closed my eyes and steadied my breathing. The wolf’s barriers were down, my Farseer concerns pushed from my mind. Only Nighteyes mattered. I opened myself and willed my strength, my vitality, the days of my life into him. It was like a long exhalation of breath, a flow of life leaving my body and seeping into his. I felt dizzied, yet I sensed him growing steadier, like a wick given a fresh supply of oil. I sent another exhalation of life into him, feeling fatigue seep through me as I did so. It did not matter. What I had given him had steadied him but not restored him; he needed more of my strength. I could eat and sleep and regain my vitality later. Right now, his need was greater.
Then his awareness flared up like a leaping flame, and NO! He forbade it, jerking his body away from mine. He separated himself from me, throwing up walls that nearly sealed me out. Then his thoughts blasted my mind. If ever you attempt that again, I will leave you. Completely and forever. You will not see my body, you will not touch my thoughts, and you will not even catch my scent near your trails. Do you understand me?
I felt like a puppy, shaken and flung aside. The abruptness of the severing left me disoriented. The world swung around me. ‘Why?’ I asked shakily.
Why? He seemed amazed that I could ask.
At that moment, I heard a furtive footfall grating sand. I turned to catch sight of my prisoner darting out the mouth of the cave. I sprang to my feet and leapt after him. In the darkness and rain, I collided with him, and then we were rolling over and over down the rocky hillside in front of the cave. He yelped once as we fell. Then I seized him, and did not let go until we skidded to a halt in the brush and scree at the foot of the slope. Bruised and shaken, we lay panting together as loosened stones bounced past us. My knife was under me, the hilt digging into my hip. I seized the archer by the throat.
‘I should kill you right now,’ I snarled at him. From above, in the darkness, I heard questioning voices. ‘Be quiet!’ I roared at them, and they ceased. ‘Get up,’ I told my prisoner savagely.
‘I can’t.’ His voice shook.
‘Get up!’ I demanded. I staggered upright without letting go of him, and then half-hauled him to his feet. ‘Move!’ I told him. ‘Up the hill, back to the cave. Try to run again, and I’ll pound you bloody.’
He believed me. The reality was that my efforts with Nighteyes had drained me. I could barely keep pace with him as we clambered back up the rain-slick slope. As we scrabbled and slid, a Skill-headache painted bolts of lightning on my eyelids. We were both caked with mud before we regained the cave. Once inside, I ignored Lord Golden’s anxious expression and Laurel’s questions while I securely trussed my prisoner’s wrists behind his back and bound his ankles together. I handled him viciously, the pounding pain in my skull spurring me on. I could feel Laurel and the Fool watching me. It made me feel both angry and ashamed of what I did. ‘Sleep well,’ I hissed at him when I was finished. I stepped back from him and drew my knife from its sheath. I heard Laurel’s gasp and the prisoner gave a sudden sob. But I only walked to the trickle of water to clean the mud from the hilt and sheath. I sloshed mud off my hands and then rubbed my face with cold water. I’d wrenched my back in the struggle. Nighteyes whined low in his throat, a worried sound at my pain. I clenched my teeth and tried to block it away from him. As I stood up, my prisoner spoke. ‘You’re a traitor to your own kind.’ Fear of death gave the boy a false courage. He flung his words at me, but I wouldn’t even look at him. His voice rose in shrill accusation. ‘What did they pay you to betray us? What reward is there for you and your wolf if you bring back the Prince? Do they hold a hostage? A mother? Your sister? Do they swear that if you do this, they’ll let you and your family live? They lie, you know. They always lie.’ His shaking voice was gaining volume. ‘Old Blood hunts Old Blood, and for what? So the Farseers can deny that the blood of the Piebald Prince runs in their line? Or do you work for those who hate the Queen and her son? Will you take him back so that he can be denounced as Old Blood, and the Farseers brought down by those who think they could rule better than they?’
I should have been focused on what he was saying about the Farseers. Instead I heard only his denunciation of what I was. He spoke with certainty. He knew. I tried to brush his words aside. ‘Your wild accusations mean nothing. I am sworn to the Farseers. I serve my queen,’ I replied, though I knew it was stupid to be baited into talking to him. ‘I will rescue the Prince, regardless of who holds him, or what they are to me –’
‘Rescue? Ha! Return him to slavery, you mean.’ The archer had transferred his glare to Laurel as if to convince her. ‘The boy with the cat rides with us to safety, not as a prisoner, but as one coming home to his own kind. Better a free Piebald than a prince in a cage. So you betray him doubly, for he is a Farseer that you are sworn to serve, and Old Blood kin as truly as you are. Will you drag him back to be hanged and quartered and burned, as so many of us have been? As they killed my brother but two nights ago?’ His voice was suddenly choked. ‘Arno was only seventeen. He had not even the magic, himself. But he was kin to Old Blood, and chose to stand with us, even to giving up his life for us. He declared himself a Piebald and rode with us. Because he knew he was one of us, even if the magic did not work for him.’ He looked back at me. ‘Yet there you stand, as Old Blood as I am, you and your Wit-wolf beside you, and you would hunt us to the death. Lie all you wish, for you only shame yourself. Do you think I cannot sense you speaking to him?’
I stared at him. My throbbing head calculated what he had just done to me. By betraying me in front of Laurel, he had not only endangered me; he had taken Buckkeep from me once more. I could not return there now; not with Laurel knowing what I was. Horror had drained all colour from her face. She looked as if she would be ill. I saw a shifting in her eyes when I glanced at her, a rearranging of her opinion of me. The Fool’s face was very still. It was as if he struggled to conceal so many emotions that he was left wearing no expression at all. Had he already discerned what I must do? It was like a spreading poison. They knew I was Witted. Now it was not just the archer I’d have to kill, but Laurel as well. If I didn’t, I’d always be vulnerable.
Yet if I did, it would destroy all that was between the Fool and me as well. The assassin’s conclusion to that was to kill him, too, so that he would never look at me with those deaths in his eyes.
And then you could kill me, and then you could kill yourself, and no one would ever know of all we had shared. It would remain our shameful secret, taken to the grave with both of us. Kill us all, rather than admit to anyone what we are.
As unerring as a cold pointing finger, the thought jabbed me in the terrible division that had plagued me since we had captured the archer…no, since I had first realized, for the sake of my Farseer oath, I must set myself against the Old Blood and against the Prince’s wishes for himself.
‘Are you Witted?’ Laurel asked me slowly. Her voice was quiet but the question rang in my ears.
The others were still staring at me. I reached for the lie, but could not utter it. To speak it would be to deny the wolf. I was alienated from the Old Blood, yet there was still a kinship that went deeper than emotion or learned loyalties. I might not live as Old Blood, but the threats that hovered over their heads menaced me as well.
But I was sworn to the Farseers, and that, too, was my bloodline.
What must I do?
What is right. Be what you are, Farseer and Old Blood both. Even if it kills us, it will be easier than these endless denials. I’d rather die being true to ourselves.
It was like pulling my soul out of a morass.
The pain of my Skill-headache lessened abruptly, as if finding my own decision had freed me of something. I found my tongue. ‘I am Witted,’ I admitted quietly and soberly. ‘And I am sworn to the Farseer
