She met my eyes squarely. “I cannot make you that promise, FitzChivalry. She is too important for simple love to claim her.”

  The words struck me as both utterly absurd and completely true. I bowed my head in what was not assent. I stared a hole into the floor, trying to find other choices, other ways.

  ”I know what you will say next,” Kettricken said bitterly. “That if I claim your child for the throne, you will not help me find Verity. I have considered long and well, knowing that this will sever me from your help. I am prepared to seek him out on my own. I have the map. Somehow, I shall ...”/P>

  ”Kettricken.” I cut into her speech with her name said quietly, bereft of her title. I had not meant to. I saw it startled her. I found myself slowly shaking my head. “You do not understand. Were Molly standing here before me with our daughter, still I would have to seek my king. No matter what is done to me, no matter how I am wronged. Still, I must seek Verity.”

  My words changed the faces in the room. Chade lifted his head and looked at me with fierce pride shining in his eyes. Kettricken turned aside, blinking at tears. I think she may have felt slightly ashamed. To the Fool, I was once more his Catalyst. In Starling there bloomed the hope that I might still be worthy of a legend.

  But in me there was the overriding hunger for the absolute. Verity had shown it to me, in its pure physical form. I would answer my king’s Skill-command and serve him as I had vowed. But another call beckoned me now as well. The Skill.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Mountains

  0NE MIGHT SUPPOSE that the Mountain Kingdom, with its sparse hamlets and scattered folk, was a new realm but recently gathered together. In truth, its history far predates any of the written records of the Six Duchies. To call this region a kingdom is truly a misnomer. In ancient times, the diverse hunters, herders, and farmers, both nomadic and settled, gradually gave their allegiance to a Judge, a woman of great wisdom, who resided at Jhaampe. Although this person has come to be called the King or Queen of the Mountains by outsiders, to the residents of the Mountain Kingdom, he or she is still the Sacrifice, the one who is willing to give all, even life, for the sake of those who are ruled. The first Judge who lived at Jhaampe as now a shadowy figure of legend, her deeds known only by the songs of her that Mountain folk still sing.

  Yet old as those songs are, there is an even older rumor of a more ancient ruler and capital city. The Mountain Kingdom, as we know it today, consists almost entirely of the wandering folk and settlements on the eastern flanks of the Mountains. Beyond the Mountains lie the icy shores that border the White Sea. Some few trade routes still meander through the sharp teeth of the Mountains to reach the hunting folk who live in that snowy place. To the south of the Mountains are the unsettled forests of the Rain Wilds, and somewhere the source of the Rain River that is the trade boundary of the Chalced States. These are the only lands and folks that have been truly charted beyond the Mountains. Yet there have always been legends of another land, one locked and lost in the peaks beyond the Mountain Kingdom. As one travels deeper in the Mountains, past the boundaries of the folk who owe allegiance to Jhaampe, the land becomes even more rugged and unyielding. Snow never leaves the taller peaks, and some valleys host only glacial ice. In some areas, it is said that great steams and smokes pour up from cracks in the mountains and that the earth may tremble quietly or wrench itself in violent shakings. There are few reasons for anyone to venture into that region of scree and cliffs. Hunting is easier and more profitable on the greener slopes of the mountains. There is insufficient grazing to lure any shepherd’s flocks.

  Regarding that land, we have the usual tales that distant lands spawn. Dragons and giants, ancient tumbledown cities, savage unicorns, treasure hoards and secret maps, dusty streets paved with gold, valleys of eternal spring where the water rises steaming from the ground, dangerous sorcerers spell-locked in caves of gems and ancient sleeping evils embedded in the earth. All are said to reside in the ancient, nameless land beyond the boundaries of the Mountain Kingdom.

  Kettricken truly had expected me to refuse to help her search for Verity. In the days of my convalescence she had determined she would seek for him on her own, and to that end she had mustered supplies and animals. In the Six Duchies, a queen would have had the royal treasury to draw on, as well the enforced largesse of her nobles. Such was not the case in the Mountain Kingdom. Here, while King Eyod remained alive, she was no more than a younger relative of the Sacrifice. While it was expected that she would succeed him someday, it gave her no right to command the wealth of her people. In truth, even were she Sacrifice, she would have not had access to riches and resources. The Sacrifice and his immediate family lived simply within their beautiful dwelling. All of Jhaampe, the palace, the gardens, the fountains, all belonged to the folk of the Mountain Kingdom. The Sacrifice did not want for anything, but neither did he possess excess.

  So Kettricken turned not to royal coffers and nobles eager to curry favor, but to old friends and cousins for what she needed. She had approached her father, but he had told her, firmly but sadly, that finding the King of the Six Duchies was her concern, not that of the Mountain Kingdom. Much as he grieved with his daughter over the disappearance of the man she loved, he could not divert supplies from defending the Mountain Kingdom from Regal of the Six Duchies. Such was the bond between them that she could accept his refusal with understanding. It shamed me to think of the rightful Queen of the Six Duchies turning to the charity of her relatives and friends. But only when I was not nursing my resentment toward her.

  She had designed the expedition to her convenience, not mine. I approved of little of it. In the few days before we departed, she deigned to consult me on some aspects of it, but my opinions were overridden as often as they were listened to. We spoke to one another civilly, without the warmth of either anger or friendship. There were many areas where we disagreed, and when we did, she did as she judged wisest. Unspoken but implied was that my judgment in the past had been faulty and shortsighted.

  I wanted no beasts of burden that might starve and freeze. Block as I might, the Wit left me vulnerable to their pain. Kettricken, however, had procured half a dozen creatures that she claimed did not mind snow and cold, and browsed rather than grazed. They were jeppas, creatures native to some of the remoter parts of the Mountain Kingdom. They reminded me of long necked goats with paws instead of hooves. I had small faith that they would be able to carry enough to make them worth the nuisance of dealing with them. Kettricken told me calmly that I would soon get used to them.

  It all depends on how they taste, Nighteyes suggested philosophically. I was prone to agree with him.

  Her choice of companions for the expedition irked me even more. I saw no sense to her risking herself, but on that point I knew better than to argue. I resented Starling’s going, once I discovered what she had bargained to be allowed to go. Her reason was still to find a song that would make her reputation. She had bought her place in our group by her unspoken trade that only if she were allowed to go would she make written record that Molly’s child was mine also. She knew I felt she had betrayed me, and wisely avoided my company after that. With us would go three cousins of Kettricken’s, all big, stoutly muscled folk well practiced in traveling through the Mountains. It would not be a large party. Kettricken assured me that if six were not enough to find Verity, then six hundred would not suffice. I agreed with her that it was easier to supply a smaller party; and that often they traveled faster than large groups.

  Chade was not to be of our party. He was going back to Buckkeep, to bear the tidings to Patience that Kettricken would seek out Verity, and to plant the seeds of rumor that there was, indeed, an heir to the Six Duchies throne. He would also be seeing Burrich and Molly and the child. He had offered to let Molly and Patience and Burrich know that I was still alive. The offer had come awkwardly, for he knew full well that I hated the part he had played in claiming my daughter for the throne. But I swallowed my anger and spoke to him politely and was rewarded with his solemn promise that he would say nothing of me to any of them. At the time it seemed like the wisest course. I felt that only I could filly explain to Molly why I had acted as I had. And she had already mourned me as dead once. If I did not survive this quest, she would not grieve any more than she had.

  Chade came to bid me farewell the night he left for Buck. At first we both tried to pretend that all was well between us. We talked of small things that had once mattered to both of us. I felt genuine loss when he told me of Slink’s death. I tried to talk him into taking Ruddy and Sooty with him, to return them to Burrich’s care. Ruddy needed a firmer hand than he was getting, and the stallion could be far more than transportation to Burrich. His stud service could be sold or traded, and Sooty’s foal represented more wealth to come. But Chade shook his head and said he must travel swiftly and attract no attention. One man with three horses was a target for bandits if nothing else. I had seen the vicious little gelding Chade had for a mount. Bad-tempered as he was, he was tough and agile and, Chade assured me, very swift in a chase over bad terrain. He grinned as he said it, and I knew that that particular ability of the horse had been well tested. The Fool was right, I thought then bitterly. War and intrigue did agree with him. I looked at him, in his tall boots and swirling cloak, at the rampant buck he wore so openly on his brow above his green eyes, and tried to equate him with the gentle-handed old man who had schooled me in how to kill people. His years were there still, but he carried them differently. Privately I wondered what drugs he used to prolong his energy.

  Yet as different as he was, he was still Chade. I wanted to reach out to him and know that there was still a bond of some kind between us, but I could not. I could not understand myself. How could his opinion still matter so much to me, when I knew he was willing to take my child and my happiness for the sake of the Farseer throne? I felt it as a weakness in myself that I could not find the strength of will to hate him. I reached for that hatred, and came up with only a boyish sulkiness that kept me from clasping his hand at his departure or wishing him well. He ignored my surliness, which made me feel even more childish.

  After he was gone, the Fool gave me the leather saddlebag he had left for me. Inside was a very serviceable sheath knife, a small pouch of coins, and a selection of poisons and healing herbs, including a generous supply of elfbark. Wrapped and carefully labeled that it should be used only with the greatest caution and in greatest need was a small paper of carris seed. In a battered leather sheath was a plain but serviceable shortsword. I felt a sudden anger at him that I could not explain. “It is so typical of him,” I exclaimed, and dumped the bag out on the table for the Foot to witness. “Poison and knives. That is what he thinks of me. This is still how he sees me. Death is all he can imagine for me.”

  ”I doubt he expected you to use them on yourself,” the Fool observed mildly. He pushed the knife away from the marionette he was stringing. “Perhaps he thought you might use them to protect yourself.”

  ”Don’t you understand?” I demanded of him. “These are gifts for the boy Chade taught to be an assassin. He can’t see that isn’t who I am any longer. He can’t forgive me for wanting a life of my own.”

  ”Any more than you can forgive him for no longer being your benevolent and indulgent tutor,” the Fool observed dryly. He was knotting the strings from the control paddles to the marionette’s limbs. “It’s a bit of a threat, isn’t it, to see him stride about like a warrior, putting himself joyfully in danger for something he believes in, flirting with women, and generally acting as if he’d claimed a life of his own for himself?”

  It was like a dash of cold water in the face. Almost, I had to admit my jealousy that Chade had boldly seized what still eluded me. “That isn’t it at all!” I snarled at the Fool.

  The marionette he was working on wagged a rebuking finger at me while the Fool smirked at me over his head. It had an uncanny resemblance to Ratsy. “What I see,” he observed to no one in particular, “is that it is not Verity’s buck head he wears on his brow. No, the sigil he chose is more like one, oh, let me see, one that Prince Verity chose for his bastard nephew. Do not you see a resemblance?”

  I was silent for a time. Then, “What of it?” I asked grudgingly.

  The Fool swung his marionette to the floor, where the bony creature shrugged eerily. “Neither King Shrewd’s death nor Verity’s supposed death flushed that weasel out of hiding. Only when he believed you murdered did anger flare up in him hot enough for him to fling aside all hiding and pretense and declare he would yet see a true Farseer on the throne.” The marionette wagged a finger at me.

  ”Are you trying to, say he does this for me, for my sake? When the last thing I would wish is to see the throne claim my child?”

  The marionette crossed its arms and wagged its head thoughtfully. “It seems to me that Chade has always done what he thought was best for you. Whether you agreed or not. Perhaps he extends that to your daughter. She would be, after all, his grandniece, and the last living remnant of his bloodline. Excluding Regal and yourself, of course.” The marionette danced a few steps. “How else would you expect a man that old to provide for a child so young? He does not expect to live forever. Perhaps he thought she would be safer astride a throne than ridden over by another who wished to claim it.”

  I turned away from the Fool and made some pretense of gathering clothing to wash. It would take me a long time to think through what he had said.

  I was willing to accept Kettricken’s choice of tents and clothing for her expedition, and honest enough to be grateful that she saw fit to provide for my clothing and shelter as well. Had she excluded me totally from her entourage, I could not have completely faulted her. Instead, Jofron came one day bearing a stack of clothing and bedding for me, and to measure my feet for the sack like boots the Mountain folk favored. She proved merry company, for she and the Fool exchanged playful barbs all the while. His fluency in Chyurda exceeded my own, and at times I was hard pressed to follow the conversation, while half of the Fool’s wordplays escaped me. I wondered in passing exactly what went on between those two. When I had first arrived, I had thought her some sort of disciple to him. Now I wondered if she had not affected that interest simply as an excuse to be near him. Before she left, she measured the Fool’s feet as well, and asked him questions as to what colors and trims he wished worked into the boots.

  ”New boots?” I asked him after she had gone. “As little as you venture outside, I would scarcely think you need them.”

  He gave me a level look. The recent merriment faded from his face. “You know I must go with you,” he pointed out calmly. He smiled an odd smile. “Why else do you think we have been brought together in this far place? It is by the interaction of the Catalyst and the White Prophet that the events of this time shall be returned to their proper course. I believe that if we succeed, the Red-Ships will be driven from the Six Duchies coast, and a Farseer will inherit a throne.”

  ”That would seem to fit most of the prophecies,” Kettle agreed from her hearth corner. She was tying off the last row of knitting on a thick mitten. “If the plague of the mindless hunger is Forging, and your actions put a stop to that, that would fit another prophecy as well.”

  Kettle’s knack of providing a prophecy for every occasion was beginning to grate on me. I took a breath, and then asked the Fool, “And what does Queen Kettricken say about your joining her party?”

  ”I haven’t discussed it with her,” he replied blithely. “I am not joining her, Fitz. I am following you.” A sort of bemusement came over his face. “I have known since I was a child that together we should do this task. It had not occurred to me to question that I would go with you. I have been making preparations since the day you arrived here.”

  ”As have I,” Kettle observed quietly.

  We both turned to stare at her. She feigned not to notice as she tried on the mitten and admired its fit.

  ”No.” I spoke bluntly. Bad enough to look forward to dying pack animals. I was not going to witness the death of another friend. It was too obvious to voice that she was hopelessly too old for such a trek.

  ”I thought you might stay here, in my home,” the Fool offered more gently. “There is plenty of firewood for the rest of the winter and some supplies of meal and--”

  ”I expect to die on the journey, if it’s any comfort to you.” She took off the mitten and set it with its mate. Casually she inspected what was left of her skein of wool. She began to cast on stitches, the yarn flowing effortlessly through her fingers. “And you needn’t worry about me before then. I’ve made provision for myself. Done a bit of trading, and I have the food and such that I’ll need.” She glanced up at me from her needles, and added quietly, “I have the wherewithal to see this journey through to the end.”

  I had to admire her calm assumption that her life was still her own, to do with as she wished. I wondered when I had begun to think of her as a helpless old woman that someone would have to look after now. She looked back down to her knitting. Needlessly, for her fingers continued to work whether she watched them or not. “I see you understand me,” she said quietly. And that was that.

  I have never known any expedition to get off exactly as planned. Generally, the larger one is, the more difficulties it has. Ours was no exception. The morning before we were scheduled to depart, I was rudely shaken out of my sleep.

  ”Get up, Fitz, we have to leave now,” Kettricken said tersely.

  I sat up slowly. I was wide awake instantly, but my healing back still did not encourage me to move swiftly. The Fool was sitting on the edge of his bed, looking more anxious than I had ever seen him. “What is it?” I demanded.

  ”Regal.” I had never heard so much venom in one word. Her face was very white and she knotted and unknotted her fists at her side. “He has sent a courier under a truce flag to my father, saying that we harbor a known traitor to the Six Duchies. He says that if we release you to him, he will see it as a sign of good faith with the Six Duchies and will not consider us an enemy. But if we do not, he will loose the troops he has poised on our borders, for he will know that we plot with his enemies against him,” She paused. “My father is considering what to do.”