EARLY IN OUR resistance to the Red-Ships, before anyone in the Six Duchies had begun to call it a war, King Shrewd and Prince Verity realized that the task facing them was overwhelming. No individual man, no matter how Skilled, could stand alone to fend the Red-Ships from our coasts. King Shrewd summoned before him Galen, the Skillmaster, and directed him to create for Verity a coterie to aid the prince's efforts. Galen resisted this idea, especially when he found that one of those he must train was a royal bastard. The Skillmaster declared that none of the students presented to him were worthy of training. But King Shrewd insisted, telling him to make the best of them that he could. When Galen grudgingly gave in, he created the coterie that bore his name.
It soon became apparent to Prince Verity that the coterie, while internally cohesive, did not work well with the prince at all. By then Galen had died, leaving Buckkeep with no successor to the post of Skillmaster. In desperation, Verity sought for others trained in the Skill who might come to his aid. Although there had been no coteries created in the peaceful years of King Shrewd's reign, Verity reasoned that there might still live men and women trained for coteries before that. Had not the longevity of coterie members always been legendary? Perhaps he could find one who would either help him, or be able to train others in the Skill.
But Prince Verity's efforts in this area availed him nothing. Those he could identify as Skill users from records and word of mouth were all either dead, or mysteriously vanished. So Prince Verity was left to wage his war alone.
Before I could press Kettle to clarify her answers, there was a cry from Verity's tent. Every one of us jumped, but Kettle was the first to the tent flap. The Fool emerged, gripping his left wrist in his right hand. He went straight to the water bucket and plunged in his hand. His face was contorted with either pain or fear, perhaps both. Kettle stalked after him to peer at the hand he gripped.
She shook her head in disgust. "I warned you! Here, take it out of the water, it won't do it any good. Nothing will do it any good. Stop. Think about it. It's not really pain, it's just a sensation you've never felt before. Take a breath. Relax. Accept it. Accept it. Breathe deep, breathe deep."
All the while she spoke, she tugged at the Fool's arm until he reluctantly drew his hand from the water. Kettle immediately overset the bucket with her foot. She scuffed rock dust and gravel over the spilled water, all the while gripping the Fool's arm. I craned my neck to peer past her. His first three fingers on his left hand were now tipped with silver. He looked at them with a shudder. I had never seen the Fool so unnerved.
Kettle spoke firmly. "It won't wash off: It won't wipe off. It's with you now, so accept it. Accept it."
"Does it hurt?" I asked anxiously.
"Don't ask him that!" Kettle snapped at me. "Don't ask him anything just now. See to the King, FitzChivalry, and leave the Fool to me."
In my worry over the Fool, I had all but forgotten my king. I stooped to enter the tent. Verity sat on two folded blankets. He was struggling to lace up one of my shirts. I deduced that Starling had ransacked all the packs to find clean clothes for him. It smote me to see him so thin that one of my shirts fit him.
"Allow me, my king," I suggested.
He not only dropped his hands away, he put them behind his back. "Is the Fool much hurt?" he asked me as I fought with the knotted strings. He sounded almost like my old Verity.
"Just three fingertips are silvered," I told him. I saw that the Fool had laid out a brush and thong. I stepped behind Verity, and began to brush his hair back. He hastily snatched his hands around in front of him. Some of the gray in his hair had been rock dust, but not all. His warrior's queue was now gray with black streaks in it and coarse as a horse's tail. I struggled to smooth it back. As I tied the thong I asked him, "What does it feel like?"
"These?" he asked, holding up his hands and waggling the fingers. "Oh. Like Skill. Only more so, and on my hands and arms."
I saw he thought he had answered my question. "Why did you do it?" I asked.
"Well, to work the stone, you know. When this power is on my hands, the stone must obey the Skill. Extraordinary stone. Like the Witness Stones in Buck, did you know that? Only they are not nearly as pure as what is here. Of course, hands are poor tools for working stone. But once you have cut away all the excess, down to where the dragon waits, then he can be awakened with your touch. I draw my hands over the stone, and I recall to it the dragon. And all that is not dragon shivers away in shards and chips. Very slowly, of course. It took a whole day just to reveal his eyes."
"I see," I murmured, at a loss. I did not know whether he was mad or if I believed him.
He stood up as far as he could in the low tent. "Is Kettricken angry with me?" he asked abruptly.
"My lord king, it is not for me to say …"
"Verity," he interrupted wearily. "Call me Verity, and for Eda's sake, answer the question, Fitz."
He sounded so like his old self I wanted to embrace him. Instead, I said, "I do not know if she is angry. She is definitely hurt. She came a long and weary way to find you, bearing terrible news. And you did not seem to care."
"I care, when I think of it," he said gravely. "When I think of it, I grieve. But there are so many things I must think of, and I cannot think of them all at once. I knew when the child died, Fitz. How could I not know? He, too, and all I felt, I have put into the dragon."
He walked slowly away from me, and I followed him out of the tent. Outside, he stood up straight, but did not lose the stoop in his shoulders. Verity was an old man now, far older than Chade somehow. I did not understand that, but I knew it was true. Kettricken glanced up at his approach. She looked back into the fire, and then, almost unwillingly she stood, stepping clear of the sleeping wolf. Kettle and Starling were binding the Fool's fingers in strips of cloth. Verity went straight to Kettricken and stood beside her. "My queen," he said gravely. "If I could, I would embrace you. But you have seen that my touch …" He gestured at the Fool and let his words trail away.
I had seen the look on her face when she had told Verity about the stillbirth. I expected her to turn aside from him, to hurt him as he had hurt her. But Kettricken's heart was larger than that. "Oh, my husband," she said, and her voice broke on the words. He held his silvered arms wide, and she came to him, taking him in her embrace. He bowed his gray head over the rough gold of her hair, but could not allow his hand to touch her. He turned his silvered cheek away from her. His voice was husky and broken as he asked her, "Did you give him a name? Our son?"
"I named him according to the customs of your land." She took a breath. The word was so soft I scarce heard it. "Sacrifice," she breathed. She clung to him tightly and I saw his thin shoulders convulse in a sob.
"Fitz!" Kettle hissed at me sharply. I turned to find her scowling at me. "Leave them alone," she whispered. "Make yourself useful. Get a plate for the Fool."
I had been staring at them. I turned away, shamed to have been gawking, but glad to see them embrace, even in sorrow. I did as Kettle had ordered, getting food for myself at the same time. I took the plate to the Fool. He sat cradling his injured hand in his lap.
He looked up as I sat beside him. "It doesn't rub off on anything else," he complained. "Why did it cling to my fingers?"
"I don't know."
"Because you're alive," Kettle said succinctly. She sat down across from us as if we needed supervising.
"Verity told me he can shape rock with his fingers because of the Skill on them," I told her.
"Is your tongue hinged in the middle so that it flaps at both ends? You talk too much!" Kettle rebuked me.
"Perhaps I would not talk too much if you spoke a bit more," I replied. "Rock is not alive."
She looked at me. "You know that, do you? Well, what is the point of my talking when you already know everything?" She attacked her food as if it had done her a personal wrong.
Starling joined us. She sat down beside me, her plate on her knees and said, "I don't understand about the silvery stuff on his hands. What is it?"
The Fool snickered into his plate like a naughty child when Kettle glared at her. But I was getting tired of Kettle's evasions. "What does it feel like?" I asked the Fool.
He glanced down at his bandaged fingers. "Not pain. Very sensitive. I can feel the weave of the threads in the bandages." His eyes started to get distant: He smiled. "I can see the man who wove it, and I know the woman who spun it. The sheep on the hillside, rain falling on their thick wool, and the grass they ate … wool is from grass, Fitz. A shirt woven from grass. No, there is more. The soil, black and rich and …"
"Stop it!" Kettle said harshly. And she turned to me angrily. "And you stop asking him, Fitz. Unless you want him to follow it too far and be lost forever." She gave the Fool a sharp poke. "Eat your food."
"How is it you know so much about the Skill?" Starling suddenly asked her.
"Not you, too!" Kettle angrily declared: "Is there nothing private anymore?"
"Among us? Not much," the Fool replied, but he was not looking at her. He was watching Kettricken, her face still puffy from weeping, as she dished up food for herself and Verity. Her worn and stained clothing, her rough hair and chapped hands and the simple, homely task she performed for her husband should have made her seem like any woman. But I looked at her and saw perhaps the strongest queen that Buckkeep had ever known.
I watched Verity wince slightly as he took from her hand the simple wooden dish and spoon. He shut his eyes a moment, struggling against the pull of the implement's history. He composed his face and took a mouthful of food. Even across camp from him, I felt the sudden awakening of plain hunger. It was not just hot food he had been long without, it was solid sustenance of any kind. He took a shuddering breath and began to eat like a starved wolf.
Kettle was watching him. A look of pity crossed her face. "No. Very little privacy left for any of us," she said sadly.
"The sooner we get him back to Jhaampe, the sooner he can get better," Starling said soothingly. "Should we start tomorrow, do you think? Or give him a few days of food and rest to rebuild his strength?"
"We shall not be taking him back to Jhaampe," Kettle said, an undercurrent of sadness in her voice. "He has begun a dragon. He cannot leave it." She looked around at us levelly. "The only thing we can do for him now is stay here and help him finish it."
"With Red-Ships torching the entire coastline of the Six Duchies and Farrow attacking the Mountains, we should stay here and help the King carve a dragon?" Starling was incredulous.
"Yes. If we want to save the Six Duchies and the Mountains, that is exactly what we should do. Now, you will excuse me. I think I shall put on more meat to cook. Our king looks as if he could use it."
I set my empty plate aside. "We should probably cook it all. In this weather, meat will sour fast," I unwisely said.
I spent the next hour butchering the pig into portions that could dry cook over the fire all night. Nighteyes awoke and helped dispose of scraps until his belly was distended. Kettricken and Verity sat talking quietly. I tried not to watch them, but even so, I was aware that his gaze frequently strayed from her to the dais where his dragon crouched over us. The low rumble of his voice was hesitant, and often died away altogether until prompted by another question from Kettricken.
The Fool was amusing himself by touching things with his Skillfingers: a bowl, a knife, the cloth of his shirt. He met Kettle's scowls with a benign smile. "I'm being careful," he told her once.
"You have no idea of how to be careful," she complained. "You won't know you've lost your way until you're gone." She got up from our butchery with a grunt and insisted on rebandaging his fingers. After that, she and Starling left together to get more firewood. The wolf got up with a groan and followed them.
Kettricken helped Verity into the tent. After a moment she reappeared to go into the main tent. She emerged carrying her bedding. She caught my quick glance and abashed me by meeting my eyes squarely. "I have taken your long mittens from your pack, Fitz," she told me calmly. Then she joined Verity in the smaller tent. The Fool and I looked everywhere except at each other.
I went back to my cutting on the meat. I was tired of it. The smell of the pig was suddenly the smell of something dead rather than that of fresh meat and I had smears of sticky blood up to my elbows. The worn cuffs of my shirt were soaked with it. I continued doggedly with my task. The Fool came to crouch beside me.
"When my fingers brushed Verity's arm, I knew him," he said suddenly. "I knew he was a worthy king for me to follow, as worthy as his father before him. I know what he intends," he added in a lower voice. "It was too much for me to grasp at first, but I have been sitting and thinking. And it fits in with my dream about Realder."
A shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with chill. "What?" I demanded.
"The dragons are the Elderlings," the Fool said softly. "But Verity could not wake them. So he carves his own dragon, and when it is finished, he will waken it, and then he will go forth to fight the Red-Ships. Alone."
Alone. That word struck me. Once again, Verity expected to fight the Red-Ships alone. But there was too much I didn't quite grasp. "All the Elderlings were dragons?" I asked. My mind went back to all the fanciful drawings and weavings of Elderlings I had ever seen. Some had been dragon like, but …"
"No. The Elderlings are dragons. Those carved creatures back in the stone garden. Those are the Elderlings. King Wisdom was able to wake them in his time, to rouse them and recruit them to his cause. They came to life for him. But now they either sleep too deeply or they are dead. Verity spent much of his strength trying to rouse them in every way he could think of. And when he could not, he decided that he would have to make his own Elderling, and quicken it, and use it to fight the Red-Ships."
I sat stunned. I thought of the Wit-life both the wolf and I had sensed crawling through those stones. With a sudden pang, I remembered the trapped anguish of the girl on a dragon statue in this very quarry. Living stone, trapped and flightless forever. I shuddered. It was a different kind of dungeon.
"How is it done?"
The Fool shook his head. "I don't know. I don't think Verity himself knows. He blunders toward it, blind and groping. He shapes the stone, and gives it his memories. And when it is finished, it will come to life. I suppose."
"Do you hear what you are saying?" I asked him. "Stone is going to rise, and defend the Six Duchies from the Red-Ships. And what of Regal's troops and the border skirmishes with the Mountain Kingdom? Will this `dragon' drive them off as well?" Slow anger was building in me. "This is what we have come all this way for? For a tale I would not expect a child to believe?"
The Fool looked mildly affronted. "Believe it or not as you choose. I but know that Verity believes it. Unless I am much mistaken, Kettle believes it as well. Why else would she insist we must stay here, and help Verity complete the dragon?"
For a time, I pondered this. Then I asked him, "Your dream about Realder's dragon. What do you recall of it?"
He gave a helpless shrug. "The feelings of it, mostly. I was exuberant and joyful, for not only was I announcing Realder's dragon, but he was going to fly me on it. I felt I was a bit in love with him, you know. That sort of lift to the heart. But …" He faltered. "I cannot recall if I loved Realder or his dragon. In my dream, they are mingled … I think. Recalling dreams is so hard. One must seize them as soon as one awakes, and quickly repeat them to oneself, to harden the details. Otherwise they fade so quickly."
"But in your dream, did a stone dragon fly?"
"I was announcing the dragon in my dream, and knew I was to fly upon it. I had not yet seen it, in my dream."
"Then maybe it has nothing to do at all with what Verity does. Perhaps, in the time from which your dream came, there were real dragons, of flesh and blood."
He looked at me curiously. "You do not believe there are real dragons, today?"
"I have never seen one."
"In the city," he pointed out quietly.
"That was a vision of a different time, You said today."
He held one of his own pale hands up to the firelight. "I think they are like my kind. Rare, but not mythical. Besides, if there were no dragons of flesh and blood and fire, whence would come the idea for these stone carvings?"
I shook my head wearily. "This conversation goes in circles. I am tired of riddles and guesses and beliefs. I want to know what is real. I want to know why we came all this way, and what it is we must do."
But the Fool had no answers to that. When Kettle and Starling got back with the wood, he helped me layer the fire and arrange the meat where the heat would drive the fat from it. What meat we could not set to cook, we bundled aside in the pigskin. There was a sizable pile of bones and scraps. Despite how he had gorged earlier, Nighteyes settled down with a leg bone to gnaw. I surmised he had regurgitated part of his bellyful somewhere.
There is no such thing as having too much meat in reserve, he told me contentedly.
I made a few attempts to needle Kettle into talking to me, but somehow it evolved into a lecture on how much more aware of the Fool I must be now. He must be protected, not only from Regal's coterie, but from the Skill-pull of objects that might take his mind wandering. For that reason, she wished us to stand our watches together. She insisted the Fool must sleep on his back, his bared fingers upturned so they touched nothing. As the Fool usually slept huddled in a ball, he was not overly pleased. But at last we settled for the night.
I was not due to take my watch until the hours before dawn. But it was short of that when the wolf came to push his nose under my cheek and jog my head until I opened my eyes.
"What?" I demanded tiredly.
Kettricken walks alone, weeping.
I doubted she would want my company. I also doubted that she should be alone. I rose noiselessly and followed the wolf out of the tent. Outside, Kettle sat by the fire, poking disconsolately at the meat. I knew she must have seen the Queen leave, so I did not dissemble.
"I'm going to go find Kettricken."
"Probably a good idea," she said quietly. "She told me she was going to look at his dragon, but she has been gone longer than that."
We needed to say no more about it. I followed Nighteyes as he trotted purposefully away from the fire. But he led me, not toward Verity's dragon, but back through the quarry. There was little moonlight, and what there was the looming black blocks of stone seemed to drink away. Shadows seemed to fall in all different directions, altering perspective. The need for caution made the quarry vast as I picked my way along in the wolf's wake.
My skin prickled as I realized we were going in the direction of the pillar. But we found her before we reached there. She was standing, motionless as the stone itself, by the girl on the dragon. She had clambered up onto the block of stone that mired the dragon, and reached up to lay a hand on the girl's leg. A trick of the moonlight made it look as if the girl's stone eyes looked down at her. Light sparkled silver on a stone tear, and glistened on the tears on Kettricken's face. Nighteyes padded lightly up, leaped weightlessly upon the dais, and leaned his head against Kettricken's leg with a tiny whine..
"Hush," she told him softly. "Listen. Can you hear her weeping? I can."
I did not doubt it, for I could feel her questing out with the Wit, more strongly than I had ever sensed it from her before.
"My lady," I said quietly.
She startled, her hand flying to her mouth as she turned to me.
"I beg your pardon. I did not mean to frighten you. But you should not be out here alone. Kettle fears there may still be danger from the coterie, and we are not so far from the pillar."
She smiled bitterly. "Wherever I am, I am alone. Nor can I think of anything they could do to me worse than what I have done to myself."
"That is only because you do not know them as well as I do. Please, my queen, come back to the camp with me."
She moved and I thought she would step down to me. Instead she sat down and leaned back against the dragon. My Wit-sense of the dragon-girl's misery was echoed by Kettricken's. "I just wanted to lie beside him," she said quietly. "To hold him. And to be held. To be held, Fitz. To feel … not safe. I know none of us are safe. But to feel valued. Loved. I did not expect more than that. But he would not. He said he could not touch me. That he dared not touch anything live save his dragon." She turned her head aside. "Even with his hands and arms gloved, he would not touch me."
I found myself clambering up the dais. I took her by the shoulders and drew her to her feet. "He would if he could," I told her. "This I know. He would if he could."
She lifted her hands to cover her face, and her silent sliding tears suddenly became sobs. She spoke through them. "You … and your Skill. And him. You speak so easily of knowing what he feels. Of love. But I … I don't have that. I am only … I need to feel it, Fitz. I need to feel his arms about me, to be close to him. To believe he loves me. As I love him. After I have failed him in so many ways. How can I believe … when he refuses to even …" I put my arms about her and drew her head down on my shoulder, while Nighteyes leaned up against both of us and keened softly.
"He loves you," I told her. "He does. But fate has laid this burden upon both of you. It must be borne."
"Sacrifice," she breathed, and I did not know if she named her child or defined her life. She continued to weep, and I held her, soothing her hair and telling her it would get better, it had to be better someday, there would be a life for them when all this was over, and children, children growing up safe from Red-Ships or Regal's evil ambitions. In time I felt her quiet, and realized it was Wit as much as words I had been giving her. The feeling I had for her had mingled with the wolf's and joined us. Gentler than a Skill-bond, more warm and natural, I held her in my heart as much as in my arms. Nighteyes pressed up against her, telling her he would guard her, that his meat would ever be her meat, that she need fear nothing that had teeth, for we were pack, and always would be.
It was she who finally broke the embrace. She gave a final shuddering sigh, and then stepped apart from me. Her hand rose to smear the wetness on her cheeks. "Oh, Fitz," she said, simply, sadly. And that was all. I stood still, feeling the chill apartness where for a time we had been together. A sudden pang of loss assailed me. And then a shiver of fear as I realized its source. The girl on the dragon had shared our embrace, her Wit-misery briefly consoled by our closeness. Now, as we drew apart, the far, chill wailing of the stone rose up again, louder and stronger. I tried to leap lightly down from the dais, but as I landed I staggered and nearly fell. Somehow that joining had drawn strength from me. It was frightening, but I masked my uneasiness as I silently accompanied Kettricken back to the camp.
I was just in time to relieve Kettle on watch. She and Kettricken went to sleep, promising to send the Fool out to stand watch with me. The wolf gave me an apologetic glance and then followed Kettricken into the tent. I assured him I approved. A moment later the Fool emerged, rubbing his eyes with his left hand and carrying his right lightly curled against his chest. He took a seat on a stone across from me as I looked over the meat to see which pieces needed turning. For a time he watched me silently. Then he stooped, and with his right hand, picked up a piece of firewood. I knew I should rebuke him, but instead I watched, as curious as he. After a moment, he tucked the wood into the fire and straightened. "Quiet and lovely," he told me. "Some forty years of growing, winter and summer, storm and fair weather. And before that, it was borne as a nut by another tree. And so the thread goes back, over and over. –I do not think I need fear much from natural things, only those that have been wrought by man. Then the threads go raveling out. But trees, I think, will be pleasant to touch."
"Kettle said you should touch no live things," I reminded him like a tattling child.
"Kettle has not to live with this. I do. I must discover the limits it places on me. The sooner I find what I can and cannot do with my right hand, the better." He grinned wickedly, and made a suggestive gesture toward himself.
I shook my head at him, but could not keep from laughing.
He joined his laughter with my own. "Ah, Fitz," he said quietly a moment later. "You do not know how much it means to me that I can still make you laugh. If I can stir you to laughter, I can laugh myself."
"It surprises me that you can still jest at all," I replied.
"When you can either laugh or cry, you might as well laugh," he replied. Abruptly he asked, "I heard you leave the tent earlier. Then, while you were gone … I could feel something of what happened. Where did you go? There was much I did not understand."
I was silent, thinking. "The Skill-bond between us may be growing stronger instead of weaker. I do not think that is a good thing."
"There is no elfbark left. I had the last of it two days ago. Good or bad, it is as it is. Now explain to me what happened."
I saw little point in refusing. So I attempted to explain. He interrupted with a number of questions, few of which I could answer. When he decided he understood it as well as words could convey it, he quirked a smile at me. "Let us go see this girt on a dragon," he suggested.
"Why?" I asked warily.
He lifted his right hand and waggled his silver fingertips at me as he lifted one eyebrow.
"No," I said firmly.
"Afraid?" he needled me.
"We are on watch here," I told him severely.
"Then you will go with me tomorrow," he suggested.
"It is not wise, Fool. Who knows what effect it might have on you?"
"Not I. And that is exactly why I wish to do it. Besides. What call has a Fool to be wise?"
"No."
"Then I shall have to go alone," he said with a mock sigh. I refused to rise to the bait. After a moment, he asked me, "What is it you know about Kettle that I do not?"
I looked at him uncomfortably. "About as much as I know about you that she does not."
"Ah. That was well spoken. Those words could have been stolen from me," he conceded. "Do you wonder why the coterie had not tried to attack us again?" he asked next.
"Is this your night to ask unfortunate questions?" I demanded.
"Of late, I have no other kinds."
"At the very least, I dare to hope that Carrod's death has weakened them. It must be a great shock to lose a member of your coterie. Almost as bad as losing a Wit-beast companion."
"And what do you fear?" the Fool pressed.
It was a question I had been pushing away from myself. "What do I fear? The worst, of course. What I fear is that they are somehow marshaling greater strength against us, to offset Verity's power. Or perhaps they are setting a trap for us. I fear they are turning their Skill to seeking out Molly." I added the last with great reluctance. It seemed the greatest bad luck even to think about it, let alone speak it aloud.
"Cannot you Skill a warning to her somehow?"
As if it had never occurred to me. "Not without betraying her. I have never been able to reach Burrich with the Skill. Sometimes, I am able to see them, but I cannot make them aware of me. I fear that even making the effort might be enough to expose her to the coterie. He may know of her, but not know where she is. You told me that not even Chade himself knew where she was. And Regal has many places to send his troops and attention. Buck is far from Farrow, and the Red-Ships have kept it in turmoil. Surely he would not send troops into that for the sake of finding one girl."
"One girl and a Farseer child," the Fool reminded me gravely. "Fitz, I do not speak to grieve you, but only to warn you. I have contained his anger at you. That night, when they held me …" He swallowed and his eyes went distant. "I have tried so hard to forget it. If I touch those memories at all, they seethe and burn within me like a poison I cannot be rid of. I have felt Regal's very being inside my own. Hatred for you squirms through him like maggots through rotting meat." He shook his head, sickened at recalling it. "The man is mad. He ascribes to you every evil ambition he can imagine. Your Wit he regards with loathing, and terror. He cannot conceive that what you do, you do for Verity. In his mind, you have devoted your life to injuring him since you came to Buckkeep. He believes that both Verity and you have come to these Mountains not to wake the Elderlings to defend Buck, but to find some Skill-treasure or power to use against him. He believes he has no choice but to act first, to find whatever it is you seek and turn it against you. To that, he bends all his resources and determination."
I listened to the Fool in a sort of frozen horror. His eyes had taken on the stare of a man who recalls torture. "Why have you not spoken of this to me before?" I asked him gently when he paused to catch his breath. The skin of his arms was standing up in gooseflesh.
He looked away from me. "It is not a thing I enjoy recalling." He was trembling very lightly. "They were in my mind like evil, idle children, smashing what they could not grasp. I could keep nothing back from them. But they were not interested in me at all. They regarded me as less than a dog. Angry, in that moment of finding I was not you. They nearly destroyed me because I was not you. Then they considered how they might use me against you." He coughed. "If that Skill-wave had not come…"
I felt like Chade himself as I said quietly, "Now I will turn that back upon them. They could not hold you in thrall like that without revealing much of themselves to you. As much as you can, I ask you to reach back to that time, and tell me all you can recall."
"You would not ask that, if you knew what you were asking."
I thought I did know, but I refrained from saying it. Instead, I let silence bid him think it through. Dawn was graying the sky, and I had just returned from walking a circuit of our camp when next he spoke.
"There were Skill books you know nothing about. Books and scrolls that Galen removed from Solicity's rooms as she was dying. The information they held was for a Skillmaster alone, and some were even fastened shut with clever locks. Galen had many years to tinker those locks loose. A lock does no more than keep an honest man honest, you know. Galen found there much he did not understand. But there were also scrolls listing those who had been Skill-trained. Galen sought out all he could find and questioned them. Then he did away with them, lest others should ask them the same questions he had. Galen found much in those scrolls. How a man might live long and enjoy good health. How to give pain with the Skill, without even touching a man. But in the oldest scrolls he found hints of great power awaiting a strongly Skilled man in the Mountains. If Regal could bring the Mountains under his sway, he could come into power no one could withstand: To that end did he seek the hand of Kettricken for Verity, with no intent that she would ever be his bride. He intended that when Verity was dead, he would take her in his brother's stead. And her inheritance. "
"I don't understand," I said gently. "The Mountains have amber and furs and …"
"No. No." The Fool shook his head. "It was nothing like that. Galen would not divulge the whole of his secret to Regal, for he then would have had no hold over his half-brother. But you can be sure that when Galen died, Regal immediately possessed those scrolls and books and set to studying them. He is no master of the older languages, but he feared to seek the help of others, lest they discover the secret first. But he puzzled it out at last, and when he did, he was horrified. For by then he had eagerly dispatched Verity into the Mountains to die on some foolish quest. He finally ciphered out that the power Galen had sought for him was power over the Elderlings. Immediately he decided Verity had conspired with you to seek that very power for himself. How dare he seek to steal the very treasure that Regal had worked so long to gain! How dare he try to make a fool of Regal in such a way!" The Fool smiled weakly. "In his mind, his domination over the Elderlings is his birthright. You seek to steal it from him. He believes he upholds what is right and just by trying to kill you."
I sat nodding to myself. The pieces all fit, every one of them. Holes in my understanding of Regal's motives were being closed up, to present me with a frightening picture. I had known the man was ambitious. I also knew he feared and suspected anyone or anything he could not control. I had been a double danger to him, a rival for his father's affection and with a strange Wit-talent he could neither understand nor destroy. To Regal, every other person in the world was a tool or a threat. All threats must be destroyed.
He had probably never considered that all I wanted from him was to be left alone.