by Robin Hobb
My Wit made me aware of Web before his silhouette lumbered out of the dim light of the ship's lantern to stand over me. "You're a faithful man, Tom Badgerlock," he observed as he hunkered down beside me. "This can't be pleasant duty, but you've not left his side even for a moment."
His praise both warmed me and made me uncomfortable. "It's my responsibility," I replied, letting his compliment slide past me.
"And you take it seriously."
"Burrich taught me that," I said, a bit testily.
Web laughed easily. "And he taught you to hang on to a grievance like a pit dog hanging on to a bull's nose. Let it go, FitzChivalry Farseer. I'll say no more of the man."
"I wish you would not bandy that name about so casually," I said after a moment of heavy quiet. "It belongs to you. It's a piece of you that is missing. You should take it back."
"He's dead. And better left that way, for the sake of all I hold dear."
"Is it truly for them, or is it for yourself?" he asked of the night.
I wasn't looking at him. I was staring out over the stern, watching the other ships that trailed us through the watery night. They were black hulks, their sails blotting out the stars behind them. The lanterns they bore rose and fell with them, distant moving stars. "Web, what do you want of me?" I asked him at last.
"Only to make you think," he answered soothingly. "Not to make you angry, though I seem to excel at that. Or perhaps your anger is always there, festering inside you, and I am the knife that lances the boil and lets it burst forth."
I shook my head at him silently, not caring if he could or could not see me. I had other things to deal with right now, and wished I were alone.
As if he could read my thoughts, he added, "And tonight I did not even intend to start you on your thinking path. Actually, I came here to offer you respite. I'll sit vigil with Thick, if you wish to take a few hours to yourself. I doubt you've slept deeply since you took up this watch."
I longed to move about freely on my own, to see what the temper was on the rest of the ship. Even more than that, I longed for a little unguarded sleep. The offer was incredibly attractive. It therefore made me immediately suspicious.
"Why?"
Web smiled. "Is it that unusual for people to be nice to you?"
His question jolted me in an odd way. I took a breath. "Sometimes it seems that way, I suppose."
I rose slowly, for I had stiffened in the night chill. Thick muttered in his uneasy rest. I raised my arms over my head and rolled my shoulders as I arrowed a swift thought to Dutiful.Web is offering to take over my watch of Thick for a time. May I allow this?
Of course. He seemed almost surprised that I had asked.
But then, sometimes my prince trusted too easily. Please let Chade know.
I felt Dutiful's agreement. I spoke aloud to Web, at the end of my stretch. "Thank you. I'll take you up on your offer, very gratefully."
I watched him settle himself carefully beside Thick and take the smallest seapipes I'd ever seen from inside his shirt. Seapipes are probably the most common musical instrument in any fleet, for they withstand both bad weather and careless handling. It takes little to learn to play a simple tune on them, yet a talented player can entertain like a Buckkeep minstrel with them. I wasn't surprised to see them in Web's hands. He'd been a fisherman; he probably still was, in many ways.
He waved me away. As I departed, I heard a breathy sigh of music. He was playing, very softly, a child's tune on his pipes. Had he instinctively known that might soothe Thick? I wondered why I hadn't thought of music as a way to comfort him. I sighed. I was becoming too set in my ways. I needed to remember how to be flexible. I went to the galley in hopes of begging something hot to eat. Instead I got hard bread and a piece of cheese no bigger than two fingers. The cook let me know I could consider myself fortunate for being allowed that. She didn't have food to waste, she didn't, not aboard this top-heavy, overpopulated tub. I had hoped for washwater, just enough to splash the salt from my hands and face, but she told me I hadn't a prayer of that. I'd had my share for the day, hadn't I? I should take what I was issued and be happy with it. Guardsmen. No idea what life aboard a vessel required of a man in self-discipline.
I retreated from her sharp tongue. I longed to stay abovedecks to eat, but I was out of my territory there, and the sailors were in a mood to prove it to me. So I went below, down to where the rest of the guard snored and muttered and played cards by the swinging light of a lantern. Our days at sea had not improved the smell of our quarters. I found that Riddle had not exaggerated the ill humor of the men. The comments of one man on "the returning nursemaid" would have been enough justification for a fight if I'd wanted one. I didn't, and managed to shed his insults, eat my food hastily, and dig my blanket out of my sea chest. Finding a place to stretch out was impossible. Prone guardsmen littered the floor. I curled up in their midst. I would have preferred to sleep with my back to a wall, but there was no hope of that. I eased off my boots and loosened my belt. The man next to me muttered nastily and rolled over as I tried to settle on the deck and cover most of myself with my blanket. I closed my eyes and breathed out, reaching desperately for unconsciousness, grateful for the opportunity to close my eyes and sleep. At least in my dreams I could escape this nightmare.
But as I crossed the dim territory between wakefulness and sleep, I recognized that perhaps I held the solution to my problems. Instead of wallowing my way into full sleep, I slid sideways through it, seeking Nettle. My task was harder than I had expected. Thick's music was here, and finding my way through it was like blundering through brambles in a fog. No sooner did I think of that than the sounds sprouted tendrils and thorns. Music should not hurt a man, but this did. I staggered through a fog of sickness, hunger, and thirst, my spine tight with cold and my head pounding with the discordant music that snatched and dragged at me. After a time I halted. "It's a dream," I said to myself, and the brambles writhed mockingly at my words. As I stood still, pondering my situation, they began to wrap around my legs. "It's a dream," I said again. "It can't hurt me." But my words did not prevail. I felt the thorns bite through my leggings into my flesh as I staggered forward. They tightened their grip and held me fast.
I halted again, fighting for calm. What had begun as Thick's Skill-suggestion was now my own nightmare. I straightened up against the weight of the thorny vines trying to pull me down, reached to my hip and drew Verity's sword. I slashed at the brambles and they gave way, wriggling away like severed snakes. Encouraged, I gave the sword a blade of flame that singed the writhing plants and lit my way through the encroaching fog. "Go uphill," I told myself. "Only the valleys are full of mist. The hilltops will be clean and bare." And it was so.
When I finally struggled clear of Thick's Skill-fog, I found myself at the edges of Nettle's dream. I stood staring up at a glass tower on the hilltop above me. I recognized the tale. The hillside above me was littered with tangling threads. As I waded in, they clung like spiderweb. I knew that Nettle was aware of me. Nonetheless, she left me to my own devices, and I floundered through the ankle-deep tangle that represented all the broken promises her false lovers had made to the princess. In the old tale, only a truehearted man could tread such a path without falling.
In the dream, I had become the wolf. All four of my legs were soon bound by the clinging stuff and I must needs stop and chew myself clear of it. For some reason, the thread tasted of anise, a pleasant enough flavor in moderation, but choking by the mouthful. When I finally reached the glass tower and looked up at her, my chest was wet and my jaws dripped saliva. I gave myself a shake, droplets flying, and then asked her, "Aren't you going to invite me to come up?"
She did not reply. She leaned on the parapet of her balcony and stared out over the countryside. I looked behind me, down to where the brambles waved above the banked fog in the deep valleys. Was the fog creeping closer? When Nettle continued to ignore me, I trotted around the base of the tower. In the old tale, there was no door and
Nettle had re-created it faithfully. Did that mean she had had a lover who had been faithless to her? My heart turned over in me and for a moment I forgot the purpose of my visit. When I had circled the tower, I sat down on my haunches and looked up at the figure on the balcony. "Who has betrayed you?" I asked her. She continued to stare out and I thought she would not answer. But then, without looking down at me, she replied, "Everyone. Go away."
"How can I help you if I go away?"
"You can't help me. You've told me that often enough. So you might as well just go away and leave me alone. Like everyone else."
"Who has gone away and left you alone?"
That brought me a furious glare. She spoke in a low voice full of hurt. "I don't know why I thought you might remember! My brother, for one. My brother Swift, who you said would soon be coming home to us. Well, he hasn't! And then my stupid father decided to go look for him. As if a man with fogged eyes can go look for anything! And we told him not to go, but he did. And something happened, we don't know what, but his horse came home without him. So I went out on my horse, despite my mother shrieking at me that I wasn't to leave, and I tracked his horse's trail back and found Papa by the side of the road, bruised and bloody and trying to crawl home dragging one leg. So I brought him home, and then my mother scolded me again for disobeying her. And now my father is in bed and all he does is lie there and stare at the wall and not speak to anyone. My mother forbade any of us from bringing him any brandy. So he won't talk to us or tell us what happened. Which makes my mother furious at all of us. As if it were my fault."
Halfway through this tirade, her tears had begun to stream down her face. They dripped from her chin and ran over her hands and trickled down the wall of the tower. Slowly they solidified into opal strands of misery. I reared up on my hind legs and clawed at them, but they were too smooth and too shallow for me to gain any purchase. I sat down again. I felt hollow and old. I tried to tell myself that the misery in Molly's home had nothing to do with me, that I had not caused it and could not cure it. And yet, the roots of it ran deep, did they not?
After a time, she looked down at me and laughed bitterly. "Well, Shadow Wolf? Aren't you going to say you can't help me with that? Isn't that what you always say?" When I could think of no reply, she added in an accusing tone, "I don't know why I even speak to you. You lied to me. You said my brother was coming home."
"I thought he was," I replied, finding words at last. "I went to him and I told him to go home. I thought he had."
"Well, perhaps he tried to. Perhaps he started this way, and was killed by robbers, or fell in a river and drowned. I don't suppose you ever considered that ten is a bit young to be out on the roads alone? I suppose you never thought that it might have been kinder if you had brought him home safely to us, instead of 'sending' him? But no, that might have been inconvenient to you."
"Nettle. Stop. Let me speak. Swift is safe. Alive and safe. He is still here, with me." I paused and tried to breathe. The inevitability of what must follow those words sickened me. Here it comes, Burrich, I thought to myself. All the pain I ever tried to save you. All tied up in a tidy package of misery for you and your family. For Nettle asked, as I knew she must, "And where is 'safe with you'? And how do I know he is safe? How do I know you are a true thing at all? Perhaps you are like the rest of this dream, a thing I made. Look at you, man- wolf! You are not real and you offer me false hope."
"I am not real as you see me," I replied slowly. "But I am real. And once upon a time, your father knew me."
"'Once upon a time,' " she said scornfully. "Another tale from Shadow Wolf. Take your silly stories away." She took a shuddering breath and fresh tears started down her face. "I'm not a child any longer. Your stupid stories can't help me."
So I knew I had lost her. Lost her trust, lost her friendship. Lost my chance of knowing my child as a child. Terrible sadness welled up in me, but it was laced with the music of brambles growing. I glanced behind me. The thorn vines and fog had crept higher. Was it just my own dream threatening me, or had Thick's music become even more menacing? I didn't know. "And I came here seeking your help," I reminded myself bitterly. "My help?" Nettle asked in a choked voice.
I had spoken without thinking. "I know I don't have the right to ask you for anything."
"No. You don't." She was looking past me. "What is that, anyway?"
"A dream. A nightmare, actually."
"I thought your nightmares were about falling." She sounded intrigued.
"That's not my nightmare. It belongs to someone else. He is… It's a very strong nightmare. Strong enough to spread out from him and take over the dreams of other people. It's threatening lives. And I don't think the man whose dream it is can control it."
"Just wake him up, then." She offered the solution disdainfully.
"That might help, for a little time. But I need a more permanent solution." For a brief moment, I considered telling her that the man's nightmare endangered Swift, as well. I pushed the thought aside. There was no use frightening her, especially when I wasn't sure she could help me. "What did you think I could do about it?"
"I thought you could help me go into his dream and change it. Make it pleasant and calm. Convince him that what is happening to him won't kill him, that he'll be fine. Then his dreams might be calmer. And we could all rest."
"How could I do that?" And then, more sharply, "And why should I do that? What do you offer me in exchange, Shadow Wolf?"
I did not like that it had come down to barter, but I had only myself to blame. It was cruelest of all that the only thing I had to offer her would bring pain and guilt for her father. I spoke slowly. "As to how, you are very strong in the magic that lets one person walk into another person's dreams and change them. Strong enough, perhaps, to shape my friend's dream for him, even though he himself is also very strong in magic. And very frightened."
"I have no magic."
I ignored her words. "As for why… I have told you that Swift is with me, and safe. You doubt me. I don't blame you, for it appears I have failed you in my earlier assurance. But I will give you words, to say to your father. They will… they will be hard for him to hear. But when he hears them, he will know that what I say is true. That your brother is alive and well. And with me."
"Tell me the words, then."
For one brief Chade-ish moment, I thought of demanding that first she help me with Thick's dreaming. Then I harshly rejected that notion. My daughter owed me exactly what I had given her: nothing. Perhaps there was also the fear that if I did not speak to her then, I would lose my courage. Uttering those words was like touching my tongue to a glowing coal. I spoke them. "Tell him that you dreamed of a wolf with porcupine quills in his muzzle. And that the wolf said to you, 'As once you did, so I do now. I shelter and guide your son. I will put my life between him and any harm, and when my task is done, I will bring him safely home to you.' " I had cloaked my message as best I could, under the circumstances. Nettle still struck far too close to the truth when she eagerly asked, "My father cared for your son, years ago?"
Some decisions are easier if you don't allow yourself time to think. "Yes," I lied to my daughter. "Exactly." I watched her mull this for a moment. Slowly her tower of glass began to melt into water. It flowed, warm and harmless, past my feet until her balcony had descended to the ground. She offered me her hand to help her climb over the railing. I took it, touching and yet not touching my daughter for the first time in her life. Her tanned fingers rested briefly on my black-clawed paw. Then she stood clear of me and looked down at the fog and creeping briars that were ascending the hillside toward us. "You know I've never done anything like this before?"
"Neither have I," I admitted.
"Before we go into his dream, tell me something about him," she suggested. The fog and bramble crept ever closer. Whatever I told her about Thick would be too much, and yet for her to enter his dream ignorant might be dangerous to all. I could not control what Thick revealed to her in the con
text of the dream. For one fleeting second, I wondered if I should have consulted Chade or Dutiful before seeking Nettle's aid. Then I smiled grimly to myself. I was Skillmaster, was I not? In that capacity, this decision was mine alone. And so I told my daughter that Thick was simple, a man with the mind and heart of a child, and the strength of an army when it came to Skill Magic. I even told her that he served the Farseer Prince, and that he journeyed with him on a ship. I told her how his powerful Skill-music and now his dreams were undermining morale on the ship. I told her of his conviction that he would always be seasick and that he would likely die from it. And as I told her these things, the thorns grew and twined toward us, and I watched her quickly drawing her own conclusions from what I said; that I was on board the ship also, and therefore that her brother was with me, on a sea voyage with the Farseer Prince. Rural as her home was, I wondered how much she had heard of the Narcheska and the Prince's quest. I didn't have to wonder long. She put the tale together for herself. "So that is the black dragon that the silver dragon keeps asking you about. The one the Prince goes to slay."
"Don't speak her name," I begged her.
She gave me a disdainful look that mocked my foolish fears. Then, "Here it comes," she said quietly. And the brambles engulfed us.
They made a crackling sound as they rose around our ankles and then our knees, like fire racing up a tree. The thorns bit into our flesh and then a dense fog swirled up about us, choking and menacing. "What is this?" Nettle exclaimed in annoyance. Then, as the fog stole her from my sight, she exclaimed, "Stop it. Shadow Wolf, stop it right now! This is all yours; you made this mess. Let go of it!"
And she wrested my dream from me. It was rather like having someone snatch away your blankets. But most jarring for me was that it evoked a memory I both did and did not recognize: another time and an older woman, prying something fascinating and shiny from my chubby-fisted grasp, while saying, "No, Keppet. Not for little boys."
