Fool's Errand ttm-1

by Robin Hobb

  "I'll check on the horses," I offered.

  "I want to check on Malta myself," he replied. We both rose. My back clenched for a moment as I got up, and then eased. I was no longer accustomed to this type of life.

  I'll watch him, the wolf volunteered wearily. With a sigh he got up from where he lay, and walked stiffly over to the blankets, saddles, and sleeping Prince. Unerringly he chose the blanket I had put out for myself. He scuffed it up to suit himself and then lay down on it. He blinked his eyes at me, and then transferred his gaze to the boy.

  The horses were in fine shape, considering how badly we'd treated them. Malta went to the Fool eagerly, rubbing her head against his shoulder as he petted her. Myblack, without apparently ever noticing me, still managed to sidle away whenever I tried to approach her. The Prince's horse was neutral, neither welcoming nor shy about my touching her. After I'd petted her for a few moments, Myblack was suddenly behind me. She gave me a nudge, and when I turned to her, she allowed me to stroke her. The Fool spoke quietly, to Malta rather than to me.

  "It must be hard for you, meeting him for the first time like this."

  I wasn't going to reply. There seemed nothing to say. Then I surprised myself by saying, "He isn't really mine that way. He's Verity's heir, and Kettricken's son. My body was there, but not me. Verity wore my body."

  I tried to rein my mind away from that memory. When Verity had told me that there was a way to wake his dragon, that my life and passion were the key, I had thought my King was asking me to give him my life. In my loyalty and my misery, I would have been glad to surrender it. Instead he had used the Skill to take the use of my body, leaving me trapped in the shambling wreckage of his while he went in to his young wife and conceived an heir with her. I had no memories of their hours together. Instead, I recalled a long evening spent as an old man. Not even Kettricken was completely aware of what had happened. Only the Fool shared my knowledge of Dutiful's conception. Now his voice jolted me from my painful musing.

  "He looks so like you at that age that it makes my heart ache."

  I knew there was nothing to say to that.

  "He makes me want to hold him tight and keep him safe. Protect him from all the terrible things that were done to you in the name of the Farseer reign." The Fool paused. "I lie," he admitted. "I would protect him from all the terrible things that were done to you because I used you as my Catalyst."

  The night was too black and our enemies were too near for me to want to hear any more of that. "You should sleep near him, near the fire. The wolf will stay there, too. Keep your sword handy."

  "And you?" he said after a moment. Was he disappointed that I had turned the conversation so firmly?

  I tossed my head toward the row of trees along the streambed. "I'm going to climb one of those and keep watch. You should get a few hours of sleep. If they try to fall on us, they'll have to cross the whole meadow. I'll see them against the firelight in time to take action."

  "What action?"

  I shrugged. "If there's a few, we fight. If there's many, we run."

  "Complex strategy. Chade taught you well."

  "Rest while you can. We ride at moonrise." And we parted. I had the nagging sense that something had been left unspoken between us, something important. Well. There would be a better time later.

  Anyone who thinks it is easy to find a good climbing tree in the dark has never tried it. On my third try, I found one that had a limb broad enough to sit on that still afforded me an unencumbered view of our campsite. I could have sat and pondered the vagaries of fate that had made me the father of two children and the parent of neither. Instead, I decided to worry about Hap. I knew Chade would keep his word, but could Hap hold up his end of the bargain? Had I taught him how to work well enough, would he have enough care for what he did, would he listen well and endure correction humbly?

  The darkness was pitch-black. I looked in vain for the waning moon to rise. She and her dwindling light would not appear until the dead of night. Against the black-red smear of our campfire, I could just make out the shapes of Lord Golden and the boy in their blankets. Time passed. A friendly branch stub nudged against the small of my back and prevented me from getting too comfortable.

  Come down.

  I had dozed. I could not see the wolf, but I knew that he was in the shadows at the base of my tree. Something's wrong.

  Come down. Be silent.

  I came down, but not as quietly as I had hoped. I hung by my hands and then dropped, only to discover there was a hollow beneath the tree and the fall was greater than I had expected. The jar clacked my teeth together and jolted my spine against the base of my skull. I'm too old to do this sort of thing anymore.

  No. You only wish you were. Come.

  I followed him, my teeth gritted. He took me silently back to the campsite. The Fool sat up noiselessly as I drew near. Even in the dark, I could make out his questioning look. I made a small motion for silence and watched.

  The wolf went to where the Prince was curled like a kitten in his blankets. He put his muzzle close to Dutiful's ear. I gestured at him not to wake the boy, but he ignored me. In fact, he levered his nose under the Prince's cheek and nudged him. The boy's head gave limply to his touch, lolling like a dead man's. My heart stood still, and then I heard the rasp of his sleeping breath. The wolf nudged him again. He still didn't wake.

  I met the Fool's wide-eyed stare, then I went to kneel by the boy. Nighteyes looked up into my face.

  He was questing for them, questing and reaching, and then suddenly, he was just gone. I can't feel him. Nighteyes was anxious.

  He's gone far and deep. I considered a moment. This is not the Wit.

  "Watch over us," I bade the Fool. Then I lay down beside Dutiful. I closed my eyes. As if I were steeling myself to dive into deep water, I measured each breath I drew into myself. I matched the rhythm to the boy's breathing. Verity, I thought, for no reason at all save that it seemed to center me. I hesitated, then I groped for and found the boy's hand. I held it in mine, and it pleased me unreasonably that his palm was callused with work. I drew a final breath and plunged into the flow of the Skill. Skin to skin, I found him immediately.

  I attached my consciousness to his and flowed with him. This, I suddenly knew, was how Galen's coterie had spied on King Shrewd all those years ago. Then I had despised that leeching of knowledge. Now I seized onto it relentlessly and followed my Prince.

  There had been a shock of recognition, a jolt of kinship, when I had first seen the boy. It did not compare to what I experienced. I knew this boy's wild seeking, his artless and fearless Skilling. It was as my own had been, a wild reaching with no knowledge of how I did it or the dangers it posed. He quested with his Wit and did not know that he Skilled out as well. For a daunting moment, I realized that like my own Skill magic, his was tainted with the Wit. Having taught himself to Skill this way, could he ever learn to use the Skill magic purely?

  Then that consideration was pushed completely aside. Cloaked within the Skill, I witnessed his Wit magic, and I was appalled.

  Prince Dutiful was the cat. He was not merely bonded with the animal; he flowed completely into it, reserving nothing of himself. I knew that the wolf and I had interwoven our consciousness to a deep and dangerous level, but it was superficial compared to the Prince's complete surrender to his bond.

  Worse was the creature's complete acceptance of the boy's subservience. Then, as if I had blinked, I perceived it was not a cat at all. The cat was but a thin layer. It was a woman.

  I swirled in confusion, and nearly lost my grip on the Prince. The Wit did not go from human to human. That was the province of the Skill. Did he Skill to this woman, then? No. This joining was not the Skill. I tried to sort it out and could not. I could not separate the woman from the cat, and Dutiful was submerged in both of them. It did not make sense. The woman was plumbing the boy's mind. No. She was here, pooling into his body like cold thick water. I felt her flowing through him, exploring th
e shape of his flesh around her. It was still foreign to her. There was a strange eroticism to that chilling internal touch. Their joining in the cat was not yet complete enough, but soon, soon, she promised him, soon he would know her completely. They were coming for him, she assured him, and she knew where he was. I witnessed how he poured forth to her everything he knew about Lord Golden and me, the stamina and condition of our horses, the wolf that followed me, and I sensed her fury and revulsion for an Old Blood who betrayed his own kind.

  They were coming. I saw with the cat's eyes, and recognized the Piebalds we had battled earlier in the day. Limping, she led them. The big man came slowly, on foot, leading his massive horse as they forced their way through the dark forest. The two women rode slowly behind him. The scratched man with the injured cat came last of all. They led two riderless horses now, so we had either killed or severely injured one of their party. We come, my love. And a bird has been sent, summoning others to your aid. Soon you will be with us again, she promised. We will take no chances of losing you. When the others are near, we will close in and free you.

  Will you kill Lord Golden and his servant? the Prince asked anxiously.

  Yes.

  I wish you wouldn't kill Lord Golden..

  It is necessary. I regret it, but it must be, for Lord Golden has come too far into our territory. He has seen the faces of our folk, and ridden our paths. He has to die.

  Can you not let him go? He is sympathetic to our cause. Shown our strength, he might simply go back to the Queen and say he had never found Where is your loyalty? How can you trust him so quickly? Have you forgotten how many of our own folk have been killed by the Farseer reign? Or do you wish to see me and all our people die?

  This question was like the snap of a whip and it pained me to feel Dutiful cower before it. My heart is with you, my love, with you, he assured her.

  Good. That's good. Then trust only me, and let me do what I must do. There is no need for you to dwell on it. You need not feel responsible for what people bring down upon themselves. It is none of your doing. You tried to leave quietly. They are the ones who pursued you and attacked us. Put it from your mind.

  Then she wrapped him in love, in a surging wave of warm affection that overpowered any thought of his own that he might have. But she seemed to be only at the edges of that flow. It was cat-love, the fierce claws-and-teeth love of a feline. The emotion drenched me and, despite my wariness, I near succumbed to it myself. I felt the Prince accept that she would do what she must do. She only did it so that they could be together. Was any price too high to pay for that?

  She's dead.

  The wolf's thought was like a voice in the room of a sleeping man. For a moment, I incorporated it into my dreams. Then the sense of it struck me like a punch to the belly. Of course. She's dead. She rides the cat.

  And in that foolish moment of my sharing with the wolf, she was aware of me.

  What is this? Her fear and outrage were nothing compared to her utter shock. She had never experienced anything like this. It was outside her magic completely, and in the rawness of her astonishment, she betrayed much of her self.

  I wrenched free of all contact before she could know any more than that someone had been there, watching her, just as I felt her make surer her grip upon him. It reminded me of a great cat seizing a mouse in her jaws and paralyzing it with a bite. I got that same sense of both possession and devouring. For one clear moment, I hoped that the Prince perceived her as clearly as I did. He was a toy for her, a possession and a tool. She felt no love for him.

  But the cat does, Nighteyes pointed out to me. And in that twisting disparity, I came back to myself. It reminded me of my jolting leap from the tree. Slammed back into my own flesh, I sat up, gasping for air and space. Beside me, the Prince remained inert, but Nighteyes was instantly with me, thrusting his great head under my arm. Are you all right, little brother? Did she hurt you?

  I tried to answer, but instead rocked forward, moaning as a Skill-headache exploded in my skull. I was literally blinded, isolated in a black night riven by lightning bolts of blazing white across my vision. I blinked, then knuckled my eyes, trying to make the glaring light go away. It burst into colors that sickened me. I hunched my shoulders and curled up against the pain.

  A moment later, I felt a cold cloth laid across the back of my neck. I sensed the Fool beside me, blessedly silent. I swallowed and drew several deep breaths and then spoke into my hands. "They're coming. The Piebalds we fought today, and others. They know where we are from the Prince. He's like a beacon fire. We can't hide, and they're too many for us to fight and survive. Running is our only chance. We can't wait for moonrise. Nighteyes will lead us,"

  The Fool spoke very softly as if he guessed at my pain. "Shall I wake the Prince?"

  "Don't bother trying. He's far and deep, and I don't think she'll let him come back to his body right now. We'll have to take him as a dead weight. Saddle the horses, will you?"

  "I will. Fitz, can you ride as you are?"

  I opened my eyes. Floating jags of light still divided my vision, but now I could see the darkened meadow beyond them. I forced a smile to my face. "I'll have to ride, just as my wolf will have to run. And you may have to fight. Not what any of us would choose, but there it is. Nighteyes. Go now. Choose a path for us, and get as far ahead of us as you can. I don't know from which direction the other attackers are coming. Spy ahead for us."

  You think to send me out of harm's way. The thought was almost reproachful.

  I would if I could, my brother, but the truth is that I may be sending you directly into danger. Scout for us. Go now.

  He rose stiffly and stretched. He gave himself a shake, and then set out, not at a lope, but at his distance-devouring trot. Almost immediately, he became invisible to me, the gray wolf gone into the gray meadow. Go carefully, my heart, I wished after him, but softly, softly, lest he know how much I feared for him.

  I rose, moving very carefully, as if my head were an overfull glass. I did not actually believe my brains would spill out of the top of my skull if I were careless, but I almost hoped it. I took the Fool's wet handkerchief off the back of my neck and held it to my brow and eyes for a time. When I looked down on the Prince, he hadn't moved. If anything, his body was curled more tightly. I heard the Fool come up behind me leading the horses and I turned cautiously to look at him.

  "Can you explain?" he asked softly, and I realized how little he knew. It was all the more amazing that he so un-questioningly acted on my requests.

  I drew a breath. "He's using the Skill and the Wit. And he hasn't been trained in either, so he's vulnerable, very vulnerable. He's too young to understand just how much at risk he is. Right now, his consciousness rides with the cat. For all intents, he is the cat."

  "But he will awaken and come back to his body?"

  I shrugged. "I don't know. I hope so. Fool, there is more. There is someone else joined to the cat. I, that is, we, Nighteyes and I, suspect that she is the cat's former owner."

  "Former? I thought Witted ones bonded to their animals for life?"

  "They do. She would be dead now. But her consciousness is within the cat, using the cat."

  "But I thought the Prince—"

  "Yes. The Prince is there, too. I do not think he realizes that this woman he loves does not exist as a woman anymore. I know he has no concept of how much power she has over him. And over the cat."

  "What can we do?"

  The throbbing in my head was making me sick to my stomach. I spoke more harshly than I intended. "Forcibly separate the boy from the cat. Kill the cat, and hope the boy doesn't die."

  "Oh, Fitz!" He was appalled. I didn't have time to care.

  "Saddle just two of the horses, Malta and Myblack. I'll put the boy in front of me. And then we have to ride."

  I did nothing while the Fool prepared the horses. I didn't pack up anything, for I didn't intend to take anything with us. Instead I just sat still and tried to persuade my head
to ease. It was made the more difficult in that I was still Skill-twined with the boy. I felt more his absence than his presence. I sensed that there was pressure upon him, but it was a Wit-pushing. I could not decide if she reached trying to know more of me, or if she reached trying to possess the boy's body. I did not wish to respond to it; they already knew enough of me from that earlier glancing touch. So I sat, head in hands, and looked at Kettricken's son. As Verity had taught me so long ago, I carefully set my Skill-walls. This time, I set them to include the boy at my feet. I did not consider what I was trying to hold out. Instead, I focused on keeping open the space that was his mind, reserving it for him to return to.

  "Ready," the Fool said quietly, and I stood up again. I mounted Myblack, who was amazingly steady under me as the Fool hoisted the boy up into my arms. As always, the strength of the slender man surprised me. I arranged the Prince before me so that I had one arm to hold on to him, and one hand for the reins. It would have to do. In an instant, the Fool was mounted on Malta beside me. "Which way?" he asked.

  Nighteyes? I kept the questing as small and secret as I could. They might sense our Wit, but I doubted they could use that to follow us.

  My brother. His reply was as discreet. I nudged Myblack and we moved off. I could not have told anyone where Nighteyes was, but I knew that I moved toward him. The Prince was a swaying weight in my arms. It was already uncomfortable. Giving in to my frustration with my pain and his dead weight, I gave him a rough shake. He made a faint sound of protest, but it might have been just air moving out of his lungs. For a time we traveled through forest, ducking swoops of branches and pressing through tangles of underbrush. The Prince's horse, stripped of harness, followed us. We did not go swiftly. The footing was treacherous for the weary horses and the trees dense. I followed the wolf's elusive presence down into a ravine. The horses clattered along through a rushing stream over slippery wet rocks. The ravine became a vale, then spread wide and we rode under moonlight through a meadow. Startled deer bounded away from us. Into the forest again, our hooves thudded on deep layers of packed ancient leaves. Then we came to a steep place I did not recognize, but when we completed our scrabbling mount of that hill, the night spilled us out onto the road. The wolf's route had cut the rough country and put us back on the same road we had traveled that morning. I pulled in Myblack and let her breathe. Ahead of us, on the next rise, the stingy light of the quarter-moon showed me the silhouette of a wolf waiting for us to appear. As soon as he saw us, he turned, and trotted down the next hill and out of sight. All is clear. Come swiftly.