DIMITY KEEP, a very small holding on the coast of Buck, fell shortly before Regal crowned himself King of the Six Duchies. A great many villages were destroyed in that dread time, and there has never been a true count made of all the lives that were lost. Small keeps like Dimity were frequent targets for the Red-Ships. Their strategy was to attack simple villages and the smaller holdings to weaken the overall defense line. Lord Bronze, to whom the Keep of Dimity was entrusted, was an old man, but nonetheless he led his men in defending his small castle: Unfortunately, heavy taxation for general coastline protection had drained his resources for some time, and Dimity Keep's defenses were in poor repair. Lord Bronze was among the first to fall. The Red-Ships took the keep almost easily, and reduced it with fire and sword to the rubble-strewn mound that it is today.
Unlike the Skill road, the road we traveled the next day had experienced the full ravages of time. Doubtless once a wide thoroughfare, it had been narrowed by the encroachments of the forest to little more than a track. While to me it seemed almost carefree to march down a road that did not at every moment threaten to steal my mind from me, the others muttered about the hummocks, upthrust roots, fallen branches, and other obstacles we scrambled through all day. I kept my thoughts to myself and enjoyed the thick moss that overlaid the once-cobbled surface, the branchy shade of the bud-leafed trees that overarched the road, and the occasional patter of fleeing animals in the underbrush.
Nighteyes was in his element, racing ahead and then galloping back to us, to trot purposefully along beside Kettricken for a time. Then he would go ranging off again. At one time he came dashing back to the Fool and me, tongue lolling, to announce that tonight we would hunt wild pig, for their sign was plentiful. I relayed this to the Fool.
"I did not lose any wild pigs. Therefore, I shall not hunt for any," he replied loftily. I rather agreed with his sentiments. Burrich's scarred leg had made me more than wary of the great tusked animals.
Rabbits, I suggested to Nighteyes. Let us hunt rabbits.
Rabbits for rabbits, he snorted disdainfully, and dashed off again.
I ignored the insult. The day was just pleasantly cool for hiking and the verdant forest smells were like a homecoming to me. Kettricken led us on, lost in her own thoughts, while Kettle and Starling followed us, caught up in talk. Kettle still tended to walk more slowly, though the old woman seemed to have gained stamina and strength since our journey had begun. But they were a comfortable distance behind us when I quietly asked the Fool, "Why do you allow Starling to believe you are a woman?"
He turned to me, waggled his eyebrows and blew me a kiss. "And am I not, fair princeling?"
"I'm serious," I rebuked him. "She thinks you are a woman and in love with me. She thought that we had a tryst last night."
"And did we not, my shy one?" He leered at me outrageously.
"Fool," I said warningly.
"Ah." He sighed suddenly. "Perhaps the truth is, I fear to show her my proof, lest ever afterward she find all other men a disappointment." He gestured meaningfully at himself.
I looked at him levelly until he grew sober. "What does it matter what she thinks? Let her think whatever is easiest for her to believe."
"Meaning?"
"She needed someone to confide in and, for a time, chose me. Perhaps it was easier for her to do that if she believed I was a woman, also." He sighed again. "That is one thing that in all my years among your folk I have never become accustomed to. The great importance that you attach to what gender one is."
"Well, it is important …" I began.
"Rubbish!" he exclaimed. "Mere plumbing, when all is said and done. Why is it important?"
I stared at him, at a loss for words. It all seemed so obvious to me as to not need saying. After a time, I said, "Could you not simply tell her you are a man and let the issue be laid to rest?"
"That would scarcely lay it to rest, Fitz," he replied judiciously. He clambered over a fallen tree and waited for me to follow. "For then she would need to know why, if I am a man, I do not desire her. It would have to be either a fault in me, or something I perceived as a fault in her. No. I do not think anything needs to be said on that topic. Starling, however, has the minstrel's failing. She thinks that everything in the world, no matter how private, should be a topic for discussion. Or better yet, made into a song. Ah, yes!"
He struck a sudden pose in the middle of the forest trail. His stance was so artfully reminiscent of Starling when she readied herself to sing that I was horrified. I glanced back at her as the Fool launched into sudden, hearty song:
"Oh, when the Fool pisses
Pray tell, what's the angle?
Did we take down his pants
Would he dimple or dangle?"
My eyes darted from Starling to the Fool. He bowed, an embroidery of the elaborate bow that often marked the end of her performances. I wanted at once to laugh aloud and to sink into, the earth. I saw Starling redden and start forward, but Kettle caught at her sleeve and said something severely. Then they both glared at me. It was not the first time that one of the Fool's escapades had embarrassed me, but it was one of the most keenly edged ones. I made a helpless gesture back at them, then rounded on the Fool. He was capering down the path ahead of me. I hastened to catch up with him.
"Did you ever stop to think you might hurt her feelings?" I asked him angrily.
"I gave it as much thought as she gave to whether such an allegation might hurt mine." He rounded on me suddenly, wagging a long finger. "Admit it. You asked that question with never a thought as to whether it would hurt my vanity. How would you feel if I demanded proof that you were a man? Ah!" His shoulders slumped suddenly and he seemed to lose all energy. "Such a thing to waste words on, with all else we must confront. Let it go, Fitz, and I will as well. Let her refer to me as `she' as much as she wishes. I will do my best to ignore it."
I should have left it alone. I did not. "It is only that she thinks that you love me," I tried to explain.
He gave me an odd look. "I do."
"I mean, as a man and a woman love."
He took a breath. "And how is that?"
"I mean …" It half-angered me that he pretended not to understand me. "For bedding. For …"
"And is that how a man loves a woman?" he interrupted me suddenly. "For bedding?"
"It's a part of it!" I felt suddenly defensive but could not say why.
He arched an eyebrow at me and said calmly, "You are confusing plumbing and love again."
"It's more than plumbing!" I shouted at him. A bird abruptly flew off, cawing. I glanced back at Kettle and Starling, who exchanged puzzled glances.
"I see," he said. He thought a bit as I strode ahead of him on the path. Then, from behind me he called out, "Tell me, Fitz, did you love Molly or that which was under her skirts?"
Now it was my turn to be affronted, But I was not going to let him baffle me into silence. "I love Molly and all that is a part of her," I declared. I hated the heat that rose in my cheeks.
"There, now you have said it," the Fool replied as if I had proven his point for him. "And I love you, and all that is a part of you." He cocked his head and the next words held a challenge. "And do you not return that to me?"
He waited. I desperately wished I had never started this discussion. "You know I love you," I said at last, grudgingly. "After all that has been between us, how can you even ask? But I love you as a man loves another man …." Here the Fool leered at me mockingly. Then a sudden glint lit his eyes, and I knew that he was about to do something awful to me.
He leaped to the top of a fallen log. From that height, he gave Starling a triumphant look and cried dramatically, "He loves me, he says! And I love him!" Then with a whoop of wild laughter he leapt down and raced ahead of me on the trail.
I ran my hand back through my hair and then slowly clambered over the log. I heard Kettle laughing and Starling's angry comments. I walked silently through the forest, wishing I'd had the sense to keep my mouth shut. I was certain that Starling was simmering with fury. It was bad enough that lately she had almost no words for me. I had accepted that she found my Wit something of an abomination. She was not the first to be dismayed by it at least she showed some tolerance for me. But now the anger she carried would have a more personal bite to it. One more small loss of what little I had left. A part of me greatly missed the closeness we had shared for a time. I missed the human comfort of having her sleep against my back, or suddenly take my arm when we were walking. I thought I had closed my heart against those needs, but I suddenly missed that simple warmth.
As if that thought had opened a breach in my walls, I suddenly thought of Molly. And Nettle, both in danger because of me. Without warning, my heart was in my throat. I must not think of them, I warned myself, and reminded myself that there was nothing I could do. There was no way I could warn them without betraying them. There was no possible way I could reach them before Regal's henchmen did. All I could do was trust to Burrich's strong right arm, and cling to the hope that Regal did not truly know where they were.
I jumped over a trickling creek and found the Fool waiting for me on the other side. He said nothing as he fell into pace beside me. His merriment seemed to have deserted him.
I reminded myself that I scarcely knew where Molly and Burrich were. Oh, I knew the name of a nearby village, but as long as I kept that to myself, they were safe.
"What you know, I can know."
"What did you say?" I asked the Fool uneasily. His words had replied so exactly to my thoughts that it sent a chill up my spine.
"I said, what you know, I can know," he repeated absently.
"Why?"
"Exactly my thought. Why would I wish to know what you know?"
"No. I mean, why did you say that?"
"In truth, Fitz, I've no idea. The words popped into my head and I said them. I often say things I have not well considered." The last he said almost as an apology.
"As do I," I agreed. I said no more to him, but it bothered me. He seemed, since the incident at the pillar, to be much more of the Fool I remembered from Buckkeep. I welcomed his sudden growth in confidence and spirits but I also worried that he might have too much faith in events flowing as they should. I also recalled that his sharp tongue was more prone to bare conflicts than resolve them. I myself had felt its edge more than once, but in the context of King Shrewd's court, I had expected it. Here, in such a small company, it seemed to cut more sharply. I wondered if there were any way I could soften his razor humor. I shook my head to myself, then resolutely dredged up Kettle's latest game problem and kept it before my mind even as I clambered over-forest debris and sidestepped hanging branches.
As late afternoon wore on, our path led us deeper and deeper into a valley. At one point the ancient trail afforded a view of what lay below us. I glimpsed the green-beaded, trailing branches of willows coming into leaf and the rose-tinged trunks of paper birches presiding over a deeply grassed meadow. Beyond I saw the brown standing husks of last year's cattails deeper in the vale. Toe lush rankness of the grasses and ferns foretold swampland as surely as the green smell of standing water did. When the ranging wolf came back wet to his flanks, I knew I was right.
Before long we came to where an energetic stream had long ago washed out a bridge and devoured the road to either side of it. Now it trickled shining and silver in a gravelly bed, but the fallen trees on either bank attested to its flood time fury. A chorus of frogs stilled suddenly at our approach. I went rock to rock to get past it with dry feet. We had not gone far before a second stream crossed our path. Given a choice of wet feet or wet boots, I chose the former. The water was icy. The only kindness was that it numbed my feet from the stones in its bed. On the far side I put my boots back on. Our small company had closed its ranks as the trail grew more difficult. Now we continued to march silently together. Blackbirds called and early insects hummed.
"So much life here," Kettricken said softly. Her words seemed to hang in the still sweet air. I found myself nodding in agreement. So much life around us, both green and animal. It filled my Wit-sense and seemed to hang in the air like a mist. After the barren stones of the mountains and the deserted Skill road, this abundance of life was heady.
Then I saw the dragon.
I halted in my tracks and lifted my arms out in a sudden gesture for both stillness and silence that all seemed to recognize. All of my companions' gazes followed mine. Starling gasped and the hackles on the wolf stood up. We stared at it, as unmoving as it was.
Golden and green, he sprawled under the trees in their dappled shade. He was far enough off the trail that I could only see patches of him through the trees, but those were impressive enough. His immense head, as long as a horse's body, rested deep in the moss. His single eye that I could see was closed. A great crest of feather-scales, rainbow hued, lay lax about his throat.
Similar tufts above each eye looked almost comical, save that there could be nothing comical about a creature so immense and so strange. I saw a scaled shoulder, and winding between two trees, a length of tail. Old leaves were heaped about it like a sort of nest.
After a long breathless moment, we exchanged glances. Kettricken raised her eyebrows at me, but I deferred to her with a tiny shrug. I had no concept of what dangers it might present, or how to face them. Very slowly and silently I drew my sword. It suddenly looked like a very silly weapon. As well face a bear with a table knife. I don't know how long our tableau held. It seemed an endless time. My muscles were beginning to ache with the strain of remaining motionless. The jeppas shifted impatiently, but held their places in line as long as Kettricken kept their leader still. At last Kettricken made a small silent motion, and slowly started our party forward again.
When I could no longer see the slumbering beast, I began to breathe a bit easier. Just as quickly, reaction set in. My hand ached from gripping my sword hilt and all my muscles suddenly went rubbery. I wiped my sweaty hair back from my face. I turned to exchange a relieved look with the Fool, only to find him staring beyond me with unbelieving eyes. I turned hastily, and like flocking birds, the others mimed my gesture. Yet again we halted, silently transfixed, to stare at a sleeping dragon.
This one sprawled in the deep shade of evergreen trees. Like the first, she nestled deep in moss and forest debris. But there the resemblance ended. Her long sinuous tail was coiled and wrapped around her like a garland, and her smoothly scaled hide shone a rich, coppery brown. I could see wings folded tight to her narrow body. Her long neck was craned over her back like a sleeping goose's and the shape of her head was birdlike also, even to a hawklike beak. From the creature's brow spiraled up a shining horn, wickedly sharp at the tip. The four limbs folded beneath her put me more in mind of a hind than a lizard. To call both these creatures dragons seemed a contradiction, yet I had no other word for beings such as these.
Again we stood silent and staring while the jeppas shifted restlessly. Abruptly Kettricken spoke. "I do not think they are living beings. I think they are clever carvings of stone."
My Wit-sense told me otherwise. "They are alive!" I cautioned her in a whisper. I started to quest toward one, but Nighteyes near panicked. I drew my mind-touch back. "They sleep very deeply, as if still hibernating from the cold weather. But I know they are alive."
While Kettricken and I were speaking, Kettle went to decide it for herself. I saw Kettricken's eyes widen, and turned to look back at the dragon, fearing it was awakening. Instead I saw Kettle place her withered hand on the creature's still brow. Her hand seemed to tremble as she touched it, but then she smiled, almost sadly, and stroked her hand up the spiraling horn. "So beautiful," she mused. "So cunningly wrought."
She turned back to us all. "Mark how last year's vine twined about her tail tip. See how deeply she lies in the fallen leaves of a score of years. Or perhaps a score of scores. Yet each tiny scale still gleams, so perfectly fashioned is she!"
Starling and Kettricken started forward with exclamations of wonder and delight, and were soon crouched by the sculpture, calling each other's attention to crafted detail after detail. The individual scales of each wing, the fluidly graceful looping of the tail coils and every other marvel of the artist's design were admired. Yet while they pointed and touched so avidly, the wolf and I held back. Hackles stood up all along Nighteyes' back. He did not growl; instead he gave a whine so high it was almost like a whistle. After a moment, I realized the Fool had not joined the others. I turned to find him regarding it from afar, as a miser might look on a pile of gold larger even than his dreams. There was the same sort of wideness to his eyes. Even his pale cheeks seemed to hold a rosy flush.
"Fitz, come and see! It is only cold stone, carved so well as to appear alive. And look! There is another, with the antlers of a stag and the face of a man!" Kettricken lifted a hand to point and I glimpsed yet another figure sprawled sleeping on the forest floor. They all departed the first effigy to regard this new one, exclaiming anew over the beauty and details of it.
I moved myself forward on leaden feet, the wolf pressed tightly to my side. When I stood next to the horned one, I could see for myself the fuzzy sac of spiderwebs affixed in the hollow of one hoofed foot. The creature's ribs did not move with the pumping of any lungs, nor did I feel any body warmth at all. I finally forced myself to set a hand to the cold, carved stone. "It's a statue," I said aloud, as if to force myself to believe what my Witsense denied. I looked around me, past the stagman that Starling still admired, to where Kettle and Kettricken stood smiling by yet another sculpture. Its boarlike body sprawled on its side, and the tusks that protruded from its snout were as long as I was tall. In all ways it resembled the forest pig that Nighteyes had killed, save for its immense size and the wings tucked close to its side.
"I spy at least a dozen of these things," the Fool announced. "And, behind those trees, I found another carved column such as we have seen before." He set a curious hand to the skin of the sculpture, then almost winced away at the cold contact.
"I cannot believe they are lifeless stone," I told him.
"I, too, have never seen such realistic detail in a carving," he agreed.
I did not try to tell him he had misunderstood me. Instead, I stood pondering a thing. Here, I sensed life, but there was only cold stone under my hand. It had been the opposite with Forged ones; savage life obviously motivated their bodies, yet my Witsense regarded them as but cold stone. I groped for some sort of connection but found only the odd comparison.
I glanced about me but found my companions scattered throughout the forest, moving from sculpture to sculpture, and calling to one another in delight as they discovered new ones under clambering ivy or engulfed in fallen leaves. I drifted after them slowly. It seemed to me that this might be the destination marked on the map. It almost certainly was, if the old mapmaker had had his scale correct. And yet, why? What was important about these statues? The significance of the city I had seen at once; it might have been the original habitation of the Elderlings. But this?
I hastened after Kettricken. I found her by a winged bull. He slept, legs folded under him, powerful shoulders bunched, heavy muzzle dropped to his knees. It was a perfect replica of a bull in every way, from its wide sweep of horns to its tufted tail. His cloven hooves were buried beneath the forest loam, but I did not doubt they were there. She had stretched her arms wide to span the sweep of his horns. Like all the others, he had wings, folded in repose on his wide black back.
"May I see the map?" I asked her, and she started out of her reverie.
"I've already checked it," she told me quietly. "I am convinced this is the marked area. We passed the remains of two stone bridges. That corresponds to what is shown on the map. And the marking on the column the Fool found corresponds to one you copied in the city for this destination. I think we are on what was once the shore of a lake. That is how I've been reading the map, anyway."
"The shores of a lake." I nodded to myself as I considered what Verity's map had shown me. "Perhaps. Perhaps it silted in and became swamp. But then, what do all these statues signify?"
She made a vague gesture around at the forest. "A garden or park of some kind, perhaps?"
I looked around us and shook my head. "Not like any garden I've ever seen. The statues seem random. Should not a garden possess unity and theme? At least, so Patience taught me. Here I see only sprawled statues, with no sign of paths or beds or … Kettricken? Are all the statues of sleeping creatures?"
She frowned to herself for a moment. "I believe so. And I think that all are winged."
"Perhaps it is a graveyard," I ventured. "Perhaps there are tombs beneath these creatures. Perhaps this is some strange heraldry, marking the burial places for different families."
Kettricken looked about us, considering. "Perhaps it is so. But why would that be marked on the map?"
"Why would a garden?" I countered.
We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the area. We found a great many more animals. There were all kinds and a variety of styles, but all were winged and sleeping. And they had been here a very long time. A closer examination showed me that these great trees had grown around the statues, the statues had not been placed around them. Some were almost captured by the encroaching moss and leaf mold. Of one, little remained to be seen save a great toothed snout projecting from a boggy bit of ground. The bared teeth shone silver and the tips were sharp.
"Yet I found not a single one with a chip or a crack. Everyone looks as perfect as the day it was created. Nor can I decide how the colors were put to the stone. It does not feel like paint or stain, nor does it appear weathered by the years."
I was expounding my thoughts slowly to the others as we sat about our campfire that evening. I was trying to work Kettricken's comb through my wet hair. In the late afternoon, I had slipped away from the others, to wash thoroughly for the first time since we had left Jhaampe. I had also attempted to wash out some of my clothes. When I returned to camp, I had found that all of the others had had much the same ideas. Kettle was moodily draping wet laundry on a dragon to dry. Kettricken's cheeks were pinker than usual and she had rebraided her wet hair into a tight queue. Starling seemed to have forgotten her earlier anger at me. Indeed, she seemed to have forgotten entirely about the rest of us. She stared at the flames of the campfire, a musing look on her face, and I could almost see the tumbling words and notes as she fit them together. I wondered what it was like, if it was like solving the game puzzles that Kettle set for me. It seemed odd to watch her face, knowing a song was unfolding in her mind.
Nighteyes came to lean his head against my knee. I do not like denning in the midst of these living stones, he confided to me.
"It does seem as if at any moment they might awaken," I observed.
Kettle had settled with a sigh to the earth beside me. She shook her old head slowly. "I do not think so," she said quietly. She almost sounded as if she grieved.
"Well, as we cannot fathom their mystery, and what remains of the road has ended here, we shall leave them tomorrow and resume our journey," Kettricken announced.
"What will you do," the Fool asked quietly, "if Verity is not at the last map destination?"
"I do not know," Kettricken confided to us quietly. "Nor shall I worry about it until it happens. I still have an action left to take; until I have exhausted it, I shall not despair."
It struck me then that she spoke as if considering a game, with one final move left that might yet lead to victory. Then I decided that I had spent too much time focusing on Kettle's game problems. I yanked a last snarl from my hair and pulled it back into a tail.
Come hunt with me before the last light is gone, the wolf suggested.
"I think I shall hunt with Nighteyes tonight," I announced as I stood and stretched. I raised one eyebrow at the Fool, but he seemed lost in thought and made no response. As I stepped, away from the fire, Kettricken asked me, "Are you safe, alone?"
"We are far from the Skill road. This has been the most peaceful day I've known in some time. In some ways."
"We may be far from the Skill road, but we are still in the heart of a land once occupied by Skill users. They have left their touch everywhere. You cannot say, while you walk these hills, that you are safe. You should not go alone."
Nighteyes whined low in his throat, anxious to be gone. I longed to go hunt with him, to stalk and chase, to move through the night with no human thoughts. But I would not discount Kettle's warning.
"I'll go` with him," Starling offered suddenly. She rose, dusting her hands on her hips. If anyone besides myself thought it was strange, no one made sign of it. I expected at least a mocking farewell from the Fool, but he continued to gaze off into the darkness. I hoped he was not getting sick again.
Do you mind if she goes with us? I asked Nighteyes.
In reply he gave a small sigh of resignation, and trotted away from the fire. I followed him more slowly and Starling followed me.
"Shouldn't we catch up with him?" she asked me several moments later. The forest and the deepening dusk were closing in around us. Nighteyes was nowhere to be seen, but then, I did not need to see him.
I spoke, not in a whisper, but very low. "When we hunt, we move independently of one another. When one of us starts up some game, the other comes swiftly, either to intercept, or to join in the chase."
My eyes had adjusted to the dark. Our quest led us away from the statues, into a forest night innocent of man's workings. Spring smells were strong, and the songs of frogs and insects were all around us. I soon struck a game trail and began to move along it. Starling came behind me, not silently, but not awkwardly either. When one moves through the forest by day or by night, one can either move with it or against it. Some people know how to do it instinctively; others never learn. Starling moved with the forest, ducking under hanging branches and sidestepping others as we wove our way through the night. She did not try to force her way through the thickets we encountered, but turned her body to avoid being caught on the twiggy branches.
You are so aware of her, you will not see a rabbit if you step on it! Nighteyes chided me.
At that moment, a hare started from a bush right beside my path. I sprang after it, going doubled over to follow it on the game trail. It was far faster than I, but I knew it would most likely circle. I also knew that Nighteyes was also moving swiftly to intercept it. I heard Starling hurrying after me but had no time to think of her as I kept the rabbit in sight as it dodged around trees and under snags. Twice I nearly had it, and twice it doubled away from me. But the second time it doubled, it raced straight into the jaws of the wolf. He sprang, pinned it to the earth with his front paws, then seized its small skull in his jaws. As he stood, he gave it a sharp shake, snapping its neck.
I was opening its belly and spilling its entrails out for the wolf when Starling caught up with us. Nighteyes snapped the guts up with relish. Let's find another, he suggested, and moved swiftly off into the night.
"He always gives up the meat to you like that?" Starling asked me.
"He doesn't give it up. He lets me carry it. He knows that, now is the best hunting, and so he hopes to kill again swiftly. If not, he knows I will keep meat safe for him, and that we will share later." I secured the dead rabbit to my belt. I started off through the night, the warm body flopping lightly against my thigh as I walked.
"Oh." Starling followed. A short time later, as if in answer to something I'd said, she observed, "I do not find your Wit-bond with the wolf offensive."
"Neither do I," I replied quietly. Something in her choice of words nettled me. I continued to prowl along the trail, eyes and ears alert. I could hear the soft pad, pad, pad of Nighteyes feet off to my left and ahead of me. I hoped he would scare game toward me.
A short time later, Starling added, "And I will stop calling the Fool `she.' Whatever I may suspect."
"That's good," I told her noncommittally. I did not slow my pace.
I truly doubt you will be much good as hunter this night.
This is not of my choosing.
I know.
"Do you want me to apologize as well?" Starling asked in a low strained voice.
"I … uh," I stammered, and fell silent, unsure of what this was all about.
"Very well then," she said in an icily determined voice. "I apologize, Lord FitzChivalry."
I rounded on her. "Why are you doing this?" I demanded. I spoke in a normal voice. I could sense Nighteyes. He was already topping the hill, hunting alone now.
"My lady queen bid me stop spreading discord within the company. She said that Lord FitzChivalry carried many burdens I could not know of, and did not deserve to bear also my disapproval," she informed me carefully.
I wondered when all this had come to pass, but dared not ask it. "None of this is necessary," I said quietly. I felt oddly shamed, like a spoiled child who had sulked until the other children gave in. I took a deep breath, determined to simply speak honestly and see what came of it. "I do not know what made you withdraw your friendship, save that I disclosed my Wit to you. Nor do I understand your suspicions of the Fool, or why they seem to anger you. I hate this awkwardness between us. I wish we could be friends, as we were before." "You do not despise me, then? For giving my witness that you claimed Molly's child as your get?"
I groped inside me after the lost feelings. It had been long since I had even thought about it. "Chade already knew of them." I said quietly. "He would have found a way, even if you had not existed. He is very … resourceful. And I have come to understand that you do not live by the same rules that I do."
"I used to," she said softly. "A long time ago. Before the keep was sacked and I was left for dead. After that, it was hard to believe in the rules. Everything was taken from me. All that was good and beautiful and truthful was laid waste by evil and lust and greed. No. By something even baser than lust and greed, some drive I could not even understand. Even while the Raiders were raping me, they seemed to take no pleasure in it. At least, not the kind of pleasure … They mocked my pain and struggling. Those who watched were laughing as they waited." She was looking past me into the darkness of the past. I believe she spoke as much to herself as me, groping to understand something that defied meaning. "It was as if they were driven, but not by any lust or greed that could be sated. It was a thing they could do to me, so they did it. I had always believed, perhaps childishly, that if you followed the rules, you would be protected, that things like that would not happen to you. Afterward, I felt … tricked. Foolish. Gullible, that I had thought ideals could protect me. Honor and courtesy and justice … they are not real, Fitz. We all pretend to them, and hold them up like shields. But they guard only against folk who carry the same shields. Against those who have discarded them, they are no shields at all, but only additional weapons to use against their victims."
I felt dizzied for an instant. I had never heard a woman speak of something like that so dispassionately. Mostly it was not spoken of at all. The rapes that occurred during a raid, the pregnancies that might follow, even the children that Six Duchies women bore to the Red-Ship Raiders were seldom spoken of as such. I suddenly realized we had been standing still a long time. The chill of the spring night was reaching me. "Let's go back to the camp," I suggested abruptly.
"No," she said flatly. "Not yet. I fear I may cry, and if I do, I'd rather do it in the dark."
It was getting close to full dark. But I led her back to a wider game trail, and we found a log to sit down on. Around us, the frogs and insects filled the night with mating songs.
"Are you all right?" I asked her after we had sat some time in the silence.
"No. I am not," she said shortly. "I need to make you understand. I did not sell your child cheaply, Fitz. I did not betray you casually. At first, I did not even think of it that way. Who would not want her daughter to become a princess, and eventually a queen? Who would not want lovely clothes and a fine home for his child? I did not think that you or your woman would see it as a misfortune befalling her."
"Molly is my wife," I said quietly, but I truly believe she did not hear me.
"Then, even after I knew it would not please you, I did it anyway. Knowing it would buy me a place here, at your side, witnessing … whatever it is you are going to do. Seeing strange sights no minstrel has ever sung of before, like those statues today. Because it was my only chance at a future. I must have a song, I must witness something that will assure me forever of a place of honor among minstrels. Something that will guarantee me my soup and wine when I am too old to travel from keep to keep."
"Couldn't you have settled for a man to share your life and children?" I asked quietly. "It seems to me you have no problem catching a man's eye. Surely there must be one that …"
"No man wants a barren woman to wed," she said. Her voice went flat, losing its music. "At the fall of Dimity Keep, Fitz, they left me for dead. And I lay there among the dead, sure that I would die soon, for I could not imagine continuing to live. Around me buildings were burning and injured folk were screaming and I could smell flesh scorching …." She stopped speaking. When she resumed, her voice was a bit more even. "But I didn't die. My body was stronger than my will. On the second day, I dragged myself to water. Some other survivors found me. I lived, and was better off than many. Until two months later. By then I was sure that what had been done to me was worse than killing me. I knew I carried a child fathered by one of those creatures.
"So I went to a healer, who gave me herbs that did not work. I went to her again, and she warned me, saying if they had not worked, then I had better leave it to happen. But I went to another healer, who gave me a different potion. It … made me bleed. I shook the child loose from me, but the bleeding did not stop. I went back to the healers, both of them, but neither could help me.
They said it would stop on its own, in time. But the one told me that it was likely I would never have other children." Her voice tightened, then thickened. "I know you think it slatternly, the way I am with men. But once you have been forced, it is … different. Ever after. I say to myself, Well, I know that it can happen to me at any time. So this way, at least I decide with whom and when. There will never be children for me, and hence there will never be a permanent man. So why should not I take my pick of what I can have? You made me question that for a time, you know. Until Moonseye. Moonseye proved me right again. And from Moonseye I came to Jhaampe, knowing that I was free to do whatever I must do to assure my own survival. For there will be no man and no children to look after me when I am old." Her voice went brittle and uneven as she said, "Sometimes I think it were better had they Forged me…"
"No. Never say that. Never." I feared to touch her, but she turned suddenly and burrowed her face against me. I put an arm around her and found her trembling. I felt compelled to confess my stupidity. "I did not understand. When you said Burl's soldiers had raped some of the women… I did not know you had suffered that."
"Oh." Her voice was very small. "I had thought you deemed it unimportant. I have heard it said in Farrow that rape bothers only virgins and wives. I thought perhaps you felt that to one such as I, it was no more than my due."
"Starling!" I felt an irrational flash of anger that she could have believed me so heartless. Then I thought back. I had seen the bruises on her face. Why had not I guessed? I had never even spoken to her of how Burl had broken her fingers. I had assumed she had known how that had sickened me, that she knew it was Burl's threat of greater damage to her that had kept me leashed. I had thought that she withdrew friendship from me because of my wolf. What had she believed of my distance?
"I have brought much pain into your life," I confessed. "Do not think I do not know the value of a minstrel's hands. Or that I discount the violation of your body. If you wish to speak of it, I am ready to listen. Sometimes, talking helps."
"Sometimes it does not," she countered. Her grip on me suddenly tightened. "The day you stood before us all, and spoke in detail of what Regal had done to you. I bled for you that day. It did not undo anything that was done to you. No. I do not want to talk about it, or think about it."
I lifted her hand and softly kissed the fingers that had been broken on my account. "I do not confuse what was done to you with who you are," I offered. "When I look at you, I see Starling Birdsong the minstrel."
She nodded her face against me, and I knew it was as I surmised. She and I shared that fear. We would not live as victims.
I said no more than that, but only sat there. It came to me again that even if we found Verity, even if by some miracle his return would shift the tides of war and make us victors, for some the victory would come far too late. Mine had been a long and weary road, but I still dared to believe that at the end of it there might be a life of my own choosing. Starling had not even that. No matter how far inland she might flee, she would never escape the war. I held her closer and felt her pain bleed over into me. After a time, her trembling stilled.
"It's full dark," I said at last. "We had best go back to the camp."
She sighed, but she straightened up. She took my hand. I started to lead her back to camp, but she tugged back on my hand. "Be with me," she said simply. "Just for here and just for now. With gentleness and friendship. To take the … other away. Give me that much of yourself."
I wanted her. I wanted her with a desperation that had nothing to do with love, and even, I believe, little to do with lust. She was warm and alive and it would have been sweet and simple human comfort. If I could have been with her, and somehow arisen from it unchanged in how I thought of myself and what I felt for Molly, I would have done so. But what I felt for Molly was not something that was only for when we were together. I had given Molly that claim to me; I could not rescind it simply because we were apart for a time. I did not think there were words that could make Starling understand that in choosing Molly I was not rejecting her. So instead I said, "Nighteyes comes. He has a rabbit."
Starling stepped close to me. She ran a hand up my chest to the side of my neck. Her fingers traced the line of my jaw and caressed my mouth. "Send him away," she said quietly.
"I could not send him far enough that he would not know everything of what we shared," I told her truthfully.
Her hand on my face was suddenly still. "Everything?" she asked. Her voice was full of dismay.
Everything. He came and sat down beside us. Another rabbit dangled in his jaws.
"We are Wit-bonded. We share everything."
She took her hand from my face and stood clear of me. She stared down at the dark shape of the wolf. "Then all I just told you …"
"He understands it in his own way. Not as another human would, but …"
"How did Molly feel about that?" she abruptly demanded.
I took a sharp breath. I had not expected our conversation to take this turn. "She never knew," I told her. Nighteyes started back to the camp. I followed him more slowly. Behind me came Starling.
"And when she does know?" Starling pressed. "She will just accept this … sharing?"
"Probably not," I muttered unwillingly. Why did Starling always make me think of things I had avoided considering?
"What if she forces you to choose between her and the wolf?"
I halted in my tracks for an instant. Then I started walking again, a bit faster. The question hung around me, but I refused to think about it. It could not be, it could never come to that. Yet a voice whispered inside me, "If you tell Molly the truth, it will come to that. It must."
"You are going to tell her, aren't you?" Starling relentlessly asked me the one question I was hiding from.
"I don't know," I said grimly.
"Oh," she said. Then after a time, she added, "When a man says that, it usually means, `No, I won't, but from time to time, I'll toy with the idea, so I can pretend I eventually intend to do it.' "
"Would you please shut up?" There was no strength in my words.
Starling followed me silently. After a time, she observed, "I don't know who to pity. You, or her."
"Both of us, perhaps," I suggested stonily. I wanted no more words about it.
The Fool was on watch when we got back to camp. Kettle and Kettricken were asleep. "Good hunting?" he asked in a comradely way as we approached.
I shrugged. Nighteyes was already gnawing his way through the rabbit he had carried. He sprawled contentedly by the Fool's feet. "Good enough." I held up the other rabbit. The Fool took it from me and casually hung it from the tent pole.
"Breakfast," he told me calmly. His eyes darted to Starling's face, but if he could tell she had been weeping, he made no jest of it. I don't know what he read in my face, for he made no comment on it. She followed me into the tent. I pulled off my boots and sank gratefully into my bedding. When I felt her settle herself against my back a few moments later, I was not very surprised. I decided it meant she had forgiven me. It did not make it easy to fall asleep.
But eventually I did. I had set up my walls, but somehow I managed a dream of my very own. I dreamed that I sat by Molly's bed and watched over her as she and Nettle slept. The wolf was at my feet, while in the chimney corner the Fool sat on a stool and nodded to himself well pleased. Kettle's gamecloth was spread on the table, but instead of stones, it had tiny statues of different dragons in white and black. The red stones were ships, and it was my move. I had the piece in my hand that could win the game, but I only wished to watch Molly sleep. It was almost a peaceful dream.