I spoke. “It’s not connected, Chade. Whoever bribed them had no way of knowing you’d be here: He’d have been hoping they could somehow kill you at Buckkeep. Bee and Shun were taken the same day they were bribed. And why send these traitors if they already had a force on its way here? It’s two different things. Kill him and let me see to your side. ”
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Chade shot me a look that silenced me. “What did he look like, the man who offered the money?”
“My legs hurt so bad, I can’t think. I want a healer before I talk any more. Sweet Eda!” He lifted his head a short way and then let it fall back in the snow. “You killed everyone? All four of them?”
“What did he look like?” Chade was relentless. The man was bleeding to death. Chade and I knew it, but Crafty seemed unaware of it.
“A tall man, but not thin. Tall, but with a stomach like a barrel. Just a Buckman, like any other. I don’t know. It was an easy deal. Bring the hand with your ring on it, the innkeeper at the Bawdy Trout gives us the money. When you showed up, it was like the gods handed you to us. So damned easy. If the captain had said yes, you’d be a dead man, and him, too. ”
“Tell me about his teeth. ”
“I’m not saying nothing more until you take me to a healer. I’m getting cold, so cold. What did you do to my legs?”
Chade set the tip of his knife to the man’s nostril. “Talk to me, or I cut your nose,” he said coldly. He inserted the blade up the man’s nostril until he felt the edge of it.
Crafty’s eyes went very wide. “His tooth, one of the front ones, was gray. Is that what you meant?
Chade nodded to himself. “Did he mention a girl?”
“The girl you stole. Yah. Said if we found her with you, we could have her. Or if we could make you tell us where she was. Said she’d make a good whore. Aaaaah!”
The nose is sensitive. Very sensitive. Chade had always maintained it was as good a target for torment as a man’s genitals—or better. Not only is there pain, but disfiguring a man’s face will affect him for the rest of his life. Crafty was writhing in the snow, one of his nostrils sliced open and bleeding profusely. He began to weep. Abruptly, I wanted this to be over.
“He said it. ” The blood and the pain of his sliced nose thickened his voice. “Not me. And no one even saw the girl, so no one did her. Eda, help me!” He called on the goddess, as I doubted he’d ever done before, and snorted wildly, spraying blood.
I was fairly certain this was all about Shun, and Chade’s vendetta with her stepfather, but I would be certain. “Did he mention a little girl?” I demanded of him. “A child?”
He halted his thrashing and stared up at me. “A little girl? No. Gods, we’re not monsters!”
“Liar,” Chade said. Crafty had thrashed away from him. Chade hitched himself closer, and very slowly, almost gently, drew his blade across the man’s throat. Crafty’s eyes flew wide open in the sudden knowledge that he was dead. His mouth worked but the sounds were not words. Cutting a man’s throat isn’t an instant death for him, but it’s a certain one. Chade knew that. So did Crafty. He was still moving when Chade said to me, “Give me a hand up. ”
I held my hand out to him. “All of that to confirm what you already knew?”
“I got a bit extra. The name of the inn. ” He took my hand. His was slippery with blood. I stooped, slid my arm around him, and pulled him upright. He grunted with pain as he came to his feet. “It wasn’t about information, Fitz. It was payback. For Captain Stout. Treachery deserves great pain. ” He made a bad sound. I stood very still until he could catch his breath. “And daring to think he could try to kill me. ”
My bared hand felt the warmth of the blood on his clothing. “I’ll sit you down and catch a horse. There’s a healer in—”
“The stone,” Chade said decisively. “Better healers in Buckkeep. ”
Nettle once compared having the Skill to having a sense of smell. One does not mean to intrude on people any more than one wants to sniff someone, but in proximity, you sense the smell of someone. Or Skill tells you of his pain. In this case, the Wit that told me Chade was a creature in desperate need of healing. And he was right. The best healers would be in Buckkeep. I reached out to Nettle. We were attacked. Chade is injured. Coming through the stones in a few moments. Please have a healer ready to tend him. He’s taken a sword wound to his side.
We knew of the attack. And then you both blocked us out! What is going on? Were they Bee’s kidnappers? Have you found her, is she safe? Anger and frantic questions that I had no time for.
No Bee. We are coming through the stones. Our attackers are dead. I’ll explain when I get there.
This time the block I threw up against the Skill was deliberate. King Verity had always complained that whenever I became fully engaged in battle or any dangerous activity, I blocked my Skill. Evidently Chade did the same. Interesting. But not as compelling as the blood that had now soaked my hand and sleeve, nor my own blood that was still dripping down my brow and gumming up my eyes.
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Master?
Go back to where you had oats today. Get the others to follow you if you can. But go back and be safe there.
Go with you.
No.
I closed my Wit to her. The roan was a beautiful horse, shimmering with spirit and intelligence. She was reaching for me strongly, seeking a bond I could not allow. I had no time to be that important to any creature, not until I had regained my little girl. And perhaps not then. I sensed the horse’s confusion and disappointment. I could not let it touch my heart. Nothing could touch my heart until Bee was safe again.
“The stone,” I told Chade. He nodded, saving his breath. The snow was deep and the path to the stone only partially broken. I waded side-on in the deep snow, letting Chade benefit from the path I made. He moved his legs, but I was taking most of his weight. My shoulder reminded me of the slice on the tip of it. We reached the stone with Chade leaning heavily on me. “Catch your breath for a minute,” I suggested. He managed to shake his head.
“No. ” He barely breathed the word. “Going to faint. Get through while I’m conscious. ”
“Too dangerous,” I objected, but he lifted the bloody hand that had been clutching his side. I couldn’t stop him, and I barely had time to focus my Skill before he slapped the stone and we were snatched inside.
It was wrong. For an instant, I was clutching Chade as we entered the stone. But as he dragged me in behind him, my Skill-sense of him winked out. I gripped naught but deadweight. I could not sense him and I fell through the sea of stars, plummeting in a place that had no bottom.
Chapter Sixteen
The Journey
When a shaysim appears, the Servants must be ready to welcome the child. Often the parents will be filled with sadness at having to give up the child they have nourished and sheltered for years. When parents bring a shaysim to the gates, let them be welcomed and offered rest and refreshment. Gifts, too, should be offered but it must never appear that the gifts are given in exchange for the child. No shaysim should be purchased nor taken by force. If the parents are reluctant to surrender the child, allow them as much time as they need. If the child is an infant, gently remind them that such a child can require years of intense care. If the child be older, speak of the needs of the child to be raised where he can be accepted, taught, and cherished.
If they cannot bear to immediately surrender the child, be patient. Offer them lodgings for the night, let them walk in the gardens and see the libraries. Allow them to see that no matter how long the child’s infancy or childhood, she will be cherished here, educated, and, yes, loved by those Servants who tend her. Do not forget that every White child is a gift given by the family to the world. Be grateful.
Above all, be patient. Remember that it is the child’s destiny to come to us, and that destiny is never denied. It may happen
in a way none of us has foreseen, but happen it will. To interfere too much may set the child’s life on a path unforeseen and unfortunate. Once the child is with us, it is important to let the shaysim’s life unfold as it will. The future cannot be rushed. Allow time to work its will upon us all.
—Buffeni, Servant of the 3rd Line
I do not know how long I was ill. It was like a terrible vertigo from which no one could rescue me. I was sick upon myself, and soiled myself, more than once. Shun tended me fiercely, without gentleness and certainly not because she wished to do so. She battled relentlessly for privacy in which she washed me with cold snowmelt water. She gave my dirtied garments over to the pale people for them to wash and attempt to dry. She was uncompromising in insisting that only she could tend me. It was not devotion to me, although she claimed that. It was fear, plain and simple. She thought that if they discovered I was a girl, they would have no further use for me. Or her.
And so she took care of me, as best she could. They gave her no help. There was no willowbark tea brewed for my fever, no rest from our relentless traveling. They simply allowed me to be ill while they continued their journey. Every evening, Shun carried me from the tent to the sleigh. We traveled all night. As dawn approached, they made camp and she moved me from the sleigh to the tent. They prepared no special food for me, no broth or gruel. Shun increased my misery by insisting that I eat and drink, sometimes forcing the spoon into my mouth. My lips were chapped and sore from the fever. Her ministrations made them bleed.
But I didn’t die, and one night I felt slightly better. I kept my eyes open and watched the stars as they appeared and then vanished again behind the wind-driven clouds. Dwalia no longer held me on her lap. None of the luriks seemed to want to touch me. So Shun held me, and I heard her little gasp when we crested a hill and saw the lights of a small town below us. We followed the road down the hill, directly toward the town. The fog boy sat beside the driver and I could feel how hard he strove to keep anyone from seeing us. Commander Ellik and the handsome rapist led the way. The other soldiers rode close beside the sleighs, and the luriks on their white horses were bunched close behind us. A dog barked and barked at us, hackles raised, until his owner came out and shouted at him to be quiet.
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I felt Shun tighten her grip on me. “Could you run?” she breathed by my ear, and I knew what she was thinking.
So did Dwalia. She did not whisper but spoke in a normal voice. “If you leapt from the sleigh and ran to any of those houses, the soldiers with us would kill everyone you spoke to. The rest we would bind to forgetfulness. Then we would burn the house down around the bodies, and on you would go with us. Much simpler for all if you simply stay where you are and enjoy this picturesque little town. ” She gave a sideways glance, and Reppin and Soula both shifted to sit between us and the edge of the sleigh.
Shun did not loosen her grip on me, but I felt the spirit go out of her. We drove right past a team and waiting wagon outside an inn. The horses whickered a greeting to us, but on we went. We passed through the town as if we were the wind, and we continued past the outlying farmsteads and up another hill and back into woodlands again. We left the road and followed a dimpled cart-trail into the forest. And on until dawn.
That morning, I could eat a little food on my own, and follow Shun when she went aside from the others to piss. I remembered what she had told me, and mimed standing to piss as if I were a boy before crouching to relieve myself. When we went back in the tent, the luriks whispered to one another behind their hands. “I told you he would live, if he was meant to live. And we knew he was. That was why we did not interfere. ” Dwalia spoke those words to her underlings, and once more she held a kindly smile on her face whenever she looked at me. She was pleased that I hadn’t died, but even more pleased, I thought, that she hadn’t helped me to stay alive.
We camped well off the road that dawn. The fog boy stumbled when he clambered down from the sleigh. Then he held on to the side of the sleigh and stood there with his head bent. Dwalia frowned but as soon as she realized I’d seen her expression, she changed it to a look of motherly concern. “Come, Vindeliar. It was not that hard, was it? And we have spared you that work as much as we can. But traveling cross-country is taking far too much time. You must be strong and determined. We need to return to the ship as swiftly as we can, lest the work you did there begin to weaken and fade. Come. I will see if we cannot get a bit of meat for you tonight. ”
He nodded, his head a heavy stone on a reed neck. She held out her arm with a sigh, and he took it. She escorted him to a place where others were building the fire and commanded that a fur be folded for him to sit upon. That dawn he did no chores but only sat by the fire and went early to his bed.
Shun and I slept more closely together than ever we had that day. I was too weak still to stay awake for long, but I could tell that she had not eaten enough of the brown soup to make her sleep. She feigned sleep with one arm flung over me, as if she feared they might take me from her.
I woke toward nightfall, itching everywhere. I scratched myself but it brought only slight relief. When the others stirred and we went out by the fires, Shun flinched back at the sight of me. “What is wrong with you?” she demanded. I had been scratching my cheek. I lowered my hand, startled, and saw tendrils and flaps of dry white skin clinging to my fingers.
“I don’t know!” I exclaimed and, still weak from being ill so long, I began to weep. Shun sighed over my uselessness. But Dwalia came quickly to my side.
“Silly,” said Dwalia. “You shed your old skin. That is all. You’ve taken a step forward in your path. Let me look at you!” She seized me by the sleeve and pulled me closer to the fire. She pushed back the cuff of the fur coat, and then my shirt. Her nails were rounded and clean. She matter-of-factly scratched at my arm, and then shook the threads of dangling skin from her fingertips. She leaned in to look closer at my new skin.
“That is not right!” she exclaimed, and then clapped a hand over her own mouth.
“What isn’t right?” I asked anxiously.
“I didn’t hear you, dear? Does something worry you?” Her voice was warm with concern for me.
“You said something wasn’t right. What’s wrong?”
Her brows drew together and her voice radiated warmth. “Why, dear, I said nothing. Do you think something’s wrong?”
I looked at the patch of skin her nails had cleared. “I’m turning white. Like a dead person. ” I had nearly said like the messenger. I shut my lips tightly and tried not to sob. I’d said too many words. I wasn’t good at this pretending to be younger and stupider than I was.
“Did he dream in his change time?” a thin-faced lurik lad asked, and Dwalia shot him a look far sharper than a slap. He hung his head and I saw him take a quick, anxious breath. Alaria had been sitting next to him. She hitched herself away from him.
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They were all watching me to see if I would answer. Even Dwalia. “No dreams,” I said quietly, and I saw a puzzled look wash through her eyes. “None that made sense,” I amended. “Silly dreams. ” I hoped I sounded childish. I gave a small sigh and seated myself on the fallen log that was serving us as a bench. Odessa immediately came to sit close beside me.
For a short time I listened to the crackling of the fire. No one else spoke, but I could almost feel them wishing for me to go on. I didn’t. Dwalia made a little sound in her throat and left the fireside. I was suddenly tired. I leaned my head forward, my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands, and looked into the darkness there. I wanted Revel to come and pick me up and carry me in to where it was warm.
But Revel was dead.
I thought about my father. Did he care that I’d been stolen? Would he come after me?
I’m right here, Wolf-Father said. I’ve never left you.
My other father.
We are one.
r /> “Shaysim?”
I felt queasy. I lifted my head slowly. Dwalia crouched before me. I said nothing.
“Look what I have for you, Shaysim. ” She held out to me something rectangular and covered in bright fabric. I looked at it without comprehension. She opened it, and inside were pages of thick, creamy paper. It was a book, not a simple ledger such as my father had given me, but a book bound in rich cloth. I itched to touch it.
Danger! Wolf-Father’s warning brushed against my mind. I kept perfectly still.
“And this. ” It was like a quill, but made of silver. “The ink I have for this is as blue as a summer sky. ” She waited. “Don’t you want to try them?” she asked me.
I tried to restore childishness to my voice. “Try them how? What do they do?”
Dismay crept over her face. “You write with the pen on the paper. You write down your dreams. Your important dreams. ”
“I don’t know how to write. ” I held my breath, hoping my lie would protect me.
“You don’t …” She let her words trail away. Then she smiled her warmest smile. “That doesn’t matter, Shaysim. When we get to Clerres, you will be taught. Until then, you can tell me about your dreams, and I will write—”
Temptation surged in me. Tell her I had dreamed of a wolf tearing white rabbits into bloody shreds. Tell her of a man with a battle-axe chopping the heads of squirming white snakes.
NO. Wolf-Father was adamant. In a breath of awareness, he added, Do not provoke another predator until your pack is ready to tear it apart. Be small and still, cub.
“I don’t remember any dreams now. ” I scratched my face, looked at the bits of dangling skin, wiped them on my shirt, and then pretended to pick my nose until she made a small sound of dismay. She moved away from me, taking book and quill with her. I looked carefully at my finger and then put it in my mouth. Odessa moved away from me. I did not let myself smile.
Chapter Seventeen
Blood
There are seventy-seven known medicinal uses for dragon parts, and fifty-two unsubstantiated ones. The seventy-seven are listed in the scrolls called Trifton Dragon-killer’s Remedies. Of great antiquity, this scroll has been translated many times, to the extent that seventeen of the remedies make no sense. For instance, we are told that “ground dragon scales applied to the apple with brighten coal a maiden’s eyes. ” Yet, mistranslated as these remedies may be, for each one the original scribe provided the name and apparently the attestation from someone who had used the remedy to good effect.