off.'
'I don't want to go back.'
'Don't waste my time by arguing with me,' he said tightly. 'Don't dare to try my patience that way. I've told you what you are to do. Do it.'
Suddenly I was six years old again, and a man in a kitchen backed up a crowd with a look. I shivered, cowed. Abruptly, it was easier to face Galen than to defy Burrich. Even when he added, 'And you'll leave that pup with me until your lessons are done. Being shut up inside your room all day is no life for a dog. His coat will go bad and his muscles won't grow properly. But you'd better be down here each evening, to see to both him and Sooty, or you'll answer to me. And I don't give a damn what Galen says about that, either.'
And so I was dismissed. I conveyed to Smithy that he was to stay with Burrich, and he accepted it with an equanimity that surprised me as much as it hurt my feelings. Dispirited, I took my pot of unguent and plodded back up to the keep. I took food from the kitchen, for I had no heart to face anyone at table and went up to my room. It was cold and dark, no fire in the hearth, no candles in the sticks, and the fouled reeds underfoot stank. I fetched candles and wood, set a fire, and while I was waiting for it to take some of the chill off the stone walls and floors, I busied myself with taking up the floor rushes. Then, as Lacey had advised me, I scrubbed the room well with hot water and vinegar. Somehow I got the vinegar that had been flavored with tarragon, and so when I was finished, the room smelled of that herb. Exhausted, I flung myself down on my bed and fell asleep wondering why I'd never discovered how to open whatever hidden door it was that led to Chade's quarters. But I had no doubt that he would have simply dismissed me, for he was a man of his word and would not interfere until Galen had finished with me. Or until he discovered that I was finished with Galen.
The Fool's candles awoke me. I was completely disoriented as to time and place until he said, 'You've just time to wash and eat and still be first on the tower top.'
He'd brought warm water in a ewer, and warm rolls from the kitchen ovens.
'I'm not going.'
It was the first time I'd ever seen the Fool look surprised. 'Why not?'
'It's pointless. I can't succeed. I simply haven't the aptitude and I'm tired of beating my head against the wall.'
The Fool's eyes widened further. 'I thought you had been doing well, before ...'
It was my turn to be surprised. 'Well? Why do you think he mocks me and strikes me? As a reward for my success? No. I haven't been able to even understand what it's about. All the others have already surpassed me. Why should I go back? So Galen can prove even more thoroughly how right he was?'
'Something,' the Fool said carefully, 'is not right here.' He considered a moment. 'Before, I asked you to quit the lessons. You would not. Do you recall that?'
I cast my mind back. 'I'm stubborn, sometimes,' I admitted.
'And if I asked you now, -to continue? To go up to the tower top, and continue to try?'
'Why have you changed your mind?'
'Because that which I sought to prevent came to pass. But you survived it. So I seek now to ...' His words trailed off. 'It is as you said. Why should I speak at all, when I cannot speak plainly?'
'If I said that, I regret it. It is not a thing one should say to a friend. I do not remember it.'
He smiled faintly. 'If you do not remember it, then neither shall I' He reached and took both of my hands in his. His grip was oddly cool. A shiver passed over me at his touch. 'Would you continue, if I asked it of you? As a friend?'
The word sounded so odd from his lips. He spoke it without mockery, carefully, as if the saying of it aloud could shatter the meaning. His colorless eyes held mine. I found I could not say no. So I nodded.
Even so, I rose reluctantly. He watched me with an impassive interest as I straightened the clothes I'd slept in, splashed my face, and then tore into the bread he'd brought. 'I don't want to go,' I told him as I finished the first roll and took up the second. 'I don't see what it can accomplish.'
'I don't know why he bothers with you,' the Fool agreed. The familiar cynicism was back.
'Galen? He has to, the King ...'
'Burrich.'
'He just likes bossing me about,' I complained, and it sounded childish, even to me.
The Fool shook his head. 'You haven't even a clue, have you?'
'About what?'
'About how the stablemaster dragged Galen from his bed, and from thence to the Witness Stones. I wasn't there, of course, or I would be able to tell you how Galen cursed and struck at him at first, but the stablemaster paid no attention. He just hunched his shoulders to the man's blows, and kept silent. He gripped the Skillmaster by the collar, so the man was fair choked, and dragged him along. And the soldiers and guards and stable boys followed in a stream that became a torrent of men. If I had been there, I could tell you how no man dared to interfere, for it was as if the stablemaster had become as Burrich once was, an iron muscled man with a black temper that was like a madness when it came on him. No one, then, dared to brook that temper, and that day, it was as if Burrich was that man again. If he limped still, no one noticed it at all.
'As for the Skillmaster, he flailed and cursed, and then he grew still, and all suspected that he turned what he knew upon his captor. But if he did, it had no effect, save that the stablemaster tightened his grip on the man's neck. And if Galen strove to sway others to his cause, they did not react. Perhaps being choked and dragged was sufficient to break his concentration. Or perhaps his Skill is not so strong as it was rumored. Or perhaps too many remember his mistreatment of them too well to be vulnerable to his wiles. Or perhaps-'
'Fool! Get on with it! What happened?' A light sweat cloaked my body and I shivered, not knowing what I hoped for.
'I wasn't there, of course,' the Fool asserted sweetly. 'But I have heard it said that the dark man dragged the skinny man all the way up to the Witness Stones. And there, still gripping the Skillmaster so he could not speak, he asserted his challenge. They would fight. No weapons, but hands only, just as the Skillmaster had assaulted a certain boy the day before. And the Stones would witness, if Burrich won, that Galen had had no call to strike the boy, nor had he the right to refuse to teach the boy. And Galen would have refused the challenge and gone to the King himself, except that the dark man had already called the Stones to witness. And so they fought, in much the same way that a bull fights a bale of straw when he tosses and stamps and gores it. And when he was done, the stablemaster bent and whispered something to the Skillmaster, before he and all others turned and left the man lying there, with the Stones witness to his whimpering and bleeding.'
'What did he say?' I demanded.
'I wasn't there. I saw and heard nothing of it.' The Fool stood and stretched. 'You'll be late if you tarry,' he pointed out to me, and left. And I left my room, wondering, and climbed the tall tower to the Queen's stripped garden and was still in time to be the first one there.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN. Lessons
ACCORDING TO ANCIENT CHRONICLES, Skill users were organized in coteries of six. These groups did not usually include any of exceptional royal blood, but were limited to cousins and nephews of the direct line of ascension, or those who showed an aptitude and were judged worthy. One of the most famous, Crossfire's Coterie, provides a splendid example of how they functioned. Dedicated to Queen Vision, Crossfire and the others of her coterie had been trained by a Skillmaster called Tactic. The partners in this coterie were mutually chosen by one another, and then received special training from Tactic to bind them into a close unit. Whether scattered across the Six Duchies to collect or disseminate information, or when massed as a group for the purpose of confounding and demoralizing the enemy, their deeds became legendary. Their final heroism, detailed in the ballad 'Crossfire's Sacrifice,' was the massing of their strength, which they channeled to Queen Vision during the battle of Besham. Unbeknownst to the exhausted Queen, they gave to her more than they could spare themselves, and in the midst of the victory celebration the coterie was discovered in their tower, drained and dying. Perhaps the people's love of Crossfire's Coterie stemmed in part from their all being cripples in one form or another: blind, lame, harelipped, or disfigured by fire were all of the six, yet in the Skill their strength was greater than that of the largest warship, and more important to the defense of the Queen.
During the peaceful years of King Bounty's reign, the instruction of the Skill for the creation of coteries was
