Fool's Errand (48 page)

We walked back to the inn together in near silence. I marked her dark garments and the soft-soled boots she wore, and once again I thought that Queen Kettricken had chosen well. I dirtied the night with a question whose answer I dreaded. “Did she tell you many details? How or why they were attacked, if the boy and the cat were with them?”

Laurel drew a deep breath. “The one they killed was not a stranger. He was one of their own, and they had suspected him of Beast Magic for a long time. The usual stupid stories . . . that when other lambs died of the scours, his survived. That a man angered him, and after that, the man’s chickens died off. He came to town today with strangers, one a big man on a warhorse, one with a cat riding behind him. The others with him were also known to these folk, boys who had grown up on outlying farms. There are usually dogs at the inn. The innkeeper’s son keeps rabbit hounds, and he had just returned from the hunt. The dogs were still excited. At the sight of the cat, the dogs went mad. They surrounded the horse, leaping and snapping. The man with the cat—our Prince, most likely—drew his blade to defend the cat, and slashed at the hounds, cutting an ear off one. But that was not all he did. He opened his mouth wide, and snarled, hissing like a cat.

“At the commotion, other men boiled out of the inn. Someone shouted ‘Piebald!’ Another cried for a rope and a torch. The man on the warhorse laughed at them, and put his horse to kicking out at both dogs and men. One man was kicked to the ground by the horse. The mob responded with rocks and curses, and more men came out of the tavern. The Piebalds broke the circle and tried to ride off, but a lucky stone caught one of the riders on the temple and knocked him from his saddle. The mob closed on him, and he yelled at the others to ride. The girl made them all out to be cowards for fleeing, but I suspect that the one they caught delayed the mob so his companions could escape.”

“He bought the Prince’s life with his own.”

“So it would seem.”

I was silent for a moment, tallying my facts. They had not denied what they were. None of them had attempted to placate the mob. It was confrontational behavior, a harbinger of things to come. And one of their company had sacrificed himself, and the others had accepted it as necessary and right. That indicated not only the value they placed on the Prince, but deep loyalty to an organized cause. Had Dutiful been won completely to their side? I wondered what role these “Piebalds” had assigned to the Prince, and if he concurred in it. Had Dutiful accepted that the man should die for him? When he rode on, did he know then that the man they left behind faced an agonizing death? I would have given much to know that. “But Dutiful was not recognized as the Prince?”

She shook her head. The night was growing darker around us and I felt more than saw the movement.

“So. If the others caught up with him, they would not hesitate to kill him.”

“Even knowing he was the Prince would not delay them. The hatred of the Old Blood runs deep here. They would think they were cleansing the royal line, not destroying it.”

Some small part of me marked that she called them “Old Blood” now. I did not think I had heard her use the phrase before. “Well. I think time becomes even more precious.”

“We should ride on tonight.”

The very thought made me ache. I no longer had the resilience of youth. In the past fifteen years, I had grown used to regular meals and rest every night. I was tired and sick with dread of what must come when we caught up with the Prince. And my wolf was weary beyond weariness. I knew it was a false strength that moved his limbs now. Soon, his body would demand rest, no matter how hard the circumstances. He needed food and healing time, not to be dragged on tonight.

I’ll keep up. Or you’ll leave me behind and do what you must.

The fatalism in the thought shamed me. The sacrifice was too close to what a man had done today for a prince. The inarguable truth was that once more I spent all our strength for a king and a cause. The wolf yielded up the days of his life to me for an allegiance he understood only in terms of his love for me. Black Rolf had been right all those years ago. It was wrong of me to use him so. I made a child’s promise to myself that when this was over, I would make it up to him somehow. We would go somewhere he wanted to go, and do something he longed to do.

Our cabin and the fireside. That would be enough for me.

It is yours.

I know.

We returned to the inn by a roundabout path, avoiding the better traveled roads of the village. In the dark of the innyard, she put her mouth close to my ear. “I’ll slip up to my room to pack my things. You wake Lord Golden and let him know that we must ride.”

She disappeared into the shadows near the back door. I made my own entrance through the front, presenting the scowling face of a chastised servant as I hastened through the main room. The hour was late now and the mood more one of brooding than celebration. No one took notice of me. I made my way to our room. Outside the door, the sounds of argument reached me. Lord Golden’s voice was raised in aristocratic fury. “Bedbugs, sir! Thick as swarming bees. I’ve most delicate skin. I cannot stay where such vermin thrives!”

Our landlord, garbed in nightshirt and cap and clutching a candle, sounded horrified. “Please, Lord Golden, I’ve other bedding, if you would—”

“No. I shall not spend the night here. Prepare an accounting immediately.”

I knocked on the door. At my entrance, Lord Golden transferred his temper to me. “There you are, you worthless scoundrel! Out carousing, I don’t doubt, while I’ve had to pack my own things and yours, as well. Well, make yourself useful in some way! Run and knock on Huntswoman Laurel’s door and tell her we must leave immediately. Then roust the hostler and have our horses made ready. I cannot spend the night at an inn infested with vermin!”

I hastened away from the innkeeper’s insistence that he ran a good, clean inn. In a surprisingly short time, we found ourselves outside and ready to ride. I’d saddled our mounts myself; the hostler had not responded to my efforts to roust him. The innkeeper had followed Lord Golden out into the yard, remonstrating that we would find no other inn tonight, but the noble was adamant. He mounted, and without a word to us, stirred Malta to a walk. Laurel and I followed.

For a time, we kept our sedate pace. The moon had risen, but the crowding houses thwarted her light, and the occasional lamplight leaking through shutters made more shadows than illumination for us. Lord Golden’s voice carried softly to both of us. “I heard the gossip in the taproom and judged it best we leave immediately. They fled on the road.”

“By going in the dark, we take a large chance on missing their trail,” I pointed out.

“I know. But by waiting, we might arrive too late to do anything but bury him. Besides, none of us could sleep, and this way we go ahead of those who will ride out tomorrow.”

Nighteyes ghosted up to join us. I quested toward him, and as we joined, the night seemed lighter around us. He snorted at our dust, then trotted up to lead the way. Linked by the Wit, he could not hide from me the effort that cost him. I winced but accepted his decision. I nudged Myblack to keep pace with him.

“Our saddle packs seem bulkier than when we first arrived,” I observed to the night as Myblack came abreast of Malta.

Lord Golden lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “Blankets. Candles. Anything else that I thought might prove useful to us. I ghosted the kitchens, once I knew that we’d have to be on the road swiftly, so there is bread in that sack, as well. And apples. If I’d taken much more than that, it would have been noticed. Try not to crush the loaves.”

“One would think you two had done this sort of thing before, Lord Golden.” There was an edge to Laurel’s tone, and just enough query on the honorific to sober us both. When neither of us came up with words, she added, “I don’t think it quite fair that I share the risks of this venture, but still go blindfolded between you.”

Lord Golden spoke in his best aristocratic tone. “You’re right, Huntswoman. It is not fair, yet that is how it must remain for a time. For unless I am mistaken, we need to put on some speed. As our Prince left this town at a gallop, so shall we.”

He acted as he spoke, setting his heels to Malta, who sprang forward joyously to challenge Myblack for the lead. Laurel was at his side in an instant.
Later, my brother.
I felt Nighteyes part himself from me, both mentally and physically. He knew he could not keep up with the running horses. He would follow at his own pace and on his own path. That sundering wrenched me, even as I knew it was his choice and the wisest course of action. Naked of him, stripped of his night vision, I rode on, letting Myblack choose her path as we cantered three abreast past the huddled houses.

The village was small. We reached the outskirts swiftly. The moon’s light spilled down the ribbon of road. Malta broke into a gallop, and both the other horses bolted forward to keep up with her. We passed farmsteads, and fields both harvested and standing. I tried to keep watch for the tracks of running horses leaving the road, but saw nothing. We let the horses run until they wanted to slow down and breathe. As soon as Malta tugged at her bit, Lord Golden let her have her head and we were off again. The two were more of one mind than I had realized. It was his complete trust that gave her such cheeky confidence. We rode through what remained of the night, and Lord Golden set our pace.

As dawn grayed the skies, Laurel spoke my thoughts aloud. “At least we have a good start on those who intended to ride out at dawn to see what luck their fellows had in hunting Piebalds. And clearer heads.”

She left unspoken a fear I knew we all shared; that we had lost the Prince’s trail in our haste to follow him. As the strengthening day hid the moon from us, we rode on. Sometimes one has to trust to luck, or to believe in fate as the Fool did.

chapter
XX

STONES

There are techniques a man can use to deal with torture. One is to learn to divorce the mind from the body. Half the anguish that a skilled torturer inflicts is not the physical pain, but the victim’s knowledge of the level of damage done. The torturer must walk a fine line if he wishes his victim to talk. If he takes his destruction past what the victim knows can heal, then the victim loses all incentive to talk. He but wishes to plunge more swiftly into death. But if he can hold the torment short of that line, then the torturer can make the victim an accomplice in his own torment. Suspended in pain, the anguish for the victim is wondering how long he can maintain his silence without pushing his tormentor over the line into irrevocable damage. As long as the victim refuses to talk, then the torturer proceeds, venturing closer, ever closer to damage the body cannot repair.

Once a man has been broken by pain, he remains forever a victim. He cannot ever forget that place he has visited, the moment when he decided that he would surrender everything rather than endure more pain. It is a shame no man ever completely recovers from. Some try to drown it by becoming the perpetrator of similar pain, and creating a new victim to bear for them that shame. Cruelty is a skill taught not only by example but by experience of it.

— FROM THE SCROLL
“
VERSAAY
’
S USES OF PAIN
”

As the sun rose, we rode on. Farmsteads, cultivated fields, and pastures became less common, and then vanished to be replaced by rocky hillsides and open forest. My anxiety was divided between fear for my wolf and for my young Prince. All in all, I had greater faith in my four-legged companion’s ability to take care of himself than I did in Dutiful. With a resolution Nighteyes would have approved, I set him out of my thoughts and concentrated on the road beside me. The increasing heat of the day was exacerbated by the thickness of the air. I could feel a storm brewing. A heavy rainfall might take all trace of their trail from the road. Tension chewed at me.

Without speaking of it, Laurel rode close to the left-hand side of the road and I the right. We looked for any sign of horses leaving the road; specifically, we looked for sign of at least three horses, galloping in flight. I knew that if I were fleeing mounted pursuers my first thought would have been to get off the road and take to the woods where there was a better chance of losing them. I assumed the Prince and his companions would do the same.

My fears that we had missed their trail in the dark built, but suddenly Laurel cried out that she had them. I no sooner looked at the marks than I was sure she was right. Here were a plentitude of shod hooves leaving the road, and all in haste. The wide tracks of the great warhorse were unmistakable. I was certain we had discovered where the Prince had left the road with his companions, and where the mob had pursued them.

As the others left the road and followed, I paused and dismounted briefly on the pretense of securing our baggage better to Myblack’s saddle. I used the opportunity to relieve myself at the side of the road, knowing Nighteyes would be seeking sign of my passage.

Mounted again, I swiftly caught up with the others. A darkness gathered at the far horizon. We heard several long rumbling threats of thunder in the distance. The trampled path of the pursuit was easy to follow, and we urged our weary beasts to a canter as we followed it. Over two open hills of grass and scrub we followed them. As we ascended the third hill, a forest of oak and alder came down to meet us. There we caught up with the pursuers. There were half a dozen of them, sprawled in the tall grass in the shadows of the trees.

Their ambushers had killed their mounts and the dogs, as well. It was a wise thing to do; riderless horses returning to the village would have brought out the pursuit much sooner. Yet the act sickened me, the more so because it had been done by those of Old Blood. It seemed ruthless in a way that frightened me. The animals had done nothing to deserve death. What sort of folk were these that the Prince rode with now?

Laurel covered her mouth and nose with her hand and held it there. She did not dismount. Lord Golden looked tired and sickened, but he dismounted alongside me. Together we moved among the dead, inspecting them. They were all young men, just at the age to be caught up in such madness. Yesterday afternoon, they had leapt onto their horses and ridden off to kill some Piebalds. Yesterday evening, they had died. Lying there, they did not look cruel or vicious or even stupid. Only dead.

“There were archers in those trees,” I decided. “And they were waiting here. I think the Prince’s party rode through, relying on folk that already were in position here to protect them.” I had found but one broken arrow, cast aside. The others had been frugally and coolly recovered from the bodies.

“That is not the mark of an arrow.” Lord Golden pointed out a body that lay apart from the others. There were deep puncture wounds in his throat. Powerful clawed hind legs had disemboweled him. His guts buzzed and clustering flies covered the look of horror in his eyes.

“Look at the dogs. Cats attacked them, as well. All the Piebalds rounded and stood together here, and killed those who followed.”

“And then they rode on.”

“Yes.” Had the Prince’s cat killed this man? Had their minds been joined as the cat killed?

“How many do you think we follow now?”

Laurel had ridden a little way ahead. I suspected she did so to be away from the bloating bodies as much as to study the trail. I didn’t blame her. Now she called back in a low voice, “I make it at least eight that we follow now.”

“And follow we must,” Lord Golden said. “Immediately.”

Laurel nodded. “There will be others from the village riding out by now, wondering why these men have not returned. When they find these bodies, their fury will drive them mad. The Prince must be extricated before these two groups clash.”

Her words made it sound so simple. I went back to Myblack, who annoyed me by sidling away twice before I could catch her reins. She wanted schooling but now was not the time for it. I reminded myself that blood will unnerve the calmest animal, and that patience with her now would pay great dividends later. “A different rider would give you a fist between the ears for that,” I told her mildly after I was mounted.

Her shiver of apprehension surprised me. Evidently she was more aware of me than I supposed. “Don’t worry. I don’t do things like that,” I reassured her. Horselike, she ignored my calming remark. Thunder rolled again in the distance and she laid her ears back flat.

I think it bothered all of us to ride away and leave those bodies swelling in the heat. Realistically, it was the wise thing to do. Their fellows would find them soon enough, and to them should fall the burying. The delay it would cause them would work to our good.

Wise or not, it felt wrong.

The tracks we followed now were the deep cuts of hard-ridden horses. The soil under the forest roof was moister and held the trail better. At first, they had ridden for distance and speed, and a child could have followed their marks. But after a time, the trail descended into a ravine and followed a twisting stream. I rode with my eyes on the trees overhead, trusting Myblack to follow Malta’s lead as I watched for possible ambush. An unspoken concern occupied my mind. The Piebalds the Prince rode with seemed very organized, almost to a military level. This was the second group of men who had waited for the Prince, and then ridden on with him. At least one member of the party had not hesitated to sacrifice his life for the others, nor had they scrupled at slaughtering all those who followed them. Their readiness and ruthlessness bespoke a great determination to keep the Prince and bear him on to whatever destination they had in mind. Retrieving him was very likely beyond our abilities, yet I could discover no alternatives save to follow them. Sending Laurel back to Buckkeep to fetch the guard was not feasible. By the time she returned, it would be too late. We would lose not only time, but the secrecy of our mission.

The ravine widened and became a narrow valley. Our quarry left the stream. Before we departed it, we paused briefly to refill waterskins and share out a bit of the Fool’s purloined bread and some apples. I bought a bit of Myblack’s favor with the apple core. Then we were up and off again. The long afternoon wore on. None of us had spoken much. There was little to say unless we worried out loud. Danger rode behind us, as well. In either direction we were outnumbered, and I badly missed my wolf at my side.

The trail left the valley floor and wound up into the hills. The trees thinned and the terrain became rocky. The hard earth made tracking more difficult, and we went more slowly. We passed the stony foundations of a small village, long abandoned. We rode past odd hummocky formations that jutted from the boulder-strewn hillside. Lord Golden saw me looking at them and said quietly, “Graves.”

“Too big,” I protested.

“Not for those folk. They built stone chambers to hold their dead, and often entire families were interred in them as they died.”

I looked curiously back at them. Tall dead grass waved on the mounds. If there was stone beneath that sod, it was well covered. “How do you know such things?” I demanded of him.

He didn’t meet my eyes. “I just do, Badgerlock. Put it down to the advantages of an aristocratic education.”

“I’ve heard tales of these sorts of places,” Laurel put in, her voice hushed. “They say tall thin ghosts rise from those mounds sometimes, to capture straying children and . . . Oh, Eda save us. Look. The standing stone from the same tales.”

I lifted my eyes to follow her pointing finger. A shiver walked up my back.

Black and gleaming, the stone stood twice as tall as a man did. Silver veined it. No moss clung to it. The inland breezes had been kinder to it than the salt-heavy storm winds that had weathered the Witness Stones near Buckkeep. At this distance, I could not see what signs were carved into its sides, but I knew they would be there. This stone pillar was kin to the Witness Stones and to the black pillar that had once transported me to the Elderling city. I stared at it, and knew it had been cut from the same quarry that had birthed Verity’s dragon. Had magic or muscle borne it so far from that place to this?

“Do the graves go with the stone?” I asked Lord Golden.

“Things that are next to each other are not always related to one another,” he observed smoothly, and I knew he evaded my question. I turned slightly in the saddle to ask Laurel, “What does the legend say about the stone?”

She shrugged one shoulder and smiled, but I think the intensity of my question made her uneasy. “There are lots of tales, but most have the same spine.” She drew a breath. “A straying child or an idle shepherd or lovers who have run away from forbidding parents come to the mounds. In most tales they sit down beside them to rest, or to find a bit of shade on a hot day. Then the ghosts rise from the mounds, and lead them to the standing stone. And they follow the ghost inside, to a different world. Some say they never come back. Some say they come back aged and old after being gone but a night, but others say the opposite: that a hundred years later, the lovers came back, hand in hand, as young as ever, to find their quarreling parents long dead and that they are free to wed.”

I had my own opinion of such tales, but did not voice them. Once I had stepped through such a pillar, to find myself in a distant dead city. Once the black stone walls of that long-dead city had spoken to me, and the city had sprung to life around me. Monoliths and cities of black stone were the work of the Elderlings, long perished from the world. I had believed the Elderlings had been denizens of a far realm, deep in the mountains behind Kettricken’s Mountain Kingdom. Twice now I had seen evidence that they had walked these Six Duchies hills, as well. But how many summers ago?

I tried to catch Lord Golden’s eye, but he stared straight ahead and it seemed to me that he hastened his horse on. I knew by the set of his mouth that any question I asked him would be answered with another question or with an evasion. I focused my efforts on Laurel.

“It seems odd that you would hear tales of this place in Farrow.”

She gave that small shrug again. “The tales I heard were of a similar place in Farrow. And I told you. My mother’s family came from a place not far from the Bresinga holdings. We often visited, when she was still alive. But I’d wager that the folk around here tell the same sort of tales about those mounds and that pillar. If any folk do live around here.”

That seemed unlikely as the day wore on. The farther we rode on, the wilder the country became. The horizon darkened and the storm muttered threats but came no nearer. If these valleys had ever known the plow, or these hills ever nurtured pasturing kine, they had forgotten it these many years. The earth was dry, stones thrusting out amongst the clots of dried-up grasses and scrubby brush. Chirring insects and birdcalls were the only signs of animal life. The trail became more difficult to follow and perforce we went more slowly. Often I glanced back behind us. Our tracks atop the tracks we followed would make it easier for our pursuers to catch up with us, but I could think of no alternative.

The constant hum of the insects suddenly hushed off to our left. I turned toward it, my heart in my mouth, but an instant later I felt my brother’s presence. Two breaths, and I could see him. As always I marveled at how well the wolf could hide himself even in the scantiest of cover. As he drew closer, my gladness at seeing him turned to dismay. He trotted determinedly, head down, and his tongue hung nearly to his knees. Without a word to the others, I pulled up Myblack and dismounted, taking down my waterskin. He came to me, to drink water from my cupped hands.

How did you catch up so swiftly?

You follow tracks, going slowly to find your way. I followed my heart. Where your path has wound through these hills, mine brought me straight to you, over terrain a horse would not relish.

Oh, my brother.