Fool's Quest - Страница 9

The raiders. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, fighting for clarity of vision and thought.

This attack made no sense to me. We had no enemies that I knew of. We were far inland in the duchy of Buck, and the Six Duchies were not at war with anyone. Yet these foreigners had come and attacked us. They had battered their way into our halls.

Why?

Because they wanted me.

The thought made no sense, and yet it seemed to be true. These attackers had come to steal me. Armed men on horseback had run me down. Run us down. Oh, Perseverance. His own blood leaking between his fingers. Was he dead or hiding? How had I ended here, back at Withywoods? One of the men had seized me and dragged me back. The woman who seemed to be in charge of this raid had rejoiced at finding me, and told me that she was taking me home, to where I belonged. I frowned. I’d felt so happy at those words. So cherished. What had been wrong with me? The fog man had greeted me and welcomed me as his brother.

Even though I was a girl. I had not told them that. I had been so suffused with happiness to see them that I could scarcely speak. I had opened my arms to the fog man, and to the plump, motherly woman who had rescued me from the raider who had been choking me. But after that … I remembered a warm whiteness. That was all. The memory made no sense but it still filled me with shame. I’d embraced the woman who had brought these killers to my home.

I turned my head slowly. I felt as if I could not do anything quickly. I could not move quickly or think quickly. I had taken a bad fall, I remembered slowly. From a running horse. Had I struck my head? Was that what was wrong with me?

My unseeing eyes had been focused on the burning stables. Two men approached it now, carrying something. Withywoods men, dressed in our yellow and green, in their best clothes. For a Winterfest eve that had become a winter slaughter. I recognized one as Lin, our shepherd. They were carrying something between them. Something that sagged. A body. Around the burning stables, the snow had melted to slush. They trudged on. Closer and closer. Would they walk right into the flames? But as they drew closer, they halted. “One, two, three!” Lin’s voice cracked on the count as they swung the body and then, on three, they let go. It flew into the red mouth of the burning building. They turned. Like puppets traipsing across a stage, they walked away from the flames.

Was that why the stable was burning? To get rid of the bodies? A good hot bonfire was a very effective way to get rid of a body. I’d learned that from my father. “Papa?” I whispered. Where was he? Would he come to save me? Could he save all our people? No. He’d left me and gone off to Buckkeep Castle, to try to save the blind old beggar. He wasn’t going to save me, or our people. No one was.

“I am cleverer than this.” I whispered the words aloud. I had not known I was going to say them. It seemed as if some part of me strove to wake the dull, deadened creature I had become. I looked around fearfully to see if anyone had heard me speak. They must not hear me speak. Because … if they did … If they did, they would know. Know what?

“Know they aren’t controlling me anymore.”

My whisper was even softer this time. The parts of me were coming back together. I sat very still in my warm nest, gathering my mind and my strength. I mustn’t betray myself until I could do something. The sleigh had been heaped with furs and woolen blankets from the manor. I was wrapped in a heavy robe of white fur, thick and soft, too big for me. It was not from Withywoods. It was no type of fur that I knew and it smelled foreign. A hat of the same fur covered my head. I moved my mittened hands, shifting my arms free of the heavy blankets. I was loaded up like a stolen treasure. I was what they were taking. Me and very little else. If they had come to plunder, I reasoned, the teams and wagons of Withywoods would be standing full of loot and the riches of my home. I saw none of that, not even our riding horses bunched to steal. I was the only thing they were carrying off. They had killed Revel to steal me.

So what would happen to everyone else?

I lifted my eyes. The huddled folk of Withywoods were limned against smaller fires. They stood like penned cattle in the snowy center. Some were held up by their fellows. Faces were transformed by pain and horror into people I dared not recognize. The fires, built of the fine furniture of Withywoods, were not there to warm them but to light the night so they could not elude their captors. Most of the raiders were mounted on horses. Not our horses, nor our saddles. I’d never seen saddles like those, so high in the back. My numbed mind counted them. Not many, perhaps as few as ten. But they were men of blood and iron. Most of them were fair, with yellow hair and stained pale beards. They were tall and hard and some walked with bared blades in their hands. Those men were the killers, the soldiers that had come to do this task. Those men with fair hair like mine. I saw the man who had chased me down, the one who had dragged me, half-strangled, back to the house. He stood face-to-face with the woman who had shouted at him, the plump woman who had made him drop me. And next to them, there, make my eyes see him, yes, there. He was there. The fog man.

Today was not the first time I had seen him.

He had been in Oaksbywater, at the market. He had been there, fogging the whole town. No one who had passed him had turned to look at him. He’d been in the alley, the one that no one was choosing to walk down. And what had been behind him? The raiders? The soft, kind woman with the voice and words that made me love her as soon as she spoke? I was not sure. I had not seen through his fog, had barely seen the fog man himself. I could scarcely see him now. He stood by the woman.

He was doing something. Something hard. It was so hard for him that he had had to stop fogging me to do it. Knowing that helped me to peel my mind clear of his. With every passing moment, my thoughts were more my own. My body was more my own. I felt now the bruises of the day, and how my head ached. I ran my tongue around inside my mouth and found the place where I had bitten my cheek ragged. I pushed my tongue against it, tasting blood and waking the pain, and suddenly my thoughts were my own and only my own.

Do something. Don’t sit still and warm and let them burn the bodies of your friends while Withywoods folk stand shivering in the snow. They were helpless, I perceived, their minds almost as fogged as mine had been. Perhaps I was only able to find myself because of my years of experience at withstanding the pressure of my father’s mind. There they stood, in distress, as indecisive as sheep in a blizzard and as helpless. They knew something was wrong, and yet there they stood. They moaned, they lowed like penned cattle awaiting slaughter. Save for Lin and his partner. Here they came again, out of the darkness, a body slung between them. They trudged, wooden-faced, men carrying out an assigned task. One they had been told not to think about.

I looked at the fog man. More of a fog boy, I decided. His round face had the unfinished, chinless look of a boy. His body was soft, unused. Not so his mind, I suspected. His brow was wrinkled in concentration. The soldiers, I realized suddenly. He was ignoring the Withywoods folk, trusting that the haze he had left them in would not disperse quickly. He held the soldiers still, keeping them listening to the woman with the trustworthy words. His fog wrapped the old man who sat on a black horse.

The old man held his sword in his hand, and the tip that pointed at the ground dripped blackness. The fog was almost a haze I could see. Then I realized that actually I could not quite see through it. It reflected light, so the old man had an aura of red firelight around him. His was a terrifying face, old and fallen, as if he had melted. The bones were hard and his eyes were pale. He radiated bitterness and hatred of everyone who was not as miserable as he was. I groped within my mind and made a tiny hole in my wall so that I could feel what the fog man told the old soldier. The fog man was wrapping him in triumph and success, was feeding him satisfaction and satiation. The task was done. He would be well rewarded, rewarded far beyond his expectations. People would know what he had done. They would hear of it and remember who he had been. They’d regret how they had treated him. They’d grovel before him and beg for him to be merciful.

But now? Now it was time to turn away from the pillaging and raping, time for him and his men to take what they had come for and begin the journey home. If they delayed here, it could only cause complications. There would be more conflict, more killing … no. The fog shifted suddenly. Don’t feed him that prospect. Instead the fog became full of the cold and the darkness and how weary he was. The sword was heavy in his hand; his armor bowed his shoulders. They had what they had come for. The sooner they turned back toward Chalced, the sooner he would be in warmer lands with his well-earned prize. The sooner he would look down from his horse on the folk who would regret how they had scorned him.

“We should burn it all. Kill all of them and burn it all,” one of his men offered. He was mounted on a brown horse. He smiled, showing good teeth. His pale hair was bound back from his face in two long braids. His brow was square and his chin firm. Such a handsome man. He rode the horse into the huddled people and they parted like butter melting before a hot spoon. In the midst of them, he wheeled his mount and looked at his commander. “Commander Ellik! Why should we leave one timber standing here?”