by Robin Hobb
Once inside, the door shut, he turned on me. “I can take care of the pup for you,” he told me dryly. “But I can’t take care of you. Use your head, boy. What can you possibly learn from what he’s doing to you?”
I shrugged, then winced. “It’s just to toughen us. I don’t think it will go on much longer before he gets down to actually teaching us. I can take it.” Then: “Wait,” I said as he fed bits of meat to Smithy from the pail. “How do you know what Galen’s been putting us through?”
“Ah, that would be telling,” he said blithely. “And I can’t do that. Tell, that is.” He dumped the rest of the pail out for Smithy, replenished his water, and stood.
“I’ll feed the puppy,” he told me. “I’ll even try to take him outside for a bit each day. But I won’t clean up his messes.” He paused at the door. “That’s where I draw the line. You’d better decide where you will draw the line. And soon. Very soon. The danger is greater than you know.”
And then he was gone, taking his candle and warnings with him. I lay down and fell asleep to the sounds of Smithy worrying a bone and making puppy growls to himself.
Chapter
15
The Witness Stones
The skill, at its simplest, is the bridging of thought from person to person. It can be used a number of ways. During battle, for instance, a commander can relay simple information and commands directly to those officers under him, if those officers have been trained to receive it. One powerfully Skilled can use his talent to influence even untrained minds or the minds of his enemies, inspiring them with fear or confusion or doubt. Men so talented are rare. But, if incredibly gifted with the Skill, a man can aspire to speak directly to the Elderlings, those who are below only the gods themselves. Few have ever dared to do so, and of those who did, even fewer attained what they asked. For it is said, one may ask of the Elderlings, but what they answer may not be the question you ask, but the one you should have asked. And the answer to that question may be one a man cannot hear and live.
For when one speaks to the Elderlings, then is the sweetness of using the Skill strongest and most perilous. And this is the thing that every practitioner of the Skill, weak or strong, must always guard against. For in using the Skill, the user feels a keenness of life, an uplifting of being, that can distract a man from taking his next breath. Compelling is this feeling, even in the common uses of the Skill, and addictive to any not hardened of purpose. But the intensity of this exultation when speaking to the Elderlings is a thing for which we have no comparison. Both senses and sense may be blasted forever from a man who uses the Skill to speak to an Elderling. Such a man dies raving, but it is also true he dies raving of his joy.
* * *
The Fool was right. I had no idea of the peril I faced. I plunged on doggedly. I have no heart to detail the weeks that followed. Suffice to say that with each day, Galen had us more under his sway, and that he also became more cruel and manipulative. Some few pupils disappeared early on. Merry was one. She stopped coming after the fourth day. I saw her only once after that, creeping about the keep with a face both woebegone and shamed. I learned later that Serene and the other women had shunned her after she had dropped the training, and when they later spoke of her, it was not as if she had failed at a test, but rather had committed some low and loathsome act for which she could never be forgiven. I know not where she went, only that she left Buckkeep and never returned.
As the ocean sorts pebbles from sand on a beach and stratifies them at the tide mark, so did the poundings and caressings of Galen separate his students. Initially, all of us strove to be his best. It was not because we liked or admired him. I know not what the others felt, but in my heart was nothing but hate for him. But it was a hatred so strong that it spawned a resolution not to be broken by such a man. After days of his abuse, to wring a single grudging word of acknowledgment from him was like a torrent of praise from any other master. Days of his belittling should have made me numb to his mockery. Instead, I came to believe much of what he said, and tried futilely to change.
We vied constantly with one another to come to his attention. Some emerged clearly as his favorites. August was one, and we were often exhorted to imitate him. I was clearly his most despised. And yet this did not stop me from burning to distinguish myself before him. After the first time I was never last on the tower top. I never wavered from his blows. Nor did Serene, who shared my distinction of being despised. Serene became Galen’s groveling follower, never breathing a word of criticism about him after that first lashing. Yet he constantly found fault with her, berated and reviled her, and struck her far more often than he struck any of the other women. Yet it made her only more determined to prove she could withstand his abuse, and she, after Galen, was the most intolerant of any who wavered or doubted in our teaching.
Winter deepened. It was cold and dark on the tower top, save for what light came from the stairwell. It was the most isolated place in the world, and Galen was god of it. He forged us into a unit. We believed ourselves elite, superior, and privileged to be instructed in the Skill. Even I, who endured mockery and beatings, believed this to be so. Those of us he broke, we despised. We saw only one another for this time, we heard only Galen. At first I missed Chade. I wondered what Burrich and Lady Patience were doing. But as months went by, such lesser occupations no longer seemed interesting. Even the Fool and Smithy came to be almost annoyances to me, so single-mindedly did I pursue Galen’s approval. The Fool came and went silently then. Though there were times, when I was sorest and weariest, when the touch of Smithy’s nose against my cheek was the only comfort I had, and times when I felt shamed by how little time I was giving to my growing puppy.
After three months of cold and cruelty, Galen had whittled us down to eight candidates. The real training finally began then, and also he returned to us a small measure of comfort and dignity. These seemed by then not only great luxuries, but gifts from Galen to be grateful for. A bit of dried fruit with our meals, permission to wear shoes, brief conversation allowed at the table—that was all, and yet we were grovelingly grateful for it. But the changes were only beginning.
It comes back in crystal glimpses. I remember the first time he touched me with the Skill. We were on the tower top, spaced even farther now that there were fewer of us. And he went from one of us to the next, pausing a moment before each, while the rest of us waited in reverent silence. “Ready your minds for the touch. Be open to it, but do not indulge in the pleasure of it. The purpose of the Skill is not pleasure.”
He wended his way among us, in no particular order. Spaced as we were, we could not see one another’s faces, nor did it ever please Galen that our eyes follow his movements. And so we heard only his brief, stern words, then heard the indrawn gasp of each touched one. To Serene he said in disgust, “Be open to it, I said. Not cower like a beaten dog.”
And last he came to me. I listened to his words, and as he had counseled us earlier, I tried to let go of every sensory awareness I had and be open only to him. I felt the brush of his mind against mine, like a soft tickle on my forehead. I stood firm before it. It grew stronger, a warmth, a light, but I refused to be drawn into it. I felt Galen stood within my mind, sternly regarding me, and using the focusing techniques he had taught us (imagine a pail of purest white wood, and pour yourself into it) I was able to stand before him, waiting, aware of the Skill’s elation, but not giving in to it. Thrice the warmth rushed through me, and thrice I stood before it. And then he withdrew. He gave me a grudging nod, but in his eyes I saw not approval but a trace of fear.
That first touch was like the spark that finally kindles the tinder. I grasped what it was. I could not do it yet, I could not send my thoughts out from me, but I had a knowing that would not fit into words. I would be able to Skill. And with that knowing my resolve hardened, and there was nothing, nothing Galen could have done that would stop me learning it.
&nb
sp; I think he knew it. For some reason, it frightened him. For he turned on me in the days that followed with a cruelty that I now find incredible. Hard words and blows he dealt me, but none could turn me aside. He struck me once in the face with his quirt. It left a visible welt, and it chanced that when I was coming into the dining hall, Burrich was also there. I saw his eyes widen. He started up from his place at table, his jaw clenched in a way I knew too well. But I looked aside from him and down. He stood a moment, glaring at Galen, who returned his look with a supercilious stare. Then, fists clenched, Burrich turned his back and left the room. I relaxed, relieved there would be no confrontation. But then Galen looked at me, and the triumph in his face made my heart cold. I was his now, and he knew it.
Pain and victories mixed for me in the next week. He never lost an opportunity to belittle me. And yet I knew I excelled at each exercise he gave us. I sensed the others groping after his touch of Skill, but for me it was as simple as opening my eyes. I knew one moment of intense fear. He had entered my mind with the Skill and given me a sentence to repeat aloud. “I am a bastard, and I shame my father’s name,” I said aloud, calmly. And then he spoke again within my mind. You draw strength from somewhere, bastard. This is not your Skill. Do you think I will not find the source? And then I quailed before him and drew back from his touch, hiding Smithy within my mind. His smile showed all his teeth to me.
In the days that followed, we played a game of hide-and-seek. I must let him into my mind, to learn the Skill. Once there, I danced on coals to keep my secrets from him. Not just Smithy, but Chade and the Fool did I hide, and Molly and Kerry and Dirk, and other, older secrets I would not reveal even to myself. He sought them all, and I juggled them desperately out of his reach. But despite all that, or perhaps because of it, I felt myself growing stronger in the Skill. “Don’t mock me!” he roared after one session, and then grew infuriated as the other students exchanged shocked glances. “Attend to your own exercises!” he roared at them. He paced away from me, then spun suddenly and flung himself at me. Fist and boot, he attacked me and as Molly once had, I had no more thought than to shield my face and belly. The blows he rained on me were more like a child’s tantrum than a man’s attack. I felt their ineffectiveness and then realized with a chill that I was repelling at him. Not so much that he would sense it, just enough that not one of his blows fell exactly as he had intended. I knew, more, that he had no idea what I was doing. When at last he dropped his fists and I dared to lift my eyes, I felt momentarily I had won. For all the others on the tower top were looking at him with gazes mingled of disgust and fear. He had gone too far for even Serene to stomach. White-faced, he turned aside from me. In that moment I felt him reach a decision.
That evening in my room, I was horribly tired, but too enervated to sleep. The Fool had left food for Smithy, and I was teasing him with a large beef knuckle. He had set his teeth in my sleeve and was worrying it while I held the bone just out of his reach. It was the sort of game he loved, and he snarled with mock ferocity as he shook my arm. He was near as big as he would get, and I felt with pride the muscles in his thick little neck. With my free hand, I pinched his tail and he spun snarling to this new attack. From hand to hand I juggled his bone, and his eyes darted back and forth as he snapped after it. “No brain,” I teased him. “All you can think of is what you want. No brain, no brain.”
“Just like his owner.”
I startled, and in that second Smithy had his bone. He flopped down with it, giving the Fool no more than a perfunctory wag of his tail. I sat down, out of breath. “I never even heard the door open. Or shut.”
He ignored that and went straight to his topic. “Do you think Galen will allow you to succeed?”
I grinned smugly. “Do you think he can prevent it?”
The Fool sat down beside me with a sigh. “I know he can. So does he. What I cannot decide is if he is ruthless enough. But I suspect he is.”
“So let him try,” I said flippantly.
“I have no choice in that.” The Fool was adamantly serious. “What I had hoped to do was dissuade you from trying.”
“You’d ask me to give up? Now?” I was incredulous.
“I would.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“Because,” he began, and then stopped in frustration. “I don’t know. Too many things converge. Perhaps if I pluck one thread loose, the knot will not form.”
I was suddenly tired, and the earlier elation of my triumph collapsed before his dour warnings. My irritability won and I snapped, “If you cannot speak clearly, why do you speak at all?”
He was as silent as if I had struck him. “That’s another thing I don’t know,” he said at last. He rose to go.
“Fool,” I began.
“Yes. I am that,” he said, and left.
And so I persevered, growing stronger. I grew impatient with our slow pace of instruction. We went over the same practices each day, and gradually the others began to master what seemed so natural to me. How could they have been so closed off from the rest of the world? I wondered. How could it be so hard for them to open their minds to Galen’s Skill? My own task was not to open, but rather to keep closed to him what I did not wish to share. Often, as he gave me a perfunctory touch of the Skill, I sensed a tendril of seeking slinking into my mind. But I evaded it.
“You are ready,” he announced one chill day. It was afternoon, but the brightest stars were already showing in the blue darkness of the sky. I missed the clouds that had yesterday snowed upon us, but had at least kept this deeper cold at bay. I flexed my toes inside the leather shoes that Galen permitted us, trying to warm them to life again. “Before, I have touched you with the Skill, to accustom you to it. Now, today, we will attempt a full joining. You will each reach out to me as I reach out to you. But beware! Most of you have coped with resisting the distractions of the Skill touch. But the power of what you felt was the lightest brush. Today will be stronger. Resist it, but stay open to the Skill.”
And again he began his slow circuit among us. I waited, enervated but unafraid. I had looked forward to attempting this. I was ready.
Some clearly failed, and were rebuked for laziness or stupidity. August was praised. Serene was slapped for reaching forth too eagerly. And then he came to me.
I braced as if for a wrestling contest. I felt the brush of his mind against mine, and offered him a cautious reaching of thought. Like this?
Yes, bastard. Like this.
And for a moment we were in balance, hovering like children on a seesaw. I felt him steady our contact. Then, abruptly, he slammed into me. It felt exactly as if the air had been knocked out of me, but in a mental rather than physical way. Instead of being unable to get my breath, I was unable to master my thoughts. He rifled through my mind, ransacking my privacy, and I was powerless before him. He had won and he knew it. But in that moment of his careless triumph I found an opening. I grasped at him, trying to seize his mind as he had mine. I gripped him and held him, and knew for a dizzying instant that I was stronger than he, that I could force into his mind any thought I chose to put there. “No!” he shrieked, and dimly I knew that at some former time, he had struggled like this with someone he had despised. Someone else who had also won as I intended to. “Yes!” I insisted. “Die!” he commanded me, but I knew I would not. I knew I would win, and I focused my will and bore down on my grip.
The Skill does not care who wins. It does not allow anyone to surrender to any one thought, even for a moment. But I did. And when I did, I forgot to guard against the ecstasy that is both the honey and the sting of the Skill. The euphoria rushed over me, drowning me, and Galen, too, sank below it, no longer exploring my mind, but only seeking to return to his.
I had never felt the like of that moment.
Galen had called it pleasure, and I had expected a pleasant sensation, like warmth in winter, or the fragra
nce of a rose, or a sweet taste in my mouth. This was none of these. Pleasure is too physical a word to describe what I felt. It had nothing to do with the skin or body. It suffused me, it washed over me in a wave that I could not repulse. Elation filled me and flowed through me. I forgot Galen and all else. I felt him escape me, and knew it mattered, but could not care. I forgot all except exploring this sensation.
“Bastard!” Galen bellowed, and struck me with his fist on the side of my head. I fell, helpless, for the pain was not enough to jolt me from the entrancement of the Skill. I felt him kick me, I knew the cold of the stones under me that bruised and scraped me, and yet I felt I was held, smothered in a blanket of euphoria that would not let me pay attention to the beating. My mind assured me, despite the pain, that all was well, there was no need to fight or flee.
Somewhere a tide was ebbing, leaving me beached and gasping. Galen stood over me, disheveled and sweating. His breath smoked in the cold air as he leaned close over me. “Die!” he said, but I did not hear the words. I felt them. He let go of my throat and I fell.
And in the wake of the devouring elation of the Skill came now a bleakness of failure and guilt that made my physical pain as nothing. My nose was bleeding, it was painful to breathe, and the force of the kicks he had dealt me had scraped skin from my body as I had slid across the tower stones. The different pains so contradicted one another, each clamoring for attention, that I couldn’t even assess what damage had been done to me. I could not even gather myself together to stand back up. But looming over all was the knowledge that I had failed. I was defeated and unworthy and Galen had proven it.
As if from a distance, I heard him shouting at the others, telling them to beware, for this was how he would deal with those so undisciplined that they could not turn their minds from pleasure to the Skill. And he warned them all of what befell such a man who strove to use the Skill and instead fell under the spell of the pleasure it bore with it. Such a man would become mindless, a great infant, speechless, sightless, soiling himself, forgetting thought, forgetting even food and drink, until he died. Such a one was beyond disgust.
