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I asked hoarsely. My soul strained towards him, word, Wit and Skill seeking for my king. I did not find him. I set my hands flat to his cold shoulder, pressed my brow against that hard form, and reached again, recklessly. I sensed him then, but it was a far and thin glimpse of what he had been. As well to say one touches the sun when one cups a dapple of forest light in the palm of a hand. ‘Verity, please,’ I begged him, and reached yet again with every drop of the Skill that was in me.
When I came to myself, I was crumpled beside his dragon. Nighteyes had not moved from where he kept his vigil. ‘He’s gone,’ I told him, uselessly, needlessly. ‘Verity’s gone.’
I bowed my head to my knees and I wept then, mourning my king as I never had the day his human body had vanished into his dragon form.
I paused in my telling to clear my throat. I drank a bit of the Fool’s brandy. I set down my cup and found the Fool looking at me. He had moved closer to hear my hoarse words, and the firelight gilded his skin, but could not reveal what was behind his eyes.
‘I think that was when I fully acknowledged that my old life was completely reduced to ashes. If Verity had remained in some form I could reach, if he had still existed to partner me in the Skill, then I think some part of me would have wanted to remain FitzChivalry Farseer. But he did not. The end of my king was also the end of me. When I rose and walked away from the Stone Garden, I knew I truly had what I had longed for all those years: the chance to determine for myself who I was, and a time in which to live my own life as I chose. From now on, I alone would make my decisions.’
Almost. The wolf derided me. I ignored him to speak to the Fool. ‘I stopped at one more place before we left the Mountains. I think you will recall it. The pillar where I saw you change.’
He nodded silently and I spoke on.
When we came to the place where a tall Skill-stone stood at a crossroads, I halted, beset by temptation. Memories washed over me. The first time I had come here, it had been with Starling and Kettle, with the Fool and Queen Kettricken, searching for King Verity. Here we had paused, and in a flash of waking-dream, I had seen the verdant forest replaced with a teeming market-place. Where the Fool had perched upon a stone pillar, a woman stood, like him in white skin and near-colourless eyes. In that other place and time, she had been crowned with a wooden circlet carved with rooster heads and decorated with tail feathers. Like the Fool, her antics had held the crowd’s attention. All that I had glimpsed in a moment, like a brief glance through some otherworldly window. Then, in the blinking of an eye, it had all changed back, and I had seen the stunned Fool topple from his precarious perch. Yet he seemed to have shared that brief vision of another time and folk.
The mystery of that moment was what drew me back to the place. The black monolith that presided over that circle of stones stood impervious to moss or lichen, the glyphs carved in its faces beckoning me to destinations unknown. I knew it now for what it was, as I had not when I had first encountered one of the Skill-gates. I circled it slowly. I recognized the symbol that would take me back to the stone quarry. Another, I was almost sure, would bear me back to the deserted Elderling city. Without thinking, I lifted a finger to trace the rune.
Despite his size, Nighteyes can move swiftly and near silently. He seized my wrist in his jaw as he sprang between me and the obelisk. I fell with him to keep his teeth from tearing my flesh. We finished with me on my back on the ground. He stood beside but not quite over me, still gripping my wrist in his jaws. You will not do that.
‘I didn’t intend to use the stone. Only to touch it.’
It is not a thing to trust. I have been inside the blackness within the stone. If I must follow you there again, for the sake of your life, then you know I would. But do not ask me to follow you there for puppy curiosity.
Would you mind if I went to the city for a short time, alone?
Alone? You know there is no true ‘alone’ for either of us any more.
I let you go alone to try a time with the wolf pack.
It is not at all the same, and you know it.
I did. He released my wrist and I stood and brushed myself off. We spoke no more about it. That is one of the best things about the Wit. There is absolutely no need for long and painfully-detailed discussions to be sure of understanding one another. Once, years ago, he had left me to run with his own kind. When he had returned, it was his unspoken assertion that he belonged more with me than he did with them. In the years since, we had grown ever closer. As he had once pointed out to me, I was no longer completely a man, nor was he completely a wolf. Nor were we truly separate entities. This was not a case of him overriding my decision. It was more like debating with myself as to the wisdom of an action. Yet in that brief confrontation, we both faced what we had avoided considering. ‘Our bond was becoming deeper and more complicated. Neither of us was certain of how to deal with it.’
The wolf lifted his head. His deep eyes stared into mine. We shared the misgiving, but he left the decision to me.
Should I tell the Fool where we had gone next and all we had learned? Was my experience among the Old Blood folk completely mine to share? The secrets I held protected many lives. For myself, I was willing to put my entire existence trustingly in the Fool’s hands. But did I have the right to share secrets that were not exclusively mine?
I don’t know how the Fool interpreted my hesitation. I suspect he took it for something other than my own uncertainty.
‘You are right,’ he declared abruptly. He lifted his cup and drained off the last of his brandy. He set the cup firmly on the floor, then rotated one graceful hand, to halt it with one slender forefinger held aloft in a gesture long familiar to me. Wait, it bid me.
As if drawn by a puppeteer’s strings, he flowed fluidly to his feet. The room was in darkness, yet he crossed it unerringly to his pack. I heard him rustling through it. A short time later, he returned to the fireside with a canvas sack. He sat down close beside me, as if he were about to reveal secrets too intimate even for darkness to share. The sack in his lap was worn and stained. He tugged open the draw-stringed mouth of it, and pulled out something wrapped in beautiful cloth. I gasped as he undid the folds of it. Never had I seen so liquid a fabric, nor so intricate a design worked in such brilliant colours. Even in the muted light of the dying fire, the reds blazed and the yellows simmered. With that length of textile, he could have purchased the favour of any lord.
Yet this wondrous cloth was not what he wished to show me. He unwound it from what it protected, heedless of how the glorious stuff pooled to the rough floor beside him. I leaned closer, holding my breath, to see what greater wonder it might reveal. The last supple length of it slithered away. I leaned closer, puzzled, to be sure of what I was seeing.
‘I thought I had dreamed that,’ I said at last.
‘You did. We did.’
The wooden crown in his hands showed the wear of years. Gone were the bright feathers and paint that had once lent it colour. It was a simple thing of wood, skilfully carved, but austere in its beauty.
‘You had it made?’ I guessed.
‘I found it,’ he returned. He took a breath, then said shakily, ‘Or perhaps it found me.’
I waited for him to say more but he did not. I put out a hand to touch it, and he made a tiny motion as if to keep it to himself. An instant later, he relented. He held it out to me. As I took it into my hands, I realized that in sharing this he offered me far more of himself, even more than the sharing of his horse. I turned the ancient thing in my hands, discovering traces of bright paint still trapped in the graven lines of the rooster heads. Two of the heads still possessed winking gem eyes. Holes in the brim of the crown showed where each tail feather would have been set. I did not know the wood it was carved from. Light but strong, it seemed to whisper against my fingers, hissing secrets in a tongue I did not know.
I proffered it back to him. ‘Put it on,’ I said quietly.
He took the crown. I