else had failed him, and he feared that the next summer of kind weather would bring the end of the Six Duchies and House Farseer, he resolved to spend the winter searching for a legendary folk. The Elderlings. Do we agree so far?'
'Mostly. As I have heard it, the legends called them not a folk, but near gods. And the folk of the Six Duchies had always believed Wisdom something of a religious fanatic, almost a madman where such things were concerned.'
'Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad,' she calmly informed me. 'I shall continue. He left his castle one fall, with no more information than that the Elderlings resided in the Rain Wilds beyond the tallest mountains of the Mountain Kingdom. Somehow, he found them, and he won their alliance. He returned to Buckkeep, and together they drove the raiders and invaders away from the coasts of the Six Duchies. Peace and trade were reestablished. And the Elderlings swore to him that if they were ever needed again, they would return. Do we still agree?'
'As before, mostly. I have heard many minstrels say that the ending is a standard one in tales of heroes and quests. Always, they promise that if ever they are needed again, they will return. Some even pledge to return from beyond the grave if they must.'
'Actually,' Patience suddenly observed, rocking back on her heels, 'Wisdom himself never returned to Buckkeep. The Elderlings came to his daughter, Princess Mindful, and it was to her they offered allegiance.'
'Whence do you have that knowledge?' Kettricken demanded.
Patience shrugged. 'An old minstrel my father used to have always sang it that way.' Unconcerned, she went back to knotting twine about a straw-bundled plant.
Kettricken considered a moment. The wind teased loose a long lock of her hair and blew it across her face like a net. She looked at me through the pale web. 'It doesn't matter what the tales say about their returning. If a King once sought them, and they gave aid, do you not think they might do so again, if a King again beseeched them? Or a Queen?'
'Perhaps,' I said grudgingly. Privately I wondered if the Queen longed for her homeland and would make any excuse for a visit there. Folk were beginning to talk about her lack of pregnancy. While many ladies attended her now, she really had no favorites that were genuinely her friends. Lonely, I suspected. 'I think…' I began gently, pausing to consider how to frame a discouraging reply.
Tell her she should come to me and speak of it. I wish to know more of what she has gleaned. Verity's thought quivered with excitement. It unsettled me.
'I think you should take your idea to the King-in-Waiting and discuss it with him,' I dutifully suggested to her.
She was silent a long time. When she spoke, her voice was pitched very low, for my ears alone. 'I think not. He will consider it another one of my foolishnesses. He will listen for a bit, and then begin to look at the maps on the wall, or move things about on his table as he waits for me to finish so he can smile and nod and send me on my way. Again.' Her voice hoarsened on the last word. She brushed the hair back from her face, then brushed at her eyes again. She turned from me to look out over the sea again, as distant as Verity when he Skilled.
She's crying?
I could not conceal from Verity my annoyance that this surprised him.
Bring her to me. Now, at once!
'My queen?'
'A moment.' Kettricken looked aside from me. With her face away from me, she pretended to be scratching her nose. I knew she brushed at tears.
'Kettricken?' I ventured the familiarity as I had not for months. 'Let us go to him now with this idea. At once. I will go with you.'
She spoke hesitantly, not turning to look at me. 'You do not think it is foolish?'
I would not lie, I reminded myself. 'I think that as things stand, we must consider any possible sources of aid.' As I spoke the words I found I believed them. Had not both Chade and the Fool hinted, no, pleaded for this very idea? Perhaps Verity and I were the ones who were shortsighted.
She took a shuddering breath. 'We shall do it, then. But… you must wait for me outside my chamber. I wish to fetch several scrolls to show him. I will be but a short time.' She turned to Patience, spoke more loudly. 'Lady Patience, might I ask you to finish these plants for me as well? I have something else I wish to attend to.'
'Of course, my queen. I should be pleased to.'
We left the garden, and I followed her to her chambers. I waited for more than a short time. When she emerged, her little maid Rosemary was behind her, insisting on carrying the scrolls for her. Kettricken had washed the soil from her hands. And changed her gown, and added scent and dressed her hair and was wearing the jewelry Verity had sent to her when she was pledged to him. She smiled at me cautiously as I looked at her. 'My lady queen, I am dazzled,' I ventured.
'You flatter me as wildly as Regal does,' she proclaimed, and hastened away down the hall, but a blush warmed her cheeks.
She dresses so just to come to speak to me?
She dresses so to… attract you. How could a man so astute at reading men be so ignorant of women?
Perhaps he has had little time ever to learn much of their ways.
I clamped my mind shut on my thoughts and hastened after my queen. We arrived at Verity's study just in time to see Charim leaving. He was carrying an armful of laundry. It seemed odd until we were admitted. Verity was wearing a soft shirt of pale blue linen, and the mingled scents of lavender and cedar were lively in the air. It reminded me of a clothes chest. His hair and beard were freshly smoothed; well I knew that his hair never stayed that way for more than a few minutes. As Kettricken advanced shyly to curtsy to her lord, I saw Verity as I had not for months. The summer of Skilling had wasted him again. The fine shirt belled about his shoulders, and the smoothed hair was as much gray as black now. There were lines, too, about his eyes and mouth that I had never noticed before.
Do I look so poorly, then?
Not to her, I reminded him.
As Verity took her hand and drew her to sit down beside him on a bench near the fire, she looked at him with a hunger as deep as his Skill drive. Her fingers clung to his hand, and I looked aside as he lifted her hand to kiss it. Perhaps Verity was right about a Skill sensitivity. What Kettricken felt battered at me as roughly as the fury of my crew mates during battle.
I felt a flutter of astonishment from Verity. Then: Shield yourself, he commanded me brusquely, and I was suddenly alone inside my skull. I stood still a moment, dizzied by the abruptness of his departure. He really had no idea, I found myself thinking, and felt glad the thought remained private.
'My lord, I have come to ask a moment or two of your time for… an idea I have.' Kettricken's eyes searched his face as she spoke quietly.
'Certainly,' Verity agreed. He glanced up at me. 'FitzChivalry, will you join us?'
'If you will, my lord.' I took a seat on a stool on the opposite side of the hearth. Rosemary came and stood at my elbow with her armload of scrolls. Probably filched from my room by the Fool, I suspected. But as Kettricken began to talk to Verity she took up the scrolls one by one, in each case to illustrate her argument. Without exception, they were scrolls that dealt, not with the Elderlings, but with the Mountain Kingdom. 'King Wisdom, you may recall, was the first of Six Duchies nobility to come to our land… to the land of the Mountain Kingdom, for anything other than the making of war upon us. So he is well remembered in our histories. These scrolls, copied from ones made in his time, deal with his doings and travels in the Mountain Kingdom. And thus, indirectly, with the Elderlings.' She unrolled the last scroll. Verity and I both leaned forward in amazement. A map. Faded with time, poorly copied probably, but a map. Of the Mountain Kingdom, with passes and trails marked on it. And a few straggling lines leading into the lands beyond.
'One of these paths, marked here, must lead to the Elderlings. For I know the trails of the Mountains, and these are not trade routes, nor do they go to any village I know. Nor do they lie in conjunction with the trails as I know them now to be. These are older roads and paths. And why else would they be marked here, save that they go where King Wisdom went?'
'Can it be that simple?' Verity rose quickly, to return with a branch of candles to light the map better. He smoothed the vellum lovingly with his hands and leaned close over it.
