Fool’s Errand (Tawny Man Trilogy Book One) by Robin Hobb (24)

I think that for a time I slept dreamlessly. Certainly I was weary enough. Far too much had happened to me, far too swiftly. Sleep was as much a respite from thought as it was rest. Yet after a time, dreams claimed me and tumbled me. I climbed the steps to Verity’s tower. He was sitting at the window, Skilling. My heart leapt joyfully at first sight of him, but when he turned to me, his face was grieved. ‘You did not teach my son, Fitz. I’ll have to take your daughter for that.’ Both Nettle and Dutiful were stones on a game-cloth, and with a single sweep of his hand, he exchanged their positions. ‘It’s your move,’ he said. But before I could do anything, Jinna came to brush all the stones from the cloth into her hand. ‘I’ll make a charm of these,’ she promised me. ‘One to protect all of the Six Duchies.’

‘Put it away,’ I begged her, for I was the wolf and the charm was one against predators. It sickened and cowed me just to behold it. It was potent, far more potent than any of the other charms she had shown me. It was magic stripped to its most basic form, all human sentiment abraded from it. It was magic of an older time and place, magic that cared nothing for people. It was as implacable as the Skill. It was sharp as knives and burning as poison. ‘Put it away!’

He couldn’t hear me. He had never been able to hear me. The Scentless One wore it around his throat, and he had opened his collar wide to bare it. It was all I could do to force myself to stand still and guard his back. Even behind him, I could feel its harsh radiance. I could smell blood, his and my own. I still felt the warm slow seep of my blood down my flank, and my strength dripping away with it.

A man with a whining dog stood guard over us, scowling. Behind him, a fire burned, and Piebalds slept around it. Beyond them was the open mouth of the shelter, and an edge of dawn in the sky. It seemed horribly far away. Our guard’s face was contorted, not just with anger but with fear and frustration. He longed to hurt us, but dared come no closer. It was not a dream. It was the Wit and I was with Nighteyes and he lived. The surge of joy I felt amused him but only for an instant. Your witnessing this will not make it easier for either of us. You should have stayed away from this.

‘Cover that damned thing!’ the guard growled at him.

‘Make me!’ the Scentless One suggested. I heard the Fool’s lilting reply with the wolf’s ears. The whip-snap of his old mockery capered in his words. Some part of him relished this defiance. His sword was gone, taken from him when they had been captured, but he sat defiantly straight, throat bared to show a charm that burned with cold magic. He had placed himself between the wolf and those who would torment him.

Nighteyes showed me a chamber, walls of stone, floor of earth. A cave, perhaps. He and the Fool were in a corner of it. Blood had sheeted down the side of the Fool’s tawny face. Dried, it had cracked so that he looked like a badly-glazed pot. Nighteyes and the Fool were prisoners, violently taken but kept alive, the Fool because he might know where the Prince had gone and how, and the wolf because of his link to me.

They puzzled that out, that we are linked?

I’m afraid it was obvious to all.

From out of the shadows, the cat appeared. She stalked stiffly towards us. Her whiskers vibrated and her intent stare fixed on Nighteyes. When the guard’s dog turned to look at her, she spat and slashed at him. He leaped back with a yipe and the guard’s scowl deepened, but both he and his dog gave ground to her. She prowled back and forth, padding stiff-legged and casting sidelong glances up at the Fool while rumbling a threat in her throat. Her tail floated behind her.

The charm holds her at bay?

Yes. But not for long, I fear. The wolf’s next thought surprised me. The cat is a miserable creature, honeycombed with the woman as a sick deer is riddled with parasites. She stalks about with a human looking out of her eyes. She does not even move like a true cat any more.

The cat halted suddenly and opened her mouth wide as if taking our scent. Then she suddenly spun about and trotted purposefully away.

You should not have come. She senses you are with me. She has gone to find the big man. He is bonded to a horse. The charm does not bother prey, nor those who bond with them.

The wolf’s thought rang with contempt for grass-eaters, but there was an element of dread behind it. I pondered it. The Fool’s charm was a charm against predators; it was logical it would not bother the man bonded to the warhorse.

Before I could follow that thought further, the cat returned with the man behind her. She sat down at his side, insufferably pleased with herself, and fixed us with a very uncatlike stare. The big man stared, too, not at the defiant Fool, but past him at my wolf.

‘There you are. We’ve been waiting for you,’ he said slowly.

Nighteyes would not meet his gaze, but the big man’s words fell on his ears and came to me. ‘I have your friends, you treacherous coward. Will you betray them as you’ve betrayed your Old Blood? I know you’re somewhere with the Prince. I don’t know how you vanished, nor do I care. I say only this to you. Bring him back, or they die slowly.’

The Fool stood up between the man and my wolf. I knew he spoke to me when he said, ‘Don’t listen. Stay away. Keep him safe.’

I could not see past the Fool, but the shadow of the big man loomed suddenly larger. ‘Your hedge-witch charm means nothing to me, Lord Golden.’

Then the Fool’s flying body crashed suddenly into my battered wolf, and my Wit-bond to him vanished.

I jolted awake. I leaped to my feet, but all I saw was the greying of dawn and the empty beach. I heard only the cries of seabirds wheeling overhead. In my sleep, I had drawn my body up into a ball for warmth, but now I shook with something that was not cold. Sweat sheathed me and I was breathing hard. Sleep had fled completely. I stared out over the sea, my dream still vivid in my mind. I did not doubt the reality of it. I took a long, shuddering breath. The tide was rising again, but had not quite peaked. I sought in vain for some sign of a Skill-pillar thrusting up from the waves. I would have to wait until afternoon, when the water would be at full ebb … I dared not wonder what would happen to the Fool and Nighteyes in the intervening hours. If luck sided with me, the retreating waves would bare the pillar that had brought us here, and I would go back to them. The Prince would have to manage here on his own until I could return for him.

If the retreating water did not reveal the pillar – I refused to consider what that might mean. Instead, I focused on the problems I could solve right now. Find food and eat it. Keep up my strength. And break the woman’s hold on the Prince. I turned to the still sleeping boy and nudged him firmly with my foot. ‘Get up!’ I grated at him.

I knew that waking him would not necessarily break his Wit-link with the cat, but it would make it more difficult for him to focus on it exclusively. When I was a lad, I had spent my sleeping hours ‘dreaming’ of hunts with Nighteyes. Awake, I was still aware of the wolf, but not in such an immediate way. When Dutiful groaned, and rolled away from me, stubbornly clinging to his Wit-dreams, I bent over him, seized him by the collar and stood him on his feet. ‘Wake up!’

‘Leave me alone, you ugly bastard,’ he rasped at me. Catlike he glowered at me, head canted, mouth ajar. I almost expected him to hiss and claw at me. Then my temper got the better of me. I gave him a violent shake, then thrust him from me, so that he stumbled back, lost his footing, and nearly fell into the embers of the fire.

‘Don’t call me that,’ I warned him. ‘Don’t you ever call me that!’

He wound up sitting on the sand, staring up at me in astonishment. I doubted that anyone had ever spoken to him that way in his life, let alone given him a shaking. It shamed me that I was the first. I turned away from him and spoke over my shoulder. ‘Build up the fire. I’m going to see if the tide has bared anything for us to eat, before it covers it up again.’ I strode away without looking back at him. Within three strides, I wanted to go back for my boots, but I would not. I didn’t want to face him again just yet. My temper with him was still too high, my thwarted fury at the Piebalds too strong.

The tide had not quite reached the sand of the beach. On the bared black rock I stepped gingerly, trying to avoid barnacles. I gathered black mussels, and seaweed to steam them in. I found one fat green crab wedged under an outcropping of rock. He attempted to defend himself by clamping onto my finger. He bruised me but I captured him and pouched him in my shirt with the mussels. My gathering carried me some little way down the beach. The chill of the day and the simplicity of collecting food cooled my anger towards the Prince. Dutiful was being used, I reminded myself, by folk who should know better. The ugliness of what the woman was doing should prove that the folk who conspired had no ethics. I should not blame the boy. He was young, not stupid or evil. Well, perhaps young and stupid, but had not I been the same once?

I was returning to the fire when I stepped on the fourth feather. As I stooped to pick it up, I saw the fifth one glinting in the sunlight, not a dozen paces away. The fifth one shone with extraordinary colours, dazzling to the eyes, but when I reached it, I decided it had been a trick of the sunlight and damp, for it was as flat a grey as its brethren.

The Prince was not by the fire when I returned, though he had built up the fire before he left. I set the two feathers with the three I had found the night before. I glanced about for the lad and saw him walking back towards me. He had evidently visited the stream, for his face was damp and his hair washed back from his brow. When he reached the fire, he stood over me for a time, watching me as I killed the crab and wrapped it and the mussels in the flat fronds of seaweed. With a stick I nudged some of the burning wood aside and then gingerly placed the packet on the bared coals. It sizzled. He watched me pushing other coals up around it. When he spoke, his voice was even, as if he commented on the weather.

‘I’ve a message for you. If you do not bring me back before sunset, they will kill them both, the man and the wolf.’

I did not even betray that I had heard his words. I kept my eyes on the food, edging the coals closer to it. When I finally spoke, my words were just as cold. ‘Perhaps, if they do not free the man and the wolf before noon, I will kill you.’ I lifted my face to look into his, and showed him my assassin’s eyes. He took a step back.

‘But I am the Prince!’ he cried. An instant later, I saw how he despised those words. But he could not call them back. They hung quivering in the air between us.

‘That would only matter if you acted like the Prince,’ I observed callously. ‘But you don’t. You’re a tool, and you don’t even know it. Worse, you’re a tool used against not just your mother, but the whole of the Six Duchies.’ I looked aside from him as I spoke the words I must. ‘You don’t even know that the woman you worship doesn’t exist. Not as a woman, at any rate. She’s dead, Prince Dutiful. But when she died, instead of letting go, she pushed into her cat’s mind, to live there. She rides the cat, a shameful thing for any Old Blood one to do. And she has used the cat to lure you in and deceive you with words of love. I do not know what she intends in the end, but it will not be good for any of you. And it will cost my friends’ lives.’

I should have known that she was with him. I should have known that that was the one thing that she would not permit me to tell him. He hissed like a cat from his open mouth as he sprang, and the tiny sound gave me an instant of warning. I leaned to one side as he threw himself at me. I turned to his passage, caught him by the back of his shirt, and jerked him back towards me. I pinioned him in a hug. He threw his head back in an effort to smash my face, but got only the side of my jaw. I had long been wise to that trick, as it was one of my own favourites.

It was not much of a fight, as fights go. He was at that lanky stage of his growth when bones and muscles do not yet match one another, and he fought with the heedless frenzy of youth. I had long been comfortable in my body, and I had a man’s weight and years of experience to back it. With his arms tightly pinioned, he could do little more than toss his head about and kick at me with his feet. I recognized abruptly that no one had ever grappled with him this way. Of course. A prince would be trained with a blade, not with fists. Nor had he had brothers or a father for rough play. He did not know what to make of being manhandled this way. He repelled at me, the Wit equivalent of a mental shove. As Burrich had so long ago with me, I deflected it back at him. I felt his shock at that. In the next moment, he redoubled his struggle. I felt the fury that coursed through him. It was like fighting myself, and I knew he set no limits to what he would do in an attempt to injure me. His mindless savagery was limited only by his inexperience. He tried to fling us both to the ground, but I had his balance too well. His efforts to wriggle out of my embrace only made me tighten my grip. His face was bright red before his head suddenly drooped. For a moment he hung limp and gasping in my arms. Then he rasped in a sullen voice, ‘Enough. You win.’

I let go, expecting him to drop to the sand. Instead, he spun, my knife in his hand, and thrust it into my belly. At least, that was his intent. The buckle of my swordbelt deflected it, the blade skidded across the leather of the belt, and then plunged past me, wrapping in my shirt as it went. The blade so near my flesh woke my anger. I caught his wrist, snapped it sharply back, and the knife went flying. A blow from my fist to the side of his neck hammered him to his knees. He yowled in fury as he fell, and the sound stood my hair on end. The glaring glance he turned on me was not the Prince’s, but some awful combination of cat, boy, and a woman who would master them both. Her will was the one that brought him up off his knees and springing towards me.

I tried to catch his charge and control him, but he fought like a mad thing, clawing and spitting and ripping at my hair. I hit him hard in the centre of his chest, a blow that should have at least slowed him, but he came back at me, his fury doubled. I knew then that she had full control of him, and that she would care nothing about pain I dealt him. I’d have to damage him if I wanted to stop him, and even at that moment, I could not bring myself to do that. So I flung myself to meet his charge, wrapped him in my arms and used my weight to bear him down. We came down very near the fire, but I was on top, and resolved to stay there. Our faces were inches apart as I made good my hold on him. He twisted his head about wildly, and tried to strike me in the face with his brow. The eyes that met mine were not the Prince’s. She spat up at me and cursed me. I lifted him and slammed him back against the earth. I saw his head bounce off the ground. He should have been near stunned, but he darted his mouth at my arm as if to bite me. I felt a surge of fury that started somewhere so deep it was outside me.

‘Dutiful!’ I roared. ‘Stop fighting me!’

He went limp in my arms. The woman/cat glared at me furiously, but slowly she faded from his eyes. Prince Dutiful goggled up at me in terror. Then even that faded from his eyes. He stared like a dead man. Blood outlined his teeth. It was his own, leaking from his nose and over his mouth. He lay very still. I felt sickened. I peeled myself away from him and stood slowly, chest heaving. ‘Eda and El, mercy,’ I prayed as I seldom did, but the gods were not interested in undoing what I had done.

I knew what I had done. I had done it before, coldly and deliberately. I had used the Skill to forcefully imprint on my uncle, Prince Regal, that he would suddenly become adamantly loyal to Queen Kettricken, and the child she carried. I had intended that Skill imprint to be permanent, and it had been, though Prince Regal’s untimely death but a few months later had prevented me from ever knowing how long such an imposed command would remain in force.

This time I had acted in anger, with no thought beyond the moment. The furious command I had given him had printed itself onto his mind with the full strength of my Skill behind it. He had not decided to stop fighting me. Part of him doubtless wished to kill me still. His baffled look told me that he had no comprehension of what I had done to him. Neither did I, really.

‘Can you get up?’ I asked him guardedly.

‘Can I get up?’ He echoed my words eerily. His diction was blurred. His eyes rolled about as he seemed to seek an answer in himself, then his gaze came back to me.

‘You can get up,’ I ventured fearfully.

And at my words, he could.

He came to his feet unsteadily, reeling as if I had knocked him cold. The force of my command seemed to have driven the woman’s control away. Yet to have supplanted that with my own will over him was no victory for me. He stood, shoulders slightly hunched, as if investigating a pain in himself. After a time, he lifted his eyes to look at me. ‘I hate you,’ he told me, in a voice divested of rancour.

‘That’s understandable,’ I heard myself reply. Sometimes I shared that sentiment.

I couldn’t look at him. I found my knife on the sand and returned it to its sheath. The Prince lurched around the fire, then sat down on the opposite side. I watched him surreptitiously. He wiped his hand across his mouth and then looked at his bloody palm. Mouth slightly ajar, he ran his tongue past his teeth. I feared he would spit some out, but he did not. He made no complaint at all. Instead, he looked like a man trying desperately to recall something. Humiliated and confused, he stared at the fire. I wondered what he pondered.

For a time I sat, feeling all the new little pains he had given me. Many of them were not physical. I doubted they equalled what I had done to him. I could think of nothing to say to him, so I poked at the food in the fire. The seaweed I’d wrapped it in had shrunken and dried in the heat and was beginning to char. I poked the packet out from the coals. Inside, the mussels had opened, and the crab’s flesh had gone from opaque to white. Close enough to cooked to satisfy me, I decided.

‘There’s food here,’ I announced.

‘I’m not hungry,’ the Prince replied. Voice and eyes were distant.

‘Eat it anyway, while there’s food to eat.’ My words came out as a callous command.

Whether it was my Skill hold upon him, or his own common sense, I couldn’t tell. But after I had taken my share of the food from the seaweed packet, he came cautiously around the fire to claim his share. In some ways, he reminded me of Nighteyes when he had first come to me. The cub had been wary and defiant, yet pragmatic enough to realize he had to depend on me to provide for him. Perhaps the Prince knew that without me, he had no hopes of returning easily to Buck.

Or perhaps my Skill-command had burned so deep that even a suggestion from me must be obeyed.

The silence lasted as long as the food did, and a bit longer. I broke it. ‘I looked at the stars last night.’

The Prince nodded. After a time, ‘We’re a long way from home,’ he admitted grudgingly.

‘We may face a long journey home with few resources. Do you know how to live off the land at all?’

Again, a silence followed my words. He did not want to speak to me, but I had knowledge he desperately needed. His question came grudgingly.

‘What about the way we came here? Can’t we go back that way?’ A frown divided his brows as he asked, ‘How did you learn to do that magic? Is it the Skill?’

I broke a little piece of the truth off and gave it to him. ‘King Verity taught me to Skill. A long time ago.’ Before he could ask another question, I announced, ‘I’m going to walk down the beach and climb up those cliffs. It could be there’s a town nearby.’ If I had to leave the boy here alone, I’d do my best to leave him in a safe place. And if the Skill-pillar did not emerge from the water, then I’d best prepare for a long walk home. My will was iron in that regard. I’d return to Buck if I had to crawl there. And once there, I’d hunt down every one of those Piebalds and kill them slowly. The promise gave purpose to my motions. I began to pull on my socks and boots. The feathers still lay on the sand. A flick of my fingers slid them up my sleeve. I’d secure them better later. I did not wish to discuss them with the Prince. Dutiful made no reply to my words, but when I stood up and walked away from the fire, he followed me. I stopped at the freshwater stream, to wash my hands and face and to drink as well. The Prince watched me, and when I was finished, he walked upstream to drink himself. While he was occupied, a strip from my shirt secured the feathers to my forearm. By the time he looked up from washing the blood from his face, my sleeve once more concealed them. Together we walked on. The silence felt like a heavy thing we carried between us. I could feel him mulling over what I had told him about the woman. I wanted to lecture him, to batter him with words until he understood exactly what the woman was trying to do. I wanted to ask if she was still in his mind with him. Instead I bit my tongue and held back my words. He wasn’t stupid, I told myself. I’d told him the truth. Now I had to let him work out what it meant to him. We kept walking.

To my relief, we found no more feathers on the sand. We found little of anything useful, though the beach seemed to have more than its share of flotsam. There were bits of rotting rope, and worm-bored lengths of ship timbers. The remains of a dead-eye lay not far from a thole. As we walked, the black cliff gradually loomed larger, until it towered above us and promised a good vantage of the land around it. As we drew closer, I saw that its face was pocked with holes. In a sand cliff, I would have thought them swallow’s nests, but not in black stone. The holes seemed too regular and too evenly spaced to be the work of natural forces. The sun striking them seemed to wake glints in some of them. Curiosity beckoned me.

The reality was stranger than anything I could have imagined. When we reached the foot of the cliff, the holes were revealed as alcoves, of graduated sizes. Not all, but many of them held an object. Wordless with wonder, the Prince and I strolled along looking at the lowest levels of alcoves. The variety of objects put me in mind of some mad king’s treasure hoard. One held a jewelled goblet, the next a porcelain cup of amazing delicacy. In a large alcove was something that looked like a wooden helmet for a horse, save that a horse’s eyes are set on the sides of its head, not the front. A net of gold chain studded with tiny blue gems had been draped over a stone about the size of a woman’s head. A tiny box of gleaming wood with images of flowers on it, a lamp carved from some lustrous green stone, a sheet of metal with odd characters graven into it, a delicate stone flower in a vase – treasure after treasure after treasure was displayed there.

Wonder wrapped me. Who would so display such wealth, on an isolated cliff where the wind and waves could batter it? Each item shone as a cherished gem. No tarnish marred the metal, no coating of salt dimmed the wood. To whom did all this belong, and how and why was it here? I looked behind me down the beach, but saw no sign of any inhabitants. No footprints save our own marred the sand. All these marvels were left unguarded. Tempted beyond my control, I reached a finger to touch the flower in the vase, only to encounter resistance. It was as if a soft glass covered the opening of the alcove. Foolishly curious, I pressed my hand against the pliable surface. The harder I pressed, the more unyielding the invisible barrier became. I managed to touch one finger to the flower; it moved and a delicate chiming from its petals just reached my ears. Yet it would have taken a stronger man than I to press a hand in deep enough to grasp that flower. I drew my hand back, and as my flesh left the alcove, my fingers tingled unpleasantly. It reminded me of brushing a nettle, save that it did not last as long.

The Prince had watched me. ‘Thief,’ he observed quietly.

I felt like a child caught in some reckless act. ‘I did not intend to take it. I but wished to touch it.’

‘Certainly,’ he observed sarcastically.

‘Have it as you will,’ I replied. I turned my eyes from the distraction of the treasures and looked up the cliff. I realized then that one series of vertical holes were a ladder rather than a succession of alcoves. I said not a word to the Prince as I approached them. Studying them, I decided they had been cut for a man taller than myself, but that I could probably manage.

Dutiful watched me curiously, but I decided he deserved no explanation. I began my climb. Each handhold was a bit of a stretch for me, and placing my feet demanded that I lift each foot uncomfortably high. I was about a third of the way up the cliff before I realized just how much work the whole climb was going to be. The new bruises the Prince had given me throbbed dully. If I had been by myself, I probably would have backed down.

I kept climbing, though the old injury in my back began to shriek in protest each time I reached for the next handhold. By the time I reached the top, my shirt was stuck to my back with sweat. I hauled myself over the lip of the cliff on my belly, and then lay still for a moment or two, catching my breath. The wind was freer here, and colder. I stood up slowly and surveyed my surroundings.

Lots of water. The shores beyond the point I stood on were rocky and abrupt. No beaches. Behind me I saw forest. Beyond the tableland that fronted our beach was more forest. We were either on an island or a peninsula. I saw no sign of human habitation, no ships on the sea, not even a tendril of smoke rising anywhere. If we had to leave our beach on foot, we’d have to go through the forest. The thought sent a surge of unease through me.

After a time, I became aware of a thin sound. I walked to the cliff’s edge and looked down. Prince Dutiful looked up at me and shouted a question, but the inflection of his words were all that reached my ears. I made a vague hand motion at him, feeling annoyed. If he wanted so badly to know what I saw, let him climb up here himself. My mind was busy with other concerns. Someone had made those alcoves and gathered those treasures. I should see some sign of human occupation somewhere. Logic demanded it. At last I discovered what might be a footpath far down the beach. It led through the tableland and towards the forest. It did not look well-used. It might be no more than a game-trail, I thought, but I fixed it in my mind in case we had to resort to it.

Then I looked out over the retreating water, searching for anything that might indicate worked stone. Nothing was exposed yet, but one area looked promising. As each wave fell back, I had glimpses of what might be several large black stones with straight edges. They were still under a shallow layer of water. I hoped it was not a geological quirk. There was a tangle of driftwood on the beach, with a seaweed festooned branch that pointed towards the rocks. I noted it as a guide. I wasn’t sure the tide would bare the rocks completely, but when it reached its full ebb, I intended to investigate them as much as I could.

Finally, with a sigh, I lay down on my belly, scrabbled my legs over the edge, and felt for the first foothold. The climb down was even more unpleasant than the journey up, for I had to grope blindly for each step as I descended. By the time I reached the ground, my legs had a tremor of weariness in them. I skipped the last two steps, dropping to the sand and nearly falling to my knees.

‘Well, what did you see?’ the Prince demanded.

I let him wait while I caught my breath. ‘Water. Rocks. Trees.’

‘No town? No road?’

‘No.’

‘So what are we going to do?’ He sounded annoyed, as if it were all my fault.

I knew what I would do. I was going back through the Skill-pillar, even if I had to dive to find it. But what I said to him was, ‘What I tell you, she knows. Isn’t that true?’

That stole all his words from him. He stood for a time just staring at me. When I set off down the beach, he followed me, unaware of how much authority he had ceded to me.

The day was not warm, but hiking on sand demands more effort than walking on solid ground. I was tired from my climb and preoccupied with my own worries, so I made no effort at conversation. It was Dutiful who broke the silence. ‘You said she was dead,’ he abruptly accused me. ‘That’s impossible. If she is dead, how does she speak to me?’

I took a breath to speak, sighed it out after a moment, and then took another. ‘When you are Witted, you bond to an animal. It’s more than sharing thoughts, it’s sharing being. After a time, you can see through the animal’s eyes, experience its life as it does, perceive the world as the animal does. It isn’t just –’

‘I know all that. I am Piebald, you know.’ He gave a snort of contempt for my words.

I don’t think an interruption had ever irritated me more. ‘Old Blood,’ I corrected him sharply. ‘Tell me you’re Piebald again, and I’ll have to beat it out of you. I’ve no respect for what they do with their magic. Now. How long have you known that you’re Witted?’ I demanded suddenly.

‘I – why –’ I saw him struggle to push his mind past my threat. I’d meant it and he knew it. He took a breath. ‘For about five months. Since the cat was given to me. Almost as soon as her leash was given over to me, I felt –’

‘You felt a trap closing on you, one you’ve been too stupid to perceive. The cat was given to you because others knew you were Witted before you knew it yourself. So you’ve shown signs of it, without being aware that you were doing so. Someone noticed, someone decided to use you. So they presented you with an animal to bond with. That’s not how it’s supposed to be, you know. Witted parents don’t just hand their child an animal and say, here, this is your partner for as long as you both live. No. Usually the child is well schooled in the Wit and its consequences before it bonds. Usually the child makes a quest of some sort, seeking a like-minded animal. When it’s done right, it’s like getting married. This wasn’t done right. You weren’t educated about the Wit by people that cared about you. A group of Witted saw an opening, and took advantage of it. The cat didn’t choose you. That’s bad enough. But I don’t think the cat was even allowed to choose the woman. She stole it, as a kit, from the mother’s den, and forced the bond. Then the woman died, but she kept on living in the cat.’

His eyes were wide and dark, staring up at me. He looked slightly aside from me, and I felt the Wit working between them.

‘I don’t believe you. She says she can explain it all, that you’re trying to confuse me.’ The words spilled out of him hastily, as if he tried to hide behind them.

I glanced over at the boy. Scepticism and confusion had closed his face.

I took a breath and kept my temper. ‘Look, lad. I don’t know all the details. But I can speculate. Perhaps she knew she was dying; maybe that’s why she chose such a helpless creature and forced the bond. When a bond is uneven, as that one would have been, the stronger partner can control the weaker one. She could dominate the kit, and move in and out, sharing the cat’s body as she pleased. And when she died, instead of dying with her own body, she stepped over to the cat’s.’

I stopped walking. I waited until Dutiful met my eyes. ‘You’re next,’ I said quietly.

‘You’re mad! She loves me!’

I shook my head. ‘I sense great ambition in her. She’ll want a human body of her own again, not to be a cat, not to die when the cat’s days are done. She’d have to find someone. It would have to be someone that was both Witted, and ignorant of the Wit. Why not someone well placed? Why not a prince?’

Conflicting expressions flickered over his face. Some part of him knew I spoke truth, and it shamed him that he had been so deceived. He struggled to disbelieve me. I tried to temper my words, so that he did not feel so foolish.

‘I think she selected you. You never had any choice at all, any more than the cat did. The woman/cat is what you’re bonded to, not the cat itself. And it wasn’t done for love of you, any more than she loved the cat. No. Somewhere, someone has a very careful plan, and you’re just a tool for it. A tool for the Piebalds.’

‘I don’t believe you!’ His voice rose on the words. ‘You’re a liar!’ On those words, his voice cracked.

I saw his shoulders heave with the breath he took. I almost felt my Skill-command hold him back from attacking me. For a time I was carefully quiet. When I judged he had mastered himself, I spoke very quietly. ‘You’ve called me a bastard, a thief, and now a liar. A prince should be more mindful of what insults he flings, unless he thinks that his title alone will protect him. So here’s an insult for you, and a warning. Hide behind being a prince while calling me nasty names, and I’ll call you a coward. The next time you insult me, your bloodlines won’t stop my fist.’

I held his gaze until he looked aside from me, a cub cowed by a wolf. I lowered my voice, forcing him to listen carefully to catch my words. ‘You’re not stupid, Dutiful. You know I’m not a liar. She’s dead, and you are being used. You don’t want it to be true, but that’s not the same as disbelieving me. You’ll probably keep hoping and praying that something will happen to prove I’m wrong. It won’t.’ I took a deep breath. ‘About the only thing I can offer you right now is that none of this is really your fault. Someone should have protected you from this. Someone should have taught you about Old Blood from the time you were small.’

There was no way to admit to either of us that that someone was me. The same person who had introduced him to the Wit and all it could be, through Skill-dreams when he was four.

We walked for a long time without speaking. I kept my eyes on my seaweed-festooned snag. Once I’d left the Prince here, I could not predict how long I’d be gone. Could he care for himself? The treasures in the alcove made me uneasy. Such wealth belonged to someone, and that person might resent an intruder on his beach. Yet I could not take him back with me. He’d be a hindrance. A time alone, taking care of himself might do him good, I decided. And if I died trying to save the Fool and Nighteyes? Well, at least the Piebalds would not have the Prince.

I set my teeth, trudged through the sand and kept my grim thoughts to myself. We had nearly reached my snag when Dutiful spoke. His voice was very low. ‘You said my father taught you to Skill. Did he teach you to –’

Then he tripped on something. As he fell, the toe of his boot jerked a silver chain free of the sand that had covered it. He sat up, cursing, and then reached down to free his boot. As he dragged the looped chain clear of the sand, I gaped at it. It was an intricately woven thing, each thread of metal the thickness of a horsehair. He coiled it into his hand, a necklace-length of chain that filled his palm. He gave a final tug to free the last loop, and a figurine popped from the sand. It was fastened to the chain as a dangling charm. It was the length of Dutiful’s little finger. Bright colours had been enamelled onto the metal.

It was the image of a woman. We stared down at the proud face. The artist had given her black eyes and let the dark gold shine through for the tone of her skin. Her hair was painted black with a standing blue ornament crowning it. The draped garments bared one of her breasts. Bare feet of dark gold peeped from beneath the hem.

‘She’s beautiful,’ I said. He made no reply.

The Prince was engrossed by her. He turned the figurine over in his hand and traced the fall of hair down her back.

‘I don’t know what this is made from. It weighs scarcely anything.’

We both lifted our heads at the same instant. Perhaps it was our Wit warning us of the presence of another living being, but I do not think so. I had caught the scent of something indescribably foul on the air. Yet even as I turned my head to seek the source of the stench, I almost became persuaded it was a sweet perfume. Almost.

Some things one never forgets. The insidious tendrilling of mindtouch is one of them. Terror spasmed through me and I slammed up the Skill-walls around my mind in a reflex I thought I had forgotten. My reward was that I perceived the full foulness of its stench as I turned to confront a nightmare creature.

It stood as tall as I did, but that was only the portion of its body that reared upright. I could not decide if it reminded me of a reptile or a sea mammal. The flat flounder eyes on the front of its face looked unnatural in their orientation. The brain-bump of its skull seemed tumescently large. Its lower jaw dropped like a trap door as it stared at us. Its mouth could have engulfed a rabbit. A stiff, fishy tongue protruded from it briefly. As we stared, it jerked its tongue back in and closed its jaws with a snap.

To my horror, the transfixed prince was smiling at the creature in an addled way. He swayed a step closer to it. I set my hand firmly to his shoulder and gripped hard. I set my thumb to his flesh and tried to invoke the earlier Skill-bond I had laid on him without breaching my own walls. ‘Come with me,’ I said quietly but firmly. I drew him back towards me, and if he did not actively obey at least he did not resist me.

The thing reared up even taller. Sacs at the sides of its throat puffed up as it lifted its flipper-like limbs. It suddenly spread finny hands that were large and wide. Claws like bullfish spines stood out from the ends of the digits. Then it spoke, wheezing and belching the syllables. The shock of its distorted words felt like pebbles pelting against me. ‘You did not come by the path. How came you?’

‘We came by –’

‘Silence!’ I warned the Prince and gave him a rough shake. I was backing us away from the creature, but it hummocked its ungainly body over the sand towards us. Where had it come from? I glanced about wildly, fearing to see more of the creatures, but there was only the one. It made a sudden rush forwards, interposing its huge body between the tableland and us. I responded by retreating towards the water. It was where I wished to go anyway, the only possible escape that I could imagine. I prayed the tide would bare the Skill-pillar.

‘You must leave it!’ the creature belched at us. ‘What the ocean washes up on the treasure beach must always remain here. Drop what you have found.’

The Prince opened his hand. The figurine fell but the chain tangled on his lax fingers, to dangle from his hand like a puppet.

‘Drop it!’ the creature repeated more urgently.

I decided the time for subtlety was past. I drew my sword awkwardly with my left hand, for I feared to let go of the Prince. ‘Stay back,’ I warned. My feet were crunching over barnacles on the uneven rocks. I risked a glance behind me. I could see my squared-off black stones, but they barely stuck up above the water. The creature mistook my look.

‘Your ship has left you here! There is nothing out there but ocean. Drop the treasure.’ There was a hissing quality to its speech, most unnerving. It had no more lips than a lizard, but the teeth that the opened mouth bared were multitudinous and sharp. ‘The treasures of this beach are not for humans! What the sea brings here is meant to be lost to humankind! You were not worthy of it.’

Seaweed squelched underfoot. The Prince slipped and nearly went down. I kept my grip on his shoulder and dragged him back to his feet. Three more steps, and water lapped around my feet.

‘You cannot swim far!’ the creature warned us. ‘The beach will have your bones!’

Like a distant wind, I faintly felt the buffeting of fear that he directed at us. The Prince’s mind was unshielded, and he gave a sudden cry of wild terror. ‘I don’t want to drown!’ he cried out. ‘Please, I don’t want to drown!’ When he turned to me, the whites showed all round the edges of his eyes. I did not think him a coward. I knew only too well what it was like to have another mind impose panic on my unguarded thoughts.

‘Dutiful. You have to trust me. Trust me.’

‘I can’t!’ he bellowed, and I believed him. He was torn between us, my Skill-command for obedience warring with the insidious waves of fear the creature gushed at him. I tightened my grip and dragged him back with me as I retreated. The water was up to our knees. Every wave nudged against us in its passage. The wallowing creature did not hesitate to follow us. Doubtless it would be more at home in the sea. I risked another glance behind me. The Skill-pillar was close. I felt that vague confusion that the black memory stone always inflicted on me. It was strange, to push myself towards disorientation in the hopes of salvation.

‘Give me the treasure!’ the creature commanded, and virulent green droplets shimmered suddenly at the end of its claws. It lifted them menacingly.

In one motion, I sheathed my sword, threw my left arm around Dutiful, and flung us both backward into the water. As the creature dove towards us, I thought I saw a sudden flash of comprehension in those inhuman eyes, but it was too late. We fell full-length into the cold saltwater, and my groping fingers sought and found the canted surface of the fallen pillar. I had no time to warn the Prince as it swallowed us.

We stumbled out into an almost-warm afternoon. The Prince dropped nervelessly from my grip to sprawl on a cobblestoned street in the gush of saltwater that had accompanied us. I drew a deep breath and looked around us. ‘Wrong face!’ I had known this could happen but had been too intent on escaping the thing on the beach to consider it. Each face of a Skill-pillar was carved with a rune that told where that surface would transport you. It was a wonderful system, if one understood what the runes meant. With a jolt, I suddenly grasped how much I had just risked. What if this pillar had been buried under stone, or shattered to pieces? I dared not think what might have become of us. Shaking, I stared at the foreign landscape. We stood in the windswept ruins of an abandoned Elderling city. It looked vaguely familiar and I wondered if it were the same city that a similar pillar had once carried me to. But there was no time for exploration or speculation. All had gone wrong. My original plan had been to return alone through the pillar, to rush unhindered to the aid of my friends. But I could not leave Dutiful stunned and alone in this barren place any more than I could have left him on the hostile beach. I’d have to take him with me. ‘We have to go back,’ I told the Prince. ‘We have to get back to Buck exactly as we came.’

‘I didn’t like that at all.’ His voice shook, and I knew instinctively that he was not speaking about the creature on the beach. Going through a pillar was a harrowing experience for an untrained mind. Regal had used the pillars recklessly in transporting his young Skill-users, little caring how many of them went mad from the process. I would not use my prince so recklessly. Except that I had no other choice, and no time.

‘I know,’ I said gently. ‘But we have to go now, before the tide comes in any deeper.’ He stared at me without comprehension. I weighed him keeping his sanity against what the woman might know through him. Then I threw that concern aside. He had to understand, at least a little, or I’d emerge from the pillar with a drooling idiot. ‘We have to go back to the pillar on the beach. We know it has a facet that will take us back to Buck. We’ll have to discover which one.’

The boy made a small retching sound. He hunkered down on the cobblestones, pressing the heels of his hands to his temples. ‘I don’t think I can,’ he said faintly.

My heart smote me. ‘Waiting won’t make it any better,’ I warned him. ‘I’ll hold you together as best I can. But we have to go now, my prince.’

‘That thing might be waiting for us!’ he cried wildly, but I think he feared the passage more than any lurking creature.

I stooped and put my arms around him, and although he struggled wildly, I dragged him back into the pillar with me.

I had never used a pillar twice in such swift succession. I was unprepared for the sharp sensation of heat. As we emerged, I accidentally snuffed warm seawater up my nose. I stood up, holding Dutiful’s head above water. The water around the pillar was seething with the heat from it. And the Prince had been right. As I held his lax body in my arms and shook water from my face, I heard startled grunts from the beach. Not one, but four of the ungainly creatures had congregated there. At the sight of us, they charged, hunching across the sand and into the waves. No time to think or look or choose. The Prince was limp and lolling. I clutched him to me, and risked dropping my Skill-walls to try to hold his mind intact. As an incoming wave drove me to my knees, I slapped a hand to the steaming surface of the Skill-pillar. It dragged me in.

The transit this time seemed unbearable. I swear I smelled a strange odour, oddly familiar and yet repulsive. Dutiful. Dutiful, prince. Heir to the Farseer throne. Son of Kettricken. I wrapped his tattering thoughts in my own and named him by every name I could think of.

Then came a moment he reached back to me. I know you. That was all I sensed from him, but after that, he held onto himself and to me. There was a queer passivity to our bond, and when at length we washed out onto green grass under a lowering sky, I wondered if the Prince’s mind had survived our escape from the treasure-beach.