ONE THING I have learned well in my travels. The riches of one region are taken for granted in another. Fish we would not feed to a cat in Buckkeep is prized as a delicacy in the inland cities. In some places water is wealth, in others the constant flooding of the river is both an annoyance and a peril. Fine leather, graceful pottery, glass as transparent as air, exotic flowers … all of these I have seen in such plentiful supply that the folk who possess them no longer see them as wealth.
So perhaps, in sufficient quantity, magic becomes ordinary. Instead of a thing of wonder and awe, it becomes the stuff of roadbeds and signposts, used with a profligacy that astounds those who have it not.
That day I traveled, as before, across the face of a wooded hillside. At first the flank of the hill was broad and gentle. I could walk in sight of the road and only slightly below it on the hillside. The huge evergreens held most of the burden of winter snow above me. The footing was uneven and there were occasional patches of deep snow but walking was not too difficult. By the end of that day, however, the trees were beginning to dwindle in size and the slope of the hill was markedly steeper. The road hugged the hillside, and I walked below it. When it came time to camp that night, my companions and I were hard-pressed to find a level place to pitch the tent. We scrabbled quite a way down the hill before we found a place where it leveled. When we did have the yurt up, Kettricken stood looking back up at the road and frowning to herself. She took out her map and was consulting it by the waning daylight when I asked her what the matter was.
She tapped the map with a mittened finger and then gestured to the slope above us. "By tomorrow, if the road keeps climbing and the slopes get steeper, you won't be able to keep pace with us. We'll be leaving the trees behind us by evening tomorrow. The country is going to be bare, steep and rocky. We should take firewood with us now, as much as the jeppas can easily carry." She frowned. "We may have to slow our pace to allow you to match us."
"I'll keep up," I promised her.
Her blue eyes met mine. "By the day after tomorrow, you may have to join us on the road." She looked at me steadily.
"If I do, then I'll have to cope with it." I shrugged and tried to smile despite my uneasiness. "What else can I do?"
"What else can any of us do?" she muttered to herself in reply.
That night when I had finished cleaning the cooking pots, Kettle once again set out her cloth and stones. I looked at the spread of pieces and shook my head. "I haven't worked it out," I told her.
"Well, that is a relief," she told me. "If you, or even if you and your wolf had, I would have been too astonished for words. It's a difficult problem. But we shall play a few games tonight, and if you keep your eyes open and your wits sharp, you may see the solution to your problem."
But I did not, and lay down to sleep with gamecloth and pieces scattered in my brain.
The next day's walk went as Kettricken had foretold. By noon I was scrabbling through brushy places and over tumbles of bared rock with Starling at my heels. Despite the breathless effort the terrain demanded, she was full of questions, and all about the Fool. What did I know of his parentage? Who had made his clothing for him? Had he ever been seriously ill? It had become routine for me to answer her by giving her little or no information. I had expected her to weary of this game, but she was as tenacious as a bulldog. Finally, I rounded on her in exasperation and demanded to know exactly what it was about him that fascinated her so.
A strange look came to her face, as one who steels oneself to a dare. She started to speak, paused, and then could not resist. Her eyes were avid on my face as she announced, "The Fool is a woman, and she is in love with you."
For a moment it was as if she had spoken in a foreign language. I stood looking down on her and trying to puzzle out what she had meant. Had she not begun to laugh, I might have thought of a reply. But something in her laughter offended me so deeply that I turned my back on her and continued making my way across the steep slope.
"You're blushing!" she called from behind me. Merriment choked her voice. "I can tell from the back of your neck! All these years, and you never even knew? Never even suspected?"
"I think it's a ridiculous idea," I said without even looking back.
"Really? What part of it?"
"All of it," I said coldly.
"Tell me you absolutely know that I'm wrong."
I didn't dignify her taunt with an answer. I did forge through a patch of thick brush without pausing to hold the branches back for her. I know she knew I was getting angry, because she was laughing. I pushed my way clear of the last of the trees and stood looking out over a nearly sheer rock face. There was almost no brush, and cracked gray stone pushed up in icy ridges through the snow. "Stay back!" I warned Starling as she pushed up beside me. She looked around me and sucked in her breath.
I looked up the steep hillside to where the road was scored across the mountain's face like a gouge in a piece of wood. It was the only safe way across that sheer mountain face. Above us was the steep boulder strewn mountainside. It was not quite sheer enough to call it a cliff: There was a scattering of wind-warped trees and bushes, some with roots straggling over the rocky soil as much as in it. Snow frosted it unevenly. Climbing up to the road would be a challenge. The slope we traversed had been getting steeper all morning. I should not have been surprised, but I had been so intent on picking the best path that it had been some time since I had looked up to the road.
"We'll have to return to the road," I told Starling and she nodded mutely.
It was easier said than done. In several places I felt rock and scree slew under my feet, and more than once I went on all fours. I could hear Starling panting behind me. "Only a little farther!" I called back to her as Nighteyes came toiling up the slope beside us. He passed us effortlessly, moving by leaps up the slope until he reached the edge of the road. He disappeared over the edge of it, and then returned to stand on the lip looking down at us. In a moment the Fool appeared beside him, to gaze down at us anxiously. "Need any help?" he called down.
"No. We'll make it!" I called back up to him. I paused, crouching and clinging to the trunk of a stunted tree, to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my eyes. Starling halted behind me. And suddenly I felt the road above me. It had a current like a river, and as the current of a river stirs the air to wind over it, so did the road. It was a wind not of winter cold, but of lives, both distant and near. The Fool's strange essence floated on it, and Kettle's closemouthed fear and Kettricken's sad determination. They were as separate and recognizable as the bouquets of different wines.
"FitzChivalry!" Starling emphasized my name by hitting me between the shoulder blades.
"What?" I asked her absently.
"Keep moving! I can't cling here much longer, my calves are cramping! "
"Oh." I found my body and climbed the remaining distance to the lip of the road. The flowing Skill made me effortlessly aware of Starling behind me. I could feel her placing her feet and gripping the scraggly mountain willow at the edge of the cliff. I stood for an instant on the lip of the road's edge. Then I stepped down, onto the smooth surface of the road, slipping into its pull like a child slipping into a river.
The Fool had waited for us. Kettricken was at the head of the line of jeppas, looking back anxiously to watch us join them. I took a deep breath and felt as if I were gathering myself together. Beside me, Nighteyes suddenly flipped my hand with his nose.
Stay with me, he suggested. I felt him groping for a firmer grip on our bond. That I could not help him alarmed me. I looked down into his deep eyes and suddenly found a question.
```You're on the road. I didn't think animals could come on the road.
He gave a sneeze of disgust. There's a difference between thinking an action is wise and doing it. And you might have noticed that the jeppas have been traveling on the road for some days.
It was too obvious. Why do the wild animals avoid it then?
Because we still depend on ourselves for survival. The jeppas depend on humans, and will follow them into any danger, no matter how foolish it seems to them. Thus they have not the sense to run from a wolf, either. Instead they flee back to you humans when I scare them. It's a lot like horses or cattle and rivers. Left to themselves, they swim them only if death is right behind them, from predators or starvation. But humans convince them to swim rivers any time the human wishes to be on the other side. I think they are rather stupid.
So why are you on this road? I asked him with a smile.
Do not question friendship, he told me seriously.
"Fitz!"
I startled, and turned to Kettle. "I'm fine," I told her, even as I knew I was not. My Wit sense usually made me very aware of others around me. But Kettle had walked up right behind me and I'd not noticed until she spoke to me. Something about the Skill road was dulling my Wit. When I did not think specifically of Nighteyes, he faded into a vague shadow in my mind.
I'd be less than that, were I not striving to stay with you, he pointed out worriedly.
"It will be all right. I just have to pay attention," I told him.
Kettle assumed I was speaking to her. "Yes, you do." Pointedly she took my arm and started me walking. The others had gone ahead. Starling was walking with the Fool, and singing some love ditty as she walked, but he was looking over his shoulder worriedly at me. I gave him a nod and he nodded back uneasily. Beside me, Kettle pinched my arm. "Pay attention to me. Talk to me. Tell me. Have you solved the game problem I gave you?"
"Not yet," I admitted. The days were warmer, but the wind that blew past us now still brought the threat of ice on the higher mountain peaks. If I thought about it, I could feel the cold on my cheeks, but the Skill road bade me ignore it. The road was steadily climbing now. Even so, I seemed to walk effortlessly on its surface. My eyes told me that we were going uphill, but I strode along as easily as if it were down.
Another pinch from Kettle. "Think about the problem," she bade me curtly. "And do not be deceived. Your body labors and is cold. Simply because you are not constantly aware of it does not mean you can ignore it. Pace yourself."
Her words seemed both foolish and wise. I realized that by hanging on to my arm, she was not only supporting herself but was forcing me to walk more slowly. I shortened and slowed my stride to match hers. "The others seem to take no harm from it," I observed to her.
"True. But they are neither old nor Skill-sensitive. They will ache tonight, and tomorrow they will slow their pace. This road was built with the assumption that those who used it would be either unaware of its more subtle influences, or trained in how to manage them."
"How do you know so much about it?" I demanded.
"Do you want to know about me, or about this road?" she snapped angrily.
"Both, actually," I told her.
She didn't answer that. After a time she asked me, "Do you know your nursery rhymes?"
I don't know why it made me so angry. "I don't know!" I retorted. "I don't recall my earliest childhood, when most children learn them. I suppose you could say I learned stable rhymes instead. Shall I recite for you the fifteen points of a good horse?"
"Recite for me instead `Six Wisemen Went to Jhaampe Town'!" she snarled. "In my days, children were not only taught their learning rhymes, they knew what they meant. This is the hill in the poem, you ignorant pup! The one no wise man goes up and expects to come down again!"
A shiver walked down my spine. There have been a few times in my life when I have recognized some symbolic truth in a way that stripped it down to its most frightening bones. This was one. Kettle had brought to the forefront of my mind a thing I had known for days. "The Wisemen were Skilled ones, weren't they?" I asked softly. "Six, and five, and four … coteries, and the remains of coteries …" My mind skipped up the stair of logic, substituting intuition for most of the steps. "So that's what became of the Skilled ones, the old one we could not find. When Galen's coterie did not work well, and Verity needed more help to defend Buck, Verity and I sought for older Skilled ones, folk who had been trained by Solicity before Galen became Skillmaster," I explained to Kettle. "We could find few records of names. And they had all either died, or disappeared. We suspected treachery."
Kettle snorted. "Treachery would be nothing new to coteries. But what more commonly happened is that as people grew in the Skill, they became more and more attuned to it. Eventually the Skill called them. If one were strong enough in the Skill, one could survive the trip up this road. But if she were not, she perished."
"And if one succeeded?" I asked.
Kettle gave me a sidelong glance, but said nothing.
"What is at the end of this road? Who built it, and where does it lead?"
"Verity," she said quietly at last. "It leads to Verity. You and I need know no more than that."
"But you know more than that!" I accused her. "As do I. It leads to the source of all Skill as well."
Her glance became worried, then opaque. "I know nothing," she told me sourly. Then, as conscience smote her, "There is much I suspect, and many half-truths have I heard. Legends, prophecies, rumors. Those are what I know."
"And how do you know them?" I pressed.
She turned to regard me levelly. "Because I am fated to do so. Even as you are."
And not another word on the subject would she say. Instead, she set up hypothetical game boards and demanded to know what moves I would make, given a black, red, or white stone. I tried to focus on the tasks, knowing that she gave them to me to keep my mind my own. But ignoring the Skill-force of that road was rather like ignoring a strong wind or a current of icy water. I could choose not to pay attention to it, but that did not make it stop. In the midst of puzzling out game strategy, I would wonder at the pattern of my own thoughts and believe them – not my own at all, but those of another whom I had somehow tapped. While I could keep the game puzzle in front of me, it did not stop the gallery of voices whispering in the back of my mind.
The road wound up and up. The mountain itself rose nearly sheer on our left, and dropped off as abruptly on our right. This road went where no sane builders would have placed it. Most trade routes meandered between hills and over passes. This one traversed the face of a mountain, carrying us ever higher. By the time the day was fading, we had fallen far behind the others. Nighteyes raced ahead of us and then came trotting back to report that they had come to a resting place, wide and level, where they were setting up the tent. With the coming of night, the mountain winds bit more fiercely. I was glad to think of warmth and rest, and persuaded Kettle to try to hurry.
"Hurry?" she asked. "You are the one who keeps slowing. Keep up, now."
The last march before rest always seems longest. So the soldiers of Buckkeep always told me. But that night I felt we waded through cold syrup, so heavy did my feet seem. I think I kept pausing. I know that several times Kettle tugged at my arm and told me to come along. Even when we rounded a fold in the mountainside and saw the lit tent ahead of us, I could not seem to make myself move faster. As if in a fever dream, my eyes brought the tent closer to me, and then set it afar. I plodded on. Multitudes whispered around me. The night dimmed my eyes. I had to squint to see in the cold wind. A crowd streamed past us on the road, laden donkeys, laughing girls carrying baskets of bright yarn. I turned to watch a bell merchant pass us. He carried a rack high on his shoulder, and dozens of brass bells of every shape and tone jingled and rang as he walked along. I tugged at Kettle's arm to bid her turn and see it, but she only seized my hand in a grip of iron and hurried me on. A boy strode past us, going down to the village with a basketful of bright mountain flowers. Their fragrance was intoxicating. I pulled free of Kettle's grip. I hurried after him, to buy, a few for Molly to scent her candles.
"Help me!" Kettle called. I looked to see what was the matter, but she was not by me. I couldn't find her in the crowd.
"Kettle!" I called. I glanced back but then realized I was losing the flowermonger. "Wait!" I called to him.
"He's getting away!" she cried, and there was fear and desperation in her voice.
Nighteyes suddenly hit me from behind, his front paws striking my shoulders. His weight and speed threw me face-first on the thin layer of snow covering the road's smooth surface. Despite my mittens, I skinned the palms of my hands and the pain in my knees was like fire. "Idiot!" I snarled at him and tried to rise, but he caught me by one ankle and flipped me down onto the road again. This time I could look down over the edge into the abyss below. My pain and astonishment had stilled the night, the folk had all vanished, leaving me alone with the wolf.
"Nighteyes!" I protested. "Let me up!"
Instead he seized my wrist in his jaws, clamped his teeth down and began to drag me on my knees away from the road's edge. I had not known he had such strength, or rather, I had never supposed it would be turned on me. I swatted at him ineffectually with my free hand, all the while yelling and trying to get to my feet. I could feel blood running on my arm where one tooth had sunk in.
Kettricken and the Fool suddenly flanked me, seizing me by my upper arms and hoisting me to my feet. "He's gone mad!" I exclaimed as Starling raced up behind them. Her face was white, her eyes huge.
"Oh, wolf," she exclaimed, and dropped to one knee to give him a hug. Nighteyes sat panting, obviously enjoying her embrace.
"What is the matter with you?" I demanded of him. He looked up at me, but did not reply.
My first reaction was a stupid one. I lifted my hands to my ears. But that had never been how I had heard Nighteyes. He whined as I did so, and I heard that clearly. It was just a dog's whine. "Nighteyes!" I cried. He reared up to stand on his hind legs, his front paws on my chest. He was so big he could almost look me in the eye. I caught an echo of his worry and desperation, but no more than that. I quested out toward him with my Witsense. I could not find him. I could not sense any of them. It was as if they had all been Forged.
I looked around at their frightened faces and realized they were talking, no, almost shouting, something about the edge of the road and the black column and what was the matter, what was the matter? For the first time it struck me how ungainly speech was. All of those separate words, strung together, every voice mouthing them differently, and this was how we communicated with each other. "Fitz, fitz, fitz," they shouted, my name, meaning me, I suppose, but each voice sounding the word differently, and each with a different image of whom they spoke to and why they needed to speak to me. The words were such awkward things, I could not concentrate on what they were trying to convey by them. It was like dealing with foreign traders, pointing and holding up fingers, smiling or frowning, and guessing, always guessing at what the other truly meant.
"Please," I said. "Hush. Please!" I only wanted them to be silent, to stop their noises and mouthings. But the sound of my own words caught my attention. "Please," I said again, marveling at all the ways my mouth must move to make that inexact sound. "Hush!" I said again, and realized the word meant too many things to have any real meaning at all.
Once, when I was very new to Burrich, he had told me to unharness a team. It was when we were still getting a measure of one another, and no task any sane man would give a child. But I managed, climbing all over the docile beasts, and unfastening every shining buckle and clasp until the harness lay in pieces on the ground. When he came to see what was taking me so long, Burrich had been mutely astounded but unable to fault that I had done what he had told me to do. As for me, I had been amazed at how many pieces there were to something that had seemed to be all one thing when I had started in on it.
So it was for me then. All these sounds to make a word, all these words to frame a thought. Language came apart in my hands. I had never stopped to consider it before. I stood before them, so drenched in the Skill-essence on that road that speech seemed as childishly awkward as eating porridge with one's fingers. Words were slow and inexact, hiding as much meaning as they revealed. "Fitz, please, you have to …" began Kettricken, and so engrossed did I become in considering every possible meaning those five words might have that I never heard the rest of what she said.
The Fool took hold of my hand and led me into the tent. He pushed at me until I sat down, and took off my hat and mittens and outer coat. Without a word, he put a hot mug into my hands. That I could understand, but the rapid, worried conversation of the others was like the frightened squawking of a coop full of chickens. The wolf came and lay down beside me, to rest his big head on one of my thighs. I reached down to stroke the broad skull and finger the soft ears. He pressed closer against me as if pleading. I scratched him behind the ears, thinking that might be what he wanted. It was terrible not to know.
I was not much use to anyone that evening. I tried to do my share of the chores, but the others kept taking them out of my hands. Several times I was pinched, or poked and bid "Wake up!" by Kettle. One time I became so fascinated by the motion of her mouth as she scolded me that I didn't realize when she walked away from me. I don't remember what I was doing when the back of my neck was seized in her clawlike grip. She dragged my head forward and kept her hold while she tapped each stone in turn on her gamecloth. She put a black stone in my hand. For a time I just stared at the markers. Then suddenly I felt that shift in perception. There was no space between me and the game. For a time I tried my pebble in various positions. I finally found the perfect move, and when I set my stone in place, it was as if my ears had suddenly cleared, or like blinking sleep from my eyes. I lifted my eyes to consider those around me.
"Sorry," I muttered inadequately. "Sorry."
"Better now?" Kettle asked me softly. She spoke as if I were a toddler.
"I'm more myself now," I told her. I looked up at her, suddenly desperate. "What happened to me?"
"The Skill," she said simply. "You just aren't strong enough in it. You nearly followed the road where it no longer goes. There is some sort of marker there, and once the road diverged there, one track going down into the valley and the other continuing across the mountainside. The downhill path is sheared off, carried away in a cataclysm years ago. There is nothing but tumbled stone at the bottom, but one can just see where the road emerges from the ruin and continues. It vanishes in another jumble of stone in the distance. Verity could not have gone there. But you nearly followed its memory to your death." She paused and looked at me severely. "In my days … you haven't been trained enough to do what you've been doing, let alone face this challenge. If this is the best you were taught … Are you certain Verity is alive?" she suddenly demanded of me. "That he survived this trial alone?"
I decided one of us had to stop keeping secrets. "I saw him, in a Skill dream. In a city, with folk such as we passed today. He laved his hands and arms in a magic river, and walked away laden with power."
"God of fishes!" Kettle swore. Something of horror and something of awe lit in her face.
"We passed no folk today," Starling objected. I had not been aware she had seated herself by me until she spoke. I jumped, startled that someone could get that close to me and I had not sensed it.
"All those who have ever trodden this road have left something of themselves upon it. Your senses are muffled to those ghosts, but Fitz walks here naked as a newborn child. And as naive." Kettle leaned back suddenly against her bedroll, and all the lines in her face deepened. "How can such a child be the Catalyst?" she asked of no one in particular. "You don't know how to save yourself from yourself. How are you going to save the world?"
The Fool leaned over from his bedroll suddenly to take my hand. Something like strength flowed into me with that reassuring touch. His tone was light, but his words sank into me. "Competence was never guaranteed in the prophecies. Only persistence. What does your White Column say? `They come like raindrops against the stone towers of time. But in time it is always the rain that prevails, not the tower.' " He gave my hand a squeeze.
"Your fingers are like ice," I told him as he let go.
"I am cold past belief," he agreed with me. He drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. "Cold and tired. But persistent."
I lifted my eyes from him to find Starling with a knowing smile on her face. Gods, how it irked me. "I have elfbark in my pack," I suggested to the Fool. "It gives warmth as well as strength."
"Elfbark," Kettle scowled, as if it were disgusting. But after a moment's reflection, she said excitedly, "Actually, that might be a good idea. Yes. Elfbark tea."
When I took the drug out of my pack, Kettle snatched it out of my hands as if I might cut myself on it. She muttered to herself as she measured tiny portions of it into mugs for us. "I've seen what kind of doses you expose yourself to," she chided me, and brewed the tea herself. She put none of it in the tea she prepared for Kettricken, Starling, and herself.
I sipped at my hot tea, tasting first the acrid bite of the elfbark and then the warmth of it in my belly. Its enervating heat spread through me. I watched the Fool, and saw him relax in its embrace, even as his eyes began to sparkle with it.
Kettricken had her map out and was frowning over it. "FitzChivalry, study this with me," the Queen suddenly commanded. I moved around the brazier to sit next to her. I was scarcely settled before she began. "I believe we are here," she told me. Her finger tapped the first juncture of the trail that was marked on the map. "Verity said he would visit all three places that were marked on the map. I believe that when this map was made, the road that you nearly followed tonight was intact. Now it is no longer there. And has not been there for some time." Her blue eyes met mine. "What do you suppose Verity did when he reached this point?"
I considered a moment. "He's a pragmatic man. This other, second destination looks no more than three or four days from here. I think he might go there first, seeking the Elderlings there. And this third one is but, oh, seven days past there. I think he would decide it would be fastest to visit those two places first. Then, if he had no success there, he might return here, to try and find a way down to … whatever's there."
She wrinkled her brow. I suddenly recalled how smooth it had been when she was first his bride. Now I seldom saw her without lines of care and worry in her face. "He has been gone long, my husband. Yet it did not take us all that long to reach here. Perhaps he has not yet returned because he is down there. Because it took him so long to find a way down there to continue his journey."
"Perhaps," I agreed uneasily. "Bear in mind that we are well supplied and travel together. By the time Verity reached this far, he would have been alone, and with few resources." I refrained from telling Kettricken that I suspected he had been injured in that last battle. There was no sense in giving her more anxiety. Against my will, I felt a part of me groping out toward Verity. I shut my eyes and resolutely sealed myself in again. Had I imagined a taint upon the Skill-current, a too-familiar feeling of insidious power? I set my walls again.
"… split the party?"
"I beg pardon, my queen," I said humbly.
I did not know if the look in her eyes was exasperation or fear. She took my hand and held it firmly. "Attend me," she commanded. "I said, tomorrow we shall seek a way down. If we see anything that looks promising, we will attempt it. But I think we should give such a search no more than three days. If we find nothing, we should move on. But an alternative is to split the party. To send …"
"I do not think we should split the party," I said hastily.
"You are most likely correct," she conceded. "But it takes so long, so very long, and I have been alone with my questions too long."
I could think of nothing to say to that, so I pretended to be busy rubbing Nighteyes' ears.
My brother. It was a whisper, no more, but I looked down at Nighteyes beside me. I rested a hand on his ruff, strengthening the bond with a touch. You were as empty as an ordinary human. I could not make you even feel me.
I know. I don't know what happened to me.
I do. You are moving ever farther from my side to the other side. I fear you will go too far and be unable to return: I feared it had already happened today.
What do you mean, my side, and the other side?
"Can you hear the wolf again?" Kettricken asked me worriedly. I was surprised, when I looked up, to see how anxiously she regarded me.
"Yes. We are together again," I told her. A thought occurred to me. "How did you know we were unable to communicate?"
She shrugged. "I suppose I assumed it. He seemed so anxious and you seemed so distant from everyone."
She has the Wit. Don't you, my queen?
I can not say for certain that something passed between them. Once, long before in Buckkeep, I thought I had sensed Kettricken using the Wit. I suppose she well could have been using it then, for my own sense of it was so diminished I could scarce sense my own bond-animal. In any case Nighteyes lifted his head to look at her and she returned his gaze steadily. With a small frown, Kettricken added, "Sometimes I wish I could speak to him as you do. Had I his speed and stealth at my disposal, I could be more certain of the safety of the road, both before us and behind. He might be able to find a path down, one not apparent to our eyes."
If you can keep your Wits about you enough to tell her what I see, I would not mind doing such a task.
"Nighteyes would be most pleased to help you in such a way, my queen," I offered.
She gave a weary smile. "Then, I suppose, if you can keep aware of both of us, you may serve as go-between."
Her eerie echoing of the wolf's thought unsettled me, but I only nodded my assent. Every aspect of conversation now demanded my complete attention, or it slipped away from me. It was like being horribly tired and having to constantly fight off sleep. I wondered if it was this hard for Verity.
There is a way to ride it, but lightly, lightly, like mastering an ill-tempered stallion who rebels against every touch of the rein or heel. But you are not ready to do so yet. So fight it, boy, and keep your head above water. I would that there were another way for you to come to me. But there is only the road, and you must follow it. No, make no reply to me. Know that there are others that listen avariciously if not as keenly as I. Be wary.
Once, in describing my father, Chivalry, Verity had said that when he Skilled it was like being trampled by a horse, that Chivalry would rush into his mind, dump out his messages, and flee. I now had a better understanding of what my uncle had meant. I felt rather like a fish suddenly deserted by a wave. There was that gaping sense of something missing in the instant after Verity's departure. It took me a moment to remember I was a person. Had I not been fortified already with the elfbark, I think I might have fainted. As it was, the drug was increasing its hold on me. I had a sense of being muffed in a warm soft blanket. My weariness was gone, but I felt muted. I finished the little that was left in my cup and waited for the flush of energy that elfbark usually gave me. It didn't come.
"I don't think you used enough," I told Kettle.
"You have had plenty," she said with asperity. She sounded like Molly did when she thought I was drinking too much. I braced myself, expecting images of Molly to fill my mind. But I stayed within my own life. I do not know if I felt relieved or disappointed. I longed to see her and Nettle. But Verity had warned me …. Belatedly I announced to Kettricken, "Verity Skilled to me. Just now." Then I cursed myself as a churl and a lackwit as I saw the hope flush her face. "It was not really a message," I amended hastily. "Just a warning reminder to me that I am to avoid Skilling. He still believes there may be others seeking me that way."
Her face fell. She shook her head to herself. Then she looked up to demand, "He had no word at all for me?"
"I do not know if he realizes you are with me," I hastily sidestepped the question.
"No words," she said dully as if she had not heard me. Her eyes were opaque as she asked. "Does he know how I have failed him? Does he know about … our child?"
"I do not believe he does, my lady. I sense no such grief in him, and well I know how it would grieve him."
Kettricken swallowed. I cursed my clumsy words, and yet, was it my place to utter words of comfort and love to his wife? She straightened up abruptly, then rose. "I think I shall bring in a bit more firewood for tonight," she announced. "And grain the jeppas. There is scarcely a twig for them to browse on here."
I watched her leave the tent for the dark and still cold outside. No one spoke a word. After a breath or two, I rose and followed her. "Don't be long," Kettle warned me enigmatically. The wolf shadowed after me.
Outside the night was clear and cold. The wind was no worse than usual. Familiar discomforts can almost be ignored. Kettricken was neither fetching wood nor graining the jeppas. I was sure both tasks had already been done earlier. Instead she was standing at the edge of the cloven road, staring out over the blackness of cliff at her feet. She stood tall and stiff as a soldier reporting to his sergeant and made not a sound. I knew she was crying.
There is a time for courtly manners, a time for formal protocol, and a time for humanity. I went to her, took her by the shoulders, and turned her to face me. She radiated misery, and the wolf beside me whined high. "Kettricken," I said simply. "He loves you. He will not blame you. He will grieve, yes, but what kind of a man would not? As for Regal's deeds, they are Regal's deeds. Do not take the blame for those to yourself. You could not have stopped him."
She wiped a hand across her face and did not speak. She looked past me, her face a pale mask in the starlight. She sighed heavily, but I could sense her strangling on her sorrow. I set my arms about my queen and pulled her to me, pressing her face to my shoulder. I stroked her back, feeling the terrible tension there. "It's all right," I lied to her. "It's going to be all right. In time, you'll see. You'll be together again, you'll make another child, both of you will sit in the Great Hall at Buckkeep and listen to the minstrels sing. There will be peace again, somehow. You've never seen Buckkeep at peace. There will be time for Verity to hunt and fish, and you'll ride at his side. Verity will laugh and shout and roar through the halls like the north wind again. Cook used to chase him out of the kitchen for slicing the meat from the roast before it was cooked through, he would come home from the chase that hungry. He'd come right in and cut the leg off a cooking fowl, that he would, and carry it about with him, telling stories in the guardroom, waving it about like a sword …"
I patted her back as if she were a child and told her tales of the bluff, hearty man I remembered from my boyhood. For a time, her forehead rested on my shoulder and she was completely still. Then she coughed once, as if starting to choke, but instead terrible sobs welled up from her. She cried suddenly and unabashedly as a child that has taken a bad fall and is hurt as well as frightened. I sensed these were tears that had long gone unshed, and I did not try to help her stop. Instead I went on talking and patting her, scarcely hearing what I was saying myself, until her sobs began to quiet and her shaking to still. At last she drew away from me a little, to grope in her pocket for a kerchief. She wiped her face and eyes and blew her nose before she tried to speak.
"I'm going to be all right," she said. To hear the strength of her belief in those words made my heart ache. "It's just … It's hard just now. Waiting to tell him all these terrible things. Knowing how they will hurt him. They taught me so many things about being Sacrifice, Fitz. From the beginning, I knew I might have terrible sorrows to bear. I am strong enough … to bear these things. But no one warned me that I might come to love the man they'd choose for me. To bear my sorrow is one thing. To bring sorrow to him is another." Her throat closed on the words and she bowed her head. I feared she might begin to weep again. Instead when she lifted her head she smiled at me. Moonlight touched the silver wetness on her cheeks and lashes. "Sometimes I think only you and I see the man beneath the crown. I want him to laugh, and roar about, and leave his bottles of ink open and his maps scattered about. I want him to put his arms about me and hold me. Sometimes I want those things so much, I forget about the Red-Ships and Regal and … everything else. Sometimes I think that, if we could only be together again, all the rest would come right as well. It is not a very worthy thought to have. A Sacrifice is supposed to be more …"
A glint of silver behind her caught my eyes. I saw the black column over her shoulder. It leaned at a cant over the broken edge of the road, half its stone support gone. I did not hear the rest of what she said. I wondered how I had not seen it before. It gleamed brighter than the moon on the sparkling snow. It was hewn of black stone webbed with glittering crystal. Like moonlight on a rippling river of Skill. I could decipher no writing on its surface. The wind was screaming behind me as I reached out and ran a hand down that smooth stone. It welcomed me.