The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy Omnibus (214 page)

Yet even here, in the heart of her kingdom, she had a rival. In the glassy ceiling of the chamber, behind the blue blurring of thick ice, I glimpsed finally the complete outline of the one I had come so far to see. Our winding path through the corridors had taken us beneath the dragon. I thought I could even glimpse a brighter rectangle of light that might have been our feeble excavation efforts. I wondered if, above us, our friends still laboured to chip through the ice to the trapped dragon. Useless to scream out to them; it would have been like trying to scream through not one, but three or four castle walls.

Scores of the Pale Woman’s followers had gathered to watch us brought before her. Immense white globes, suspended from frost-encased chains, lit the hall with an unnatural blue-white light. Heavily clad in furs and skins, her Outislander warriors seemed like dwarves in the overwhelming immensity of the ice palace. They were silent, their faces stoic as we were dragged past them. Their clan tattoos had been obliterated by black blotches. A few wore some sign of regard for their new liege, in the form of dragon or serpent tattoos. They regarded us without pity or hatred or even much curiosity. They did not seem fired with hatred or passion of any kind. The deadness I saw in them went beyond resignation
to the beast-like tolerance for suffering that is usually attributed to abused animals. Even my Wit-sense of them was dampened. I wondered if she had discovered some lesser form of Forging, one that tore away their connections to humanity but left them enough fear of her to make them obedient. One of them I recognized. The woman Henja, who had been the Narcheska’s servant at Buckkeep, was as uninterested as the rest of them. I turned my head to confirm it. Yes, it was her. Since she’d left Buckkeep Castle, I’d glimpsed her once in Buckkeep Town when the Piebalds nearly killed me, and again when she had spied on the Prince and the Narcheska riding ponies on the hillside of Mayle Island. How did she fit into all of this? I could not make her role clear to myself, but I knew with sudden certainty that she had always been the Pale Woman’s tool. Danger threatened my prince as surely as it did me.

I managed to get my feet under me, but I could not keep up with the quick step of my guards. I stumbled between them, and when they finally halted and forced me onto my knees before her, I did not resist. My head was still spinning. I would rest in whatever posture I could, and find my strength in blessed stillness. I tried to turn to look at the Fool, but had only a glimpse of him, head lolling as his guards held him in a limp obeisance before their ruler. Then a stinging slap from one of my wardens brought my eyes back to my captor.

She was white, as the Fool was once white, and her hair floated unbound around her shoulders. Her eyes were colourless, just as the Fool’s had been when he was a boy. Her face was his, softened to a woman’s countenance. Her beauty was unearthly, cool as the ice that surrounded her. She sat on overlapping furs, white bear, white fox and ermine with dangling black tails, on a throne chiselled from ice. Her robe of purest white wool did not conceal the womanly curves of her body. About her throat she wore a necklace of flowers carved from ivory. Diamonds sparkled in their centres. Her long-fingered hands rested in idle relaxation on the fur-draped arms of her throne. Her fingers were ringed with silver, all set with glistening white stones. She looked down at us, held on our knees before her, and appeared neither pleased nor surprised. Perhaps, like the Fool, she had always known it would come to this.

Her throne nestled in the coil of a curved and sleeping carved dragon. The black-and-silver memory stone of his body gleamed in a mountainous arch behind her throne and his folded wings were thick and heavy against him. He was not one single piece of stone, but rather blocks of it, probably painstakingly hauled here from the quarry at the other end of the island, and then fitted tightly together to form a continuous sculpture. The fine seams in the carefully matched stone were barely visible. The dormant dragon was immense, larger than Verity as Dragon had been, and yet still not as big as Icefyre. And he was incomplete, soft and slumped and without details, an unformed suggestion of a dragon rather than a reality. His blocky head on his curved long neck rested before the Pale Woman’s elevated throne like a step. His eyes were lidded. Even so, I shuddered at his cruel countenance. My Wit clamoured with conflicting emotions, fear, hatred, pain, lust and vengeance. All were trapped within the crudely-worked stone.

The source of the dragon’s developing essence was plain. Several Outislanders, nearly spent, were chained against his flanks. The captives bore the marks of torture and privation; that would be how the Pale Woman wrung sufficient emotion from them to make them useful to her. Emotions and memories were what a Skill-coterie fed into a stone dragon as they created it to hold their joined awareness. I could not understand how she could imagine a creature fed by the discordant memories of tormented wretches could become a sentient creature. What would unite them and give purpose to the dragon’s flight? The stone dragons I had seen had been works of single-minded devotion, the crowning glory of the coteries that had created them. Beauty had infused them, no matter how odd the shapes each coterie had selected to represent it. Even the Winged Boar had gained grace in flight. This creature of hers was a mosaic of stolen pain. What temperament would such a creature have? It was obvious to my Wit that the prisoners’ humanity had already been Forged away from them, stripped from their souls and forced into the dragon. What she fed it now was the dumb torment of creatures less than beasts. What sort of a dragon would he be, founded on pain and hatred and cruelty?

Between the sleeping dragon’s forepaws was another throne, also
of ice and also draped with furs. The ice and coverings of that throne were corroded with filth and human waste. A caricature of a human was chained to it, manacled at ankles, wrists and throat to rings sunk deep in the ice of the royal chair. The black crown he wore looked painfully tight, as if locked to his brow, and his royal robes were stained and tattered. He wore chains of silver about his neck, and the chains that restrained him had been set with jewels, mocking his captivity. His beard and hair were grown long and matted; his nails were yellow and crusted. The ends of his bare toes and fingers were black with frostbite. Discarded bones, picked clean of meat, littered the floor near his feet. Perhaps one was a human arm-bone. I looked away, unwilling to know what they fed him. He was Forged, but not completely. I could still feel his hate, and how it burned. Perhaps that was the only feeling left to him. And then, like a numbed limb returning to life, I felt an odd tingling of my Skill. I turned my head as if I could capture it, like a man straining after a sound. It came no more clearly to me, but I discerned the source of it. The mad king Skilled at me. His teeth were set in a yellow snarl and his sunken eyes were fixed on me. For an instant, I felt the full force of his Skilled hatred and it struck me like a blow. Then it was gone, not because I shielded myself, but because my ability to feel it faded again. I heaved in a panting breath, shocked at his Skill-strength. Perhaps Thick could have matched him in Skill-power; I knew I never could have.

I managed to lift my head and look back at the woman, and was startled to find her smiling at me. She had been waiting for me, letting me look my fill and reach my own conclusions. A long, graceful hand gestured at her captive king. ‘Kebal Rawbread. But I’m sure you guessed that only my failed Catalyst could be worthy of such a punishment, FitzChivalry Farseer. Oh, you need not look so aghast. I am only finishing what your Six Duchies dragons began. He foolishly ventured out, to draw his bow and fire at a flight of dragons overhead. But their mere passage above him sapped much of his intelligence. Not that he had much to begin with. He was a useful tool, for a time. He had cunning, ambition, and he knew the ways of war.’

She stood, and then descended the dais of her throne, treading on
the dragon’s head in passing. She strolled over to the soiled throne and the squalid monarch upon it and considered her prisoner. ‘Nonetheless, he failed me.’ She stretched out a slender hand to him. His nostrils flared and he bared his teeth as if to snap at her. She shook her head, almost fondly, as a man might over a stallion too spirited to be trusted. Her voice was sweet as she asked him, ‘Shall I give a bit more of you to the dragon, my pet? Would you like that?’

The muscles around the mad king’s deep-set eyes twitched as if he desperately tried to recall something. Then he cringed away from her, raising one shoulder as if that could shelter him. A low moan of ‘Nooooooo!’ oozed from him.

‘Not now, perhaps. Eventually, of course, he will have all of you. When there is nothing else to wring from you, I shall fling you on top of him and watch you melt into him. That is how it happens, is it not?’ She turned suddenly to confront me. ‘At the final quickening, are not the sacrifices to the dragon completely absorbed? When your Skill-coteries are given to a dragon, do not they vanish completely into its body?’

I held my tongue, as much from shock as from a desire to withhold the information from her. She spoke as if coteries were forced into a dragon, rather than entering one willingly. I would not take her ignorance from her. One of my guards growled and lifted a fist to menace me, but she shook her head and flicked her fingers at him, dismissing my silence as inconsequential.

Instead, she transferred her gaze to the Fool, dangling insensible between his captors, and for the first time, a frown marred her sculpted face. ‘You have not damaged him, have you? I warned you that I wished him brought to me intact. He is the greatest curiosity in the world, that most rare creature, a false White Prophet. Though he scarcely deserves such a title now. Look at him, gone all brown as a withered flower. Is he dead?’

‘No, Lady Most High. He has but fainted.’ The guard who spoke sounded nervous.

‘I don’t believe it. Shake him a bit. He has the tenacity of a cat, and I’ll wager he’d be just as hard to kill as one. Open your eyes, Beloved. Greet me again, with a smile and a little bow, as
you did once when you were a pale wisp of a child. Oh, how sweet a creature he was, as if made all of whipped egg white and milk and sugar crystal, a confection of a child. With the tongue of a viper!’ She leaned forward suddenly, venom in her voice. As if her hatred warned him of its poison, the Fool gave a sudden gasp and stirred. He wobbled his head upright, and stared blindly about. Then comprehension crashed down around him. I thought he would scream as every muscle in his face went taut. Then he went suddenly still. He looked at me and spoke to me only. ‘I am so very sorry. So very sorry.’

The Pale Woman turned abruptly away from us and remounted her throne. She took her time settling herself into her throne, snuggling into her furs. When she was comfortable, she issued her orders. ‘This day has been long in coming. I see no point in either hurrying or delaying my enjoyment of it. Truth to tell, I had expected that you both would stand before me almost a year ago. The Piebalds had been promised much gold, but only if they delivered both of you, intact. And that they could not seem to do. Some silly personal scheme of vengeance overturned all our arrangements with them. They were unreliable allies, with all their dirty little animals traipsing around after them, tainting their minds with animal thoughts like men fornicating with sheep! No wonder they failed me. I should never have wasted my time with them. Well. It matters not now. I have you here, by my own manoeuvring, and that makes it all the sweeter.’ She leaned back, steepling her slender hands as she regarded us with satisfaction.

‘I have long had quarters prepared for you. Guards, escort each of my guests to his proper accommodations, and see that they take full advantage of them. Rest and relax, FitzChivalry. I shall come to call upon you soon. Until then, do you have any questions for me? No? A pity. I do not often offer to answer questions, but for you, I would have. For I think that, the more you know, the more you will see how you have been deceived and misled by our darling little pretender. Take them off, but gently, gently. Harm not a hair of their heads.’

At the door of her grand hall they parted us, the Fool’s captors taking him in one direction and mine jostling me along in the other.
‘Fitz!’ His sudden shout startled me and made me strain against my guards’ grip. One gently twisted my arm higher behind my back. I set my heels to the ice and skidded as they dragged me relentlessly on. The Fool’s shout came faint to my ears. ‘I knew my fate! I chose to meet it! Stay your course and do not doubt! All will be as –’ His shout ended in a muffled cry, and then they staggered me around a corner and down yet another icy hall.

‘Where are they taking him?’ I demanded, and received another example of the Pale Woman’s guard’s idea of gentleness as a gauntleted fist doubled me over. I could almost take a full breath again when they paused at one of the icy doors. One of the guards produced a long tool and thrust it into a small opening in the ice. He jigged it until I heard a catch give, and then pulled the door open with it. They threw me inside and I landed face down on some patchy deerskins on the floor. One followed me, and I rolled, trying to escape the punishment sure to come, but he only caught at my bound wrists, pulled them up high and screamingly tight, and then suddenly released them. The knife he had used to cut the bindings nicked my hand in passing. He was not concerned. ‘Don’t make noise!’ he warned me. ‘She doesn’t like it, and I don’t like having to come and make you be quiet.’

The icy door closed behind him before I could think of a reply. The earlier blow to my head had left me woozy. I lifted my head just enough to be sure I was alone in the chamber. As soon as I was reassured that no Forged ones lurked there, I let my head drop, closed my eyes and tried to think.

I opened them again. A minute, a day, a week had passed. The light in the chamber remained the same. I had had no useful thoughts, and perhaps I had slept. I got up slowly, feeling various aches. They were washed from my awareness by the tide of anxiety I felt for the Fool. Where had they taken him and what was his fate? It suddenly seemed incomprehensible to me that we had not struggled harder to keep from being separated.