I should have been focused on what he was saying about the Farseers. Instead I heard only his denunciation of what I was. He spoke with certainty. He knew. I tried to brush his words aside. “Your wild accusations mean nothing. I am sworn to the Farseers. serve my Queen,” I replied, though I knew it was stupid to be baited into talking to him. "I will rescue the Prince, regardless of who holds him, or what they are to me
“Rescue? Ha! Return him to slavery, you mean. ” The archer had transferred his glare to Laurel as if to convince her. “The boy with the cat rides with us to safety, not as a prisoner, but as one coming home to his own kind. Better a free Piebald than a prince in a cage. So you betray him doubly, for he is a Farseer whom you are sworn to serve, and Old Blood kin as truly as you are. Will you drag him back to be hanged and quartered and burned, as so many of us have been? As they killed my brother but two nights ago?” His voice was suddenly choked. “Arno was only seventeen. He had not even the magic, himself. But he was kin to Old Blood, and chose to stand with us, even to giving up his life for us. He declared himself a Piebald and rode with us. Because he knew he was one of us, even if the magic did not work for him. ” He looked back at me. “Yet there you stand, as Old Blood as I am, you and your Witwolf beside you, and you would hunt us to the death. Lie all you wish, for you only shame yourself. Do you think I cannot sense you speaking to him?”
I stared at him. My throbbing head calculated what he had just done to me. By betraying me in front of Laurel, he had not only endangered me; he had taken Buckkeep from me once more. I could not return there now; not with Laurel knowing what I was. Horror had drained all color from her face. She looked as if she would be ill. I saw a shifting in her eyes when I glanced at her, a rearranging of her opinion of me. The Fool's face was very still. It was as if he struggled to conceal so many emotions that he was left wearing no expression at all. Had he already discerned what I must do? It was like a spreading poison. They knew I was Witted. Now it was not just the archer I'd have to kill, but Laurel, as well. If I didn't, I'd always be vulnerable.
Yet if I did, it would destroy all that was between the Fool and me. The assassin's conclusion to that was to kill him, too, so that he would never look at me with those deaths in his eyes.
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And then you could kill me, and then you could kill yourself, and no one would ever know of all we had shared. It would remain our shameful secret, taken to the grave with both of us. Kill us all, rather than admit to anyone what we are.
As unerring as a cold pointing finger, the thought jabbed me in the terrible division that had plagued me since we had captured the archer . . . no, since I had first realized that, for the sake of my Farseer oath, I must set myself against the Old Blood and against the Prince's wishes for himself.
“Are you Witted?” Laurel asked me slowly. Her voice was quiet but the question rang in my ears.
The others were still staring at me. I reached for the lie, but could not utter it. To speak it would be to deny the wolf. I was alienated from the Old Blood, yet there was still a kinship that went deeper than emotion or learned loyalties. I might not live as Old Blood, but the threats that hovered over their heads menaced me, too.
But I was sworn to the Farseers, and that too was my bloodline.
What must I do?
What is right. Be what you are, Farseer and Old Blood both. Even if it kills us, it will be easier than these endless denials. I'd rather die being true to ourselves.
It was like pulling my soul out of a morass.
The pain of my Skillheadache abruptly lessened, as if finding my own decision had freed me of something. I found my tongue. “I am Witted,” I admitted quietly and soberly. “And I am sworn to the Farseer line. I serve my Queen. And my Prince, though he may not yet recognize it. I will do whatever I must to keep my oath of loyalty to them. ” I stared at the boy with wolfeyes, and spoke what we both knew. “The Old Bloods have not taken him out of any loyalty or love for him. They do not seek to 'free' him. They have taken him in an effort to claim him. Then they will use him. They will be as ruthless in that as they have been in taking him. But I will not allow that to befall him. - , No matter what I must do to assure that he is saved from that, I will do it. I will find where they have taken him and I will take him home. Regardless of what it may cost me. ”
I saw the archer blanch. “I am a Piebald,” he declared shakily. “Do you know what that means? It means I refuse to be ashamed of my Old Blood. That I will declare myself and assert my right to use my magic. And I will not betray my own kind. Even if it means facing my death. ” Did he say those words to show his determination equaled mine? Then he was mistaken. Obviously he had taken my words as a threat. Another mistake . . . I didn't care. I didn't bother to correct his misapprehension. One night spent in fear would not kill him, and perhaps he might, by morning, be ready to tell me where they were taking the Prince. If not, my wolf and I would find him.
“Shut up,” I told him. “Sleep while you can. ” I glanced at the others, who were watching our exchange closely. Laurel was staring at me with loathing and disbelief. The set lines in the Fool's face aged him. His mouth was small and still, his silence an accusation. I closed my heart against it. “We should all sleep while we can. ”
And suddenly fatigue was a tide rising around rne. Nighteyes had come to sit beside me. He leaned against me, and the boneweariness he felt was suddenly mine, too. I sat down, muddy and wet as I was, on the sandy floor of the cave. I was cold, but then, it was a night when one should expect to be cold. And my brother was beside me, and between us we had warmth to share. I lay down, put my arm over him, and sighed out. I meant to lie still for just a moment before I rose to take the first watch. But in that instant, the wolf drew me down and wrapped me in his sleep.
DUTIFUL
In Choky, there was an old woman who was most stalled at weaving. She could weave in a day what it took others a week to do, and all of the finest work. Never a stitch that she took went awry, and the thread she spun for her best tapestries was so strong that it could not be snipped with the teeth but must be cut with a blade. She lived alone and apart, and though the coins came in stacks to her for her work, she lived simpty. When she missed the week's market for the second time, a gentlewoman who had been waiting for the cloak the weaver had promised her rode out to her hut to see if aught was wrong. There was the old woman, sitting at her loom, her head bent over her work, but her hands were still and she did not stir to the woman's knock at her doorjamb. So the gentlewoman's manservant went in to tap on her shoulder, for surely she dozed. But when he did, the old woman tumbled back, dead as a stone, to sprawl at his feet. And from her bosom leapt out a fine fat spider, big as a man's fist, and it scampered over the loom, trailing a thick thread of web. So all then knew the trick of her weaving. Her bod the;y cut in four pieces and burned, and with her they burned all the work known to come from her loom, and then her cottage and loom itself.
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Ê- ADGERLOCK'S “OLD BLOOD TALES”
I awoke before dawn, with the terrible sensation of having forgotten something. I lay still for a time in the darkness, piecing together my uneasiness. Sleepily I tried to recall what had wakened me. Through the tattering veils of a headache, I forced my mind to function. Threads of a cÊbi.
tangling nightmare came back to me slowly. They were unnerving; I had been a cat. It was like the worst of the old Wittales, in which the Witted one was gradually dominated by his beast until one day he awoke as a shapechanger, doomed to take on the form of his beast and forever prey to his beast's worst impulses. In my dream, I had been the cat, but in a human body. Yet there had been a woman there also, sharing my awareness with the cat, mingled so thoroughly that I could not determine where one began and the other left off. Disturbing. The dream had caught at me, snagged me with its claws, and held me under. Yet some part of me had heard . . . what? Whispers?
The soft jingle of harness, the grit of boots and hooves on sand? I sat up and glared around at the darkness. The fire was no more than a dark red smudge on the earth nearby. I could not see, but I was already certain that my prisoner was gone. Somehow he had wriggled loose, and now he had gone ahead to warn the others that we followed. I gave my head a shake to clear it. He had probably taken my damn horse, as well. Myblack was the only one of the horses dumb enough to allow herself to be stolen without a sound. I found my voice. “Lord Golden! Awake. Our prisoner has escaped. ”
I heard him sit up in his blankets, no more than an arm's length away. I heard him scrabble in the darkness, then a handful of wood bits was thrown on the fire. They glowed, and then a small flame of true fire leapt up. It only flared briefly, but what it showed was enough to confound me. Not only our prisoner was missing, but Laurel and Whitecap were gone.
“She went after him,” I guessed stupidly.
“They went together. ” The Fool pointed out the more likely scenario. Alone with me, he completely abandoned Lord Golden's voice and posture. In the fading flare of the fire, he sat up on his blanket, his knees tucked under his chin and his arms wrapped around his legs as he expostulated. He shook his head at his own stupidity. “When you fell asleep, she insisted she would take first watch. She promised to wake me when her duty was over. If I had not been so concerned over your behavior, I might have seen how peculiar that offer was. ” His wounded look was almost an accusation. “She loosed him, and then they left deliberately and quietly. So quietly that not even Nighteyes heard them go. ”
There was a question in his words if not his voice. “He isn't feeling well,” I said, and bit down on any other explanation. Had the wolf intentionally held me deep in sleep while he allowed them to leave? He still slept heavily by my side, the sodden sleep of exhaustion and sickness. “Why would she go with him?”
The silence lasted too long. Then, unwillingly, the Fool guessed, “Perhaps she thought you would kill him, and she didn't want it to come to that. ”
“I wouldn't have killed him,” I replied irritably.
“Oh? Well, then, I suppose it is good that at least one of us is sure of that. Because frankly, the same fear had crossed my mind. ” He peered at me through the dimness, and then spoke with disarming directness. “You frightened me last night, Fitz. No. You terrified me. I almost wondered if I knew you at all. ”
I didn't want to discuss that. “Do you think he could have freed himself and then forced Laurel to go with him?”
He was quiet for a time, then accepted my change of subject. “That is possible, but only just. Laurel is . . . very resourceful. She would have found some way to make a noise. Nor can I imagine why he would do so. ” He frowned. “Did you think they looked at one another oddly? Almost as if they shared a secret?”
Had he seen something I had not? I tried to think that through, then gave it up as a hopeless task. Reluctantly, I pushed my blanket completely away. I spoke quietly, still not wishing to wake the wolf. “We have to go after them. Now. ” My wet, muddy clothes from the night before were clammy and stiff on my body. Well, at least I didn't have to get dressed. I stood up. I refastened my sword belt a notch closer to its old setting. Then I stopped, staring at the blanket.
“I covered you,” the Fool admitted quietly. He added, “Let Nighteyes sleep, at least until dawn. We will need some light to find their trail. ” He paused, then asked, “You say we should follow them because you think . . . what? That he will go to wherever the Prince has gone? Do you think he would take Laurel there with him?”
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I bit a torn corner off my thumbnail. “I don't know what I think,” I admitted.
For a time we both pondered in silence and darkness. I drew a breath. “We must go after the Prince. Nothing must distract us from that. We should go back to where we left his trail yesterday and try to discover it again, if the rains have left anything for us to discover. That is the only path that we are absolutely certain will lead to Dutiful. If that fails us, then we will fall back on trying to follow Laurel and the Piebald and hope that that trail also leads to the Prince. ”
“Agreed,” the Fool replied softly.
I felt oddly guilty because I felt relief. Not just that he had agreed with me, not just that the Piebald had been put out of my reach, but relief that with Laurel and the prisoner gone, we could drop pretenses and just be ourselves. “I've missed you,” I said quietly, knowing that he would know what I meant.
“So have I. ” His voice came from a new direction. In the dark, he was up and moving silently and gracefully as a cat. That thought brought my dream back to me abruptly. I grasped at the tattered fragments of it. “I think the Prince might be in danger,” I admitted.
“You're only now concluding that?”
“A different type of danger from what I expected. I suspected the Witted ones of luring him away from Kettricken and the Court, of bribing him with a cat to be his Witpartner so that they could take him off and make him one of their own. But last night, I dreamed, and . . . it was an evil dream, Fool. Of the Prince displaced from himself, of the cat exerting so much influence over their bonding that he could scarcely recall who or what he was. ”
“That could happen?”
“I wish I knew for certain. The whole thing was so peculiar. It was his cat, and yet it was not. There was a woman, but I never saw her. When I was the Prince, I loved her. And the cat, I loved the cat, too. I think the cat loved me, but it was hard to tell. The woman was almost . . . between us,”
“When you were the Prince. ” I could tell that he could not even decide how to phrase the question.
The mouth of the cave was a lighter bit of darkness now. The wolf slumbered on. I fumbled through an explanation. “Sometimes, at night . . . it's not exactly Skilling. Nor is it completely the Wit. I think that even in my magic, I am a bastard cross of two lines, Fool. Perhaps that is why Skilling sometimes hurts so much. Perhaps I never learned to do it properly at all. Maybe Galen was right about me, allthe time ”
“When you were the Prince,” he reminded me firmly.
“In the dreams, I become him. Sometimes I recall who I truly am. Sometimes I simply become him and know where he is and what he is doing. I share his thoughts, but he is not aware of me, nor can I speak to him. Or perhaps I can. I've never tried. In the dreams, it never occurs to me to try. I simply become him, and ride along. ”
He made a small sound, like breathing out thoughtfully. Dawn came in the way it does at the change of the seasons, going from dark to pearly gray all in an instant. And in the moment, I smelled that summer was over, that the thunderstorm last night had drowned it and washed it away, and the days of autumn were undeniably upon us. There was a smell in the air of leaves soon to fall, and plants abandoning their greenery to sink back into their roots, and even of seeds on the wing seeking desperately for a place to settle and sink before the frosts of winter found them.
I turned away from the mouth of our cave and found the Fool, already dressed in clean clothes, putting the final touch on our packing. “There's just a bit of bread and an apple left,” he told me. “And I don't think Nighteyes would fancy the apple. ”
He tossed me the bread for the wolf. As the light of day reached his face, Nighteyes stirred. He carefully thought nothing at all as he rose, cautiously stretched, and then went to lap water from the pool at the back of the cave. When he came back, he dropped down beside me and accepted the bread as I broke it into pieces.
So. How long have they been gone? I asked him.
You know I let them go . Why do you even ask me that?
I was silent for a time. had changed my mind. Couldn't you feel that? had decided wouldn't even hurt him, let alone kill him.
Changer. Last night you bore us both too close to a very dangerous place. Neither one of us truly knew what you would do. I chose to let them go rather than find out. Did choose w
rong?
I didn't know. That was the frightening part, that I didn't know. I wouldn't ask him to help me track Laurel and the archer. Instead I asked, Think we can pick up the Prince's trail?
I promised you I would, didn't ? Let us simply do what we must do and then go home.
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I bowed my head. It sounded good to me.
The Fool had been juggling the apple in one hand. Once Nighteyes had finished eating, he stopped, gripped the apple in both hands, and then gave it a sudden twist. It broke smoothly into two halves, and he tossed one to me. I caught it, and shook my head at him, grinning. "Every time I think I know all your tricks
“You find out how wrong you are,” he finished. He ate his half rapidly, saving the core for Malta, and I did the same for Myblack. The hungry horses were not enthusiastic about the day ahead. I smoothed their ragged coats a bit before I saddled them and fastened our saddle packs to Myblack. Then we led them out and down the gravelly slope, now slippery with mud. The wolf limped along behind us.
As so often happens after a good thunderstorm, the sky was blue and clear. The scents of the day were strong as the rising sun warmed the wet earth. Birds sang. Overhead, a flock of ducks headed south in the morning light. At the bottom of the hill, we mounted. Can you keep up? I asked Nighteyes worriedly.
You'd better hope so. Because without me, you haven't a chance of trailing the Prince .
A single set of horse tracks led back the way we had come. Heavy imprints. They were riding double, as fast as Whitecap could carry them. Where were they going, and why? Then I put Laurel and the Piebald out of my head. It was the Prince we sought.