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“Fitz. Fitz! Fitz! You have to stop. Set your walls, come back to yourself. Fitz!”

I had forgotten my body. It was shaking all around me and Lant’s arms were around my chest, trying to hold me up. “Get away from us!” Lant roared, and for a moment the press of the crowd lessened. But those who could see me collapsing were pushed forward by those who wished to know what was happening. This I knew in a dispassionate way. I would fall, Lant would go down holding on to me, the grim youngsters trying to hold back the crowd would stumble backward, and we would be trampled.

The Skill told me that Amber had been pushed up under my arm. “Fitz,” the Fool said by my ear. “Fitz, where are you? I can’t feel you. Fitz, put up your walls! Please, Fitz. Beloved.”

“Give him this!” Lant cried out to her.

None of it mattered. Skill was a spreading pool and I was spreading with it. There were others here, diluted and mingled. They’d enjoyed what I had done. I sensed that there were some here who were larger and more intact, larger souls that were more defined. Older and wiser. I couldn’t be one of them. There wasn’t enough of me. I’d spread and disperse. Mingle. I could just let go. It would be like the sweetsleep. Stop the worries, give up the guilt. The worst were the sharp-edged hopes that I still clung to. The hope that somewhere, somehow, Bee still existed and would tumble intact from a Skill-pillar. But it was far more likely that she was here in this amorphous mingling. Perhaps letting go was the closest I’d ever get to reuniting with her.

Being Fitz had never been that enticing an existence.

Fingers prying at my lips, pressing on my teeth. Bitterness in my mouth. The Skill-tide that had surged so strongly against me became a lapping of calmer water. I tried to recede with it.

The touch of fingers on my wrist burned. Burned exquisitely, pain and ecstasy inseparable.

BELOVED!

The word echoed through me, rebounded from my fraying edges, found and bound me. I was there, trapped in an exhausted and shaking body, trembling as Lant hugged me from behind and held me upright. His hand was over my mouth and I tasted elfbark. Dry powder coated my lips. Per and Spark, arms locked, faced out into the press. They were crowded up against Amber, pushing her against me.

The Fool embraced me, his head bowed on my chest. One of his arms was around my neck, holding on to me. I clutched an empty glove in one hand. Slowly and dully, I lifted that hand to look at the glove. The Fool’s hand, his fingers gleaming silver, clutched my wrist, burning my identity into me. The bond was shockingly and completely renewed.

“I told you!” Rapskal’s shout was guttural with excitement and validation. “I told you they were thieves! See there, see on her hand, my proof! Silver! She has stolen Silver from the dragons and she must be punished! Seize her! Seize all of them!”

A moment of horror and shock. I heard Spark give a shriek as someone grabbed her. In the next instant the Fool was torn away from me. I struggled to remain standing.

I heard the Fool scream as the surging crowd engulfed us.

Chapter Thirty-Eight
Emergence

...

In this dream, I am very small and I am hiding inside a tiny case, like a nut in a shell. I am floating in a wild and raging river. I am very frightened because I fear this journey has no end. Around me there are others who are flowing with the river. It seems I could come out of my shell and melt and be part of them.

Then a dragon picks me up. He holds me tight in his paw so that even if I wanted to come out of my shell and melt, I could not. I am scared, and then he lets me feel that I am very, very safe. “As the wolf did for my young, so I will do for his cub. I will protect you here. When you emerge, come to me. I will protect you.”

I draw here the dragon. He is a terrifying creature, but to me he is a kindly uncle.

After not being for so long, I was not sure how to exist.

Uncurl, Wolf-Father commanded me. You have to be ready before they are. Uncurl. Stand up.

I couldn’t. I tried. Somewhere, I knew I had legs and arms. A face. Sunlight. Warm. Slowly those words began to have meaning again. Sunlight was touching me and it was almost warm. I was sprawled on my back. I blinked my eyes. I was looking up at blue sky. The sun was too bright. I tried to move but my body was weighted down with something.

I heard a terrible sound. I rolled my head toward it. The Chalcedean who had liked Shun. He was making the sounds. I could not remember his name. He was on all fours and he was stretching his mouth wide open and making peculiar retching sounds. I thought he would be sick on the ground. Instead he collapsed back onto his belly. His face was turned toward mine, and he looked at me. Nothing human was in his eyes. They grew wider until I could see the whites all around them. He pursed his lips as if he would blow a horn and hooted at me. They were silly sounds that were somehow frightening.

Fear can help you do things. I rolled over onto my belly and suddenly knew what was holding me down. The heavy, floppy fur coat I wore was like being rolled up in a rug. I tried to get my knees under me but instead I knelt inside the coat and could not move. The sounds the Chalcedean was making were getting stranger, as if he were trying to make squirrel noises.

I rolled onto my back. My floppy hands found the peg-and-loop fastenings that held the coat shut. I fumbled at them, trying to make the part of me that knew how to undo them connect with my fingers. His sounds were now like a dog trying to howl. I gave up on the pegs and sat up. I was suddenly far too warm and getting out of the coat seemed more important than getting away from the madman. I managed to stand up, staggered a few steps, and almost fell over someone. One of Dwalia’s luriks. I could not think of her name. She was dead, I suddenly knew. I tottered away from her, still fighting with the pegs on my coat. I saw Dwalia. She was underneath someone and fighting to get out from under him.

Don’t look. Run. Just run. You are safer in the forest than among these evil creatures. There is one here who will help us if I can wake him. Run. Run where I show you.

I ran. I had landed on a surface of black stone like paving stones in the middle of a forest. I reached a place where melting snow vied with sprouting grass. Spring? How could it be spring? I had been dragged into the stone-pillar in winter. Where had I been? What was I not remembering?

A wave of vertigo swept over me. I fell, going to my knees and my hands met the melting edge of a snowbank. I got up and staggered away. Into the forest. Get into the forest as fast and as far as I could.

Behind me I heard Dwalia shout, “Catch her! Don’t let her get away! We can never go home unless we bring her with us.”

I ran.

About the Author

Robin Hobb is the author of the Farseer Trilogy, the Liveship Traders Trilogy, the Tawny Man Trilogy, the Soldier Son Trilogy, and the Rain Wilds Chronicles. She has also written as Megan Lindholm. She is a native of Washington State.

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