“Anyone aware of the Skill must be aware that Thick is not what he seems to be, nor you. Perhaps they realized Thick's strength and sought to get rid of it by having you two destroy each other.”
“But why not strike immediately against the Prince and his trusted adviser? Why not turn you against each other, and sow discord at the top of the command rather than work from the bottom up?”
“It would be nice to know that,” Chade conceded after a moment's pondering. “But we don't. Indeed, all we have is that you and Thick felt you were under attack. The Prince and I felt nothing, until you two turned on one another.”
“That was rather impressive,” Dutiful added, rubbing his temples wearily. He suddenly gave a huge yawn. “I wish this was over and done with,” he said softly. “I'm tired, I'm cold, and I have no real heart for the task I must do.”
“That could be a Skill-influence, subtly applied to you,” I warned him. “Your father used the Skill that way, to confound the steersmen of the Red Ships and send them onto the rocks.”
The Prince shook his head. “My walls are up and tight. No, this comes from within me.” He watched Chade pour some yellowish tea from the pot, scowl, and return it to steep some more.
“It's not a Skill-influence,” Chade concurred bitterly. “It's the damn Fool, talking to the Wit coterie and the Hetgurd folk, stirring up sympathy for the dragon and preying on the Hetgurd superstitions. Hold to your resolve, my prince. Remember, you gave the Narcheska your word that you would lay the dragon's head on her mothers' hearth for her.”
“That you did,” Peottre observed heavily as he lifted the tent flap. “May I come in?”
“Yes, you may,” Dutiful replied. “And yes, I recall what I promised. But I never promised to take joy in the doing of it.”
My Wit had warned me that someone had approached the tent, but I had expected it to be Swift or Riddle. I wondered why the Outislander had come, and hoped he would not hold his tidings until I had departed. But the nod he gave me seemed to concede my right to be there. Nor did he offer any ominous words of danger on the path ahead, but instead gave a hard smile as he said, “Today was little joy for any of us. And tomorrow will be as wearying. After such a cold and wet day, I thought I would share with you our cure for such a miserable journey.” He sighed heavily. “This weather will not make our task any easier. The rain eats into the snow, weakening places that once were sound. Tomorrow, we must be wary of avalanche as well as crevasses as we cross the saddle of the island.”
As he spoke, he was unwrapping a dark cake from a stained square of fabric. I was hungry and my nose was keen. Whatever it was, it had been soaked in brandy to preserve it. He broke a piece from it, revealing raisins, bits of suet, and what was probably dried apple. The brandy smell grew stronger. Thick sat up eagerly, but warily. I was still shielded from his Skill, but his worry reached me faintly. Fish oil. Would it taste of fish oil?
Peottre seemed to notice my avid stare, for he grinned as he offered me the first chunk. “You look to be the one coldest and wettest still,” he observed. It was true, since the others had already changed to drier clothing. I took it gratefully. As I bit into it, he said, “These cakes are what our warriors call 'courage cake.' We make them with dark thick honey, dried fruits, and strengthening herbs, and then all is soaked in brandy to make it keep well. A man can fight a day or travel two on but a handful of this.”
The sweetness and brandy-echo filled my mouth. As I swallowed, I caught a familiar aftertaste. The bitterness of elfbark had been cloaked by the cloying sweetness of the honey, suet, and fruit. I knew I should warn Chade, even as my weary body shouted in anticipation of the surge of energy it would bring.
Then the world went dead around me.
I do not know how else to describe it. The first time I encountered Forged folk was also the first time I was aware that I had the Wit Magic. I had never realized that I had an extra sense of the kinship of all creatures until I saw living beings that made no imprint on that sense. Forging removed one from the intertwining net of life, made humans into individual unconnected things that ate and raped and existed with absolutely no empathy or sympathy for other living creatures. Only in meeting them had I discovered how the Wit connected me to all living things.
This was a similar experience, but its antithesis. I had thought of the Skill as a magic that only linked me to other Skill-users. Now I was suddenly severed from all the myriad tiny connections it made to all folk. The great voice of the human world, the constant murmur of other thoughts and minds around me, was stilled. I blinked and hastily probed an ear with my finger, wondering for a fraction of a second what had happened to me. I saw, I heard, I smelled, I touched, and the taste of the food lingered still in my mouth, but some other sense, unnamed and unknown until that instant, had been completely quenched in me by that single bite. I made a sudden prodigious effort to reach Chade and Dutiful with the Skill but it was like asking a frozen hand to grip. I remembered how once that sense had been triggered, but now it was a numbed place inside me.
Smiling, Peottre had handed Thick a chunk of the cake. The little man had his mouth open wide and his hand was traveling toward it. I lunged to catch his wrist and pulled it away from him. He moved his mouth after it, snapping at the treat in a gesture that would have been comical if it were not such a threat to the coterie. “Elfbark!” My deprivation of the Skill made me shout the word, as if mere voice alone could not convey such a warning.
I immediately moderated my tone, behaving as if my remark were intended for Thick alone. “No, Thick! You know the herb makes you sick. Let me have that and I promise that I'll find you something else good to eat. No, Thick, please.”
“What herb? I'm not sick! It's mine, it's mine! You said we were friends and wouldn't hurt each other. Let go! Not fair, it's not polite to grab!”
In his love of sweets, he struggled with me for it. I dared not let him have even a taste. Never had I had such a strong reaction to the herb. I felt the rush of its energy through me, and wondered how deeply would I fall into the inevitable trough of despair that followed elfbark use. Then I had scooped the handful of cake from his grasp. He sat down flat on the floor, gave one angry sob, and then went off in a coughing fit. I handed the cake hastily to Chade with the improvised warning, “I wouldn't eat this in front of him, sir. I know how he is about sweets. If he sees you having some without him, well, I'd predict a disruption that would deafen us all.”
I wondered if Chade and Dutiful reached toward me with the Skill. I wondered if Thick tried to make me stumble into the fire in revenge. But I felt absolutely nothing. No touch of them brushed against my senses. My Wit knew they were still there, and that was a comfort. But the Skill-threads that had run amongst us were all severed. Peottre scowled, looking on the verge of affront. Chade reacted more swiftly than I could have hoped, saying, “Ah, yes, I recall what an effect it had on you last time, Thick. It wouldn't be good for you, now, don't fuss, there's a good fellow. I'm sure we can find something just as nice for you.” He turned to Peottre with a conspiratorial wink. “The Prince's good fellow stayed awake a day and a night, and then fell into such a black mood that nothing could cheer him for several days. Not the sort of thing to invite on such an expedition as ours. Come, Thick, don't scowl like that. I think Prince Dutiful has some sugar barley sticks that he has been saving for you.”
The Prince was already rummaging in his pack and Chade hastily took the mashed handful of cake from me, deftly returned it to the rest of the cake and wrapped it up again. He tucked it immediately into his pack. “I'm sure the Prince and I will enjoy a bit of this later, perhaps after Thick has fallen asleep,” he confided to Peottre in a lowered voice. “I, for one, will appreciate what an herb like elfbark can do for an old man. I wasn't aware that it was used in the Out Islands.”
“Elfbark?” Did Peottre feign his ignorance? “We have no plant by such an odd name. There are herbs in the cake but each mothershouse has her own recipe for it, and the ingredients are jealously guarded. But I can tell you that this is from my own home, the same mothershouse the Narcheska shares. This 'courage cake' has been a food that has sustained the Narwhal Clan for generations.”
“Doubtless it is!” Chade exclaimed delightedly. “And I look forward to trying it, later tonight. Or perhaps early tomorrow morning, to have its invigoration with me for the day after a sound night's sleep. Poor Tom, I know what an effect elfbark has on you! You may enjoy it, but I doubt you'll get a wink of sleep tonight. I've told you before not to indulge in it at evening. But, well, there's no talking to you on that topic, is there?”
I essayed a grin I didn't feel. “That's true, Lord Chade, sir. No matter how long you might lecture me, doubtless I'd not hear a word you said.” A tiny change in his eyes suggested he understood me only too well.
He poured weak tea for himself, sipped it, and then coughed loudly, nearly gagging, and vigorously thumping himself on the chest. In a wheezing voice, he added, “You are dismissed, Tom Badgerlock. Get yourself a bit of food, but please report back here before you sleep. I think Thick will wish to sleep here tonight.”
“Yes, my lord.” His mimed action had not been lost on me.
I left the tent, and by a roundabout route, walked to the far corner of the camp. The rain had stopped, but the wind still blew. At the outskirts of camp, I thrust two fingers down my throat and tried desperately to gag up the bite of cake I'd eaten. It didn't work. I'd fasted too long and my belly had taken it down too swiftly. What little I brought up left me shuddering with its bitterness. I ate a handful of wet snow to try to clear the bile from my mouth, kicked loose snow over my vomit, and went shaking back toward the tents. More than mere cold chilled me. I think that once a man has experienced the insidious treachery of poison, he never fully recovers from it. To know that you have taken something into your body, to be aware that it is working changes, debilitating changes, with every beat of your heart, is an excursion into horror that is hard to describe. I had tasted the elfbark and I already felt its impact. What if there had been other drugs in there, ones I had not tasted, working damage I did not yet suspect? I tried to rein my mind away from that precipice. It made no sense, I told myself. The cake had been a gift from Peottre, delivered without apparent guile. We were here to accomplish his mission of slaying the dragon; why would he attempt to poison one of us? Yet I could not quite dismiss it as a perverse twist of luck that he had fed me such a form of the herb strong enough to obliterate my magic.
I was cold and wet and shaky. I didn't want to join the guardsmen in our tent until I had finished calming myself. In a sort of instinctive retreat to safety, I found myself outside the Fool's tent. I fumbled with cold hands at the tent flap. “Lord Golden,” I called softly, belatedly recalling that he might have other guests.
There must have been some note in my voice that alerted him to my distress. He flung the flap open and beckoned me hastily in. Then, “Stand still. Don't drip everywhere.” He had already changed out of his hiking clothes. He looked warm and dry in a long black robe. I envied him.
“Peottre fed me a bit of cake. It had elfbark in it, and I've lost my Skill Magic.” The words tumbled from me, broken by my chattering teeth.
“Take off your wet things.” He had begun rummaging in his pack almost as soon as I entered. Now he dragged out a long coppery garment. “This will probably fit you. It's warmer than it looks. How could elfbark steal all your magic in one bite? It's never affected you that way before.”
I shook my head. “It just did. And someone is attacking Thick and me with the Skill, trying to make us hate each other. It nearly worked, until I thought Thick was going to attack me with the Skill, so I put up my walls and then I could suddenly think my own thoughts and I knew that I didn't really resent having to nursemaid him all the time. It's not really his fault, and even if I don't like having to do it, I shouldn't take it out on him, should I? If anything, I should be angry with Chade, not Thick. He's the one who has put me in this position, and I think that half of it is that he's trying to keep me so busy that I'm separated from you and therefore won't be influenced by you. Because he wants me simply to follow his orders and not to think--”
“Stop!” the Fool exclaimed, alarmed. I halted in mid-word. I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, but he held up both hands. “Fitz. Listen to yourself. I've never heard you rattle on that way. It's...disturbing.”
“It's the elfbark.” I shivered with the restless energy that coursed through me. The last of my wet clothing slapped onto the pile and I gratefully accepted the garment he held out to me, then flinched at its chill weight in my hands. “It's cold. It's cold as iron! What is this made from, fish scales?”
“Just trust me and put it on. It warms quickly.”
I had little choice. I pulled it over my head and it slithered down my body. The long robe reached almost to my feet. I shifted my shoulders in its grip and it suddenly relaxed. “That's strange. It felt tight across my shoulders and chest, and then, when I flexed my shoulders, it just settled onto me. Look. It even reaches to my wrists. It's like unimaginably fine chain metal. Is this more Elderling magic? Is this from the Rain Wilds? I wonder how they made it, and from what? Look at the way the color shifts when I move.”
“Fitz. Stop chattering like that. It's unnerving.” The Fool had taken possession of my wet clothes. As he lifted them, a fine trickle of water ran out of them. “I'm putting these outside to drain. It's hopeless to expect them to dry by morning. Do you have others?”
“Yes. In my pack, but I left that in the Prince's tent. I left the keg of Chade's explosion powder there, too. And Thick's things were mostly in my pack, but that's all right as he is there and he'll need them. So it's good that they are already there.” I heard myself babbling and managed to stop talking before he commanded me to.