LITMIR.BIZ

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Verity would do nothing for me until I opened a way for my Skill to go forth, and his to enter my mind. Very well. That was easy enough. Just relax. Stare into the fire and watch the tiny sparks that rode upward on the heat. Dancing floating sparks. Relax the vigilance. Forget how Will had slammed his Skill-strength against that wall and nearly made it give way. Forget that holding the wall was all that had kept my mind my own while they hammered away at my flesh. Forget that sickening sense of violation the time that Justin had forced his way into me. The way Galen had scarred and crippled my Skill ability the time he had abused his position as Skillmaster to force his control on my mind.

      As clearly as if Verity were beside me, I heard again my prince’s words. ‘Galen has scarred you. You’ve walls I can’t begin to penetrate, and I am strong. You’d have to learn to drop them. That’s a hard thing.’ And those words to me had been years ago, before Justin’s invasion, before Will’s attacks. I smiled bitterly. Did they know they had succeeded at un-Skilling me? They’d probably never even given it thought. Someone, somewhere, should make a record of that. Someday a Skilled king might find it handy, to know that if you hurt a Skilled one badly enough with the Skill, you could seal him up inside himself and render him powerless in that area.

      Verity had never had the time to teach me how to drop those walls. Ironically, he had found a way to show me how to reinforce them, so I could seal my private thoughts from him when I did not wish to share them. Perhaps that was a thing I had learned too well. I wondered if I would ever have time to unlearn it.

      Time, no time, Nighteyes interrupted wearily. Time is a thing that men made up to bother themselves with. You think on it until I am dizzy. Why do you follow these old trails at all? Snuff out a new one that may have some meat at the end of it. If you want the game, you must stalk it. That is all. You cannot say, to stalk this takes too long, I wish to simply eat. It is all one. The stalking is the beginning of the eating.

      You do not understand, I told him wearily. There are only so many hours in a day, and only so many days in which I can do this thing.

      Why do you chop your life into bits and give the bits names? Hours, days. It is like a rabbit. If I kill a rabbit, I eat a rabbit. A sleepy snort of disdain. When you have a rabbit, you chop it up and call it bones and meat and fur and guts. And so you never have enough.

       So what should I do, oh wise master?

      Stop whining about it and just do it. So I can sleep.

      He gave me a slight mind-nudge, like an elbow in the ribs when a companion crowds too close to you on the tavern bench. I suddenly realized how closely I had been holding our contact these past few weeks. Had been a time when I had rebuked him for always being in my mind. I had not wanted his company when I was with Molly, and I had tried to explain to him then that such times must belong to me alone. Now his nudge made it plain to me that I had been clinging as close to him as he had to me when he was a cub. I firmly resisted my first impulse to clutch at him. Instead I settled back in my chair and looked at the fire.

      I took the walls down. I sat for a time, with my mouth dry, waiting for an attack. When nothing came, I thought carefully, and again lowered my walls. They believe me dead, I reminded myself. They will not be lying in wait to ambush a dead man. It was still not easy to will my walls down. Far easier to unsquint my eyes on a day of bright sunlight on the water, or to stand unflinching before a coming blow. But when finally I did it, I could sense the Skill flowing all about me, parting around me as if I were a stone in the current of a river. I had but to plunge into it and I could find Verity. Or Will, or Burl, or Carrod. I shuddered and the river retreated. I steeled myself and returned to it. A long time I stood teetering on that bank, daring myself to plunge in. No such thing as testing the water with the Skill. In or out. In.

      In, and I was spinning and tumbling, and I felt my self fraying apart like a piece of rotten hemp rope. Strands peeling and twisting away from me, all the overlays that made me myself, memories, emotions, the deep thoughts that mattered, the flashes of poetry that one experiences that strike deeper than understanding, the random memories of ordinary days, all of it tattering away. It felt so good. All I had to do was let go.

      But that would have made Galen right about me.

      Verity?

      There was no reply. Nothing. He wasn’t there.

      I drew back into myself and pulled my entire self about my mind. I could do it, I found, I could hold myself in the Skill stream and yet maintain my identity. Why had it always been so hard before? I set that question aside and considered the worst. The worst was that Verity had been alive and spoken to me, a few short months ago. ‘Tell them Verity’s alive. That’s all.’ And I had, but they had not understood, and no one had taken any action. Yet what could that message have been, if not a plea for help? A call for help from my king had gone unanswered.

      Suddenly that was not a thing to be borne, and the Skill cry that went out from me was something I felt, as if my very life sprang out of my chest in a questing reach.

      VERITY!

      … Chivalry?

      No more than a whisper brushing against my consciousness, as slight as a moth battering at a window-curtain. It was my turn, this time, to reach and grasp and steady. I flung myself out toward him and found him. His presence flickered like a candle-flame guttering out in the pool of its own wax. I knew he would soon be gone. I had a thousand questions. I asked the only important one.

       Verity. Can you take strength from me, without touching me?

      Fitz? The question more feeble, more hesitant. I thought Chivalry had come back … He teetered on the edge of darkness … to take this burden from me …

      Verity, pay attention. Think. Can you take strength from me? Can you do it now?

      I don’t … I can’t reach. Fitz?

      I remembered Shrewd, drawing strength from me to Skill a farewell to his son. And how Justin and Serene had attacked him and leeched all his strength away and killed him. How he had died, like a bubble popping. Like a spark winking out.

      VERITY! I flung myself at him, wrapped myself around him, steadied him as he had so often steadied me in our Skill contacts. Take from me, I commanded him, and opened myself to him. I willed myself to believe in the reality of his hand on my shoulder, tried to recall what it had felt like the times when he or Shrewd had drawn strength from me. The flame that was Verity leapt up suddenly, and after a moment burned strong and clean again.

      Enough, he cautioned me, and then more strongly, Be careful, boy!

      No, I’m all right, I can do this, I assured him, and willed my strength to him.

      Enough! he insisted, and drew back from me. It was almost as if we stepped slightly apart and considered one another. I could not see his body, but I could sense the terrible weariness in him. It was not the healthy weariness that comes at the end of a day’s labour, but the bone weariness of one grinding day piled upon another, with never food enough nor rest enough in between them. I had given him strength, but not health, and he would quickly burn the vitality he had borrowed from me, for it was not true strength any more than elfbark tea was a sustaining meal.

      Where are you? I demanded of him.

      In the Mountains, he said unwillingly, and added, it is not safe to say more. We should not Skill at all. There are those who would try to hear us.

      But he did not end the contact, and I knew he was as hungry to ask questions as I was. I tried to think what I could tell him. I could sense no one save ourselves but I was not certain I would know if we were spied upon. For long moments our contact held simply as an awareness of one another. Then Verity warned me sternly, You must be more careful. You will draw down trouble on yourself. Yet I take heart from this. I have gone long without the touch of a friend.

      Then it is worth any risk to myself. I hesitated, then found I could not confine the thought within myself. My king. There is something

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