The Tawny Man 1 - Fool's Errand Read online

  When I came to myself, I was crumpled beside his dragon. Nighteyes had not moved from where he kept his vigil. "He's gone," I told him, uselessly, needlessly. "Verity's gone."

  I bowed my head to my knees and I wept then, mourning my King as I never had the day his human body had vanished into his dragon form.

  I paused in my telling to clear my throat. I drank a bit of the Fool's brandy. I set down my cup and found the Fool looking at me. He had moved closer to hear my hoarse words, and the firelight gilded his skin, but could not reveal what was behind his eyes.

  "I think that was when I fully acknowledged that my old life was completely reduced to ashes. If Verity had remained in some form I could reach, if he had still existed to partner me in the Skill, then I think some part of me would have wanted to remain FitzChivalry Farseer. But he did not. The end of my King was also the end of me. When I rose and walked away from the Stone Garden, I knew truly had what I had longed for all those years: the chance to determine for myself who I was, and a time in which to live my own life as I chose. From now on, I alone would make my decisions."

  Almost, the wolf derided me. I ignored him to speak to the Fool. "I stopped at one more place before we left the Mountains. I think you will recall it. The pillar where I saw you change."

  He nodded silently and I spoke on. When we came to the place where a tall Skill-stone stood at a crossroads, I halted, beset by temptation. Memories washed over me. The first time had come here, it had been with Starling and Kettle, with the Fool and Queen Kettricken, searching for King Verity. Here we had paused, and in a flash of waking-dream, I had seen the verdant forest replaced with a teeming marketplace. Where the Fool had perched atop a stone pillar, a woman stood, like him in white skin and near-colorless eyes. In that other place and time, she had been crowned with a wooden circlet carved with rooster heads and decorated with tail feathers. Like the Fool, her antics had held the crowd's attention. All that I had glimpsed in a moment, like a brief glance through some otherworldly window. Then, in the blinking of an eye, it had all changed back, and I had seen the stunned Fool topple from his precarious perch. Yet he seemed to have shared that brief vision of another time and folk.

  The mystery of that moment was what drew me back to the place. The black monolith that presided over that circle of stones stood impervious to moss or lichen, the glyphs carved in its faces beckoning me to destinations unknown. I knew it now for what it was, as I had not when I had first encountered one of the Skill-gates. I circled it slowly. I recognized the symbol that would take me back to the stone quarry. Another, I was almost sure, would bear me back to the deserted Elderling city. Without thinking, I lifted a finger to trace the rune.

  Despite his size, Nighteyes can move swiftly and near silently. He seized my wrist in his jaws as he sprang between me and the obelisk. I fell with him to keep his teeth from tearing my flesh. We finished with me on my back on the ground. He stood beside but not quite over me, still gripping my wrist in his jaws. You will not do that.

  "I didn't intend to use the stone. Only to touch it."

  Jt is not a thing to trust. have been inside the blackness within the stone. If I must follow you there again, for the sake of your life, then you know I would. But do not ask me to follow you there for puppy curiosity.

  Would you mind if I went to the city for a short time, alone!

  Alone? You know there is no true "alone" for either of us anymore.

  I let you go alone to try a time with the wolf pack.

  It is not at all the same, and you know it.

  I did. He released my wrist and I stood and brushed myself off. We spoke no more about it. That is one of the best things about the Wit. There is absolutely no need for long and painfully detailed discussions to be sure of understanding one another. Once, years ago, he had left me to run with his own kind. When he had returned, it was his unspoken assertion that he belonged more with me than he did with them. In the years since, we had grown ever closer. As he had once pointed out to me, I was no longer completely a man, nor was he a wolf. Nor were we truly separate entities. This was not a case of him overriding my decision. It was more like debating with myself as to the wisdom of an action. Yet in that brief confrontation, we both faced what we had avoided considering. "Our bond was becoming deeper and more complicated. Neither of us was certain of how to deal with it."

  The wolf lifted his head. His deep eyes stared into mine. We shared the misgiving, but he left the decision to me.

  Should I tell the Fool where we had gone next and all we had learned? Was my experience among the Old Blood folk completely mine to share? The secrets I held protected many lives. For myself, I was willing to put my entire existence trustingly in the Fool's hands. But did I have the right to share secrets that were not exclusively mine?

  I don't know how the Fool interpreted my hesitation. I suspect he took it for something other than my own uncertainty.

  "You are right," he declared abruptly. He lifted his cup and drained off the last of his brandy. He set the cup firmly on the floor, then rotated one graceful hand, to halt it with one slender forefinger held aloft in a gesture long familiar to me. Wait, it bade me.

  As if drawn by a puppeteer's strings, he flowed fluidly to his feet. The room was in darkness, yet he crossed it unerringly to his pack. I heard him rustling through it. A short time later, he returned to the fireside with a canvas sack. He sat down close beside me, as if he were about to reveal secrets too intimate even for darkness to share. The sack in his lap was worn and stained. He tugged open the draw-stringed mouth of it, and pulled out something wrapped in beautiful cloth. gasped as he undid the folds of it. Never had I seen so liquid a fabric, nor so intricate a design worked in such brilliant colors. Even in the muted light of the dying fire, the reds blazed and the yellows shimmered. With that length of textile, he could have purchased the favor of any lord.

  Yet this wondrous cloth was not what he wished to show me. He unwound it from what it protected, heedless of how the glorious stuff pooled to the rough floor beside him. I leaned closer, holding my breath, to see what greater wonder it might reveal. The last supple length of it slithered away. I leaned closer, puzzled, to be sure of what I wasseeing.

  "I thought I had dreamed that," I said at last.

  "You did. We did."

  The wooden crown in his hands showed the wear of years. Gone were the bright feathers and paint that had once lent it color. It was a simple thing of carved wood, skillfully wrought, but austere in its beauty. "You had it made?" I guessed.

  "I found it," he returned. He took a breath, then said shakily, "Or perhaps it found me."

  I waited for him to say more but he did not. I put out a hand to touch it, and he made a tiny motion as if to keep it to himself. An instant later, he relented. He held it out to me. As I took it into my hands, I realized that in sharing this he offered me far more of himself, even more than the sharing of his horse. I turned the ancient thing in my hands, discovering traces of bright paint still trapped in the graven lines of the rooster heads. Two of the heads still possessed winking gem eyes. Holes in the brim of the crown showed where each tail feather would have been set. I did not know the wood it was carved from. Light but strong, it seemed to whisper against my fingers, hissing secrets in a tongue I did not know.

  I proffered it back to him. "Put it on," I said quietly. He took the crown. I saw him swallow. "Are you sure ?" he asked me quietly. "I have tried it upon my head, I will admit. Nothing happened. But with us both here, the White Prophet and his Catalyst . . . Fitz, it may be that we tempt a magic neither one of us understands. Time and again, I have searched my memory, but in no prophecy I was ever taught did I find mention of this crown. I have no idea what it signifies, or if it signifies anything at all. You recall your vision of me; I have only the haziest of memories of it, like a butterfly of a dream, too fragile to recapture yet wondrous in its flight."

  I said nothing. His hands, as golden as they had once been white, held the
crown before him. In silence, we dared ourselves, curiosity warring with caution. In the end, given who we were, there could only be one outcome. A slow, reckless grin spread over his face. Thus, I recalled, had he smiled the night he set his Skilled fingers to the carven flesh of Girl-on- a-dragon. Recalling the agony we had inadvertently caused, I knew a sudden moment of apprehension. But before I could speak, he lifted the crown aloft and set it upon his head. I caught my breath.

  Nothing happened.

  I stared at him, torn between relief and disappointment. For an instant, silence held between us. Then he began to snicker. In an instant, laughter burst from both of us. The tension broken, we both laughed until the tears streamed down our cheeks. When our mirth subsided, I looked at the Fool, still crowned with wood, still my friend as he had always been. He wiped tears from his eyes.

  "You know, last month my rooster lost most of his tail to a scuffle with a weasel. Hap picked up the feathers. Shall we try them in the crown?"

  He lifted it from his head and regarded it with mock regret. "Tomorrow, perhaps. And perhaps I shall steal some of your inks as well, and redo the colors. Do you recall them at all?"

  I shrugged. "I'd trust your own eye for that, Fool. You always had a gift for such things."

  He bowed his head with grave exaggeration to my compliment. He twitched the fabric from the floor and began to rewrap the crown. The fire was little more than embers now, casting a ruddy glow over both of us. I looked at him for a long moment. In this light, I could pretend his coloring had not changed, that he was the white-skinned jester of my boyhood, and hence, that I was still as young as he was. He glanced over at me, caught my eyes on him, and stared back at me, a strange avidity in his face. His look was so intense I glanced aside from it. A moment later, he spoke.

  "So. After the Mountains, you went . . . ?"

  I picked up my brandy cup. It was empty. I wondered how much I had drunk, and suddenly knew it was more than enough for one evening. "Tomorrow, Fool. Tomorrow. Give me a night to sleep on it, and ponder how best to tell it."

  One long-fingered hand closed suddenly about my wrist. As always, his flesh was cool against mine. "Ponder, Fitz. But as you do so, do not forget..." Words seemed suddenly to fail him. His eyes gazed once more into mine. His tone changed to a quiet plea. "Tell me all you can, in good conscience. For I never know what it is I need to hear until I have heard it."

  Again, the fervor of his stare unnerved me. "Riddles," I scoffed, trying to speak lightly. Instead, the word seemed to come out as a confirmation of his own.

  "Riddles," he agreed. "Riddles to which we are the answers, if only we can discover the questions." He looked down at his grip on my wrist, and released me. He rose suddenly, graceful as a cat. He stretched, a sinuous writhing that looked as if he unfastened his bones from his joints and then put himself together again. He looked down on me fondly. "Go to bed, Fitz," he told me as if I were a child. "Rest while you can. I need to stay up a bit longer and think. If I can. The brandy has quite gone to my head."

  "Mine as well," I agreed. He offered a hand and I took it. He drew me easily to my feet, his strength, as always, surprising in one so slightly built. I staggered a step sideways and he moved with me, then caught my elbow, righting me. "Care to dance?" I jested feebly as he steadied me.

  "We already do," he responded, almost seriously. As if he bade farewell to a dance partner, he pantomimed a courtly bow over my hand as I drew my fingers from his grip. "Dream of me," he added melodramatically.

  "Good night," I replied, stoically refusing to be baited. As I headed toward my bed, the wolf rose with a groan and followed me. He seldom slept more than an arm's reach from my side. In my room, I let my clothes drop where they would before pulling on a nightshirt and falling into bed. The wolf had already found his place on the cool floor beside it. I closed my eyes and let my arm fall so that my fingers just brushed his ruff.

  "Sleep well, Fitz," the Fool offered. I opened my eyes a crack. He had resumed his chair before the dying fire and smiled at me through the open door of my room. "I'll keep watch," he offered dramatically. I shook my head at his nonsense and flapped a hand in his direction. Sleep swallowed me.

  Chapter VII

  HEART OF A WOLF

  One of the most basic misunderstandings of the Wit is that it is a power given to a human that can be imposed on a beast. In almost all the cautionary tales one hears about the Wit, the story involves an evil person who uses his power over animals or birds to harm his human neighbors. In many of these stories, the just fate of the evil magicker is that his beast servants rise up against him to bring him down to their level, thus revealing him to those he has maligned.

  The reality is that Wit magic is as much a province of animals as of humans. Not all humans evince the ability to form the special bond with an animal that is at the heart of the Wit. Nor does every animal have the full capacity for that bond. Of those creatures that possess the capacity, an even smaller number desire such a bond with a human. For the bond to form, it must be mutual and equal between the partners. Amongst Witted families, when the youngster comes of age, he is sent forth on a sort of quest to seek an animal companion. He does not go out, select a capable beast, and then bend it to his will. Rather the hope is that the human will encounter a like-minded creature, either wild or domestic, that is interested in establishing a Wit'bond. Simply put, for a Wit-bond to be established, the animal must be as gifted as the human. Although a Witted human can achieve some level of communication with almost any animal, no bond will be formed unless the animal shares a like talent and inclination.

  Yet in any relationship there is always the capacity for abuse. Just as a husband may beat his wife, or a wife pare her husband's soul with belittlement, so may a human dominate his Wit partner. Perhaps the most common formof this is when a Witted human selects a beast partner when the creature is far too young to realize the magnitude of that life decision. Rarer are the cases in which animals debase or dictate to their bond-partner, but they are not unknown. Among the Old Blood, the common ballad of Roving Gray son is said to be derived from a tale of a man so foolish as to bond with a wild gander, and ever after spent his life in following the seasons as his bird did.

  badgerlock's "old blood tales"

  Morning came, too bright and too early, on the third day of the Fool's visit. He was awake before me, and if the brandy or the late night held any consequences for him, he did not betray them. The day already promised to be hot, so he had kept the cook fire small, just enough to boil a kettle for porridge. Outside, I turned the chickens out for the day, and took the pony and the Fool's horse out to an open hillside facing the sea. I turned the pony loose but picketed Malta. She gave me a reproachful look at that, but went to grazing as if the tufty grass were exactly what she desired. I stood for a time, overlooking the calm sea. Under the bright morning sun, it looked like hammered blue metal. A very light breeze came off it and stirred my hair. I felt as if someone had spoken words aloud to me and I echoed them. "Time for a change."

  A changing time, the wolf echoed me in return. And yet that was not quite what I had said, but it felt truer. I stretched, rolling my shoulders, and letting the little wind blow away my headache. I looked at my hands held out before me, and then stared at them. They were a farmer's hands, tough and callused, stained dark with earth and weather. I scratched at my bristly face; I had not taken the care to shave in days. My clothes were clean and serviceable, yet like my hands they were stained with the marks of my daily work, and patched besides. All that had seemed comfortable and set a moment before suddenly seemed a disguise, a costume donned to protect me through my quiet years of rest. I suddenly longed to break out of my life and become, not Fitz as I had been, but Fitz as he might have been, had I not died to the world. A strange shiver ran over me. I was reminded, suddenly, of a summer morning in my childhood when I had watched a butterfly twitch and tear its way out of its chrysalis. Had it felt so, as if the stillness and translucency t
hat had wrapped and protected it had abruptly become too confining to bear?

  I took a deep breath and held it, then sighed it out. I expected my sudden discontent to disperse with it, and most of it did. But not all. A changing time, the wolf had said. "So. What are we changing into, then?"

  You. don't know. know only that you change, and sometimes it frightens me . As for me, the change is simpler. I grow old .

  I glanced over at the wolf. "So do I," I pointed out.

  No. You do not. You are aging, but you are not getting old as am getting old. This is true and we both know it.

  There seemed little point in denying it. "So?" I challenged him, bravado masking my sudden uneasiness.

  So we approach a time of decision. And it should be something we decide, not something that we let happen to us. I think you should teR the Fool about our time among the Old Blood. Not because he will or can decide for us, but because we both think better when we share thoughts with him.

  This was a carefully structured thought from the wolf, an almost too-human reasoning from the part of me that ran on four legs. I went down on one knee suddenly beside him and flung my arms around his neck. Frightened for no reason I dared name, I hugged him tight, as if I could pull him inside my chest and hold him there forever. He tolerated it for a moment, then flung his head down and bucked clear of me. He leapt away from me, then stopped. He shook himself all over to settle his rumpled coat, then stared out over the sea as if surveying new hunting terrain. I drew a breath and spoke. "I'll tell him. Tonight."

  He gave me a glance over his shoulder, nose held low and ears forward. His eyes were alight. A flash of his old mischief danced there. I know you will, little brother. Don't fear.