by Robin Hobb
Verity was broader of shoulder than I but not quite of my height. My uncle shared with me the dark eyes and hair of the Farseer family, but his eyes were set more deeply than mine, and his unruly hair and beard were shot through with grey. When I was a boy, he had been well-muscled and hard, a stocky man who wielded a sword as easily as a pen. These later years had wasted him. He had been forced to spend too much time physically idle as he used his Skill-strength to defend our coastline from the Raiders. But even as his muscle had dwindled, his Skill-aura had increased, until to stand before him now was like standing before a blazing hearth. When I was in his presence, I was much more aware of his Skill now than his body. For his scent, I called to mind the piquancy of the coloured inks he used when he made his maps, the smell of fine vellum, and, too, the edge of elfbark that was often on his breath. ‘Verity,’ I said softly aloud, and felt the word echo within me, bouncing off my walls.
I opened my eyes. I could not reach out of myself until I lowered my walls. Visualizing Verity would do nothing for me until I opened a way for my Skill to go forth, and his to enter my mind. Very well. That was easy enough. Just relax. Stare into the fire and watch the tiny sparks that rode upward on the heat. Dancing floating sparks. Relax the vigilance. Forget how Will had slammed his Skill-strength against that wall and nearly made it give way. Forget that holding the wall was all that had kept my mind my own while they hammered away at my flesh. Forget that sickening sense of violation the time that Justin had forced his way into me. The way Galen had scarred and crippled my Skill ability the time he had abused his position as Skillmaster to force his control on my mind.
As clearly as if Verity were beside me, I heard again my prince’s words. ‘Galen has scarred you. You’ve walls I can’t begin to penetrate, and I am strong. You’d have to learn to drop them. That’s a hard thing.’ And those words to me had been years ago, before Justin’s invasion, before Will’s attacks. I smiled bitterly. Did they know they had succeeded at un-Skilling me? They’d probably never even given it thought. Someone, somewhere, should make a record of that. Someday a Skilled king might find it handy, to know that if you hurt a Skilled one badly enough with the Skill, you could seal him up inside himself and render him powerless in that area.
Verity had never had the time to teach me how to drop those walls. Ironically, he had found a way to show me how to reinforce them, so I could seal my private thoughts from him when I did not wish to share them. Perhaps that was a thing I had learned too well. I wondered if I would ever have time to unlearn it.
Time, no time, Nighteyes interrupted wearily. Time is a thing that men made up to bother themselves with. You think on it until I am dizzy. Why do you follow these old trails at all? Snuff out a new one that may have some meat at the end of it. If you want the game, you must stalk it. That is all. You cannot say, to stalk this takes too long, I wish to simply eat. It is all one. The stalking is the beginning of the eating.
You do not understand, I told him wearily. There are only so many hours in a day, and only so many days in which I can do this thing.
Why do you chop your life into bits and give the bits names? Hours, days. It is like a rabbit. If I kill a rabbit, I eat a rabbit. A sleepy snort of disdain. When you have a rabbit, you chop it up and call it bones and meat and fur and guts. And so you never have enough.
So what should I do, oh wise master?
Stop whining about it and just do it. So I can sleep.
He gave me a slight mind-nudge, like an elbow in the ribs when a companion crowds too close to you on the tavern bench. I suddenly realized how closely I had been holding our contact these past few weeks. Had been a time when I had rebuked him for always being in my mind. I had not wanted his company when I was with Molly, and I had tried to explain to him then that such times must belong to me alone. Now his nudge made it plain to me that I had been clinging as close to him as he had to me when he was a cub. I firmly resisted my first impulse to clutch at him. Instead I settled back in my chair and looked at the fire.
I took the walls down. I sat for a time, with my mouth dry, waiting for an attack. When nothing came, I thought carefully, and again lowered my walls. They believe me dead, I reminded myself. They will not be lying in wait to ambush a dead man. It was still not easy to will my walls down. Far easier to unsquint my eyes on a day of bright sunlight on the water, or to stand unflinching before a coming blow. But when finally I did it, I could sense the Skill flowing all about me, parting around me as if I were a stone in the current of a river. I had but to plunge into it and I could find Verity. Or Will, or Burl, or Carrod. I shuddered and the river retreated. I steeled myself and returned to it. A long time I stood teetering on that bank, daring myself to plunge in. No such thing as testing the water with the Skill. In or out. In.
In, and I was spinning and tumbling, and I felt my self fraying apart like a piece of rotten hemp rope. Strands peeling and twisting away from me, all the overlays that made me myself, memories, emotions, the deep thoughts that mattered, the flashes of poetry that one experiences that strike deeper than understanding, the random memories of ordinary days, all of it tattering away. It felt so good. All I had to do was let go.
But that would have made Galen right about me.
Verity?
There was no reply. Nothing. He wasn’t there.
I drew back into myself and pulled my entire self about my mind. I could do it, I found, I could hold myself in the Skill stream and yet maintain my identity. Why had it always been so hard before? I set that question aside and considered the worst. The worst was that Verity had been alive and spoken to me, a few short months ago. ‘Tell them Verity’s alive. That’s all.’ And I had, but they had not understood, and no one had taken any action. Yet what could that message have been, if not a plea for help? A call for help from my king had gone unanswered.
Suddenly that was not a thing to be borne, and the Skill cry that went out from me was something I felt, as if my very life sprang out of my chest in a questing reach.
VERITY!
… Chivalry?
No more than a whisper brushing against my consciousness, as slight as a moth battering at a window-curtain. It was my turn, this time, to reach and grasp and steady. I flung myself out toward him and found him. His presence flickered like a candle-flame guttering out in the pool of its own wax. I knew he would soon be gone. I had a thousand questions. I asked the only important one.
Verity. Can you take strength from me, without touching me?
Fitz? The question more feeble, more hesitant. I thought Chivalry had come back … He teetered on the edge of darkness … to take this burden from me …
Verity, pay attention. Think. Can you take strength from me? Can you do it now?
I don’t … I can’t reach. Fitz?
I remembered Shrewd, drawing strength from me to Skill a farewell to his son. And how Justin and Serene had attacked him and leeched all his strength away and killed him. How he had died, like a bubble popping. Like a spark winking out.
VERITY! I flung myself at him, wrapped myself around him, steadied him as he had so often steadied me in our Skill contacts. Take from me, I commanded him, and opened myself to him. I willed myself to believe in the reality of his hand on my shoulder, tried to recall what it had felt like the times when he or Shrewd had drawn strength from me. The flame that was Verity leapt up suddenly, and after a moment burned strong and clean again.
Enough, he cautioned me, and then more strongly, Be careful, boy!
No, I’m all right, I can
do this, I assured him, and willed my strength to him.
Enough! he insisted, and drew back from me. It was almost as if we stepped slightly apart and considered one another. I could not see his body, but I could sense the terrible weariness in him. It was not the healthy weariness that comes at the end of a day’s labour, but the bone weariness of one grinding day piled upon another, with never food enough nor rest enough in between them. I had given him strength, but not health, and he would quickly burn the vitality he had borrowed from me, for it was not true strength any more than elfbark tea was a sustaining meal.
Where are you? I demanded of him.
In the Mountains, he said unwillingly, and added, it is not safe to say more. We should not Skill at all. There are those who would try to hear us.
But he did not end the contact, and I knew he was as hungry to ask questions as I was. I tried to think what I could tell him. I could sense no one save ourselves but I was not certain I would know if we were spied upon. For long moments our contact held simply as an awareness of one another. Then Verity warned me sternly, You must be more careful. You will draw down trouble on yourself. Yet I take heart from this. I have gone long without the touch of a friend.
Then it is worth any risk to myself. I hesitated, then found I could not confine the thought within myself. My king. There is something I must do. But when it is done, I will come to you.
I sensed something from him them. A gratitude humbling in its intensity. I hope I shall still be here if you arrive. Then, more sternly, Speak no names, Skill only if you must. More softly, then, Be careful of yourself, boy. Be very careful. They are ruthless.
And then he was gone.
He had broken the Skill contact off cleanly. I hoped that wherever he was, he would use the strength I had loaned him to find some food or a safe place to rest. I had sensed him living as a hunted thing, always wary, ever hungry. Prey, much as I was. And something else. An injury, a fever? I leaned back in my chair, trembling lightly. I knew better than to try to stand. Simply Skilling took strength out of me, and I had opened myself to Verity and let him draw off even more. In a few moments, when the shaking lessened, I would make some elfbark tea and restore myself. For now I sat and stared into the fire and thought of Verity.
Verity had left Buckkeep last autumn. It seemed an eternity ago. When Verity had departed, King Shrewd had lived yet, and Verity’s wife Kettricken had been pregnant. He had set himself a quest. The Red Ship Raiders from the Out Islands had assailed our shores for three full years, and all our efforts to drive them away had failed. So Verity, King-in-Waiting for the throne of the Six Duchies, had set out to go to the Mountains, there to find our near legendary allies, the Elderlings. Tradition had it that generations ago King Wisdom had sought them out and they had aided the Six Duchies against similar raiders. They had also promised to return if ever we needed them. And so Verity had left throne and wife and kingdom behind to seek them out and remind them of their promise. His aged father, King Shrewd, had remained behind, and also his younger brother, Prince Regal.
Almost the moment Verity was gone, Regal began to move against him. He courted the Inland Dukes and ignored the needs of the Coastal Duchies. I suspected he was the source of the whispered rumours that made mock of Verity’s quest and painted him as an irresponsible fool if not a madman. The coterie of Skill users who should have been sworn to Verity had long been corrupted to Regal’s service. He used them to announce that Verity had died while en route to the Mountains, and then proclaimed himself King-in-Waiting. His control over the ailing King Shrewd became absolute; Regal had declared he would move his court inland, abandoning Buckkeep in every way that mattered to the mercies of the Red Ships. When he announced that King Shrewd and Verity’s Queen Kettricken must go with him, Chade had decided we must act. We knew Regal would suffer neither of them to stand between him and the throne. So we had made our plans to spirit them both away, on the very evening he declared himself King-in-Waiting.
Nothing went as planned. The Coastal Dukes had been close to rising up against Regal; they had tried to recruit me to their rebellion. I had agreed to aid their cause, in the hope of keeping Buckkeep as a position of power for Verity. Before we could spirit the King away, two coterie members had killed him. Only Kettricken had fled, and although I had killed those who had killed King Shrewd, I myself was captured, tortured, and found guilty of the Wit magic. Lady Patience, my father’s wife, had interceded on my behalf to no avail. Had Burrich not managed to smuggle poison to me, I would have been hung over water and burned. But the poison had been enough to counterfeit death convincingly. While my soul rode with Nighteyes in his body, Patience had claimed my body from the prison cell and buried it. Unbeknownst to her, Burrich and Chade had disinterred me as soon as they safely could.
I blinked my eyes and looked away from the flames. The fire had burned low. My life was like that now, all in ashes behind me. There was no way to reclaim the woman I had loved. Molly believed me dead now, and doubtless viewed my use of Wit magic with disgust. And anyway she had left me days before the rest of my life had fallen apart. I had known her since we were children and had played together on the streets and docks of Buckkeep Town. She had called me Newboy, and assumed I was just one of the children from the keep, a stable-boy or a scribe’s lad. She had fallen in love with me before she discovered that I was the Bastard, the illegitimate son that had forced Chivalry to abdicate the throne. When she found out, I very nearly lost her. But I had persuaded her to trust me, to believe in me, and for almost a year, we had clung to one another, despite every obstacle. Time and again, I had been forced to put my duty to the King ahead of what we wished to do. The King had refused me permission to marry; she had accepted that. He had pledged me to another woman. Even that, she had tolerated. She had been threatened and mocked, as the ‘bastard’s whore’. I had been unable to protect her. But she had been so steadfast through it all … until one day she simply told me there was someone else for her, someone she could love, and put above all else in her life, just as I did my king. And she had left me. I could not blame her. I could only miss her.
I closed my eyes. I was tired, nearly exhausted. And Verity had warned me to Skill no more unless I must. But surely it could not hurt to attempt a glimpse of Molly. Just to see her, for a moment, to see that she was well … I probably wouldn’t even succeed at seeing her. But what could I hurt by trying, just for a moment?
It should have been easy. It was effortless to recall everything about her. I had so often breathed her scent, compounded of the herbs she used to scent her candles, and the warmth of her own sweet skin. I knew every nuance of her voice, and how it went deeper when she laughed. I could recall the precise line of her jaw, and how she set her chin when she was annoyed with me. I knew the glossy texture of her rich brown hair and the darting glance of her dark eyes. She had had a way of putting her hands to the sides of my face and holding me firmly while she kissed me … I lifted my own hand to my face, wishing I could find her hand there, that I could trap it and hold it forever. Instead I felt the seam of a scar. The foolish tears rose warm in my eyes. I blinked them away, seeing the flames of my fire swim for a moment before my vision steadied. I was tired, I told myself. Too tired to try and find Molly with my Skill. I should try to get some sleep. I tried to set myself apart from these too-human emotions. Yet this was what I chose when I chose to be a man again. Maybe it was wiser to be a wolf. Surely an animal never had to feel these things.
Out in the night, a sin
gle wolf lifted his nose and howled suddenly up to the sky, piercing the night with his loneliness and despair.
FOUR
The River Road
Buck, the oldest Duchy of the Six Duchies, has a coastline that stretches from just below the Highdowns southwards to include the mouth of the Buck River and Bay of Buck. Antler Island is included in the Duchy of Buck. Buck’s wealth has two major sources: the rich fishing grounds that the coastal folk have always enjoyed, and the shipping trade created by supplying the Inland Duchies with all they lack via the Buck River. The Buck River is a wide river, meandering freely in its bed, and often flooding the lowlands of Buck during the spring. The current is such that an ice-free channel has always remained open in the river year round, save for the four severest winters in Buck’s history. Not only Buck goods travel up the river to the Inland Duchies, but trade goods from Rippon and Shoaks Duchies, not to mention the more exotic items from the Chalced States and those of the Bingtown Traders. Down the river comes all that the Inland Duchies have to offer, as well as the fine furs and ambers from the Mountain Kingdom trade.
I awoke when Nighteyes nudged my cheek with a cold nose. Even then I did not startle awake, but became soddenly aware of my surroundings. My head pounded and my face felt stiff. The empty bottle from the elderberry wine rolled away from me as I pushed myself to a sitting position on the floor.
