by Robin Hobb
They knew King Charger was dead. This perhaps my Redbird would not sing as a truth, but I saw it in their hard eyes. They never feared that the king would reappear to claim his throne. Even then, I believe, they were concocting the lie that would explain why no body had been found. Their cowardly slaughter of King Charger was being transformed by false-hearted nobles and minstrels who cared only for the favor of the powerful and nothing for the truth. But, to be true to Redbird, I shall write here that the flat truth is that I have no proof that any of them knew, save those who had been present at the murder.
So. My Piebald Prince was dead. I mourned alone for the babe I had held at my breast, for the boy who had not forgotten me when he no longer needed me, for the prince who had elevated my bastard son to be his truthsinger, for the man who had always smiled at first sight of me. I mourned him alone for I dared not speak of how my grief tore me. Redbird was sunk so deep in sorrow that I feared if I added my burden to his, he would drown in it and die. He was all I had left, the only one in the world who might look at me with love. And so, unbelieving, I spoke to him of better days and hope for a future that neither one of us could imagine. Without the protection of King Charger what hope had we, Witted or not? When I left the room, I did so either early or late, taking what I needed from what was left in the kitchens, no longer claiming a place at the servants’ table, but striving to move around unnoticed.
All these changes at Buckkeep Castle transpired in less than thirty days, still with no proof that the king was fled or dead. And all that time, within my room, Redbird dwindled and mourned. He was too lost in his grief even to shear his hair as he should have done for his dead king. He changed his clothes only when I demanded it, and washed his face only when I set the bowl and cloth before him. He ate little, picking at the trays I brought up from the kitchen, letting the soup go cold and scummy, the warmed bread turn to stale crusts. My son shrank and soured, it seemed to me, hating himself because he was a truthsinger and not a warrior. He poisoned himself with self-disgust, and I was powerless to stop him.
Now in that time, Canny had taken Lady Wiffen back to his side and his bed. Whatever rift there had been between them seemed healed. Her hand was on the back of his wrist when they entered the feasting hall, and she rode at his side when he went out to the hunt. And when, two months after her wedding, she began to exhibit the signs of a woman with child, the Canny Court rejoiced and urged Canny Farseer ever more urgently to ascend the throne. They wanted ‘an untainted Farseer’ to wear the crown.
By then, the rumors had begun to circulate that King Charger was no more. There was no proof of it, and yet men nodded and smiled coldly when his name was spoken, often with a curse attached to it. Slowly the story began to leak and swirl into the minds and mouths of all the servants. Lord Canny Farseer had saved the Six Duchies. Soon would come a time when the full tale could be told.
Canny Farseer chose Harvest Fest as the time when he would take the crown. Whatever his father thought of this, he kept it to himself, while the other dukes assented easily to his claim. The Witted folk, both great and small, had been driven from Buckkeep. All of Buckkeep, both castle and town, was deemed cleansed of the Witted taint. Despite the poor spring the harvest promised abundance and this too was attributed to Canny Farseer, as if a mere man could take credit for such a thing. But folk are easily persuaded of such things. A strong and handsome young Farseer stood ready to ascend the throne, and the future queen’s belly already swelled with the heir. An aura of well-being had begun to suffuse the air despite the lingering stench of blood spilled on the earth. All folk, both great and small, seemed weary of the savagery they had witnessed, and were more than ready to declare that with Canny’s ascent to the throne all was now well.
Within my chambers, Redbird had fully come back to himself. He had spent many days in dark dreams or silent staring, tormenting himself for his cowardice. He had spoken only to me of what he had witnessed.
The day for Canny Farseer’s crowning drew nigh, and still Redbird kept to his bed and still the raven perched outside my window. Canny had declared the court purified of beast-magic and now that his labors were finished he was ready to be king of the cleansed kingdom. Only when I reported that announcement to him did Redbird stir. “Fetch me my harp,” were his first words; and his second request was, “Find me a pen, Mother, and set out the best vellum we can buy, for I would make a song for King Canny’s coronation.” He spoke those words merrily, more cheery than he had been in weeks, and yet my heart sank to hear them. I feared what he intended.
Yet still I brought him the ink and the plume and the vellum. He plucked strings softly and muttered words to himself, and then went back and tried other chords and other words. I came and went as quiet as a mouse. Isolated in my rooms, Redbird worked on his song and all the while the raven sat on the sill and kept watch over him.
The day before King Canny’s coronation, the song was finished. I returned to my room to find Redbird rolling up the scroll that held his words. He sealed it with wax and pressed into the wax his sigil. Then, with a sigh, he set it down beside an identically sealed scroll on the table before him. It was then he gave me my instructions: that he wished me to copy his song in my best hand, and to write down in my own words all he had told me. “Then you must hide my tale where it will be safe from those who would seek to destroy truth, and where wise men may find it a decade or a century hence.”
My heart went cold at his words. “Why must they be written down? Surely you will sing this song a thousand times.”
He looked at me, sadness in his eyes, his head tilted to my words and then told, perhaps, the closest to a lie that he had ever uttered. “Perhaps I shall indeed, Mother. Perhaps I shall.” Then he patted my hand. “But all the same, I shall ask you to see to the safety of these scrolls as I have asked. For I believe I shall be remembered for this song as I am for no other.”
Redbird had not been invited to sing at the coronation. Doubtless many thought him dead or fled, for in all that time he had kept to my room in the keep and none had seen him. He had been the Piebald Prince’s friend, and then the Witted King’s minstrel, and well we both knew that all would now regard him with disdain if not hatred. It shames me to admit it now, but the truth I will tell, as he bade me. I thought he was going to seek to curry favor with the new king, that he would sing a song to honor King Canny. It saddened me to see my son so broken, but he had never been a brave child, and given what he had witnessed, I believed he had chosen the wiser path. We would bow our heads to the change in our fortunes, and somehow we would go on.
The coronation was to be held in the Great Hall, and as was the custom, everyone was welcome to witness the event. He bade me go early so that I would have a better view. Yet I did not go to see Canny claim a bloodied crown, but to hear my son sing and to hope that all went well for him. And so I chose a spot that few others would envy, for I went to the upper galleries and stood where I would have at best a view of the left corner of the throne, for from there I could clearly see the minstrel’s dais where they would be called to perform to honor the new king.
Long I stood, and others came to pack in around me after the better vantage points were taken. I was hot and my head ached and my legs pained me long before the high folk of the keep entered. And when the dukes were seated on their cushioned and gilded chairs and when the lesser nobles had found their places on benches and all were settled, at last the musicians struck up a grand tune, and Lord Canny Farseer and Lady Wiffen entered. Slowly they paced to their high seats, and though I wondered at the absence of the Duke of Buck, no one near me commented on it, and so I chose to keep my silence as well.
This lordly one and that lordly one took a turn to speak, and all of it was the same: here before us was Canny of Buck, the heir to the crown and throne that his father, as King Virile’s brother and next in line for the throne, had ceded to him. To hear them speak, King Charger and Queen-in-Waiting Caution had never even existed. Tears came
to my eyes and doubtless those near me thought me a sentimental fool to be so patriotic during those dull speeches, but in truth grief wrenched me.
Then Canny Farseer stood and accepted the will of his dukes and agreed that he would accept the crown of the Six Duchies. Then came all five dukes walking in slow procession and bearing among them the crown on a blue cushion. And at that, a sigh of wonder and a mutter of curiosity went up, for had not that crown vanished when the ‘pretender’ to the throne had disappeared? And though Canny Farseer had been grave of mien up to that moment, I swear that I saw a smile pass briefly over his face, so greatly did he enjoy the crowd’s astonishment. Then he held up his hands, his arms spread wide for silence, and promised that now would be revealed all to them.
Copper Songsmith rose to come and stand before the assembled dukes and the would-be king. The years had passed unremarked between us and he had never seen fit to claim his son, even though the resemblance was such that none could have missed it. He and I had never been more to one another than a few bumps in the night. Yet he had taken Redbird as his apprentice, and somehow I had expected better of him. I was surprised at how deeply wounded I felt when he took up his instrument to strike up a fine and stirring melody and then in his lovely resonant voice, accompanied by his clever fingers on his harp all ornamented with turquoise and opal, sang as dark a string of perfectly rhymed lies as has ever been sung. The refrain was stirring and memorable: a quatrain about how the purity of his Farseer blood pounded in his veins as Canny did that which he knew he must do, and slew the beast-wizard who sought to take the Farseer throne.
It had to have been all arranged, and yet it seemed so spontaneous. As Copper Songsmith sang of how Canny had triumphed in his battle with the evil Witted enchanter, and how he had stooped to lift the disgraced crown from the dirt and wipe the stain of tainted blood from it, the dukes passed the crown from hand to hand until at last the Duke of Bearns set it up Canny Farseer’s head.
And at that there rose such a roar of approval that every person in the hall who had been seated came to his feet. People stamped until the stones rang with echoes and cries of “King Canny! King Canny!” deafened us all.
And so it was done. The crown was set on his brow and the cheers rose. His dukes retreated and returned again with a crown for Lady Wiffen and she became Queen Wiffen Farseer that night. And while all watched the royal pair, my eyes sought for my son and found him at last.
I had not marked him when he entered the Great Hall, for he was dressed all in black rather than his usual piebald attire, and a tight-fitting cowl of black scarfed his copper locks from sight. My eyes ran past him, pitying the wandering minstrel so wan and worn before I looked again and recognized my own son. Sometimes it takes seeing someone you love as a stranger to notice all the changes to them. Illness and sorrow had hollowed his cheeks and sunken his eyes so that he looked a decade older than he was. I doubt that even his own king would have known him at a glance, and surmised that all there thought him murdered or driven away with the others of the Piebald Court. So he stood, suddenly an old man, neglected in the corner, while lesser minstrels stepped forward one by one to sing of the queen’s beauty or the king’s bravery.
Then someone called for Copper Songsmith to sing again of how the king had slain the Witted Pretender. And so Copper stepped forth and once more sang his lies, embroidered with all the artifice of a master minstrel. Once more all heard of how the king had challenged him, vowing to break the enchantment he had put upon his wife, and how they had fought, with Charger constantly changing from one beast to another, each more terrible in form, until at last Canny slew him by hewing his great bear’s head from his massive shoulders, so that the evil enchanter fell to the earth once more in the form of a man.
Silence held in the hall through this telling, though a brief cheer rose again when Copper sang once more of how the king had rescued the dishonored Farseer crown. Quiet washed back through the Great Hall as this time Copper finished every verse, telling how the king called forth his most trusted friends to help him to do what he knew must be done to ensure the slain beast-wizard did not rise from the dead. They hewed his body and burned it over water, and thus the dreaded beast-magic was vanquished and the Lady Wiffen’s mind cleared of the cloud the Witted one had put upon her.
A lone tear rolled down that lady’s cheek, and she leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder. Many a sympathetic sniffle I heard amongst those gathered, and I found myself wondering how much of this falsehood Wiffen herself believed. Then my eye fell on my son, and dread rose in me. For as Copper Songsmith swung into the final refrain of his falsehoods, I marked how Redbird slowly stood taller and how his eyes began to burn.
Every coward may know one moment of courage. So it was with my Redbird. For in the deep of evening, as the queen herself pressed the prize purse into Copper’s cupped hands, Redbird Truthsinger pushed his way through the crowd to the cleared space before the throne and the false king who sat upon it. Then, before all the court, he craved a boon of King Canny, that he might make gift to him of his last song before he departed the court of the Farseers forever. King Canny raised his brows, plainly unaware of who stood so boldly before him. To this day, I think Canny believed him a wandering minstrel hoping to earn a few coins with a flattering tongue.
The end is swiftly told. Redbird set his harp before him and struck a commanding chord. For a brief time he played but notes, but they were of a power and progression that stilled tongues and drew the attention of all present. And then, louder and more clearly than ever he had sung before, he told his truth. He sang of King Charger walking in the garden alone, and how his minstrel had come to join him and how the king had bid Redbird flee. He spoke of climbing the tree, and name by name, he sang of those who had come and how they had ringed the unarmed king.
Faces paled and the king stared, while at his side his queen sat as stiff as if turned to stone. Redbird’s voice was true and strong, but abruptly King Canny seemed not to wish to hear the end of the song. No sooner had he begun the verse that told how Lord Curl drove a knife into King Charger’s back and himself killed young Lord Lock than King Canny cried out that the minstrel was a traitor. A dozen men, anxious to prove themselves loyal to the new king, sprang upon my Redbird.
He had never been a hearty man, and his long confinement had made him only more frail. A big man kicked him hard, driving his harp into his breast. He flew backwards, already limp. I heard his skull crack as his head struck the stones. He did not move again. I shrieked, over and over again, but my cries of anguish went unheard amongst the screams of anger and horror that rose from those around me. Then the room spun and had there been room for me to collapse, I would have. But the press of bodies held me up and though I felt as limp and paralyzed by horror as my son once had been, I had to see that which is burned still into my memory: the guards dragging Redbird’s lifeless body from the Great Hall.
And then, quite suddenly, a raven glided suddenly down from the high corner of the Great Hall. He fluttered and he jibed, like a day-bird baffled by the shadowy hall and the flaring torches. Then, as he swept low, causing people to duck, he made a final swoop and struck from King Canny’s head the crown he had falsely claimed. As men shouted and ladies shrieked and all cowered away from his passage, he circled the hall three times, cawing as he did so. The queen shrieked and sought shelter behind the false king’s throne. From the left and the right folk pressed and surged against me as they sought to flee the gallery. The king shouted angrily for an archer, but the raven vanished as he had come, swooping over men’s heads as he flapped his way out of the Great Hall.
A panicked girl pushed me hard and as I fell to my knees she clambered over me in her panic to escape. Battered and half-trampled, I crouched, hands over my head, adding my wild sobs of sorrow to the cries of fear and anger that filled my ears. When I finally came to my senses, enough time had passed that the king and his dukes were gone, and half the gathering fled as well. I pulled
myself to my feet and staggered back to my room. Alone. Alone, as ever I will be now.
And so Redbird’s tale ends. It took all the courage I could muster to go to the guards and asked after the body of the last minstrel. They told me harshly that he had been judged a Witted one, and hanged and quartered and burned over water, and thus there was nothing left to claim. Some were mocking as they spoke, but one old man had the grace to be ashamed. And as he hurried me away, he told me in a hushed voice that the wandering minstrel had been dead when they took him from the hall.
So now I shall roll this scroll around the one my son made, and a second one as well, as he asked of me. One seal I have broken, for I wished to read every word of his last song, the one he was not allowed to sing to the end, to see if he had guessed that which I now know. He did not, and as a truthsinger, he would not have written that he could not verify. But I can and I will. So I will end this account as I began it, by speaking of events to which Redbird was not a party. And yet I will vouch for the truth of them with as honest a tongue as ever a minstrel had, and will put my truth alongside his, to be found a day or a decade hence.
A winter of storms followed King Canny’s coronation. The hunting was bad and an ice storm such as we had never seen before broke the roofs on two grain warehouses, leaving us short of bread for the first time anyone could remember. At Buckkeep Castle, the court was less populated than it had been in previous years. The storms kept folk inside, the long days were dreary and the superstitious began to see ill omens in every broken cup or sputtering hearth-log. The queen had fainting spells and twice it was feared she was losing her child. A storm that lasted three days lashed Buckkeep Town so that the main dock was carried off on the waves and two ships sank despite believing themselves in safe harbor. Just as the weather began to warm, a disease swept through the byres and many a cow lost her unborn calf in blood and lowing. I would have blamed the poor hunting on the fools who had killed our best hounds for the crime of being spotted, and the disease on the fools who had driven away the Witted folk who once had tended Buckkeep’s stables, coops and barns. Instead, many saw it as a curse put on the castle by the Witted folk, and throughout all the Six Duchies persecution of them grew only the harsher.