by Robin Hobb
I reached across the table to set my hand atop his. I swear, I strove to will strength into him. I gripped his eyes with mine and sought to give him confidence. "Begin the night before he disappeared," I suggested quietly. "And tell me all that you know."
"After all these years, I should report to you, and let you draw the conclusions?" I thought I had affronted him, but then his smile dawned. "Ah, Fitz, thank you. Thank you, boy. After this long while, it is so good to have you back at my side. So good to have someone I can trust. The night before Prince Dutiful vanished. Well. Let me see, then."
For a time, those green eyes looked far afield. I feared for a moment that I had sent his mind wandering, but then he suddenly looked back at me, and his glance was keen. "I'll go back a bit further than that. We had quarreled that morning, the Prince and I. Well, not quarreled exactly. Dutiful is too mannered to quarrel with an elder. But I had lectured him, and he had sulked, much as you used to. I declare, sometimes it is a wonder to me how much that boy can put me in mind of you." He huffed out a brief sigh. "Anyway. We had had a little confrontation. He came to me for his morning Skill lesson, but he could not keep his mind on it. There were circles under his eyes, and I knew he had been out late again with that hunting cat of his. And I warned him, sharply, that if he could not regulate himself so as to arrive refreshed and ready for lessons, it could be done for him. The cat could be put out in the stables with the other coursing beasts to assure that my Prince would get a good sleep every night.
"That, of course, ill suited him. He and that cat have been inseparable ever since the beast was given to him. But he did not speak of the cat or his late-night excursions, possibly because he thinks I am less well informed of them than I truly am. Instead he attacked the lessons, and his tutor, as being at fault. He told me that he had no head for the Skill and never would no matter how much sleep he got. I told him not to be ridiculous, that he was a Farseer and the Skill was in his blood. He had the nerve to tell me that I was the one being ridiculous, for I had but to look in the mirror to see a Farseer who had no Skill."
Chade cleared his throat and sat back in his chair. It took me a moment to realize that he was amused, not annoyed. "He can be an insolent pup," he growled, but in his complaint I heard a fondness, and a pride in the boy's spirit. It amused me in a different way. A much milder remark from me at that age would have earned me a good rap on the head. The old man had mellowed. I hoped his tolerance for the boy's insolence would not ruin him. Princes, I thought, needed more discipline than other boys, not less.
I offered a distraction of my own. "Then you've begun teaching him the Skill." I put no judgment in my voice.
"I've begun trying," Chade growled, and there was concession in his. "I feel like a mole telling an owl about the sun. I've read the scrolls, Fitz, and I've attempted the meditations and the exercises they suggest. And sometimes I almost feel… something. But I don't know if it's what I'm meant to feel or only an old man's wistful imagining."
"I told you," I said, and I kept my voice gentle. "It can't be learned, nor taught, from a scroll. The meditation can ready you for it, but then someone has to show it to you."
"That's why I sent for you," he replied, too quickly. "Because you are not just the only one who can properly teach the Skill to the Prince. You are also the only one who can use it to find him."
I sighed. "Chade, the Skill doesn't work that way. It -"
"Say rather that you were never taught to use the Skill that way. It's in the scrolls, Fitz. It says that two who have been joined by the Skill can find one another with it, if they need to. All my other efforts to find the Prince have failed. Dogs put on his scent ran well for half the morning, and then raced in circles, whimpering in confusion. My best spies have nothing to tell me, bribes have bought me nothing. The Skill is all that is left, I tell you."
I thrust aside my piqued curiosity. I did not want to see the scrolls. "Even if the scrolls claim it can be done, you say it happens between two who have been joined by the Skill. The Prince and I have no such -"
"I think you do."
There is a certain tone of voice Chade has that stops one from speaking. It warns that he knows far more than you think he does, and cautions you against telling him lies. It was extremely effective when I was a small boy. It was a bit of a shock to find it was no less effective now that I was a man. I slowly drew breath into my lungs but before I could ask, he answered me.
"Certain dreams the Prince has recounted to me first woke my suspicions. They started with occasional dreams when he was very small. He dreamed of a wolf bringing down a doe, and a man rushing up to cut her throat. In the dream, he was the man, and yet he could also see the man. That first dream excited him. For a day and a half, he spoke of little else. He told it as if it were something he had done himself." He paused. "Dutiful was only five at the time. The detail of his dream far exceeded his own experience." I still said nothing.
"It was years before he had another such dream. Or, perhaps I should say it was years before he spoke to me of one. He dreamed of a man fording a river. The water threatened to sweep him away, but at the last he managed to cross it. He was too wet and too cold to build a fire to warm himself, but he lay down in the shelter of a fallen tree. A wolf came to lie beside him and warm him. And again, the Prince told me this dream as something that he himself had done. 'I love it,' he told me. 'It is almost as if there is another life that belongs to me, one that is far away and free of being a prince. A life that belongs to me alone, where I have a friend who is as close as my own skin.' It was then that I suspected he had had other such Skill-dreams, but had not shared them with me."
He waited, and this time I had to break my silence. I took a breath. "If I shared those moments of my life with the Prince, I was unaware of it. But, yes, those are true events." I halted, suddenly wondering what else he had shared. I recalled Verity's complaint that I did not guard my thoughts well, and that my dreams and experiences sometimes intruded on his. I thought of my trysts with Starling and prayed I would not blush. It had been a very long time since I had bothered to set Skill-walls round myself. Plainly, I must do so again. Another thought came in the wake of that. Obviously, my Skill-talent had not degraded as much as I believed. A surge of exhilaration came with that thought. It was probably, I told myself viciously, much the same as what a drunk felt on discovering a forgotten bottle beneath the bed.
"And you have shared moments of the Prince's life?"
Chade pressed me.
"Perhaps. I suspect so. I often have vivid dreams, and to dream of being a boy in Buckkeep is not so foreign from my own experience. But," I took a breath and forced myself on. "The important thing here is the cat, Chade. How long has he had it? Do you think he is Witted? Is he bonded to the cat?"
I felt like a liar, asking questions when I already knew the answers. My mind was rapidly shuffling through my dreams of the last fifteen years, sorting out those that came with the peculiar clarity that lingered after waking. Some could have been episodes from the Prince's life. Others I halted at the recollection of my fever dream of Burrich Nettle, too? Dream-sharing with Nettle? This new insight reordered my memory of the dream. I had not just witnessed those events from Nettle's perspective. I had been Skill-sharing her life. It was possible that, as with Dutiful, the flow of Skill-sharing had gone both ways. What had seemed a cherished glimpse into her life, a tiny window on Molly and Burrich, was now revealed as her vulnerability before my carelessness. I winced away from the thought and resolved a stronger wall about my thoughts. How could I have been so incautious? How many of my secrets had I spilled before those most vulnerable to them?
"How would I know if the boy was Witted?" Chade replied testily. "I never knew you were, until you told me. Even then, I didn't know what you were telling me at first."
I was suddenly weary, too tired to lie. Whom was I trying to protect with deceit? I knew too well that lies did not shield for long, that in the end they became the largest chi
nks in any man's armor. "I suspect he is. And bonded to the cat. From dreams I've had."
Before my eyes, the man aged. He shook his head wordlessly, and poured more brandy for both of us. I drank mine off while he drank his in long, considering sips. When he finally spoke, he said, "I hate irony. It is a manacle that ties our dreams to our fears. I had hoped you had a dream bond with the boy, a tie that would let you use the Skill to find him. And indeed you do, but with it you reveal my greatest fear for Dutiful is real. The Wit. Oh, Fitz. I wish I could go back and make my fears foolish instead of real."
"Who gave him the cat?"
"One of the nobles. It was a gift. He receives far too many gifts. All try to curry favor with him. Kettricken tries to turn aside those of the more valuable sort. She worries it will spoil the boy. But it was only a little hunting cat… yet it may be the gift that spoils him for his life."
"Who gave it to him?" I pressed.
"I will have to look back in my journals," Chade confessed. He gave me a dark look. "You can't expect an old man to have a young man's memory. I do the best I can, Fitz." His reproachful look spoke volumes. If I had returned to Buckkeep, resumed my tasks at his side, I would know these vital answers. The thought brought a new question to my mind.
"Where is your new apprentice in all this?"
He watched me speculatively. After a moment he said, "Not ready for tasks such as these."
I met his gaze squarely. "Is he, perhaps, recovering from, well, from a lightning strike from a clear sky? One that exploded an unused storage shed?"
He blinked, but kept control of his face. Even his voice remained steady as he ignored my thrust. "No, FitzChivalry, this task belongs to you. Only you have the unique abilities needed."
"What, exactly, do you want of me?" The question was as good as surrender. I had already hastened to his side at his call. He knew I was still his. So did I.
"Find the Prince. Return him to us, discreetly, and Eda save us, unharmed. And do it while my excuses for his absence are still believable. Get him home safely to us before the Outislander delegation arrives to formalize the betrothal to their Princess."
"How soon is that?"
He shrugged helplessly. "It depends on the winds and the waves and the strength of their oarsmen. They have already departed the Out Islands. We had a bird tell us so. The formality is scheduled for the new moon. If they arrive before that and the Prince is not here, I could, perhaps, fabricate something about his meditating alone before such a serious event in his life. But it would be a thin facade, one that would crumble if he did not appear for the ceremony."
I reckoned it quickly in my head. "That's more than a fortnight away. Plenty of time for a recalcitrant boy to change his mind and run home again."
Chade looked at me somberly. "Yet if the Prince has been taken, and we do not yet know by whom or why, let alone how we will recover him, then sixteen days seems but a pittance of time."
I put my head in my hands for a moment. When I looked up, my old mentor was still regarding me hopefully. Trusting me to see a solution that eluded him. I wanted to flee; I wanted never to have known any of this. I took a steadying breath. Then I ordered his mind as he had once disciplined mine. "I need information," I announced. "Don't assume I know anything about the situation, because it is likely I don't. I need to know, first of all, who gave him the cat. And how that person feels about the Wit, and the Prince's betrothal. Expand the circle from there. Who rivals the gift-giver, who allies with him? Who at Court most strongly persecutes those with the Wit, who most directly opposes the Prince's betrothal, who supports it? Which nobles have most recently been accused of having the Wit in their families? Who could have helped Dutiful run, if run he did? If he was taken, who had the opportunity? Who knew his midnight habits?" Each question I formulated seemed to beget another, yet in the face of that volley, Chade seemed to grow steadier. These were questions he could answer, and his ability to answer them strengthened his belief that together we might prevail. I paused for breath.
"And I still need to report to you the events of those days. However, you seem to be forgetting that the Skill might save us hours of talk. Let me show you the scrolls, and see if they make more sense to you than they do to me."
I looked around me, but he shook his head. "I do not bring the Prince here. This part of the castle remains a secret from him. I keep the Skill-scrolls in Verity's old tower, and it is there that the boy has his lessons. Keep the tower room well secured, and a trusted guard is always by the door."
"Then how am I to have access to them?"
He cocked his head at me. "There is a way to them, from here to Verity's tower. It's a winding and narrow way, with many steps, but you're a young man. You can manage them. Finish eating. Then I will show you the way.
Chapter XII
Charms
Kettricken of the Mountains was wed to King-in-Waiting Verify of the Six Duchies before she had reached her twentieth year. Their marriage was a political expedient, pan of a larger negotiation to cement an alliance of trade and protection between the Six Duchies and the Mountain Kingdom. The death of her older brother on the eve of her wedding bestowed an unexpected benefit on the Six Duchies: any heir she now bore would inherit the Mountain crown as well as that of the Six Duchies.
Her transition from Mountain princess to Six Duchies queen was not an easy one, yet she faced it with the acceptance of duty that is the stamp of the Mountain rulers. She came to Buckkeep alone, without so much as a lady's maid to sustain her. She brought to Buckkeep her personal standards that required her to be ever ready to sacrifice herself in any way that her new station might demand of her. For in the Mountains, that is the accepted role of the ruler. The king is Sacrifice for his people.
Bedel's "Mountain Queen"
Night was ebbing toward morning before I made my way down the hidden stairs to seek my own bed. My head was stuffed full of facts, few of which seemed useful to my puzzle. I'd go to sleep, I decided. Somehow, when I awoke, my mind would have sorted it all out.
I reached the panel that would lead back into my bedchamber and paused. Chade had already taught me all his cautions for using these passages. Breath pent, I peered through the tiny slit in the stone. It afforded me a very narrow view of the room. I could see a candle guttering on a small table set in the center of the room. That was all. I listened, but heard nothing. I silently eased a lever that set unseen counterweights into motion. The door swung open and I slipped back into my room. A nudge from me sent the door back into place. I stared at the wall. The portal was as invisible as ever.
Lord Golden had thoughtfully provided a couple of scratchy wool blankets for the narrow cot in the stuffy little room. Tired as was, it still looked remarkably uninviting. I could, I reminded myself, return to the tower room and sleep in Chade's magnificent bed. He no longer used it. But that prospect was uninviting in a different way. Recently used or not, that bed was Chade's bed. The tower room, the maps and the scroll racks, the arcane laboratory and the two hearths: all of that was Chade's, and I had no desire to make it mine by using it. This was better. The hard bed and the stuffy room were comforting reminders that my stay here was to be very brief. After a single evening of secrets and machinations, I was already weary of Buckkeep politics.
My pack and Verity's sword were on the bed. I threw the pack to the floor, leaned Verity's sword in a corner, kicked my discarded clothing under the table, blew out the candle, and groped my way to bed. I thrust Dutiful and the Wit and all the attendant threads resolutely aside. I expected to fall asleep immediately. Instead I stared open-eyed into the dark room. More personal worries found me and chewed on me. My boy and my wolf would be on the road to Buckkeep tonight. It was unsettling to realize I was now counting on Hap to care for the old wolf that had always been his protector. He had his bow, and he was good with it. They'd be fine. Unless they were set on by highwaymen. Even then, Hap would probably eliminate one or two before they were captured. Which would probably
anger the rest of them. Nighteyes would fight to the death before he'd let Hap be taken. Which left me with the pleasant image of my wolf dead in the road and my son captured by angered highwaymen. And I'd be too far away to do anything for them.
Wool blankets itch even more when you sweat. I rolled over to stare at a different patch of darkness. I wouldn't think about Hap just now. There was no point to worrying about disasters that hadn't happened yet. Unwillingly, I let my mind wander back to Chade's Skill-scrolls and the present crisis. I had expected three or four scrolls. What he had shown me were several chests of scrolls, in various degrees of preservation. Even he had not been through all of them, though he thought he had them somewhat sorted into topics and levels of difficulty. He had presented me with a large table with three scrolls unrolled on it. My heart sank. The lettering on two of the scrolls was so archaic I could barely decipher it. The other seemed more recent, but almost immediately I encountered words and phrases that made no sense to me. It recommended an "anticula trance" and suggested a helpful infusion made from an herb called "Shepherd's Wort." I'd never heard of it. The scroll further cautioned me to beware of "dividing my partner's self-barrier" as I might then "diffuse his anma." I looked up to Chade in bewilderment. He instantly divined my problem. "I thought you would know what it meant," he said defeated!
I shook my head. "If Galen ever knew what these words and terms meant, he never divulged them to me."
Chade gave a snort of contempt. "I doubt our 'Skillmaster' could even read these characters." He sighed. "Half of any trade is understanding the vocabulary and idiom that the practitioners use. With time, we might piece it together with clues from the other scrolls. But we have precious little time. With every passing moment, the Prince may be carried farther from Buckkeep."
"Or he may never even have left the town. Chade, you have cautioned me many times not to take action simply for the sake of taking action. If we rush forth, we may be rushing in the wrong direction. First think, then act."
