The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy: Fool’s Errand, The Golden Fool, Fool’s Fate. Robin Hobb
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have to find the Prince. He knows where he is. I have no choice.
I am your choice. Believe in me. I’ll track the Prince for you.
I doubt this storm has left any trail to follow.
Trust me. I’ll find him for you. I promise. Only do not do this thing.
Nighteyes, I can’t let him live. He knows too much.
He ignored that thought, or seemed to. Instead, he bade me, Before you kill him, think of what you take from him. Remember what it is to be alive.
Before I could reply, he trapped me in his senses and swept me into his wolf’s ‘now’. FitzChivalry Farseer and all his concerns were banished. We stared out into the black night outside the cave mouth. The falling rain had wakened all the scents of the hills and he read them for me. The rain was a steady hiss against the ground, masking all other sounds. Beside us, the fire was subsiding. I was peripherally aware of the Fool tending it, feeding it bits of firewood to keep it alive but hoarding our supply against the long night to come. I smelled the smoke, the horses, the other humans.
His intent was to take me away from being a man with a man’s cares and back to being a wolf. In that, he succeeded better than he planned. Perhaps Nighteyes was wearier than he knew, or perhaps the hissing rain lulled us both into the closeness of puppies that set no boundaries. I drifted into him, into his mind and spirit and then into his body.
Slowly I came to awareness of the flesh that enclosed him. He had no reserves left. The weariness that filled him pushed out all else. He was dwindling, like the fire, taking in sustenance but none the less, growing ever smaller.
Life is a balance. We tend to forget that as we go blithely from day to day. We eat and drink and sleep and assume that we will always rise up the next day, that meals and rest will always replenish us. Injuries we expect to heal, and pain to lessen as times go by. Even when we are faced with wounds that heal more slowly, with pain that lessens by day only to return in full force at nightfall, even when sleep does not leave us rested, we still expect that somehow tomorrow all will come back into balance and that we will go on. At some point, the exquisite balance has tipped, and despite all our flailing efforts, we begin the slow fall from the body that maintains itself to the body that struggles, nails clawing, to cling to what it used to be.
I stared at the darkness before us. It suddenly seemed that each of the wolf’s exhalations was longer than the breaths he drew in. Like a foundering ship, he sank each day deeper into an acceptance of routine pain and decreased vitality.
He slept heavily now, all wariness forgotten, his broad-skulled head on my lap. I drew a stealthy breath and then gently set my hand to his brow.
As a lad, I had been a source of strength for Verity. He had set his hand to my shoulder, and by his Skill, drawn off the strength he desperately needed to fight the Red-Ships. I thought back to the day on the riverbank, and what I had done to the wolf then. I had reached him with the Wit, but mended him with the Skill. I had known for some time that the two magics could mingle. I had even feared that my use of the Skill must always be contaminated by the Wit. Now that fear became a hope that I could use the two magics together for my wolf. For one could not just take strength with the Skill; one could lend it.
I closed my eyes and steadied my breathing. The wolf’s barriers were down, my Farseer concerns pushed from my mind. Only Nighteyes mattered. I opened myself and willed my strength, my vitality, the days of my life into him. It was like a long exhalation of breath, a flow of life leaving my body and seeping into his. I felt dizzied, yet I sensed him growing steadier, like a wick given a fresh supply of oil. I sent another exhalation of life into him, feeling fatigue seep through me as I did so. It did not matter. What I had given him had steadied him but not restored him; he needed more of my strength. I could eat and sleep and regain my vitality later. Right now, his need was greater.
Then his awareness flared up like a leaping flame, and NO! He forbade it, jerking his body away from mine. He separated himself from me, throwing up walls that nearly sealed me out. Then his thoughts blasted my mind. If ever you attempt that again, I will leave you. Completely and forever. You will not see my body, you will not touch my thoughts, and you will not even catch my scent near your trails. Do you understand me?
I felt like a puppy, shaken and flung aside. The abruptness of the severing left me disoriented. The world swung around me. ‘Why?’ I asked shakily.
Why? He seemed amazed that I could ask.
At that moment, I heard a furtive footfall grating sand. I turned to catch sight of my prisoner darting out the mouth of the cave. I sprang to my feet and leapt after him. In the darkness and rain, I collided with him, and then we were rolling over and over down the rocky hillside in front of the cave. He yelped once as we fell. Then I seized him, and did not let go until we skidded to a halt in the brush and scree at the foot of the slope. Bruised and shaken, we lay panting together as loosened stones bounced past us. My knife was under me, the hilt digging into my hip. I seized the archer by the throat.
‘I should kill you right now,’ I snarled at him. From above, in the darkness, I heard questioning voices. ‘Be quiet!’ I roared at them, and they ceased. ‘Get up,’ I told my prisoner savagely.
‘I can’t.’ His voice shook.
‘Get up!’ I demanded. I staggered upright without letting go of him, and then half-hauled him to his feet. ‘Move!’ I told him. ‘Up the hill, back to the cave. Try to run again, and I’ll pound you bloody.’
He believed me. The reality was that my efforts with Nighteyes had drained me. I could barely keep pace with him as we clambered back up the rain-slick slope. As we scrabbled and slid, a Skill-headache painted bolts of lightning on my eyelids. We were both caked with mud before we regained the cave. Once inside, I ignored Lord Golden’s anxious expression and Laurel’s questions while I securely trussed my prisoner’s wrists behind his back and bound his ankles together. I handled him viciously, the pounding pain in my skull spurring me on. I could feel Laurel and the Fool watching me. It made me feel both angry and ashamed of what I did. ‘Sleep well,’ I hissed at him when I was finished. I stepped back from him and drew my knife from its sheath. I heard Laurel’s gasp and the prisoner gave a sudden sob. But I only walked to the trickle of water to clean the mud from the hilt and sheath. I sloshed mud off my hands and then rubbed my face with cold water. I’d wrenched my back in the struggle. Nighteyes whined low in his throat, a worried sound at my pain. I clenched my teeth and tried to block it away from him. As I stood up, my prisoner spoke. ‘You’re a traitor to your own kind.’ Fear of death gave the boy a false courage. He flung his words at me, but I wouldn’t even look at him. His voice rose in shrill accusation. ‘What did they pay you to betray us? What reward is there for you and your wolf if you bring back the Prince? Do they hold a hostage? A mother? Your sister? Do they swear that if you do this, they’ll let you and your family live? They lie, you know. They always lie.’ His shaking voice was gaining volume. ‘Old Blood hunts Old Blood, and for what? So the Farseers can deny that the blood of the Piebald Prince runs in their line? Or do you work for those who hate the Queen and her son? Will you take him back so that he can be denounced as Old Blood, and the Farseers brought down by those who think they could rule better than they?’
I should have been focused on what he was saying about the Farseers. Instead I heard only his denunciation of what I was. He spoke with certainty. He knew. I tried to brush his words aside. ‘Your wild accusations mean nothing. I am sworn to the Farseers. I serve my queen,’ I replied, though I knew it was stupid to be baited into talking to him. ‘I will rescue the Prince, regardless of who holds him, or what they are to me –’
‘Rescue? Ha! Return him to slavery, you mean.’ The archer had transferred his glare to Laurel as if to convince her. ‘The boy with the cat rides with us to safety, not as a prisoner, but as one coming home to his own kind. Better a free Piebald than a prince in a cage. So you betray him doubly, for he is a Farseer that you are sworn to serve, and Old Blood kin as truly as you are. Will you drag him back to be hanged and quartered and burned, as so many of us have been? As they killed my brother but two nights ago?’ His voice was suddenly