by Robin Hobb
‘An excellent report,’ Spark said in a fair imitation of Chade’s voice. Perseverance snorted into his hands.
‘Truly,’ Amber agreed, and the colour rose in Lant’s cheeks.
‘He trained you well,’ I said. ‘Why do you think they convene and invite us to dine with them?’
‘To thank you?’ Perseverance seemed incredulous I would not have thought of that.
‘It will be the preliminary to bargaining with us. It’s the Trader way.’ Amber sighed. ‘We know what we need from them. Fresh supplies and passage as far south as we can get. The question is, what will they ask of us in return?’
THREE
* * *
In the Mountains
This was a very short dream. A chalk-faced man dressed in robes of green trimmed with gold walked on a beach. A grotesque creature hunched on a grassy outcrop above the beach and watched him, but the man paid it no mind. He was carrying fine chains, as if to be worn as jewellery, but much stronger. He carried them in loops on his arm. He came to a place where the sand was shaking and bulging. He watched it, smiling. Snakes began to come out of the earth. They were large snakes, as long as my arm. They were wet and their skins were bright shades of blue and red and green and yellow. The man put a looped chain around the head of a blue one, and the chain became a noose. He lifted the snake clear of the ground. It thrashed but it could not get away even though it opened wide its mouth and showed white teeth, very pointed. The pale man caught another snake in his snare, a yellow one. Next, he tried to catch a red one, but it shook free of him and slithered away very fast toward the sea. ‘I will have you!’ the man shouted, and he chased the snake and stepped on the end of its tail, trapping it near the waves’ edge. He held the leashes of his two captive snakes in one hand and in the other he shook out a fresh snare for the red snake.
He thought she would turn and dart her head at him and he would loop the chain around her neck. But it was a dragon who turned on him, for he was treading on a dragon’s tail. ‘No,’ she said to him very loudly. ‘But I will have you.’
The picture I have painted for this dream is not very good, for my father’s red ink does not gleam and glisten as the snake did.
Bee Farseer’s dream journal
I slept cold and awoke to the toe of Dwalia’s shoe nudging my sore belly. ‘What have you been doing?’ she demanded of me, and then snarled over her shoulder, ‘Alaria! You were supposed to be watching her! Look at this! She’s been chewing at her bonds!’
Alaria came at a stumbling trot, her fur coat slung around her shoulders, her pale hair a tangle around her bleary-eyed face. ‘I was up almost all night! I asked Reppin to watch her …’
Dwalia spun away from me. I tried to sit up. My bound hands were cold and nearly numb. My whole body was stiff with various bruises and cuts. I fell over and tried to roll away from her, but I didn’t get far. I heard a slap and then a wordless yelp. ‘No excuses,’ Dwalia snarled. I heard her stalk away.
I tried to stagger to my feet, but Alaria was swifter. She put a knee in my back to keep me down. I twisted toward her to bite. She put one hand on the back of my head and pushed my face down on the paving stone. ‘Give me a reason to slam your teeth into that,’ she invited me. I didn’t.
‘Don’t hurt my brother!’ Vindeliar wailed.
‘Don’t hurt my brother,’ Dwalia mocked him in a shrill whine. ‘Be silent!’ The last word she spoke with a grunt, and I heard Vindeliar yelp.
Alaria pulled at my tunic hem then sawed strips from it with her belt-knife. She cursed in a guttural voice as she worked. I could feel her fury. Now was not a good time to challenge her. She rolled me over roughly and I saw the print of Dwalia’s hand on her face, livid red against her pale skin. ‘Bitch,’ she snapped, and I did not know if she meant me or Dwalia. She seized my stiff hands and jerked them roughly toward her. She brutally sawed at the sodden rags with her dull knife. I pulled my wrists as far apart as I could, hoping she would not cut me. ‘This time, I tie them behind your back,’ she promised through gritted teeth.
I heard footsteps crunching through leaves and twigs and Reppin came to join Alaria. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘My hand hurt so much …’
‘It’s fine,’ Alaria said in a tone that said it was not.
‘She’s so unfair,’ Reppin said. ‘So cruel to us. We are supposed to be her advisors and she treats us like servants! And tells us nothing. Not a word of what she plans now that she has dragged us to this horrid place. This is not what Symphe intended for us.’
Alaria relented in her sulk. ‘There’s a road over there. I think we should follow it. It makes no sense to stay here.’
‘Perhaps it goes to a village,’ Reppin offered hopefully. She added in a softer voice, ‘I need a healer. My whole arm throbs.’
‘All of you. Go fetch wood!’ Dwalia shouted from her seat by the dwindling fire. Vindeliar looked up with a woeful face. I saw Reppin and Alaria exchange rebellious glances.
‘I said, “All of you”!’ Dwalia shrieked.
Vindeliar came to his feet and stood uncertainly. Dwalia stood up, a much-folded paper in her hand. She looked at it angrily, gripped it so tightly that I knew it was the source of her ire. ‘That liar,’ she growled. ‘I should have known. I should not have trusted a word that we wrung from Prilkop.’ Abruptly, she slapped Vindeliar with her paper. ‘Go. Get wood. We will be here another night at least! Alaria! Reppin! Take Bee with you. Watch her. We need firewood. Lots of it! You, Chalcedean! Go hunt for some food for us.’
Kerf did not even turn his head. He was perched on a low stone wall and looking across the square at nothing. Nothing until I eased my walls down and saw tumblers, clad all in black and white, performing for a crowd of tall folk with oddly coloured hair. Sounds of a busy market-day filled my ears. I squeezed my eyes shut, firmed my walls, and opened my eyes to the long-deserted plaza. For that was what it was. Once, this open space in the forest had been a lively market square, a crossroads where traders met to exchange wares and Elderlings gathered for amusement and shopping.
‘Come on,’ Alaria snapped at me.
I got slowly to my feet. If I walked hunched over, my belly did not hurt so badly. Eyes on the ground, I followed them as they crossed the ancient paving stones. I saw bear-scat among the sparse forest debris, and then a glove. I slowed my pace. Another lady’s glove, this one of soft yellow kid. Then some sodden canvas. Something red and knitted peeped out from beneath it.
Slowly and carefully I stooped and tugged out a red woollen shawl. It was as damp and smelly as the hat I’d found, but just as welcome. ‘What do you have there?’ Dwalia demanded and I flinched. I hadn’t heard her come up behind me.
‘Just a rag,’ I said, my words blurred by my swollen mouth.
‘There’s a lot of rubbish over here,’ Reppin observed.
‘Which shows that people use this road.’ Alaria added. She looked toward Dwalia as she said, ‘If we followed it, we might soon come to a village. And a healer for Reppin.’
‘There’s bear-scat, too,’ I contributed. ‘And it’s fresher than the rubbish.’ That last part was true. The excrement was on top of some of the canvas and unmelted by rain.
‘Ew!’ Alaria had been tugging at a corner of some canvas. She dropped it and sprang back.
‘What’s that?’ Dwalia exclaimed and pushed her aside. She squatted down and peeled the canvas back from the wet stones to expose something white and cylindrical. A bone? ‘Umph,’ she exclaimed in satisfaction. We all watched as she unscrewed a small plug from the end and coaxed out a coiled piece of parchment.
‘What is it?’ Alaria asked.
‘Go get wood!’ Dwalia snapped and took her treasure back to the fireside.
‘Move, Bee!’ Alaria commanded me. I hastily wrapped my shawl around my shoulders and followed them.
For the rest of the morning they broke sticks from storm-fallen branches and piled them in my arms for me to carry back to the campsite. Dwalia
remained crouched by the fire, brow furrowed over the little scroll she’d found.
‘I am going to die here,’ Reppin announced. She was huddled under her coat and mine, her bitten arm cradled in her lap.
‘Don’t be dramatic,’ Dwalia snapped at her and went back to studying her papers, squinting as the light faded from the day. It had been two days since I’d bitten Reppin, and here we still were. Dwalia had forbidden Alaria from exploring any farther down the old roads, and had slapped Reppin for asking what we would do next. Since she had found the bone cylinder and discovered the parchment inside it, all she had done was sit by the fire and compare it to her crumpled paper. She scowled and squinted as her gaze moved from one to the other.
I stared at Reppin across the fire. The sun was going down and the cold was creeping back. The small amount of warmth the stones of the old plaza had captured would soon flee. Reppin probably felt colder because of her fever. I kept my mouth flat. She was right; she would die. Not quickly, but she would die. Wolf Father had told me and, when I let him guide my senses, I could smell the infection in her sweat. Next time, for a faster kill, you must find and bite a place where the blood leaps forth in gushes. But for a first kill, you did well. Even if this is meat you cannot eat.
I didn’t know my bite could kill her.
No regrets, Wolf Father chided me. There is no going back to do a thing or not do a thing. There is only today. Today you must resolve to live. Each time you are given a choice, you must do the thing that will keep you alive and unhurt. Regrets are useless. If you had not made her fear you she would have done you many more hurts. And the others would have joined in. They are a pack and they will follow their leader. You made the bitch fear you, and the others know that. What she fears, they will fear.
So I kept my face set and showed no remorse – though I did suspect that the proscription against eating humans had not been made by someone as hungry as I was. In the two days that had passed since we’d arrived, I’d eaten twice – if a thin soup of some bird Alaria had killed with a thrown stone and two handfuls of meal cooked in a full pot of water could be counted as food. The others had eaten better than I had. I had wanted to be too proud to eat the little they offered me, but Wolf Father said that was a poor choice. Eat to live, he had told me. Be proud of staying alive. And so I tried. I ate what I was given, spoke little and listened much.
By day, they untied my hands and hobbled my ankles so I could help with the endless task of scavenging for firewood. My new bonds had been made from strips torn from my tunic. I dared not chew them again lest they tear away even more of my clothing. They watched me closely. If I strayed at all from Alaria’s side, Dwalia would hit me with a stick. Every night, she bound my wrists to my tied ankles and tethered them to her wrist. If I shifted in my sleep, she kicked me. Hard.
And with every kick, Father Wolf would snarl, Kill her. As soon. As possible.
‘You and I are the only ones left,’ Reppin whispered that night to Alaria after Dwalia slept.
‘I am here,’ Vindeliar reminded them.
‘Of the true luriks,’ Reppin clarified disdainfully. ‘You are no scholar of the dream-scrolls. Stop spying on us!’ She lowered her voice as if to exclude Vindeliar. ‘Remember when Symphe herself said we were chosen as the best to help Dwalia discern the Path. But from the beginning she ignored our advice. We both know that girl has no value.’ She sighed. ‘I fear we have strayed very far from the way.’
Alaria sounded uncertain as she said, ‘But Bee did have the fever, and the skin-change. That must mean something.’
‘Only that she has some White heritage. Not that she can dream. Certainly not that she is this Unexpected Son that Dwalia claimed we would find.’ Reppin dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘You know she is not! Even Dwalia no longer credits that. Alaria, we must protect one another. No one else will. When Symphe and Dwalia proposed this mission, Capra and Coultrie both insisted that we had already endured the Unexpected Son; that he was the one who freed IceFyre and put an end to Ilistore. So Beloved told us when he came back to Clerres. He said that one of his Catalysts, the noble assassin, was the Unexpected Son. Among his people, they called Ilistore the Pale Woman. And she was defeated by the Unexpected Son. All know that! Three of the Four say that the dreams related to him are fulfilled and those prophecies should be discarded now. Only Symphe thought otherwise. And Dwalia.’
I held my breath. They were speaking of my father! I knew from poring through his papers that the Fool had said he was the Unexpected Son. But I had never grasped that in some far-off land he had been the fulfilment of a prophecy. Furtively, I edged closer.
Reppin dropped her voice. ‘Symphe believed her only because Dwalia showered her with obscure references that said the Unexpected Son’s victory would be absolute. And it was not, because Beloved came back to us and was recaptured. And remember that Dwalia served Ilistore for years and was infatuated with her. Dwalia always bragged that when Ilistore returned, she would raise her to power.’ She barely breathed the next words. ‘I think Dwalia only wants vengeance. You recall how she was about Beloved. She holds him responsible for Ilistore’s death. And you know whose home we stole Bee from? FitzChivalry’s.’
Alaria sat up in her blankets. ‘No!’
‘Yes. FitzChivalry Farseer.’ Reppin reached up to tug her back down. ‘Think back. Recall the name Beloved shouted when his foot was being crushed? The name of his true Catalyst. He’d held that back, saying he’d had many: an assassin, a nine-fingered slave boy, a ship’s captain, a spoiled girl, a noble bastard. Not true. His one real Catalyst was FitzChivalry Farseer. And when I followed Dwalia into that house, in a room full of scrolls, she stopped still and stared and smiled. And there, on a mantelpiece, I saw a carving. One of the faces on it was Beloved’s! As he looked before he was interrogated.’ She nestled deeper into their bedding. ‘She wanted to take it. But just then, Ellik’s men came in and began to push over shelves and throw things around. They took a sword from there. So we left. But that’s who Bee is. The daughter of a Catalyst.’
‘They said the house belonged to Badgerlock, Tom Badgerlock. Bee said that was her father’s name.’
‘So. You are surprised that the biting little bitch lies?’
‘But she is a White, too?’
Alaria’s whisper was soft. I strained to hear Reppin’s reply.
‘Yes. And think now how a thing such as that could come to be!’ Her words were triumphantly scandalized, as if my very existence were shameful.
‘Vindeliar is listening,’ Alaria cautioned her. She shifted, pulling the coat more closely around them. ‘I don’t care about such things. I just want to go home. Back to Clerres. I want to sleep in a bed and have breakfast waiting for me when I awaken. I wish I’d never been chosen for this.’
‘My hand hurts so badly. I’d like to kill that brat!’
‘Don’t talk like that!’ Vindeliar warned them.
‘You shouldn’t talk at all. It’s your fault, all of this!’ Reppin hissed at him.
‘Sneaking spy,’ Alaria rebuked him, and they all fell silent.
It was not the only time they whispered at night, though most of what they said made little sense to me. Reppin complained of her bite, and they discussed the politics of Clerres with names I did not know and fine points I could not understand. They promised to report all they had suffered when they returned home and agreed that Dwalia would be punished. Twice they spoke of dreams about a Destroyer, who Alaria claimed would bring screaming and foul fumes and death. In one, an acorn brought into a house suddenly grew into a tree of flames and swords. I recalled my own dream of the puppet with the acorn head and wondered if there was any connection. But I had also dreamed of a nut bobbing in a stream. I decided that my dreams were very confusing. Almost as bad as Reppin’s, for she had dreamed just darkness and a voice that announced, ‘Comes the Destroyer that you have made.’
I gleaned what facts I could from their whispering. Some important people h
ad not agreed about allowing Dwalia to go forth on her mission. When she persisted, they had relented, but only because Beloved had escaped. From my father’s writings, ‘Beloved’ was also ‘the Fool’. And ‘Lord Golden’. ‘The Four’ had warned Dwalia of what would befall her if she failed to produce results. She had promised to deliver to them the Unexpected Son. And I was all she had.
Vindeliar was excluded from their discussions, but he so craved their attention that he had no pride. One night, as they whispered under their furs, he broke in excitedly to say, ‘I had a dream, too.’
‘You did not!’ Reppin declared.
‘I did.’ He was as defiant as a child. ‘I dreamed that someone brought a small package into a room and no one wanted it. But then someone opened it. And flames and smoke and loud noises came out and the room fell apart all around everyone.’
‘You did not dream that,’ Reppin exploded with disdain. ‘You are such a liar! You heard me talking about that dream and just repeated what you heard.’
‘I did not hear you say such a dream!’ He was indignant.
Alaria’s voice was a low growl. ‘You’d better not claim that dream with Dwalia, because I already told it to her. She will know you for what a liar you are and beat you with a stick.’
‘I did dream that,’ he whined. ‘Sometimes Whites dream the same. You know that.’
‘You are no White. You were born broken, you and your sister. You should have been drowned.’
I caught my breath at that and waited for Vindeliar to explode with fury. Instead he fell silent. The cold wind blew and the only thing we truly shared was misery. And dreams.
