suspected he had been injured in that last battle. There was no sense in giving her more anxiety. Against my will, I felt a part of me groping out toward Verity. I shut my eyes and resolutely sealed myself in again. Had I imagined a taint upon the Skill-current, a too-familiar feeling of insidious power? I set my walls again.
'… split the party?'
'I beg pardon, my queen,' I said humbly.
I did not know if the look in her eyes was exasperation or fear. She took my hand and held it firmly. 'Attend me,' she commanded. 'I said, tomorrow we shall seek a way down. If we see anything that looks promising, we will attempt it. But I think we should give such a search no more than three days. If we find nothing, we should move on. But an alternative is to split the party. To send …'
'I do not think we should split the party,' I said hastily.
'You are most likely correct,' she conceded. 'But it takes so long, so very long, and I have been alone with my questions too long.'
I could think of nothing to say to that, so I pretended to be busy rubbing Nighteyes' ears.
My brother. It was a whisper, no more, but I looked down at Nighteyes beside me. I rested a hand on his ruff, strengthening the bond with a touch. You were as empty as an ordinary human. I could not make you even feel me.
I know. I don't know what happened to me.
I do. You are moving ever farther from my side to the other side. I fear you will go too far and be unable to return: I feared it had already happened today.
What do you mean, my side, and the other side?
'Can you hear the wolf again?' Kettricken asked me worriedly. I was surprised, when I looked up, to see how anxiously she regarded me.
'Yes. We are together again,' I told her. A thought occurred to me. 'How did you know we were unable to communicate?'
She shrugged. 'I suppose I assumed it. He seemed so anxious and you seemed so distant from everyone.'
She has the Wit. Don't you, my queen?
I can not say for certain that something passed between them. Once, long before in Buckkeep, I thought I had sensed Kettricken using the Wit. I suppose she well could have been using it then, for my own sense of it was so diminished I could scarce sense my own bond-animal. In any case Nighteyes lifted his head to look at her and she returned his gaze steadily. With a small frown, Kettricken added, 'Sometimes I wish I could speak to him as you do. Had I his speed and stealth at my disposal, I could be more certain of the safety of the road, both before us and behind. He might be able to find a path down, one not apparent to our eyes.'
If you can keep your Wits about you enough to tell her what I see, I would not mind doing such a task.
'Nighteyes would be most pleased to help you in such a way, my queen,' I offered.
She gave a weary smile. 'Then, I suppose, if you can keep aware of both of us, you may serve as go- between.'
Her eerie echoing of the wolf's thought unsettled me, but I only nodded my assent. Every aspect of conversation now demanded my complete attention, or it slipped away from me. It was like being horribly tired and having to constantly fight off sleep. I wondered if it was this hard for Verity.
There is a way to ride it, but lightly, lightly, like mastering an ill-tempered stallion who rebels against every touch of the rein or heel. But you are not ready to do so yet. So fight it, boy, and keep your head above water. I would that there were another way for you to come to me. But there is only the road, and you must follow it. No, make no reply to me. Know that there are others that listen avariciously if not as keenly as I. Be wary.
Once, in describing my father, Chivalry, Verity had said that when he Skilled it was like being trampled by a horse, that Chivalry would rush into his mind, dump out his messages, and flee. I now had a better understanding of what my uncle had meant. I felt rather like a fish suddenly deserted by a wave. There was that gaping sense of something missing in the instant after Verity's departure. It took me a moment to remember I was a person. Had I not been fortified already with the elfbark, I think I might have fainted. As it was, the drug was increasing its hold on me. I had a sense of being muffed in a warm soft blanket. My weariness was gone, but I felt muted. I finished the little that was left in my cup and waited for the flush of energy that elfbark usually gave me. It didn't come.
'I don't think you used enough,' I told Kettle.
'You have had plenty,' she said with asperity. She sounded like Molly did when she thought I was drinking too much. I braced myself, expecting images of Molly to fill my mind. But I stayed within my own life. I do not know if I felt relieved or disappointed. I longed to see her and Nettle. But Verity had warned me …. Belatedly I announced to Kettricken, 'Verity Skilled to me. Just now.' Then I cursed myself as a churl and a lackwit as I saw the hope flush her face. 'It was not really a message,' I amended hastily. 'Just a warning reminder to me that I am to avoid Skilling. He still believes there may be others seeking me that way.'
Her face fell. She shook her head to herself. Then she looked up to demand, 'He had no word at all for me?'
'I do not know if he realizes you are with me,' I hastily sidestepped the question.
'No words,' she said dully as if she had not heard me. Her eyes were opaque as she asked. 'Does he know how I have failed him? Does he know about … our child?'
'I do not believe he does, my lady. I sense no such grief in him, and well I know how it would grieve him.'
Kettricken swallowed. I cursed my clumsy words, and yet, was it my place to utter words of comfort and love to his wife? She straightened up abruptly, then rose. 'I think I shall bring in a bit more firewood for tonight,' she announced. 'And grain the jeppas. There is scarcely a twig for them to browse on here.'
I watched her leave the tent for the dark and still cold outside. No one spoke a word. After a breath or two, I rose and followed her. 'Don't be long,' Kettle warned me enigmatically. The wolf shadowed after me.
Outside the night was clear and cold. The wind was no worse than usual. Familiar discomforts can almost be ignored. Kettricken was neither fetching wood nor graining the jeppas. I was sure both tasks had already been done earlier. Instead she was standing at the edge of the cloven road, staring out over the blackness of cliff at her feet. She stood tall and stiff as a soldier reporting to his sergeant and made not a sound. I knew she was crying.
There is a time for courtly manners, a time for formal protocol, and a time for humanity. I went to her, took her by the shoulders, and turned her to face me. She radiated misery, and the wolf beside me whined high. 'Kettricken,' I said simply. 'He loves you. He will not blame you. He will grieve, yes, but what kind of a man would not? As for Regal's deeds, they are Regal's deeds. Do not take the blame for those to yourself. You could not have stopped him.'
She wiped a hand across her face and did not speak. She looked past me, her face a pale mask in the starlight. She sighed heavily, but I could sense her strangling on her sorrow. I set my arms about my queen and pulled her to me, pressing her face to my shoulder. I stroked her back, feeling the terrible tension there. 'It's all right,' I lied to her. 'It's going to be all right. In time, you'll see. You'll be together again, you'll make another child, both of you will sit in the Great Hall at Buckkeep and listen to the minstrels sing. There will be peace again, somehow. You've never seen Buckkeep at peace. There will be time for Verity to hunt and fish, and you'll ride at his side. Verity will laugh and shout and roar through the halls like the north wind again. Cook used to chase him out of the kitchen for slicing the meat from the roast before it was cooked through, he would come home from the chase that hungry. He'd come right in and cut the leg off a cooking fowl, that he would, and carry it about with him, telling stories in the guardroom, waving it about like a sword …'
I patted her back as if she were a child and told her tales of the bluff, hearty man I remembered from my boyhood. For a time, her forehead rested on my shoulder and she was completely still. Then she coughed once, as if starting to choke, but instead terrible sobs welled up from her. She cried suddenly and unabashedly as a child that has taken a bad fall and is hurt as well as frightened. I sensed these were tears that had long gone unshed, and I did not try to help her stop. Instead I went on talking and patting her, scarcely hearing what I was saying myself, until her sobs began to quiet and her shaking to still. At last she drew away from me a little, to grope in her pocket for a kerchief. She wiped her face and eyes and blew her nose before she tried to speak.
'I'm going to be all right,' she said. To hear the strength of her belief in those words made my heart ache.
