I glanced about for any chores that needed doing, but camp had been set without me. Kettricken was inside the tent, poring over the map by candlelight. Kettle stirred porridge by the fire while, strange to say, the Fool and Starling conversed quietly. I stood still, trying to recall something I'd meant to do, something I'd been in the middle of doing. The road. I wanted another look at the road. I turned and walked toward it.
'FitzChivalry!'
I turned, startled at the sharpness in Kettle's call. 'What is it?'
'Where are you going?' she asked. She paused, as if surprised by her own question. 'I mean, is Nighteyes about? I haven't seen him for a bit.'
'He went to hunt. He'll be back.' I started toward the road again.
'Usually he's made his kill and come back by now,' she continued.
I paused. 'There's not much game near the road, he said. So he's had to go farther.' I turned away again.
'Now, there's a thing that seems odd,' she went on. 'There's no sign of human traffic on the road. And yet the animals avoid it still. Doesn't game usually follow whatever path is easiest?'
I called back to her, 'Some animals do. Others prefer to keep to cover.'
'Go and get him, girl!' I heard Kettle tell someone sharply.
'Fitz!' I heard Starling call, but it was the Fool who caught up with me and took me by the arm.
'Come back to the tent,' he urged me, tugging at my arm.
'I just want to have another look at the road.'
'It's dark. You'll see nothing now. Wait until morning, when we're traveling on it again. For now, come back to the tent.'
I went with him, but told him irritably, 'You're the one who is acting strange, Fool.'
'You'd not say that, had you seen the look on your face but a moment ago.'
The rations that night were much the same as they had been since we left Jhaampe: thick grain porridge with some chopped dried apple in it, some dried meat, and tea. It was filling, but not exciting. It did nothing to distract me from the intent way the others watched me. I finally set down my tea mug and demanded, 'What?'
No one said anything at first. Then Kettricken said, bluntly, 'Fitz, you don't have a watch tonight. I want you to stay in the tent and sleep.'
'I'm fine, I can stand a watch,' I began to object, but it was my queen who ordered, 'I tell you to stay within the tent tonight.'
For a moment I fought my tongue. Then I bowed my head. 'As you command. I am, perhaps, overly tired.'
'No. It is more than that, FitzChivalry. You scarcely ate tonight, and unless one of us forces you to speak you do nothing save gaze off into the distance. What distracts you?'
I tried to find an answer to Kettricken's blunt question. 'I do not know. Exactly. At least, it is a difficult thing to explain.' The only sound was the tiny crackling of the fire. All eyes were on me. 'When one is trained to Skill,' I went on more slowly, 'one becomes aware that the magic itself has a danger to it. It attracts the attention of the user. When one is using the Skill to do a thing, one must focus one's attention tightly on the intent and refuse to be distracted by the pulling of the Skill. If the Skill user loses that focus, if he gives in to the Skill itself, he can become lost in it. Absorbed by it.' I lifted my eyes from the fire and looked around at their faces. Everyone was still save for Kettle, who was nodding ever so slightly.
'Today, since we found the road, I have felt something that is almost like the pull of the Skill. I have not attempted to Skill; actually, for some days, I have blocked the Skill from myself as much as I can, for I have feared that Regal's coterie may try to break into my mind and do me harm. But despite that, I have felt as if the Skill were luring me. Like a music I can almost hear, or a very faint scent of game. I catch myself straining after it, trying to decide what calls me ….'
I snapped my gaze back to Kettle, saw the distant hunger in her eves. 'Is it because the road is Skill- wrought?'
A flash of anger crossed her face. She looked down to her old hands curled in her lap. She gave a sigh of exasperation. 'It might. The old legends that I have heard say that when a thing is Skill-wrought, it can be dangerous to some folk. Not to ordinary people, but to those who have an aptitude for the Skill but have not been trained in it. Or to those whose training is not advanced far enough for them to know how to be wary.'
'I have never heard of any legends about Skill-wrought things.' I turned to the Fool and Starling. 'Have either of you?'
Both shook their heads slowly.
'It seems to me,' I said carefully to Kettle, 'that someone as well-read as the Fool should have come across such legends. And certainly a trained minstrel should have heard something about them.' I continued to look at her levelly.
She crossed her arms on her chest. 'I am not to blame for what they have not read or heard,' she said stiffly. 'I only tell you what I was told, a long time ago.'
'How long ago?' I pressed. Across from me, Kettricken frowned, but did not interfere.
'A very long time ago,' Kettle replied coldly. 'Back when young men respected their elders.'
The Fool's face lit with a delighted grin. Kettle seemed to feel she had won something, for she set her tea mug in her porridge bowl with a clatter and handed them to me. 'It is your turn to clean the dishes,' she told me severely. She got up and stamped away from the fire and into the tent.
As I slowly gathered the dishes to wipe them out with clean snow, Kettricken came to stand beside me. 'What do you suspect?' she asked me in her forthright way. 'Do you think she is a spy, an enemy among us?'
'No. I do not think she is an enemy. But I think she is … something. Not just an old woman with a religious interest in the Fool. Something more than that.'
'But you don't know what?'
'No. I don't. Only I have noticed that she seems to know a deal more about the Skill than I expect her to. Still, an old person gathers much odd knowledge in a lifetime. It may be no more than that.' I glanced up to where the wind was stirring the tree tops. 'Do you think we shall have snow tonight?' I asked Kettricken.
'Almost certainly. And we shall be fortunate if it stops by morning. We should gather more firewood, and stack it near the tent's door. No, not you. You should go within the tent. If you wandered off now, in this darkness and with snow to come, we'd never find you.'
I began to protest, but she stopped me with a question. 'My Verity. He is more highly trained than you are in the Skill?'
'Yes, my lady.'
'Do you think this road would call to him, as it does to you?'
'Almost certainly. But he has always been far stronger than I in matters of Skill or stubbornness.'
A sad smile tweaked her lips. 'Yes, he is stubborn, that one.' She sighed suddenly, heavily. 'Would that we were only a man and a woman, living far from both sea and mountains. Would that things were simple for us.'
'I wish for that as well,' I said quietly. 'I wish for blisters on my hands from simple work and Molly's candles lighting our home. '
'I hope you get that, Fitz,' Kettricken said quietly. 'I truly do. But we've a long road to tread between here and there.'
'That we do,' I agreed. And a sort of peace bloomed between us. I did not doubt that if circumstances demanded it, she would take my daughter for the throne. But she could no more have changed her attitude about duty and sacrifice than she could have changed the blood and bones of her body. It was who she was. It was not that she wished to take my child from me.
All I needed do to keep my daughter was to bring her husband safely back to her.
We went to bed later that night than had become our custom. All were wearier than usual. The Fool took first watch despite the lines of strain in his face. The new ivory cast his skin had taken on made him look terrible when he was cold, like a statue of misery carved from old bone. The rest of us did not notice the cold much when we were moving during the day, but I don't think the Fool was ever completely warm. Yet he bundled himself warmly and went to stand outside in the rising wind without a murmur of complaint. The rest of us lay down to sleep.
The storm was, at first, a thing that was happening above us, in the treetops. Loose needles fell rattling
