by Robin Hobb
"What gives you the right to tell me where my loyalty should be?" he demanded. The anger in his voice let me know that I had touched that very question within him.
"You're correct. It's not my right, Prince Dutiful. It's my duty. To remind you of what you seem to have forgotten. I'll find some firewood. You might ponder what will become of the Farseer Throne if you simply refuse your duty and vanish."
Despite his weariness, the wolf heaved himself to his feet and followed me. We went back to the stream's edge, to look for dead wood carried by higher waters and left to dry all summer. We drank first, and then I dabbed my chest with water where the Prince's blade had scored me. Another day, another scar. Or perhaps not. It had not even bled very much. I turned from that to looking for dry wood. Nighteyes' keener night vision helped my lesser senses, and I soon had an armload.
He's very like you, the wolf observed as we made our way back.
Family resemblance. He's Verity's heir.
Only because you refused to be. He's our blood, little brother. Yours and mine.
That struck me into silence for a time. Then I pointed out, You are much more aware of human concerns than you used to be. Time was when you took no notice of such things.
True. And Black Rolf warned us both that we have twined too deeply, and that I am more man than a wolf should be, and you more wolf. We'll pay for it, little brother. Not that we could have helped it, but that does not change it. We will suffer for how deeply our natures have meshed.
What are you trying to tell me?
You already know.
And I did. Like myself, the Prince had been brought up amongst folk who did not use the Wit. And as I had, un-guided, he seemed to have not only fallen into his magic, but to be wallowing in it. Untaught, I had bonded far too deeply. In my case, I had first bonded to a dog when we were both young, and far too immature to consider the implications of such a joining. Burrich had forcibly separated us. At the time, I had hated him for it, a hate that lasted years. Now I looked at the Prince, in the full throes of his obsession with the cat, and counted myself lucky that when I had bonded, there had only been the puppy involved. Somehow, his attachment to his cat had grown to include a young woman of Old Blood. When I took him back to Buckkeep, he would lose not only his companion, but also a woman he believed he loved.
What woman?
He speaks of a woman, one of Old Blood. Probably one of those women who rode with him.
He speaks of a woman, but he does not smell of a woman. Does not that strike you odd?
I pondered that on my way back to camp. I dropped the wood in a small tumble. As I set my fuel and then shaved a dry stick for tinder, I watched the boy. He had tidied away the linen napkin but left out the bottle of wine. Now he sat morosely on a blanket, his knees drawn up to his chin, staring out at the deepening night.
I dropped all my guards and quested toward him. The wolf was right. He keened for his Wit-partner, but I was not sure if he was even aware of doing it. It was a sad little seeking he sent forth, like a lost pup whimpering for its mother. It grated on my nerves, once I was aware of it. It was not just that he would call his friends down on us; it was the whining aspect of it that appalled me. It made me want to cuff him. Instead, as I worked with my tinder and flint, I asked callously, "Thinking of your girl?"
He swiveled toward me, startled. Lord Golden flinched at the directness of my question. I bent deeper to puff gently at the tiny spark I had conjured up. It glowed, then became a pale, licking flame.
The Prince reached for a measure of dignity. "I am always thinking of her," he said softly.
I tented several skinny sticks over my tiny fire. "So. What's she look like?" I spoke with a soldier's crude interest, the inflection learned from many a meal with the guardsmen at Buckkeep. "Is she…" I made the unmistakable, universal gesture "any good?"
"Shut up!" He spat the words savagely.
I leered at Lord Golden knowingly. "Ah, we both know what that means. It means he don't know. At least, not firsthand. Or maybe it's only his hand that knows." I leaned back and smirked at him challengingly.
"Badgerlock!" Lord Golden rebuked me. I think I had truly scandalized him.
I didn't take the hint. "Well, that's always how it is, isn't it? He's just a moony boy for her. Bet he's never even kissed her, let alone…" I repeated the gesture.
The taunting had the desired effect. As I added larger sticks to the flames, the Prince stood up indignantly. The firelight revealed that his color was high and his nostrils pinched with anger. "It isn't like that!" he grated. "She isn't some… Not that I expect you to understand anything other than whores! She's a woman worth waiting for, and when we come together, it will be a higher and sweeter thing than you can imagine. Hers is a love to be earned, and I will prove myself worthy of her."
Inside, I bled for him. They were a boy's words, taken from minstrel tellings, a lad's imaginings of something he had never experienced. The innocence of his passion blazed in him, and his idealistic expectations shone in his eyes. I tried to summon some withering crudity worthy of the role I had chosen, but could not force it past my lips. The Fool saved me.
"Badgerlock!" Lord Golden snapped. "Enough of this. Just cook the meat."
"My lord," I acknowledged gruffly. I gave Dutiful a sidelong sneer that he refused to see. As I picked up the stiff rabbit and the knife, Lord Golden spoke more gently to the Prince.
"Does she have a name, this lady you so admire? Have I met her at court?" Lord Golden was courteously curious. Somehow the warmth in his voice made it flattering that he would care to ask such a question. Dutiful was instantly charmed, not only despite his earlier irritation with me, but perhaps because of it. Here was a chance for him to prove himself a well-bred gentleman, to ignore my crass interest and reply as politely as if did not exist.
He smiled as he looked down at his hands, the smile of a boy with a secret sweetheart. "Oh, you will not have met her at Court, Lord Golden. Her kind is not to be found there. She is a lady of the wild woods, a huntress and a forester. She does not hem handkerchiefs in a garden on a summer's day, nor huddle within walls by a hearth when the wind begins to blow. She is free to the open world, her hair blowing in the wind, her eyes full of the night's mysteries."
"I see." Lord Golden's voice was warm with a worldly man's tolerance for a youth's first romance. He came to sit on his saddle, next to the boy and yet slightly above him. "And does this paragon of the forest have a name? Or a family?" he asked paternally.
Dutiful looked up at him and shook his head wearily. "There, you see what you ask? That is why I am so weary of the Court. As if I cared whether she has family or fortune! It is her whom I love."
"But she must have a name," Lord Golden protested tolerantly as I slid my knife blade under the rabbit's hide and loosened it. "Else what do you whisper to the stars at night when you dream of her?" I peeled the hide from the rabbit as Lord Golden stripped the layers of secrets from the boy's romance. "Come. How did you meet her?" Lord Golden picked up the wine bottle, drank delicately from it, and then handed it to the Prince.
The lad turned it in his hands thoughtfully, glanced up at Golden's smile, and drank. Then he sat, the bottle held loosely in his hands, the neck of it pointed toward the small fire that limned his features against the night. "My cat took me to her," he confided at last. He took another sip of the wine. "I had slipped out one night to go hunting with her. Sometimes, just have to get away on my own. You know what it is like at court. If I say I will ride at dawn, I arise and there are six gentlemen ready to accompany me, and a dozen ladies to bid us farewell. If I say I will walk in the gardens after dinner, I cannot turn a comer in the path without finding a lady writing poetry beneath a tree, or encountering some noble who wishes me to have a word with the Queen on his behalf. It's stifling, Lord Golden. In truth, I do not know why so many choose to come to court when they do not have to. If I had the privilege of freedom, I would leave it." He drew himself up suddenly and looked all around
at the night. "I have left it," he declared abruptly, almost as if it surprised him. "I'm here, away from all that pretense and manipulation. And I'm happy. Or was happy, until you came to drag me back." And he glared at me, as if it were all my doing, and Lord Golden an innocent bystander.
"So. You went out hunting with your cat one night, and this lady…?" Lord Golden deftly picked up the threads that had interested him.
"I went out hunting with my cat and—" The cat's name? Nighteyes pressed with sudden urgency. I grunted mockingly. "Sounds to me as if the cat and the lady got the same name. 'Neverspeakit'." I skewered the rabbit on my sword. I didn't like to cook on the end of my blade; it was bad for the tempering. But to get a green branch I would have had to leave the conversation and go to the forest's edge and I wanted to hear what he had to say. The Prince replied scathingly to my comment. "I would think that you, as a Piebald, would know that beasts have their own names, which they reveal to you at a time they think is proper. My cat has not shared her true name with me yet. When I am worthy of that confidence, I will have it."
"I'm not a 'Piebald'," I asserted gruffly.
Dutiful ignored me. He took a breath and spoke earnestly to Lord Golden. "And the same is true of my lady. I do not need to know her name when it is her essence that I love."
"Of course, of course," Lord Golden comforted him. He hitched himself closer to the Prince and went on. "But I would hear of your first meeting with the fair one. For I confess that at heart, I am as soft a romantic as any court lady weeping at a minstrel's tale." He spoke as if what Dutiful had said was of no consequence. But a profound sense of wrongness washed through me. It was true that Nighteyes had not immediately shared his true name with me, but the cat and the Prince had been together for months. I turned the sword, but the rabbit flopped around on the blade, its body cavity a loose fit, the seared side turning back to the flames. Grumbling, I pulled it out of the fire and burnt my fingers jamming it more firmly onto the weapon. I thrust it back over the flames and held it there.
"Our first meeting," Dutiful mused. A rueful smile curved his mouth. "I fear that has yet to happen. In some ways. In all the important ways, I have met her. The cat showed her to me, or rather, she revealed herself to me through the cat."
Lord Golden cocked his head and gave the boy an interested, if confused, look. The lad's smile widened.
"It is hard to explain to someone with no experience of the Wit. But I will try. Through my magic, I can share thoughts with the cat. Her senses enhance my own. Sometimes, I can lie abed at night, and surrender my mind to hers, and become one with her. I see what she sees, feel what she feels. It's wonderful, Lord Golden. Not debased and bestial as others would have you believe. It brought the world to life around me. If there was some way I could share the experience with you, I would, just so that you could understand it."
The boy was so earnest in his proselytizing. I glimpsed the quick flash of amusement through Lord Golden's eyes, but I am sure the Prince saw only his sympathetic warmth. "I shall have to imagine it," he murmured.
Prince Dutiful shook his head. "Ah, but you cannot. No one can, who is not born with this magic. That is why all persecute us. Because, lacking this magic, they become filled with envy and it turns to hatred."
"I think fear might have something to do with it," I muttered, but the Fool shot me a glance that bade me shut up. Chastened, I turned away from them and rotated the smoking rabbit.
"I think I can imagine your communion with the cat. How wondrous it must be to share the thoughts of such a noble creature! How rich to experience the night and the hunt with one so attuned to the natural world! But I confess, I do not understand how she could reveal this wondrous lady to you… unless she guided you to her?"
How pleasant to feel her filthy claws raking your belly!
Shush.
Cats noble creatures? Spitting, carrion-breathed sneaks.
With difficulty, I ignored Nighteyes' asides and focused on the conversation while appearing to be engrossed with the rabbit. The Prince was smiling and shaking his head at Lord Golden, totally enraptured now with speaking of his love. Had I ever been that young?
"It was not like that. One night, as the cat and I moved through a forest of black trees, lit to silver by the moon's radiance, I perceived we were not alone. It was not that uncomfortable sensation of being watched. This was more like… Imagine if the wind was the breath of a woman on the back of your neck, if the scent of the forest was her perfume, the chuckling of a brook her amusement. There was nothing there I had not seen or heard or felt a hundred times, and yet that night it was more than it had ever been before. At first, I thought I was imagining it, and then, through the cat, I began to know more of her. I felt her watching us as we hunted together, and I knew that she approved of me. When I shared fresh meat with the cat from her kill, I sensed that the woman shared its savor. The cat's senses sharpen my own, I told you that. But suddenly I was seeing things, not as the cat or as myself, but as she saw things. I saw how the tumbled gap in a stone wall framed a struggling sapling, I saw the infinite pattern in the ripple of moonlight on a stream's rapids, I saw… I saw the night world as her poetry."
Prince Dutiful sighed slowly. He was lost in his romance, but the slow suspicion forming in my mind sent a chill up my back. I could feel the perk of the wolf's ears and the readiness in his muscles as he shared my foreboding.
"That was how it began. As shared glimpses of the beauty of the world. I was so foolish. At first, I thought she must be near us, watching us from a hiding place. I kept asking the cat to take me to her. And she did, but not in the manner I had expected. It was like approaching a castle through a fog. Layer after layer of mist lifted like veils. The closer I came to her, the more I longed to behold her in the flesh. Yet she taught me it would be nobler to wait for that. First, I must complete my lessons in the Wit. I must learn to surrender my human boundaries and self, and let the cat possess me. When I let the cat inside me, when I become the cat completely, then am I most aware of my lady. For we are both bonded to the same creature."
Can that happen? The wolf's question was incredulous and sharp. I don't know, I admitted. Then, more strongly, But don't think so.
"It doesn't work that way," I said aloud. I tried to say it in an unthreatening way, but I wanted the Fool to know that immediately. Nevertheless, the Prince bristled at me. "I said that it did. Do you call me a liar?" I slumped back into my thuggish personality. "If I wanted to call you a liar," I greased my threatening words, "I would have said, 'You're a liar'. I didn't. I said, 'It doesn't work that way'." I smiled, showing my teeth. "Why don't you take it that I think that you don't know what you're talking about? That you're just spilling out what someone else has filled you full of."
"For the last time, Badgerlock, be silent. You are interrupting a fascinating tale, and neither the Prince nor I particularly care if you believe it. I simply want to hear how it ends. So. When you finally did meet?" Lord Golden's tone implied he was on the edge of his seat.
The warm romanticism of Dutiful's voice suddenly crashed into heartsick desperation. "We haven't. Not yet. That was where I was going. She called me to her, and I left Buckkeep. She promised she would send folk to help me on my path to her. And she did. She promised that as I learned my magic, as my bond with the cat deepened and became truer, I would know more and more of her. I would have to prove myself worthy, of course. My love would be tested, as would my true willingness to be one with my Old Blood. I would have to learn to drop all barriers between the cat and myself. She told me it would be arduous, she warned me that I would have to change the way I thought about things. But, when I was ready," and despite the darkness, I could see the flush rise to the Prince's cheeks, "she promised we would be joined, in a way that would be more compelling and true than anything I could imagine." His young voice went husky on those last words.
A slow anger began to build in me. I knew what he was imagining, and I was almost certain that what she wa
s offering him had nothing to do with that. He thought he would be consummating their relationship. I feared he was about to be consumed by it.
"I understand," said Lord Golden, and there was compassion in his voice. For my part, I was certain that he did not understand at all.
Hope flamed in the boy. "So now you understand why you must let me go? I have to go back. I do not ask that you take me back to my guides. I know they will be furious and a danger to you. All I ask is that you give me my horse and let me go. It is easy for you to do. Go back to Buckkeep; say you never found me. No one will know any better."
"I would," I pointed out sweetly as I took the rabbit from the fire. "The meat's cooked," I added. Charred to the bone.
The look the Prince gave me was venomous. I almost felt the clear solution flash through his mind. Kill the servant. Silence him. I would wager that Kettricken's son had not been schooled in such ruthlessness before the Piebalds taught him. Yet it was an idea truly worthy of his Farseer forebears. I met his gaze, and let my mouth curl slightly, daring him. I saw his chest swell, and then I saw him master himself. He glanced away, veiling his hatred. Admirable self-control. I wondered if he'd try to kill me in my sleep.
I kept my gaze on him, challenging him to meet my eyes as I tore the rabbit into smoking pieces. The grease and soot coated my fingers. I passed a portion to Lord Golden, who took it with genteel distaste. Knowing how ravenous the Fool had been earlier in the day, I recognized it was but a show.
"Meat, my Prince," Lord Golden asked him.
"No. Thank you." His voice was cold. He was too proud to accept anything from me, for I had mocked him.
The wolf declined a share of the well-cooked meat, so Lord Golden and I silently devoured it down to the bones. The Prince sat apart from us as we ate, staring off into the darkness. After a time, he lay down on his blanket. I sensed his Wit-keening grow in volume.
Lord Golden broke the leg bone he held, sucked a bit of marrow from it, and tossed it into the embers of the fire. In its fading light, he looked at me with the Fool's eyes. That gaze held such a mixture of sympathy and rebuke that I did not know how to react to it. We both looked over at the lad. He appeared to be asleep.
