LITMIR.BIZ

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heavy, that the mere bending of a finger could demand a painful effort. I wanted to rest. To sleep again. Was it I, or Shrewd? I should let the Fool put me to bed, let my king have his rest. But the Fool kept holding that one key morsel of information just above my snapping jaws. He juggled away the one mote of knowledge I must possess to be whole.

      ‘Did she die there?’ I demanded.

      He looked at me sadly. He stooped abruptly, picked up his rat sceptre again. A tiny pearl of a tear trickled down Ratsy’s cheek. He focused on it and his eyes went afar again, wandering across a tundra of pain. He spoke in a whisper. ‘A woman in Siltbay. A drop of water in the current of all the women of Siltbay. What might have befallen her? Did she die? Yes. No. Badly burned, but alive. Her arm severed at the shoulder. Cornered and raped while they killed her children, but left alive. Sort of.’ The Fool’s eyes became even emptier. It was as if he read aloud from a roster. His voice had no inflection. ‘Roasted alive with the children when the burning structure fell on them. Took poison as soon as her husband awoke her. Choked to death on smoke. And died of an infection in a sword wound only a few days later. Died of a sword thrust. Strangled on her own blood as she was raped. Cut her own throat after she had killed the children while Raiders were hacking her door down. Survived, and gave birth to a Raider’s child the next summer. Was found wandering days later, badly burned, but recalling nothing. Had her face burned and her hands hacked off, but lived a short …’

      ‘Stop!’ I commanded him. ‘Stop it! I beg you, stop.’

      He paused and drew a breath. His eyes came back to me, focused on me. ‘Stop it?’ he sighed. He put his face into his hands, spoke through muffling fingers. ‘Stop it? So shrieked the women of Siltbay. But it is done already, my liege. We cannot stop what’s already happening. Once it’s come to pass, it’s too late.’ He lifted his face from his hands. He looked very weary.

      ‘Please,’ I begged him. ‘Cannot you tell me of the one woman I saw?’ I suddenly could not recall her name, only that she was very important to me.

      He shook his head, and the small silver bells on his cap jingled wearily. ‘The only way to find out would be to go there.’ He looked up at me. ‘If you command it, I shall do so.’

      ‘Summon Verity,’ I told him instead. ‘I have instructions for him.’

      ‘Our soldiers cannot arrive in time to stop this raid,’ he reminded me. ‘Only to help to douse the fires and assist the folk there in picking from the ruins what is left to them.’

      ‘Then so they shall do,’ I said heavily.

      ‘First, let me help you return to your bed, my king. Before you take a chill. And let me bring you food.’

      ‘No, Fool,’ I told him sadly. ‘Shall I eat and be warm, while the bodies of children are cooling in the mud? Fetch me instead my robe and buskins. And then be off to find Verity.’

      The Fool stood his ground boldly. ‘Do you think the discomfort you inflict on yourself will give even one child another breath, my liege? What happened at Siltbay is done. Why must you suffer?’

      ‘Why must I suffer?’ I found a smile for the Fool. ‘Surely that is the same question that every inhabitant of Siltbay asked tonight of the fog. I suffer, my Fool, because they did. Because I am king. But more, because I am a man, and I saw what happened there. Consider it, Fool. What if every man in the Six Duchies said to himself, “Well, the worst that can befall them has already happened. Why should I give up my meal and warm bed to concern myself with it?” Fool, by the blood that is in me, these are my folk. Do I suffer more tonight than any one of them did? What is the pain and trembling of one man compared to what happened at Siltbay? Why should I shelter myself, while my folk are slaughtered like cattle?’

      ‘But two words are all I need to say to Prince Verity.’ The Fool vexed me with more words. ‘“Raiders” and “Siltbay”, and he knows as much as any man needs to. Let me rest you in your bed, my lord, and then I shall race to him with those words.’

      ‘No.’ A fresh cloud of pain blossomed in the back of my skull. It tried to push the sense from my thoughts, but I held firm. I forced my body to walk to the chair beside the hearth. I managed to lower myself into it. ‘I spent my youth defining the borders of the Six Duchies to any who challenged them. Should my life be too valuable to risk now, when there is so little left of it, and all of that riddled with pain? No, Fool. Fetch my son to me at once. He shall Skill for me, since my own strength for it is at an end this night. Together, we shall consider what we see, and make our decisions as to what must be done. Now go. GO!’

      The Fool’s feet pattered on the stone floor as he fled.

      I was left alone with myself. Myselves. I put my hands to my temples. I felt a painful smile crease my face as I found myself. So, boy. There you are. My king slowly turned his attention to me. He was weary, but he reached his Skill towards me to touch my mind as softly as blowing spider web. I reached clumsily, attempting to complete the Skill bond and it all went awry. Our contact tattered, frayed apart like rotten cloth. And then he was gone.

      I hunkered alone on the floor of my bedchamber in the Mountain Kingdom, uncomfortably close to the hearth fire. I was fifteen, and my nightclothes were soft and clean. The fire in the hearth had burned low. My blistered fingers throbbed angrily. The beginnings of a Skill headache pulsed in my temples.

      I moved slowly, cautiously, as I rose. Like an old man? No. Like a young man whose health was still mending. I knew the difference now.

      My soft, clean bed beckoned, like a soft clean tomorrow.

      I refused them both. I took the chair by the hearth and stared into the flames, pondering.

      When Burrich came at first light to bid me farewell, I was ready to ride with him.

       TWO

       The Homecoming

      Buckkeep Hold overlooks the finest deep water harbour in the Six Duchies. To the north, the Buck River spills into the sea, and with its waters carries most of the goods exported from the interior Duchies of Tilth and Farrow. Steep black cliffs provide the seat for the castle which overlooks the river mouth, the harbour and the waters beyond. The town of Buckkeep clings precariously to those cliffs, well away from the great river’s flood plain, with a good portion of it built on docks and quays. The original stronghold was a log structure built by the inhabitants of the area as a defence against Outislander raids. It was seized in ancient time, by a Raider named Taker, who with the seizing of the fort became a resident. He replaced the timber structure with walls and towers of black stone quarried from the cliffs themselves, and in the process sank the foundations of Buckkeep deep into the stone. With each succeeding generation of the Farseer line, the walls are fortified and the towers built taller and stouter. Since Taker, the founder of the Farseer line, Buckkeep has never fallen to enemy hands.

      Snow kissed my face, wind pushed the hair back from my forehead. I stirred from a dark dream to a darker one, to a winterscape in forest land. I was cold, save where the rising heat of my toiling horse warmed me. Beneath me, Sooty was plodding stolidly along through wind-banked snow. I thought I had been riding long. Hands, the stable-boy, was riding before me. He turned in his saddle and shouted something back to me.

      Sooty stopped, not abruptly, but I was not expecting it, and I nearly slid from the saddle. I caught at her mane and steadied myself. Falling flakes veiled the forest around us. The spruce trees were heavy with accumulated snow, while the interspersed birches were bare black silhouettes in the clouded winter moonlight. There was no sign of a trail. The woods were thick around us. Hands had reined in his black gelding in front of us, and that was why Sooty halted. Behind me Burrich sat his roan mare with the practised ease of the lifelong horseman.

      I was cold, and shaky with weakness. I looked round dully, wondering why we had stopped. The wind gusted sharply, snapping

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