Kettricken had gone snow pale as she mulled my words. Softly she asked, 'Always disloyal to him, Fitz? Speak plainly. Did not they aid in defending the Six Duchies at all?'
I weighed my words as if I were reporting to Verity himself. 'I have no proof, my lady. But I would guess that Skill-messages of Red-Ships were sometimes never relayed, or were deliberately delayed. I think the commands that Verity Skilled forth to the coterie members in the watchtowers were not passed on to the keeps they were to guard. They obeyed him enough that Verity could not tell his messages and commands had been delivered hours after he had sent them. To his dukes, his efforts would appear inept, his strategies untimely or foolish.' My voice trailed away at the anger that blossomed in Kettricken's face. Color came up in her cheeks, angry roses.
'How many lives?' she asked harshly. 'How many towns? How many dead, or worse, Forged? All for a prince's spite, all for a spoiled boy's ambition for the throne? How could he have done it, Fitz? How could he have stood to let people die simply to make his brother look foolish and incompetent?'
I did not have any real answer to that. 'Perhaps he did not think they were people and towns,' I heard myself say softly. 'Perhaps to him they were only game pieces. Possessions of Verity's to be destroyed if he could not win them for himself.'
Kettricken closed her eyes. 'This cannot be forgiven,' she said quietly to herself. She sounded ill with it. With an oddly gentle finality, she added, 'You will have to kill him, FitzChivalry.'
So odd, to be given that royal command at last. 'I know that, my lady. I knew it when last I tried.'
'No,' she corrected me. 'When last you attempted it, it was for yourself. Did not you know that had angered me? This time, I tell you that you must kill him for the sake of the Six Duchies.' She shook her head, almost surprised. 'It is the only way in which he can be Sacrifice for his people. To be killed for them before he can hurt them any more.'
She looked around abruptly at the circle of silent people huddled in bedding, staring at her. 'Go to sleep,' she told all of us, as if we were willful children. 'We must get up early again tomorrow and once more travel swiftly. Sleep while you can.'
Starling went outside to take up her first night's watch. The others lay back, and as the flames from the brazier fell and the light dimmed, I am sure they slept. But despite my weariness, I lay and stared into the darkness. About me were only the sounds of people breathing, of the night wind barely moving through the trees. If I quested out, I could sense Nighteyes prowling about, ever alert for the unwary mouse. The peace and stillness of the winterbound forest was all around us. They all slept deeply, save for Starling on watch.
No one else heard the rushing drive of the Skill-urge that grew stronger within me every day of our journeying. I had not spoken to the Queen of my other fear: that if I reached out to Verity with the Skill, I would never return, but would instead immerse myself in that Skill river I had glimpsed and be forever borne away on it. Even to think on that temptation brought me quivering to the edge of acquiescence. Fiercely I set my walls and boundaries, putting every guard between me and the Skill that I had ever been taught. But tonight I set them, not just to keep Regal and his coterie out of my mind, but to keep myself in it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. The Skill Road
WHAT IS THE true source of magic? Is one born with it in the blood, as some dogs are born to follow a scent while others are best at herding sheep? Or is it a thing that may be won by any with the determination to learn? Or rather are magics inherent to the stones and waters and earths of the world, so that a child imbibes abilities with the water he drinks or the air he breathes? I ask these questions with no concept of how to discover the answers. Did we know the source, could a wizard of great power be deliberately created by one desiring to do so? Could one breed for magic in a child as one breeds a horse for strength or speed? Or select a babe, and begin instruction before the child could even speak? Or build one's house where one might tap the magic where the earth is richest with it? These questions so frighten me that I have almost no desire to pursue the answers, save that if I do not, another may.
It was early afternoon when we came to the wide trail marked on the map. Our narrow path merged into it as a stream joins a river. For some days we were to follow it. Sometimes it led us past small villages tucked into sheltered folds of the Mountains, but Kettricken hastened us past them without stopping. We passed other travelers on the road, and these she greeted courteously, but firmly turned aside all efforts at conversation. If any recognized her as Eyod's daughter, they gave no sign of it. There came a day, however, when we passed the entire day without so much as a glimpse of another traveler, let alone a village or hut. The trail grew narrower, and the only tracks upon it were old ones, blurred by fresh snow. When we rose the next day and set forth upon it, it soon dwindled to no more than a vague track through the trees. Several times Kettricken paused and cast about, and once she made us backtrack and then go on in a new direction. Whatever signs she was following were too subtle for me.
That night, when we camped, she again took out her map and studied it. I sensed her uncertainty, and came to sit beside her. I asked no questions and offered no advice, only gazing with her at the map's worn markings. Finally she glanced up at me.
'I think we are here,' she said. Her finger showed me the end of the trade trail we had followed. 'Somewhere north of us, we should find this other road. I had hoped there would be some ancient connecting trail between the two. It was an idea that made sense to me, that this old road would perhaps connect to one even more forgotten. But now …' She sighed. 'Tomorrow, I suppose we blunder on and hope for luck to aid us.'
Her words did not put heart into any of us.
Nevertheless, the next day we moved on. We moved steadily north, through forest that seemed to have been forever untouched by an axe. Tree branches laced and intertwined high above us, while generations of leaves and needles lay deep beneath the uneven blanketing of snow that had filtered down to the forest floor. To my Wit- sense, these trees had a ghostly life that was almost animal, as if they had acquired some awareness simply by virtue of their age. But it was an awareness of the greater world of light and moisture, soil and air. They regarded our passage not at all, and by afternoon I felt no more significant than an ant. I had never thought to be disdained by a tree.
As we traveled on, hour after hour, I am sure I was not the only one to wonder if we had lost our way completely. A forest this old could have swallowed a road a generation ago. Roots would have lifted its cobbles, leaves and needles blanketed it. What we sought might no longer exist except as a line on an old map.
It was the wolf, ranging well ahead of us as always, who came upon it first.
I like this not at all, he announced.
'The road is that way,' I called to Kettricken ahead of me. My puny human voice seemed like a fly's buzzing in a great hall. I was almost surprised when she heard me and looked back. She took in my pointing hand, then, with a shrug, led her pack sheep in a more westerly direction. We still walked for some time before I saw an arrow- straight break through the clustering trees ahead of us. A stripe of light penetrated the forest there. Kettricken led her pack sheep down onto its wide surface.
What is wrong with it?
He shook himself all over as if to rid his coat of water. It is too much of man. Like a fire to cook meat over.
I do not understand.
He lay back his ears. Like a great force made small and bent to a man's will. Always fire seeks a way to escape containment. So does this road.
His answer made no sense to me. Then we came to the road. I watched Kettricken and the jeppas precede me. The wide road was a straight cut through the trees, its surface lower than that of the forest floor, as when a child drags a stick through sand and leaves a trough behind. The forest trees grew alongside it and leaned over it, but none of them had sent roots thrusting out into the road, nor had any saplings sprouted up from it. Neither had the snow that covered the road's surface been marred, not even by a bird's track. There were not even the muted signs of old tracks covered with snow. No one had trodden this road since the winter snows had begun. As far as I could see, no game trails even crossed it.
I stepped down onto the road's surface.
It was like walking into trailing cobwebs face-first. A piece of ice down the back. Stepping into a hot kitchen after being out in an icy wind. It was a physical sensation that seized me, as sharply as any of those others, and yet as indescribable as wet or dry is. I halted, transfixed. Yet none of the others showed any awareness of it as
