by Robin Hobb
Chade and the Prince stared at me. Then Chade nodded slowly. The Prince looked as if he wondered who I was.
“Think!” Burrich barked at me suddenly. “Think it through for yourself, with no assumptions. There is much here that makes no sense to me, questions that you should answer before you blindly do her wishes, regardless of what threat she holds over you. Why hasn't she simply killed the dragon herself? Why does she bid you do it, and then cast you out of her stronghold, when it would be easier for her to assist you in reaching him?” In an aside to no one, he muttered, “I hate this. I hate thinking this way, the intrigue and the plotting. I always have. ” He stared blindly into the recesses of the dim tent. “All these intricate balances of power, ambition, and the Farseer drive to set forces in motion and ride them out. All the secrets. That is what killed your father, the finest man I ever knew. It killed his father, and it killed Verity, a man I was proud to have served. Must it kill yet another generation, must it end your whole line before you stop it?” He turned his gaze, and suddenly seemed to see the Prince. “End it, my lord. I beg you. Even at the cost of the Fool's life, even at the cost of your betrothal. End it now. Cut your losses, which are already far too high. Death is all you can buy for the Narcheska's family. Walk away from all of it. Leave here, sail home, marry a sensible woman, and have healthy children. Leave this woeful cup to the Outislanders who brewed it. Please, my prince, blood of my dearest friend. Leave this. Let us go home. ”
His words shocked all of us, not least the Prince. I could see Dutiful's mind racing as he stared at Burrich. Had it ever occurred to the youngster that he could take such a step? He looked at each of us in turn, then stood up. Something changed in his face. I had never seen it happen, never suspected that perhaps a single moment could carry a boy to manhood. I saw it then. He stepped to the door of the tent. “Longwick!”
Longwick thrust his head inside. “My prince?”
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“Fetch me Lord Blackwater and the Narcheska. I wish them to come here, immediately. ”
“What do you do?” Chade asked in a low voice when Longwick had withdrawn.
Prince Dutiful did not reply directly. “How much of this magic powder do you have? Can it do what Fitz has said it can?”
A light kindled in the old man's eyes, the same light that had used to terrify me when I was his apprentice. I knew that he didn't know completely what his powder could do, but that he was willing to gamble that it would work. “Two kegs, my prince. And yes, I think it will be sufficient. ”
I heard the crunch of footsteps on the ice outside the tent. We all fell silent. Longwick lifted the flap. “My prince, Lord Blackwater and the Narcheska Elliania. ”
“Admit them,” Dutiful said. He remained standing. He crossed his arms on his chest. It looked forbidding but I suspect he did it to keep his hands from trembling. His face looked as if it had been chiseled from stone. When they entered, he did not greet them or invite them to sit, but merely said, “I know what the Pale Woman holds over you. ”
Elliania gasped, but Peottre only inclined his head once. “When your man returned, I feared that you might. She has sent me word, saying that she did not intend to divulge that secret, but that now it is known, I may beg you freely to help us. ” He took a deep breath and I thought I knew what it cost the proud man to sink slowly down on his knees. “Which I do. ” He bowed his head and waited. I wondered if he had ever before knelt to any man. Elliania's face flared from white to sudden crimson. She stepped forward and put a hand on her uncle's shoulder. Slowly she sank to her knees beside him. Her proud young head drooped until her black hair curtained her face.
I stared at them, wanting to hate them for their intrigues and betrayal. I could not. I knew too well what Chade and I would be capable of, were Kettricken taken as hostage. I thought the Prince would bid her rise, but he only stared at them. Chade spoke. “She has sent you word? How?”
“She has her ways,” Peottre said tightly. He remained on his knees as he spoke. “And those I am still forbidden to speak about. I am sorry. ”
“You are sorry? Why could you not have been honest with us from the beginning? Why could you not have told us that you acted under duress, with no interest in an alliance or a marriage? What makes you guard her secrets still? Forbidden to speak! What worse thing could she have done to you than what she has already done?” The hurt and outrage in the Prince's voice went beyond anything mere words could convey. He knew now, as we all did, that he had been only a tool for the Narcheska, never anyone she could care about. It humiliated him as much as hurt him. I knew then that he had let himself fall in love with her, despite their differences.
Peottre clenched his teeth. His voice grated when he replied. “Exactly the question that keeps me awake at night. You know only of the most recent and vicious attack she has made against Narwhal Clan. For a long time, we stood firm before the blows she dealt us, thinking, ‘She has done her worst and we have withstood it. We will not bend to her. ' And each time she proved us wrong. What worse can she do to us? We do not know. And that ignorance of where her next blow will land is her most fearsome weapon over us. ”
“Did you never think that you could have told me that there were hostages involved? Did you think it would not have moved me to help you?” Dutiful demanded.
Peottre shook his head heavily. “You could never have accepted the bargain she made us. You had too much honor. ”
The Prince ignored the strange compliment.
“What was the pact?” Chade asked sternly.
Peottre answered in a flat voice. “If we made the Prince kill the dragon, she would kill Oerttre and Kossi. Their torment and shame would end. ” He lifted his head and looked at me with difficulty, but then spoke honestly. “And if we delivered you and the tawny man to her, alive, she promised to give us their bodies. To return to our motherland. ”
I groped for my anger and felt only sickness. No wonder they had been so glad to see the Fool awaiting us on Aslevjal. We had been sold like cattle.
“May I speak?” Elliania lifted her head. Perhaps she had always carried that grave sorrow in her, but I had never seen the shame she bore plainly now. She looked younger than I recalled, and yet she had the eyes of a dying woman. She looked at Dutiful and then lowered her eyes before the hurt he did not hide. “I think there is much I could make clear for you. It is long since I had any heart for this vicious sham. But my duty to my family means that first I must speak of this to you. My mother and my sister . . . it is imperative that . . . that we—” She choked for a time. Then she flung up her head and spoke stiffly. “I do not think I can make you understand how important it is. That they must die, and that their bodies must be returned to my mothershouse. For an Outislander, for a daughter of Narwhal Clan, no other choice was ever possible. ” She clasped her shaking hands in front of her. “There was never an honorable choice,” she managed to say before her voice died.
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Dutiful spoke quietly. “Sit down, if you can find the space. I think we have all come to the same place now. ” He did not mean the tent.
We all shifted, trying to make room in the small shelter. Burrich grunted as he tried to move his stiff leg out of the way. As Peottre and Elliania found places to sit, Burrich shook out my shirt and then draped it around me. It almost made me smile. No matter what else might be going on, he still would not let me offend a lady by sitting bare-chested in her presence. The grandson of a slave, he had always been far more aware of the social niceties than I had.
Elliania's voice was shamed and weary. She held her shoulders tightly hunched. “You ask what else she could do to us? Much. We do not know, with certainty, who belongs to her. She has preyed on our men and boys for years. Our warriors go forth and do not return. Young boys vanished while shepherding our flocks, on our own clan lands! Child by child, she has reduced our family. Some she killed. Others went
out to play and returned home as soulless monsters. ” She glanced sideways at Peottre, who stared at nothing. “With our own hands, we have killed the children of our clan,” she whispered. The Prince made a small sound at her words. She stopped speaking, then took a ragged breath and went on. “Henja had been in our household for years before she betrayed us. We still do not know how my mother and little sister were snatched so effortlessly from our midst. Just as those two were taken, so others are vulnerable. My Great Mother is elderly, and her mind flickers like a dying candle, as you have seen. All her knowledge should have been passed on to my mother by now. Yet my mother is not there to receive it. So, she lingers, trying her best to mother our house despite the burden of her years. Perhaps you think her pathetic. Nonetheless, if she were taken from us, the center of our mothershouse would be completely destroyed. My family would cease to be. As it is, we have suffered greatly from my mother's absence and the discord it has created. What is a mothershouse, with no mother in it?”
She asked the question as if it were rhetorical, but the Prince suddenly sat very straight. Stiffly, he asked, “But then, if you came to Buckkeep to be my wife, would not you be leaving your mothershouse, that is, who would be the Great Mother when it was your turn to take that role?”
A tiny spark of anger kindled in Elliania's eyes. She spoke disdainfully. “My cousin already fancies herself in that role, as you have seen. She seeks to make others think it is hers by right rather than by default. ” For a second, I saw the spitfire I had glimpsed on her home island. Then she gave a small sigh and tossed her hands helplessly. “But you are right. I gave up all hope of becoming what I was born to be when I agreed to marry you. That loss is the price I pay to buy the deaths of my sister and mother, and end their torment and degradation. ” She dwindled back into herself, her shoulders rounding. She clenched her hands, and I saw the sweat start on her brow.
“Why didn't she ask you to kill the dragon? Or why doesn't she do it herself?” Chade asked them.
Peottre spoke up. “She believes she is a great prophetess, one who can not only see the future, but one who determines what the future will be. During the war, she said that the Farseer line must perish entirely, or that they would bring the dragons to descend on us, just as they did of old. Some believed her, and tried to do her will. But they failed, and her words came true. You Farseers brought the wrath of the dragons upon us, smashing and destroying our ships and villages. ”
“But if you had not attacked us with your Red Ships—” Dutiful began, outraged.
Peottre spoke over him. “Now, she says there is still a chance to redeem ourselves. She says our dragon deserves to die, for he failed to rise and protect us. Moreover, she says he deserves to die at a Farseer's hands, since you are the foe that he failed to protect us from. But most of all, she says a Farseer must kill Icefyre because that is what she has seen in her visions of the future. For it to go as she wills it, a Farseer must do this deed. ”
“Which seems to me to be a very good reason to consider not doing it,” Burrich remarked under his breath to me.
The Prince's ears were keen. He spoke bitterly. “But the best reason to consider not killing the dragon is that it may be impossible. You've been aware that some in my group had begun to doubt my mission. The closer we came to Icefyre, the clearer we could sense him, not just his life that lingers in him still, but his power. His intellect. Now, I discover that my friends have acted against me. Lord Blackwater, Narcheska Elliania, I have failed you. My own trusted friends have sent a message to the Bingtown Traders. They will send their dragon to oppose us. She may already be hastening here. ”
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“I do not understand,” Peottre broke in. “I knew there had been resistance in your group to killing the dragon. But what is this talk of ‘sensing' him?”
“You are not the only one with secrets, and this I will reserve to myself for now. Just as you reserve the secret of how the Pale Woman has been in contact with you. She prompted you to poison Fit—Tom with the cake you brought to us, did she not?”
Peottre sat up very straight, lips folded. Dutiful gave a sharp nod to himself. “Yes. Secrets. If you had not seen fit to hold yours so tightly, we might have acted as one from the beginning, not against the dragon, but against the Pale Woman. If only you had spoken to me . . . ”
The Narcheska suddenly collapsed. She fell onto her side, moaning, and then shuddered into stillness.
Blackwater knelt by her. “We could not!” he exclaimed bitterly. “You cannot even guess what price this little one has paid tonight to speak this plainly to you. Her tongue has been sealed, and mine, too. ” He looked suddenly at Burrich. “Old soldier, if you have a thread of mercy left in you, will you fetch snow for me?”
“I will,” I said quietly, not knowing how much or how little Burrich could see. But he had already risen, taking up an empty cooking pot and going out of the tent. Blackwater rolled Elliania onto her belly and, without ceremony, dragged up her tunic. The Prince gasped at what was revealed and I turned aside, sickened. The dragon and serpent tattoos on her back were inflamed, some oozing droplets of blood, others puffed and wet like freshly burst burns. Peottre spoke through clenched teeth. “She went for a walk one day with Henja, her trusted handmaid. Two days later, Henja brought her stumbling home to us, with these marks on her back and the Pale Woman's cruel bargain for us. Henja spoke it, for Elliania cannot say anything of what befell her without the dragons punishing her. Even the mention of the Pale Woman's name does this to her. ”
Burrich came back with his pot of snow. He set it down beside the prone woman and peered at her in horror, trying to discern what it was. “An infection of the skin?” he asked hesitantly.
“A poisoning of the soul,” Peottre said bitterly. He lifted a handful of the clean snow Burrich had brought and smoothed it across Elliania's back. She stirred slightly. Her eyelids fluttered. I thought she had hovered at the edge of consciousness, but she did not make a sound.
“I free you from all agreements between us,” Dutiful said quietly.
Peottre looked at him, stricken. But the Prince spoke on.
“She will not be held by me to any promises she made under duress. Yet I will still kill your dragon,” the Prince said quietly. “Tonight. And after we have won clean death for our people, when no one but myself is at risk, then I will do all within my power to finish the Pale Woman's evil forever. ” He took a great breath, and as if fearing mockery, said, “And if any of us survive, then I will stand before Elliania and ask her if she will have me. ”
Elliania spoke. Her voice was faint and she did not lift her head. “I will. Freely. ” The second utterance she added more strongly. I do not think Peottre or Chade approved, but they held their tongues. She motioned away the handful of snow that Peottre held. Instead, she took his hand and managed to sit up. She was still in pain. She looked as if she had taken a death wound.
Chade swung his gaze to me.
“Then we act. Tonight. ” He looked around at each of us in turn, then almost visibly threw caution to the wind. “We dare not wait, for who among us knows how swift a dragon can fly? If we act together and quickly, then perhaps the deed can be done and we can be gone from here before this Tintaglia even arrives. ” A flush, almost a blush, suffused the old man's face suddenly. He could not keep down the small smile that came as he announced, “It is true. I have created a powder that has the force of a bolt of lightning. I brought some of it with me, when I came here. I do not have as much of it as I had hoped to apply to this task. Most of my supply remained behind on the beach. But perhaps what I have is enough. When cast into a fire in a sealed container, it explodes violently, like a lightning strike. If we placed it down our tunnel and set it off, it would definitely blow up much ice. By itself, it may kill the dragon. Even if it doesn't, it will give us swifter access to him. ”
I heaved myself to my feet. “Have you a cloak I
can use?” I asked Burrich.
He ignored me, looking only at Chade. “Is this like what you did the night Shrewd died? Whatever you treated the candles with, it did not behave as reliably as you had expected. What do we risk here?”
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But Chade's enthusiasm for an immediate test of his wonderful powder had already grown beyond all caution. He was like a boy with an untested kite or boat. “This isn't like that at all. That was a fine measurement, and it had to be done in more haste than I liked. Have you any idea what was involved in treating all those candles and the firewood supply for that evening, with no one the wiser? No one has ever appreciated that, no, nor any of the other wonders I've worked for the Farseer reign. But even so, this is different. It will happen on a much larger scale, and I am free to use as much of the powder as we think necessary. There will be no half-measures this time. ”
Burrich shook his head at me as I freed my arm from its binding and carefully threaded my left hand into my shirtsleeve. It was sore, but I could use it. Carefully. The prospect that the dragon might be slain tonight had fired me. A calm part of me knew that all I had was the Pale Woman's word that she would release the Fool as soon as Icefyre was dead. It was scarcely reliable, and yet it was the only chance I had. And if Chade's powder did slay the beast, but did not win the Fool's release, then a second dose of it, used alongside the dragon's body, might very well open up a passageway into her realm under the ice. I kept that thought to myself for now.
“What are the dangers?” Dutiful asked, but Chade waved a dismissive hand.
“I made extensive tests of it. I dug holes on the beach, built fires in the bottom of them, and when it was burning well, put in the box of powder and retreated. When the powder burst, it created a pit on the beach, the size proportionate to the amount of powder in the sealed container. Why should ice and snow be any different? Oh, I'll grant you that they are heavier and thicker, but that is why we'll use a larger container of powder. Now as for the fire—”
“Easily done,” I said. My mind was already racing. I had found Chade's cloak. I settled it around my shoulders. “A container of some kind, a large cooking pot. That kettle we use for stew and melting snow for water. That will do. Kindling to start a small fire in the bottom of it, and then the Fool's burning oil. He had it with his tent, so it will be there still. I will crawl down the excavated tunnel, get the fire going, and then put in the powder and crawl out. Hastily. ” Chade and I grinned at one another. I was already infected with his enthusiasm.
