The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy Omnibus (67 page)

Lord Golden bowed his head for a moment, and then nodded to her gravely.

Deerkin rubbed a hand across his eyes. He spoke as if he had not even heard her words to Lord Golden. ‘You are wrong, Laurel. I owe you a debt, and I will never forget it. When we were children, we were never kind to you when you came to visit your mother’s kin. We always excluded you. Even your own brother called you the mole, blind and tunnelling where we ran free and wise. And I had shot you. I had no right to expect any help from you. But you came to me. You saved my life.’

Laurel’s voice was stiff. ‘Arno,’ she said. ‘I did it for Arno. He was as blind and deaf as I was to this “family” magic that excluded us. He alone was my playmate when I visited. But he loved you, always, and in the end he thought you worth his life.’ She shook her head. ‘I would not have let his death be for nothing.’

Together, they had crept away from the cave that night. She had convinced him that the taking of Prince Dutiful could only bring harsh persecution down on the Old Blood, and demanded that he find elders powerful enough to demand Laudwine surrender him. Queen Kettricken, she reminded him, had already spoken out against those who lynched the Witted. Would he turn that queen, the first who had taken their part in generations, against them? Laurel had convinced Deerkin that, as Piebalds had stolen the Prince, so the Old Blood must return him. It was the only reparation they could make.

She turned to Lord Golden. Her voice pleaded. ‘We returned with aid as swiftly as we could. It is not the fault of Old Blood that they must live scattered and silent. From farm to cottage
we rode, gathering those of influence who were willing to speak sense to Laudwine. It was hard, for that is not the Old Blood way. Each man is supposed to rule himself, each household have its own integrity. Few wanted to stand over Laudwine and demand he do what was right.’ Her gaze left Lord Golden and travelled over the others gathered there. ‘To those of you who came, I give great thanks. And if you would let me, I would make your names known to the Queen, so she would know where her debt lies.’

‘And where to bring the rope and the sword?’ the healer asked quietly. ‘Times are not yet kind enough for names to be given, Laurel. We have yours. If we need the Queen’s ear, we can seek her out through you.’

Those they had gathered were Old Blood folk, but they did not style themselves Piebalds, nor did they condone the latter’s ways. They clove to the old teachings, Deerkin told Lord Golden earnestly. It shamed him that for a time he had followed Laudwine. Anger had made him do it, he swore, not a desire to master animals and turn them to his own purposes as the Piebalds did. He had seen too many of his own folk hung and quartered these last two years. It was enough to turn any man’s reason, but he had seen the error of his ways, thank Eda. And thanks to Laurel, and he hoped his cousin would forgive him the cruelty of their childhood years.

The conversation lapped against me like the rhythmic washing of waves. I tried to stay awake and make sense of his words, but we were so weary, my wolf and I. Nighteyes lay beside me and I could not separate where his pain ended and mine began. I did not care. Even if pain had been all we could share any more, I would have taken it gladly. We still had one another.

The Prince was not so fortunate. I rolled my head to look at him, but he slept on, his breath sighing in and out as if even in his dreams, he grieved.

I felt myself wavering in and out of awareness. The wolf’s
heavy sleep tugged at me, a pleasant lure. Sleep is the great healer, Burrich had always told me. I prayed he had been right. As if they were the notes of far-off music, I sensed Nighteyes’ dreams of hunting, but I could not yet give in to my longing to share them. The Fool might be confident of Laurel and Deerkin and their fellows, but I was not. I would keep watch, I promised myself. I would keep watch.

In my seeming sleep, I shifted to observe them. I idly marked that though Laurel sat between Lord Golden and Deerkin, she sat closer to the noble than she did to her own cousin. The talk had moved nearer to negotiation than explanation. I listened keenly to Lord Golden’s measured and reasonable words.

‘I fear you do not completely understand Queen Kettricken’s position. I cannot, of course, presume to speak for her. I am but a guest at the Farseer court, a newcomer and a foreigner at that. Yet perhaps these very limitations let me see more clearly what familiarity blinds you to. The crown and the Farseer name will not shield Prince Dutiful from persecution as a Witted one. Rather they will be as oil thrown on a fire; it will immolate him. You admit Queen Kettricken has done far more than any of her predecessors to outlaw persecution of your people. But if she reveals that her son is Witted, not only may both he and she be thrown down from power, but her very efforts to shelter your folk will be seen as a suspicious attempt to shield her own blood.’

‘Queen Kettricken has outlawed putting us to death simply for being “Witted”, that is true,’ Deerkin replied. ‘But it does not mean we have stopped dying. The reality is obvious. Those who seek to kill us all fabricate injuries and invent supposed wrongs we have done to them. One man lies, another swears to it, and an Old Blood father or sister is hanged and quartered and burnt. Perhaps if the Queen sees the same threat to her son that my father sees to his, she will take greater action on our behalf.’

Behind Deerkin, a man gave a slow nod.

Lord Golden spread his hands gracefully. ‘I will do what I can, I assure you. The Queen will hear a full accounting of all you did to save her son. Laurel, too, is more than a simple Huntswoman to Queen Kettricken. She is friend and confidante as well. She will tell the Queen all you did to recover her son. More, I cannot do. I cannot make promises for Queen Kettricken.’

The man who had nodded behind Deerkin leaned forwards. He touched him on the shoulder, a ‘go on’ nudge. Then he leaned back and waited. Deerkin looked uncomfortable for a moment. Then he cleared his voice and spoke. ‘We will be watching the Queen and listening for what she will say to her nobles. We know better than any the threat that Prince Dutiful would face, were it known that he has Old Blood in his veins. They are the dangers that our brothers and sisters face every day. We would that our own were not at jeopardy. If the Queen sees fit to stretch forth her hand and shield our folk from persecution, then Old Blood will shield her son’s secret. But if she ignores our situation, if a blind eye is turned to the bloodshed … well …’

‘I take your meaning,’ Lord Golden replied swiftly. His voice was cool but not harsh. He took a breath. ‘Under the circumstances, it is, perhaps, the most we could ask of you. You have already restored the Farseer heir to us. This will dispose the Queen kindly towards you.’

‘So we expect,’ Deerkin responded heavily, and the men behind him nodded gravely.

Sleep beckoned me. Nighteyes was already in a torpor. His coat was sticky with salve, as was my chest and belly. There was almost no place that we didn’t hurt, but I rested my brow against the back of his neck and draped a careful arm over him. His fur stuck to my skin. The words of the conference beside the fire faded and became insignificant as I opened myself to him. I sank my consciousness past the red pain that bounded him until I found the warmth and humour of his soul.

Cats. Worse than porcupines
.

Much worse.

But the boy loved the cat.

The cat loved the boy. Poor boy.

Poor cat. The woman was selfish.

Past selfish. Evil. Her own life wasn’t enough for her.

That was a brave little cat. She held tight and took the woman with her.

Brave cat
. A pause.
Do you think it will ever come, that Witted folk can openly declare the magic?

I don’t know. It would be good. I suppose. Look how the secrecy and evil reputation of it has shaped our lives. But … but it has also been good as it has been. Ours. Yours and mine.

Yes. Rest now.

Rest.

I could not sort out which thoughts were mine and which the wolf’s. I didn’t need to. I sank into his dreams with him and we dreamed well together. Perhaps it was Dutiful’s loss that put us so much in mind of all we still possessed, and all we had had. We dreamed of a cub hunting mice beneath the rotting floor of an old outbuilding, and we dreamed of a man and a wolf pulling down a great boar between them. We dreamed of stalking one another in deep snow, tussling and yelping and shouting. Deer blood, hot in the mouth, and the rich soft liver to squabble over. And then we sank past those ancient memories into perfect rest and comfort. Healing begins in deep sleeps such as that.

He stirred first. I nearly woke as he rose, gingerly shook himself, and then stretched more bravely. His superior sense of smell told me that the edge of dawn was in the air. The weak sun had just begun to touch the dew-wet grasses, waking the smells of the earth. Game would be stirring. The hunting would be good.

I’m so tired
, I complained.
I can’t believe you’re getting up. Rest for a while longer. We’ll hunt later
.

You’re tired? I’m so tired that rest won’t ease me. Only the hunt
. I felt his wet nose poke my cheek. It was cold.
Aren’t you coming? I was sure you’d want to come with me
.

I do. I do. But not just yet. Give me just a bit longer.

Very well, little brother. Just a bit longer. Follow me when you will.

But my mind rode with his, as it had so many times. We left the cave, thick with man-stink, and walked past the cat’s new cairn. We smelled her death, and the musk of a fox who had come to the scent, but turned aside at the smell of the campfire’s smoke. Swiftly we left the camp behind. Nighteyes chose the open hillside instead of the wooded vale. The sky overhead was blue and deep, and the last star fading in the sky. The night had been colder than I had realized. Frost tipped some of the grasses still, but as the rising sun touched it, it smoked briefly and was gone. The crisp edge of the air remained, each scent as sharp as a clean knife-edge. With a wolf’s nose, I scented all and knew all. The world was ours.
The turning time
, I said to him.

Exactly. Time to change, Changer.

There were fat mice hastily harvesting seedheads in the tall grass, but we passed them by. At the top of the hill, we paused. We walked the spine of the hill, smelling the morning, tasting the lip of the day to come. There would be deer in the forested creek bottoms. They would be healthy and strong and fat, a challenge to any pack let alone a single wolf. He would need me at his side to hunt those. He would have to come back for them later. Nevertheless, he halted on top of the ridge. The morning wind riffled his fur and his ears were perked as he looked down to where we knew they must be.

Good hunting. I’m going now, my brother
. He spoke with great determination.

Alone? You can’t bring a buck down alone!
I sighed with resignation.
Wait, I’ll get up and come with you
.

Wait for you? Not likely! I’ve always had to run ahead of you and show you the way
.

Swift as thought, he slipped away from me, running down the hillside like a cloud’s shadow when the wind blows. My connection to him frayed away as he went, scattering and floating like dandelion fluff in the wind. Instead of small and secret, I felt our bond go wide and open, as if he had invited all the Witted creatures in the world in to share our joining. All the web of life on the whole hillside suddenly swelled within my heart, linked and meshed and woven through with one another. It was too glorious to contain. I had to go with him; a morning this wondrous must be shared.

‘Wait!’ I cried, and in shouting the word, I woke myself. Nearby, the Fool sat up, his hair tousled. I blinked. My mouth was full of salve and wolf-hair, my fingers buried deep in his coat. I clutched him to me, and my grip sighed his last stilled breath out of his lungs. But Nighteyes was gone. Cold rain was cascading down past the mouth of the cave.

Before the Skill can be taught, resistance to the teaching must be eliminated. Some Skillmasters have held that they must know each student a year and a day before teaching can even begin. At the end of that time, the master will know which students are ready to receive instruction. The others, no matter how likely they seemed, are then released back to their previous lives.

Other masters have held that this technique is a waste of valuable talent and potential. They espouse a more direct path to eliminating the student’s resistance, one that does not focus so much on trust as on compliance to the master’s will. A strict regimen of austerity becomes the basis for focusing the student’s will on pleasing his master. Tools to achieve this humbled attitude are fasting, cold, reduced sleep and discipline. The use of this method is recommended in times of need when coteries have to be trained and formed quickly and in quantity. The quality of Skill-user created may not be as admirable, but almost every student with any level of talent can be forced to function this way.

Observations
, Wemdel, Journeyman to Skillmaster Quilo

For a day and a night, the Old Blood healer kept Prince Dutiful in a stupor. I knew it frightened Lord Golden, despite Laurel’s efforts to reassure him that she had seen this before and the healer was only doing what needed to be done. For myself, I envied Dutiful. No such comfort was offered me, and very
little was said to me. Perhaps part of it was ostracism; when one separates oneself from supporting a society, one loses the support of that society as well. But I do not think it was completely callous cruelty. I was an adult as well as an outcast, and they expected me to deal with my loss in my own way. As strangers, there was very little they could say, and absolutely nothing they could do that would help me.

I was aware of the Fool’s sympathy, but in a peripheral way. As Lord Golden, he could say little to me. The death of my wolf was an isolating and numbing thing. The loss of Nighteyes’ companionship was cutting enough, but with him had gone my access to his keener senses. Sound seemed muted, and night darker, scent and taste dulled. It was as if the world had been robbed of its brightness. He had left me behind to dwell alone in a dimmed and stale place.

I built a funeral pyre and burned my wolf’s body. This obviously distressed the Old Blood folk, but it was my way of mourning and I took it. With my knife, I cut my hair and burned it with him, thick hanks of both black and white. With him went a long, airy lock of tawny gold. As Burrich had once done for Vixen, I stayed the day by the fire, battling the rain that strove to quench it, adding wood whenever it began to die, until even the wolf’s bones were ash.

On the second morning, the healer allowed the Prince to wake. She sat by him, watching him come out of his drugged stupor. I stood aside, but kept my own watch. I saw awareness come back slowly, first to his eyes and then to his face. His hands began to make a little nervous kneading motion, but the healer reached over and stilled them with one of her own. ‘You are not the cat. The cat died. You are a man, and you must go on living. The blessing of Old Blood is that they share their lives with us. The curse is that those lives are seldom as long as our own.’

Then she rose and left him, with no more than that to ponder. In a short time, Deerkin and his fellows mounted
and rode away. I noticed that he and Laurel found a time to speak privately before he left. Perhaps they mended some broken family tie. I knew that Chade would ask me what they had said, but I was too dispirited to attempt to spy on them.

The Piebalds had left several horses behind when they fled. One was given over by the Old Bloods to the Prince’s use. It was a little dun creature, its spirit as dull as its hide. It suited Prince Dutiful perfectly, as did the steady drizzle of rain. Before noon, we mounted and began our journey back to Buckkeep.

I rode alongside the Prince on Myblack. She had recovered from the worst of her limp. Laurel and Lord Golden rode ahead of us. They talked to one another, but I could not seem to follow their conversation. I do not think they spoke softly and privately. Rather, it was part of the deadening of my world. I felt numbed and dazed, half-blind. I knew I was alive because my injuries hurt and the rain was cold. But all the rest of the world, all sense and sensation, was dimmed. I no longer walked fearlessly in the darkness; the wind no longer spoke to me of a rabbit on a hillside or a deer that had recently crossed the road. Food had lost all savour.

The Prince was little better. He managed his grief as graciously as I did, with surliness and silence. There was, I suppose, an unspoken wall of blame between us. But for him, my wolf would live still, or at least would have died in kindlier circumstances. I had killed his cat, right before his eyes. Somehow it was even worse that a spiderweb of Skill attached us still. I could not look at him without being aware of just how completely miserable he was. I suspect he could feel my unspoken accusation of him. I knew it was not just, but I was in too much pain to be fair. If the Prince had kept to his name and his duty, if he had stayed at Buckkeep, I reasoned, then his cat would be alive, and my wolf as well. I never spoke the words aloud. I didn’t need to.

The journey back to Buckkeep was miserable for all of us. When we reached the road, we followed it north. None of
us desired to visit Hallerby and the inn of the Piebald Prince again. And despite Deerkin’s assurances that Lady Bresinga and her family had had no hand in the Piebalds’ plot against the Prince, we stayed well away from their lands and keep. The rains came down. The Old Blood folk had left us what they could of supplies, but it was not much. At the first small town we came to, we spent the night in a dismal inn. There Lord Golden paid handsomely for a messenger to take a scroll by the swiftest way possible to ‘his cousin’ in Buckkeep Town. Then we struck out cross-country, heading for the next settlement that offered a ferry across the Buck River. The detours took us two extra days. We camped in the rain, ate our scanty rations, and slept cold and wet. I knew the Fool anxiously counted the dwindling days before the new moon and the Prince’s betrothal ceremony. Nonetheless, we went slowly, and I suspected that Lord Golden bought time for his messenger to reach Buckkeep and alert the Queen to the circumstances of our return. It might have been, also, that he tried to give both the Prince and me some time to deal with our bereavement before we returned to the clatter and society of Buckkeep Castle.

If a man does not die of a wound, then it heals in some fashion, and so it is with loss. From the sharp pain of immediate bereavement, both the Prince and I passed into the grey days of numb bewilderment and waiting. So grief has always seemed to me, a time of waiting not for the hurt to pass, but to become accustomed to it.

It did not help my temperament that Lord Golden and Laurel did not find the way as tedious and lonely as the Prince and I did. They rode before us, stirrup to stirrup, and though they did not laugh aloud or sing gay wayfaring songs, they conversed near continuously and seemed to take a good deal of pleasure in one another’s company. I told myself that I scarcely needed a nursemaid, and that there were excellent reasons why the Fool and I should not betray the depth of our friendship to either Laurel or Dutiful. But I ached with loss
and loneliness, and resentment was the least painful emotion I could feel.

Three days before the new moon, we came to Newford. As it was named, so it was, a fording and ferry that had not existed on my last journey through this area. It had a large dockyard, and a good fleet of flat-bottomed river barges was tied there. The little town around it was new, raw as a scab with its rough timbered houses and warehouses. We did not linger but went straight to the ferry dock and waited in the rain until the evening ferry was ready to cross.

The Prince held the reins of his nondescript horse and stared silently across the water. The recent rains had swelled the river and thickened it with silt, but I could not find sufficient love of life to be scared of death. The tossing and spray as the ferrymen struggled against the current seemed but one more annoying delay. Delay, I wondered sarcastically to myself. And what did I rush toward? Home and hearth? Wife and children? I had Hap still, I reminded myself, but on the heels of that thought I knew I did not. Hap was a young man striking out on his own. For me to cling to him now and make him the focus of my life would have been the act of a leech. So who was I, when I stood alone, stripped of all others? It was a difficult question.

The ferry lurched as we scraped gravel, and then men were drawing it in tighter to the bank. We were across. Buckkeep was a day’s ride away. Somewhere above the dense clouds, the sliver of old moon lingered. We would reach Buckkeep before Prince Dutiful’s betrothal ceremony. We had done it. Yet I felt no sense of elation or even accomplishment. I only wanted this journey to be finished.

The rain came down in torrents as we reached the landing, and Lord Golden declared firmly that we would go no further that night. The inn there was older than the town on the other side of the river. Rain masked the other buildings of the hamlet, but I thought I glimpsed a small livery stable, and a scatter of homes beyond it. The inn’s signboard was an oar painted on
an old tiller, and the lumber of its walls showed weathered grey where its whitewashing had faded. The savage night had crowded the inn near full. Lord Golden and his party were too bedraggled to invoke the assumptions of nobility. Fortunately, he had sufficient coin to buy both the respect and awe of the innkeeper. Merchant Kestrel, as he identified himself, obtained two rooms for us, although one was a small one up under the rafters. This his ‘sister’ gamely declared would suit her admirably, and the merchant and his two servants would have the other. If the Prince had any qualms about travelling in disguise, he did not show them. Hooded and cloaked, he stood dripping on the porch with me until a serving-boy came out to tell us that our master’s room was ready.

As I passed through the entry, I heard a woman’s clear voice lifted in song from the common room.
Of course
, I thought to myself.
Of course
. Who else could better keep watch at an inn than a minstrel? Starling sang that ancient lay of the two lovers who defied their families and ran off to leap to their deaths for love of one another. I did not even glance into the room, though I saw Laurel had paused to listen by the door. The Prince followed me listlessly up the stairs to a large but rustic chamber.

Lord Golden had preceded us. An inn-boy was making up the fire while two others set up a bathing tub and draught screens in the corner. There were two large beds in the room, and a pallet near the door. There was a window at one end of the room. The Prince walked to it and morosely stared out into the night. There was a rack near the fire, and I fulfilled my role by helping Lord Golden out of his soaked and dirty cloak. I shrugged out of mine, hung them both to dry on the rack, and then pulled his wet boots off as a stream of servants moved in and out of the room, bringing buckets of hot water and a repast of meat pies, stewed fruit, bread and ale. They all moved with such precision that they reminded me of a troop of jugglers as they swept in as a wave and then likewise receded
from the room. When they had vanished out of the door once more, I shut it firmly behind them. The hot water in the tub filled the room with the aroma of bathing herbs and I suddenly longed to lean back in it and seek oblivion.

Lord Golden’s words recalled me to the reality. ‘My prince, your bath is ready. Do you require assistance?’

The Prince stood. He let his wet cloak fall to the floor with a slap. He looked at it for a moment, then picked it up and brought it to the drying rack. He spread it there with the air of a boy used to attending to his own needs. ‘No assistance. Thank you,’ he said quietly. He glanced at the food steaming on the table. ‘Do not wait on me. I do not stand on formalities. I see no sense in your going hungry while I am bathing.’

‘In that, you are your father’s son,’ Lord Golden observed approvingly.

The Prince inclined his head gravely to the compliment but made no other response.

Lord Golden waited until Prince Dutiful had vanished behind the screens. From the landlord, he had secured paper, ink and quill. He sat down at a little table with these supplies, and busied himself silently for some moments. I walked over to the hearth with a meat pie from the table. I ate it standing while the fire at my back steamed some of the wet from my clothes. Lord Golden spoke to me as his quill scratched out a final line. ‘Well, at least we’re out of the weather for a time. I think we shall have a good sleep here, and go on tomorrow, but not too early in the morning. Does that suit you, Tom?’

‘As you wish, Lord Golden,’ I replied as he blew on the missive, then rolled it. He tied it with a thread drawn from his once-grand cloak. He handed it to me, one eyebrow raised.

I did not mistake his meaning. ‘I’d rather not,’ I said very quietly.

He left the writing table and went to where the food was spread. He began to serve himself, deliberately clattering dishes and pots as he did so. His voice was soft as he muttered, ‘And I
would rather you did not have to go. But I cannot. Unkempt as I am, there are still folk here that might recognize Lord Golden and mark his interest in the minstrel. I’ve earned enough scandal to my name on this journey. Have you forgotten my actions at Galekeep? I’ve all of that to explain away when I return to Buckkeep. Nor can Dutiful go, and as far as I know, Laurel is ignorant of the connection. Starling might recognize her, but would look askance at a note delivered by her. So you it must be, I fear.’

I feared the same, and feared more the traitorous part of me that actually wished to go down the stairs and catch the minstrel’s eye. There is a part of any man that will do anything to stave off loneliness. It is not necessarily the most cowardly part of a man’s soul, but I’ve seen any number of men do shameful things to indulge it. Worse, I wondered if the Fool were not deliberately sending me down to her. Once before, when loneliness had threatened to devour my heart, he had told her where to find me. It had been a misguided comfort I took in her arms. I vowed I would not do so again.