Six Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town
Climbed a hill, and never came down
Found their flesh and lost their skins
Flew away on stony wings.
Five Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town
Walked a road not up nor down
Were torn to many and turned to one,
In the end, left a task half-done.
Four Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town
They spoke in words without a sound
They begged their Queen to let them go
And what became of them, no one can know.
Three Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town
They'd helped a king to keep his crown.
But when they tried to climb the hill
Down they came in a terrible spill.
Two Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town
Gentle women there they found.
Forgot their quest and lived in love
Perhaps were wiser than ones above.
One Wiseman came to Jhaampe-town.
He set aside both Queen and Crown
Did his task and fell asleep
Gave his bones to the stones to keep.
No wise men go to Jhaampe-town.
To climb the hill and never come down.
'Tis wiser far and much more brave
To stay at home and face the grave.
"Fitz? Are you awake?" The Fool was bending over me, his face very close to mine. He seemed anxious.
"I think so." I shut my eyes. Images and thoughts flickered through my mind. I could not decide which of them were mine. I tried to remember if it was important to know that.
"Fitz!" This was Kettricken, shaking me.
"Make him sit up," Starling suggested. Kettricken promptly gripped me by my shirtfront and hauled me into a sitting position. The sudden change dizzied me. I could not understand why they wanted me to be awake in the middle of the night. I said so.
"It's midday," Kettricken said tersely. "The storm hasn't let up since last night." She peered at me closely. "Are you hungry? Would you like a cup of tea?"
While I was trying to decide, I forgot what she had asked me. There were so many people talking softly, I could not sort my thoughts from theirs. "I beg your pardon," I told the woman politely. "What did you ask me?"
"Fitz!" the pale man hissed in exasperation. He reached behind me and dragged a pack over to him. "He has elfbark in here, for tea. Chade left it with him. It should bring him back to himself."
"He doesn't need that," an old woman said sharply. She crawled closer to me, reached up, and gripped my ear. She pinched it tightly.
"Ouch! Kettle!" I rebuked her, and tried to pull away. She kept her painful hold. "Wake up!" she told me sternly. "Right now!"
"I'm awake!" I promised her, and after a scowl at me, she let go of my ear. While I looked about me in some confusion, she muttered angrily, "We're too close to that damnable road."
"It's still stormy outside?" I asked bewilderedly.
"You've only been told that six times," Starling retorted, but I could hear the worry that underlay her words.
"I had … nightmares last night. I didn't sleep well." I looked around at the circle of folk clustered around the small brazier. Someone had braved the wind for a fresh supply of wood. A kettle hung on a tripod over the brazier, heaped full of melting snow. "Where's Nighteyes?" I asked as soon as I missed him.
"Hunting," Kettricken said and, With very little luck, came the echo from the hillside above us. I could feel the wind past his eyes. He had folded his ears back from it. Nothing is moving in this storm. I don't know why I bother.
Come back and stay warm, I suggested. At that moment, Kettle leaned over and pinched my arm savagely. I jerked back from it with a cry.
"Pay attention to us!" she snapped at me.
"What are we doing?" I demanded as I sat rubbing my arm. No one's behavior made any sense to me today.
"Waiting for the storm to pass," Starling told me. She leaned closer to me, peering into my face. "Fitz, what is the matter with you? I feel as if you're not really here."
"I don't know," I admitted. "I feel caught in a dream. And if I don't concentrate on staying awake, I start to fall right back to sleep."
"Then concentrate," Kettle advised me roughly. I could not understand why she seemed so angry with me.
"Maybe he should just sleep," the Fool suggested. "He seems tired, and from all the leaping and yelping he did in his sleep last night, his dreams were scarcely restful."
"So he will get more rest staying awake now than from going back to dreams like that," Kettle insisted mercilessly. She poked me suddenly in the ribs. "Talk to us, Fitz."
"About what?" I hedged.
Kettricken moved quickly to the attack. "Did you dream of Verity last night?" she demanded. "Is Skilling last night what has left you so dazed today?"
I sighed. One does not answer a direct question from one's queen with a lie. "Yes," I told her, but as her eyes lit I had to add, "But it was a dream that will bring you small comfort. He is alive, in a cold; windy place. He would let me see no more than that, and when I asked where he was, he simply told me to find him."
"Why would he behave so?" Kettricken asked. The hurt on her face was as if Verity himself had shoved her away.
"He warned me severely against all Skilling. I had been … watching Molly and Burrich." It was so hard to admit this, for I wanted to speak nothing of what I had seen there. "Verity came and took me away from there, and warned me that our enemies might find them through me and hurt them. I believe that is why he concealed his surroundings from me. Because he feared that if I knew them, somehow Regal or his coterie might come to know them."
"Does he fear that they seek for him also?" Kettricken asked wonderingly.
"So it seems to me. Though I have felt no tremor of their presence, he seems to believe they will seek him out, either by the Skill or in the flesh."
"Why should Regal bother to do so, when all believe Verity dead?" Kettricken asked me.
I shrugged. "Perhaps to make certain that he never returns to prove them all wrong. I do not truly know, my queen. I sense that my king conceals much from me. He warned me that the powers of the coterie are many and strong."
"But surely Verity is as strong?" Kettricken asked with a child's faith.
"He masters a storm of power such as I have never witnessed, my lady. But it takes all his will to control it."
"All such control is an illusion," Kettle mumbled to herself. "A trap to deceive the unwary."
"King Verity is scarcely unwary, Dame Kettle!" Kettricken retorted angrily.
"No, he is not," I agreed in a conciliatory tone. "And the words were mine, not Ver … King Verity's, my lady. I only seek to make you understand that what he now does is beyond my comprehension. All I can do is trust that he knows what he is about. And do as he has ordered me."
"To find him," Kettricken agreed. She sighed. "Would that we could leave now, this very minute. But only a fool defies a storm such as this one."
"While we bide here, FitzChivalry is in constant danger," Kettle informed us. All eyes turned to her.
"What makes you say so, Kettle?" Kettricken asked.
She hesitated. "Anyone can see it is so. Unless he is kept talking, his thoughts drift, his eyes become empty. He cannot sleep at night without the Skill coming upon him. It is obvious that the road is at fault."
"While these things are so, it is not at all obvious to me that the road is the problem. A lingering fever from his injury could be at fault, or …"
"No." I risked interrupting my queen. "It is the road. I have no fever. And I did not feel this way before I traveled on it."
"Explain this to me," Kettricken commanded.
"I don't understand it myself. I can only suppose that Skill was somehow used to construct that road. It runs straighter and more level than any road I have ever known. No tree intrudes upon it, despite how little it is used. There are no animal tracks upon it. And did you mark the one tree we passed yesterday, the log that had fallen across the road? The stump and the uppermost branches were still almost sound … but all of the trunk that had fallen upon the road itself was rotted away to almost nothing. Some force moves still in that road, to keep it so clear and true. And I think whatever it is, it is related to the Skill."
Kettricken sat a moment considering this. "What do you suggest we do?" she asked me.
I shrugged. "Nothing. For now. The tent is well pitched here. We'd be foolish to try to move it in this wind. I must simply be aware of the danger to myself, and endeavor to avoid it. And tomorrow, or whenever the wind falls, I should walk beside the road instead of upon it."
"That will be little better for you," Kettle grumbled.
"Perhaps. But as the road is our guide to Verity, it would be foolish to leave it. Verity survived this path, and he walked it alone." I paused, thinking that I now understood better some of the fragmented Skill dreams I had had of him. "I will manage, somehow."
The circle of faces doubtfully regarding me were not reassuring. "You must, I suppose," Kettricken concluded dolefully. "If there is any way we can assist you, FitzChivalry …"
"There is none that I can think of," I admitted.
"Save to keep his mind occupied as best we can," Kettle offered. "Do not let him sit idly, nor sleep overmuch. Starling, you have your harp, have you not? Could not you play and sing for us?"
"I have a harp," Starling corrected her sourly. "It's a poor thing compared to my old one that was taken from me at Moonseye." For a moment her face emptied and her eyes turned inward. I wondered if that was how I looked when the Skill pulled at me. Kettle reached to pat her softly on one knee, but Starling flinched to the touch. "Still, it's what I have, and I'll play it, if you think it will help." She reached behind her for her pack and drew from it a bundled harp. As she drew the harp from its wrappings, I could see that it was little more than a framework of raw wood with strings stretched across it. It had the essential shape of her old harp, but with none of its grace and polish. It was to Starling's old harp what one of Hod's practice blades was to a fine sword; a thing of utility and function, no more than that. But she settled it on her lap and began tuning it. She began the opening notes of an old Buck ballad when she was interrupted by a snowy nose poking its way into the tent door.
"Nighteyes!" The Fool welcomed him.
I've meat to share. This came as a proud announcement. More than enough to gorge well on.
It was not an exaggeration. When I crawled out of the tent to see his kill, it was a sort of boar. The tusks and coarse hair were much the same as those I had hunted before, but this creature had larger ears and the coarse hair was mottled black and white. When Kettricken joined me, she exclaimed over it, saying she had seen few of them before, but they were known to roam the forests and had a reputation as vicious game best left alone. She scratched the wolf behind the ear with a mittened hand and praised him overmuch for his bravery and skill, until he fell over in the snow overcome with pride in himself. I looked at him, lolling near on his back in the snow and wind, and could not help but grin. In an instant he had flipped to his feet, to give me a nasty pinch on the leg and demand that I open its belly for him.
The meat was fat and rich. Kettricken and I did most of the butchering, for the cold savaged the Fool and Kettle mercilessly and Starling begged off for the sake of a harpist's hands. Cold and damp were not the best things for her still-healing fingers. I did not much mind. Both the task and the harsh conditions kept my mind from wandering as I worked, and there was an odd pleasure to being alone with Kettricken, even under such circumstances, for in sharing this humble work, we both forgot station and past and became but two people in the cold rejoicing in a richness of meat. We cut off long skewering strips that would cook swiftly over the little brazier in sufficient quantity for all of us to gorge. Nighteyes took the entrails for himself, reveling in the heart and liver and guts and then a front leg with the satisfaction of bones to crack. He brought this gristly prize into the tent with him, but no one made comment on the snowy, bloody wolf that lay along one side of the tent wall and noisily chewed his meat save to praise him. I thought him insufferably satisfied with himself and told him so; he but informed me that I had never made so difficult a kill alone, let alone dragged it back intact to share. All the while the Fool scratched his ears.
Soon the rich smell of cooking filled the tent. It had been some days since we had had fresh meat of any kind, and the cold we had endured made the fat taste doubly rich to us. It brought our spirits up and we could almost forget the howling of the wind outside and the cold that pressed so fiercely against our small shelter. After we were all sated with meat, Kettle made tea for us. I know of nothing more warming than hot meat and tea and good fellowship.
This is pack, Nighteyes observed in contentment from his corner. And I could do no more than agree.
Starling cleansed her fingers of grease and took her harp back from the Fool, who had asked to see it. To my surprise, he leaned over it with her, and traced down the frame with a pale fingernail, saying, "Had I my tools here, I could shave the wood here, and here, and smooth a curve like so along this side. I think it might fit your hands better."
Starling looked at him hard, caught between suspicion and hesitancy. She studied his face for mockery, but found none. Carefully she observed, as if she spoke to us all, "My master who taught me harping was good at the making of harps as well. Too good, perhaps. He tried to teach me, and I learned the basics, but he could not stand to watch me `fumble and scrape at fine wood,' as he put it. So I never learned for myself the finer points of shaping the frame. And with this hand still stiff …"
"Were we back at Jhaampe, I could let you fumble and scrape as much as you wanted. To do is truly the only way to learn. But for here, for now, even with such knives as we have, I think I might bring a more graceful shape out of this wood." The Fool spoke openly.
"If you would," she accepted quietly. I wondered when they had set aside their hostilities and realized I had not, for some days, paid much attention to anyone save myself. I had accepted that Starling wanted little more to do with me than to be present if I did something of vast import. I had not made any of friendship's demands upon her. Both Kettricken's rank and her grief had imposed a barrier between us that I had not ventured to breach. Kettle's reticence about herself made any true conversation difficult. But I could think of no excuse for how I had excluded the Fool and the wolf from my thoughts lately.
When you throw up walls against those who would use Skill against you, you lock more than your Skill-sense inside, Nighteyes observed.
I sat pondering that. It seemed to me that my Wit and my feeling for people had dimmed somewhat of late. Perhaps my companion was right. Kettle poked me suddenly, sharply. "Don't wander!" she chided me.
"I was just thinking," I said defensively.
"Well, think aloud then."
"I've no thoughts worth sharing just now."
Kettle glowered at me for being uncooperative.
"Recite then," commanded the Fool. "Or sing something. Anything to keep yourself focused here."
"That's a good idea," Kettle agreed, and it was my turn to glower at the Fool. But all eyes were on me. I took a breath and tried to think of something to recite. Almost everyone had a favorite story or bit of poetry memorized. But most of what I had possessed had to do with the poisoning herbs or others of the assassin's arts. "I know one song," I finally admitted. " `Crossfire's Sacrifice.' "
Now Kettle scowled, but Starling struck up the opening notes with an amused smile on her face. After one false start, I launched into it, and carried it off fairly well, though I saw Starling flinch a time or two at a soured note. For whatever reason my choice of song displeased Kettle, who sat grim and staring at me defiantly. When I had finished, the turn was passed to Kettricken, who sang a hunting ballad from the Mountains. Then it was the Fool's turn, and he humored us with a ribald folk song about courting a milkmaid. I believe I saw grudging admiration from Starling for that performance. That left Kettle, and I had expected her to beg off. Instead, she sang the old children's nursery rhyme about "Six Wise Men went to Jhaampe-town, climbed a hill and never came down," all the time eyeing me as if each word from her cracked old voice were a barb meant just for me. But if there was a veiled insult there, I missed it, as well as the reason for her ill will.
Wolves sing together, Nighteyes observed, just as Kettricken suggested, "Play us something we all know, Starling. Something to give us heart." So Starling played that ancient song about gathering flowers for one's beloved, and we all sang along, some with more heart than others.
As the last note died away, Kettle observed, "The wind's dropping."
We all listened, and then Kettricken crawled from the tent. I followed her, and we stood quiet for a time in a wind that had gone quieter. Dusk had stolen the colors from the world. In the wake of the wind, snow had begun thickly falling. "The storm has almost blown itself out," she observed. "We can be on our way tomorrow."
"None too soon for me," I said. Come to me, come to me still echoed in the beating of my heart. Somewhere up in those Mountains, or beyond them, was Verity.
And the river of Skill.
"As for me," Kettricken said quietly. "Would that I had followed my instincts a year ago, and gone to the ends of the map. But I reasoned that I could do no better than Verity had done. And I feared to risk his child. A child I lost anyway, and thus failed him both ways."
"Failed him?" I exclaimed in horror. "By losing his child?"
"His child, his crown, his kingdom. His father. What did he entrust me with that I did not lose, FitzChivalry? Even as I rush to be with him again, I wonder how I can meet his eyes."
"Oh, my queen, you are mistaken in this, I assure you. He would not perceive that you have failed him, but fears only that he abandoned you in the greatest of danger."
"He only went to do what he knew he must," Kettricken said quietly. And then added plaintively, "Oh, Fitz, how can you speak for what he feels, when you cannot even tell me where he is?"
"Where he is, my queen, is but a bit of information, a spot on that map. But what he feels, and what he feels for you … that is what he breathes, and when we are together in the Skill, joined mind to mind, then I know such things, almost whether I would or no." I recalled the other times I had been privy unwillingly to Verity's feelings for his queen, and was glad the night hid my face from her.
"Would this Skill were a thing I could learn …. Do you know how often and how angry I have felt with you, solely because you could reach forth to the one I longed for, and know his mind and heart so easily? Jealousy is an ugly thing, and always I have tried to set it aside from me. But sometimes it seems so monstrously unfair that you are joined to him in such a way, and I am not."
It had never occurred to me that she might feel such a thing. Awkwardly, I pointed out, "The Skill is as much curse as it is gift. Or so it has been to me. Even if it were a thing I could gift you with, my lady, I do not know that is a thing one would do to a friend."
"To feel his presence and his love for even a moment, Fitz … for that I would accept any curse that rode with it. To know his touch again, in any form … can you imagine how I miss him?"
"I think I can, my lady," I said quietly. Molly. Like a hand gripping my heart. Chopping hard winter turnips on the tabletop. The knife was dull, she would ask Burrich to put an edge on it if he ever came in from the rain. He was cutting wood to take down to the village and sell tomorrow. The man worked too hard, his leg would be hurting him tonight.
"Fitz? FitzChivalry!"
I snapped back to Kettricken shaking me by the shoulders.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly. I rubbed at my eyes and laughed. "Irony. All my life, it has been so difficult to use the Skill. It came and went like the wind in a ship's sails. Now I am here, and suddenly Skilling is as effortless as breathing. And I hunger to use it, to find out what is happening to those I love best. But Verity warns me I must not, and I must believe he knows best."
"As must I," she agreed wearily.
We stood a moment longer in the dimness, and I fought a sudden impulse to put my arm around her shoulders and tell her it would be all right, that we would find her husband and king. Briefly, she seemed that tall slender girl who had come from the Mountains to be Verity's bride. But now she was the Queen of the Six Duchies, and I had seen her strength. Surely she needed no comfort from one such as I.
We cut more slices of meat from the freezing boar and then rejoined our companions in the tent. Nighteyes was sleeping contentedly. The Fool had Starling's harp clutched between his knees and was using a skinning knife as a makeshift drawknife to gentle some of the frame's lines. Starling sat beside him, watching and trying not to look anxious. Kettle had taken off a little pouch she wore about her neck and opened it, and was sorting out a handful of polished stone. As Kettricken and I built up the small fire in the brazier and prepared to cook the meat, Kettle insisted on explaining the rules of a game to me. Or attempting to. She finally gave up, exclaiming, "You'll understand it when you've lost a few times."
I lost more than a few times. She kept me at it for long hours after we had eaten. The Fool continued to shave wood from Starling's harp, with many pauses to put a fresh edge on the knife. Kettricken was silent, almost moody, until the Fool noticed her melancholy mood and began to tell tales of Buckkeep life before she had come there. I listened with one ear, and even I was drawn back to those days when the Red-Ships were no more than a tale and my life had been almost secure if not happy. Somehow the talk rounded into the various minstrels that had played at Buckkeep, both famous and lesser, and Starling plied the Fool with questions about them.
I soon found myself caught up in the play of the stones. It was strangely soothing: the stones themselves were red, black, and white, smoothly polished and pleasant to hold. The game involved each player randomly drawing stones from the pouch and then placing them on the intersections of lines on a patterned cloth. It was a game at once simple and complex. Each time I won a game, Kettle immediately introduced me to more complicated strategies. It engrossed me and freed my mind from memories or ponderings. When finally all the others were already drowsing in their sleeping skins, she set up a game on the board and bade me study it.
"It can be won decisively in one move of a black stone," she told me. "But the solution is not easy to see."
I stared at the game layout and shook my head. "How long did it take you to learn to play?"
She smiled to herself. "As a child, I was a fast learner. But I will admit you are faster."
"I thought this game came from some far land."
"No, it is an old Buck game."
"I've never seen it played before."
"It was not uncommon when I was a girl, but it was not taught to everyone. But that is of no matter now. Study the layout of the pieces. In the morning, tell me the solution."
She left the pieces set up on the cloth by the brazier. Chade's long training of my memory served me well. When I lay down, I visualized the board and gave myself one black stone with which to win. There were quite a variety of possible moves, as a black stone could also claim the place of a red stone and force it to another intersection, and a red stone had similar powers over a white. I closed my eyes, but held on to the game, playing the stone in various ways until I finally fell asleep. Either I dreamed of the game, or of nothing at all. It kept the Skill dreams safely at bay, but when I awoke in the morning, I still had no solution to the puzzle she had set me.
I was the first one awake. I crawled out of the tent and returned with a pot packed full of new wet snow to melt for morning tea. It was substantially warmer outside than it had been in days. It cheered me, even as it made me wonder if spring was already a reality in the lowlands. Before my mind could start wandering, I returned to puzzling about the game. Nighteyes came to rest his head on my shoulder where I sat.
I'm tired of dreaming of rocks. Lift up your eyes and see the whole thing, little brother. It is a hunting pack, not isolated hunters. See. That one. Put the black there, and do not use the red to displace a white, but set it there to close the trap. That is all.
I was still wondering at the marvelous simplicity of Nighteyes' solution when Kettle awoke. With a grin she asked me if I had solved it yet. In answer, I took a black stone from the pouch and made the moves the wolf had suggested. Kettle's face went slack with astonishment. Then she looked up at me in awe. "No one has ever figured it out that rapidly," she told me.
"I had help," I admitted sheepishly. "It's the wolf's game, not mine."
Kettle's eyes grew round. "You are jesting with an old woman," she rebuked me carefully.
"No. I am not," I told her, as I seemed to have hurt her feelings. "I thought about it for most of the night. I believe I even dreamed about game strategies. But when I woke, it was Nighteyes who had the solution."
She was silent for a time. "I had thought that Nighteyes was … a clever pet. One who could hear your commands even if you did not speak them aloud. But now you say he can comprehend a game. Will you tell me he understands the words I speak?"
Across the tent, Starling was propped up on one elbow, listening to the conversation. I tried to think of a way to dissemble, then rejected it fiercely. I squared my shoulders as if I were reporting to Verity himself and spoke clearly. "We are Wit-bound. What I hear and understand, he comprehends as I do. What interests him, he learns. I do not say he could read a scroll, or remember a song. But if a thing intrigues him, he thinks on it, in his own way. As a wolf, usually, but sometimes almost as anyone might …"
I struggled to try and put in words something I myself did not understand perfectly. "He saw the game as a pack of wolves driving game. Not as black and red and white markers. And he saw where he would go, were he hunting with that pack, to make their kill more likely. I suppose that sometimes I see things as he sees them … as a wolf. It is not wrong, I believe. Only a different way of perceiving the world."
There was still a trace of superstitious fear in Kettle's eyes as she glanced from me to the sleeping wolf. Nighteyes chose that moment to let his tail rise and fall in a sleepy wag to indicate he was fully cognizant that we spoke of him. Kettle gave a shiver. "What you do with him … is it like Skilling from human to human, only to a wolf?"
I started to shake my head, but then had to shrug. "The Wit begins more as a sharing of feelings. Especially when I was a child. Following smells, chasing a chicken because it would run, enjoying food together. But when you have been together as long as Nighteyes and I have, it starts to be something else. It goes beyond feelings, and it's never really words. I am more aware of the animal that my mind lives inside. He is more aware of …"
Thinking. Of what comes before and after choosing to do an action. One becomes aware that one is always making choices, and considers what the best ones are.
Exactly. I repeated his words aloud for Kettle. By now Nighteyes was sitting up. He made an elaborate show of stretching and then sat looking at her, his head cocked to one side.
"I see," she said faintly. "I see." Then she got up and left the tent.
Starling sat up and stretched. "It gives one an entirely different outlook on scratching his ears," she observed. The Fool answered her with a snort of laughter, sat up in his bedding, and immediately reached to scratch Nighteyes behind the ears. The wolf fell over on him in appreciation. I growled at both of them and went back to making tea.
We were not as swift to be packed and on our way. A thick layer of damp snow overlay everything, making breaking camp that much more difficult. We cut up what was left of the boar and took it with us. The jeppas were rounded up; despite the storm, they had not wandered far. The secret seemed to be in the bag of sweetened grain that Kettricken kept to lure the leader. When we were loaded and finally ready to leave, Kettle announced that I must not be allowed to walk on the road, and that someone must always be with me. I bristled a bit at that, but they ignored me. The Fool volunteered quickly to be my first partner. Starling gave him an odd smile and a shake of her head over that. I accepted their ridicule by sulking manfully. They ignored that, too.
In a short time the women and the jeppas were moving easily up the road, while the Fool and I scrabbled alongside on the berm that marked the edge of it. Kettle turned to shake her walking stick. "Get him farther away than that!" she scolded the Fool. "Get to where you can just see us to follow us. Go on, now. Go on."
So we obediently edged back into the woods. As soon as we were out of sight of the others, the Fool turned to me and excitedly demanded, "Who is Kettle?"
"You know as much as I do," I pointed out shortly. And added a question of my own, "What is between you and Starling now?"
He lifted his eyebrows at me and winked slyly.
"I doubt that very much," I retorted.
"Ah, not all are as immune to my wiles as you are, Fitz. What can I tell you? She pines for me, she yearns for me in the depths of her soul, but knows not how to express it, poor thing."
I gave it up as a bad question. "What do you mean by asking me, `Who is Kettle?' "
He gave me a pitying glance. "It is not so complex a question, princeling. Who is this woman who knows so much of what troubles you, who suddenly fishes out of a pocket a game I have only seen mentioned once in a very old scroll, who sings for us `Six Wise Men Went to Jhaampe-Town' with two additional verses I've never heard anywhere. Who, O light of my life, is Kettle, and why does so ancient a woman choose to spend her last days hiking up a mountain with us?"
"You're in fine spirits this morning," I observed sourly.
"Aren't I?" he agreed. "And you are almost as adept at avoiding my question. Surely, you must have some musings on this mystery to share with a poor Fool?"
"She doesn't give me enough information about herself to base any wondering on," I returned.
"So. What can we surmise about one who guards her tongue as closely as all that? About someone who seems to know something of the Skill as well? And the ancient games of Buck, and old poetry? How old do you suppose she is?"
I shrugged. "She didn't like my song about Crossfire's coterie," I offered suddenly.
"Ah, but that could easily have been just your singing. Let's not grasp at straws, here."
In spite of myself, I smiled. "It has been so long since your tongue has had an edge to it, it's almost a relief to hear you mock me.'
"Had I known you missed it, I would have been rude to you much sooner." He grinned. Then he grew more serious. "FitzChivalry, mystery hovers about that woman like flies on … spilt beer. She absolutely reeks of omens and portents and prophecies coming into focus. I think it is time one of us asked her a few direct questions." He smiled at me. "Your best chance will be when she is shepherding you along this afternoon. Be subtle, of course. Ask her who was king when she was a girl. And why she was exiled."
"Exiled?" I laughed aloud. "There's a leap of the imagination."
"Do you think so?. I don't. Ask her. And be sure to tell me whatever she doesn't say."
"And in return for all this, you will tell me what is truly going on between you and Starling?"
He gave me a sideways glance. "Are you sure you want to know? The last time we made such a trade, when I gave you the secret you'd bargained for, you found you did not want it."
"Is this such a secret?"
He arched one eyebrow at me. "You know, I am hardly certain of the answer to that myself. Sometimes you surprise me, Fitz. More often, you don't, of course. Most often I surprise myself. Such as when I volunteer to slog through loose snow and dodge trees with some bastard when I could be parading up a perfectly straight avenue with a string of charming jeppas."
I got as little information from him the rest of the morning. When afternoon came, it was not Kettle but Starling who was my walking companion. I expected that to be uncomfortable. I still had not forgotten that she had bargained her knowledge of my child in order to be part of this expedition. But somehow in the days since we had begun our journey, my anger had become a weary wariness toward her. I knew now there was no bit of information she would scruple to use against me, and so I guarded my tongue, resolving to say nothing at all of Molly or my daughter. Not that it would do much good now.
But to my surprise, Starling was affable and chatty. She plied me with questions, not about Molly, but about the Fool, to the point at which I began to wonder if she had conceived a sudden affection for him. There had been a few times at court when women had taken an interest in him and pursued him. To those who were attracted by the novelty of his appearance, he had been mercilessly cruel in exposing the shallowness of their interest. There had been one gardener maid who was impressed with his wit so much that she was tongue-tied in his presence. I heard kitchen gossip that she left bouquets of flowers for him at the base of his tower stairs, and some surmised that she had occasionally been invited to ascend those steps. She had had to leave Buckkeep Castle to care for her elderly mother in a distant town, and that had been where it ended, as far as I knew.
Yet as slight as this knowledge of the Fool was, I kept it from Starling, turning aside her questions with banalities that the two of us were childhood friends whose duties had left us very little time for socializing. This was actually very close to the truth, but I could see it both frustrated and amused her. Her other questions were as odd. She asked if I had ever wondered what his true name was. I told her that not being able to recall the name my own mother had given me had left me chary of asking others such questions. That quieted her for a time, but then she demanded to know how he had dressed as a child. My descriptions of his seasonal motleys did not suit her, but I truthfully told her that until Jhaampe I had never seen him dressed in other than his jester's clothes. By afternoon's end, her questions and my answers had more of sparring in them than conversation. I was glad to join the others in a camp, pitched at quite a distance from the Skill road.
Even so, Kettle kept me busy, letting me do her chores as well as my own for the sake of occupying my mind. The Fool concocted a respectable stew from our supplies and the pork. The wolf contented himself with another leg off the animal. When the meal things were finally cleared away, Kettle immediately set out the gamecloth and pouch of stones. "Now we shall see what you have learned," she promised me.
But half a dozen games later, she squinted up at me with a frown. "You were not lying!" she accused me.
"About what?"
"About the wolf devising the solution. Had you mastered that strategy yourself, you would play a different game now. Because someone gave you the answer rather than your discovering it yourself, you don't fully understand it."
At the moment the wolf rose and stretched. I weary of stones and cloth, he informed me. My hunting is more fun, and offers real meat at the end of it.
So you are hungry?
No. Bored. He nosed the flap of the tent open and slipped out into the night.
Kettle watched him go with pursed lips. "I was about to ask if you could not team together to play this game. It would interest me to see how you played."
"I think he suspected that," I muttered, a bit disgruntled that he had not invited me to join him.
Five games later, I grasped the brilliant simplicity of Nighteyes' noose tactic. It had lain before me all that time, but suddenly it was as if I saw the stones in motion rather than resting on the vertices of the cloth's pattern. In my next move, I employed it to win easily. I won the next three games handily, for I saw how it could be employed in a reverse situation as well.
At the fourth win, Kettle cleared the cloth of stones. Around us the others had already sunk into sleep. Kettle added a handful of twigs to the brazier to give us one last burst of light. Rapidly her knotted old fingers set out the stones on the cloth. "Again, this is your game, and it is your move," she informed me. "But this time, you have only a white stone to place. A little weak white stone, but it can win for you. Think well on this one. And no cheating. Leave the wolf out of it."
I stared at the situation to fix the game in my mind and then lay down to sleep. The game she had set out for me looked hopeless. I did not see how it could be won with a black stone, let alone a white one. I do not know if it were the stone game or our distance from the road, but I sank quickly into a sleep that was dreamless until near dawn. Then I joined the wolf in his wild running. Nighteyes had left the road far behind him and was joyously exploring the surrounding hillsides. We came on two snow cats feeding off a kill, and for a time he taunted them, circling just out of reach to make them hiss and spit at us. Neither would be lured from the meat and after a time we gave up the game to head back for the yurt. As we approached the tent, we circled stealthily about the jeppas, scaring them into a defensive bunch and then nudging them along to mill about just outside the tent. When the wolf crept back into the tent, I was still with him as he poked the Fool rudely with an icy nose.
It is good to see you have not lost all spirit and fun, he told me as I unlocked my mind from his and roused up in my own body.
Very good, I agreed with him. And rose to face the day.