Читать книгу The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy: Fool’s Errand, The Golden Fool, Fool’s Fate - Робин Хобб - Страница 31

The legends of the Catalyst and the White Prophet are not Six Duchies’ legends. Although the writings and lore of that tradition are known to some scholars in the Six Duchies, it has its roots in the lands far to the south, beyond even the reaches of Jamaillia and the Spice Islands. It is not properly a religion, but is more a concept both of history and philosophy. According to those who believe such things, all of time is a great wheel that turns in a track of pre-determined events. Left to itself, time turns endlessly, and all the world is doomed to repeat the cycle of events that lead us all ever deeper into darkness and degradation. Those who follow the White Prophet believe that to each age is born one who has the vision to redirect time and history into a better path. This one is known by his white skin and colourless eyes. It is said that the blood of the ancient lines of the Whites find voice again in the White Prophet. To each White Prophet, there is a Catalyst. Only the White Prophet of that particular age can divine who the Catalyst is. The Catalyst is one who is born in a unique position to alter, however slightly, predetermined events, which in turn cascade time into other paths with possibilities that diverge ever wider. In partnership with this Catalyst, the White Prophet labours to divert the turning of time into a better path.

Caterhill’s Philosophies

We could not keep up the pace forever, of course. Long before I felt safe, the condition of the horses forced us to breathe them. The sounds of pursuit had faded behind us; a warhorse is not a courser. As the evening approached true dark around us, we walked the horses down a winding streambed. The Prince’s horse could barely hold her head up. As soon as the heat was walked off her, we would have to stop for a time. I rode crouched in my saddle to avoid the sweeping branches of the willows that lined the stream. The others followed. When we had first slowed the horses, I had feared that the Prince would try a leaping escape. But he had not. Instead he sat his horse in sullen silence as I led her on.

‘Mind this branch,’ I warned Dutiful and Lord Golden as a low limb snagged on me when Myblack pushed her way under it. I tried not to let it snap back in the Prince’s face.

‘Who are you?’ the Prince suddenly demanded in a low voice.

‘You do not recognize me, my lord?’ Lord Golden asked him anxiously. I recognized his effort to distract the Prince’s attention from me.

‘Not you. Him. Who is he? And why have you assaulted myself and my friends in this way?’ There was an amazing depth of accusation in his voice. Abruptly he sat up straighter in his saddle as if he were just discovering his anger.

‘Duck,’ I warned him as I released another branch. He did.

Lord Golden spoke. ‘That is my servant, Tom Badgerlock. We’ve come to take you home to Buckkeep, Prince Dutiful. The Queen, your mother, has been most worried about you.’

‘I do not wish to go.’ With every sentence, the young man was recovering himself. There was dignity in his voice as he spoke these words. I waited for Lord Golden to reply, but the splashing thuds of the horses’ hooves in the stream and the swish and crackle of the branches we passed through were the only sound. To our right, a meadow suddenly opened out. A few blackened, snaggly stumps in it were reminders of a forest fire in this area years ago. Tall grass with browned seedheads vied with fireweed with sprung and fluffy seedpods. I turned the horses out of the stream and onto the grass. When I looked up at the sky, it was dark enough to show a pricking of early stars. The dwindling moon would not show herself until night was deep. Even now, the gathering darkness was leaching colour from the day, making the surrounding forest an impenetrable tangle of blackness.

I led them out to the centre of the meadow, well away from the forest edge before I reined in. Any attackers would have to cross open ground before they reached us. ‘Best we rest until moon-rise,’ I observed to Lord Golden. ‘It will be difficult enough to make our way then.’

‘Is it safe to stop?’ he asked me.

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Safe or not, I think we must. The horses are nearly spent, and it’s getting dark. I think we’ve gained a good lead. That warhorse is strong, but not swift nor nimble. The terrain we’ve covered will daunt him. And the Piebalds must either abandon their wounded, splitting their party, or come after us more slowly. We have a little breathing space.’

I looked back at the Prince before I dismounted. He sat, shoulders slumped, but the anger in his eyes proclaimed him far from defeated. I waited until he swung his dark eyes to meet mine, and then spoke to him. ‘It’s up to you. We can treat you well and simply return you to Buckkeep. Or you can behave like a wilful child and try to run away back to your Witted friends. In which case I will hunt you down, and take you back to Buckkeep with your hands bound behind you. Choose now.’

He stared at me, a flat, challenging stare, the rudest thing one animal can do to another. He didn’t speak. It offended me on so many levels that I could scarcely keep my temper.

‘Answer me!’ I commanded.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘And who are you?’ His tone made the repeated question an insult.

In all the years I’d had the care and raising of Hap, he had never provoked me to the level of temper that this youth had instantly roused in me. I wheeled Myblack. I was taller than the lad to begin with and the differences in our mounts made me tower over him. I crowded both him and his horse, leaning over him to look down on him like a wolf asserting authority over a cub. ‘I’m the man who’s taking you back to Buckkeep. One way or another. Accept it.’

‘Badgerlo—’ Lord Golden began warningly, but it was too late. Dutiful made a move, a tiny flexing of muscle that warned me. Without considering anything, I launched at him from Myblack’s back. My spring carried us both off our horses and onto the ground. We landed in deep grass, luckily for Dutiful, for I fell atop him, pinning him as neatly as if I had intended it. Both our horses snorted and shied away, but they were too weary to run. Myblack trotted a few paces, knees high, snorted a second rebuke at me, and then dropped her head to the grass. The Prince’s horse, having followed her so far today, copied her example.

I sat up, straddling the Prince’s chest while pinning both his arms down. I heard the sound of Lord Golden dismounting, but did not even turn my head. I stared down at Dutiful silently. I knew by the labouring of his chest that I had knocked the wind out of him, but he refused to make a sound. Nor would he meet my eyes, not even when I took his knife from him and flung it disdainfully into the forest. He looked past me at the sky until I seized his chin and forced him to look me in the face.

‘Choose,’ I told him again.

He met my eyes, looked away, then met them again. When he looked away a second time, I felt some of the fight go out of him. Then his face twisted with misery as he stared past me. ‘But I have to go back to her,’ he gasped out. He drew breath raggedly, and tried to explain. ‘I don’t expect you to understand. You’re nothing but a hound sent to track me down and drag me back. Doing your duty is all you know. But I have to go after her. She is my life, the breath in my body … she completes me. We have to be together.’

Well. You won’t be. I came a knife’s edge away from saying those words, but I did not. Factually, I told him, ‘I do understand. But that doesn’t change what I have to do. It doesn’t even change what you have to do.’

I got off him as Lord Golden approached. ‘Badgerlock, that is Prince Dutiful, heir to the Farseer Throne,’ he reminded me sharply.

I decided to play the role he’d left open for me. ‘And that’s why he’s still got all his teeth. My lord. Most boys who draw knives on me are lucky to keep any.’ I tried to sound both surly and truculent. Let the lad think Lord Golden had me on a short leash. Let him worry that I wasn’t completely under the lord’s control. It would give me an edge of mastery over him.

‘I’ll tend the horses,’ I announced, and stalked away from them into the darkness. I kept one eye and one ear on the shapes of the Fool and the Prince as I dragged off saddles, slipped bits, and wiped the horses down with handfuls of grass. Dutiful got slowly to his feet, disdaining Lord Golden’s offered hand. He brushed himself off, and when Golden asked if he had taken any harm, replied with stiff courtesy that he was as well as could be expected. Lord Golden retreated a short way, to consider the night and allow the lad to collect his shattered dignity. In a short time, Myblack and Malta were grazing as greedily as if they had never seen grass before. I had put the saddles in a row. I removed bedding from Myblack’s saddle-packs and began to make it into pallets near them. If possible, I’d steal an hour of sleep. The Prince watched me. After a moment he asked, ‘Aren’t you going to build a fire?’

‘And make it easier for your friends to find us? No.’

‘But –’

‘It’s not that cold. And there’s no food to cook anyway.’ I shook out the last blanket, then asked him, ‘Do you have any bedding in your saddle-pack?’

‘No,’ he admitted unhappily. I divided the blankets to make three pallets instead of two. I saw him pondering something. Then he added, ‘I do have food. And wine.’ He took a breath, then asked, ‘It seems a fair trade for a blanket.’ I kept a wary eye on him as he approached and began to open his saddle-packs.

‘My prince, you misjudge us. We would not think of making you sleep on the bare earth,’ Lord Golden protested in horror.

‘You might not, Lord Golden. But he would.’ He cast me a baleful glance and added, ‘He does not even accord me the courtesy one man gives to another, let alone the respect a servant should have for his sovereign.’

‘He is a rough man, my prince, but a good servant all the same.’ Lord Golden gave me a warning look.

I made a show of lowering my eyes, but muttered, ‘Respect a sovereign? Perhaps. But not a runaway boy fleeing his duty.’

Dutiful took a breath as if he would reply in fury. Then he let it out as a hiss, but leashed his anger. ‘You know nothing of what you speak about,’ he said coldly. ‘I did not run away.’

Lord Golden’s tone was much gentler than mine had been. ‘Forgive me, my lord, but that is how it must appear to us. The Queen feared at first that you had been kidnapped. But no notes of ransom arrived. She did not wish to alarm her nobles, or to offend the Outislander delegation soon to arrive for your betrothal agreement. Surely you have not forgotten that in nine more nights, the new moon brings your betrothal? For you to be absent at such a time goes beyond mere discourtesy to insult. She doubted that was your intent. Even so, she did not turn out the guards after you, as she might have done. Preferring to be subtle, she asked me to locate you and bring you safely home. And that is our only aim.’

‘I did not run away,’ he repeated stubbornly, and I saw that the accusation had stung him more sharply than I had suspected. Nonetheless, he stubbornly added, ‘But I have no intention of returning to Buckkeep.’ He had taken a bottle of wine from his pack. Now he pulled out food. Smoked fish wrapped in linen, several slabs of hard-crusted honey-cake, and two apples; hardly travelling rations, but the toothsome repast that loyal companions would supply for a prince’s enjoyment. He unfolded the linen on the grass, and began to divide the food into three portions. Dainty as a cat, he arranged the food. I thought it was well done, a show of a gracious nature by a boy in an uncomfortable situation. He uncorked the wine and set it in the middle. With a gesture he invited us, and we were not slow to respond. Little as there was, it was very welcome. The honey-cake was heavy, suety and thick with raisins. I filled my mouth with half my slab and tried to chew it slowly. I was fiercely hungry. Yet even as we attacked the food, the Prince, less hungry, spoke seriously.

‘If you try to force me to return with you, you will only get hurt. My friends will come for me, you know. She will not surrender me so easily, nor I her. And I have no desire to see you get hurt. Not even you,’ he added, meeting my stare. I had thought he intended his words as a threat. Instead, he seemed sincere as he explained, ‘I must go with her. I am not a boy running away from his duty, nor even a man fleeing an arranged marriage. I do not run away from unpleasantness. Instead, I join myself where I most belong … where I was born to belong.’ His careful unfolding of words put me in mind of Verity. His eyes travelled slowly from me to Lord Golden and back again. He seemed to be seeking an ally, or at least a sympathetic ear. He licked his lips as if taking a risk. Very quietly, he asked, ‘Have you ever heard the tale of the Piebald Prince?’

We were both silent. I swallowed food gone tasteless. Was Dutiful mad? Then Lord Golden nodded, once, slowly.

‘I am of that line. As sometimes happens in the Farseer line, I was born with the Wit.’

I did not know whether to admire his honesty, or be horrified at his naïve assumption that he had not just condemned himself to death. I kept my features motionless and did not let my eyes betray my thoughts. Desperately I wondered if he had admitted this to others at Buckkeep.

I think our lack of reaction unnerved him more than anything else we could have done. We both sat quietly, watching him. He took a gambler’s breath. ‘So you see now, why it would be best for everyone if you let me go. The Six Duchies will not follow a Witted king, nor can I forsake what my blood makes me. I will not deny what I am. That would be cowardice, and false to my friends. If I returned, it would only be a matter of time before all knew of my Wit. If you drag me back, it can only lead to strife and division amongst the nobles. You should let me go, and tell my mother you could not find me. That way is best for all.’

I looked down at the last of my portion of fish. Quietly I asked, ‘What if we decided it were best for all if we killed you? Hung you, and cut you in quarters and burned the parts near running water? And then told the Queen we had not found you?’ I looked away from the wild fear in his eyes, shamed by what I had done and yet knowing he must be taught caution. After a space: ‘Know men before you share your deepest secrets with them,’ I counselled him.

Or your kill. He came up on me as quietly as a shadow, his thought light as the wind against my skin. Nighteyes dropped a rabbit, a bit the worse for wear, on the ground beside me. He had already eaten the guts. Casually, he lifted the smoked fish from my hands, gulped it down, and then lay down beside me with a heavy sigh. He dropped his head onto his forepaws. That rabbit started up right under me. Easiest kill I’ve ever made.

The Prince’s eyes opened so wide I could see white all around them. His gaze darted from the wolf to me and back again. I don’t think he had overheard our shared thought, but he knew all the same. He leapt to his feet with an angry cry. ‘You should understand! How can you tear me from not just my bond-beast but the woman who shares that Old Blood kinship with me? How can you betray one of your own?’

I had more important questions of my own. How did you cover that much ground so quickly?

The same way his cat will, and for much the same reason. A wolf can go straight where a horse must go round. Are you ready for them to find you? With my hand resting on his back, I could feel the weariness thrumming through him. He shuddered away my concern as if it were flies on his coat. I’m not that decrepit. I brought you meat, he pointed out.

You should have eaten it all yourself.

A trace of humour. I did. The first one. You don’t think I’d be foolish enough to follow you all this way on an empty belly? That one is for you and the Scentless One. And this cub, if you so will it.

I doubt he will eat it raw.

I doubt there is sense to avoiding a fire. Come they will, and they need no light to guide them. The boy calls to her; it is like breath sighing in and out of him. He yowls it like a mating call.

I am not aware of it.

Your nose is not the only sense that you have that is not as keen as mine.

I stood up, then nudged the eviscerated rabbit with my foot. ‘I’ll make a fire and cook this.’ The Prince was staring at me silently. He was well aware I’d been having a conversation that excluded him.

‘What about drawing pursuit to us?’ Lord Golden asked. Despite his question, I knew he was hoping for the comfort of a fire and hot meat.

‘He’s already doing that.’ I gestured at the Prince with my chin. ‘Having a fire long enough to have some hot food will not make it any worse.’

‘How can you betray your own kind?’ Dutiful demanded again.

I had already puzzled out the answer to that the night before. ‘There are levels of loyalty here, my prince. And my highest loyalty is to the Farseers. As yours should be.’ He was more my own kind than I had the heart to tell him, and I ached for him. Yet my actions did not feel like a betrayal to me. Rather I imposed safe boundaries on him. As Burrich had once done for me, I thought ruefully.

‘What gives you the right to tell me where my loyalty should be?’ he demanded. The anger in his voice let me know that I had touched that very question within him.

‘You’re correct. It’s not my right, Prince Dutiful. It’s my duty. To remind you of what you seem to have forgotten. I’ll find some firewood. You might ponder what will become of the Farseer throne if you simply refuse your duty and vanish.’

Despite his weariness, the wolf heaved himself to his feet and followed me. We went back to the stream’s edge, to look for dead wood carried by higher waters and left to dry all summer. We drank first, and then I dabbed my chest with water where the Prince’s blade had scored me. Another day, another scar. Or perhaps not. It had not even bled very much. I turned from that to looking for dry wood. Nighteyes’ keener night vision helped my lesser senses, and I soon had an armload. He’s very like you, the wolf observed as we made our way back.

Family resemblance. He’s Verity’s heir.

Only because you refused to be. He’s our blood, little brother. Yours and mine.

That struck me into silence for a time. Then I pointed out, You are much more aware of human concerns than you used to be. Time was when you took no notice of such things.

True. And Black Rolf warned us both that we have twined too deeply, and that I am more man than a wolf should be, and you more wolf. We’ll pay for it, little brother. Not that we could have helped it, but that does not change it. We will suffer for how deeply our natures have meshed.

What are you trying to tell me?

You already know.

And I did. Like myself, the Prince had been brought up amongst folk who did not use the Wit. And as I had, unguided, he seemed to have not only fallen into his magic, but to be wallowing in it. Untaught, I had bonded far too deeply. In my case, I had first bonded to a dog when we were both young, and far too immature to consider the implications of such a joining. Burrich had forcibly separated us. At the time, I had hated him for it, a hate that lasted years. Now I looked at the Prince, in the full throes of his obsession with the cat, and counted myself lucky that when I had bonded, there had only been the puppy involved. Somehow, his attachment to his cat had grown to include a young woman of Old Blood. When I took him back to Buckkeep, he would lose not only his companion, but also a woman he believed he loved.

What woman?

He speaks of a woman, one of Old Blood. Probably one of those women who rode with him.

He speaks of a woman, but he does not smell of a woman. Does not that strike you odd?

I pondered that on my way back to camp. I dropped the wood in a small tumble. As I set my fuel and then shaved a dry stick for tinder, I watched the boy. He had tidied away the linen napkin but left out the bottle of wine. Now he sat morosely on a blanket, his knees drawn up to his chin, staring out at the deepening night.

I dropped all my guards and quested towards him. The wolf was right. He keened for his Wit-partner, but I was not sure if he was even aware of doing it. It was a sad little seeking he sent forth, like a lost pup whimpering for its mother. It grated on my nerves, once I was aware of it. It was not just that he would call his friends down on us; it was the whining aspect of it that appalled me. It made me want to cuff him. Instead, as I worked with my tinder and flint, I asked callously, ‘Thinking of your girl?’

His head swivelled towards me, startled. Lord Golden flinched at the directness of my question. I bent deeper to puff gently at the tiny spark I had conjured up. It glowed, then became a pale, licking flame.

The Prince reached for a measure of dignity. ‘I am always thinking of her,’ he said softly.

I tented several skinny sticks over my tiny fire. ‘So. What’s she look like?’ I spoke with a soldier’s crude interest, the inflection learned from many a meal with the guardsmen at Buckkeep. ‘Is she …?’ I made the unmistakable, universal gesture, ‘any good?’

‘Shut up!’ He spat the words savagely.

I leered at Lord Golden knowingly. ‘Ah, we both know what that means. It means he don’t know. At least, not first hand. Or maybe it’s only his hand that knows.’ I leaned back and smirked at him challengingly.

‘Badgerlock!’ Lord Golden rebuked me. I think I had truly scandalized him.

I didn’t take the hint. ‘Well, that’s always how it is, isn’t it? He’s just a moony boy for her. Bet he’s never even kissed her, let alone …’ I repeated the gesture.

The taunting had the desired effect. As I added larger sticks to the flames, the Prince stood up indignantly. The firelight revealed that his colour was high and his nostrils pinched with anger. ‘It isn’t like that!’ he grated. ‘She isn’t some … Not that I expect you to understand anything other than whores! She’s a woman worth waiting for, and when we come together, it will be a higher and sweeter thing than you can imagine. Hers is a love to be earned, and I will prove myself worthy of her.’

Inside, I bled for him. They were a boy’s words, taken from minstrel tellings, a lad’s imaginings of something he had never experienced. The innocence of his passion blazed in him, and his idealistic expectations shone in his eyes. I tried to summon some withering crudity worthy of the role I had chosen, but could not force it past my lips. The Fool saved me.

‘Badgerlock!’ Lord Golden snapped. ‘Enough of this. Just cook the meat.’

‘My lord,’ I acknowledged gruffly. I gave Dutiful a sidelong sneer that he refused to see. As I picked up the stiff rabbit and the knife, Lord Golden spoke more gently to the Prince.

‘Does she have a name, this lady you so admire? Have I met her at court?’ Lord Golden was courteously curious. Somehow the warmth in his voice made it flattering that he would care to ask such a question. Dutiful was instantly charmed, not only despite his earlier irritation with me, but perhaps because of it. Here was a chance for him to prove himself a well-bred gentleman, to ignore my crass interest and reply as politely as if I did not exist.

He smiled as he looked down at his hands, the smile of a boy with a secret sweetheart. ‘Oh, you will not have met her at court, Lord Golden. Her kind is not to be found there. She is a lady of the wild woods, a huntress and a forester. She does not hem handkerchiefs in a garden on a summer’s day, nor huddle within walls by a hearth when the wind begins to blow. She is free to the open world, her hair blowing in the wind, her eyes full of the night’s mysteries.’

‘I see.’ Lord Golden’s voice was warm with a worldly man’s tolerance for a youth’s first romance. He came to sit on his saddle, next to the boy and yet slightly above him. ‘And does this paragon of the forest have a name? Or a family?’ he asked paternally.

Dutiful looked up at him and shook his head wearily. ‘There, you see what you ask? That is why I am so weary of the court. As if I cared whether she has family or fortune! It is she whom I love.’

‘But she must have a name,’ Lord Golden protested tolerantly as I slid my knife blade under the rabbit’s hide and loosened it. ‘Else what do you whisper to the stars at night when you dream of her?’ I peeled the hide from the rabbit as Lord Golden stripped the layers of secrets from the boy’s romance. ‘Come. How did you meet her?’ Lord Golden picked up the wine bottle, drank delicately from it, and then handed it to the Prince.

The lad turned it in his hands thoughtfully, glanced up at Golden’s smile, and drank. Then he sat, the bottle held loosely in his hands, the neck of it pointed towards the small fire that limned his features against the night. ‘My cat took me to her,’ he confided at last. He took another sip of the wine. ‘I had slipped out one night to go hunting with her. Sometimes, I just have to get away on my own. You know what it is like at court. If I say I will ride at dawn, I arise and there are six gentlemen ready to accompany me, and a dozen ladies to bid us farewell. If I say I will walk in the gardens after dinner, I cannot turn a corner in the path without finding a lady writing poetry beneath a tree, or encountering some noble who wishes me to have a word with the Queen on his behalf. It’s stifling, Lord Golden. In truth, I do not know why so many choose to come to court when they do not have to. Had I the privilege of freedom, I would leave it.’ He drew himself up suddenly and looked all around at the night. ‘I have left it,’ he declared abruptly, almost as if it surprised him. ‘I’m here, away from all that pretence and manipulation. And I’m happy. Or I was happy, until you came to drag me back.’ And he glared at me, as if it were all my doing, and Lord Golden an innocent bystander.

‘So. You went out hunting with your cat one night, and this lady …?’ Lord Golden deftly picked up the threads that had interested him.

‘I went out hunting with my cat and –’

The cat’s name? Nighteyes pressed with sudden urgency.

I grunted mockingly. ‘Sounds to me as if the cat and the lady got the same name. “Neverspeakit.”’ I skewered the rabbit on my sword. I didn’t like to cook on the end of my blade; it was bad for the tempering, but to get a green branch I would have had to leave the conversation and go to the forest’s edge and I wanted to hear what he had to say.

The Prince replied scathingly to my comment. ‘I would think that you, as a Piebald, would know that beasts have their own names, which they reveal to you at a time they think is proper. My cat has not shared her true name with me yet. When I am worthy of that confidence, I will have it.’

‘I’m not a “Piebald”,’ I asserted gruffly.

Dutiful ignored me. He took a breath and spoke earnestly to Lord Golden. ‘And the same is true of my lady. I do not need to know her name when it is her essence that I love.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Lord Golden comforted him. He hitched himself closer to the Prince and went on, ‘But I would hear of your first meeting with the fair one. For I confess that at heart, I am as soft a romantic as any court lady weeping at a minstrel’s tale.’ He spoke as if what Dutiful had said was of no consequence. But a profound sense of wrongness washed through me. It was true that Nighteyes had not immediately shared his true name with me, but the cat and the Prince had been together for months. I turned the sword, but the rabbit flopped around on the blade, its body cavity a loose fit, the seared side turning back to the flames. Grumbling, I pulled it out of the fire and burnt my fingers jamming it more firmly onto the weapon. I thrust it back over the flames and held it there.

‘Our first meeting,’ Dutiful mused. A rueful smile curved his mouth. ‘I fear that has yet to happen. In some ways. In all the important ways, I have met her. The cat showed her to me, or rather, she revealed herself to me through the cat.’

Lord Golden cocked his head and gave the boy an interested, if confused look. The lad’s smile widened.

‘It is hard to explain to someone with no experience of the Wit. But I will try. Through my magic, I can share thoughts with the cat. Her senses enhance my own. Sometimes, I can lie abed at night, and surrender my mind to hers, and become one with her. I see what she sees, feel what she feels. It’s wonderful, Lord Golden. Not debased and bestial as others would have you believe. It brought the world to life around me. If there was some way I could share the experience with you, I would, just so that you could understand it.’

The boy was so earnest in his proselytizing. I glimpsed the quick flash of amusement through Lord Golden’s eyes, but I am sure the Prince saw only his sympathetic warmth. ‘I shall have to imagine it,’ he murmured.

Prince Dutiful shook his head. ‘Ah, but you cannot. No one can, who is not born with this magic. That is why all persecute us. Because, lacking this magic, they become filled with envy and it turns to hatred.’

‘I think fear might have something to do with it,’ I muttered, but the Fool shot me a glance that bade me shut up. Chastened, I turned away from them and rotated the smoking rabbit.

‘I think I can imagine your communion with the cat. How wondrous it must be to share the thoughts of such a noble creature! How rich to experience the night and the hunt with one so attuned to the natural world! But I confess, I do not understand how she could reveal this wondrous lady to you … unless she guided you to her?’

How pleasant to feel her filthy claws raking your belly!

Shush.

Cats noble creatures? Spitting, carrion-breathed sneaks.

With difficulty, I ignored Nighteyes’ asides and focused on the conversation while appearing to be engrossed with the rabbit. The Prince was smiling and shaking his head at Lord Golden, totally enraptured now with speaking of his love. Had I ever been that young?

‘It was not like that. One night, as the cat and I moved through a forest of black trees, lit to silver by the moon’s radiance, I perceived we were not alone. It was not that uncomfortable sensation of being watched. This was more like … Imagine if the wind was the breath of a woman on the back of your neck, if the scent of the forest was her perfume, the chuckling of a brook her amusement. There was nothing there I had not seen or heard or felt a hundred times, and yet that night it was more than it had ever been before. At first, I thought I was imagining it, and then, through the cat, I began to know more of her. I felt her watching us as we hunted together, and I knew that she approved of me. When I shared fresh meat with the cat from her kill, I sensed that the woman shared its savour. The cat’s senses sharpen my own, I told you that. But suddenly I was seeing things, not as the cat or as myself, but as she saw things. I saw how the tumbled gap in a stone wall framed a struggling sapling, I saw the infinite pattern in the ripple of moonlight on a stream’s rapids, I saw … I saw the night world as her poetry.’

Prince Dutiful sighed slowly. He was lost in his romance, but the slow suspicion forming in my mind sent a chill up my back. I could feel the perk of the wolf’s ears and the readiness in his muscles as he shared my foreboding.

‘That was how it began. As shared glimpses of the beauty of the world. I was so foolish. At first, I thought she must be near us, watching us from a hiding place. I kept asking the cat to take me to her. And she did, but not in the manner I had expected. It was like approaching a castle through a fog. Layer after layer of mist lifted like veils. The closer I came to her, the more I longed to behold her in the flesh. Yet she taught me it would be nobler to wait for that. First, I must complete my lessons in the Wit. I must learn to surrender my human boundaries and self, and let the cat possess me. When I let the cat inside me, when I become the cat completely, then am I most aware of my lady. For we are both bonded to the same creature.’

Can that happen? The wolf’s question was incredulous and sharp.

I don’t know, I admitted. Then, more strongly. But I don’t think so.

‘It doesn’t work that way,’ I said aloud. I tried to say it in an unthreatening way, but I wanted the Fool to know that immediately. Nevertheless, the Prince bristled at me.

‘I said that it did. Do you call me a liar?’

I slumped back into my thuggish personality. ‘If I wanted to call you a liar,’ I greased my threatening words, ‘I would have said, “You’re a liar.” I didn’t. I said, “It doesn’t work that way.”’ I smiled, showing my teeth. ‘Why don’t you take it that I think that you don’t know what you’re talking about? That you’re just spilling out what someone else has filled you full of.’

‘For the last time, Badgerlock, be silent. You are interrupting a fascinating tale, and neither the Prince nor I particularly care if you believe it. I simply want to hear how it ends. So. When you finally did meet?’ Lord Golden’s tone implied he was on the edge of his seat.

The warm romanticism of Dutiful’s voice crashed suddenly into heartsick desperation. ‘We haven’t. Not yet. That was where I was going. She called me to her, and I left Buckkeep. She promised she would send folk to help me on my path to her. And she did. She promised that as I learned my magic, as my bond with the cat deepened and became truer, I would know more and more of her. I would have to prove myself worthy, of course. My love would be tested, as would my true willingness to be one with my Old Blood. I would have to learn to drop all barriers between the cat and myself. She told me it would be arduous, she warned me that I would have to change the way I thought about things. But, when I was ready,’ and despite the darkness, I could see the flush rise to the Prince’s cheeks, ‘she promised we would be joined, in a way that would be more compelling and true than anything I could imagine.’ His young voice went husky on those last words.

A slow anger began to build in me. I knew what he was imagining, and I was almost certain that what she was offering him had nothing to do with that. He thought he would be consummating their relationship. I feared he was about to be consumed by it.

‘I understand,’ said Lord Golden, and there was compassion in his voice. For my part, I was certain that he did not understand at all.

Hope flamed in the boy. ‘So now you understand why you must let me go? I have to go back. I do not ask that you take me back to my guides. I know they will be furious and a danger to you. All I ask is that you give me my horse and let me go. It is easy for you to do. Go back to Buckkeep; say you never found me. No one will know any better.’

‘I would,’ I pointed out sweetly as I took the rabbit from the fire. ‘The meat’s cooked,’ I added.

Charred to the bone.

The look the Prince gave me was venomous. I almost felt the clear solution flash through his mind. Kill the servant. Silence him. I would wager that Kettricken’s son had not been schooled in such ruthlessness before the Piebalds taught him. Yet it was an idea truly worthy of his Farseer forebears. I met his gaze, and let my mouth curl slightly, daring him. I saw his chest swell, and then I saw him master himself. He glanced away, veiling his hatred. Admirable self-control. I wondered if he’d try to kill me in my sleep.

I kept my gaze on him, challenging him to meet my eyes as I tore the rabbit into smoking pieces. The grease and soot coated my fingers. I passed a portion to Lord Golden, who took it with genteel distaste. Knowing how ravenous the Fool had been earlier in the day, I recognized it was but a show.

‘Meat, my prince?’ Lord Golden asked him.

‘No. Thank you.’ His voice was cold. He was too proud to accept anything from me, for I had mocked him.

The wolf declined a share of the well-cooked meat, so Lord Golden and I silently devoured it down to the bones. The Prince sat apart from us as we ate, staring off into the darkness. After a time, he lay down on his blanket. I sensed his Wit-keening grow in volume.

Lord Golden broke the leg-bone he held, sucked a bit of marrow from it, and tossed it into the embers of the fire. In its fading light, he looked at me with the Fool’s eyes. That gaze held such a mixture of sympathy and rebuke that I did not know how to react to it. We both looked over at the lad. He appeared to be asleep.

‘I’ll check on the horses,’ I offered.

‘I want to check on Malta myself,’ he replied. We both rose. My back clenched for a moment as I got up, and then eased. I was no longer accustomed to this type of life.

I’ll watch him, the wolf volunteered wearily. With a sigh he got up from where he lay, and walked stiffly over to the blankets, saddles and sleeping prince. Unerringly he chose the blanket I had put out for myself. He scuffed it up to suit himself and then lay down on it. He blinked his eyes at me, and then transferred his gaze to the boy.

The horses were in fine shape, considering how badly we’d treated them. Malta went to the Fool eagerly, rubbing her head against his shoulder as he petted her. Myblack, without apparently ever noticing me, still managed to sidle away whenever I tried to approach her. The Prince’s horse was neutral, neither welcoming nor shy about my touching her. After I’d petted her for a few moments, Myblack was suddenly behind me. She gave me a nudge, and when I turned to her, she allowed me to stroke her. The Fool spoke quietly, to Malta rather than to me.

‘It must be hard for you, meeting him for the first time like this.’

I wasn’t going to reply. There seemed nothing to say. Then I surprised myself by saying, ‘He isn’t really mine that way. He’s Verity’s heir, and Kettricken’s son. My body was there, but not me. Verity wore my body.’

I tried to rein my mind away from that memory. When Verity had told me that there was a way to wake his dragon, that my life and passion were the key, I had thought my King was asking me to give him my life. In my loyalty and my misery, I had been glad to surrender it. Instead he had used the Skill to take the use of my body, leaving me trapped in the shambling wreckage of his while he went in to his young wife and conceived an heir with her. I had no memories of their hours together. Instead, I recalled a long evening spent as an old man. Not even Kettricken was completely aware of what had happened. Only the Fool shared my knowledge of Dutiful’s conception. Now his voice jolted me from my painful musing.

‘He looks so like you at that age that it makes my heart ache.’

I knew there was nothing to say to that.

‘He makes me want to hold him tight and keep him safe. Protect him from all the terrible things that were done to you in the name of the Farseer reign.’ The Fool paused. ‘I lie,’ he admitted. ‘I would protect him from all the terrible things that were done to you because I used you as my Catalyst.’

The night was too black and our enemies were too near for me to want to hear any more of that. ‘You should sleep near him, near the fire. The wolf will stay there, too. Keep your sword handy.’

‘And you?’ he said after a moment. Was he disappointed that I had turned the conversation so firmly?

I tossed my head towards the row of trees along the streambed. ‘I’m going to climb one of those and keep watch. You should get a few hours of sleep. If they try to fall on us, they’ll have to cross the whole meadow. I’ll see them against the firelight in time to take action.’

‘What action?’

I shrugged. ‘If there’s a few, we fight. If there’s many, we run.’

‘Complex strategy. Chade taught you well.’

‘Rest while you can. We ride at moonrise.’

And we parted. I had the nagging sense that something had been left unspoken between us, something important. Well. There would be a better time later.

Anyone who thinks it is easy to find a good climbing tree in the dark has never tried it. On my third try, I found one that had a limb broad enough to sit on that still afforded me an unencumbered view of our campsite. I could have sat and pondered the vagaries of fate that had made me the father of two children and the parent of neither. Instead, I decided to worry about Hap. I knew Chade would keep his word, but could Hap hold up his end of the bargain? Had I taught him how to work well enough, would he have enough care for what he did, would he listen well and endure correction humbly?

The darkness was pitch. I looked in vain for the waning moon to rise. She and her dwindling light would not appear until the dead of night. Against the black-red smear of our campfire, I could just make out the shapes of Lord Golden and the boy in their blankets. Time passed. A friendly branch-stub nudged against the small of my back and prevented me from getting too comfortable.

Come down.

I had dozed. I could not see the wolf, but I knew that he was in the shadows at the base of my tree. Something’s wrong?

Come down. Be silent.

I came down, but not as quietly as I had hoped. I hung by my hands and then dropped, only to discover there was a hollow beneath the tree and the fall was greater than I had expected. The jar clacked my teeth together and jolted my spine against the base of my skull. I’m too old to do this sort of thing any more.

No. You only wish you were. Come.

I followed him, my teeth gritted. He took me silently back to the campsite. The Fool sat up noiselessly as I drew near. Even in the dark, I could make out his questioning look. I made a small motion for silence and watched.

The wolf went to where the Prince was curled like a kitten in his blankets. He put his muzzle close to Dutiful’s ear. I gestured at him not to wake the boy, but he ignored me. In fact, he levered his nose under the Prince’s cheek and nudged him. The boy’s head gave limply to his touch, lolling like a dead man’s. My heart stood still, and then I heard the rasp of his sleeping breath. The wolf nudged him again. He still didn’t wake.

I met the Fool’s wide-eyed stare, then I went to kneel by the boy. Nighteyes looked up into my face.

He was questing for them, questing and reaching, and then suddenly, he was just gone. I can’t feel him. Nighteyes was anxious.

He’s gone far and deep. I considered a moment. This is not the Wit.

‘Watch over us,’ I bade the Fool. Then I lay down beside Dutiful. I closed my eyes. As if I were steeling myself to dive into deep water, I measured each breath I drew into myself. I matched the rhythm to the boy’s breathing. Verity, I thought, for no reason at all save that it seemed to centre me. I hesitated, then I groped for and found the boy’s hand. I held it in mine, and it pleased me unreasonably that his palm was callused with work. I drew a final breath and plunged into the flow of the Skill. Skin to skin, I found him immediately.

I attached my consciousness to his and flowed with him. This, I suddenly knew, was how Galen’s coterie had spied on King Shrewd all those years ago. Then I had despised that leeching of knowledge. Now I seized onto it relentlessly and followed my prince.

There had been a shock of recognition, a jolt of kinship when I had first seen the boy. It did not compare to what I experienced now. I knew this boy’s wild seeking, his artless and fearless Skilling. It was as my own had been, a wild reaching with no knowledge of how I did it or the dangers it posed. He quested with his Wit and did not know that he Skilled out as well. For a daunting moment, I realized that like my own Skill-magic, his was tainted with the Wit. Having taught himself to Skill this way, could he ever learn to use the Skill-magic purely?

Then that consideration was pushed completely aside. Cloaked within the Skill, I witnessed his Wit-magic, and I was appalled.

Prince Dutiful was the cat. He was not merely bonded with the animal; he flowed completely into it, reserving nothing of himself. I knew that the wolf and I had interwoven our consciousness to a deep and dangerous level, but it was superficial compared to the Prince’s complete surrender to his bond.

Worse was the creature’s complete acceptance of the boy’s subservience. Then, as if I had blinked, I perceived it was not a cat at all. The cat was but a thin layer. It was a woman.

I swirled in confusion, and nearly lost my grip on the Prince. The Wit did not go from human to human. That was the province of the Skill. Did he Skill to this woman, then? No. This joining was not the Skill. I tried to sort it out and could not. I could not separate the woman from the cat, and Dutiful was submerged in both of them. It did not make sense. The woman was plumbing the boy’s mind. No. She was here, pooling into his body like cold thick water. I felt her flowing through him, exploring the shape of his flesh around her. It was still foreign to her. There was a strange eroticism to that chilling internal touch. Their joining in the cat was not yet complete enough, but soon, soon, she promised him, soon he would know her completely. They were coming for him, she assured him, and she knew where he was. I witnessed how he poured forth to her everything he knew about Lord Golden and me, the stamina and condition of our horses, the wolf that followed me, and I sensed her fury and revulsion for an Old Blood who betrayed his own kind.

They were coming. I saw with the cat’s eyes, and recognized the Piebalds we had battled earlier in the day. Limping, she led them. The big man came slowly, on foot, leading his massive horse as they forced their way through the dark forest. The two women rode slowly behind him. The scratched man with the injured cat came last of all. They led two riderless horses now, so we had either killed or severely injured one of their party. We come, my love. And a bird has been sent, summoning others to your aid. Soon you will be with us again, she promised. We will take no chances of losing you. When the others are near, we will close in and free you.

Will you kill Lord Golden and his servant? the Prince asked anxiously.

Yes.

I wish you wouldn’t kill Lord Golden.

It is necessary. I regret it, but it must be, for Lord Golden has come too far into our territory. He has seen the faces of our folk, and ridden our paths. He has to die.

Can not you let him go? He is sympathetic to our cause. Shown our strength, he might simply go back to the Queen and say he had never found –

Where is your loyalty? How can you trust him so quickly? Have you forgotten how many of our own folk have been killed by the Farseer reign? Or do you wish to see me and all our people die?

This question was like the snap of a whip and it pained me to feel Dutiful cower before it. My heart is with you, my love, with you, he assured her.

Good. That’s good. Then trust only me, and let me do what I must do. There is no need for you to dwell on it. You need not feel responsible for what people bring down upon themselves. It is none of your doing. You tried to leave quietly. They are the ones who pursued you and attacked us. Put it from your mind.

Then she wrapped him in love, in a surging wave of warm affection that overpowered any thought of his own that he might have. But she seemed to be only at the edges of that flow. It was cat-love, the fierce claws-and-teeth love of a feline. The emotion drenched me and despite my wariness, I near succumbed to it myself. I felt the Prince accept that she would do what she must do. She only did it so that they could be together. Was any price too high to pay for that?

She’s dead.

The wolf’s thought was like a voice in the room of a sleeping man. For a moment, I incorporated it into my dreams. Then the sense of it struck me like a punch to the belly. Of course. She’s dead. She rides the cat.

And in that foolish moment of my sharing with the wolf, she was aware of me.

What is this? Her fear and outrage were nothing compared to her utter shock. She had never experienced anything like this. It was outside her magic completely, and in the rawness of her astonishment, she betrayed much of her self.

I wrenched free of all contact before she could know any more than that someone had been there, watching her, just as I felt her make surer her grip upon him. It reminded me of a great cat seizing a mouse in her jaws and paralysing it with a bite. I got that same sense of both possession and devouring. For one clear moment, I hoped that the Prince perceived her as clearly as I did. He was a toy for her, a possession and a tool. She felt no love for him.

But the cat does, Nighteyes pointed out to me.

And in that twisting disparity, I came back to myself.

It reminded me of my jolting leap from the tree. Slammed back into my own flesh, I still sat up, gasping for air and space. Beside me, the Prince remained inert, but Nighteyes was instantly with me, thrusting his great head under my arm. Are you all right, little brother? Did she hurt you?

I tried to answer, but instead rocked forwards, moaning as a Skill-headache exploded in my skull. I was literally blinded, isolated in a black night riven by lightning bolts of blazing white across my vision. I blinked, then knuckled my eyes, trying to make the glaring light go away. It exploded into colours that sickened me. I hunched my shoulders and curled up against the pain.

A moment later, I felt a cold cloth laid across the back of my neck. I sensed the Fool beside me, blessedly silent. I swallowed and drew several deep breaths and then spoke into my hands. ‘They’re coming. The Piebalds we fought today, and others. They know where we are from the Prince. He’s like a beacon fire. We can’t hide, and they’re too many for us to fight and survive. Running is our only chance. We can’t wait for moonrise. Nighteyes will lead us.’

The Fool spoke very softly as if he guessed at my pain. ‘Shall I wake the Prince?’

‘Don’t bother trying. He’s far and deep, and I don’t think she’ll let him come back to his body right now. We’ll have to take him as a dead weight. Saddle the horses, will you?’

‘I will. Fitz, can you ride as you are?’

I opened my eyes. Floating jags of light still divided my vision, but now I could see the darkened meadow beyond them. I forced a smile to my face. ‘I’ll have to ride, just as my wolf will have to run. And you may have to fight. Not what any of us would choose, but there it is. Nighteyes. Go now. Choose a path for us, and get as far ahead of us as you can. I don’t know from which direction the other attackers are coming. Spy ahead for us.’

You think to send me out of harm’s way. The thought was almost reproachful.

I would if I could, my brother, but the truth is that I may be sending you directly into danger. Scout for us. Go now.

He rose stiffly and stretched. He gave himself a shake, and then set out, not at a lope, but at his distance-devouring trot. Almost immediately, he became invisible to me, the grey wolf gone into the grey meadow. Go carefully, my heart, I wished after him, but softly, softly, lest he know how much I feared for him.

I rose, moving very carefully, as if my head were an over-full glass. I did not actually believe my brains would spill out of the top of my skull if I were careless, but I almost hoped it. I took the Fool’s wet handkerchief off the back of my neck and held it to my brow and eyes for a time. When I looked down on the Prince, he hadn’t moved. If anything, his body was curled more tightly. I heard the Fool come up behind me leading the horses and I turned cautiously to look at him.

‘Can you explain?’ he asked softly, and I realized how little he knew. It was all the more amazing that he so unquestioningly acted on my requests.

I drew a breath. ‘He’s using the Skill and the Wit. And he hasn’t been trained in either, so he’s vulnerable, very vulnerable. He’s too young to understand just how much at risk he is. Right now, his consciousness rides with the cat. For all intents, he is the cat.’

‘But he will awaken and come back to his body?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I hope so. Fool, there is more. There is someone else joined to the cat. I, that is, we, Nighteyes and I, suspect that she is the cat’s former owner.’

‘Former? I thought Witted ones bonded to their animals for life?’

‘They do. She would be dead now. But her consciousness is within the cat, using the cat.’

‘But I thought the Prince …’

‘Yes. The Prince is there, too. I do not think he realizes that this woman he loves does not exist as a woman any more. I know he has no concept of how much power she has over him. And over the cat.’

‘What can we do?’

The throbbing in my head was making me sick to my stomach. I spoke more harshly than I intended. ‘Forcibly separate the boy from the cat. Kill the cat, and hope the boy doesn’t die.’

‘Oh, Fitz!’ He was appalled.

I didn’t have time to care.

‘Saddle just two of the horses, Malta and Myblack. I’ll put the boy in front of me. And then we have to ride.’

I did nothing while the Fool prepared the horses. I didn’t pack up anything, for I didn’t intend to take anything with us. Instead I just sat still and tried to persuade my head to ease. It was made the more difficult in that I was still Skill-twined with the boy. I felt more his absence than his presence. I sensed that there was pressure upon him, but it was a Wit pushing. I could not decide if she reached, trying to know more of me, or if she reached trying to possess the boy’s body. I did not wish to respond to it; they already knew enough of me from that earlier brushing touch. So I sat, head in hands, and looked at Kettricken’s son. As Verity had taught me so long ago, I carefully set my Skill-walls. This time, I set them to include the boy at my feet. I did not consider what I was trying to hold out. Instead, I focused on keeping open the space that was his mind, reserving it for him to return to.

‘Ready,’ the Fool said quietly, and I stood up again. I mounted Myblack, who was amazingly steady under me as the Fool hoisted the boy up into my arms. As always, the strength of the slender man surprised me. I arranged the Prince before me so that I had one arm to hold on to him, and one hand for the reins. It would have to do. In an instant, the Fool was mounted on Malta beside me. ‘Which way?’ he asked.

Nighteyes? I kept the questing as small and secret as I could. They might sense our Wit, but I doubted they could use that to follow us.

My brother. His reply was as discreet. I nudged Myblack and we moved off. I could not have told anyone where Nighteyes was, but I knew that I moved towards him. The Prince was a swaying weight in my arms. It was already uncomfortable. Giving in to my frustration with my pain and his dead weight, I gave him a rough shake. He made a faint sound of protest, but it might have been just air moving out of his lungs. For a time we travelled through forest, ducking swoops of branches and pressing through tangles of underbrush. The Prince’s horse, stripped of harness, followed us. We did not go swiftly. The footing was treacherous for the weary horses and the trees dense. I followed the wolf’s elusive presence down into a ravine. The horses clattered along through a rushing stream over slippery wet rocks. The ravine became a vale, then spread wide and we rode under moonlight through a meadow. Startled deer bounded away from us. Into the forest again, our hooves thudded on deep layers of packed ancient leaves. Then we came to a steep place I did not recognize, but when we completed our scrabbling mount of that hill, the night spilled us out onto the road. The wolf’s route had cut the rough country and put us back on the same road we had travelled that morning. I pulled in Myblack and let her breathe. Ahead of us, on the next rise, the stingy light of the quarter moon showed me the silhouette of a wolf waiting for us to appear. As soon as he saw us, he turned, and trotted down the next hill and out of sight. All is clear. Come swiftly.

‘Now we ride,’ I warned the Fool in a low voice. I leaned forwards, spoke a word to Myblack as my knees urged her on. When she was sluggish to respond, I suggested with my predator’s Wit, Pursuit is just behind us. They come swiftly.

Her ears flicked back once. I think she was a bit sceptical, but she gathered herself. As Malta threatened to pass us, I felt her powerful muscles bunch and then she stretched under me and we galloped. Encumbered by our double weight and weary from her day’s work, she ran heavily. Malta gamely kept the pace, her presence pushing Myblack on. The Prince’s horse was left behind. The wolf ran before us, and I fastened my eyes to him as to my final hope. It seemed he had somehow discarded his years; he ran like a yearling, bounding ahead of us.

To our left, the horizon appeared as dawn began its timid creep towards day. I welcomed the light that made our footing surer even as I cursed how it would reveal us to our enemies. We pressed on, varying our pace as the morning grew stronger, trying to ration our mounts’ endurance. The last two days had been hard on both horses. To run them to dropping would not help our situation.

‘When will it be safe to stop?’ the Fool asked me during a period when we had slowed to let the horses breathe.

‘When we reach Buckkeep Castle. Perhaps.’ I did not add that the Prince would not be safe until I had turned back and killed the cat. We had only his body in our keeping. The Piebalds still had his soul.

At midmorning, we passed the tree where their archer had ambushed us. It made me realize how much I was trusting to the wolf to choose our path. He had decided this way was safe and I was following him unquestioningly.

Are we not pack? Of course you must follow your leader. The tease in his thought could not quite mask his weariness.

We were all tired; men, wolf and horses. A sustained trot was the best I could wring from Myblack now. Dutiful was a lolling weight in my arms as we jolted along. The pain in my back and shoulders from supporting his weight vied with the dull throbbing in my head. The Fool still sat his horse well but made no attempt at conversation of any kind. He had offered once to take the Prince on Malta with him, but I had declined. It was not that I thought that he or his horse lacked the strength. I could not define exactly why I felt I must keep possession of Dutiful’s body. I worried that he had been so long insensible. Somewhere, I knew his mind worked, that he saw with the cat’s eyes, felt with the cat’s body. Sooner or later, they would realize –

The Prince stirred in my arms. I kept silent. It took him some little while to come back to himself. As he regained his senses, he twitched unpleasantly in my arms, reminding me of my own seizures. Then he sat up with a sudden hoarse gasp of breath. Breath after breath he took, as he turned his head wildly from side to side, trying to make sense of his situation. I heard him swallow. In a dry and cracked voice he asked, ‘Where are we?’

Useless to lie. Above us on the hill, Laurel’s mysterious standing stones cast their shadows. He would surely recognize them. I didn’t bother to answer him at all. Lord Golden rode closer to us.

‘My prince, are you well? You have been long unconscious.’

‘I am – well. Where are you taking me?’

They come!

In a breath, our situation had changed. I saw the wolf fleeing back towards us. On the road behind him, horsemen had suddenly appeared. I made them five at a quick count. Two hounds, Wit-beasts both, ran alongside them. I swivelled in my saddle. Two rises back, other riders were cresting a hill. I saw one lift an arm, waving a triumphant greeting to the other group of riders.

‘They’ve caught us,’ I said calmly to the Fool.

He looked ill.

‘Up the hill. We’ll put one of those barrows at our back.’ I reined Myblack from the road, and my companions followed.

‘Let me go!’ my prince commanded me. He struggled in my arms, but his long insensibility had left him weak. It was not easy to keep my grip on him, but we had not far to go. As we came abreast of the barrow and the adjacent standing stone, I reined in Myblack. My dismount was not graceful, but I pulled the Prince down with me. Myblack stepped wearily away from us, and then turned to give me a look of rebuke. In an instant the Fool was beside us. I sidestepped Dutiful’s swing at me, caught his wrist and stepped behind him with it. I caught his other shoulder and held him firmly, one arm twisted high behind his back. I was no rougher than I had to be, but he did not give in easily. ‘Breaking your arm or dislocating your shoulder wouldn’t kill you,’ I pointed out to him harshly. ‘But it would keep you from being a nuisance for a time.’

He subsided, grunting with pain. The wolf was a grey streak pouring himself up the hill towards us. ‘Now what?’ the Fool asked me as he stared around us wide-eyed.

‘Now we make a stand,’ I said. The riders below us were already spreading wide. The barrow at our backs would be a poor barrier against attack from behind, blinding us as much as it shielded us. The wolf stood with us, panting.

‘You’ll die here,’ the Prince pointed out through gritted teeth. I still held him quite firmly.

‘That seems very likely,’ I conceded.

‘You’ll die, and I’ll go with them.’ His voice was strained with pain. ‘So why be stupid? Release me now. I’ll go to them. You can run. I promise I’ll ask them to let you go.’

My eyes met the Fool’s over the boy’s head. I knew what my answer to that would be, but then I knew what I’d be sending the Prince to face. It might buy us an opportunity to come after him again, but I doubted it. The woman-cat would see to it that they hunted us down and killed us. Death standing and waiting, or death after flight? I didn’t want to choose how my friends would die.

I’m too tired to flee. I’m dying here.

The Fool’s eyes wavered to Nighteyes. I do not know if he grasped that flicker of thought, or if he simply saw the wolf’s weariness. ‘Stand and fight,’ he said faintly.

He drew his sword from its sheath. I knew he had never fought in his life. As he lifted his blade, he looked very uncertain. Then he took a breath, and set his face in the lines of Lord Golden’s expression. He squared his shoulders and a look of cold competence came into his eyes.

He can’t fight. Don’t be stupid.

The riders were closing in. They walked their horses up the hill towards us, unhurried, letting us watch our deaths come. You have an alternative?

‘You can’t hold me and fight!’ Dutiful’s voice was elated. He obviously believed they had already won. ‘The moment you let go, I’ll run. You’ll die for nothing! Let me go now, let me talk to them. Maybe I can bargain for your life.’

Do not let her have him. Kill him before you let them take him.

I felt a great coward, but shared the thought anyway. I do not know if I can do that.

You must. We both know what they intend. If you cannot kill him then … Then take him into the pillar. The boy can Skill, and you were linked with the Scentless One once. It may be enough. Go into the pillar. Take them with you.

The riders below conferred with one another briefly, then fanned out to flank us as they came. As the woman had promised, they would take no chances. They were grinning and shouting to one another. Like the Prince, they believed they had us trapped.

It won’t work. Don’t you remember what it was like? It took all my strength to hold you together in that passage, and we were tightly linked. I might be able to hold the boy together through the journey, or you, but not both of you. I do not know if I could even pull the Fool in with me. Our Skill-link is old and thin. I might lose you all.

You don’t have to choose. I cannot go with you. I’m too tired, my brother. But I will stay here and hold them back for as long as I can, while you escape.

‘No,’ I groaned, even as the Fool suddenly said, ‘The pillar. You said the boy was Skilling. Could not you –?’

‘No!’ I cried out. ‘I will not leave Nighteyes to die alone! How can you suggest it?’

‘Alone?’ The Fool looked puzzled. A very odd smile twisted his mouth. ‘But he will not be alone. I will be here with him. And,’ he drew himself up, squaring his shoulders, ‘I will die before I allow them to kill him.’

Ah, that would be so much better. Every hackle on Nighteyes’ body was standing as he watched the advancing line of men and horses, but his eyes glinted merriment at me.

‘Send the lad down to us!’ a tall man shouted. We ignored him.

‘Do you think that makes it better for me?’ I demanded of him. They were mad, both of them. ‘I might be able to go through the pillar. I might even be able to drag the boy through, though I wonder if his mind would come through intact. But I doubt that I can take you with me, Fool. And Nighteyes refuses to go.’

‘Go where?’ Dutiful demanded. He tried to shake off my grip and I twisted his arm tighter. He subsided.

‘For the last time, will you yield?’ the tall horseman shouted up at us.

‘I seek to reason with him!’ Lord Golden called back. ‘Give me time, man!’ He put a note of panic in his voice.

‘My friend.’ The Fool set his hand on my shoulder. He pushed me softly, backwards towards the stone. I gave ground and took Dutiful with me. The Fool’s eyes never left mine. He spoke softly and carefully, as if we were alone and had all the time in the world. ‘I know I can’t go with you. It grieves me that the wolf will not. But I still tell you that you must go and take the boy. Don’t you understand? This is what you were born for, why you have stayed alive despite all the odds against you all these years. Why I have forced you to stay alive, despite all that was done to you. There must be a Farseer heir. If you keep him alive and restore him to Buckkeep, that is all that matters. We keep the future on the path I have set for it, even if it must go on without me. But if we fail, if he dies …’

‘What are you talking about?’ the Prince demanded angrily.

The Fool’s voice faded. He stared down the hill at the steadily advancing men, but his gaze seemed to go farther than that. My back was nearly touching the monolith. Dutiful was suddenly quiescent in my grip, as if spelled by the Fool’s soft voice. ‘If we all die here,’ he said faintly, ‘then … it ends. For us. But he is not the only change we have wrought … time must seek to flow as it always has, washing all obstacles away … So … fate finds her. In all times, fate battles against a Farseer surviving. Here and now, we guard Dutiful. But if we all fall, if Nettle becomes the lone focus of that battle …’ He blinked his eyes a number of times, then he drew a ragged breath before he turned back to me. He seemed to be returning from a far journey. He spoke softly, breaking ill tidings to me gently. ‘I can find no future in which Nettle survives after the Prince has died.’ His face went sallow and his eyes were old as he admitted, ‘There are not even any swift, kind ends for her.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘If you care anything at all for me, do this thing. Take the boy. Keep him alive.’

Every hair on my body stood up in horror. ‘But –’ I choked. All the sacrifices I had made to keep her safe? All for nothing? My mind completed the picture. Burrich, Molly and their sons would stand beside her, would fall with her. I could not get my breath.

‘Please go,’ the Fool begged me.

I could not tell what the boy made of our talk. He was a weight I grasped, firmly immobilizing him as my mind raced furiously. I knew there was no escape from this maze fate had set us. The wolf formed my thought for me. If you stay, we all still die. If the boy does not die, the Witted take him, and use him to their own ends. Dying would be kinder. You cannot save us, but you can save the boy.

I cannot leave you here. We cannot end like this, you and I. Tears blinded me just when I needed to see most clearly.

We not only can, we must. The pack does not die if the cub survives. Be a wolf, my brother. Things are clearer so. Leave us to fight while you save the cub. Save Nettle, too. Live well, for both of us, and someday, tell Nettle tales of me.

And then there was no more time. ‘Too late now!’ a man shouted up at us. The line of men and horses had curved to surround us. ‘Send us the lad, and we’ll end you quick! If not –’ And he laughed aloud.

Don’t fear for us. I’ll force them to kill us quickly.

The Fool rolled his shoulders. He lifted his sword in a two-handed grip. He swung it once, experimentally. ‘Go quickly, Beloved.’ Poised, he looked more a dancer than a warrior.

I could either draw my sword or keep a grip on the Prince. The standing stone was right behind me. I gave it one hasty glance over my shoulder. I could not identify the wind-eroded symbol carved in this face of it. Wherever it took me would have to be good enough. I did not recognize my voice as I demanded of the world, ‘How can the hardest thing I have ever done in my life also be the most cowardly?’

‘What are you doing?’ the boy demanded. He sensed something was about to happen, and though he could not have guessed what it was, he began to struggle wildly. ‘Help me!’ he cried to the encircling Piebalds. ‘Free me now!’

The thunder of charging horses was his answer.

Inspiration struck me. As I tightened my grip on the struggling boy, I spoke to the Fool. ‘I’ll come back. I’ll take him through and come back.’

‘Don’t risk the Prince!’ The Fool was horrified. ‘Stay with him and guard him. If you came back for us and were killed, he’d be alone in … wherever. Go! Now!’ The last smile he gave me was his old Fool’s smile, tremulous and yet mocking the world’s ability to hurt him. There was a wildness in his golden eyes that was not fear of death, but acceptance of it. I could not bear to look at it. The closing circle of horsemen engulfed us. The Fool swung his sword and it cut a gleaming arc in the blue day. Then a Piebald charged between us, swinging his blade and yelling. I dragged the Prince back with me.

I caught a last glimpse of the Fool standing over the wolf, a sword in his hands. It was the first time I had ever seen him hold a weapon as if he actually intended to use it. I heard the clash of metal on metal and the wolf’s rising snarl as he sprang for a horseman’s leg.

The Prince yelled wildly, a wordless cry of fury that was more cat than human. A rider charged straight at us, blade lifted high. But the towering black stone was at my back. ‘I’ll return!’ I promised them. Then I tightened one arm around Dutiful, clasping him to my chest. I spoke right by his ear. ‘Hold tight to who you are!’ It was the only warning I could give him. Then I twisted, and pressed my hand against the stone’s graven symbol.