Читать книгу The Complete Farseer Trilogy: Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin’s Quest - Робин Хобб - Страница 24

The Skill, at its simplest, is the bridging of thought from person to person. It can be used a number of ways. During battle, for instance, a commander can relay simple information and commands directly to those officers under him, if those officers have been trained to receive it. One powerfully Skilled can use his talent to influence even untrained minds or the minds of his enemies, inspiring them with fear or confusion or doubt. Men so talented are rare. But, if incredibly gifted with the Skill, a man can aspire to speak directly to the Elderlings, those who are below only the gods themselves. Few have ever dared to do so, and of those who did, even fewer attained what they asked. For it is said, one may ask of the Elderlings, but the answer they give may not be to the question you ask, but to the one you should have asked. And the answer to that question may be one a man cannot hear and live. For when one speaks to the Elderlings, then is the sweetness of using the Skill strongest and most perilous. And this is the thing that every practitioner of the Skill, weak or strong, must always guard against. For in using the Skill, the user feels a keenness of life, an uplifting of being, that can distract a man from taking his next breath. Compelling is this feeling, even in the common uses of the Skill, and addictive to any not hardened of purpose. But the intensity of this exultation when speaking to the Elderlings is a thing for which we have no comparison. Both senses and sense may be blasted forever from a man who uses the Skill to speak to an Elderling. Such a man dies raving, but it is also true he dies raving of his joy.

The Fool was right. I had no idea of the peril I faced. I plunged on doggedly. I have no heart to detail the weeks that followed. Suffice to say that with each day Galen had us more under his sway, and that he also became more cruel and manipulative. Some few pupils disappeared early on. Merry was one. She stopped coming after the fourth day. I saw her only once after that, creeping about the keep with a face both woebegone and shamed. I learned later that Serene and the other women had shunned her after she had dropped the training, and when they later spoke of her, it was not as if she had failed at a test, but rather had committed some low and loathsome act for which she could never be forgiven. I know not where she went, only that she left Buckkeep and never returned.

As the ocean sorts pebbles from sand on a beach and stratifies them at the tide mark, so did the poundings and caressings of Galen separate his students. Initially, all of us strove to be his best. It was not because we liked or admired him. I do not know what the others felt, but there was nothing in my heart but hate for him, a hatred so strong that it spawned a resolution not to be broken by such a man. After days of his abuse, to wring a single grudging word of acknowledgement from him was like a torrent of praise from any other master. Days of his belittling should have made me numb to his mockery. Instead, I came to believe much of what he said, and tried futilely to change.

We vied constantly with one another to come to his attention. Some emerged clearly as his favourites. August was one, and we were often urged to imitate him. I was clearly his most despised. And yet this did not stop me from burning to distinguish myself before him. After the first time, I was never last on the tower top. I never wavered from his blows. Nor did Serene, who shared my distinction of being despised. Serene became Galen’s grovelling follower, never breathing a word of criticism about him after that first lashing. Yet he constantly found fault with her, berated and reviled her, and struck her far more often than he struck any of the other women. This, however, made her only more determined to prove she could withstand his abuse, and she, after Galen, was the most intolerant of any who wavered or doubted in our teaching.

Winter deepened. It was cold and dark on the tower top, save for what light came from the stairwell. It was the most isolated place in the world, and Galen was its god. He forged us into a unit. We believed ourselves élite, superior and privileged to be instructed in the Skill. Even I, who endured mockery and beatings, believed this to be so. Those of us he broke, we despised. We saw only one another for this time, we heard only Galen. At first I missed Chade. I wondered what Burrich and Lady Patience were doing. But as months went by, such lesser occupations no longer seemed interesting. Even the Fool and Smithy came to be almost annoyances to me, so single-mindedly did I pursue Galen’s approval. The Fool came and went silently then. There were times, though, when I was sorest and weariest, when the touch of Smithy’s nose against my cheek was the only comfort I had, and times when I felt shamed by how little time I was giving to my growing puppy.

After three months of cold and cruelty, Galen had whittled us down to eight candidates. The real training finally began then, and also he returned to us a small measure of comfort and dignity. These seemed by then not only great luxuries, but gifts from Galen to be grateful for. A bit of dried fruit with our meals, permission to wear shoes, brief conversation allowed at the table – that was all, and yet we were grovellingly grateful for it. But the changes were only beginning.

It comes back in crystal glimpses. I remember the first time he touched me with the Skill. We were on the tower top, spaced even further now that there were fewer of us, and he went from one of us to the next, pausing a moment before each, while the rest of us waited in reverent silence. ‘Ready your minds for the touch. Be open to it, but do not indulge in the pleasure of it. The purpose of the Skill is not pleasure.’

He wended his way among us, in no particular order. Spaced as we were, we could not see one another’s faces, nor did it ever please Galen that our eyes follow his movements. And so we heard only his brief, stern words, then heard the in-drawn gasp of each touched one. To Serene he said in disgust, ‘Be open to it, I said. Not cower like a beaten dog.’

And last he came to me. I listened to his words, and as he had counselled us earlier, I tried to let go of every sensory awareness I had, and be open only to him. I felt the brush of his mind against mine, like a soft tickle on my forehead. I stood firm before it. It grew stronger, a warmth, a light, but I refused to be drawn into it. I felt Galen stood within my mind, sternly regarding me, and using the focusing techniques he had taught us (imagine a pail of purest white wood, and pour yourself into it) I was able to stand before him, waiting, aware of the Skill’s elation, but not giving in to it. Thrice the warmth rushed through me, and thrice I stood before it. And then he withdrew. He gave me a grudging nod, but in his eyes I saw not approval but a trace of fear.

That first touch was like the spark that finally kindles the tinder. I grasped what it was. I could not do it yet; I could not send my thoughts out from me, but I had a knowledge that would not fit into words. I would be able to Skill. And with that knowing my resolve hardened, and there was nothing, nothing Galen could have done that would stop me learning it.

I think he knew it, for he turned on me in the days that followed with a cruelty that I now find incredible. Hard words and blows he dealt me, but none could turn me aside. He struck me once in the face with his quirt. It left a visible welt, and it chanced that when I was coming into the dining hall, Burrich was also there. I saw his eyes widen. He started up from his place at table, his jaw clenched in a way I knew too well. But I looked aside from him and down. He stood a moment, glaring at Galen, who returned his look with a supercilious stare. Then, fists clenched, Burrich turned his back and left the room. I relaxed, relieved there would be no confrontation. But then Galen looked at me, and the triumph in his face made my heart cold. I was his now, and he knew it.

Pain and victories mixed for me in the next week. He never lost an opportunity to belittle me. And yet, I knew I excelled at each exercise he gave us. I sensed the others groping after his touch of Skill, but for me it was as simple as opening my eyes. I knew one moment of intense fear. He had entered my mind with the Skill, and given me a sentence to repeat aloud. ‘I am a bastard, and I shame my father’s name,’ I said aloud, calmly. And then he spoke again within my mind. You draw strength from somewhere, bastard. This is not your Skill. Do you think I will not find the source? And then I quailed before him, and drew back from his touch, hiding Smithy within my mind. His smile showed all his teeth to me.

In the days that followed, we played a game of hide and seek. I must let him into my mind, to learn the Skill. Once there, I danced on coals to keep my secrets from him. Not just Smithy, but Chade and the Fool did I hide, and Molly and Kerry and Dirk, and other, older secrets I would not reveal even to myself. He sought them all, and I juggled them desperately out of his reach. But despite all that, or perhaps because of it, I felt myself growing stronger in the Skill. ‘Don’t mock me!’ he roared after one session, and then grew infuriated as the other students exchanged shocked glances. ‘Attend to your own exercises!’ he roared at them. He paced away from me, then spun suddenly and flung himself at me. Fist and boot, he attacked me and, as Molly once had, I had no more thought than to shield my face and belly. The blows he rained on me were more like a child’s tantrum than a man’s attack. I felt their ineffectiveness and then realized with a chill that I was repelling at him. Not so much that he would sense it, just enough that not one of his blows fell exactly as he had intended. I knew, more, that he had no idea what I was doing. When at last he dropped his fists and I dared to lift my eyes, I felt momentarily that I had won, for all the others on the tower top were looking at him with gazes mingled of disgust and fear. He had gone too far for even Serene to stomach. White-faced, he turned aside from me. In that moment, I felt him reach a decision.

That evening in my room, I was horribly tired, but too enervated to sleep. The Fool had left food for Smithy, and I was teasing him with a large beef knuckle. He had set his teeth in my sleeve and was worrying it while I held the bone just out of his reach. It was the sort of game he loved, and he snarled with mock ferocity as he shook my arm. He was near as big as he would get, and I felt with pride the muscles in his thick little neck. With my free hand, I pinched his tail and he spun snarling to this new attack. From hand to hand I juggled his bone, and his eyes darted back and forth as he snapped after it. ‘No brain,’ I teased him. ‘All you can think of is what you want. No brain, no brain.’

‘Just like his owner.’

I startled, and in that second Smithy had his bone. He flopped down with it, giving the Fool no more than a perfunctory wag of his tail. I sat down, out of breath. ‘I never even heard the door open. Or shut.’

He ignored that and went straight to his topic. ‘Do you think Galen will allow you to succeed?’

I grinned smugly. ‘Do you think he can prevent it?’

The Fool sat down beside me with a sigh. ‘I know he can. So does he. What I cannot decide is if he is ruthless enough. But I suspect he is.’

‘So let him try,’ I said flippantly.

‘I have no choice in that.’ The Fool was adamantly serious. ‘What I had hoped to do was dissuade you from trying.’

‘You’d ask me to give up? Now?’ I was incredulous.

‘I would.’

‘Why?’ I demanded.

‘Because,’ he began, and then stopped in frustration. ‘I don’t know. Too many things converge. Perhaps if I pluck one thread loose, the knot will not form.’

I was suddenly tired, and the earlier elation of my triumph collapsed before his dour warnings. My irritability won and I snapped, ‘If you cannot speak clearly, why do you speak at all?’

He was as silent as if I had struck him. ‘That’s another thing I don’t know,’ he said at last. He rose to go.

‘Fool,’ I began.

‘Yes. I am that,’ he said, and left.

And so I persevered, growing stronger. I grew impatient with our slow pace of instruction. We went over the same practices each day, and gradually the others began to master what seemed so natural to me. How could they have been so closed off from the rest of the world, I wondered? How could it be so hard for them to open their minds to Galen’s Skill? My own task was not to open, but rather to keep closed to him what I did not wish to share. Often, as he gave me a perfunctory touch of the Skill, I sensed a tendril of seeking slinking into my mind. But I evaded it.

‘You are ready,’ he announced one chill day. It was afternoon, but the brightest stars were already showing in the blue darkness of the sky. I missed the clouds that had yesterday snowed upon us, but had at least kept this deeper cold at bay. I flexed my toes inside the leather shoes that Galen permitted us, trying to warm them to life again. ‘Before I have touched you with the Skill, to accustom you to it. Now, today, we will attempt a full joining. You will each reach out to me as I reach out to you. But beware! Most of you have coped with resisting the distractions of the Skill touch, but the power of what you felt was the lightest brush. Today will be stronger. Resist it, but stay open to the Skill.’

And again he began his slow circuit amongst us. I waited, enervated but unafraid. I had looked forward to attempting this. I was ready.

Some clearly failed, and were rebuked for laziness or stupidity. August was praised. Serene was slapped for reaching forth too eagerly. And then he came to me.

I braced as if for a wrestling contest. I felt the brush of his mind against mine, and offered him a cautious reaching of thought. Like this?

Yes, bastard. Like this.

And for a moment we were in balance, hovering like children on a see-saw. I felt him steady our contact. Then, abruptly, he slammed into me. It felt exactly as if the air had been knocked out of me, but in a mental rather than physical way. Instead of being unable to get my breath, I was unable to master my thoughts. He rifled through my mind, ransacking my privacy, and I was powerless before him. He had won and he knew it. But in that moment of his careless triumph I found an opening. I grasped at him, trying to seize his mind as he had mine. I gripped him and held him, and knew for a dizzying instant that I was stronger than he, that I could force into his mind any thought I chose to put there. ‘No!’ he shrieked, and dimly I knew that, at some former time, he had struggled like this with someone he had despised. Someone else who had also won as I intended to. ‘Yes!’ I insisted. ‘Die!’ he commanded me, but I knew I would not. I knew I would win, and I focused my will and bore down on my grip.

The Skill does not care who wins. It does not allow anyone to surrender to any one thought, even for a moment. But I did. And when I did, I forgot to guard against the ecstasy that is both the honey and the sting of the Skill. The euphoria rushed over me, drowning me, and Galen, too, sank below it, no longer exploring my mind, but seeking only to return to his.

I had never felt the like of that moment.

Galen had called it pleasure, and I had expected a pleasant sensation, like warmth in winter, or the fragrance of a rose or a sweet taste in my mouth. This was none of these. Pleasure is too physical a word to describe what I felt. It had nothing to do with the skin or body. It suffused me, it washed over me in a wave that I could not repulse. Elation filled me and flowed through me. I forgot Galen and all else. I felt him escape me, and knew it mattered, but could not care. I forgot all except exploring this sensation.

‘Bastard!’ Galen bellowed, and struck me with his fist on the side of my head. I fell, helpless, for the pain was not enough to jolt me from the entrancement of the Skill. I felt him kick me, I knew the cold of the stones under me that bruised and scraped me, and yet I felt I was held, smothered in a blanket of euphoria that would not let me pay attention to the beating. My mind assured me, despite the pain, that all was well, that there was no need to fight or flee.

Somewhere a tide was ebbing, leaving me beached and gasping. Galen stood over me, dishevelled and sweating. His breath smoked in the cold air as he leaned close over me. ‘Die!’ he said, but I did not hear the words. I felt them. He let go of my throat and I fell.

And in the wake of the devouring elation of the Skill came now a bleakness of failure and guilt that made my physical pain as nothing. My nose was bleeding, it was painful to breathe, and the force of the kicks he had dealt me had scraped skin from my body as I had slid across the tower stones. The different pains contradicted one another, each clamouring for attention so that I couldn’t assess what damage had been done to me. I could not even gather myself together to stand up. Looming over all was the knowledge that I had failed. I was defeated and unworthy and Galen had proven it.

As if from a distance, I heard him shouting at the others, telling them to beware, for this was how he would deal with those so undisciplined that they could not turn their minds from pleasure of the Skill. And he warned them all of what befell such a man, who strove to use the Skill and instead fell under the spell of the pleasure it bore with it. Such a man would become mindless, a great infant, speechless, sightless, soiling himself, forgetting thought, forgetting even food and drink, until he died. Such a one was beyond disgust.

And such a one was I. I sank into my shame. Helplessly, I began to sob. I merited such treatment as he had given me. I deserved worse. Only a misplaced pity had kept Galen from killing me. I had wasted his time, had taken his painstaking instruction and turned it all to selfish indulgence. I fled myself, going deeper and deeper within, but finding only disgust and hatred for myself layered throughout my thoughts. I would be better off dead. Were I to throw myself from the tower roof, it would still not be enough to destroy my shame, but at least I need no longer be aware of it. I lay still and wept.

The others left. As each one passed, they had a word, a gobbet of spittle, a kick or a blow for me. I scarcely noticed. I rejected myself more completely than they could. Then they were gone, and Galen alone stood over me. He nudged me with his foot, but I was incapable of response. Suddenly, he was everywhere, over, under, around and inside me, and I could not deny him. ‘You see, bastard,’ he said archly, calmly. ‘I tried to tell them you were not worthy. I tried to tell them the training would kill you. But you would not listen. You strove to usurp that which had been given to another. Again, I am right. Well. This has not been time wasted if it has done away with you.’

I don’t know when he left me. After a time, I was aware that it was the moon looking down on me, and not Galen. I rolled onto my belly. I could not stand, but I could crawl. Not quickly, not even lifting my stomach completely off the ground, but I could scuffle and scrape myself along. With a singleness of purpose, I began to make my way towards the low wall. I thought that I could drag myself up onto a bench, and from there to the top of the wall. And from there. Down. End it.

It was a long journey, in the cold and the dark. Somewhere I could hear a whimpering, and I despised myself for that, too. But as I scraped myself along, it grew, as a spark in the distance becomes a fire as one approaches. It refused to be ignored. It grew louder in my mind, a whining against my fate, a tiny voice of resistance that forbade that I should die, that denied my failure. It was warmth and light, too, and it grew stronger and stronger as I tried to find its source.

I stopped.

I lay still.

It was inside me. The more I sought it, the stronger it grew. It loved me. Loved me even if I couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t love myself. Loved me even if I hated it. It set its tiny teeth in my soul and braced and held so that I couldn’t crawl any further. And when I tried, a howl of despair burst from it, searing me, forbidding me to break so sacred a trust.

It was Smithy.

He cried with my pains, physical and mental. And when I stopped struggling toward the wall, he went into a paroxysm of joy, a celebration of triumph for us. And all I could do to reward him was to lie still and no longer attempt to destroy myself. And he assured me it was enough, it was a plenitude, it was a joy. I closed my eyes.

The moon was high when Burrich rolled me gently over. The Fool held the torch and Smithy capered and danced about his feet. Burrich gathered me up and stood, as if I were still a child just given into his care. I had a glimpse of his dark face, but read nothing there. He carried me down the long stone staircase, the Fool bearing the torch to light the way. And he took me out of the keep, back to the stables and up to his room. There the Fool left Burrich and Smithy and me, and I do not recall that there had been one word spoken. Burrich set me down on his own bed, and then dragged it, bedstead and all, closer to the fire. With returning warmth came great pain, and I gave my body over to Burrich, my soul to Smithy, and let go of my mind for a long while.

I opened my eyes to night. I knew not which one. Burrich sat next to me still, undozing, not even slumped in his chair. I felt the strictures of bandaging on my ribs. I lifted a hand to touch it, but was baffled by two splinted fingers. Burrich’s eyes followed my motion. ‘They were swollen with more than cold. Too swollen for me to tell if it were breaks, or just sprains. I splinted them in case. I suspect it’s just a sprain. I think if they were broken, the pain of my working on them would have wakened even you.’

He spoke calmly, as if telling me that he had purged a new dog for worms as a preventative against contagion. And just as his steady voice and calm touch had worked on a frantic animal, so it worked on me. I relaxed, thinking that if he were calm, not much could be wrong. He slipped a finger under the bandages supporting my ribs, checking the tightness. ‘What happened?’ he asked, and turned aside from me to pick up a cup of tea as he spoke, as if the question and my answer were of no great import.

I pushed my mind back over the last few weeks, tried to find a way to explain. Events danced in my mind, slipped away from me. I remembered only defeat. ‘Galen tested me,’ I said slowly. ‘I failed. And he punished me for it.’ And with my words, a wave of dejection, shame and guilt swept over me, washing away the brief comfort I had taken in the familiar surroundings. On the hearth, a sleeping Smithy abruptly waked and sat up. Reflexively, I quieted him before he could whine. Lie down. Rest. It’s all right. To my relief, he did so. And to my greater relief, Burrich seemed unaware of what had passed between us. He offered me the cup.

‘Drink this. You need water in you, and the herbs will deaden the pain and let you sleep. Drink it all, now.’

‘It stinks,’ I told him, and he nodded, and held the cup my hands were too bruised to curl around. I drank it all and then lay back.

‘That was all?’ he asked carefully, and I knew what he referred to. ‘He tested you on a thing he had taught you, and you did not know it. So he did this to you?’

‘I could not do it. I didn’t have the … self-discipline. So he punished me.’ Details eluded me. Shame washed over me, drowning me in misery.

‘No one is taught self-discipline by beating him half to death.’ Burrich spoke carefully, stating the truth for an idiot. His movements were very precise as he set the cup back on the table.

‘It was not to teach me … I don’t think he believes I can be taught. It was to show the others what would happen if they failed.’

‘Very little worth knowing is taught by fear,’ Burrich said stubbornly. And, more warmly, ‘It’s a poor teacher who tries to instruct by blows and threats. Imagine taming a horse that way. Or a dog. Even the most knot-headed dog learns better from an open hand than a stick.’

‘You’ve struck me before, when trying to teach me something.’

‘Yes. Yes, I have. But to jolt, or warn, or awaken. Not to damage. Never to break a bone or blind an eye or cripple a hand. Never. Never say to anyone that I’ve struck you, or any creature in my care that way, for it’s not true.’ He was indignant that I could even have suggested it.

‘No. You’re right about that.’ I tried to think how I could make Burrich understand why I had been punished. ‘But this was different, Burrich. A different kind of learning, a different kind of teaching.’ I felt compelled to defend Galen’s justice. I tried to explain. ‘I deserved this, Burrich. The fault was not with his teaching. I failed to learn. I tried. I did try. But like Galen, I believe there is a reason the Skill is not taught to bastards. There is a taint in me, a fatal weakness.’

‘Horseshit.’

‘No. Think on it, Burrich. If you breed a scrub-mare to a fine stud, the colt you get is as likely to get the weakness of the mother as the fineness of the father.’

The silence was long. Then, ‘I doubt much that your father would have lain down beside a woman that was a “scrub”. Without some fineness, some sign of spirit or intelligence, he would not. He could not.’

‘I’ve heard it said he was tranced by a mountain witch-woman.’ For the first time I repeated a tale I’d heard whispered often.

‘Chivalry was not a man to fall for such magickry. And his son is not some snivelling, weak-spirited fool that lies about and whines that he deserved a beating.’ He leaned closer, gently prodded just below my temple. A blast of pain rocked my consciousness. ‘That’s how near you were to losing an eye to this “teaching”.’ His temper was rising, and I kept my mouth closed. He took a quick turn around the room, then spun to face me.

‘That puppy. He’s from Patience’s bitch, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you haven’t … oh, Fitz, please tell me that it wasn’t your using the Wit that brought this on you. If he did this to you for that, there’s not a word I can say to anyone, or an eye I can meet anywhere in the keep or the whole kingdom.’

‘No, Burrich. I promise you, this had nothing to do with the pup. It was my failure to learn what I had been taught. My weakness.’

‘Quiet,’ he ordered me impatiently. ‘Your word is enough. I know you well enough to know your promise will always be true. But for the rest, you’re making no sense at all. Go back to sleep. I’m going out, but I’ll be back soon enough. Get some rest. It’s the real healer.’

A purpose had settled on Burrich. My words seemed to have satisfied him finally, settled something for him. He dressed quickly, pulling on boots, changing his shirt for a loose one, and putting only a leather jerkin over it. Smithy stood and whined anxiously as Burrich went out, but could not convey his worry to me. Instead, he came to the bedside and scrabbled up, to burrow into the covers beside me and comfort me with his trust. In the bleak despair that settled over me, he was my only light. I closed my eyes and Burrich’s herbs sank me into a dreamless sleep.

I awoke later that afternoon. A gust of cold air preceded Burrich’s entry into the room. He checked me over, casually prising open my eyes and then running competent hands down my ribs and over my other bruises. He grunted his satisfaction, then changed his torn and muddied shirt for a fresh one. He hummed as he did so, seeming in a fine mood much at odds with my bruises and depression. It was almost a relief when he left again. Below, I heard him whistling and calling orders to the stable-boys. It all sounded so normal and workaday and I longed for it with an intensity that surprised me. I wanted that back, the warm smell of the horses and dogs and straw, the simple tasks, done well and completely, and the good sleep of exhaustion at the end of a day. I longed for it, but the worthlessness that filled me now predicted that, even at that, I would fail. Galen had often sneered at those who worked such simple jobs about the keep. He had only contempt for the kitchen-maids and cooks, derision for the stable-boys, and the men-at-arms who guarded us with sword and bow, were, in his words, ‘ruffians and dolts, doomed to flail away at the world, and control with a sword what they can’t master with their minds’. So now I was strangely torn. I longed to return to being what Galen had convinced me was contemptible, yet doubt and despair filled me that I could even do so much as that.

I was abed for two days. A jovial Burrich tended me with banter and good nature that I could not fathom. There was a briskness to his step and a sureness to him that made him seem a much younger man. It added to my dispiritedness that my injuries put him in such fine fettle. But after two days of bed rest, Burrich informed me that only so much stillness was good for a man, and it was time I was up and moving if I wished to heal well. He proceeded to find me many minor chores to perform, none heavy enough to tax my strength, but more than enough to keep me busy, for I had to rest often. I believe that the busyness was what he was after rather than any exercise for me, for all I had done was to lie in bed and look at the wall and despise myself. Faced with my unrelenting depression, even Smithy had begun to turn aside from his food. Despite this, he remained my only real source of comfort. Following me about the stable was the purest enjoyment he’d ever had. Every scent and sight he relayed to me with an intensity that, despite my bleakness, renewed in me the wonder I had first felt when I’d plunged into Burrich’s world. Smithy was savagely possessive of me as well, challenging even Sooty’s right to sniff me, and earning himself a snap from Vixen that sent him yipping and cowering to my heels.

I begged the next day free for myself, and went into Buckkeep Town. The walk took me longer than it had ever taken me before, but Smithy rejoiced in my slow pace, for it gave him time to snuff his way around every clump of grass and tree on the way. I had thought that seeing Molly would lift my spirits, and give me some sense of my own life again. But when I got to the chandlery she was busy, filling three large orders for outbound ships. I sat by the hearth in the shop. Her father sat opposite me, drinking and glaring at me. Although his illness had weakened him, it had not changed his temperament, and on days when he was well enough to sit up, he was well enough to drink. After a while, I gave up all pretence at conversation, and simply watched him drink and disparage his daughter as Molly bustled frantically about, trying to be both efficient and hospitable to her customers. The dreary pettiness of it all depressed me.

At noon she told her father she was closing the shop while she went to deliver an order. She gave me a rack of candles to carry, loaded her own arms, and we left, latching the door behind us. Her father’s drunken imprecations followed us, but she ignored them. Once outside in the brisk winter wind, I followed Molly as she walked quickly to the back of the shop. Motioning for my silence, she opened the back door and set all that she carried inside. My rack of candles, too, were unloaded there, and then we left.

For a bit, we just wandered through the town, talking little. She commented on my bruised face; I said only that I had fallen. The wind was cold and relentless, so the market stalls were near-empty of both customers and vendors. She paid much attention to Smithy, and he revelled in it. On our walk back, we stopped at a tea shop, and she treated me to mulled wine and made so much of Smithy that he fell over on his back and all his thoughts turned into wallowing in her affection. I was struck suddenly by how clearly Smithy was aware of her feelings, and yet she did not sense his at all, except on the shallowest level. I quested gently toward her, but found her elusive and drifting, like a perfume that comes strong and then faint on the same breath of wind. I knew that I could have pushed more insistently against her, but somehow it seemed pointless. An aloneness settled on me, a deadly melancholy that she never had been and never would be any more aware of me than she was of Smithy. So I took her brief words to me as a bird pecks at dry breadcrumbs, and let alone the silences she curtained between us. Soon she said that she could not tarry long, or it would be the worse for her, for if her father no longer had the strength to strike her, he was still capable of smashing his beer mug on the floor or knocking over racks of things to show his displeasure at being neglected. She smiled an odd little smile as she told me this, as if it would be less appalling if somehow we thought of his behaviour as amusing. I couldn’t smile and she looked away from my face.

I helped her with her cloak and we left, walking uphill and into the wind. And that suddenly seemed a metaphor for my whole life. At her door, she shocked me with a hug and a kiss on the corner of my jaw, the embrace so brief that it was almost like being bumped in the market. ‘Newboy …’ she said, and then, ‘Thank you. For understanding.’

And then she whisked into her shop and shut the door behind her, leaving me chilled and bewildered. She thanked me for understanding her at a time when I had never felt more isolated from her, and everyone else. All the way up to the keep Smithy kept prattling to himself about all the perfumes he’d smelt on her and how she had scratched him just where he could never reach in front of his ears and of the sweet biscuit she’d fed him in the tea shop.

It was mid-afternoon when we got back to the stables. I did a few chores, and then went back up to Burrich’s room, where Smithy and I fell asleep. I awoke to Burrich standing over me, a slight frown on his face.

‘Up, and let’s have a look at you,’ he commanded, and I arose wearily and stood quiet while he went over my injuries with deft hands. He was pleased with the condition of my hand, and told me that it might go unbandaged now, but to keep the wrapping about my ribs and to come back to have it adjusted each evening. ‘As for the rest of it, keep it clean and dry, and don’t pick at the scabs. If any of it starts to fester, come and see me.’ He filled a little pot with an unguent that eased sore muscles and gave it to me, by which I deduced that he expected me to leave.

I stood holding the little pot of medicine. A terrible sadness welled up in me, and yet I could find no words to say. Burrich looked at me, scowled and turned away. ‘Now stop that,’ he commanded me angrily.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘You look at me sometimes with my lord’s eyes,’ he said quietly, and then as sharply as before, ‘Well, what did you think to do? Hide in the stables the rest of your life? No. You have to go back. You have to go back and hold up your head and eat your meals among the keep folk, and sleep in your own room, and live your own life. Yes, and go and finish those damn lessons in the Skill.’

His first commands had sounded difficult, but the last, I knew, was impossible.

‘I can’t,’ I said, not believing how stupid he was. ‘Galen wouldn’t let me come back to the group. And even if he did, I’d never catch up on all I’d missed. I’ve already failed at it, Burrich. I failed and that’s done, and I need to find something else to do with myself. I’d like to learn the hawks, please.’ The last I heard myself say with some amazement, for in truth it had never crossed my mind before. Burrich’s reply was at least as strange.

‘You can’t, for the hawks don’t like you. You’re too warm and you don’t mind your own business enough. Now listen to me. You didn’t fail, you fool. Galen tried to drive you away. If you don’t go back, you’ll have let him win. You have to go back and you have to learn it. But,’ and here he turned on me, and the anger in his eyes was for me, ‘You don’t have to stand there like a carter’s mule while he beats you. You’ve a birthright to his time and his knowledge. Make him give you what is yours. Don’t run away. No one ever gained anything by running away.’ He paused, started to say more, and then stopped.

‘I’ve missed too many lessons. I’ll never …’

‘You haven’t missed anything,’ Burrich said stubbornly. He turned away from me, and I couldn’t read his tone as he added, ‘There have been no lessons since you left. You should be able to pick up just where you left off.’

‘I don’t want to go back.’

‘Don’t waste my time by arguing with me,’ he said tightly. ‘Don’t dare to try my patience that way. I’ve told you what you are to do. Do it.’

Suddenly I was five years old again, and a man in a kitchen backed up a crowd with a look. I shivered, cowed. Abruptly, it was easier to face Galen than to defy Burrich. Even when he added, ‘And you’ll leave that pup with me until your lessons are done. Being shut up inside your room all day is no life for a dog. His coat will go bad and his muscles won’t grow properly. But you’d better be down here each evening to see to both him and Sooty or you’ll answer to me. And I don’t give a damn what Galen says about that, either.’

And so I was dismissed. I conveyed to Smithy that he was to stay with Burrich, and he accepted it with an equanimity that surprised me as much as it hurt my feelings. Dispirited, I took my pot of unguent and plodded back up to the keep. I took food from the kitchen, for I had no heart to face anyone at table and went up to my room. It was cold and dark; no fire in the hearth, no candles in the sticks and the fouled reeds underfoot stank. I fetched candles and wood, set a fire, and while I was waiting for it to take some of the chill off the stone walls and floors, I busied myself with taking up the floor rushes. Then, as Lacey had advised me, I scrubbed the room well with hot water and vinegar. Somehow I got the vinegar that had been flavoured with tarragon, and so when I was finished, the room smelt fragrant. Exhausted, I flung myself down on my bed, and fell asleep wondering why I’d never discovered how to open whatever hidden door it was that led to Chade’s quarters. But I had no doubt that he would have simply dismissed me, for he was a man of his word and would not interfere until Galen had finished with me. Or until he discovered that I was finished with Galen.

The Fool’s candles awoke me. I was completely disoriented, until he said, ‘You’ve just time to wash and eat and still be first on the tower top.’

He’d brought warm water in an ewer, and warm rolls from the kitchen ovens.

‘I’m not going.’

It was the first time I’d ever seen the Fool look surprised. ‘Why not?’

‘It’s pointless. I can’t succeed. I simply haven’t the aptitude and I’m tired of beating my head against the wall.’

The Fool’s eyes widened further. ‘I thought you had been doing well, before …’

It was my turn to be surprised. ‘Well? Why do you think he mocked me and struck me? As a reward for my success? No. I haven’t even been able to understand what it’s about. All the others had already surpassed me. Why should I go back? So Galen can prove even more thoroughly how right he was?’

‘Something,’ the Fool said carefully, ‘is not right here.’ He considered for a moment. ‘Before, I asked you to give up the lessons. You would not. Do you recall that?’

I cast my mind back. ‘I’m stubborn, sometimes,’ I admitted.

‘And if I asked you now, to continue? To go up to the tower top, and continue to try?’

‘Why have you changed your mind?’

‘Because that which I sought to prevent came to pass. But you survived it. So I seek now to …’ His words trailed off. ‘It is as you said. Why should I speak at all, when I cannot speak plainly?’

‘If I said that, I regret it. It is not a thing one should say to a friend. I do not remember it.’

He smiled faintly. ‘If you do not remember it, then neither shall I.’ He reached and took both of my hands in his. His grip was oddly cool. A shiver passed over me at his touch. ‘Would you continue, if I asked it of you? As a friend?’

The word sounded so odd from his lips. He spoke it without mockery, carefully, as if the saying of it aloud could shatter the meaning. His colourless eyes held mine. I found I could not say no. So I nodded.

Even so, I rose reluctantly. He watched me with an impassive interest as I straightened the clothes I’d slept in, splashed my face, and then tore into the bread he’d brought. ‘I don’t want to go,’ I told him as I finished the first roll and took up the second. ‘I don’t see what it can accomplish.’

‘I don’t know why he bothers with you,’ the Fool agreed. The familiar cynicism was back.

‘Galen? He has to, the King …’

‘Burrich.’

‘He just likes bossing me about,’ I complained, and it sounded childish, even to me.

The Fool shook his head. ‘You haven’t even a clue, have you?’

‘About what?’

‘About how the stablemaster dragged Galen from his bed, and from thence to the Witness Stones. I wasn’t there, of course, or I would be able to tell you how Galen cursed and struck at him at first, but the stablemaster paid no attention. He just hunched his shoulders to the man’s blows, and kept silent. He gripped the Skillmaster by the collar, so the man was fair choked, and dragged him along. And the soldiers and guards and stable-boys followed in a stream that became a torrent of men. If I had been there, I could tell you how no man dared to interfere, for it was as if the stablemaster had become as Burrich once was, an iron-muscled man with a black temper that was like a madness when it came on him. No one, then, dared to brook that temper, and that day, it was as if Burrich was that man again. If he limped still, no one noticed it at all.

‘As for the Skillmaster, he flailed and cursed, and then he grew still, and all suspected that he turned what he knew upon his captor. But if he did, it had no effect, save that the stablemaster tightened his grip on the man’s neck. And if Galen strove to sway others to his cause, they did not react. Perhaps being choked and dragged was sufficient to break his concentration. Or perhaps his Skill is not as strong as it was rumoured. Or perhaps too many remember his mistreatment of them too well to be vulnerable to his wiles. Or perhaps …’

‘Fool! Get on with it! What happened?’ A light sweat cloaked my body and I shivered, not knowing what I hoped for.

‘I wasn’t there, of course,’ the Fool asserted sweetly. ‘But I have heard it said that the dark man dragged the skinny man all the way up to the Witness Stones. And there, still gripping the Skillmaster so that he could not speak, he asserted his challenge. They would fight. No weapons, but hands only, just as the Skillmaster had assaulted a certain boy the day before. And the Stones would witness, if Burrich won, that Galen had had no call to strike the boy, nor had he the right to refuse to teach the boy. And Galen would have refused the challenge and gone to the King himself, except that the dark man had already called the Stones to witness. And so they fought, in much the same way that a bull fights a bale of straw when he tosses and stamps and gores it. And when he was done, the stablemaster bent and whispered something to the Skillmaster, before he and all others turned and left the man lying there, with the Stones witness to his whimpering and bleeding.’

‘What did he say?’ I demanded.

‘I wasn’t there. I saw and heard nothing of it.’ The Fool stood and stretched. ‘You’ll be late if you tarry,’ he pointed out to me, and left. And I left my room, wondering, and climbed the tall tower to the Queen’s stripped Garden and was still in time to be the first one there.