'Capelin Beach?' His eyes went distant. 'I think I recall … I thought I had dreamed that.' He shook his head and almost smiled. 'So I am now a party to one of the closest-held secrets in Buck. Chade told me that not even he knew precisely where Burrich had hidden Molly away. He had only a place to leave a message for Burrich, so Burrich might come to him. `The fewer who know a secret, the fewer can tell it,' he told me. Yet it seems to me I have heard that name before. Capelin Beach. Or dreamed it, perhaps.'
My heart went cold. 'What do you mean? Have you had a vision of Capelin Beach?'
He shook his head. 'Not a vision, no. Yet a nightmare toothier than most, so that when Kettle found and woke me, I felt I had not slept at all, but had been fleeing for my life for hours.' He shook his head again slowly and rubbed at his eyes, yawning. 'I do not even recall lying down to sleep outside. But that is where they found me.'
'I should have known something was wrong with you,' I apologized. 'You were by the hot spring, speaking to me of Molly and … things. And then you suddenly lay down and went to sleep. I thought you were mocking me,' I admitted sheepishly.
He gave a tremendous yawn. 'I do not even recall seeking you out,' he admitted. He sniffed suddenly. 'Did you say there was meat roasting?'
I nodded. 'The wolf and I got a kid. It's young and should be tender.'
'I'm hungry enough to eat old shoes,' he declared. He threw back his bedding and left the tent. I followed him.
That meal was a better time than we had had in days. The Fool seemed weary and pensive, but had abandoned his barbed humor. The meat, though not tender as fat lamb, was better than anything we had had in weeks. By the end of the meal, I shared Nighteyes' sleepy satiation. He curled up outside by Kettricken to share her watch while I sought my blankets in the tent.
I had half expected the Fool to be wakeful after he had slept so much of the afternoon away. Instead he was first to his blankets and deeply asleep before I had even dragged my boots off. Kettle set out her gamecloth and gave me a problem to consider. I lay down to get what rest I could while Kettle watched over my sleep.
But I got small rest that night. No sooner had I dozed off than the Fool began to twitch and yip in his sleep. Even Nighteyes poked his head in the tent door to see what it was about. It took Kettle several tries to rouse him, and when he dozed off again, he slipped right back into his noisy dreams. That time I reached over to shake him. But when I touched his shoulder, awareness of him surged through me. For an instant, I shared his night terror. 'Fool, wake up!' I cried out to him, and as if in answer to that command, he sat up.
'Let go, let go!' he cried desperately. Then, looking round and finding that no one held him, he dropped back to his bedding. He turned his eyes to meet mine.
'What were you dreaming?' I asked him.
He thought, then shook his head. 'It's gone, now.' He took a shuddering breath. 'But I fear it waits for me, should I close my eyes. I think I shall see if Kettricken wants some company. I would rather be awake than face … whatever it was I was facing in my dreams.'
I watched him leave the tent. Then I lay back in my blankets. I closed my eyes. I found it, faint as a silver shining thread. There was a Skillbond between us.
Ah. Is that what that is? the wolf marveled.
Can you feel it, too?
Only sometimes. It is like what you had with Verity.
Only weaker.
Weaker? I think not. Nighteyes considered. Not weaker, my brother. But different. Fashioned more like a Wit- bond than a Skill joining.
He looked up at the Fool as the Fool came out of the tent. After a time, the Fool frowned to himself and looked down at Nighteyes.
You see, said the wolf. He senses me. Not clearly, but he does. Hello, Fool. My ears itch.
Outside the tent, the Fool reached down suddenly to scratch the wolf's ears.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE. The Quarry
THERE ARE LEGENDS, among the Mountain folk, of an ancient race, much gifted with magic and knowing many things now lost to men forever. These tales are in many ways similar to the tales of elves and Old Ones that are told in the Six Duchies. In some cases, the tales are so similar as to be obviously the same story adapted by different folk. The most obvious example of this would be the tale of the Flying Chair of the Widow's Son. Among the Mountain folk, that Buck tale becomes the Flying Sled of the Orphan Boy. Who can tell which telling was first?
The folk of the Mountain Kingdom will tell you that that ancient race is responsible for some of the more peculiar monuments that one may chance upon in their forests. They are also credited with lesser achievements, such as some of the games of strategy that Mountain children still play, and for a very peculiar wind instrument, powered not by a man's lungs, but by breath trapped in an inflated bladder. Tales are also told of ancient cities far back in the mountains that were once the dwelling of these beings. But nowhere in all their literature, spoken or written, have I found any account of how these people ceased to be.
Three days later we reached the quarry. We had had three days of hiking through suddenly hot weather. The air had been full of the scents of opening leaves and flowers and the whistles of birds and the drones of insects. To either side of the Skill road, life burgeoned. I walked through it, senses keen, more aware of being alive than I had ever been. The Fool had spoken no more about whatever he had foreseen for me. For that I was grateful. I had found Nighteyes was right. Knowing it was hard enough. I would not dwell on it.
Then we came to the quarry. At first it seemed to us that we had simply come to a dead end. The road ramped down into a worked gorge of bare stone, an area twice the size of Buckkeep Castle. The walls of the valley were vertically straight and bare, scarred where immense blocks of black stone had been quarried from it. In a few places, cascading greenery from the earth at the edge of the quarry covered the sheared rock sides. At the lower end of the pit, rainwater had collected and stagnated greenly. There was little other vegetation, for there was precious little soil. Beneath our feet, past the end of the Skill road, we stood on the raw black stone the road had been wrought from. When we looked up at the looming cliff across from us, black stone veined with silver met our eyes. On the floor of the quarry a number of immense blocks had been abandoned amidst piles of rubble and dust. The huge blocks were bigger than buildings. I could not imagine how they had been cut, let alone how they would have been hauled away. Beside them were the remains of great machines, reminding me somewhat of siege engines. Their wood had rotted, their metal rusted. Their remains hunched together like moldering bones. Silence brimmed the quarry.
Two things about the place immediately caught my attention. The first was the black pillar that reared up in our pathway, incised with the same ancient runes we had encountered before. The second was the absolute absence of animal life.
I came to a halt by the pillar. I quested out, and the wolf shared my searching. Cold stone.
Perhaps we shall learn to eat rocks, now? The wolf suggested.
'We shall have to do our hunting elsewhere tonight,' I agreed.
'And find clean water,' added the Fool.
Kettricken had stopped by the pillar. The jeppas were already straying away, searching disconsolately for anything green. Possessing the Skill and the Wit sharpened my perceptions of other folk. But for the moment, I sensed nothing from her. Her face was still and empty. A slackness came over it, as if she aged before my eyes. Her eyes wandered over the lifeless stone, and by chance turned to me. A sickly smile spread over her mouth.
'He's not here,' she said. 'We've come all this way, and he isn't here.'
I could think of nothing to say to her. Of all the things I might have expected at the end of our quest, an abandoned stone quarry seemed unlikeliest. I tried to think of something optimistic to say. There was nothing. This was the last location marked on our map, and evidently the final destination of the Skill road as well. She sank down slowly to sit flat on the stone at the pillar's base. She just sat there, too weary and discouraged to weep. When I looked to Kettle and Starling, I found them staring at me as if I were supposed to have an answer. I did not. The heat of the warm day pressed down on me. For this, we had come so far.
