Fool's Assassin - Страница 16

Dutiful nodded. “He has made a few trips there over the last five years. He was intensely curious about all you had told him about Kebal Rawbread’s stronghold, and the Elderlings who created it and occupied it ages ago. None of us approved of his adventuring, but you know Chade. He needs no one’s approval except his own. Then, abruptly, he stopped going. I suspect something happened to frighten him into good sense, but he’s never spoken about it. Too proud, I suspect, and he didn’t want any of us to have the satisfaction of saying, We warned you. On one journey to the island he found a room with scattered blocks of memory stone and brought back a small bag of cubes of the stuff. Some held memories, mostly poetry and songs. Others were empty. “

“And he put something on one of them, and sent it to you recently.”

“Yes.”

I stared at Dutiful. He straightened slowly, dismay vying with relief.

“Oh. It’s the key, isn’t it?”

“Do you remember what it said?”

“Absolutely.” He walked to Chade’s side, sat down, and took his hand to make the Skill-contact easier. He spoke aloud. “Where violets bloom in a lady’s lap, the wise old spider spun his trap.”

We were both smiling. But as the smile faded from Dutiful’s face, I asked him, “What’s wrong?”

“No response. He’s as invisible to my Skill as he has been all day.”

I crossed the room quickly, sat, and took Chade’s hand. I focused myself at him, and used both voice and Skill. “Where violets bloom in a lady’s lap, the wise old spider spun his trap.”

There was nothing. Only Chade’s hand lax in mine.

“Maybe he’s too weak to respond,” Dutiful suggested.

“Hush.” I leaned back, not speaking. Violets in a lady’s lap. Violets in a lady’s lap. There was something, something from long ago. Then I had it. A statue in the Women’s Garden. It was in the back corner of the garden, overhung by a plum thicket. There, where the shadows were deep and cool even in the height of summer, was a statue of Eda. She was seated with her hands loose in her lap. She had been there a long time. I recalled tiny ferns growing in the mossy folds of her gown. And yes, violets in her lap.

“I need a torch. I know where he hid the key. I have to go to the Women’s Garden and the statue of Eda.”

Chade took a sudden gasp of air. For an instant I feared it was his final breath. Then Dutiful said fiercely, “That was the key. The old spider is Chade. Eda, in the Women’s Garden.”

As he said the goddess’s name, it was as if heavy draperies were parted and Chade opened to the Skill. Dutiful sent out a Skill-summoning for Nettle, Thick, and Steady, but he did not wait for the rest of the King’s coterie to arrive.

“Does he have the strength for this?” I demanded, knowing well that a forced healing burns the reserves of a man’s body without mercy. The magic itself does not heal; it but forces the body to speed the process.

“We can let what remains of his strength be slowly consumed by his dying, or we can burn it up trying to heal him. If you were Chade, which would you prefer?”

I set my teeth against my reply. I did not know. I did know that Chade and Dutiful had once made that decision for me and that I still lived with the consequences: a body that aggressively repaired every ill done to it, whether I would or no. But surely I could keep that fate from befalling Chade; I would know when to stop the healing. I made that resolution and refused to wonder if that was the choice Chade would have made for himself.

I secured my Skill-link with Dutiful and together we sank into Chade. Dimly I was aware of Nettle coming to join us, and then Thick, bewildered with sleepiness but obedient to the call, and finally Steady surging in to add his strength to our melded effort.

I led. I was not the strongest of the Skilled there. That would be Thick, his natural talent disguised by the façade of his simple-mindedness. Steady was next, a well of strength for a Skill-user even if he seemed unable to reach within himself and use it on his own. Dutiful was better taught in the varied uses of the Skill than I was, and Nettle, my daughter, more intuitive in how she wielded it. But I led by virtue of my years and my hard-won knowledge of how a man’s body is put together. Chade himself had taught me those things—not as a healer, but as an assassin’s apprentice, to know where a pressed finger can choke a man, or a small blade make a gout of blood leap out with every beat of his heart.

Even so, I did not “see” within Chade’s body with my Skill. Rather, I listened to his body, and felt where it struggled to repair itself. I lent strength and purpose to that effort, and used my knowledge to apply it where the need was greatest. Pain is not always the best indicator of damage. The greater pain can confuse the mind into thinking that is the place of most damage. And so, Skill-linked as we were to Chade, we swam against the tide of his pain and fear to see the hidden damages behind the bone of his skull, a place of constriction where once blood had rushed freely, and a pocket of pooled blood that had gone toxic.

I had the collected strength of a trained coterie behind me, something I had never experienced before. It was a heady sensation. I drew their attention to what I wished repaired and they united their strength to persuade Chade’s body to focus its energy there. It was so easy. The tempting possibilities of what I could do unfurled before me in a lush tapestry. What I could do! I could remake the man, restore him to youth! But the coins of Chade’s flesh were not mine to spend. We had strength and to spare for our task, but Chade did not. And so, when I felt that we had lent his body as much of our strength as it could use and directed it effectively, I drew the coterie back, shepherding them out of Chade’s flesh as if they were a well-meaning flock of chickens trespassing in a garden.

I opened my eyes to the darkened room and a circle of anxious candlelit faces. Trickles of perspiration lined Steady’s face; the collar of his shirt was wet with it. He was breathing like a messenger who had just delivered his baton. Nettle’s chin was propped in both her hands, her fingers splayed across her face. Thick’s mouth hung ajar, and my King’s hair was sweated flat to his brow. I blinked and felt the distant drumbeat of a headache to come. I smiled at them. “We’ve done what we can. Now we must leave him alone and let his body take its time.” I stood slowly. “Go. Go rest now. Go on. There’s no more to do here just now.” I shooed them out of the room, ignoring their reluctance to leave.

Steady now leaned on his sister’s arm. “Feed him,” I whispered as they passed. My daughter nodded. “Yah,” Thick agreed heartily and followed them. Only Dutiful dared defy me, resuming his seat by Chade’s bed. His dog sighed and dropped to the floor at his feet. I shook my head at them, took my place, and ignored my own orders to them as I reached for Chade’s awareness.

Chade?

What has happened? What happened to me? His mind touch was muzzy and confused.

You fell and struck your head. You were unconscious. And because you had sealed yourself to the Skill, we found it hard to reach you and heal you.

I felt his instant of panic. He reached out to his body like a man patting his pockets to be sure a cutpurse had not robbed him. I knew he found the tracks we had left and that they were extensive. I’m so weak. I nearly died, didn’t I? Give me water, please. Why did you let me sink so low?

At his rebuke, I felt a flash of anger. I counseled myself that now was not the time. I held the cup to his lips, propping his head as I did so. Eyes closed, he lipped feebly at the edge of the cup and sucked water in noisily. I refilled the cup and this time he drank more slowly. When he turned away from it as a sign he had had enough, I set it aside and asked him, “Why were you so obtuse? You didn’t even let any of us know that you’d sealed yourself against the Skill. And why do it at all?”

He was still too weak to speak. I took his hand again, and his thoughts touched mine.

Protect the King. I know too many of his secrets. Too many Farseer secrets. Cannot leave such a chink in armor. All coteries should be sealed.

Then how could we reach one another?

Shielded only when asleep. Awake, I would sense who was reaching for me.

You were not asleep. You were unconscious and you needed us.

Unlikely. Just … a bit of bad luck. And if it did … you came. You understood the riddle.

His thoughts were fading. I knew how weary he was. My own body had begun to clamor at me for rest. Skilling was serious work. As draining as hunting. Or fighting. It had been a fight, hadn’t it? An invasion of Chade’s private territory …

I twitched awake. I still held Chade’s hand, but he was deeply asleep now. Dutiful sprawled in his chair on the other side of the bed, snoring softly. His dog lifted his head to stare at me for a moment, and then dropped it back to his forepaws. We were all exhausted. By the last flames on the candle stubs, I studied Chade’s ravaged face. He looked as if he had fasted for days. The pads of flesh on his cheeks were gone, and I saw the shape of his skull. The hand I still held was a bundle of bones in a sack of skin. He would live now, but he would be days rebuilding his body and his strength. Tomorrow he would be ravenous.

I leaned back with a sigh. My back ached from sleeping in the chair. The rugs on the floor of the chamber were thick and inviting. I stretched out on the floor by his bedside like a faithful dog. I slept.