Fools Errand, Page 55

  “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 whipsnap 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.

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  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 toward 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 leapt 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 stifflegged 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 anymore.

  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 grasseaters, 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 hedgewitch charm means nothing to me, Lord Golden. ”

  Then the Fool's flying body crashed suddenly into my battered wolf, and my Witbond to him vanished.

  I jolted awake. I leapt to my feet, but all I saw was the graying 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 Skillpillar 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 stillsleeping boy and nudged him firmly with my foot. “Get up!” I grated at him.

  I knew that waking him would not necessarily break his Witlink 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 Witdreams, 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.

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  “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 cai, 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 toward 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 colors, 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 gray as its brethren.

  The Prince was not by the fire when I returned, though he had built it up 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 toward 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 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 toward 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 favorites. , 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 -s, 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 rec' ognized 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 whispered in a sullen voice, “Enough. You win. ”

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  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 sword belt 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 hammeredhim 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 toward 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 center 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 womancat 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 investigat' ing a pain in himself. After a time, he lifted his eyes to look at me. “I hate you,” he told me, in a voice devoid of rancor. “That's understandable,” I heard myself reply. I sometimes 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 equaled 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.

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  “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 Skillhold 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 Skillcommand 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.