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‘Wait,’ the Fool interrupted me. ‘Then you are saying that Witted ones can share thoughts with each other, just as thoughts can be exchanged through the Skill.’ He seemed very excited at the idea.
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘It’s not like that. I can sense if another Witted one is speaking with his bond-beast … if they are careless and free in their conversing, as Nighteyes and I used to be. Then I will be aware of the Wit being used, even though I am not privy to the thoughts they share. It’s like the humming of a harp string.’ I smiled ruefully. ‘That was how Burrich kept guard on me, to be sure I was not indulging in the Wit, once he was aware I had it. He kept his own walls firm against it. He did not use it, and he tried to screen himself from the beasts that reached towards him with it. For a long time, that kept him ignorant of my use of it. He had set Wit-walls, similar to the Skill-walls that Verity taught me to set. But once he realized I was Witted, I think he lowered them, to oversee me.’ I paused at the Fool’s puzzled gaze. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Not completely. But enough to take your meaning. But … can you overhear another Witted one’s beast speaking to that Witted one, then?’
I shook my head again, then nearly laughed at his baffled look. ‘It seems so natural to me, it is difficult to put it into words.’ I pondered a bit. ‘Imagine that you and I shared a personal language, one that only we two could interpret.’
‘Perhaps we do,’ he offered with a smile.
I continued doggedly. ‘The thoughts that Nighteyes and I share are our thoughts, and largely incomprehensible to anyone who overhears us using the Wit. That language has always been our own, but Rolf taught us to direct our thoughts specifically to one another, rather than flinging our Wit wide to the world. Another Witted one might be aware of us if he were specifically listening for us, but generally, our communication now blends with all the Wit-whispering of the rest of the world.’
The Fool’s brow was furrowed. ‘So only Nighteyes can speak to you?’
‘Nighteyes speaks most clearly to me. Sometimes, another creature, not bonded to me, will share thoughts with me, but the meaning is usually hard to follow; rather like trying to communicate with someone who speaks a foreign but similar language. There can be much hand waving and raised voices repeating words and gesturing. One catches the gist of the meaning with none of the niceties.’ I paused and pondered. ‘I think it is easier if the animal is bonded to another Witted one. Rolf’s bear spoke to me once. And a ferret. And between Nighteyes and Burrich … it must have been oddly humiliating to Burrich, but he let Nighteyes speak to him when I was in Regal’s dungeons. The understanding was imperfect, but it was good enough that Burrich and he could plot together to save me.’
I wandered for a time in that memory, then pulled myself back to my tale. ‘Rolf taught me the basic courtesy of the Old Blood folk but he did not teach us gently; he was as prone to chastise before we were aware of our errors as afterward. Nighteyes was more tolerant of him than I was, perhaps because he was more amenable to a pack hierarchy. I think it was more difficult for me to learn from him, for I had grown accustomed to a certain amount of adult dignity. Had I come to him younger, I might have accepted more blindly the roughness of his teaching. My experiences of the last few years had left me violent towards any person who showed aggression towards me. I think the first time I snarled back at him after he shouted at me for some error, it shocked him. He was cold and distant with me for the remainder of the day, and I perceived I must bow my head to his rough ways if I were to learn from him. And so I did, but it was like learning to control my temper all over again. As it was, I was often hard-pressed to quell my anger towards him. His impatience with my slowness frustrated me as much as my “human thinking” baffled him. On his worst days, he reminded me of the Skillmaster Galen, and he seemed as narrow-minded and cruel as he spoke spitefully of how badly educated I had been amongst the unBlooded. I resented that he should speak so of folk that I regarded as my own. I knew, too, that he thought me a suspicious and distrustful man who never completely lowered all my barriers to him. I held back much from him, that is true. He demanded to know of my upbringing, of what I could recall of my parents, of when I had first felt my Old Blood stir in me. None of the sparse answers I gave him pleased him, and yet I could not go into detail without betraying too much of whom and what I had been. The little I did tell him provoked him so much that I am sure a fuller tale would have disgusted him. He approved that Burrich had prevented me from bonding young, and yet condemned all his reasons for doing so. That I had still managed to form a bond with Smithy despite Burrich’s watchfulness convinced him of my deceitful nature. Repeatedly, he came back to my wayward childhood as the root of all my problems in finding my Old Blood magic. Again, he reminded me of Galen disparaging the Bastard for trying to master the Skill, the magic of Kings. Among a folk where I had thought finally to find acceptance, I discovered that yet again I was neither fish nor fowl. If I complained to Nighteyes at how he treated us, Rolf would snarl at me to stop whimpering to my wolf and apply myself to learning better ways.’
Nighteyes learned more easily and often the wolf was the one to convey finally to me what Rolf had failed to rattle into me. Nighteyes also sensed more strongly than I did how much Rolf pitied him. The wolf did not react well to that, for Rolf’s pity was based on the notion that I did not treat Nighteyes as well as I should. He took it amiss that I had been almost a grown man and Nighteyes little more than a cub at the time of our bonding. Over and over, Rolf rebuked me for treating Nighteyes as less than an equal, a distinction that both of us disputed.
The first time Rolf and I butted heads over it was in the fashioning of our winter home. We selected a site convenient to Rolf and Holly’s home, yet isolated enough that we would not intrude on one another. That first day, I began to build a cabin, whilst Nighteyes went hunting. When Rolf dropped by, he rebuked me for forcing Nighteyes to live in a dwelling that was entirely human. The structure of his own home incorporated a natural cave in the hillside, and was designed to be as much bear den as man-house. He insisted that Nighteyes should dig a den into the hill-face, and that I must then build my hut to incorporate it. When I conferred on this with Nighteyes, he replied that he had been accustomed to human dwellings since he was a pup, and he saw no reason why I should not do all the work to make a comfortable place for both of us. When I conveyed this to Rolf, he vented his temper at both of us explosively, telling Nighteyes he found nothing humorous in his surrendering his nature for the selfish comfort of his partner. It was so far from what either of us felt about the situation that we very nearly left Crowsneck right then. Nighteyes was the one who decided we must stay and learn. We followed Rolf’s directions, and Nighteyes laboriously excavated a den for himself and I built my hut around the mouth of it. The wolf spent very little time in the den, preferring the warmth of my fireside, but Rolf never discovered that.
Many of my disagreements with Rolf shared those same roots. He saw Nighteyes as too humanized, and shook his head at how little of wolf there was in me. Yet at the same time he warned us both that we had twined ourselves too tightly together, that he could find no place where he could sense one of us and not the other. Perhaps the most valuable thing Rolf taught us was how to separate from one another. Through me, he conveyed to Nighteyes the need that each of us had for privacy in matters such as mating or grieving. I had never been able to convince the wolf that the need for such a sundering existed. Again, Nighteyes learned it more swiftly and better than I did. When he so desired, he could vanish completely from my senses. I did not enjoy the sensation of being isolated from him. I felt halved by it, and sometimes as less than a half, and yet we both saw the wisdom of it, and strove to perfect our abilities in that area. Yet no matter how satisfied we were with our progress, Rolf remained adamant that even in our separations, we still shared a unity so basic that neither of us were even aware of it any more. When I tried to shrug it off as inconsequential, he became almost incensed.
‘And when one of you dies, what then? Death comes to all of us, sooner or later, and it cannot be cheated. Two souls can not long abide in one body before one takes control and the other becomes but a shadow. It is a cruelty, no matter which becomes the stronger. Hence, all Old Blood traditions shun such greedy snatching at life.’ Here Rolf frowned at me most severely. Did he suspect I had already side-stepped my death once by such a ruse? He could not, I promised myself. I returned his gaze guilelessly.
He knit his dark brows ominously. ‘When a creature’s life is over, it is over. It perverts all nature to extend it. Yet Old Blood alone knows the true depth of agony when two souls that have been joined are parted by death. So it must be. You must be able to separate into yourselves when that time comes.’ He beetled his heavy brows at us as he spoke. Nighteyes and I both grew still of thought, considering it. Even Rolf finally seemed to sense how much it distressed us. His voice grew gruffer, yet kinder. ‘Our custom is not cruel, at least no crueller than it must be. There is a way to keep a remembrance of all that has been shared. A way to keep the voice of the other’s wisdom and the love of the other’s heart.’
‘So one partner could go on living within the other?’ I asked, confused.
Rolf shot me a disgusted look. ‘No. I have just told you, we do not do that. When your time comes to die, you should separate yourself from your partner and die, not seek to leech onto his life.’
Nighteyes made a brief whistle of whine. He was as confused as I was. Rolf seemed to concede that he was teaching a difficult concept, for he stopped and scratched his beard noisily. ‘It’s like this. My mother is long dead and gone. But I can recall still the sound of her voice singing me a lullaby, and hear the warnings she would give when I tried to do something foolish. Right?’
‘I suppose so,’ I conceded. This was another sore spot between Rolf and me. He had never accepted that I had no memories of my natural mother, although I had spent the first six years of my life with her. At my lukewarm response, he narrowed his eyes.
‘As can most folks,’ he went on more loudly, as if sound alone could persuade me. ‘And that is what you can have when Nighteyes is gone. Or what he can keep of you.’
‘Memories,’ I agreed quietly, nodding. Even discussing Nighteyes’ death was unsettling.
‘No!’ Rolf exclaimed. ‘Not just memories. Anyone can have memories. But what a bonded one leaves behind for his partner is deeper and richer than memories. It’s a presence. Not living on in the other’s mind, not sharing thoughts, decisions, and experiences. But just – being there. Standing by. So now you understand,’ he informed me heavily.
No, I started to say, but Nighteyes leaned heavily against my leg, so I simply made a sound that might have been agreement. And over the next month, Rolf instructed us in his dogged way, bidding us separate, and then allowing us to come back together, but only in a thin, insubstantial way. I found it completely unsatisfactory. I was convinced we were doing something wrong, that this could not be the comfort and ‘being’ that Rolf had spoken about. When I expressed my doubts to Rolf, he surprised me by agreeing with me, but then went on to declare that we were still far too intertwined, that the wolf and I must separate even more. And we gave heed to him and sincerely tried, but held our own counsel as to what we would actually do when death came for one of us.
We never voiced our obstinacy, but I am sure Rolf was aware of it. He took great pains to ‘prove’ to us the error of our ways, and the examples he showed us were truly wrenching. A careless Old Blood family had let swallows nest in their eaves where their infant son could not only hear their familial twitterings but watch their coming and goings. And that was all he did, even now as a grown man of about thirty. In Buckkeep Town, folk would have called him simple, and so he was, but when Rolf bade us reach towards him more discriminatingly with the Wit, the reason was clear to us both. The boy had bonded, not just to a swallow, but to all swallows. In his mind he was a bird, and his dabbling in mud and fluttering hands and snapping after insects were the work of his bird’s mind.
‘And that’s what comes of bonding too young,’ Rolf told us darkly.
There was one other pair he showed us, but only from a distance. On an early morning when mist lay heavy in the vales, we lay on our bellies on the lip of a dell and made no sound nor thought amongst ourselves. A white hind drifted through the fog towards a pond, walking not with a deer’s true caution but with a woman’s languid grace. I knew her partner must be close by, concealed in the mist. The deer lowered her muzzle to the water and drank long slow draughts of the coolness. Then she slowly lifted her head. Her large ears swivelled forwards. I felt the tentative brush of her questing. I blinked, trying to focus on her, while the wolf made a small, questioning whine in the back of his throat.
Rolf rose abruptly, showing himself disdainfully. He coldly refused the contact. I sensed his disgust as he strode away, but we remained, staring down at her. Perhaps she sensed ambivalence, for she watched us with a very undeerlike boldness. An odd moment of vertigo washed over me. I squinted, trying to make the shape before me resolve into the two that my Wit told me were there.
When I was Chade’s apprentice, he used several exercises to teach me to see what my eyes truly beheld, not what my mind expected to see. Most were simple drills, to look at a tangle of line and decide if it were knotted or merely flung down, or to glance at a jumble of gloves and know which ones lacked mates. A more peculiar trick he showed me was to write the name of a colour in a mismatched ink, the word ‘red’ painted in bright blue letters. To read a list of such colours, correctly saying the printed word rather than the colour of the inked letters, took more concentration than I had expected it would.
And so I rubbed my eyes and looked again and saw only a deer. The woman had been an expectation of my mind, based on my Wit. Physically, she was not there. Her presence inside the hind distorted my Wit-sense of the deer. I shuddered away from the wrongness of it. Rolf had left us behind. In confusion, Nighteyes and I hastened after Rolf as he strode away from the sheltered dell and the quiet pool. Some time and distance later, ‘What was that?’ I asked him.
He rounded on me, affronted by my ignorance. ‘What was that? That was you, a dozen years hence, if you do not mend your ways. You saw her eyes! That was no deer down there, but a woman in the skin of a hind. It’s what I wanted you to see. The wrongness of it. The complete perversion of what should have been shared trust.’
I looked at him quietly, waiting. I think he had expected me to concur with his judgement, for he made a deep noise in his throat. ‘That was Delayna, who slipped through the ice into Marple Pond and drowned two winters ago. She ought to have died right then, but no, she clung to Parela. The hind either hadn’t the heart or the strength to oppose her. Now there they are, a deer with the mind and heart of a woman, and Parela with scarcely a thought to call her own. It goes against all nature, it does. Ones like Delayna are at the root of all the evil talk the unBlooded wag on about us. She’s what makes them want to hang us and burn us over water. She deserves such treatment.’
I looked away from his vehemence. I’d come too close to that fate myself to believe anyone could deserve it. My body had lain cold in my grave for days while I’d shared Nighteyes’ flesh and life. I was certain then that Rolf suspected as much of me. I wondered then, if he so despised me, why he taught me at all. As if he had caught some whiff of my thought, he added gruffly, ‘Anyone untaught can do a wrong thing. But after he’s been taught, there’s no excuse to repeat it. None at all.’
He turned and strode off down the path. We trailed after him. Nighteyes’ tail stuck out straight behind him. Rolf muttered to himself as he stumped along. ‘Delayna’s greed destroyed them both. Parela’s got no life as a deer. No mate, no young, when she dies, she’ll just stop, and Delayna with her. Delayna couldn’t accept death as a woman, but she won’t accept life as a deer, either. When the bucks call, she won’t let Parela answer them. She probably thinks she’s being faithful to her husband or some such nonsense. When Parela dies and Delayna with her, what will either of them have gained, save a few years of existence that neither of them could call complete?’
I could not argue with him. The wrongness I had sensed still crawled along my spine. ‘Yet.’ I struggled to make myself admit this to the Fool. ‘Yet privately I wondered if any save those two could fully understand the decision that had been made. If perhaps, despite how it appeared to us, it felt right to them.’
I paused for a time in my telling. The story of those two always disturbed me. If Burrich had not been able to call me back from the wolf and into my own body, would we have become as they did? If the Fool had not been nearby today, would Nighteyes and I dwell in one body even now? I did not speak the thought aloud. I knew the Fool would have already made that leap. I cleared my throat.
‘Rolf taught us a great deal in the year we were there, but even as we learned the techniques of the magic we shared, Nighteyes and I stopped short of accepting all the customs of the Old Blood folk. The secrets we learned, I felt we had a right to, simply by virtue of what we were, but I did not feel bound to accept the rules Rolf attempted to impose on us. Perhaps I would have been wiser to dissemble, but I was tired to death of deception, and the layers of lies that must be woven to protect it. So I held myself back from that world, and Nighteyes consented to be held back with me. So it was that we observed their community, but never engaged fully in the lives of the Old Blood folk.’
‘And Nighteyes, too, held back from them?’ The Fool’s question was gentle. I tried not to think that there might be a hidden rebuke in it, a questioning as to whether I was the one who had held him back for my own selfish reasons.
‘He felt as I did. The knowledge of the magic that is in us by our blood: this was something they owed to us. And when Rolf dangled it over us as a reward to be given only when we accepted the yoke of his rules – well, that is a form of exclusion, my friend.’ I glanced over at the grey wolf curled in my blankets. He slept deeply, paying the price of my interference with his body.
‘Did no one extend a simple friend’s hand to you there?’ The Fool’s question drew me back to my story. I considered it.
‘Holly tried to. I think she pitied me. She was shy and solitary by nature; it was something we had in common. Sleet and his mate had a nest in a great tree on the hillside above Rolf’s house, and Holly herself was wont to spend hours perched on a woven platform not far below Sleet’s nest. She was never talkative to me, but showed me many small kindnesses, including the gift of a featherbed, a side-product of Sleet’s kills.’ I smiled to myself. ‘And she taught me the many skills of living on my own, all I had never learned while I lived in Buckkeep Castle and others saw to my needs. There is a genuine pleasure to making leavened bread, and she taught me to cook, beyond Burrich’s travelling stews and porridges. I was ragged and worn when I first arrived there. She demanded all my clothes, not to mend, but to teach me the proper care of them. I sat by her fire, and learned to darn socks without lumping them, how to turn the hems on cuffs before they frayed hopelessly …’ I shook my head, smiling at the memories.
‘And no doubt Rolf was pleased to see your heads bent together so cosily and so often?’ The Fool’s tone asked the other question. Had I given Rolf reason to be jealous and spiteful?
I drank the last of the lukewarm elfbark tea and leaned back in my chair. The familiar melancholy of the herb was stealing over me. ‘It was never like that, Fool. You can laugh if you wish, but it was more like finding a mother. Not that she was that much older than I, but the gentleness and acceptance and the wishing me well. But,’ I cleared my throat, ‘you are right. Rolf was jealous, though he never put it into words. He would come in from the cold, to find Nighteyes sprawled on his hearth, and my hands full of yarn from some project of Holly’s needles, and he would immediately find some other task that she must do for him. Not that he treated her badly, but he took pains to make it clear she was his woman. Holly never spoke of it to me, but in a way I think she did it for the purpose, to remind him that however many years they had been together, she still had a life and a will of her own. Not that she ever tried to raise the pitch of his jealousy.
‘In fact, before the winter was over, she had made efforts to bring me into the Old Blood community. At Holly’s invitation, friends came to call, and she took great pains to introduce me to all of them. Several families had marriageable daughters, and these ones seemed to visit most often when I, too, was invited to share a meal with Rolf and Holly. Rolf drank and laughed and became expansive when guests called, and his enjoyment of these occasions was evident. He often observed aloud that this was the merriest winter he could recall in many a year, from which I deduced that Holly did not often open her home to so many guests. Yet she never made her efforts to find me a companion too painfully evident. It was obvious that she considered Twinet my best match. She was a woman but a few years older than me, tall and dark-haired with deep blue eyes. Her companion beast was a crow, as merry and mischievous as she was. We became friends, but my heart was not ready for anything more than that. I think her father more resented my lack of ardour than Twinet did, for he made several ponderous comments to the effect that a woman would not wait forever. Twinet, I sensed, was not as interested in finding a mate as her parents supposed. We remained friends throughout the spring and into summer. Ollie, Twinet’s father, gossiping to Rolf, precipitated my departure from the Old Blood community at Crowsneck. He had told his daughter that she must either stop seeing me, or press me to declare my intent. In response, Twinet had strongly expressed her own intent, which was not to marry anyone who did not suit her, let alone “a man so much younger than myself, both in years and heart. For the sake of making grandchildren, you’d have me bed with someone raised among the unBlooded, and carrying the taint of Farseer blood.”
‘Her words were carried back to me, not by Rolf, but by Holly. She spoke them softly to me, her eyes downcast as if shamed to utter such rumour. But when she looked up at me, so calmly and gently waiting for my denial, my ready lies died on my lips. I thanked her quietly for making me privy to Twinet’s feelings about me, and told her that she had given me much to ponder. Rolf was not there. I had come to their home to borrow his splitting maul, for summer is the time to make ready winter firewood. I left without asking for the loan of it, for both Nighteyes and I immediately knew that we would not be wintering amongst the Old Blood. By the time the moon appeared, the wolf and I had once more left Buck Duchy behind us. I hoped that our abrupt departure would be seen as a man’s reaction to a courtship gone bad rather than the Bastard fleeing those who had recognized him.’
Silence fell. I think the Fool knew that I had spoken aloud to him my most lingering fear. The Old Blood had knowledge of my identity, of my name, and that gave them power over me. What I would never admit to Starling, I explained plainly to the Fool. Such power over a man should not reside with those who do not love him. Yet they had it, and there was nothing I could do about it. I lived alone and apart from the Old Blood folk, but not a moment passed for me that I was not distantly aware of my vulnerability to them. I thought of telling him Starling’s story of the minstrel at Springfest. Later, I promised myself. Later. It was as if I wished to hide danger from myself. I felt suddenly morose and sour. I glanced up to find the Fool’s eyes on my face.
‘It’s the elfbark,’ he said quietly.
‘Elfbark,’ I conceded irritably, but could not convince myself that the hopelessness that swept through me was completely the after-effect of the drug. Did not at least some of it stem from the pointlessness of my own life?
The Fool got up and paced the room restlessly. He went from door to hearth to window twice, and then diverted to the cupboard. He brought the brandy and two cups back to the table. It seemed as good an idea as any. I watched him pour.
I know we drank that evening and well into the night. The Fool took over the talking. I think he tried to be amusing and lighten my mood, but his own spirits seemed as damped as mine. From anecdotes of the Bingtown Traders, he launched into a wild tale of sea-serpents that entered cocoons to emerge as dragons. When I demanded to know why I had not seen any of these dragons, he shook his head. ‘Stunted,’ he said sadly. ‘They emerged in the late spring, weak and thin, like kittens born too soon. They may yet grow to greatness, but for now the poor creatures feel shamed at their frailty. They cannot even hunt for themselves.’ I well recall his look of wide-eyed guilt. His golden eyes bored into me. ‘Could it be my fault?’ he asked softly, senselessly at the end of his tale. ‘Did I attach myself to the wrong person?’ Then he filled his glass again and drank it down with a purposefulness that reminded me of Burrich in one of his black moods.
I don’t remember going to bed that night, but I do recall lying there, my arm flung across the sleeping wolf, drowsily watching the Fool. He had taken out a funny little instrument that had but three strings. He sat before the fire and strummed it, plucking discordant notes that he smoothed with the words of a sad song in a language I had never heard. I set my fingers to my own wrist. In the darkness, I could feel him there. He did not turn to look at me, but awareness prickled between us. His voice seemed to grow truer in my ears, and I knew he sang the song of an exile longing for his homeland.
NINE Dead Man’s Regrets (#ulink_aa755d28-0cd4-50ac-96d2-3d3fce19099d)
The Skill is often said to be the hereditary magic of the Farseer line, and certainly it seems to flow most predictably in those bloodlines. It is not unknown, however, for the Skill to crop up as a latent talent almost anywhere in the Six Duchies. In earlier reigns, it was customary for the Skillmaster who served the Farseer monarch at Buckkeep regularly to seek out youngsters who showed potential for the Skill. They were brought to Buckkeep, instructed in the Skill if they showed strong talent, and encouraged to form coteries: mutually chosen groups of six that aided the reigning monarch as required. Although there is a great dearth of information on these coteries, almost as if scrolls relating to them were deliberately destroyed, oral tradition indicates that there were seldom more than two or three coteries in existence at any time, and that strong Skill-users have always been rare. The procedure Skillmasters used for locating children with latent talent is lost to time. King Bounty, father to King Shrewd, discontinued the practice of building coteries, perhaps believing that restricting knowledge of the Skill to the exclusive use of princes and princesses would increase the power of those who did possess it. Thus it was that when war came to the shores of the Six Duchies in the reign of King Shrewd, there were no Skill coteries to aid the Farseer reign in the defence of the kingdom.
I awoke in the night with a jolt. Malta. I had left the Fool’s mare picketed out on the hillside. The pony would come in, and likely had even put herself within the barn, but I had left the horse out there, all day, with no water.
There was only one thing to do about it. I arose silently and left the cabin, not closing the door behind me lest the shut of it awaken the Fool. Even the wolf I left sleeping as I walked out into the dark alone. I stopped briefly at the barn. As I suspected, the pony had come in. I touched her gently with my Wit-sense. She was sleeping and I left her where she was.
I climbed the hill to where I had picketed the horse, glad that I was not walking in the true dark of a winter night. The stars and the full moon seemed very close. Even so, my familiarity with my path guided me more than my eyes. As I came up on Malta, the horse gave a rebuking snort. I untied her picket line and led her down the hill. When the stream cut our path on its way to the sea, I stopped and let her drink.
It was a beautiful summer night. The air was mild. The chirring of night insects filled the air, accompanied by the sound of the horse sucking water. I let my gaze wander, filling myself with the night. Dark stole the colours of the grass and trees, but somehow their stark shades of black and grey made the landscape seem more intricate. The moisture in the cooler air awoke all the summer scents that had dozed by day. I opened my mouth and drew in a deep breath, tasting the night more fully. I gave myself up to my senses, letting go of my human cares, taking this moment of now and letting it stretch eternally around me. My Wit unfurled around me and I became one with the night splendour.
There is a natural euphoria to the Wit. It is both like and unlike the Skill. With the Wit, one is aware of all the life that surrounds one. It was not just the warmth of the mare nearby me that I sensed. I knew the scintillant forms of the myriad insects that populated the grasses, and felt even the shadowy life force of the great oak that lifted its limbs between the moon and me. Just up the hillside, a rabbit crouched motionless in the summer grasses. I felt its indistinct presence, not as a piece of life located in a certain place, but as one sometimes hears a single voice’s note within a market’s roar. But above all, I felt a physical kinship with all that lived in the world. I had a right to be here. I was as much a part of this summer night as the insects or the water purling past my feet. I think that old magic draws much of its strength from that acknowledgement: that we are a part of that world, no more, but certainly no less than the rabbit.
That rightness of unity washed through me, laving away the nastiness of the Skill-greed that had earlier befouled my soul. I took a deeper breath, and then breathed it out as if it were my last, willing myself to be part of this good, clean night.
My vision wavered, doubled, and then cleared. For a pent breath of time, I was not myself, was not on the summer hillside near my cabin, and I was not alone.
I was a boy again, escaped from confining stone walls and tangling bedclothes. I ran lightshod through a sheep pasture dotted with tufts of ungrazed weeds, trying vainly to keep up with my companion. She was as beautiful as the star-dotted night, her tawny coat spangled with darkness. She moved as unobtrusively as night herself did. I followed her, not with human eyes, but with the Wit-bond that joined us. I was drunk with love of her and love of this night, intoxicated with the heady rush of this wild freedom. I knew I had to go back before the sun rose. She knew, just as strongly, that we did not, that there was no better time than now to make our escape.
And in my next breath, that knowing was gone. The night still bloomed and beckoned around me, but I was a grown man, not a boy lost in the wonder of his first Wit-bond. I did not know who my senses had brushed, or where they were, nor why we had meshed our awarenesses so completely. I wondered if he had been as cognizant of me as I was of him. It did not matter. Wherever they were, whoever they were, I wished them well in their night’s hunting. I hoped their bond would last long and be deep as their bones.
I felt a questioning tug at the lead rope. Malta had quenched her thirst and had no wish to stand still while the insects feasted on her. I became aware that my own warm body had attracted a swarm of little blood-suckers as well. She swished her tail and I waved my hand about my head before we set off down the hill once more. I stabled her, and slipped softly back into the cabin, to seek out my own bed for the rest of the night. Nighteyes had stretched out, leaving me less than half the bed, but I did not mind. I stretched out beside him, and set my hand lightly on his ribs. The beating of his heart and the movement of his breath were more soothing than any lullaby. As I closed my eyes, I felt more at peace than I had in weeks.
I awoke easily and early the next morning. My interlude on the hillside seemed to have rested me more than sleep. The wolf had not fared so well. He still slept heavily, a healing sleep. I felt a twinge of conscience over that, but pushed it aside. Whatever I had done to his heart seemed to tax the resources of the rest of his body, but surely that was better than letting him die. I surrendered the bed to him and left him sleeping.
The Fool was not about, but the door was left standing open, a fair indication that he had gone out. I set a small fire, put on the kettle, and then took some time with washing up and shaving. I had just smoothed my hair back behind my ears when I heard the Fool’s footsteps on the porch. He entered with a basket of eggs on his arm. When I looked up from drying my face, he stopped in his tracks. A wide grin spread slowly over his face.
‘Why, it’s Fitz! A bit older, a bit more worn, but Fitz all the same. I had wondered what you looked like under that thatch.’
I glanced back into the mirror. ‘I suppose I don’t take much pains with my appearance any more.’ I grimaced at myself, then dabbed at a spot of blood. As usual, I had nicked myself where the old scar from my time in Buckkeep’s dungeons seamed my face. Thank you, Regal. ‘Starling told me that I look far older than my years. That I could return to Buckkeep Town and never fear that anyone would recognize me.’
The Fool made a small sound of disgust as he set the eggs on the table. ‘Starling is, as usual, wrong on both counts. For the number of years and lives you have lived, you look remarkably young. It’s true that experience and time have changed your features; folk recalling the boy Fitz would not see him grown to a man in you. Yet, some of us, my friend, would recognize you even if you were flayed and set afire.’
‘Now there’s a comforting thought.’ I set the mirror down and turned to the task of making breakfast. ‘Your colour has changed,’ I observed a moment later as I broke eggs into a bowl. ‘But you yourself don’t look a day older than the last time I saw you.’
The Fool was filling the teapot with steaming water. ‘It’s the way of my kind,’ he said quietly. ‘Our lives are longer, so we progress through them more slowly. I’ve changed, Fitz, even if all you see is the colour of my flesh. When last you saw me, I was just approaching adulthood. All sorts of new feelings and ideas were blossoming in me, so many that I scarce could keep my mind on the tasks at hand. When I recall how I behaved, well, even I am scandalized. Now, I assure you, I am far more mature. I know that there is a time and place for everything, and that what I am destined to do must take full precedent over anything I might long to do for myself.’
I poured the beaten eggs into a pan and set them at the fire’s edge. I spoke slowly. ‘When you speak in riddles, it exasperates me. Yet when you try to speak clearly of yourself, it frightens me.’
‘All the more reason why I should not speak of myself at all,’ he exclaimed with false heartiness. ‘Now. What be our tasks for the day?’
I thought it out as I stirred the setting eggs and pushed them closer to the fire. ‘I don’t know,’ I said quietly.
He looked startled at the sudden change in my voice. ‘Fitz? Are you all right?’
I myself could not explain the sudden lurch in my spirits. ‘Suddenly, it all seems so pointless. When I knew Hap was going to be here for the winter, I always took care to provide for us both. My garden was a quarter that size when the boy first came to me, and Nighteyes and I hunted day to day for our meat. If we did not hunt well and went empty for a day or so, it did not seem of much consequence. Now, I look at all I have already set by and think, if the boy is not here, if Hap is wintering with a master while he starts to learn his trade, why, then I already have plenty for both Nighteyes and me. Sometimes it seems that there’s no point to it. And then I wonder if there’s any point left to my life at all.’
A frown divided the Fool’s brows. ‘How melancholy you sound. Or is this the elfbark I’m hearing?’
‘No.’ I took up the shirred eggs and brought them to the table. It was almost a relief to speak the thoughts I’d been denying. ‘I think it was why Starling brought Hap to me. I think she saw how aimless my life had become, and brought me someone to give shape to my days.’
The Fool set down plates with a clatter, and dished food onto them in disgusted splats. ‘I think you give her credit for thinking of something beyond her own needs. I suspect she picked up the boy on an impulse, and dumped him here when she wearied of him. It was just lucky for both of you that you helped each other.’
I said nothing. His vehemence in his dislike for Starling surprised me. I sat down at the table and began eating. But he had not finished.
‘If Starling meant for anyone to give shape to your days, it was herself. I doubt that she ever imagined you might need anyone’s companionship other than hers.’
I had an uncomfortable suspicion he was right, especially when I recalled how she had spoken of Nighteyes and Hap on her last visit.
‘Well. What she thought or didn’t think scarcely matters now. One way or another, I’m determined to see Hap apprenticed well. But once I do –’
‘Once you do, you’ll be free to take up your own life again. I’ve a feeling it will call you back to Buckkeep.’
‘You’ve “a feeling”?’ I asked him dryly. ‘Is this a Fool’s feeling, or a White Prophet’s feeling?’
‘As you never seemed to give credence to any of my prophecies, why should you care?’ He smiled archly at me and began eating his eggs.
‘A time or three, it did seem as if what you predicted came true. Though your predictions were always so nebulous, it seemed to me that you could make them mean anything.’
He swallowed. ‘It was not my prophecies that were nebulous, but your understanding of them. When I arrived, I warned you that I had come back into your life because I must, not because I wanted to. Not that I didn’t want to see you again. I mean only that if I could spare you somehow from all we must do, I would.’
‘And what is it, exactly, that we must do?’
‘Exactly?’ he queried with a raised eyebrow.
‘Exactly. And precisely,’ I challenged him.
‘Oh, very well, then. Exactly and precisely what we must do. We must save the world, you and I. Again.’ He leaned back, tipping his chair onto its back legs. His pale brows shot towards his hairline as he widened his eyes at me.
I lowered my brow into my hands. But he was grinning like a maniac and I could not contain my own smile. ‘Again? I don’t recall that we did it the first time.’
‘Of course we did. You’re alive, aren’t you? And there is an heir to the Farseer throne. Hence, we changed the course of all time. In the rutted path of fate, you were a rock, my dear Fitz. And you have shifted the grinding wheel out of its trough and into a new track. Now, of course, we must see that it remains there. That may be the most difficult part of all.’
‘And what, exactly and precisely, must we do to ensure that?’ I knew his words were bait for mockery, but as ever, I could not resist the question.
‘It’s quite simple.’ He ate a bite of eggs, enjoying my suspense. ‘Very simple, really.’ He pushed the eggs around on his plate, scooped up a bite, then set his spoon down. He looked up at me, and his smile faded. When he spoke, his voice was solemn. ‘I must see that you survive. Again. And you must see that the Farseer heir inherits the throne.’
‘And the thought of my survival makes you sad?’ I demanded in perplexity.
‘Oh, no. Never that. The thought of what you must go through to survive fills me with foreboding.’
I pushed my plate away, my appetite fled. ‘I still don’t understand you,’ I replied irritably.
‘Yes, you do,’ he contradicted me implacably. ‘I suppose you say you don’t because it is easier that way, for both of us. But this time, my friend, I will lay it cold before you. Think back on the last time we were together. Were there not times when death would have been easier and less painful than life?’
His words were shards of ice in my belly, but I am nothing if not stubborn. ‘Well. And when is that ever not true?’ I demanded of him.
There have been very few times in my life when I have been able to shock the Fool into silence. That was one of them. He stared at me, his strange eyes getting wider and wider. Then a grin broke over his face. He stood so suddenly he nearly overset his chair, and then lunged at me to seize me in a wild hug. He drew a deep breath as if something that had constricted him had suddenly sprung free. ‘Of course that is true,’ he whispered by my ear. And then, in a shout that near deafened me, ‘Of course it is!’
Before I could shrug free of his strangling embrace, he sprang apart from me. He cut a caper that made motley of his ordinary clothes, and then sprang lightly to my tabletop. He flung his arms wide as if he once more performed for all of King Shrewd’s court rather than an audience of one. ‘Death is always less painful and easier than life! You speak true. And yet we do not, day to day, choose death. Because ultimately, death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice. Death is what you get when there are no choices left to make. Am I right?’
