WHAT IS THE true source of magic? Is one born with it in the blood, as some dogs are born to follow a scent while others are best at herding sheep? Or is it a thing that may be won by any with the determination to learn? Or rather are magics inherent to the stones and waters and earths of the world, so that a child imbibes abilities with the water he drinks or the air he breathes? I ask these questions with no concept of how to discover the answers. Did we know the source, could a wizard of great power be deliberately created by one desiring to do so? Could one breed for magic in a child as one breeds a horse for strength or speed? Or select a babe, and begin instruction before the child could even speak? Or build one's house where one might tap the magic where the earth is richest with it? These questions so frighten me that I have almost no desire to pursue the answers, save that if I do not, another may.
It was early afternoon when we came to the wide trail marked on the map. Our narrow path merged into it as a stream joins a river. For some days we were to follow it. Sometimes it led us past small villages tucked into sheltered folds of the Mountains, but Kettricken hastened us past them without stopping. We passed other travelers on the road, and these she greeted courteously, but firmly turned aside all efforts at conversation. If any recognized her as Eyod's daughter, they gave no sign of it. There came a day, however, when we passed the entire day without so much as a glimpse of another traveler, let alone a village or hut. The trail grew narrower, and the only tracks upon it were old ones, blurred by fresh snow. When we rose the next day and set forth upon it, it soon dwindled to no more than a vague track through the trees. Several times Kettricken paused and cast about, and once she made us backtrack and then go on in a new direction. Whatever signs she was following were too subtle for me.
That night, when we camped, she again took out her map and studied it. I sensed her uncertainty, and came to sit beside her. I asked no questions and offered no advice, only gazing with her at the map's worn markings. Finally she glanced up at me.
"I think we are here," she said. Her finger showed me the end of the trade trail we had followed. "Somewhere north of us, we should find this other road. I had hoped there would be some ancient connecting trail between the two. It was an idea that made sense to me, that this old road would perhaps connect to one even more forgotten. But now …" She sighed. "Tomorrow, I suppose we blunder on and hope for luck to aid us."
Her words did not put heart into any of us.
Nevertheless, the next day we moved on. We moved steadily north, through forest that seemed to have been forever untouched by an axe. Tree branches laced and intertwined high above us, while generations of leaves and needles lay deep beneath the uneven blanketing of snow that had filtered down to the forest floor. To my Wit-sense, these trees had a ghostly life that was almost animal, as if they had acquired some awareness simply by virtue of their age. But it was an awareness of the greater world of light and moisture, soil and air. They regarded our passage not at all, and by afternoon I felt no more significant than an ant. I had never thought to be disdained by a tree.
As we traveled on, hour after hour, I am sure I was not the only one to wonder if we had lost our way completely. A forest this old could have swallowed a road a generation ago. Roots would have lifted its cobbles, leaves and needles blanketed it. What we sought might no longer exist except as a line on an old map.
It was the wolf, ranging well ahead of us as always, who came upon it first.
I like this not at all, he announced.
"The road is that way," I called to Kettricken ahead of me. My puny human voice seemed like a fly's buzzing in a great hall. I was almost surprised when she heard me and looked back. She took in my pointing hand, then, with a shrug, led her pack sheep in a more westerly direction. We still walked for some time before I saw an arrow-straight break through the clustering trees ahead of us. A stripe of light penetrated the forest there. Kettricken led her pack sheep down onto its wide surface.
What is wrong with it?
He shook himself all over as if to rid his coat of water. It is too much of man. Like a fire to cook meat over.
I do not understand.
He lay back his ears. Like a great force made small and bent to a man's will. Always fire seeks a way to escape containment. So does this road.
His answer made no sense to me. Then we came to the road. I watched Kettricken and the jeppas precede me. The wide road was a straight cut through the trees, its surface lower than that of the forest floor, as when a child drags a stick through sand and leaves a trough behind. The forest trees grew alongside it and leaned over it, but none of them had sent roots thrusting out into the road, nor had any saplings sprouted up from it. Neither had the snow that covered the road's surface been marred, not even by a bird's track. There were not even the muted signs of old tracks covered with snow. No one had trodden this road since the winter snows had begun. As far as I could see, no game trails even crossed it.
I stepped down onto the road's surface.
It was like walking into trailing cobwebs face-first. A piece of ice down the back. Stepping into a hot kitchen after being out in an icy wind. It was a physical sensation that seized me, as sharply as any of those others, and yet as indescribable as wet or dry is. I halted, transfixed. Yet none of the others showed any awareness of it as they hopped down from the lip of the forest onto the road surface. Starling's only comment, to herself, was that at least here the snow was shallower and the walking better. She did not even ask herself why the snow should be shallower on the road, but only hurried after the trailing line of jeppas. I was still standing on the road, looking about me, some minutes later when Kettle stepped out of the trees and onto the road's surface. She, too, halted. For an instant, she seemed startled and muttered something.
"Did you say Skill-wrought?" I demanded of her.
Her eyes jumped to me as if she had been unaware of me standing right there before her. She glared. For a moment she didn't speak. Then, "I said `Hell-rot!' " she declared. "Near twisted my ankle jumping down. These mountain boots are no stiffer than socks." She turned away from me and trudged off after the others. I followed her. For some reason, I felt as if I were wading in water, save without the resistance of water. It is a difficult sensation to describe. As if something flowed uphill around me and hurried me along with its current.
It seeks a way to escape containment, the wolf observed again sourly. I glanced up to find him trotting along beside me, but on the lip of the forest rather than on the smooth road surface. You'd be wiser to travel up here, with me.
I thought about it. I seem to be all right. Walking is easier here. Smoother.
Yes, and fire makes you warmer, right up until the time it burns you.
I had no reply to that. Instead I walked alongside Kettle for a way. After days of traveling single file on the narrow trail, this seemed easier and more companionable. We walked all the rest of the afternoon on the ancient road. It climbed ever upward, but always angling across the faces of the hills, so that the going was never too steep. The only things that ever marred the smooth coat of snow on its surface were occasional dead branches dropped from trees above, and most of these were decaying into sawdust. Not once did I see any animal tracks, either on the road or crossing it.
Not even a sniff of any game, Nighteyes confirmed woefully. I shall have to range this night to find fresh meat for myself.
You could go now, I suggested.
I trust you not alone upon this road, he informed me sternly.
What could harm me? Kettle is right here beside me, so I would not be alone.
She is as bad as you are, Nighteyes insisted stubbornly. But despite my questions, he could not explain to me what he meant.
Yet as afternoon deepened into evening, I began to have notions of my own. Time and again, I caught my mind drifting in vivid daydreams, musings so engrossing that coming out of them was like waking with a start. And like many a dream, they popped like bubbles, leaving me with almost no recall of what I had been thinking. Patience giving military commands as if she were Queen of the Six Duchies. Burrich bathing a baby and humming as he did so. Two people I did not know, setting charred stones upon one another as they rebuilt a house. Foolish, bright-colored images they seemed, but edged so vividly that almost I believed my own musings. The easy walking on the road that had seemed so pleasant at first began to seem an involuntary hurrying, as if a current urged me on independent of my own will. Yet I could not have been hurrying much, for Kettle kept pace with me all the afternoon. Kettle broke in often on my thoughts, to ask me trivial questions, to draw my attention to a bird overhead, or to ask if my back was bothering me. I endeavored to answer, but moments later I could not recall what we had been talking about. I could not blame her for frowning at me, so muddle-witted was I, but neither could I seem to find a remedy for my absent mind. We passed a fallen log across the road. I thought of something odd about it, and intended to mention it to Kettle, but the thought fled before I could master it. So caught up was I in nothing at all that when the Fool hailed me, I startled. I peered ahead, but could not even see the jeppas anymore. Then, "FitzChivalry! " he shouted again, and I turned around, to find I had walked past not only him, but our whole expedition. Kettle at my side muttered to herself as she turned back.
The others had halted and were already unloading the jeppas. "Surely you don't mean to pitch the tent in the center of the road?" Kettle asked in alarm.
Starling and the Fool looked up from where they were stretching out the goat leather shape of the yurt. "Fear ye the hurrying throngs and carts?" the Fool asked sarcastically.
"It's flat and level. Last night, I had a root or a rock under my bedding," Starling added.
Kettle ignored them and spoke to Kettricken. "And we'd be in full view for anyone who stepped onto this road for quite a way in both directions. I think we should move off and camp under the trees."
Kettricken glanced about. "It's nearly dark, Kettle. And I do not think we have a great deal to fear from pursuit. I think …"
I flinched when the Fool took my arm and walked me to the edge of the road. "Climb up," he told me gruffly when we got to the edge of the forest. I did, scrambling up to stand once more on forest moss. Once I was there, I yawned, feeling my ears pop. Almost right away, I felt more alert. I glanced back to the road where Starling and Kettricken were gathering up the yurt hides to move them. Kettle was already dragging the poles off the road. "So, we've decided to camp off the road," I observed stupidly.
"Are you all right?" the Fool asked me anxiously.
"Of course. My back is no worse than usual," I added, thinking he referred to that.
"You were standing there, staring off up the road, paying no heed to anyone. Kettle says you've been like that most of the afternoon."
"I've been a bit muddled," I admitted. I dragged off my mitten to touch my own face. "I don't think I'm getting a fever. But it was like that… bright-edged fever thoughts."
"Kettle says she thinks it's the road. She said that you said it was Skill-wrought."
"She said I said? No. I thought that was what she said when we came onto it. That it was Skill-wrought."
"What is `Skill-wrought'?" the Fool asked me.
"Shaped by the Skill," I replied, then added, "I suppose. I've never heard of the Skill used to make or shape something." I looked wondering back at the road. It flowed so smoothly through the forest, a pure white ribbon, vanishing off under the trees. It drew the eye, and almost I could see what lay beyond the next fold of the forested hillside.
"Fitz!"
I jerked my attention back to the Fool in annoyance. "What?" I demanded.
He was shivering. "You've just been standing there, staring off down the road since I left you. I thought you'd gone to get firewood, until I looked up and saw you standing here still. What is the matter?"
I blinked my eyes slowly. I had been walking in a city, looking at the bright yellow and red fruit heaped high in the market stalls. But even as I groped after that dream, it was gone, leaving only a confusion of color and scent in my mind. "I don't know. Perhaps I am feverish. Or just very weary. I'll go get the wood."
"I'm going with you," the Fool announced.
By my knee, Nighteyes whined anxiously. I looked down at him. "What's the matter?" I asked him aloud.
He looked up at me, the fur between his eyes ridged with worry. You do not seem to hear me. And your thoughts are not … thoughts.
I'll be all right. The Fool is with me. Go and hunt. I can feel your hunger.
And I feel yours, he answered ominously.
He left then, but reluctantly. I followed the Fool into the woods, but did little more than carry the wood he picked up and handed to me. I felt as if I could not quite wake up. "Have you ever been studying something tremendously interesting, only to suddenly look up and realize hours have passed? That is how I feel just now."
The Fool handed me another stick of wood. "You are frightening me," he informed me quietly. "You speak much as King Shrewd did in the days he was weakening."
"But he was drugged then, against pain," I pointed out. "And I am not."
"That is what is frightening," he told me.
We walked together back to camp. We had been so slow that Kettle and Starling had gathered some fuel and got a small fire going already. The light of it illuminated the dome-shaped tent and the folk moving around it. The jeppas were shadows drifting nearby as they browsed. As we piled our wood by the fire for later use, Kettle looked up from her cooking.
"How are you feeling?" she demanded.
"Better, somewhat," I told her.
I glanced about for any chores that needed doing, but camp had been set without me. Kettricken was inside the tent, poring over the map by candlelight. Kettle stirred porridge by the fire while, strange to say, the Fool and Starling conversed quietly. I stood still, trying to recall something I'd meant to do, something I'd been in the middle of doing. The road. I wanted another look at the road. I turned and walked toward it.
"FitzChivalry!"
I turned, startled at the sharpness in Kettle's call. "What is it?"
"Where are you going?" she asked. She paused, as if surprised by her own question. "I mean, is Nighteyes about? I haven't seen him for a bit."
"He went to hunt. He'll be back." I started toward the road again.
"Usually he's made his kill and come back by now," she continued.
I paused. "There's not much game near the road, he said. So he's had to go farther." I turned away again.
"Now, there's a thing that seems odd," she went on. "There's no sign of human traffic on the road. And yet the animals avoid it still. Doesn't game usually follow whatever path is easiest?"
I called back to her, "Some animals do. Others prefer to keep to cover."
"Go and get him, girl!" I heard Kettle tell someone sharply.
"Fitz!" I heard Starling call, but it was the Fool who caught up with me and took me by the arm.
"Come back to the tent," he urged me, tugging at my arm.
"I just want to have another look at the road."
"It's dark. You'll see nothing now. Wait until morning, when we're traveling on it again. For now, come back to the tent."
I went with him, but told him irritably, "You're the one who is acting strange, Fool."
"You'd not say that, had you seen the look on your face but a moment ago."
The rations that night were much the same as they had been since we left Jhaampe: thick grain porridge with some chopped dried apple in it, some dried meat, and tea. It was filling, but not exciting. It did nothing to distract me from the intent way the others watched me. I finally set down my tea mug and demanded, "What?"
No one said anything at first. Then Kettricken said, bluntly, "Fitz, you don't have a watch tonight. I want you to stay in the tent and sleep."
"I'm fine, I can stand a watch," I began to object, but it was my queen who ordered, "I tell you to stay within the tent tonight."
For a moment I fought my tongue. Then I bowed my head. "As you command. I am, perhaps, overly tired."
"No. It is more than that, FitzChivalry. You scarcely ate tonight, and unless one of us forces you to speak you do nothing save gaze off into the distance. What distracts you?"
I tried to find an answer to Kettricken's blunt question. "I do not know. Exactly. At least, it is a difficult thing to explain." The only sound was the tiny crackling of the fire. All eyes were on me. "When one is trained to Skill," I went on more slowly, "one becomes aware that the magic itself has a danger to it. It attracts the attention of the user. When one is using the Skill to do a thing, one must focus one's attention tightly on the intent and refuse to be distracted by the pulling of the Skill. If the Skill user loses that focus, if he gives in to the Skill itself, he can become lost in it. Absorbed by it." I lifted my eyes from the fire and looked around at their faces. Everyone was still save for Kettle, who was nodding ever so slightly.
"Today, since we found the road, I have felt something that is almost like the pull of the Skill. I have not attempted to Skill; actually, for some days, I have blocked the Skill from myself as much as I can, for I have feared that Regal's coterie may try to break into my mind and do me harm. But despite that, I have felt as if the Skill were luring me. Like a music I can almost hear, or a very faint scent of game. I catch myself straining after it, trying to decide what calls me …."
I snapped my gaze back to Kettle, saw the distant hunger in her eves. "Is it because the road is Skill-wrought?"
A flash of anger crossed her face. She looked down to her old hands curled in her lap. She gave a sigh of exasperation. "It might. The old legends that I have heard say that when a thing is Skill-wrought, it can be dangerous to some folk. Not to ordinary people, but to those who have an aptitude for the Skill but have not been trained in it. Or to those whose training is not advanced far enough for them to know how to be wary."
"I have never heard of any legends about Skill-wrought things." I turned to the Fool and Starling. "Have either of you?"
Both shook their heads slowly.
"It seems to me," I said carefully to Kettle, "that someone as well-read as the Fool should have come across such legends. And certainly a trained minstrel should have heard something about them." I continued to look at her levelly.
She crossed her arms on her chest. "I am not to blame for what they have not read or heard," she said stiffly. "I only tell you what I was told, a long time ago."
"How long ago?" I pressed. Across from me, Kettricken frowned, but did not interfere.
"A very long time ago," Kettle replied coldly. "Back when young men respected their elders."
The Fool's face lit with a delighted grin. Kettle seemed to feel she had won something, for she set her tea mug in her porridge bowl with a clatter and handed them to me. "It is your turn to clean the dishes," she told me severely. She got up and stamped away from the fire and into the tent.
As I slowly gathered the dishes to wipe them out with clean snow, Kettricken came to stand beside me. "What do you suspect?" she asked me in her forthright way. "Do you think she is a spy, an enemy among us?"
"No. I do not think she is an enemy. But I think she is … something. Not just an old woman with a religious interest in the Fool. Something more than that."
"But you don't know what?"
"No. I don't. Only I have noticed that she seems to know a deal more about the Skill than I expect her to. Still, an old person gathers much odd knowledge in a lifetime. It may be no more than that." I glanced up to where the wind was stirring the tree tops. "Do you think we shall have snow tonight?" I asked Kettricken.
"Almost certainly. And we shall be fortunate if it stops by morning. We should gather more firewood, and stack it near the tent's door. No, not you. You should go within the tent. If you wandered off now, in this darkness and with snow to come, we'd never find you."
I began to protest, but she stopped me with a question. "My Verity. He is more highly trained than you are in the Skill?"
"Yes, my lady."
"Do you think this road would call to him, as it does to you?"
"Almost certainly. But he has always been far stronger than I in matters of Skill or stubbornness."
A sad smile tweaked her lips. "Yes, he is stubborn, that one." She sighed suddenly, heavily. "Would that we were only a man and a woman, living far from both sea and mountains. Would that things were simple for us."
"I wish for that as well," I said quietly. "I wish for blisters on my hands from simple work and Molly's candles lighting our home. "
"I hope you get that, Fitz," Kettricken said quietly. "I truly do. But we've a long road to tread between here and there."
"That we do," I agreed. And a sort of peace bloomed between us. I did not doubt that if circumstances demanded it, she would take my daughter for the throne. But she could no more have changed her attitude about duty and sacrifice than she could have changed the blood and bones of her body. It was who she was. It was not that she wished to take my child from me.
All I needed do to keep my daughter was to bring her husband safely back to her.
We went to bed later that night than had become our custom. All were wearier than usual. The Fool took first watch despite the lines of strain in his face. The new ivory cast his skin had taken on made him look terrible when he was cold, like a statue of misery carved from old bone. The rest of us did not notice the cold much when we were moving during the day, but I don't think the Fool was ever completely warm. Yet he bundled himself warmly and went to stand outside in the rising wind without a murmur of complaint. The rest of us lay down to sleep.
The storm was, at first, a thing that was happening above us, in the treetops. Loose needles fell rattling against the yurt's skin and as the storm grew more intense, small branches and occasional dumps of icy snow. The cold grew stronger and became a thing that crept in at every gap of blanket or garment. Midway through Starling's watch, Kettricken called her in, saying the storm would stand watch for us now. When Starling entered, the wolf slunk in at her heels. To my relief, no one objected very loudly. When Starling commented that he carried snow in with him, the Fool replied that he had less on him than she did. Nighteyes came immediately, to our part of the tent, and lay down between the Fool and the outer wall. He set his great head on the Fool's chest and heaved a sigh before closing his eyes. I almost felt jealous.
He's colder than you are. Much colder. And, in the city, where hunting was so poor, he often shared food with me.
So. He is pack, then? I asked with a trace of amusement.
You tell me, Nighteyes challenged me. He saved your life, fed you from his kills, and shared his den with you. Is he pack with us or not?
I suppose he is, I said after a moment's consideration. I had never seen things in quite that light before. Unobtrusively, I shifted in my bedding to be slightly closer to the Fool. "Are you cold?" I asked him aloud.
"Not so long as I keep shivering," he told me miserably. Then he added, "Actually, I'm warmer with the wolf between me and the wall. He gives off a lot of heat."
"He's grateful for all the times you fed him in Jhaampe."
The Fool squinted at me through the tent's dimness. "Really? I did not think animals carried memories for that long."
That startled me into thinking about it. "Usually, they don't. But tonight, he recalls that you fed him and is grateful."
The Fool lifted a hand to scratch carefully around Nighteyes' ears. Nighteyes made a puppy growl of pleasure and happily snuggled closer. I wondered again at all the changes I was seeing in him. More and more often, his reactions and thoughts were a mixture of human and wolf.
I was too tired to give it much thought. I closed my eyes and started to sink into sleep. After a time, I realized that my eyes were tightly shut, my jaw clenched, and I was no closer to sleep. I wanted to simply let go of consciousness, so weary was I, but the Skill so threatened and lured me that I could not relax enough to sleep. I kept shifting, trying to find a physical position that was more relaxing, until Kettle on the other side of me pointedly asked me if I had fleas. I tried to be still.
I stared up into the darkness of the tent's ceiling, listening to the blowing wind outside and the quiet breathing of my companions inside. I closed my eyes and relaxed my muscles, trying to at least rest my body. I wanted so desperately to fall asleep. But Skill dreams tugged at me like tiny barbed hooks in my mind until I thought I should scream. Most were horrible. Some sort of Forging ceremony in a coastal village, a huge fire burning in a pit, and captives dragged forward by jeering Outlslanders and offered the choice of being Forged or flinging themselves into the pit. Children were watching. I jerked my mind back from the flames.
I caught my breath and calmed my eyes. Sleep. In a night chamber in Buckkeep Castle, Lacey was carefully removing lace from an old wedding gown. Her mouth was pinched shut with disapproval as she picked out the tiny threads that secured the ornate work. "It will bring a good price," Patience said to her. "Perhaps enough to supply our watchtowers for another month. He would understand what we must do for Buck." She held her head very upright, and there was more gray in the black of her hair than I recalled as her fingers unfastened the strings of tiny pearls that glistened in scalloping at the neckline of the gown. Time had aged the white of the gown to ivory, and the luxuriant breadth of the skirts cascaded over their laps. Patience cocked her head suddenly as if listening, a puzzled frown on her face. I fled.
I used all my will to pry my eyes open. The fire in the small brazier burned small, shedding a reddish light. I studied the poles that supported the taut hides. I willed my breath to calmness. I dared not think of anything that might lure me out of my own life, not Molly, not Burrich, not Verity. I tried to find some neutral image to rest my mind upon, something with no special connotations to my life. I called up a bland landscape. A smooth blank plain of land cloaked in white snow, a peaceful night sky over it. Blessed stillness … I sank into it as into a soft feather bed.
A rider came, swiftly, leaning low, clinging to his horse's neck, urging him on. There was a simple safe beauty to the duo, the running horse, the man's streaming cloak echoed by the horse's flowing tail. For a time, there was no more than this, the dark horse and rider cleaving the snowy plain under an open moonlit night. The horse ran well, an effortless stretching and gathering of muscles and the man sat him lightly, almost appearing to ride above him rather than on his back. The moon glinted silver off the man's brow, glistening upon the rampant buck badge that he wore. Chade.
Three riders and horses appeared. Two came from behind, but those horses were running wearily, heavily. The lone rider would outdistance them if the chase went much longer. The third pursuer cut the plain at an angle to the others. The piebald horse ran with a will, unmindful of the deeper snow he churned through in pursuit. His small rider sat him high and well, a woman or a young man. The moonlight danced lightly along a drawn blade. For a time it looked as if the young rider would intersect with Chade's path of flight, but the old assassin saw him. He spoke to his horse, and the gelding put on a burst of speed, incredible to see. He left the two lumbering pursuers far behind, but the piebald reached the packed trail now and his legs stretched long as he endeavored to catch up. For a time, it looked as if Chade would escape cleanly, but the piebald horse was fresher. The gelding could not maintain his burst of speed, and the even pace of the piebald slowly ate into his lead. The gap closed gradually but relentlessly. Then the piebald ran right behind the black gelding. The gelding slowed and Chade turned in the saddle and lifted an arm in greeting. The other rider shouted to him, her voice thin in the cold air. "For Verity the true King!" She tossed a bag to him, and he threw a packet to her. Abruptly they separated, the two horses both veering from the trodden path to go wide of one another. The hoofbeats dwindled in the night.
The laboring mounts of the pursuers were lathered and wet, steaming in the cold air. Their riders pulled them up, cursing, when they reached the place where Chade and his cohort separated. Snatches of conversation mixed with curses floated on. the air. "Damned Farseer partisans!" and "No way to tell which one has it now!" and finally "Not going back to face a lash over this mess." They seemed to reach an agreement, for they let their horses breathe, and then proceeded more slowly, following the trodden path away from wherever they had come.
I found myself briefly. Strange to discover I was smiling even though sweat misted my face. The Skilling was strong and true. I was breathing deep with the strain of it. I tried to draw back from it, but the sweet rush of knowing was too keen. I was elated at Chade's escape, elated to know that there were partisans who worked on Verity's behalf. The world stretched out wide before me, tempting as a tray of sweet cakes. My heart chose instantly.
A baby wailed, in that endless, hopeless way that infants have. My daughter. She lay on a bed, still wrapped in a blanket that was beaded with rain. Her face was red with the earnestness of her screaming. The pent frustration in Molly's voice was frightening as she said, "Be quiet. Can't you just be quiet!"
Burrich's voice, stern and weary. "Don't be cross at her. She's only a babe. She's probably just hungry."
Molly stood, lips pinched tight, arms folded tightly across her chest. Her cheeks were red, her hair had gone to wet strands.
Burrich hung up his dripping cloak. They had all been somewhere, together, and just returned. The ashes were dead in the fireplace, the cottage cold. Burrich went to the hearth and awkwardly knelt by it, favoring his knee, and began to select kindling to build a fire. I could feel the tension in him, and I knew how he strove to contain his temper. "Take care of the baby," he suggested quietly. "I'll get the fire going and put some water to boil."
Molly took off her cloak and moved deliberately to hang it by his. I knew how she hated to be told what to do. The baby continued wailing, as remorseless a demand as the winter wind outside. "I am cold, and tired, and hungry, and wet. She's going to have to learn that sometimes she just has to wait."
Burrich leaned down to blow on a spark, cursed softly when it did not catch. "She is cold and hungry and tired and wet, too," he pointed out. His voice was getting crisper. He continued doggedly with his fire making. "And she is too small to do anything about it. So she cries. Not to torment you, but to tell you she needs help. It's like a puppy yelping, woman, or a chick cheeping. She doesn't do it to annoy." His voice was rising on every sentence.
"Well, it annoys me!" Molly declared, and turned to the fight. "She will just have to cry it out. I'm too tired to deal with her. And she's getting spoiled. All she does is cry to be held. I never have a moment to myself any longer. I can't even sleep a night through. Feed the baby, wash the baby, change the baby, hold the baby. That's all my life is anymore." She listed off her grievances aggressively. That glint was in her eye, the same one I'd seen when she defied her father, and I knew she expected Burrich to stand and advance on her. Instead, he blew on a tiny glow and grunted in satisfaction when a narrow tongue of flame licked up and kindled a curl of birch bark. He didn't even turn to look at Molly or the wailing child. Twig after twig he set on the tiny fire, and I marveled that he could not be aware of Molly seething behind him. I would not have been so composed were she behind me and wearing that expression.
Only when the fire was well established did he rise, and then he turned, not to Molly but to the child. He walked past Molly as if she were not there. I did not know if he saw how she steeled herself not to flinch from the sudden blow she half-expected from him. It wrung my heart to see this scar her father left on her. Burrich leaned over the baby, speaking in his calming voice as he unwrapped her. I watched in a sort of awe as he competently changed her napkin. He glanced about, then took up a wool shirt of his that was hanging on a chair back and wrapped her in it. She continued to wail, but on a different note. He propped her against his shoulder and used his free hand to fill the kettle and set it on the fire. It was as if Molly were not there at all. Her face went white and her eyes were huge as he began to measure out grain. When he found the water was not yet boiling, he sat down with the baby and patted her back rhythmically. The wailing became less determined, as if the baby was wearying of crying.
Molly stalked over to them. "Give me the baby. I'll nurse her now."
Burrich slowly turned his eyes up to her. His face was impassive. "When you're calm, and want to hold her, I'll give her to you."
"You'll give her to me now! She's my child!" Molly snapped, and reached for her. Burrich stopped her with a look. She stepped back. "Are you trying to make me ashamed?" she demanded. Her voice was going shrill. "She's my child. I have a right to raise her as I see fit. She doesn't need to be held all the time. "
"That's true," he agreed blandly, but made no move to give her the child.
"You think I'm a bad mother. But what do you know about children, to say I'm wrong?"
Burrich got up, staggered a half step on his bad leg, and regained his balance. He took up the measure of grain. He sprinkled it over the boiling water, then stirred it to wet it evenly. Then he put a tight lid on the pot and pulled it slightly back from the fire's reach. All this while balancing the babe in the crook of one arm. I could tell he had been thinking when he answered, "Not babies, perhaps. But I know about young things. Foals, puppies, calves, piglets. Even hunting cats. I know if you want them to trust you, you touch them often when they are small. Gently, but firmly, so they believe in your strength, too."
He warmed to his subject. I'd heard this lecture a hundred times before, usually delivered to impatient stableboys. "You don't shout at them, or make sudden moves that look threatening. You give them good feed and clean water, and keep them clean and give them shelter from the weather." His voice dropped accusingly as he added, "You don't take out your temper on them, or confuse punishment with discipline."
Molly looked shocked at his words. "Discipline comes from punishment. A child learns discipline when she is punished for doing something wrong."
Burrich shook his head. "I'd like to `punish' the man that beat that into you," he said, and an edge of his old temper crept into his voice. "What did you really learn from your father taking his temper out on you?" he demanded. "That to show tenderness to your baby is a weakness? That to give in and hold your child when she cries because she wants you is somehow not an adult thing to do?"
"I don't want to talk about my father," Molly declared suddenly, but there was uncertainty in her voice. She reached for the baby like a child clutching at a favorite toy and Burrich let her take the infant. Molly sat on the hearthstones and opened her blouse. The baby sought her breast greedily and was instantly silent. For a time the only sounds were the wind muttering outside, the bubbling of the porridge pot, and the small stick noises of Burrich feeding the fire. "You did not always keep your patience with Fitz when he was little," Molly muttered chidingly.
Burrich gave a brief snort of laughter. "I don't think anyone would have been eternally patient with that one. When I got him, he was five or six, and I knew nothing of him. And I was a young man, with many other interests. You can put a colt in a corral, or tie a dog up for a time. Not so with a child. You can never forget you have a child for even an instant." He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "Before I knew it, he'd become the center of my life." An odd little pause. "Then they took him from me, and I let them …. And now he's dead."
A silence. I wanted desperately to reach to them both, to tell them that I lived. But I could not. I could hear them, I could see them, but I could not reach them. Like the wind outside the house, I roared and pounded at the walls, to no avail.
"What am I going to do? What will become of us?" Molly asked abruptly of no one. The despair in her voice was rending. "Here I am. No husband, and a child, and no way to make my own way in the world. Everything I saved is gone." She looked at Burrich. "I was so stupid. I always believed he would come to find me, that he would marry me. But he never did. And now he never will." She began to rock as she clutched the baby to her. Tears spilled unheeded down her cheeks. "Don't think I didn't hear that old man today, the one that said he'd seen me in Buckkeep Town and I was the Wit-Bastard's whore. How long before that tale races through Capelin Beach? I daren't go to town anymore, I can't hold up my head."
Something went out of Burrich at her words. He slumped, elbow on knee, head in his hand. He muttered, "I thought you had not heard him. Had he not been half as old as God, I'd have made him answer for his words."
"You can't challenge a man for speaking the truth," Molly said dispiritedly.
That brought Burrich's head up. "You're not a whore!" he declared hotly. "You were Fitz's wife. It's not your fault if not all were privy to it."
"His wife," Molly said mockingly to herself. "I was not, Burrich. He never married me."
"Such was how he spoke of you to me. I promise you, I know this. Had he not died, he would have come to you. He would. He always intended to make you his wife."
"Oh, yes, he had many intentions. And he spoke many lies. Intentions are not deeds, Burrich. If every woman who had heard a man promise marriage were a wife, well, there'd be a spate less of bastards in the world." She straightened up and wiped the tears from her face with a weary finality. Burrich made no answer to her words. She looked down into the little face that was finally at peace. The babe went to sleep. She slipped her little finger into the child's mouth to free her nipple from the babe's sleepy grip on it. As Molly did up her blouse, she smiled weakly. "I think I feel a tooth coming through. Maybe she's just colicky from teething."
"A tooth? Let me see!" Burrich exclaimed, and came to bend over the baby as Molly carefully pushed down her pink lower lip to reveal a tiny half-moon of white showing in her gum. My daughter pulled away from the touch, frowning in her sleep. Burrich took her gently from Molly and carried her over to the bed. He settled her into it, still wrapped in his shirt. By the fire, Molly took the lid off the kettle and gave the porridge a stir.
"I'll take care of you both," Burrich offered awkwardly. He looked down at the child as he spoke. "I'm not so old I can't get work, you know. As long as I can swing an axe, we can trade or sell firewood in town. We'll get by."
"You're not old at all," Molly said absently as she sprinkled a bit of salt into the porridge. She went to her chair and dropped into it. From a basket by her chair, she took up a piece of mending and turned it about in her hands, deciding where to begin. "You seem to wake up new each day. Look at this shirt. Torn out at the shoulder seam as if a growing boy did it. I think you get younger each day. But I feel as if I get older with every passing hour. And I can't live on your kindness forever, Burrich. I've got to get on with my life. Somehow. I just can't think how to begin, just now."
"Then don't worry about it, just now," he said comfortingly.
He came to stand behind her chair. His hands lifted as if he would put them on her shoulders. Instead he crossed his arms on his chest. "Soon it will be spring: We'll put in a garden and the fish runs will begin again. There may be some hiring work down in Capelin Beach. You'll see, we'll get by."
His optimism reached something in her. "I should start now and make some straw hives. With great good luck, I might chance on a swarming of bees."
"I know a flowering field up in the hills where the bees work thick in summer. If we set out hives there, would the bees move into them?"
Molly smiled to herself. "They are not like birds, silly. They only swarm when the old hive has too many bees. We might get a swarm that way, but not until high summer or autumn. No. Come spring, when the bees first stir, we'll try to find a bee tree. I used to help my father hunt bees when I was smaller, before I grew wise enough to winter a hive over. You put out a dish of warmed honey to draw them. First one, and then another will come. If you are good at it, and I am, you can find the bee line and follow it back to the bee tree. That is only the start, of course. Then you have to force the swarm out of the tree and into the hive you've made ready. Sometimes, if the bee tree is small, you can simply cut it down and take the bee gum home with you."
"Bee gum?"
"The part of the tree they nest in."
"Don't they sting you?" Burrich asked incredulously.
"Not if you do it right," she told him calmly.
"You'll have to teach me how," he said humbly.
Molly twisted in her seat to look up at him. She smiled, but it was not like her old smile. It was a smile that acknowledged that they were pretending it would all go as they planned. She knew too well now that no hope could be completely trusted. "If you'll teach me to write my letters. Lacey and Patience started, and I can read a bit, but the writing comes harder to me."
"I'll teach you and then you can teach Nettle," he promised her.
Nettle. She named my daughter Nettle, after the herb she loves, though it leaves great rashes on her hands and arms if she is careless when she gathers it. Is that how she felt about our daughter, that she brought pain even as she brought enjoyment? It pained me to think it was so. Something tugged at my attention, but I clung fiercely where I was. If this was as close as I could come to Molly right now, then I would take what I could and cling to it.
No. Verity spoke firmly. Come away now. You put them in danger. Do you think they would scruple to destroy them, if they thought by doing so they could hurt and weaken you?
Abruptly I was with Verity. He was somewhere cold and windy and dark. I tried to see more of what was around us, but he blocked my eyes. So effortlessly he had brought me here against my will, so effortlessly he closed off my vision. The strength of Skill on him was frightening. Yet I could sense he was tired, weary almost to death despite this vast power. The Skill was like a strong stallion and Verity was the fraying rope that tethers it. It pulled at him every minute and every minute he resisted it.
We are coming to you, I told him needlessly.
I know. Hurry. And do this no more, think of them no more, and give no thought at all to the names of those who would do us harm. Every whisper here is a shout. They have powers you do not imagine, in strengths you cannot defy. Where you go, your enemies may follow. So leave no trail.
But where are you? I demanded as he thrust me away from him.
Find me! he commanded me, and slammed me back into my own body and life.
I sat up in my blankets, convulsively gasping for air. It reminded me of wrestling and being slammed down on the flat of my back. For a moment I made tiny sounds as I sought to fill my lungs. Finally I drew a full breath. I looked about me in the darkness. Outside the tent, the windstorm howled. The brazier was a small red glow in the center that illuminated little more than Kettle's huddled form sleeping close to it.
"Are you all right?" the Fool asked me quietly.
"No," I said softly. I lay back down beside him. I was suddenly too tired to think, too tired to say another word. The sweat on my body chilled and I began to shiver. The Fool surprised me by putting an arm around me. I moved closer to him gratefully, sharing warmth. The sympathy of my wolf wrapped me. I waited for the Fool to say something comforting. He was too wise to try. I fell asleep longing for words that did not exist.