There is a cage made of crawling, squirming things. Inside is something that used to be a man. A black-and-white rat looks at him, and then giggles and turns handsprings as it abandons him.
I make no illustration for this dream. It felt as if it would be true, and I would witness it.
Bee Farseer’s dream journal
‘Anything a bear can eat, a man can eat, too.’ Burrich told me that, long ago, after I died in Regal’s dungeon and before I had found myself as a human again. He was looking guardedly at a leaf-buried bear-kill we had stumbled across on one of my supervised walks. He had very hastily cut some chunks from the decomposing fawn and then we had left the bear’s cache quickly.
Aged meat is far more tender than a fresh kill. I remembered that meat fondly. But he was correct in all aspects of what he had said. A man can eat grubs from under a rotted log, or a frog. Tender roots and the young shoots of water-grasses. Even pond scum can thicken a soup, if one has something to cook soup in. But pond algae can be eaten by the handful, along with watercress, and the roots of cattails can be roasted in a low fire. Sometimes I wondered if Verity had subsisted in the same way before Kettricken and I had arrived at the quarry to hunt real food for him.
The morning after my wolf left me, I awoke and rubbed my sandy eyes. As I sat up, a terrible coughing spell took me. When I could gasp in a breath, I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. It left a smear of blood. I looked at it and a sad, sick certainty rose in me. Then, a terrible feeling in my mouth. Not pain. I would have preferred pain. I leaned forward and spat on the ground in front of me. Blood and saliva. And several pale squirming things, no thicker than a bowstring, no longer than a finger joint.
Oh.
I went to the pond, sucked in water, sloshed it through my mouth and spat on the ground. Another one.
Small bits of information tumbled and joined in my mind. An idea threatened me. The pale messenger that Bee and I had burned. I mulled over that memory and then denied it. Nighteyes had insisted that I had worms. I did. That was all. I crouched down to study the creature that had lived inside me. It was a kind I had not seen before, in man or beast. But that was all it was. Just a worm. I wondered if I could be lucky enough to find wild garlic or orangeroot growing nearby. Both were good for clearing parasites from the body. But a more practical plan would be to begin my journey to the ancient market and go from there to Buck. There would be healers there.
I scooped up more water in my hands and rubbed my face. When I dropped my hands, they were tinged pink. I touched my nostrils and looked at my fingers. No.
I touched my fingertips to my eyes. They came away red. And with the blood on my fingertips came a sickening certainty. The messenger had wept blood. She had said the worms the Servants had infected her with were eating her eyes. That she could scarcely see any more. I lifted my eyes and looked about me. I could still see.
But for how long?
I had two tasks every day that I performed faithfully. I gathered more firewood, and I went to the water to drink. I longed to go to the creek to fish, but my strength was failing me. Nosebleeds were a daily occurrence now, and my back and thighs were covered with small, itching sores. The only parts of my legs that were free of the sores were where the Silver had splashed me.
Too late I had come to agree with the wolf. I wished he would return to me so that I could tell him so. By the third day of his absence, the reduction in my stamina was something I could no longer argue with. My wolf was gone, and I knew I was never going home again. I’d made several attempts to Skill and failed at all of them. Perhaps it was the Silver on my body, or my general weakness, or the presence of so much Skill-stone around me. The reason didn’t matter. I was alone. And I had one last task to do. I had to prepare a stone for us. And hope that the wolf would return to share it with me.
Once Nighteyes had begun the carving with my handprint it did not occur to me that it would be anything other than a wolf. Daily I toiled on our ‘dragon’, my silver hand stroking the stone, as I gave it the memories Nighteyes and I shared. I was surprised to see that the wolf emerging from the stone stood with teeth bared and hackles raised. Were the two of us, together, truly so fierce of visage? Yet even as I poured in memories of hunts and shared kills, of wild romps in the snow and mice caught in an old hut, of porcupine quills pulled and his teeth pressing hard against my back as he sheared off an arrow-shaft, I knew that I did not have enough to fill this stone flesh. I knew that when it came time to draw my last breath, I would lean on this cold creature and pass into him. And remain here, mired in stone, just as Girl-on-a-Dragon had stood for so many decades of years.
I should have listened to him. I should have. If Nighteyes had been with me still, there might have been more of us to put into the wolf-dragon.
He had only the colours of the stone, and that bothered me. Before I died, I wanted to once more look into those wise eyes. I wanted, a last time, to see his glance catch the firelight and gleam green and startling. I began to sleep with my back against him, as we used to do. Not that the stone gave me any warmth, but in the hopes that my dreams might permeate it and help the wolf emerge more swiftly.
I woke in the night. There are two kinds of sleep when one is weak and cold. One is the kind where one pretends to sleep as one shivers and shifts and tries to clutch body warmth. I had wrapped my stolen cloak around me, covering my head to keep the gnats from my ears and eyes. Insects do love a dying animal. Then I had fallen into the second kind of sleep, the heavy sleep of exhaustion that cold and pain cannot break. That sleep, I think, is the precursor to death.
Thus I came out of it slowly and reluctantly, unsure of where dream gave way to reality. Voices. Scuffing footsteps. I struggled to untangle my head from its wrapping. I didn’t stand up. But I opened my eyes and blinked dully at the startling yellow glare of a swinging lantern coming toward me.
‘This way, I think,’ someone said.
‘We should make a camp and continue in the morning. I can see nothing here.’
‘We are close. I know we are so close. Bee, cannot you Skill to him? He said he felt you Skill, once.’
‘This stone … no. I have no training. You know I have no training!’
The light was so bright I could see nothing else. Then I made out shadows and silhouettes. People. Carrying a lantern. And packs. I feebly pushed my Wit toward them.
‘FITZ!’ someone shouted, and I realized I’d heard that querying call before, in my sleep, and it had wakened me. And more, that I knew the voice.
‘Over here,’ I called. But my voice was thin in a dry throat.
The wolf hit me with an almost physical impact. He was a jolt to my dwindling body, almost like an infusion of Skill-strength. Oh, my brother, I could not find you to return to you. I feared we were too late. I feared you had entered the stone without me.
I am here.
‘Look. Embers of a fire. He’s there! Fitz! Fitz!’
‘Don’t touch me!’ I cried out and clutched my Silver hand to my chest. They came to me at a run, shapes emerging out of the twilight. The Fool reached me first, but as the firelight illuminated him, he halted an arm’s length away and stared at me, his mouth hanging ajar. I looked back at him and waited.
‘Oh, Fitz!’ the Fool cried. ‘What did you do to yourself?’
‘No worse than what you have done, twice,’ I managed a twisted smile. ‘I did not choose this,’ I added feebly.
‘Far worse than anything I’ve ever done!’ he declared. His gaze wandered over me, lingering on the silvered side of my face. His expression was more telling than any mirror. ‘How could you do this? Why?’
‘I didn’t. It happened. The container of Silver. The fire-brick in my bag.’ I held up a helpless silvered hand. ‘Da!’ Bee shrieked furiously, and my watering eyes showed me Per with his arms wrapped about my younger daughter, holding her back.
She kicked and struggled, baring her teeth. Abruptly Per said to her, ‘Bee, you are not that foolish!’ and let her go. She did not rush to me. She came in small steps, studying me carefully. Then she set her small hands onto my arm, touching flesh to flesh with no Silver between us. I could suddenly draw a deeper breath. Hope flowed in me. I could live. I could go home.
Then I realized what she was doing. ‘Bee, no!’ I rebuked her and pulled my arm free of her grip. ‘You do not Skill strength to me.’
But she had. ‘I have strength to spare,’ she pleaded, but I shook my head. ‘Bee. All of you. You cannot touch me now. I am carving my dragon. Our dragon, for Nighteyes and me. Everything I have, I must put into it. And I must not pull you and your strength into it.’
The Fool set his hands, one gloved, on Bee’s shoulders. He drew her back gently, but I saw her stiffen with resentment and, for a moment, flash her teeth at his touch. Lant and Per were staring at my silvered face in something between horror and pity.
The Fool spoke. ‘Explanations can wait. After we have built up the fire, and made hot tea and soup for Fitz. There are blankets in the big pack.’ He lifted his voice to a shout. ‘Spark! Over here!’ he cried, and I glimpsed another bobbing lantern. Then they were all unshouldering their packs. And he spoke on, of wondrous things, of hot tea with honey and smoked meat and blankets while the wolf capered joyously inside me.
I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, other people had approached and were busying themselves with camp tasks. I sat quietly while Bee told me of their journey home, and described the shape of her life at Buckkeep Castle. The Fool orbited us at a distance, sometimes pausing to listen to some detail of Bee’s recitation, but mostly engaged in directing Lant and Per in setting up a shelter and sorting supplies from the packs. I leaned with my back on my partially-carved wolf and tried to take pleasure in what I knew was actually farewell.
But Motley with her silver beak came and perched on my stone wolf. She cocked her head and said nothing but I thought she looked at me sadly. She whetted her silver beak on the stone, once, twice, and I felt something go into the wolf. The memory of a kind shepherd. A man who had taken in a freak nestling. Then she hopped into the air to land on the firewood pile.
I was given a thick wool blanket and Per built up my fire recklessly large, and Lant fetched water for a cooking pot and a kettle. ‘Eat this,’ Spark said, and set wrapped food before me. I was surprised that she was there, but the smell of the food drove even a greeting out of my thoughts. I opened the sticky cloth. It was cold bacon, thick with grease, wrapped in a thick cut of dark bread. Lant uncorked a bottle of wine and set it within my reach. They moved about me as if I were a rabid dog that might lunge and bite, avoiding my touch as they offered me every physical comfort. I filled my belly with bread and meat, and washed down the immense half-chewed bites I took with the heady red wine.
Spark was brewing tea in a fat kettle. Lant stirred a pot of simmering water enriched with chunks of dried beef, and carrots and potatoes. I could smell it and a deep wave of hunger left me shaking. I hugged myself against it.
‘Fitz. Are you in pain?’ It was the Fool asking that, in a voice fraught with guilt.
‘Of course I am,’ I said. ‘They are eating me, the little bastards. They eat me, and my body rebuilds itself, and they eat me afresh. I almost think it is worse after I have eaten.’
‘I will see to that,’ a woman said. ‘I have learned a great deal about herbs for pain. And I brought what I thought best would serve.’ I looked again, and it was Kettricken. I felt a boyish lurch of joy inside me. My queen. Oh, Nighteyes.
‘Kettricken. I did not see you there.’
‘You never did,’ she said and smiled sadly. Then she called to Spark, asking for a little kettle from her pack and the blue roll of herb-bundles.
‘Da, tomorrow, you will feel better,’ Bee told me. ‘We will begin the journey back to the market-circle, and from there, we can take you home. Nettle says that there are new healers at Buckkeep, from far-off places with new ideas.’
‘So Nettle sent you to bring me home?’ I suddenly realized how wrong this all was. Was this a dying man’s illusion? I looked into the darkness. ‘She sent no coterie here?’
An uncomfortable expression passed over Bee’s face. ‘I left her a note,’ she said quietly. Then, at my shock, she added, ‘She wasn’t going to let me come. She was going to send a coterie after you, to bring you home.’
‘Bee, I am not going to go home. I am going to finish here.’ She reached out to take my hand and I tucked it under my other arm. ‘No, Bee.’ She lifted her hands and covered her face. I looked over her head at the Fool hovering at the edge of our circle. I tried to find some comforting words. ‘You will have to trust me that this is a better end than I would face if I came home. And this is the ending I choose for myself. My decision, for me.’
The Fool stared at me, and then stepped back out of the firelight. Kettricken came, bearing a small steaming kettle and a thick pottery mug. She offered me the mug and I held it as she poured her brew into it. Her hands shook slightly.
I sipped at the tea and tasted carryme and valerian for pain, and enlivening herbs and ginger all sweetened with honey. It worked swiftly; the pains eased. It was as if I poured life back into my body.
‘Tomorrow you will be strong enough, and we will take you back to Buckkeep and the healers there,’ Kettricken offered hopefully.
I smiled at her as she sat down beside my fire. Yes. It would be a long farewell. ‘Kettricken, you have been here before. We both know how this ends. You see my wolf at my back. I will finish him, and now that Nighteyes is with me again, it will go more swiftly.’ I reached behind me to set my hand on his paw. I felt each toe, the space between them, and recalled how his claws had been set. I stroked the polished smoothness of one, and almost expected him to twitch his foot away in annoyance, as he always had.
You always teased me when I was trying to sleep, barely touching the hairs between my toes. It tickled unbearably.
I let that shared memory soak into the stone. For a time, I was alone with him. I heard Kettricken retrieve the mug and her quiet steps as she walked away.
‘Fitz, can you leave off that for a time? Stop carving until you have regained some of your strength?’ There was a plea in Lant’s voice. I opened my eyes. Time had passed. They had rigged a shelter over my wolf and me. The fire was in front of it, and the tent contained the warmth. I was grateful. The Mountain nights were cold. They sat in a semicircle on the other side of the fire. I looked around at them. Little Bee, my stableboy, an apprentice assassin, Chade’s bastard, and my queen. And the Fool. He was there, sitting at the very edge of the firelight. Our eyes met and then looked away from me. He had seen this before, as had Kettricken. I tried to help the others understand.
‘Once begun, there is no stopping this task. I have already put a great deal of myself into the wolf, and as I add more, I will become vaguer—just as Verity did. This task will consume me, as it consumed him.’ I struggled to focus on their anxious faces. ‘Bee, know this now, while I can still marshal my thoughts. I will become distant to you. It almost broke Kettricken’s heart, how Verity ignored her. But he never stopped loving her. He had put his love for her into his dragon, for he never expected to see her again. It is still there, in the stone. To last forever. And so it will be with my love for you. And the wolf’s love for you.’ I looked at Lant, at Spark, at Per. ‘Everything I feel for each one of you will go into the stone.’ My gaze sought out the Fool’s, but he was looking past me, into the darkness.
Bee was sitting between Spark and Per. Her hair had grown but it was still short. Golden and curly. I had never seen such hair. My curls and my mother’s coloration. My mother. Would I put her into the wolf? Yes. For she had loved me in the time she had me.
‘Fitz?’
‘Yes?’
‘You keep drifting away.’ Kettricken looked at me with concern. Bee had wilted over and was asleep by the fire. Someone had put a blanket over her. ‘Are you hungry still? Do you want more food?’
I looked down at a bowl with a spoon in it. The taste of beef soup was in my mouth. ‘Yes. Yes, please.’
‘And then you should sleep. We should all sleep.’
‘I’ll keep the first watch,’ Lant offered.
‘I will keep you company,’ Spark added.
I finished the soup and someone took the bowl. Soon, I would sleep. But while the taste of the good food was fresh in my mind, I would put it into my wolf.
In the time before dawn, I felt a tug at my sleeve. I’d been putting the roughness on the bottoms of the pads of his feet. Strange to shape something I could neither see nor touch. I looked down at Bee sitting cross-legged beside me. She had an open book before her, and a pot of ink and a brush and a pen, all set out neatly. ‘Da, I dreamed of a time when I would sit beside you and you would tell me the tale of your days. I want that now, for I do not think we will have years for you to pass that on to me.’
‘I recall that you told me that dream.’ I looked around the quarry. ‘This is not how I imagined it. I thought I would be an old man, too feeble to write, and that we would sit by a hearth fire in a pleasant chamber, after a long and lovely life together. Is that the book I gave you to write in?’
‘No. That one went to the bottom of the bay at Clerres, when Paragon became dragons and we all fell in the water. This is a new one. The one you call Fool gave it to me, along with a book for writing down my dreams. He reads that one, and tries to help me understand them. But this one … He has explained how you must put all your memories into your wolf so that he can become a stone wolf, just as Verity is a stone dragon. But as you put them in, if you spoke them aloud, I could write them down. So I would have at least that much of you to keep.’
‘What would you have me tell you?’ It was hard to stay focused on her. My stone wolf waited for me.
‘Everything. Everything you might have told me as I was growing up. What is the first thing you remember?’
Everything I might have told her, had I longer to live. That was a fresh cut of pain. Was it a memory to consider the future we would never have? I considered her question. ‘The first thing I remember clearly? I know I have older memories, but I hid them from myself, long ago.’ I drew a deep breath. Hiding memories again. Setting the pains and the joys deep into stone. ‘The rain had soaked through me. The day was chill and cold. The hand that held mine was hard and callused. His grip was remorseless but not unkind. The cobblestones were icy, and that grip kept me from falling when I slipped. But it also would not let me turn around and run back to my mother.’
She dipped her pen and began to write rapidly. I could not tell if she took down my exact words, and as I began to pour those first memories into the wolf, what she wrote mattered less and less.
Dawn came. Lant and Per followed my directions to the stream and came back with fish. There was bread to go with it, and bacon to cook it in. I felt my strength returning to me as my body finally began to get the sustenance it needed to both rebuild what the parasites were destroying and power me through my carving. They were catching the fish and bringing the firewood. I no longer had to leave my carving at all. It was kind of them and I managed to tell them so, but the more I carved my wolf, the more focus it demanded and the less I cared for any of them.
I knew what was happening to me. It was not the first time that I had poured memories into a stone dragon. Decades ago, I had taken the pain of losing Molly and poured it into Girl-on-a-Dragon. Surrendering that pain to stone had deadened me in a way that was a relief, but there was a darker side to that forgetting. I’ve seen folk who numbed their pain with strong drink or Smoke or other herbs and always the loss of their pain made them less connected. Less human. And so it was with me.
Every day, I told tales to my little daughter, and every day I gave those same memories to the stone. Sometimes she wept for me as I told her of my days in Regal’s dungeons. When I told her that after she was born I was not sure how to love such a peculiar infant, she wept again. Perhaps for her mother, partnered to such a thoughtless man, or perhaps for herself, child to such a man. And the pain that thought gave me, I pushed as well into the stone. It was a relief to have it gone.
Sometimes I laughed as I babbled to her of pranks that Hands and I had played, and sometimes I sang aloud as I told her of learning ‘Crossfire’s Coterie’ from a wandering minstrel. Nighteyes and I had merged more closely than ever into one being, so that it was rare to hear his thoughts as something other than my own. And I told his memories as well, of kills and fights and sleeping by the fire. She asked me when I had first met the Fool, and that tale led to another and another and another, all the stories of how my life had intersected and twined with his. So much of his life was mine and so much of mine was his.
I worked and all about me, the life of the camp went on. Lant and Per hunted and fished, Spark hauled water and prepared the herb teas that kept my pains at bay. Some of the sores on my back opened. It was a distraction when Kettricken insisted on pouring warmed water down my back and using a handful of moss to scrub out the tiny mites that writhed in the sores. When I objected, she asked, ‘Would it be better if they ate you alive before your wolf was done?’ And then I saw the sense of what she did. She wore gloves and burned them in the fire afterward.
Sometimes, when I had to stop working to eat or to drink, I saw the sadness in their faces. I felt guilt at the pain I gave them. And shame. And those things became emotions that I could put into my wolf.
Several days after the Fool and Bee had arrived, others came. They rode horses into our camp, and brought with them more food. Bread and cheese and wine, once so simple, were now things to be savoured before my memories of them went into the stone. That evening, I became aware of who they were. I looked into Nettle’s grieved and shocked eyes. The Skill-coterie who had assisted her in coming set up their own tents at a short distance from ours. They spoke about me and around me and sometimes to me, but it was hard to steal my awareness from my task. Nettle spoke harshly to Bee and Spark and the Fool and Lant. I considered intervening, but I had the wolf to think of. There was no time or emotion to spare for other things.
Nettle brought me food that evening—wonderful camp-bread baked in the fire’s embers and sharing its fragrance with the evening sky, sour apples toasted to a soft tang, and a slice from a smoked ham. I ate, savouring every bite twice, for I knew I would put each delightful sensation into my wolf. Nettle kept asking me if I would allow a Skilled healer to touch me.
‘It’s dangerous,’ I warned the waiting man. ‘Not only that you may somehow transfer some of the parasites to yourself, but also that I may accidentally take something of yours for my wolf.’
The healer made a very cautious inspection of my infested wounds and attempted to see what might be happening inside me. He was a competent and plainspoken man. ‘The damage is extensive. In his weakened state, any herb we give him to try to kill the parasites would also kill him.’
Bee spoke up. ‘Cannot the coterie use the Skill to tell the parasites to be dead?’
The healer looked shocked. Then thoughtful. ‘If the creatures had minds at all, perhaps a very powerful Skill-user could suggest to them that their hearts stop beating. If they have hearts … No. I am sorry, child. There are such multitudes of them infesting your father that, even if we could Skill death to them, by the time we had killed a quarter of them, the rest would have bred enough to replace those we killed. Lord Chance has told us of seeing eggs and maggots in your father’s sores. They are living in him like wood ants in a fallen log. I tell you this plainly. Prince FitzChivalry is going to die. In his weakened state, I am not sure we can even take him back to Buckkeep Castle. Our best and kindest course might be to make him as comfortable as we can here. And offer him an end that begins with a deep sleep instead of what I fear is to come.’
Bee lowered her face into her hands. I saw Per put his arm around her, and saw also the unease on Nettle’s face.
‘I will be going into the stone,’ I announced. ‘I am not sure that is the same as dying.’
‘It’s close enough. You’ll be gone,’ Nettle said bitterly.
‘And not for the first time,’ I replied.
‘Oh, that is so true,’ she said, and the impact of her words was like an arrow to my chest.
I tried to clear my throat and realized there were no words that I could speak. Spark poured something into a cup and Lant passed it to me. I drank it. Some kind of spirit and a mixture of herbs. ‘What is in this?’ I asked when it was gone.
‘Carryme. Valerian. Some willowbark. A few other herbs that Nettle’s healer brought.’
‘As long as they aren’t the herbs that will make me sleep my way into death. I do not desire that, at all. I must be awake and aware when I go into the wolf. As Verity was.’ I shook my head. ‘Let no one seek to drug me insensible to save me pain. Keep me awake.’
I looked over at my younger daughter. Per was standing behind her. He would never be Tallestman, but he would be broad, with the shoulders for an axe. Time to think of these things while I still could. Already the stone was calling to me. It was hard to keep my eyes focused on the people here. I drew a breath and squared my shoulders. Get this task done while I could. I looked at Nettle.
‘I have some directives regarding my younger daughter, Bee. I charge you, Nettle, and you, Fool, and you, Lant and you, my lovely queen Kettricken, to be sure that they are carried out.’ I had said something wrong. I saw it in Nettle’s face. Too late. I had never been good at speeches. And this one had not been planned. ‘I would ask my old friend Riddle as well, but he is a wiser man than I, and has remained with his daughter to watch over her.’ I forced myself to meet Nettle’s eyes. ‘Would that I had done so. Not once, but twice over. I felt the decision was not mine, but I now take responsibility for it. My daughters, I am sorry. I should have stayed with both of you.’ That pang of guilt was still sharp. No matter how often I put it into the stone wolf, when I thought of my failure, it still cut me. The Fool was staring at me. He shared that guilt. I could not mend what he must feel.
I reined my thoughts back to the task at hand. ‘Per. Stand forth.’
The boy came, wide-eyed, to stand before me. No. Not a boy. I’d taken that from him. I’d taken him from a stableboy to a young man who could and had killed—for my sake and Bee’s. I could trust him. ‘I wish you to remain at Bee’s side and serve her until the end of your days, or until one or both of you wish to be freed of this connection. Until then, I desire that no one part the two of you. And I wish you to be educated alongside her. In every discipline. Language. History. And for her to learn the sword and other weapons alongside you. I have nothing of my own to give you in reward for your service. Every valuable thing I ever owned, I’ve lost along the way. Except … wait.’ I groped at the ragged collar of my shirt. It was there, as it always was.
It took me a time to unfasten it. I looked at it on my palm. The little fox looked up at me with sparkling eyes. I looked at Kettricken. ‘Would you give this to the boy, please? As once you gave it to me?’
‘After all these years, you still—’ She choked, and held out her hand. I tipped it into her palm. She looked at Per. ‘Young man. What is your full name?’
‘My lady, I am Perseverance of Withywoods. Son of Tallerman, grandson of Tallman.’ Instinct made him kneel. He bent his head, baring the back of his neck to her.
‘Come closer,’ she bade him, and he rose to do so. I saw now that her fingers were becoming knotted and knuckly. But she made no complaint as she pinned the little silver fox carefully to his Buck-blue jerkin. ‘Serve her well and let nothing but death part you from that duty.’
‘I shall.’
A moment of stillness. I broke it. ‘Nettle, my dear. Please ask Riddle to see to Per’s training. He will know exactly what he needs to be taught.’
‘I will,’ she said quietly.
‘I have nothing to give you,’ I told her. ‘Nothing for you and nothing for Bee. There are a few things of your mother’s at Withywoods in the chest at the foot of my bed. You and she must share them out. Oh. And Verity’s sword. There is that, but I am sure Dutiful will want it.’ Once, we had thought to trade our father’s swords, but after a few years, we had traded back. Now he would have both. One for each of his sons.
I looked at Lant and Spark and tried for a smile. ‘I suddenly realize that I’m a poor man. Nothing to bequeath to anyone. I dare not even clasp wrists with you a final time.’
‘You wrote a letter to my father. It was all I could ever have desired from you,’ Lant said quietly.
I looked at Nettle. ‘You will provide for Spark?’
She looked directly at the girl. ‘She does not excel at following orders,’ she said drily. ‘I do not know how much I can trust her.’
‘Can she do needlework?’ Kettricken asked suddenly.
Spark looked dismayed, but quietly replied, ‘Embroidery and crochet. Yes, my lady.’
‘I recall how well Patience was served by Lacey. Young woman, I am getting older. I could use a youngster in my service. At Buckkeep, and in the Mountains. Would you wish to accompany me to the Mountain Kingdom?’
Spark’s eyes flickered a glance at Lant. He lowered his eyes and said nothing. ‘I have heard of Lady Patience’s Lacey. Yes, my lady. I believe I could serve you in a similar capacity.’
There was a sadness there. I should have remembered something about it. But the itching, burning pains inside me and the unfinished wolf tugged and worried at my thoughts. It was so hard to focus. But there was something important left to do.
I had only one bequest left. ‘Bee. In all things, and in a better way than I ever was, the Fool will act as father to you. Is that acceptable?’
‘But Riddle—’ Nettle began, but Bee interrupted. ‘Riddle has a daughter. As do you, my sister. I would that you were my sister and Riddle my elder brother rather than you become my parents.’ She smiled and it was almost real. ‘And recall that I have my brother Hap Gladheart also to look over me.’ She brought her gaze back to me and spoke earnestly. ‘And I have had a father. You were my father, and I will go on without one now. You need not worry for me, Da. In your own way, you have well provided for me.’
‘In my own way,’ I conceded. Pain. Bitter disappointment in myself. Something more to put into the wolf.
Are we finished? I asked the wolf.
I believe so. But they may not be finished with us.
And they were not. I went back to the wolf, muttering my tale while Bee sat near me and noted it all down. Sometimes, I saw, it was not words but a painting or an ink sketch. She did not ask questions but simply accepted the things I told her about myself and my days. I noticed her head drooping lower over her book. The next time I looked at her, she was on her side, curled around her book. Her pen had fallen from her hand and she had not stoppered her ink. But I was putting into the wolf a picnic with Molly and I could not pause.
‘Fitz,’ said the Fool.
I looked down at him. He had the ink-bottle in his hand and had pushed the stopper in. I had not seen or heard him come near. I saw him set the ink to one side. He drew the book out from under Bee’s hand, and settled a blanket over her. He sat down cross-legged, his back straight, and opened the book on his lap. He began to page through it.
‘Does she know you do that?’ I asked.
‘She allows it, but not graciously. It is something I feel I must do, Fitz, for she reveals very little of herself to anyone. She told me earlier today that you had put a great many memories of me into the wolf, and that she was writing them down as well. I found that a bit alarming.’
I took my hands from the wolf and sat down beside him. It was difficult to do. I folded my hands in my lap, Silver over Silver. So bony. Absently I stroked my hand, whetting one against the other, repairing the damage to the flesh and tendons beneath the Silver. I could do that. At a cost. He watched me do it. ‘Cannot you do that with your whole body?’
‘It costs me to do this. Flesh and strength from elsewhere. And already they attack me again. But I need my hands, and so I do it.’
He turned a page, smiled and looked up at me. ‘She has written down the names of the dogs that were under the table with you the first time you saw me. You remembered all their names?’
‘They were my friends. Do you recall your friends’ names?’
‘I do,’ he said quietly. He turned a few more pages, reading swiftly, sometimes smiling, sometimes pensive. He scowled at one page, and then closed the book gently. ‘Fitz, I do not think I am the best person to be Bee’s father.’
‘Neither was I. But that is how things turned out.’
He almost smiled. ‘True. She is mine. And isn’t. For she doesn’t want to be. You heard what she said. She would rather go on with no father than have me.’
‘She isn’t old enough to know what is best for her.’
‘Are you sure of that?’
I paused to think. ‘No. But who else should I ask?’
It was his turn to pause. ‘Perhaps no one. Or Lant?’
‘Lant’s life is complicated and likely to become more so.’
‘Hap?’
‘Hap will be there for her, but as her elder brother.’
‘Chivalry or one of Molly’s other boys?’
‘If they were here, I might. But they are not, and they have no concept of what she has gone through. You do. Are you asking me to release you from being her father? Because I cannot, you know. Some duties cannot be shed.’
‘I know,’ he said quietly.
I felt a vague tug of alarm. ‘There is something else you’d rather be doing than staying with Bee? Something you feel called to do?’ Would he leave her as he had left me?
‘Yes. But in this, I take your wishes more seriously than my own.’ He blinked back tears. ‘I have made far too many decisions for both of us. Now it is time for me to accept one of yours, no matter how difficult it is for me. As you so often did.’ He leaned forward suddenly and put his hand on a paw. ‘I give you how startled you looked in the moment that King Shrewd saw you there, eating scraps with the dogs.’ After a moment, he drew his hand back from the stone wolf and shook his head as if dashing water away. ‘I’d forgotten what it felt like. Giving life to stone.’ He clasped his hands on Bee’s book and looked down at it as he said, ‘There is much more I could give you for your wolf. If you wished me to.’
I recalled something that Nighteyes had once said to me. ‘I have no desire to see Bee fathered by a Forged One. That is what you would be if you gave up too much of yourself to this stone. Save your memories and feelings for yourself, Fool. Putting some of yourself in stone is not a good idea.’
‘It has been many a day since I had a good idea,’ he replied. He slid the book under Bee’s hand and quietly left my shelter.
One night, Kettricken came to me. Despite all my warnings, she set her hand on my shoulder. ‘Stop that,’ she said. ‘You are tearing your back to shreds.’
The itching had become an unbearable distraction, and I had picked up a piece of firewood to scratch my back. She took it from my hand and tossed it into the fire. I realized it was very late and the others were all sleeping in their shelters. ‘Who has the watch?’ I asked her.
‘Spark. And Lant is keeping her company.’ She spoke without judgment. I could not see either of them. Bee was curled in her blankets nearby. She had pulled a corner up over her face to keep the gnats at bay, and pulled her book in under the covers with her. I looked up. Kettricken was gone.
Time had become so peculiar. It moved in jerks and slides now. And then Kettricken was back with a pot of something in her hand. She crouched down behind me and I heard her knees crackle. ‘In the Mountains, sometimes in winter the children had lice. Grease smothers them. I brought this with me, thinking perhaps you could be saved. Now, it may at least ease the itching.’
‘Don’t touch them!’ I warned her, but she had a small scoop like a little spoon.
There were many pustules on my back, and she had me turn toward the fire and take my shirt off. The shirt surprised me. It was intact, a nice shirt. When had they put that on me?
‘Keep still,’ she told me, and she dabbed a touch on each sore. It was grease, goose or bear, with some fragrant herbs mixed in. Mint. Mint keeps many pests at bay. With each touch, the itching eased. She spoke in a low voice as she worked. ‘I want to go with you. I truly do. But there is Bee to think of. And we have another grandchild on the way. Elliania hopes so for a girl, but I will be content with whatever we get. Think on it, Fitz! If she is a girl, she will be a narcheska, and help secure our continuing peace with the OutIslands. And the Mountain Kingdom will be formally accepting Integrity as their Sacrifice and duke. That is part of why I will be going there. To ease that transition.’ She caught her breath and said, ‘Do you recall when we first met in the Mountains? How I tried to poison you because I thought you had come to kill my brother?’
‘I do.’ Something warm fell on my bare shoulder. A tear. ‘Do you weep because you wish you had succeeded?’ I asked her, and succeeded in wringing a hiccupped laugh from her.
‘Oh, Fitz, the changes we wrought in the world. I do wish I were going with you.’
I’d never even considered such an idea. ‘On the way here … I lingered in the Skill-pillars. I am not sure how long. I do not remember it, but Nighteyes claimed that Verity spoke to me there. He said I would have to bid my child farewell and trust that others would raise her well. Just as he had to do.’
‘Oh.’ That was all she said at first. Then she added, ‘I promise. I will take her as my own. I have always wanted such a child!’
I was startled at her offer. ‘But I have already asked the Fool to take her. Though it is hard for me to imagine him as anyone’s father.’
She made an amused sound. ‘That is true. I expect he will make his own decision in that regard. It surprises me that he has not already.’ Then she leaned forward and fearlessly kissed my cheek. ‘In case it is my last opportunity,’ she explained. ‘Tomorrow, I am taking Spark with me to go visit Verity-as-Dragon. Try not to leave before I get back.’
I nodded. She rose with creaking knees. I listened to the swishing of her skirts as she walked away. Then I leaned forward and carefully put the kiss into the wolf. I knew it was actually his.
‘I would just like to finish this,’ I said to the Fool. I stroked the wolf’s rough stone coat. He still had no colour. The fur of his tail looked lumpy to me. His eyes needed work, and his bared teeth. The tendons in his hind legs. I closed my eyes. I needed to stop numbering what was missing.
It was relatively quiet now. Dark had come and the cool of the Mountains night was descending. The shelter helped but the chill still reached in. I was sitting in the open front of it, leaning back on my wolf. I felt as if I must always be touching him now. For safety.
The Fool was sitting on the ground next to me, hugging his knees and drinking a cup of tea. He set it down carefully. ‘You did not really think you would be allowed to die privately, did you?’ He flapped a long, narrow hand at the encampment that had sprung up in the quarry. There were multiple campfires and tents softly billowing in the night breeze. At the forest’s edge, someone kept watch on the picketed horses. How many people? I could not guess. More than thirty. More had arrived today. All come to watch me die.
Dutiful had come with his Skill-coterie. Over their mother’s objections, both Integrity and Prosper had come as well. Shun had wanted to come but still had a terrible fear of Skill-pillars. Hap had talked them into bringing him, and was now lying in a tent feeling disoriented and nauseated. He had even suggested he might ride a horse home through the Mountain Kingdom rather than brave a Skill-pillar again. Integrity had liked the idea and proposed to accompany him ‘since I am soon bound for the Mountain Kingdom anyway’. Dutiful was uncertain. They were waiting for Kettricken to return from visiting Verity-as-Dragon to discuss it. I could sense Dutiful’s impatience. His wife would soon be brought to bed with their child. He should be there, not here to watch me die. Earlier I had promised, ‘I will go into the wolf as soon as I can. For now, you should just go home. There is nothing you can do here. Be with the woman you love, while you can.’
He had looked troubled, but had not left yet.
I did not want to ponder any of it. My body was beginning to feel like a rickety shed on a sea cliff’s edge. I still ate but there was no pleasure in it. My gums were bleeding and my nose was continually crusted with blood. The world tasted and smelled like blood. And I itched everywhere, inside and out, as new pustules erupted. I had a terrible itch in the back of my throat, and one high inside my nose. They were maddening. I felt regret for the sturdy body I had taken for granted. With my fingers and thumb, I worked a lump from Nighteyes’ tail.
‘What did Dutiful say to you?’ the Fool asked.
‘The usual. He promised to care for Nettle and Bee. He said he would miss me. That he wished I could see his third child born. Fool, I know that what he says is so important to him. It should be to me. I know that I loved him and his boys. But … there is not enough left of me to feel those things.’ I shook my weary head. ‘All of the memories that kept those connections, the wolf has taken. I fear I hurt him. I wish he would just go home and take his coterie with him.’
He nodded slowly and took another sip of his tea. ‘So it was with Verity at the end of his days. It was hard to reach him. Did that hurt you?’
‘Yes. But I understood.’
‘And so does Dutiful. And Kettricken.’ He looked away from me. ‘So do we all.’
He lifted his gloved hand and considered it. The first time he had silvered his fingers, it had been an accident. He had been acting as Verity’s manservant and had accidentally touched his silvered hands. ‘Fitz,’ he said suddenly. ‘Is there enough of you to fill this wolf?’
I considered my wolf. It was a small block of memory-stone compared to what Verity had chosen, but much larger than a real wolf. The top of his shoulders was level with my chest. But somehow the size of the stone did not seem related to how much I needed to fill it. ‘I think so. I won’t know until I go into him.’
‘When will that be?’
I scratched the back of my neck. My nails came back bloody. I wiped them on my thigh. ‘When I have no more to give him, I suppose. Or when I am so close to dying that I must go.’
‘Oh, Fitz,’ he said mournfully, as if it were the first time he had considered the idea.
‘It will all be for the best,’ I told him, and tried to believe it. ‘Nighteyes will be a wolf again. As will I. And Bee will have you to watch over her and—’
‘She doesn’t like me, I fear.’
‘There have been many times when Nettle or Hap disliked me, Fool.’
‘I might feel better if she disliked me. I don’t think she feels much one way or the other.’ In a lower voice he added, ‘I was so sure that she would love me, as I love her. I thought it would just happen, once we were near each other. It has not.’
‘Being loved by your children isn’t really what being a parent is about.’
‘I loved my parents. I loved them so terribly much.’
‘I have no basis of comparison,’ I pointed out to him quietly.
‘You had Burrich.’
‘Oh, yes. I had Burrich.’ I laughed grimly. ‘And eventually, we realized we loved one another. But it took some years.’
‘Years,’ he repeated dolefully.
‘Be patient,’ I counselled him. I touched one of the wolf’s toenails. They were smooth. That wasn’t right. They should be ridged. I remembered the smell of a buck’s blood on a winter dawn, and how it had clotted into tiny pink balls in the ice. I corrected the toenail.
‘Fitz?’
‘Yes?’
‘You were gone again.’
‘I was,’ I admitted.
‘Have you put much of me into him?’
I thought about it. ‘I put in your room in the tower at Buckkeep, the time I climbed those broken stairs, and you were not there and I stared around in surprise at what I found. I put in the day we had the water fight in the stream, not so far from here. And that horrid song you sang to me to embarrass me in the halls of Buckkeep. And Ratsy. Ratsy is in there. And I put in treating your wounds the day Regal’s thugs put a bag over your head and beat you. And you carrying me on your back through the snow, when you did not know me.’ I smiled. ‘I know what else. I put in how you looked at me that time King Shrewd gave me his pin. I was under the table and there had been a feast. The keep dogs and I were sharing all the leftovers. And then Shrewd came in, with Regal. And you.’
An uncertain smile had dawned on his face. ‘So you will remember me. When you are a stone wolf.’
‘We will remember you, Nighteyes and I.’
He sighed. ‘Well. There is that.’
I had to cough. I turned my head aside from him and coughed. Blood spattered the wolf, and just for an instant, before it sank in, I saw his colours as they would be. I coughed again, drew breath and coughed some more. I put my arm on the wolf and leaned my forehead on it as I coughed. If I must cough blood, let not a drop be wasted. When I could finally draw a wheezing breath, my nose was bleeding.
Not long now, Nighteyes whispered.
‘Not long now,’ I agreed.
It had been quiet for a time. Then the Fool spoke beside me. ‘Fitz. I’ve brought you something. It’s cold tea. With valerian in it. And carryme.’
I sipped it. ‘There’s not enough carryme in there to do anything. I need more.’
‘I don’t dare make it stronger than it is.’
‘I don’t care what you dare. Add more carryme!’
He looked shocked and for a moment, I jolted back to being Fitz as I once was. ‘Fool, I’m so sorry. But they are gnawing on every part of me, inside and out. I itch in places I can never scratch. I feel them rattle in my lungs when I draw breath. The inside of my throat is raw and all I can taste is blood.’
He said nothing but took the cup away. I felt ashamed of myself. I put it into the wolf, enough to define the lift of his lip. I startled when the Fool spoke. ‘Careful. It’s hot now. I had to use hot water to make the carryme blend.’
‘Thank you.’ I took it from him and drained it. The hot tea mixed with the blood in my mouth. I swallowed it. He took the cup quickly from my shaky hand.
‘Fool. What were we?’ It wasn’t an idle question. I needed to know it. I needed to finally understand it to put it in the wolf.
‘I don’t know.’ His reply was guarded. ‘Friends. But also Prophet and Catalyst. And in that relationship, I did use you, Fitz. You know it and I know it. I’ve told you how sorry I was to do it. I hope you believe that. And that you can forgive me.’
His words were so intense, but that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. I waved them away. ‘Yes, yes. But there was something else there. Always. You were dead, and I called you back. For that moment, when we returned to our proper bodies, as we passed one another, we …’
We were one thing. Whole.
He was waiting for me to continue. It seemed ridiculous that he could not hear the wolf. ‘We were one thing. A whole thing. You and I and Nighteyes. I felt a strange sort of peace. As if all the parts of me were finally in one place. All the missing bits that would make me a complete … thing.’ I shook my head. ‘Words don’t reach that far.’
He set his gloved hand on my sleeved arm. The layers of fabric deadened that touch but it still sang in me. It was not the stunning touch he had shared with me once in Verity’s Skill-tower. I recalled that well. I’d been left huddled in a ball, for it had been too much, too overwhelming to know, so completely, another living entity. Nighteyes and I, we were simple creatures and our bonding was a simple thing. The Fool was complex, full of secrets and shadows and convoluted ideas. Even now, insulated from it, I felt that unfurling landscape of his being. It was endless, reaching to a distant horizon. But in some way, I knew it. Owned it. Had created it.
He lifted his hand.
‘Did you feel that?’ I asked him.
He smiled sadly. ‘Fitz, I have never needed to touch you to feel that. It was always there. No limits.’
Some part of me knew that was important. That once it would have mattered terribly to me. I tried to find words. ‘I will put that in my wolf,’ I said, and he turned sadly away from me.
‘Da?’
I tried to lift my head.
‘He’s still alive,’ someone said in a wondering voice and someone else shushed him.
‘I brought you tea. There’s a strong painkiller in it. Do you want it?’
‘Gods, yes!’ That was what I meant to say. I had draped myself over my wolf. I had feared I would die in the night and worried that if I were unconscious I could not slip away into him. I opened my eyes and saw the world through a pink sheen. Blood in my eyes. Like the messenger. I blinked and my vision cleared slightly. Nettle was there. Bee was beside her. Nettle held a cup to my lips. She tipped it and liquid lapped against my mouth. I sucked some in and tried to swallow. Some went down. Some ran down my chin.
I looked beyond her. Kettricken, weeping. Dutiful had his arm around her. His sons were with him. The Fool and Lant, Spark and Per. And beyond them the ranks of the curious. The Skill-coteries and those who had come with them. All gathered to watch my final spectacle. I would do at last what the Witted had long been rumoured able to do. I would transform into a wolf.
It reminded me of my final days in Regal’s dungeon. They had tormented me there, trying to force me to reveal my Witted nature so they could justify killing me.
Was this so different?
I wished they would all go away.
Except the Fool. I wished he would join me. Somehow, I had always thought he would join me. Now, I could not recall why. Perhaps I had buried that in the stone.
I heard music. It was strange. I cast my eyes to one side and saw Hap with a strange stringed instrument. He played a handful of notes and then began to softly sing ‘Crossfire’s Coterie’. I had taught him that, years ago. For a time, I was carried away by the music. I recalled teaching him the song, and then how he had sung it with Starling. I recalled the minstrel who had taught it to me. I let the memories seep into the wolf, and I felt them lose their colour and vibrancy within me. Hap’s song became only a song. Hap became only a singer.
I was dying. And I had never been enough for anything.
It’s time to ask him. Or time to let go.
It’s not the sort of thing one asks of a friend. He hasn’t offered, and I will not ask it. I will not tear him that way. I am trying to let go. I don’t know how.
Do not you recall how you shed your body in Regal’s dungeon?
That was long ago. Then, I feared to live and face what they would do to me. Now I fear to die. I fear that we will simply stop, like a bubble popping.
We may. But this is excruciating.
Better than being bored to death.
I do not think so. Why don’t you ask him?
Because I already asked him to look after Bee.
That one needs little looking after.
I’m letting go. Right now. I’m letting go.
But I could not.