Laurel had been riding in a mortified silence. She had said nothing, but I gathered that in humiliating himself, Lord Golden had daubed her with the same brush. Now she looked shocked as I said, “This way,” and turned Myblack off the road and into the sun-dappled forest.
“Don’t wait for us,” he told me brusquely. “Go as swiftly as you can to close the gap. We’ll catch up as we may, though my poor head may hold us back a bit. The worry now is that we may lose his trail. I am certain Laurel can follow yours. Go now.”
I wanted no more than that. I saw the purpose of his order at once. It would allow me to be alone when I overtook Nighteyes and to confer with him privately. I nodded once and set my heels to Myblack. She sprang forward willingly, and I let my heart lead us. I did not bother looping back to where I had last seen the wolf, but reined her north and east to where I knew he was today. I let a tiny thread of my awareness tug at him to let him know I was coming and felt the twitch of his response. I urged Myblack to greater speed.
Nighteyes had covered a surprising amount of ground. I did not let myself worry about whether or not Laurel could easily track me. My drive now was to rejoin my wolf, see that he was well, and then push on in pursuit of the Prince. My uneasiness for him had been steadily swelling.
The day was hot, summer’s last sprawl across the land, and the sun beat down on us even through the thin shade of the trees. The dry air seemed laden with dust that sucked the moisture from my mouth and clung to my eyelashes. I did not bother trying to find trails but pushed Myblack through the forested hills and down into the dales between them. Lusher vegetation showed where creeks sometimes ran, but their waters seeped under the surface now. Twice we crossed streams, and each time I stopped to let Myblack water and to drink deeply myself. Then we pushed on.
By early afternoon, I had an indefinable conviction that Nighteyes was near. Before I saw him or scented him, I began to get the strange feeling that I had seen this terrain before, that something about those trees ahead was oddly familiar. I pulled in the horse and slowly scanned the hills around me, only to have him step out from a patch of alder brush scarce a stone’s throw away. Myblack flinched and then focused her full attention on him. I set a hand to her neck.
Calm. No need to fear. Calm.
Too tired and not hungry enough to chase you,
Nighteyes added helpfully.
“I brought you meat.”
I know. I smell it.
I had scarcely unwrapped it before it was gone. I wanted to look at his injuries, but knew better than to bother him with that while he was eating. And as soon as he had finished eating, he gave himself a shake.
Let’s go.
Let me look at—
No. Maybe tonight. But while they have light, they travel, and so must we. They already have a good start on us, and the dry soil holds their scents poorly. Let’s go.
He was right about tracking them. The dry ground resisted both print and scent. Before the afternoon was over, we had twice been stymied, and had only rediscovered their trail by casting for it in a wide circle. The shadows were growing long when Lord Golden and Laurel caught up with us. “I see your dog has found us again,” she observed wryly, and I could think of nothing to say in reply.
“Lord Golden tells me that you track the Prince, that a servinggirl told you the Prince had fled north?” There was question in her voice, and her mouth was flat with disapproval. I did not know if she hoped to catch Lord Golden in a lie, or if I was supposed to have seduced someone for the information.
“She didn’t know he was the Prince. She simply called him a lad with a hunting cat.” I tried to think of something that would divert her from more questions. “The trail is poor. Any help you could give me would be welcome.”
My ruse worked. She proved an able tracker. As the light went out of the day, she picked up small signs that I might have missed, and thus we kept following them long past the hour when I would have said the light was too poor. We came to a creek where they had stopped to water. The spoor of two men, two horses, and the cat were all plain in the damp soil at the water’s edge. There we decided to make camp for the night. “It’s better to stop tracking while we know we are on the right trail than to wait until we are not certain, and have confused things with our own tracks. Early tomorrow we will start again,” Laurel announced.
We made a bare camp, little more than a tiny fire and our blankets beside it. Food was in short supply, but at least we had plenty of water. The fruit I had taken from our room was warm and bruised but welcome. Laurel carried, from habit, some twists of dried meat and travel bread. There was precious little of it, and she unwittingly bought much good favor from me when she announced, “We don’t need the meat as much as the dog does. We have both fruit and bread.” Another woman, I thought, might have ignored the wolf’s hunger and hoarded the meat for the next day. Nighteyes, for his part, deigned to take it from her hand. And afterward, when I insisted on looking at his scratches, he did not snarl when she joined me, though she was wise enough not to attempt to touch him. As I had suspected, he had licked most of the unguent away. The scratches were scabbed closed and the flesh beside them did not look too angry. I decided against putting more ointment on them. As I put the unused pot away, Laurel nodded her head in quiet agreement. “Better dry and sealed than greased too well and the scab softened too much.”
Lord Golden had already stretched out on his blanket. I surmised that neither his head nor his belly were yet calm. He had spoken little throughout our camp-making and sparse meal. In the gathering dark, I could not tell if his eyes were closed or if he stared up at the sky.
“Well. I suppose he has the right of it,” I said, gesturing at him. “Early to bed, and an early start tomorrow. Perhaps, with luck, we’ll overtake them.”
I think Laurel assumed Lord Golden was already asleep. She lowered her voice. “It will take some hard riding, as well as a measure of luck. They ride assuredly, knowing where they are bound, while we must go carefully lest we lose them.” Laurel cocked her head and studied me across the small fire. “How did you know when to leave the road to find their trail?”
I took a breath and chose a lie at random. “Luck,” I replied quietly. “I had a feeling they would be going in this direction, and when I struck their trail, we followed it.”
“And your dog had the same feeling, which is why he had gone ahead of you?”
I just looked at her. The words rose to my tongue without my volition. “Maybe I’m Witted.”
“Oh, yes,” she replied sarcastically. “And that is why the Queen trusts you to go after her son. Because you are one of those she most fears. You are not Witted, Tom Badgerlock. I’ve known Witted folk before; I’ve endured their disdain and snubs for folks who do not share their magic. Where I grew up, there were plenty of them, and in that place and time, they did little to conceal it. You are no more Witted than I am, though you are one of the best trackers I’ve ever ridden with.”
I did not thank her for the compliment. “Tell me about the Witted folk you grew up with,” I suggested. I smoothed a wrinkle out of my blanket and lay back on top of it. I closed my eyes almost all the way, as if I were only mildly interested in her words. The moon, a paring less than full, looked down at us through the trees. At the edge of the fire’s light, Nighteyes was diligently licking himself. Laurel fussed for a moment with her own blanket, tossing small stones out from under it. Then she smoothed it to the earth and lay back on it. She was silent for a moment or two and I did not think she was going to answer me.
Then, “Oh, they were not so bad. Not like the tales folk tell. They did not turn into bears or deer or seals at the light of the full moon, nor did they eat raw meat and steal children. Still, they were bad enough.”
“How?”
“Oh.” She hesitated. “It just was not fair,” she said at last, with a sigh. “Imagine never being sure that you were alone, for some little bird or lurking fox might carry the eyes and ears of your neighbor. They took full advantage of their Wit, for their animal partners forever told them where the hunting was best or the berries first ripened.”
“Were they that open that they were Witted? Never have I heard of such a village.”
“It was not that they were open about what they were, so much as that I was excluded for what I was not. Children are not subtle.”
The bitterness of her words shocked me. I recalled, abruptly, how the rest of Galen’s coterie had treated me with disdain when I could not seem to master the Skill. I tried to imagine growing up amidst such snubbing. Then a thought intruded. “I thought your father was Huntsman for Lord Sitswell. Did not you grow up on his estate, then?” I wanted to know where this place was, where Witted ones were so common their children had come to expect it of their playmates.
“Oh. Well, but that came later, you see.”
I was not sure if she lied then, or if she had lied earlier, only that the untruth hung almost palpably between us. It made an uncomfortable silence. My mind darted amongst the possibilities. That she was Witted, that she was an un-Witted child in a family with Witted siblings or parents, that she had made the whole tale up, that all of Lord Sitswell’s manor was riddled with Witted servants. Perhaps Lord Sitswell himself was of the Old Blood. Such speculation was not entirely useless. It prepared the mind to sort whatever other information she might toss my way into the appropriate possibilities. I harkened back to an earlier conversation we had had, and found a chance remark that put a chill down my back. She had said she would know these hills well, having spent time not far from Galeton, amongst her other folk. Chade too had mentioned something of that. I tried to find a way to renew the conversation.
“So. You sound as if you do not share the currently fashionable hatred of the Witted. That perhaps you do not wish to see them all burned and cut up.”
“It’s a filthy habit,” she said, and the way she said it made me feel as if fire and blade were too small a cure for it. “I think that parents who teach their children to indulge it should be whipped. Those that choose to practice it should not marry nor have children. They already have a beast to share their homes and lives. Why should they cheat a woman or a man by taking a spouse? Those who are Witted should have to choose, early in their lives, which they will bind to, an animal or another human. That’s all.”
Her voice had risen on the vehemence of her reply. At her last words, it dropped away, as if she suddenly recalled that Lord Golden was sleeping. “Good night, Tom Badgerlock,” she added belatedly. She tried to soften her tone, perhaps, but it still plainly told me that our talk was over. As if to emphasize it, she rolled on her blanket to put her back to me.
Nighteyes rose with a groan and came stiffly to me. He lay down beside me with a sigh. I let my hand come to rest on his ruff. Our shared thoughts flowed as secretly as our blood.
She knows.
Then you think she is Witted?
I asked him.
I think she knows that you are Witted, and I don’t think she likes it much.
For a time, I lay silently mulling that.
But she fed you.
Oh, well, I think she likes me. It’s you she’s not sure about.
Go to sleep.
Are you going to reach after them tonight?
I didn’t want to. If I succeeded, it would give me a terrible headache. The mere thought of the pain made me nauseous. Yet if I could touch the Prince, I might gain information that could help us catch up sooner.
I should try.
I felt his resignation.
Go ahead, then. I’ll be right here.
Nighteyes. When I Skill and afterward . . . do you share the pain?
Not exactly. Though it is hard for me to remain apart from it, I can. It just feels cowardly when I do.
It’s not cowardly at all. What is the point of both of us suffering?
He made no answer to me, but I sensed that he reserved some thought on that for himself. Something about my question almost amused him. I lifted my hand from his fur and set it on my chest. Then I closed my eyes, centered myself, and tried for a Skill-trance. Dread of pain kept intruding on my thoughts, pushing awry my carefully constructed peace. Finally, I managed to find a balancing point and held myself there, somewhere between dreaming and waking. I reached forth into the night.
That night I felt, as I had not in years, the sweetness of the pure connection of the Skill. I reached out and it was as if someone reached back and clasped both my hands in welcome. It was a simple, sweet joining, as comforting as homecoming after a long journey. There was the linking of the Skill, and someone drowsing in a soft bed in a loft under the eaves of a thatched roof. The homely smells of a cottage surrounded me, the lingering smell of a good stew cooked that night, and the honey-tang of a beeswax candle burning late somewhere below. I could hear a man and a woman talking, their voices muted as if they did not want to disturb my rest. I could not make out their words, but I knew I was home and safe and that nothing could harm me there. As our Skill-link faded, I sank deeply into the most peaceful sleep I had known in many a year.
chapter
XIX
THE INN
During the years of the Red Ship War, when Prince Regal the Pretender wrongfully claimed to be King of the Six Duchies, he introduced a system of justice he called the King’s Circle. Trial by arms was not unknown in the Six Duchies. It is said that if two men fight before the Witness Stones, the gods themselves look down and reward victory to him whose cause is just. Regal took this idea one step further. In his arenas, accused criminals faced either his King’s Champions or wild beasts. Those who survived were judged to be innocent of the charges against them. Many Witted met their ends in those Circles. Yet those who died in these bloody trials were but half of the evil done there. For what was born in those same contests was a public tolerance of violence and mayhem that swiftly became a hunger. These trials became spectacle and amusement as much as judgment. Although one of Kettricken’s first acts as Queen and Regent for young Dutiful was to put an end to such trials and have the Circles dismantled, no royal decision could quench the bloodlust that Regal’s spectacles had awakened.
I awoke very early the next morning with a sense of well-being and peace. An early-morning fog was in the process of burning off. Dew glimmered on my blanket. For a time I gazed unthinking at the sky through the oak branches overhead. I was in a state of mind in which the black pattern against the blue was all that I needed to satisfy me. After a while, when my mind insisted on recognizing the sight before me as tree branches against the sky, I came back to myself and where I was and what I must do.
I had no headache. I could cheerfully have rolled over and slept most of the day away, but I could not decide if I was truly tired or simply wanted to return to the safety of my dreams. I forced myself to sit up.
Nighteyes was gone. The others still slept. I poked up the embers of the fire and fed it before it occurred to me that we had nothing to cook over it. We’d have to tighten our belts and follow the Prince and his companion. With luck, something edible would cross our path.
I drank from the stream and washed my face in the cool water. The day was already warming. As I was drinking, the wolf came back.
Meat?
I asked hopefully.
A nest of mice. I didn’t save you any.
That’s all right.
I wasn’t that hungry. Yet.
He lapped alongside me for a time, then lifted his muzzle.
Where did you go last night?
I knew what he meant.
I’m not sure. But it felt safe.
It was nice. I’m glad you can get to a place like that.
There was wistfulness in his thought. I looked at him more closely. For an instant, I saw him as another might. He was an aging wolf, gray on his muzzle, flesh sunken on his flanks. His recent encounter with the cat still hindered him. He ignored my concern to stare into the stream.
Fish?
I let my annoyance seep into my thought. “Not a sign of one,” I muttered aloud. “And there should be. Plenty of plants, midges buzzing. There should be fish here. But there aren’t.”
I felt his mental shrug at how life was.
Wake the others. We need to get moving.
He did not want my worry. It was a useless burden to him, an anxiety not to be indulged. When I returned to camp, the others were already stirring. There was little to say. Lord Golden seemed to have recovered from his excesses. No one spoke about the lack of food. Dwelling on it would not change it. Instead, in a remarkably short time, we were in our saddles again and following the Prince’s fading trail. He was moving steadily north. At noon, we found a campfire, the ashes gone cold. The area around the fire was well trampled, as if folk had camped there for several days. The mystery was easily solved. Two trees bore the mark of a picket line. Someone had waited here. When the Prince, the cat, and their companion arrived, they had departed together. North. Laurel and I debated the number of horses in the other party, and finally settled on four. They had picked up two more companions here.
We pressed on, increasing our pace as the multiple tracks were easier to follow. A high overcast came in, and then thickened into clouds. I blessed the dimming of the sun’s harshness, but Nighteyes still panted as he kept pace with us. I watched him with growing concern. I longed to link more tightly with him, to be sure that he did not press on in spite of pain, but while Laurel rode with us, I dared not.
As shadows lengthened and the day began to cool, we came out of the forest and looked down at a wide yellow road crossing our path. From the crest of a hill, we stared down at it with dismay. If the Prince and his fellows had chosen to follow it, tracking might become very difficult.
We reached the edge of the road. Their tracks merged with it. The wolf made a show of casting about, but without much enthusiasm. The Prince’s trail mingled in the thick dry dust with old wagon tracks and softened hoofprints. Neither imprint nor scent would linger long. An afternoon breeze could erase all trace of their passage.
“Well,” Lord Golden observed helpfully. He lifted one eyebrow at me.
I knew what he suggested. Was not this why Chade had sent me? I shut my eyes and took a breath, then I threw myself wide to the Skill without any thought for protecting myself.
Where are you?
I demanded of the rushing world around me. There might have been a twitch of response but I had no assurance that it was the Prince. After last night, I knew there was something else out there that reacted to my Skill-reaching, something that was not the Prince. I could set my hand to it, almost. I forced myself to shift my attention away from that beckoning harbor and to reach out again for the Prince. But he and the cat eluded me. I do not know how long I sat on Myblack and extended myself to the wide world. Time stands still in such a reaching. I could almost feel the Fool waiting for me; no, I
did
feel him. A shimmering thread of Skill let me know how he contained his impatience. I sighed and pulled myself back from both the peaceful invitation and my fruitless reaching after the Prince. I had no tidings to give Lord Golden.
I opened my eyes. “They were going north. Let’s follow it north.”
“The road is more northeast than north,” Lord Golden pointed out.
I shrugged. “The other option is southwest,” I replied.
“Northeast it is,” he concurred, and touched his heels to Malta. I followed him, and then glanced back to see what was keeping Laurel. She had a puzzled look on her face and was looking from me to Lord Golden as if perplexed. After a moment, she came after us. I reviewed my most recent interchange with my master and could have kicked both of us. I hadn’t even remembered to call him “Lord,” let alone kept the proper tone of a servant to his master. Our direction had obviously been my decision. I decided the best course of action was to say nothing at all about it, and hope to make it up with future subservience though my heart sank at that thought, and I admitted to myself just how much I longed for unguarded conversation and companionship.
We rode on through the remainder of the daylight. Lord Golden ostensibly led us, but in reality we followed the road. As the light faded, I began to look for a likely camping spot. Nighteyes seemed to pluck the thought from the air, for he surged ahead of our horses to crest a low rise in the road. When he disappeared over it, I knew he wanted us to follow. “Let’s go just a bit farther,” I suggested despite the gathering darkness. And at the top of the hill, we were rewarded with the sparse lights of a little village in the folds of the valley before us. A river wound past it; I could smell it, and the smoke of cook fires. My stomach awoke from its resignation and growled loudly.
“There will be an inn down there, I’ll wager,” Lord Golden announced enthusiastically. “Real beds. And we can get provisions for tomorrow.”
“Dare we ask for word of the Prince?” Laurel asked. Our weary horses seemed to sense there might be something better than grass and creek water for them tonight. They picked up their pace as they went down the hill. I saw no sign of Nighteyes, but I had not expected to.
“I’ll make some quiet inquiries,” I volunteered. I imagined that Nighteyes already was doing that. If they had passed through the village and paused at all, the cat would have left some sign.
With unerring instinct, Lord Golden led us to an inn. It was a grand building for such a small town, built of black stone and boasting a second story. The hanging signboard chilled my heart. It was the Piebald Prince, neatly divided into his head and four quarters. It was not the first time I had seen him depicted that way; in fact, it was the commonest way to see him, but a sense of foreboding hung over me. If either Lord Golden or Laurel were given pause by the sign, they did not betray it. Light spilled wide from the inn’s open door, and talk and good cheer flowed out with it. I smelled cooking food and Smoke and beer. The level of the laughter and shouted conversation was a pleasant roar. Lord Golden dismounted and told me to take the horses to the hostler. Laurel accompanied him into the noisy common room as I led the animals around to the darkened back of the inn. In a few moments, a door was flung open, and light stabbed out into the dusty innyard. The hostler appeared, wiping his interrupted meal from his lips, and bearing a lantern. He took the horses from me and led them off to the stable. I more felt than saw Nighteyes in the deeper darkness at the corner of the inn. As I approached the inn door, a shadow detached itself and brushed past me. In that brief touch, I knew his thoughts.
They were here. Be cautious. I smell man’s blood in the street in front of this place. And dogs. Usually dogs are here, but not tonight.
He blurred into the night before I could ask him any details. I went in through the back door with an uneasy heart and an empty belly. Inside, the innkeeper informed me that my master had already commanded his finest room, and I was to bring all the bags up. Wearily I turned back to the stables. While I appreciated Lord Golden’s ruse to let me have a good look inside the stables, I was suddenly afflicted with a weariness that could barely be suppressed. Food and sleep. I didn’t even need a bed. I would have been happy to drop where I stood.
The hostler was still putting grain into our horses’ feed bins. Perhaps because I was there, they got a more generous shake of oats. I saw nothing unusual in the stables. There were three plug horses of the kind such a place usually kept for hire, and a battered cart. A cow in a byre probably provided the milk for the guests’ porridge. I disapproved of the chickens roosting in the rafters. Their droppings would foul the horses’ food and water, but there was little I could do about it. There were only two other horses stabled there, not enough to be the mounts of those we followed. There were no hunting cats tethered in empty stalls. Well, nothing was ever easy. The hostler was competent at his work, but not talkative, nor even curious. His clothing was pungent with Smoke; I suspected the herbs had mellowed him past caring much about anything. I got our bags and, heavily laden, made my way back to the inn.
The finest room was up a flight of worn wooden steps. The climb taxed me more than it should have. I knocked at the door, then managed to open it for myself. It was the finest room in the sense that it was the best sitting room at the inn. Lord Golden was enthroned in a cushioned chair at the head of a scarred table. Laurel sat at his right hand. There were mugs in front of them and a large earthenware pitcher. I smelled ale. I managed to set the bags down inside the door instead of just dropping them. Lord Golden deigned to notice me. “I’ve ordered food, Tom Badgerlock. And arranged rooms for us. As soon as they’ve made the beds up, they’ll show you where to take the bags. Until then, do be seated, my good man. You’ve well earned your keep today. There’s a mug for you.”
He nodded to a seat at his left, and I took it. Someone had already poured the ale for me. I’m afraid I drained off that first mug without any other thought than that it was sustenance after a long day. It was neither the best nor the worst brew I’d ever tasted, but few draughts had been as welcome as that one. I set the empty mug down on the table and Lord Golden nodded permission at the pitcher. As I refilled our mugs, the food arrived. There was a roast fowl, a large bowl of buttered peas, a meal pudding with treacle and cream, crisp trout on a platter, bread, butter, and more ale. Before the servingboy left, Lord Golden added another request. He had badly bruised his shoulder that morning; would the boy bring him a slab of raw meat from the kitchen to draw the soreness from the swelling? Laurel served Lord Golden and herself and then passed the dishes on to me. We ate in near silence, all of us very intent on the food. In a short time, the fowl and fish had been reduced to bones on the platters. Lord Golden rang for the inn servants to clear away. They brought a berry pie with clotted cream for a sweet, and more ale. The slab of raw meat came with it. As soon as the servant was gone, Lord Golden neatly wrapped it in his napkin and handed it to me. I wondered with weary gratitude if anyone would notice its disappearance. A short time later I became aware that I had eaten more than I should have done, and drunk more than was wise. I had that sodden, overly full feeling that is so miserable after one has been hungry all day. Lassitude crept over me. I tried to hide my yawns behind my hand and pay attention to the hushed conversation between Lord Golden and Laurel. Their voices seemed distant, as if a noisy river rushed between them and me.
“One of us should have a quiet look around,” Laurel was insisting. “Perhaps some questions asked downstairs would discover where they were going, or if they are known around here. It could be they are close by.”
“Tom?” Lord Golden prodded me.
“I already have,” I said softly. “They were here. But they either moved on already, or are at a different inn. If a town this size has more than one inn.” I leaned back in my chair.
“Tom?” Lord Golden asked me with some annoyance. In an aside to Laurel he observed, “It’s probably the Smoke. He’s never had any head for it. Just walking through the fumes puts him into a fog.”