way back to Jhaampe. A new thought came to me as I led them past the pillar and into the quarry.
I did not have to return to Jhaampe.
The hunting here is as good as any we’ve found.
We’ve the Fool to think of, as well as ourselves.
I would not let him go hungry!
And when winter comes?
When winter comes, then … He is attacked!
Nighteyes did not wait for me. He streaked past me, grey and low, claws scratching against the black stone of the quarry floor as he ran. I let go of my jeppas and ran after him. The wolf’s nose told me of human scent in the air. An instant later, he had identified Burl, even as he hurtled toward them.
The Fool had not left Girl on a Dragon. That was where Burl had found him. He must have come quietly, for the Fool was never easy to take unawares. Perhaps his obsession had betrayed him. Whatever the case, Burl had got the first cut in. Blood ran down the Fool’s arm and dripped from his fingertips. He had left smears of it all up the dragon as he climbed her. Now he clung, feet braced against the girl’s shoulders and one hand gripping the dragon’s gaping lower jaw. In his free hand he gripped his knife. He stared down at Burl balefully, waiting. Skill boiled from Burl, angry and frustrated.
Burl had climbed up onto the dais and was seeking to clamber up the dragon itself now as he strove to reach up and impose a Skill-touch on the Fool. The smoothly-scaled hide was defying him. Only one as agile as the Fool could have shinnied up to the perch where he clung just out of Burl’s reach. Burl drew his sword in frustration and swung it at the Fool’s braced feet. Its tip missed, but not by much, and its blade rang against the girl’s back. The Fool cried out as loudly as if the blade had bit truly, and sought to scrabble higher. I saw his hand slip where his own blood had greased the dragon’s hide. Then he was sliding down, scrabbling frantically as he came down hard right behind the girl’s seat on the dragon’s back. I saw his head bounce glancingly against her shoulder. He looked half stunned, and clung where he was.
Burl lifted his sword for a second swing, one that could easily separate the Fool’s leg from his body. Instead, soundless as hate could be, the wolf surged up onto the dais and took Burl from behind. I was still running toward them as I saw Nighteyes’ impact drive Burl forward to smack against Girl on a Dragon. He sank to his knees against the statue. His sword blow missed the Fool and rang again against the dragon’s gleaming green hide. Ripples of colour raced away from that clash of metal against stone, like the ripples made when one tosses a pebble in a still pond.
I reached the dais as Nighteyes darted his head in. His jaws closed, gripping Burl from behind, between his shoulder and neck. Burl screamed, his voice going amazingly shrill. He dropped his sword and lifted his hands to clutch at the wolf’s ravening jaws. Nighteyes worried him like a rabbit. Then the wolf braced his front feet on Burl’s wide back and made more sure of his grip.
Some things happen too swiftly to tell well. I felt Will behind me at the same moment that the wild spattering of Burl’s blood became a sudden gushing. Nighteyes had severed the great vein in his throat, and Burl’s life was pumping out in jumping gouts of scarlet. For you, my brother! Nighteyes told the Fool. This kill for you! Nighteyes still did not let go, but shook him again. The blood leaped like a fountain as Burl struggled, not knowing he was already dead. The blood struck the dragon’s gleaming hide and ran down it, to puddle in the chiselled troughs the Fool had made attempting to free his feet and tail. And there the blood bubbled and steamed, eating into the stone as scalding water would have eaten into a chunk of ice. The scales and claws of the dragon’s hind feet were unveiled, the detail of the whiplike tail exposed. And as Nighteyes finally flung down Burl’s lifeless body, the dragon’s wings opened.
Girl on a Dragon soared up into the sky as she had strained to do for so long. It seemed an effortless lifting, almost as if she floated away. The Fool was borne away with her. I saw him lean forward, clutching instinctively at the supple waist of the girl before him. His face was turned away from me. I glimpsed the bland eyes and still mouth of the girl’s face. Perhaps her eyes saw, but she was no more separate from the dragon than its tail or wing; merely another appendage, one to which the Fool clung as they rose higher and higher.
I saw all these things, but not because I stood and stared. I saw them in glimpses, and through the wolf’s eyes. My own gaze I turned on Will as he ran up behind me. He carried a bared blade in his hand and ran easily. I drew Verity’s sword as I turned, and found it took longer coming out of its sheath than the short sword I had become accustomed to.
The strength of Will’s Skill hit me in a buffeting wave just as the tip of Verity’s blade came free of the scabbard. I staggered back a step and threw up my walls against him. He knew me well. That first wave had been compounded not just of fear, but of specific pains. They had been prepared especially for me. I knew again the shock of my broken nose, I felt the burn of my split face even if it did not stream hot blood down my chest as it once had. For a frozen heartbeat, all I could do was hold my walls against that crippling pain. The sword I gripped seemed suddenly made of lead. It sagged in my hand, its tip drooping toward the earth.
Burl’s death saved me. In the moment that Nighteyes flung his lifeless body down, I saw that death lap against Will. His eyes sagged almost shut with the impact of it. The last member of his coterie was gone. I felt Will diminish abruptly, not just as Burl’s Skill no longer supplemented his own, but as grief washed over him. I found in my mind an image of Carrod’s rotting body and flung that at him for good measure. He staggered back.
‘You’ve failed, Will!’ I spat the words. ‘Verity’s dragon has already risen. Even now it wings toward Buck. His queen rides with him, and she bears within her his heir. The rightful king will reclaim his throne and crown, he will scourge his coasts of Red Ships and scour Regal’s troops from the Mountains. No matter what you do here now, you are defeat
ed.’ A strange smile twisted my mouth. ‘I win.’ Snarling, Nighteyes advanced to stand at my side.
Then Will’s face changed. Regal looked at me out of his eyes. He was as unmoved by Burl’s death as he would be by Will’s. I sensed no grief, only anger at a lessening of his power. ‘Perhaps,’ he said with Will’s voice, ‘perhaps then, all I should care for is killing you, Bastard. At whatever the cost.’ He smiled at me, the smile of a man who knows how the tumbling dice will fall before they land. I knew a moment of uncertainty and fear. I flung my walls up tighter against Will’s insidious tactics.
‘Do you really think a one-eyed swordsman has a fighting chance against my blade and my wolf, Regal? Or do you plan to throw his life away as casually as you have the rest of the coterie?’ I flung the question in a faint hope of stirring discord between them.
‘Why not?’ Regal asked me calmly with Will’s voice. ‘Or did you think I was truly as stupid as my brother, to be content with only one coterie?’
A wave of Skill struck me with the force of a wall of water. I staggered back before it, then regained myself and charged at Will. I’d have to kill him quickly. Regal had control of Will’s Skill. He little cared what it would do to Will, how it might scorch him if he killed me with a Skill-blast. I could feel him drawing up Skill-power into himself. Yet even as I put all my heart into killing Will, Regal’s words ate at me. Another coterie?
One-eyed or not, Will was fast. His blade was a part of him as he met my first thrust and turned it. I wished for an instant for the familiarity of my battered short sword. Then I threw such thoughts aside as useless and thought only of breaking past his guard. The wolf moved swiftly past me, belly low, as he sought to close on Regal from Will’s blind side.
‘Three new coteries!’ Will’s voice gasped with effort as he parried my blade again. I slipped away from his thrust and tried to wrap his blade. He was too fast for that.
‘Young, strong Skill-users. To carve dragons of my own.’ A swiping slash whose breeze I felt. ‘Dragons at my beck, loyal to me. Dragons to bring down Verity, in blood and scales.’ He spun and darted a thrust at Nighteyes. The wolf leapt wildly away. I sprang in, but his blade was already back to meet mine. He fought with incredible speed. Another use of the Skill? Or a Skill-illusion he forced on me?
‘Then they shall clear the Red Ships. For me. And open the Mountain passes. The Mountains will be mine as well. I shall be a hero. No one will oppose me then.’ His blade struck mine hard, a jolt I felt in my shoulder. His words jolted me as well. They rang with truth and determination. Skill-imbued, they pounded against me with the solid force of hopelessness. ‘I shall master the Skill road. The ancient city will be my new capital. All my Skill-users shall be drenched in the river’s magic.’
Another swipe at Nighteyes. It shaved a wisp of hair from his shoulder. And again that opening passed too swiftly for my own clumsy blade. I felt I stood shoulder-deep in water and fought a man whose blade was light as a straw. ‘Stupid Bastard! Did you truly think I cared about one pregnant whore, one dragon a-wing? The quarry itself is the true prize, the one you have left unguarded for me. The stuff from which a score, no, a hundred dragons shall rise!’
How had we been so stupid? How had we not seen what Regal truly sought? We had thought with our hearts, of Six Duchies folk, of farmers and fishermen who needed their king’s arm to defend them. But Regal? He had thought only of what the Skill could win for him. I knew his next words before he flung them. ‘In Bingtown and Chalced they will bend their knees to me. And in the Out Islands, they will cower at my name.’
Others come! And above us!
Nighteyes’ warning nearly killed me. For in the instant I lifted my eyes, Will sprang at me. I gave ground, all but running backwards to avoid his blade. Far behind him, from the mouth of the quarry, a dozen men ran toward us, brandishing blades. They moved, not in step, but with a oneness to them far more cohesive than any mere troops could have mastered. A coterie. I sensed their Skill as they approached like the storm winds that precede a squall. Will suddenly halted his advance. My wolf raced to meet them, teeth bared, snarling.
Nighteyes! Stop! You cannot fight twelve blades wielded by one mind!
Will lowered his blade, then casually sheathed it. He called to the coterie over his shoulder, ‘Don’t bother with them. Let the archers finish them.’
A glance at the towering walls of the quarry showed me this was no bluff. Gold-and-brown-clad soldiers were coming into position. I grasped this was what the troops were about. Not to defeat Verity, but to take and hold this quarry. Another wave of humiliation and despair washed over me. Then I lifted my blade and charged at Will. Him, at least, I would kill.
An arrow clattered across the stone where I had stood, another skittered right between Nighteyes’ legs. A scream rose from the walls of the quarry to the west of us. Girl on a Dragon swept low over me, the Fool on her back, a gold and brown archer writhing in the dragon’s jaws. The man was gone suddenly, a puff of smoke or steam swept away by the wind of her passage. She banked her wings, came in low again, snatching up another archer and sending one leaping into the quarry to avoid her. Another puff of smoke.
On the floor of the quarry, all of us were frozen, gaping up. Will recovered more quickly than I did. An angry shout to his archers, ringing with Skill. ‘Fire upon her! Bring her down!’
Almost instantly a phalanx of arrows went singing toward her. Some arched and fell before they even reached her. The rest she deflected with a single powerful beat of her wings. The arrows suddenly wobbled in the gust of her wind, and fell tumbling like straws to shatter on the quarry floor. Girl on a Dragon abruptly stooped and came diving directly at Will.
He fled. I believe Regal abandoned him for at least as long as it took him to make that decision. He ran, and for an instant it appeared that he chased the wolf who had nearly closed the distance between him and the coterie. Save at the moment the coterie realized that Will was fleeing toward them with a dragon sheering through the air behind him, the coterie turned on their heels and fled as well. I caught a brief flash of Nighteyes’ delighted triumph that twelve swordsmen would not stand to meet his charge. Then he cowered to the earth as Girl on a Dragon swept low over all of us.
It was not only the harsh wind of her passage that I felt, but also a dizzying sweep of Skill, that in an instant snatched from my mind every thought I had been holding. It was as if the world had been plunged briefly into absolute darkness and then handed back to me in full brightness. I stumbled as I ran, and for an instant could not recall why I carried a bared sword or whom I chased. Ahead of me Will faltered as her shadow swept him, and then the coterie staggered in their turn.
Her claws snatched fruitlessly at Will as she passed. The scattered blocks of black stone were his salvation, for such was her wing span that he could elude her in the narrowness of their maze. She shrieked her frustration, the high wild cry of a hawk thwarted. She rose and banked to make a second sweep at him. I gasped as she flew right into a singing flight of arrows. They rattled uselessly off her hide as if the archers had targeted the black stone of the quarry itself. Only the Fool cowered away from them. Girl on a Dragon changed course abruptly, to fly low over the archers and snatch another from their midst and consume him in an instant.
Again her shadow swept over me, and again a moment of my life was snatched from me. I opened my eyes to find Will gone. Then I caught a brief glimpse of him, veering as he ran dodging between the standing blocks of stone much as a hare breaks his trail as he flees from a hawk. I could no longer see the coterie, but suddenly Nighteyes sprang from the shadow of a stone block to race by my side.
Oh, my brother, the Scentless One hunts well! he exulted. We were wise to take him into our pack!
Will is my kill! I declared to him.
Your kill is my kill, he pointed out, quite seriously. That is pack. And he shall be no one’s kill unless we spread out to find him.
He was right. Ahead of us, I heard shouts an
d occasionally saw a gold and brown flash as a man dashed across a wide space between the blocks of stone. But most of them had rapidly understood that the way to remain sheltered from the dragon was to cling closely to the edges of the immense stone blocks.
They are running for the pillar. If we get to where we can see it, we can wait for him there.
It seemed logical. To flee through the pillar would be the only way they could hope to escape the dragon for any length of time. I still heard the occasional clatter as arrows rained down in the dragon’s wake, but a good portion of the archers who had ringed the quarry walls had retreated to the shelter of the surrounding forest.
Nighteyes and I abandoned all efforts to find Will and simply went directly to the pillar. I had to admire the discipline of some of Regal’s archers. Despite all else, if the wolf and I broke cover for more than a few strides, we would hear a cry of ‘There they are!’ and moments later arrows would be hailing down where we had been.
We reached the pillar in time to see two of Regal’s new coterie dash across the open, hands reaching, to plunge into the dark pillar itself the moment they touched it. The rune for the stone garden was the one they chose, but perhaps it was only because it was the side of the pillar closest to cover. We did not move from the angle of a great block that sheltered us from arrows.
Did he go through already?
Perhaps. Wait.
Several eternities passed. I became certain that Will had eluded us. Above us Girl on a Dragon swept her shadow over the quarry walls. The cries of her victims were less frequent. The archers were using the cover of trees to hide themselves. Briefly I watched her rise, circling high above the quarry. She hung shining green high against the blue sky, rocking on her wings. I wondered what it was like for the Fool to ride so. At least he had the girl part of the dragon to cling to. Abruptly Girl on a Dragon tipped, side-slipped in the sky, and then folded her wings, plummeting down toward us. At the moment she did, Will broke cover and ran for the pillar.