The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy Omnibus (244 page)

Your husband spent most of his life in service to the Farseer reign. Truly, he should have been rewarded years ago for all he did for his kings. His was a song which should have been sung in every hall. It was only by his risking of his life that I survived that dark night when Regal the Pretender turned upon us. In his modesty, he begged that his deeds remain unsung. It seems a callous thing that only now, when he has suffered death in our service, does the Six Duchies throne recall all that we owe to him.

I was seeking to select Crown lands that would amply reward Burrich’s service when a courier arrived from Lady Patience. Truly, ill news seems to fly swiftly, for she had already been informed of your husband’s passing. She wrote to me that he was among the most cherished of friends to the late Prince Chivalry, and that she was certain her lord would have wished to see his estate at Withywoods pass into your family’s stewardship. Title to these lands shall be immediately conveyed to you, to remain with your family forever.

Letter from Queen Kettricken to Molly Chandler Burrichswyf

‘I dreamed I was you.’ He spoke softly to the flames of the fire.

‘Did you?’

‘And you were me.’

‘How droll.’

‘Don’t do that,’ he warned me.

‘Don’t do what?’ I asked him innocently.

‘Don’t be me.’ He shifted in the bedding beside me. Night was a canopy over us, and the wind was warm. He lifted thin fingers to push the golden hair back from his face. The dying light of the fire could almost conceal the bruises fading from his face, but his cheekbones were still too prominent.

I wanted to tell him that someone had to be him, as he himself had stopped doing it so completely. Instead, I asked him, ‘Why not?’

‘It unnerves me.’ He took a deep breath and sighed it out. ‘How long have we been here?’

It was the third time he’d awakened me that night. I’d grown accustomed to it. He did not sleep well at night. I didn’t expect him to. I recalled clearly how I had chosen to sleep only by day and when Burrich was near me, watching over me, in the days of my recovery from Regal’s dungeons. There are times when it is comforting to sleep with sunlight on your eyelids. And times when quiet talk at night is better than sleep, no matter how weary you are. I tried to think how much time had passed since I’d carried his body through the pillar. It was strangely difficult. The interrupted nights and the sun-dappled days of rest seemed to multiply themselves. ‘Five days, if we count days. Four nights, if we count nights. Don’t fret about it. You’re still very weak. I don’t want to try the Skill-pillar until you are stronger.’

‘I don’t want to try the Skill-pillar at all.’

‘Um.’ I made a sound of agreement. ‘But eventually, we have to. I cannot leave Thick with the Black Man forever. And I told Chade that we would be on the beach, ready to greet the ship when it arrived. That should be in, oh, in about five days. I think.’ I had lost track of time in the ice labyrinth. I tried to be concerned about it. I had blocked all Skill-contact with the coterie since our failed healing attempt. Several times, I’d felt vague scratching at my door, but I’d determinedly ignored them. They were probably concerned for me. I said aloud, to convince myself, ‘I have a life to get back to.’

‘I don’t.’ The Fool sounded rather satisfied about that. That encouraged me. There were still moments in the day when he halted, motionless, as if listening for futures that no longer beckoned to him. I wondered what it was like for him. For his entire life, he’d endeavoured to set the track of time into the path that he perceived as best. And he had achieved that; we lived in the future that he had devised. I think he alternated between satisfaction with the future he had created and anxiety about his role in it. When he gave thoughts to such things. Sometimes he simply sat, his damaged hands cradled in his lap as he looked at the soil just beyond his knees. His eyes were afar then, his breathing so slow and shallow that his chest scarce moved with it. I knew that when he sat so, he was trying to make sense of things that were inherently senseless. I did not try to talk him out of it. But I did try, as now, to be optimistic about the days to come.

‘That’s right. You don’t have a life that you must return to; no burden to take up, no harness to resume. You died. See how pleasant it can be, to have died? Once you’ve died, no one expects you to be a king. Or a prophet.’

He propped himself up on one elbow. ‘You speak from experience.’ He spoke pensively, ignoring my jesting tone.

I grinned, ‘I do.’

He eased himself back onto my cloak beside me and stared up at the sky. He had not smiled. I followed his gaze. The stars were fading. I rolled away from him and came lightly to my feet. ‘Time to hunt soon. Dawn is coming. Do you feel strong enough to come with me?’

I had to wait for his answer. Then he shook his head. ‘In all honesty, no. I’m more tired than ever I’ve been in my life. What did you do to my body? I’ve never felt this weak and battered.’

You’ve never been tortured to death before.
That did not seem a good answer to give him, so I stepped aside from it. ‘I think it will take you a time to recover, that’s all. If you had a bit more flesh on your bones, we could use the Skill to heal you.’

‘No,’ he flatly forbade it. I let it go by.

‘In any case, I’m tired of Outislander travel rations, and we haven’t much left of them anyway. Some fresh meat would do
you good. Which I shan’t get for you by lazing here. If you want it cooked, try to wake the fire before I get back.’

‘Very well,’ he agreed quietly.

I hunted poorly that dawn. Concern for the Fool clouded my thoughts. I nearly stepped on one rabbit and it still managed to elude my frantic spring. Luckily, there were fish in the stream, fat and silver and easy to tickle. I came back in the early light, wet to the shoulders, with four of them. We ate them as the sun grew strong, and then I insisted we walk together to the stream to wash the smoky grease from our hands and faces. Belly full, I was ready to sleep after that, but the Fool was pensive. He sat by the fire and poked at it. The third time that he sighed, I rolled over onto my back and asked him, ‘What?’

‘I can’t go back.’

‘Well, you can’t stay here. It’s a pleasant enough place now, but take my word for it. Winter here is hard.’

‘And you speak from experience.’

I smiled. ‘I was a couple of valleys away from here. But yes, again, experience.’

He admitted, ‘For the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do. You have carried me forward, to a place in time that is past my death. Every day when I awaken, I am shocked. I have no idea what will happen to me next. I don’t know what I should be doing with my life. I feel like a boat cut loose and left to drift.’

‘Is that so terrible? Drift for a time. Rest, and grow strong. Most of us long for a place in our lives to do that.’

He sighed again. ‘I don’t know how. I’ve never felt like this before. I can’t decide if it’s bad or good. I’ve no idea what to do with this extra life you’ve given me.’

‘Well, you could probably stay here for the rest of the summer, if you learned to fish for yourself and hunt a bit. But you cannot hide forever from your life and friends. Eventually, you must face it again.’

He almost smiled. ‘This, from the man who spent over a decade being dead. Perhaps I should follow your example. Find a quiet cottage and live like a hermit for a decade or two. Then come back as someone else.’

I chuckled. ‘Then, in a decade, I could come ferret you out. Of course, I’ll be an old man by then.’

‘And I shall not,’ he pointed out quietly. He met my eyes as he said it and his face was solemn.

It was an unsettling thought, and I was just as glad to leave it. I did not want to think too deeply on such things. There would be enough difficult things for me to face when I went back. Burrich’s death. Swift. Nettle. Hap. Eventually, Molly, Burrich’s widow. Her now fatherless little boys. Complications I didn’t want and had no idea how to deal with. It was far easier not to think about them. I pushed them aside, and probably succeeded better than the Fool at walling myself off from the world that awaited my return, for I was practised at it. For the next two days, we lived as wolves, in the now. We had meat and water and the weather continued fair. Rabbits were plentiful and we still had dry travel bread in my pack, so we ate well enough. The Fool continued to heal, and though he did not laugh, there were times when he seemed almost relaxed. I was accustomed to his need for privacy, but now there was a dullness to his avoidance of me that saddened me. My efforts at banter woke no like response from him. He did not scowl or ignore them. He had always been so quick to find humour in even the most dismal circumstances that I felt that even in his presence, I missed him. Even so, he grew stronger and moved with less caution. I told myself that he was getting better and that there was nothing more to desire. Even so, I began to feel restless, and when he said one morning, ‘I am strong enough, now,’ I did not argue with him.

There was little enough to prepare for us to leave. I tried to take down his Elderling tent, but he shook his head, almost wildly, and then said hoarsely, ‘No. Leave it. Leave it.’ That surprised me. True, he had not slept in it since the nightmare, preferring to sleep between me and the fire, but I had thought he would want it. Nonetheless, I did not argue with him. In fact, as I gave it a last glance, and saw how the dragons and serpents on the fine fabric rippled in the light breeze, I found I could think only of his peeled skin on the ice. I shuddered and turned away from it.

In passing, I picked up the Rooster Crown. It had returned to its wooden state, if indeed it had ever been otherwise save in my
imagination. The silvery grey feathers stood up in their stiff row around the circlet. It still seemed to whisper and buzz in my hand. I held it out to him and asked, ‘What of this? A circle of jesters. Do you want it still? Shall we leave it on top of the pillar, to remember she who once wore it?’

He gave me an odd look, and then said softly, ‘I told you. I did not want it for myself. It was for a bargain I struck, long ago.’ He looked at me very carefully and nodded very slightly as he said, ‘And I think it is time that I honoured it.’

And so we did not go straight to the pillar, but walked again down that fading path under the over-arching trees, past the creek and back to the Stone Garden. It was as long a hike as I recalled, and little stinging midges found us once we had entered the shade. The Fool made no comment at them, but only pressed on. Birds flitted overhead, moving shadows that crossed our path. The forest teemed with life.

I recalled my wonder the first time I had glimpsed the stone dragons hidden in their sleep under the trees. I had been terrified, literally awe-stricken by them. Even though I had walked amongst them several times since then, and even seen them called to life and flight to battle the Red Ships for us, I still found them no less astounding. I quested ahead of us with my Wit-sense, and found them, dark green pools of waiting life beneath the shadowing trees.

This was the resting place of all the carved dragons who had awakened to defend the Six Duchies from the Red Ships. Here we had found them, here we had wakened them with blood, Wit and Skill, and here they had returned when the year of battle was over. Dragons I had called them and called them still, from long habit, but not all of them took that shape. Some spoke of other fancies or of heraldic beasts of legend. Vines draped the immense figures of carved stone, and the winged boar had a cap of last year’s leaves on his head. They were stone to the eye and alive to my Wit-touch, gleaming with colour and detail. I could sense the life that teemed deep within the stone, but could not rouse it.

I walked among them with more knowledge now than when I had first discovered them here, and even fancied I could tell which ones had been worked by Elderling hands and which were the work
of Six Duchies Skill-coteries. The Winged Buck was a Six Duchies dragon and no mistake. Those that were more dragon-like in form, I now suspected were the Elderlings’ work. I went first, of course, to Verity as Dragon. I did not torment myself with trying to rouse him from whatever stone dream held him. I did take off my shirt and dust the forest debris from his scaled brow and muscled back and folded wings. Buck blue he gleamed in the dappling sunlight after I had polished the length of him who had been my king. After all I had endured lately, the sleeping creature looked peaceful to me now. I hoped he truly was.

The Fool had gone, of course, to Girl on a Dragon. As I approached them, I saw that he stood quietly before her, the crown in one hand. The other hand rested lightly on the dragon’s shoulder, and I noted that his Skilled fingers touched the creature. His face was very still as he looked up at the figure of the girl astride the dragon. She was breathtakingly lovely. Her hair was more golden than the Fool’s; it fell to her shoulders and caressed them with its loose curls. Her skin was like cream. She wore a jerkin of hunter green, but her legs and feet were bare. Her dragon was even more glorious, his scales the shining green of dark emeralds. He possessed the lax grace of a sleeping hunting-cat. When last I had seen her, she had been posed in sleep upon the dragon, her rounded arms wrapped around his lithe neck. Now she sat upright on her mount. Her eyes were closed, but she lifted her face as if she could feel the errant sunbeams that touched her cheek. A very faint smile curved her lips. Crushed green plants beneath her sleeping steed indicated how recently she had flown. She had carried the Fool to Aslevjal Island, and then returned here, to rejoin her fellows in sleep.

I thought I had walked quietly, but as I approached, the Fool turned his head and looked at me. ‘Do you recall how we attempted to free her, that night?’

I bowed my head. I felt a bit ashamed, still, that I had ever been so young and rash.

‘I’ve repented it ever since.’ I had touched her with the Skill, thinking it might be enough to free her. Instead, it had only roused her to her torment.

He nodded slowly. ‘But what about the second time you touched her? Do you remember that?’