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 unWitted 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 harked 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 mother’s 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 practise 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 afterwards … 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, centred 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.
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 judgement. 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 time, 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 ageing wolf, grey on his muzzle, flesh sunken on his flanks. His recent encounter with the