Читать книгу The Farseer Series Books 2 and 3: Royal Assassin, Assassin’s Quest - Робин Хобб - Страница 21

The Fool will always remain one of Buckkeep’s great mysteries. It is almost possible to say that nothing definite is known of him. His origin, age, sex and race have all been the subject of conjecture. Most amazing is how such a public person maintained such an aura of privacy. The questions about the Fool will always outnumber the answers. Did he ever truly possess any mystical powers, any prescience, any magic at all, or was it merely that his quick wits and razor tongue made it seem as if he knew all before it came to pass? If he did not know the future, he appeared to, and by his calm assumption of foreknowledge, he swayed many of us to help him shape the future as he saw fit.

White on white. An ear twitched, and that minute movement betrayed all.

You see? I prompted him.

I scent.

I see. I flicked my eyes toward the prey. No more a movement than that. It was sufficient.

I see! He leaped, the rabbit started, and Cub went floundering after it. The rabbit ran lightly over the unpacked snow, while Cub had to surge and bound and leap through it. The rabbit darted elusively, this way, that way, around the tree, around the clump of bushes, into the brambles. Had he stayed in there? Cub snuffed hopefully, but the density of the thorns turned his sensitive nose back.

It’s gone. I told him.

Are you sure? Why didn’t you help?

I can’t run down game in loose snow. I must stalk and spring only when one spring is sufficient.

Ah. Enlightenment. Consideration. There are two of us. We should hunt as a pair. I could start game and drive it toward you. You could be ready, to leap out and snap its neck.

I shook my head slowly. You must learn to hunt alone, Cub. I will not always be with you, in mind or in flesh.

A wolf is not meant to hunt alone.

Perhaps not. But many do. As you will. But I did not intend that you should start with rabbits. Come on.

He fell in at my heels, content to let me lead. We had left the keep before winter light had even greyed the skies. Now they were blue and open, clear and cold above us. The trail we were following was no more than a soft, shouldered groove in the deep snow. I sank calf-deep at every step. About us, the forest was a winter stillness, broken only by the occasional dart of a small bird, or the far-off cawing of a crow. It was open forest, mostly saplings with the occasional giant which had survived the fire that had cleared this hillside. It was good pasturage for goats in summer. Their sharp little hooves had cut the trail we were now following. It led to a simple stone hut and a tumbledown corral and shelter for the goats. It was used only in summer.

Cub had been delighted when I went to get him this morning. He had shown me his roundabout path for slipping past the guards. An old cattle gate, long bricked up, was his egress. Some shift of the earth had unsettled the stone and mortar blocking it, creating a crack wide enough for him to slip through. The beaten-down snow showed me that he had used it often. Once outside the walls, we had ghosted away from the keep, moving like shadows in the not-light of stars and moon on white snow. Once safely away from the keep, Cub had turned the expedition into stalking practice. He raced ahead to lie in wait, to spring out and tag me with a splayed paw or a sharp nip, and then race away in a great circle, to attack me from behind. I had let him play, welcoming the exertion that warmed me, as well as the sheer joy of the mindless romping. Always, I kept us moving, so that by the time the sun and light found us, we were miles from Buckkeep, in an area seldom visited during the winter. My spotting of the white rabbit against the white snow had been pure happenstance. I had even humbler game in mind for his first solo hunt.

Why do we come here? Cub demanded as soon as we came in sight of the hut.

To hunt, I said simply. I halted some distance away. The wolf sank down beside me, waiting. Well, go ahead, I told him. Go and check for game sign.

Oh, this is worthy hunting, this. Sniffing about some man den for scraps. Disdainful.

Not scraps. Go and look.

He surged forward, and then angled toward the hut. I watched him go. Our dream hunts together had taught him much, but now I wished him to hunt entirely independently of me. I did not doubt that he could do it. I chided myself that demanding this proof was just one more procrastination.

He stayed in the snowy brush as much as he could. He approached the hut cautiously, ears alert and nose working. Old scents. Humans. Goats. Cold and gone. He froze an instant, then took a careful step forward. His motions now were calculated and precise. Ears forward, tail straight, he was totally intent and focused. MOUSE.’ He sprang and had it. He shook his head, a quick snap, and then let the little animal go flying. He caught it again as it came down. Mouse! He announced gleefully. He flipped his kill up into the air and danced up after it on his hind legs. He caught it again, delicately, in his small front teeth, and tossed it up again. I radiated pride and approval at him. By the time he had finished playing with his kill, the mouse was little more than a sodden rag of fur. He gulped it down finally in a single snap, and came bounding back to me.

Mice! The place is riddled with them. Their smell and sign are everywhere all about the hut.

I thought there would be plenty here. The shepherds complain about them, that the mice overrun this place and spoil their provisions in the summer. I guessed they would winter here, too.

Surprisingly fat, for this time of year, Cub opined, and was off again with a bound. He hunted with frantic enthusiasm, but only until his hunger was sated. Then it was my turn to approach the hut. Snow had drifted up against the rickety wooden door, but I shouldered it open. The interior was dismal. Snow had sifted in through the thatched roof and lay in streaks and stripes on the frozen dirt floor. There was a rudimentary hearth and chimney, with a kettle hook. A stool and a wooden bench were the only furnishings. There was still a bit of firewood left beside the hearth, and I used it to build a careful fire on the blackened stones. I kept it small, just enough to warm myself and to thaw the bread and meat I had packed with me. Cub came for a taste of that, more for the sharing than for any hunger. He made a leisurely exploration of the hut’s interior, then lifted his nose abruptly from the corner he’d been sniffing. He advanced a few steps toward me, then stopped, standing stiff-legged. His eyes met mine and held. The wilds were in their darkness. You’re abandoning me here.

Yes. There is food in plenty here. In a while, I will come back to be sure you are all right. I think you will be fine here. You will teach yourself to hunt. Mice at first, and then larger game …

You betray me. You betray pack.

No. We are not pack. I am setting you free, Cub. We are becoming too close. That is not good, for either of us. I warned you, long ago, that I would not bond. We can have no part of each other’s lives. It is better for you to go off, alone, to become what you were meant to be.

I was meant to be a member of a pack. He levelled his stare at me. Will you tell me that there are wolves near here, ones who will accept an intruder into their territory and make me part of their pack?

I was forced to look aside from him. No. There are no wolves here. One would have to travel many days to come to a place wild enough for wolves to run freely.

Then what is there here for me?

Food. Freedom. Your own life, independent of mine.

Isolation. He bared his teeth at me, and then abruptly turned aside. He circled past me, a wide circle as he went to the door. Men, he sneered. Truly you are not pack, but man. He paused in the open door to look back at me. Men it is who think they can rule others’ lives, but have no bonds to them. Do you think that to bond or not to bond is for you alone to decide? My heart is my own. I give it where I will. I will not give it to one who thrusts me aside. Nor will I obey one who denies pack and bond. Do you think I will stay here and snuff about this men’s lair, to snap at the mice who have come for their leavings, to be like the mice, things that live on the droppings of men? No. If we are not pack, then we are not kin. I owe you nothing, and least of all obedience. I shall not stay here. I shall live as I please.

A slyness to his thoughts. He was hiding something, but I guessed it. You shall do as you wish, Cub, but for one thing. You shall not follow me back to Buckkeep. I forbid it.

You forbid? You forbid? Forbid the wind to blow past your stone den then, or the grass to grow in the earth around it. You have as much right. You forbid.

He snorted and turned away from me. I hardened my will, and spoke a final time to him. ‘Cub!’ I said in my man voice. He turned back to me, startled. His small ears went back at my tone. Almost he sneered his teeth at me. But before he could, I repelled at him. It was a thing I had always known how to do, as instinctively as one knows to pull the finger back from the flame. It was a force I had used but seldom, for once Burrich had turned it against me, and I did not always trust it. This was not a push, such as I had used on him when he was caged. I put force into it, the mental repulsing becoming almost a physical thing as he recoiled from me. He leaped back a stride then stood splay-legged on the snow, ready for flight. His eyes were shocked.

‘GO!’ I shouted at him, man’s word, man’s voice, and at the same time repelled him again with every bit of Wit I had. He fled, not gracefully, but leaping and scrabbling away through the snow. I held myself within myself, refusing to follow him with my mind and make sure that he did not stop. The repelling was a breaking of that bond, not only a withdrawing of myself from him, but a pushing back of every tie he had to me. Severed. And better to let them remain that way. Yet as I stood staring at the patch of brush where he had disappeared, I felt an emptiness that was very like to cold, a tingling itch of something lost, something missing. I have heard men speak so of an amputated limb, a physical groping about for a part gone forever.

I left the hut and began my hike home. The farther I walked, the more I hurt. Not physically, but that is the only comparison I have. As raw and flayed as if stripped of skin and meat. It was worse than when Burrich had taken Nosy, for I had done it to myself. The waning afternoon seemed chillier than the dark of dawn had. I tried to tell myself that I did not feel ashamed. I had done what was necessary, as I had with Virago. I pushed that thought aside. No. Cub would be fine. He would be better off than if he were with me. What life would it be for that wild creature, skulking about, always in danger of discovery, by the keep dogs or hunters or anyone who might spot him? He might be isolated, he might be lonely, but he would be alive. Our connection was severed. There was an insistent temptation to quest out about me, to see if I could sense him still, to grope and find if his mind still touched mine at all. I resisted it sternly, and sealed my thoughts against his as firmly as I could. Gone. He would not follow me. Not after I had repelled him like that. No. I tramped on and refused to look back.

Had I not been so deep in thought, so intent on remaining isolated inside myself, I might have had some warning. But I doubt it. The Wit was never any use against Forged ones. I do not know if they stalked me, or if I blundered right past their hiding-place. The first I knew of them was when the weight hit my back and I went down face-first in the snow. At first I thought it was Cub, come back to challenge my decision. I rolled and came almost to my feet before another one seized hold of my shoulder. Forged ones, three males, one young, two large and once well-muscled. My mind recorded it all quickly, categorizing them as neatly as if this were one of Chade’s exercises. One big one with a knife, the others had sticks. Torn and filthy clothing. Faces reddened and peeling from the cold, filthy beards, shaggy hair. Faces bruised and cut. Did they fight amongst themselves, or had they attacked someone else before me?

I broke the one’s grip, and leaped back, trying to get as clear of them as I could. I had a belt knife. It was not a long blade, but it was all I had. I had thought I would not need any weapon today; I had thought there were no more Forged ones anywhere near Buckkeep. They circled wide of me, keeping me in the centre of their ring. They let me get my knife clear. It didn’t seem to worry them.

‘What do you want? My cloak?’ I undid the catch and let it fall. One’s eyes followed it down, but none of them leaped for it as I had hoped. I shifted, turning, trying to watch all three at once, trying to have none of them completely behind me. It wasn’t easy. ‘Mittens?’ I stripped them from my hands, tossed them as a pair toward the one who appeared youngest. He let them fall at his feet. They grunted as they shuffled, rocking on their feet, watching me. No one wanted to be the first to attack. They knew I had a knife; whoever went first would meet the blade. I took a step or two toward an opening in the ring. They shifted to block my escape.

‘What do you want?’ I roared at them. I spun around, trying to look at each of them, and for a moment locked eyes with one. There was less in his eyes than there had been in Cub’s. No clean wildness, only the misery of physical discomfort and want. I stared at him and he blinked.

‘Meat.’ He grunted as if I had wrung the word from him.

‘I have no meat, no food at all. You’ll get nothing from me but a fight!’

‘You,’ huffed another, in a parody of laughter. Mirthless, heartless. ‘Meat!’

I had paused a moment too long, looked too long at one, for another sprang suddenly to my back. He flung his arms around me, pinning one of my arms, and then suddenly, horribly, his teeth sank into my flesh where my neck met my shoulder. Meat. Me.

A horror beyond thought engulfed me and I fought. I fought just as I had the first time I had battled Forged ones, with a mindless brutality that rivalled their own. The elements were my only ally, for they were ravaged by cold and privation. Their hands were clumsy with cold, and if we were all powered by the frenzy for survival, at least mine was new and strong within me while theirs had been worn down by the brutality of their current existence. I left flesh in the mouth of that first attacker, but tear myself free I did. That I recall. The rest is not so clear. I cannot put it in order. I broke off my knife in the young one’s ribs. I recall a thumb gouging into my eye, and the snap when I dislocated it from its socket. Locked in a struggle with one, another pounded me across the shoulders with his stick, until I managed to turn his mate to meet the blow. I don’t recall that I felt the pain of that pounding, and the torn flesh at my neck seemed but a warm spot where blood flowed. I had no sense of damage to myself, no daunting of my desire to kill them all. I could not win. There were too many. The young one was down in the snow, coughing blood, but one was throttling me while the other tried to jerk the sword free from its entanglement in my flesh and sleeve. I was kicking and flailing, trying uselessly to inflict any sort of damage on my attackers while the edges of the world grew black and the sky began to spin.

Brother!

He came, slashing teeth and weight hitting our tangled struggle like a battering ram. We all went down in the snow then, and the impact loosened the Forged one’s grip enough that I caught a whistle of air into my lungs. My head cleared, and suddenly I had heart to fight again, to ignore pain and damage, to fight! I swear I saw myself, face purpled from strangling, the rich blood streaming and soaking and the smell so maddening. I bared my teeth. Then Cub bore the one down and away from me. He attacked him with a speed no man could match, slashing and snapping and leaping clear before the grasping hands could seize his coat. He darted back in suddenly.

I know that I knew when Cub’s jaws closed in his throat. I felt that death rattle in my own jaws and the swift, spurting blood that drenched my muzzle and flowed out over my jowls. I shook my head, my teeth tearing flesh, setting all the life loose to run free down his stinking garments.

Then was a time of nothing.

Then I was sitting in the snow, back against a tree. Cub was lying in the snow not far from me. His forepaws were dappled with blood. He was licking his legs clean, a careful, slow, thorough licking.

I lifted my sleeve to my mouth and chin. I wiped away blood. It was not mine. I knelt forward suddenly in the snow, to spit out beard hairs, and then to vomit, but not even the acid taste of my bile could cleanse the dead man’s flesh and blood from my mouth. I glanced at his body, looked away. His throat was torn out. For a terrible instant I could recall how I had chewed down, the tendons of his throat taut against my teeth. I shut my eyes tight. I sat very still.

Cold nose against my cheek. I opened my eyes. He sat beside me, regarding me. Cub.

Nighteyes, he corrected me. My mother named me Nighteyes. I was the last of my litter to get my eyes open. He snuffed, then sneezed suddenly. He looked around at the fallen men. I followed his gaze unwillingly. My knife had taken the young one, but he had not died quickly. The other two …

I killed faster, Nighteyes observed quietly. But I have not the teeth of a cow. You did well, for your kind. He stood up and shook himself. Blood, both cold and warm, spattered my face. I gasped and wiped it away, then realized the significance.

You’re bleeding.

So are you. He pulled the blade out of you to put it in me.

Let me look at it.

Why?

The question hung between us in the cold air. Night was about to find us. Overhead the tree branches had gone black against the evening sky. I did not need the light to see him. I did not even need to see him. Do you need to see your ear to know it is part of you? As useless to deny that part of my flesh was mine as to deny Nighteyes.

We are brothers. We are pack, I conceded.

Are we?

I felt a reaching, a groping, a tugging for my attention. I let myself recall that I had felt this before and denied it. Now I did not. I gave him my focus, my undivided attention. Nighteyes was there, hide and tooth, muscle and claw, and I did not avoid him. I knew the sword thrust in his shoulder and felt how it had gone between two big muscles there. He held his paw curled to his chest. I hesitated, and then felt his hurt that I would hesitate. So I paused no longer, but reached out to him as he had to me. Trust is not trust until it is complete. So close were we, I do not know which of us offered this thought. For an instant I had a double awareness of the world as Nighteye’s perceptions overlay my own, his scenting of the bodies, his hearing telling me of scavenger foxes already creeping closer, his eyes making no difficulty of the fading light. Then the duality was gone, and his senses were mine, and mine his. We were bonded.

Cold was settling, on the land and into my bones. We found my cloak, clotted with frost, but I shook it out and put it on. I did not try to fasten it, but kept it wide away from where I had been bitten. I managed to drag my mittens on despite my injured forearm. ‘We’d better go,’ I told him softly. ‘When we get home, I’ll see to cleaning and bandaging us. But first, we’d better get there and get warm.’

I felt his assent. He walked beside me as we went, not behind me. He lifted his nose once, to snuff deeply of the fresh air. A cold wind had come up. Snow began to fall. That was all. His nose brought me the knowledge that I need fear no more Forged ones. The air was clean save for the stench of those behind us, and even that was fading, turning into carrion smell, mingling with the scavenger foxes come to find them.

You were wrong, he observed. Neither of us hunts very well alone. Sly amusement. Unless you thought you were doing well before I came along?

‘A wolf is not meant to hunt alone,’ I told him. I tried for dignity.

He lolled his tongue at me. Don’t fear, little brother. I’ll be here.

We continued walking through the crisp white snow and the stark black trees. Not much farther to home, he comforted me. I felt his strength mingling with mine as we limped on.

It was nearly noon when I presented myself at Verity’s map-room door. My forearm was snugly bandaged and invisible inside a voluminous sleeve. The wound itself was not that severe, but it was painful. The bite between my shoulder and neck was not so easily concealed. I had lost flesh there, and it had bled profusely. When I had seen it with a looking glass the night before, I was nearly sick. Cleaning it had made it bleed even more profusely: there was a chunk of me gone. Well, and if Nighteyes had not intervened, more of me would have followed that mouthful. I cannot explain how sickening I found that thought. I had managed to get a dressing on it, but not a very good one. I had pulled my shirt high and fastened it in place to conceal the bandaging. It chafed painfully against the wound, but it concealed it. Apprehensively, I tapped on the door, and was clearing my throat as it opened.

Charim told me Verity was not there. There was a worry deep in his eyes. I tried not to share it. ‘He can’t leave the boat-builders to that work, can he?’

Charim shook his head to my banter. ‘No. Up in his tower,’ the old servant said shortly. I turned aside as he shut the door slowly.

Well, Kettricken had told me as much. I had tried to forget that part of our conversation. Dread crept through me as I sought the tower stairs. Verity had no reason to be in this tower. This tower was where he Skilled from in summers, when the weather was fine and the Raiders harried our shores. There was no reason to be up there in winter, especially with the wind howling and the snow dropping as it was today. No reason save the terrible attraction of the Skill itself.

I had felt that lure, I reminded myself as I gritted my teeth and began the long climb to the top. I had known, for a time, the heady exuberance of the Skill. Like the clotted memory of long-ago pain, Galen the Skillmaster’s words came back to me. ‘If you are weak,’ he had threatened us, ‘if you lack focus and discipline, if you are indulgent and inclined to pleasure, you will not master the Skill. Rather, the Skill will master you. Practise the denial of all pleasures to yourself, deny all weaknesses that tempt you. Then, when you are as steel, perhaps you will be ready to encounter the lure of the Skill and turn aside from it. If you give into it, you will become as a great babe, mindless and drooling.’ Then he had schooled us, with privations and punishments that went far past any sane level. Yet when I had encountered the Skill joy, I had not found it the tawdry pleasure Galen had implied. Rather, it had been the same rush of blood and thunder of heart that sometimes music brought to me, or a sudden flight of bright pheasant in an autumn wood, or even the pleasure of taking a horse perfectly over a difficult jump, that instant when all things come into balance, and for a moment turn together as perfectly as birds wheeling in flight. The Skill gave that to one, but not for just a moment. Rather it lasted for as long as a man could sustain it, and became stronger and purer as one’s ability with the Skill refined; or so I believed. My own abilities with the Skill had been permanently damaged in a battle of wills with Galen. The defensive mental walls I had erected were such that not even someone as strongly Skilled as Verity could always reach me. My own ability to reach out of myself had become an intermittent thing, skittish and flighty as a frightened horse.

I paused outside Verity’s door. I took a very deep breath, then breathed it out slowly, refusing to let the blackness of spirit settle on me. Those things were over, that time was gone. No sense railing to myself about it. As was my old habit, I entered without knocking, lest the noise break Verity’s concentration.

He should not have been Skilling. He was. The shutters of the window were open and he leaned out on the sill. Wind and snow swirled throughout the room, speckling his dark hair and dark blue shirt and jerkin. He was breathing in deep, long steady breaths, a cadence somewhere between a very deep sleep and that of a runner at rest and catching his wind. He seemed oblivious of me. ‘Prince Verity?’ I said softly.

He turned to me, and his gaze was like heat, like light, like wind in my face. He Skilled into me with such force that I felt driven out of myself, his mind possessing mine so completely that there was no room left to be myself in it. For a moment I was drowning in Verity, and then he was gone, withdrawing so rapidly that I was left stumbling and gasping like a fish deserted by a high wave. In a step he was beside me, catching my elbow and steadying me on my feet.

‘I’m sorry,’ he apologized. ‘I was not expecting you. You startled me.’

‘I should have knocked, my prince,’ I replied, and then gave a quick nod to him that I could stand. ‘What’s out there, that you watch so intently?’

He glanced aside from me. ‘Not much. Some boys on the cliffs, watching a pod of whales sporting. Two of our own boats, fishing halibut. Even in this weather, though not enjoying it much.’

‘Then you are not Skilling for Outislanders …’

‘There are not any out there, this time of year. But I keep a watch.’ He glanced down at my forearm, the one he had just released, and changed the subject. ‘What happened to you?’

‘That’s what I came to see you about. Forged ones attacked me. Out on the face of the ridge, the one where the spruce hen hunting is good. Near the goatherd’s shed.’

He nodded quickly, his dark brows knitting. ‘I know the area. How many? Describe them.’

I sketched my attackers for him quickly and he nodded briefly, unsurprised. ‘I had a report of them, four days ago. They should not be this close to Buckkeep this soon; not unless they are consistently moving in this direction, every day. Are they finished?’

‘Yes. You expected this?’ I was aghast. ‘I thought we had wiped them out.’

‘We wiped out the ones who were here then. There are others, moving in this direction. I have been keeping track of them by the reports, but I had not expected them to be so close so soon.’

I struggled briefly, got my voice under control. ‘My prince, why do we simply keep track of them? Why do not we … take care of this problem?’

Verity made a small noise in his throat and turned back to his window. ‘Sometimes one has to wait, and let the enemy complete a move, in order to discover what the full strategy is. Do you understand me?’

‘The Forged ones have a strategy? I think not, my prince. They were …’

‘Report to me in full,’ Verity directed, without looking at me. I hesitated briefly, then launched into a complete retelling. Towards the end of the struggle, my account became a bit incoherent. I let the words die on my lips. ‘But I did manage to break his grip on me. And all three of them died there.’

He did not take his eyes from the sea. ‘You should avoid physical struggles, FitzChivalry. You always seem to get hurt in them.’

‘I know, my prince,’ I admitted humbly. ‘Hod did her best with me …’

‘But you were not really trained to be a fighter. You have other talents. And those are the ones you should be putting to use to preserve yourself. Oh, you’re a competent swordsman, but you’ve not the brawn and weight to be a brawler. At least, not yet. And that is what you always seem to revert to in a fight.’

‘I was not offered the selection of weapons,’ I said, a bit testily, and then added, ‘my prince.’

‘No. You won’t be.’ He seemed to speak from afar. A slight tension in the air told me that he Skilled out even as we spoke. ‘Yet I’m afraid I must send you out again. I think you are perhaps right. I have watched what is happening long enough. The Forged ones are converging on Buckkeep. I cannot fathom why, and yet perhaps knowing that is not as important as preventing them from attaining their goal. You will again undertake the removal of this problem, Fitz. Perhaps this time I can keep my own lady from becoming involved in it. I understand that if she wishes to go riding, she now has a guard of her own?’

‘As you have been told, sir,’ I told him, cursing myself for not coming to speak to him sooner of the Queen’s Guard.

He turned to regard me levelly. ‘The rumour I heard was that you had authorized the creation of such a guard. Not to steal your glory, but when such rumour reached me, I let it be supposed that I had requested it of you. As, I suppose, I did. Very indirectly.’

‘My prince,’ I said, and had the good sense to keep quiet.

‘Well. If she must ride, at least she is guarded now. Though I would greatly prefer she had no more encounters with Forged ones. Would I could think of something to busy her,’ he added wearily.

‘The Queen’s Garden,’ I suggested, recalling Patience’s account of them.

Verity cocked his eye at me.

‘The old ones, on top of the tower,’ I explained. ‘They have been unused for years. I saw what was left of them, before Galen ordered us to dismantle them to clear space for our Skill lessons. It must have been a charming place at one time. Tubs of earth and greenery, statuary, climbing vines.’

Verity smiled to himself. ‘And basins of water, too, with pond lilies in them, and fish, and even tiny frogs. The birds came there often in summer, to drink and to splash. Chivalry and I used to play up there. She had little charms hung on strings, made of glass and bright metal. And when the wind stirred them, they would chime together, or flash like jewels in the sun.’ I could feel myself warming with his memory of that place and time. ‘My mother kept a little hunting cat, and it would lounge on the warm stone when the sun struck it. Hisspit; that was her name. Spotted coat and tufted ears. And we would tease her with string and tufts of feathers, and she would stalk us among the pots of flowers. While we were supposed to be studying tablets on herbs. I never properly learned them. There was too much else to do there. Except for thyme. I knew every kind of thyme she had. My mother grew a lot of thyme. And catmint.’ He was smiling.

‘Kettricken would love such a place,’ I told him. ‘She gardened much in the mountains.’

‘Did she?’ He looked surprised. ‘I would have thought her occupied with more … physical pastimes.’

I felt an instant of annoyance with him. No, of something more than annoyance. How could it be that I knew more of his wife than he did? ‘She kept gardens,’ I said quietly. ‘Of many herbs, and knew all the uses of those that grew therein. I have told you of them myself.’

‘Yes, I suppose you have.’ He sighed. ‘You are right, Fitz. Visit her for me, and tell her of the Queen’s Garden. It is winter now, and there is probably little she can do with it. But come spring, it would be a wondrous thing to see it restored …’

‘Perhaps, you yourself, my prince,’ I ventured, but he shook his head.

‘I haven’t the time. But I trust it to you. And now, downstairs. To the maps. I have things I wish to discuss with you.’

I turned immediately toward the door. Verity followed more slowly. I held the door for him and on the threshold he paused and looked back over his shoulder at the open window. ‘It calls me,’ he admitted to me, calmly, simply, as if observing that he enjoyed plums. ‘It calls to me, at any moment when I am not busied. And so I must be busy, Fitz. And too busy.’

‘I see,’ I said slowly, not at all sure that I did.

‘No. You don’t.’ Verity spoke with great certainty. ‘It is like a great loneliness, boy. I can reach out and touch others. Some, quite easily. But no one ever reaches back. When Chivalry was alive … I still miss him, boy. Sometimes I am so lonely for him; it is like being the only one of something in the world. Like the very last wolf, hunting alone.’

A shiver went down my spine. ‘What of King Shrewd?’ I ventured to ask.

He shook his head. ‘He Skills seldom now. His strength for it has dwindled, and it taxes his body as well as his mind.’ We went down a few more steps. ‘You and I are the only ones now to know that,’ he added softly. I nodded.

We went down the stairs slowly. ‘Has the healer looked at your arm?’ he queried.

I shook my head.

‘Nor Burrich.’

He was stating this as fact, already knowing it was true.

I shook my head again. The marks of Nighteyes’ teeth were too plain upon my skin, although he had given those bites in play. I could not show Burrich the marks of the Forged Ones without betraying my wolf to him.

Verity sighed. ‘Well. Keep it clean. I suppose you know as well as any how to keep an injury clean. Next time you go out, remember this, and go prepared. Always. There may not always be one to step in and aid you.’

I came to a slow stop on the stairs. Verity continued down. I took a deep breath. ‘Verity,’ I asked quietly. ‘How much do you know? About … this.’

‘Less than you do,’ he said jovially. ‘But more than you think I do.’

‘You sound like the Fool,’ I said bitterly.

‘Yes. Sometimes. He is another one who has a great understanding of aloneness, and what it can drive a man to do.’ He took a breath, and almost I thought he might say that he knew what I was, and did not condemn me for it. Instead, he continued, ‘I believe the Fool had words with you, a few days ago.’

I followed him silently now, wondering how he knew so much about so many things. The Skilling, of course. We came to his study and I followed him in. Charim, as ever, was already waiting for us. Food was set out, and mulled wine. Verity set to upon it with a great appetite. I sat across from him, mostly watching him eat. I was not very hungry, but it built my appetite to watch how much he enjoyed this simple, robust meal. In this he was still a soldier, I thought. He would take this small pleasure, this good, well-served food when he was hungry, and relish it while he could. It gave me much satisfaction to see him with this much life and appetite to him. I wondered how he would be next summer, when he would have to Skill for hours every day, keeping watch for Raiders off our coast, and using the tricks of his mind to set them astray while giving our own folk early warning. I thought of Verity as he had been last summer by harvest time; worn to thinness, face lined, without the energy to eat save that he drank the stimulants that Chade put in his tea. His life had become the hours he spent Skilling. Come summer, his hunger for the Skilling would replace every other hunger in his life. How would Kettricken react to that, I wondered?

After we had eaten, Verity went over his maps with me. There was no longer any mistaking the pattern that emerged. Regardless of what obstacles, forest or river or frozen plains, the Forged ones were moving towards Buckkeep. It made no sense to me. The ones I had encountered seemed all but bereft of their senses. I found it difficult to believe that any one of them would conceive of travelling overland, despite hardships, simply to come to Buckkeep. ‘And these records you’ve kept indicate that all of them have. All of the Forged ones that you’ve identified seem to be moving towards Buckkeep.’

‘Yet you have difficulty seeing it as a coordinated plan? Verity asked quietly.

‘I fail to see how they could have any plan at all. How have they contacted each other? And it doesn’t seem a concerted effort. They aren’t meeting up and travelling here in bands. It simply seems that each and every one sets out this way, and some of them fall in together.’

‘Like moths drawn to a candle flame,’ Verity observed.

‘Or flies to carrion,’ I added sourly.

‘The ones to fascination, the others to feed,’ Verity mused. ‘I wish I knew which it is that draws the Forged ones to me. Perhaps another thing entirely.’

‘Why do you think you must know why they come? Do you think you are their target?’

‘I do not know. But if I find out, I may understand my enemy. I do not think it chance that all the Forged ones make their way to Buckkeep. I think they move against me, Fitz. Perhaps not of their own will, but it is still a move against me. I need to understand why.’

‘To understand them, you must become them.’

‘Oh.’ He looked less than amused. ‘Now who sounds like the Fool?’

The question made me uneasy and I let it slip by me. ‘My prince, when the Fool mocked me the other day …’ I hesitated, still stung by the memory. I had always believed the Fool to be my friend. I tried to push the emotion aside. ‘He put ideas in my mind. In his teasing way. He said, if I understand his riddles aright, that I should be seeking for others who are Skilled. Men and women from your father’s generation, trained by Solicity before Galen became Skillmaster. And he seemed also to say that I should be finding out more about the Elderlings. How are they summoned, what can they do? What are they?’

Verity leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers over his chest. ‘Either of those quests might be enough for a dozen men. And yet, neither is even sufficient for one, for the answers to either question are so scarce. To the first, yes, there should yet be Skilled ones amongst us, folk older than my father even, trained for the old wars against the Outislanders. It would not have been common folk knowledge as to who was trained. Training was done privately, and even those in a coterie might know of few outside their own circle. Still, there should have been records. I am sure there were, at one time. But what has become of them, no one can say. I imagine that they were passed from Solicity down to Galen. But they were not found in his room or among his things after he … died.’

It was Verity’s turn to pause. We both knew how Galen had died, in a sense had both been there, though we had never spoken much of it. Galen had died a traitor, in the act of trying to Skill-tap Verity’s strength and drain it off and kill him. Instead, Verity had borrowed my strength to aid him in draining Galen. It was not a thing either of us enjoyed recalling. But I spoke boldly, trying to keep all emotion from my voice.

‘Do you think Regal would know where such records are?’

‘If he does, he has said nothing of it.’ Verity’s voice was as flat as my own, putting an end to that topic. ‘But I have had some small success in uncovering a few Skilled ones. The names, at least. In every case, those I have managed to discover have either already died or cannot be located now.’

‘Um.’ I recalled hearing something of this from Chade some time ago. ‘How did you discover their names?’

‘Some my father could recall. The members of the last coterie, who served King Bounty. Others I knew vaguely, when I was very small. A few I discovered by talking to some of the very old folk in the keep, asking them to recall what rumours they could of who might have been trained in the Skill. Though of course I did not ask in so many words. I did not, and still do not, wish my quest to be known.’

‘May I ask why?

He frowned and nodded toward his maps. ‘I am not as brilliant as your father was, my boy. Chivalry could make leaps of intuition that seemed nothing short of magical. What I discover are patterns. Does it seem likely to you that every Skilled one I can discover should be either dead, or unfindable? It seems to me that if I find one, and his name is known as a Skilled one, it might not be healthy for him.’

For a time we sat in silence. He was letting me come to my own conclusions. I was wise enough not to voice them aloud. ‘And Elderlings?’ I asked at last.

‘A different sort of riddle. At the time they were written about, all knew what they were. So I surmise. It would be the same if you went to find a scroll that explained exactly what a horse was. You would find many passing mentions of them, and a few that related directly to shoeing one, or to one stallion’s blood-line. But who amongst us would see the need to devote the labour and time to writing out exactly what a horse is?’

‘I see.’

‘So, again, it is a sifting out of detail. I have not had the time required to devote myself to such a task.’ For a moment he sat looking at me. Then he opened a little stone box on his desk and took out a key. ‘There is a cabinet in my bedchamber,’ he said slowly. ‘I have gathered there what scrolls I could find that made even a passing mention of the Elderlings. There are also some related to the Skill. I give you leave to pore through them. Ask Fedwren for good paper, and keep notes of what you discover. Look for patterns among those notes. And bring them to me, every month or so.’

I took the little brass key in my hand. It weighed strangely heavy, as if attached to the task the Fool had suggested and Verity had confirmed. Look for patterns, Verity had suggested. I suddenly saw one, a web woven from me to the Fool to Verity and back again. Like Verity’s other patterns, it did not seem to be an accident. I wondered who had originated the pattern. I glanced at Verity, but his thoughts had gone afar. I rose quietly to go.

As I touched the door, he spoke to me. ‘Come to me. Very early tomorrow morning. To my tower.’

‘Sir?’

‘Perhaps we may yet discover another Skilled one, unsuspected in our midst.’