then came to grip the back of Rolf’s chair and peer over his shoulder at me. I sensed the importance of my answer to them.
‘I cannot teach you that,’ I said honestly.
His eyes held mine, his disbelief plain. ‘Twice tonight, I have offered to teach you all I know of the Old Blood, to open to you all the doors that only your ignorance keeps closed. You have refused me, but by Eda, I have offered, and freely. But this one thing I ask, this one thing that might save so many lives of our own kind, you say you cannot teach me?’
My eyes flickered to Hilda. Her eyes had gone beady and bright again. Black Rolf was probably unaware of how his posture mimicked that of his bear. They both had me measuring the distance to the door, while Nighteyes was already on his feet and ready to flee. Behind Rolf, Holly cocked her head and stared at me. Above us, the hawk turned his head to watch us. I forced myself to loosen my muscles, to behave much more calmly than I felt. It was a tactic learned from Burrich when confronting any distressed animal.
‘I speak truth to you,’ I said carefully. ‘I cannot teach you what I do not fully understand myself.’ I refrained from mentioning that I myself carried that despised Farseer blood. I was sure now of what I had only suspected before. The Wit could be used to attack a Skilled one only if a Skill channel had been opened between them. Even if I had been able to describe what Nighteyes and I had done, no one else would have been able to copy it. To fight the Skill with the Wit, one had to possess both the Skill and the Wit. I met Black Rolf’s eyes calmly, knowing I had spoken the truth to him.
Slowly he relaxed his hunched shoulders, and Hilda dropped back to all fours and went snuffling after the trailing honey. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, quietly stubborn, ‘perhaps if you stayed with us, and learned what I have to teach you, you would begin to understand what you do. Then you could teach it to me. Do you think so?’
I kept my voice calm and even. ‘You witnessed the King’s servants attack me last night. Do you think they will suffer me to remain here and learn more to use against them? No. My only chance is to beard them in their den before they come seeking me out.’ I hesitated, then offered, ‘Although I cannot teach you to do as I do, you may be assured that it will be used against the enemies of the Old Blood.’
This, finally, was a reasoning he could accept. He snuffed several times thoughtfully. I wondered uncomfortably if I had as many wolf mannerisms as he had bear and Holly had hawk.
‘Will you stay the night at least?’ he asked abruptly.
‘We do better when we travel by night,’ I said regretfully. ‘It is more comfortable for both of us.’
He nodded sagely to that. ‘Well. I wish you well, and every good fortune in achieving your end. You are welcome to rest safely here until the moon rises, if you wish.’
I conferred with Nighteyes, and we accepted gratefully. I checked the slash on Nighteyes’ shoulder and found it to be no better than I had suspected. I treated it with some of Burrich’s salve, and then we sprawled outside in the shade and napped the afternoon away. It was good for both of us to be able to relax completely, knowing that others stood guard over us. It was the best sleep either of us had had since we had begun our journey. When we awoke, I found that Black Rolf had put up fish, honey and bread for us to carry with us. There was no sign of the hawk. I imagined he had gone to roost for the night. Holly stood in the shadows near the house, regarding us sleepily.
‘Go carefully, go gently,’ Rolf counselled us after we had thanked him and packed his gifts. ‘Walk in the ways Eda has opened for you.’
He paused, as if waiting for a response. I sensed a custom I was not familiar with. I wished him simply, ‘Good luck,’ and he nodded to that.
‘You will be back, you know,’ he added.
I shook my head slowly. ‘I doubt that. But I thank you for what you have given me.’
‘No. I know you will be back. It is not a matter of your wanting what I can teach you. You will find you need it. You are not a man as ordinary men are. They think they have a right to all beasts; to hunt them and eat them, or to subjugate them and rule their lives. You know you have no such right to mastery. The horse that carries you will do so because he wishes to, as does the wolf that hunts beside you. You have a deeper sense of yourself in the world. You believe you have a right, not to rule it, but to be part of it. Predator or prey; there is no shame to being either one. As time goes on, you will find you have urgent questions. What must you do when your friend wishes to run with a pack of true wolves? I promise you, that time will come. What must he do if you marry and have a child? When the time comes for one of you to die, as it must, how does the other make room for what is left, and carry on alone? In time you will hunger for others of your kind. You will need to know how to sense them and how to seek them out. There are answers to these questions, Old Blood answers, ones I cannot tell you in a day, ones you cannot understand in a week. You need those answers. And you will come back for them.’
I looked down at the trodden soil of the forest path. I had lost all certainty that I would not return to Rolf.
Holly spoke softly but clearly from the shadows. ‘I believe in what you go to do. I wish you success, and would aid you if I could.’ Her eyes darted to Rolf, as if this were a thing they had discussed, but had not agreed upon. ‘If you are in need, cry out, as you do to Nighteyes, asking that any of Old Blood who hear you pass word back to Holly and Sleet of Crowsneck. Those who hear may come to help you. Even if they do not, they will send word to me, and I will do what I can.’
Rolf let out a sudden huff of breath. ‘We will do what we can,’ he amended her words. ‘But you would be wiser to stay here and learn first how to better protect yourself.’
I nodded to his words, but resolved privately that I would not involve any of them in my revenge against Regal. When I glanced up at Rolf, he smiled at me wryly, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Go then. But be wary, both of you. Before the moon goes down you’ll leave Buck behind and be in Farrow. If you think King Regal has a grip on us here, wait until you get to where folk believe he has a right to it.’
I nodded grimly to that, and once more Nighteyes and I were on our way.
Lady Patience, the Lady of Buckkeep as she came to be called, rose to power in a unique fashion. She had been born into a noble family and was by birth a lady. She was raised to the loftier status of Queen-in-Waiting by her precipitous marriage to King-in-Waiting Chivalry. She never asserted herself in either position to take the power that birth and marriage had brought her. It was only when she was alone, almost abandoned, as eccentric Lady Patience at Buckkeep that she gathered to herself the reins of influence. She did it, as she had done everything else in her life, in a haphazard, quaint way that would have availed any other woman not at all.
She did not call on noble family connections, nor exert influential connections based on her deceased husband’s status. Instead she began with that lowest tier of power, the so-called men-at-arms, who were just as frequently women. Those few remaining of King Shrewd’s personal guard, and Queen Kettricken’s guard had been left in the peculiar position of guardians with nothing left to guard. The Buckkeep Guard had been supplanted in their duties by the personal troops that Lord Bright brought with him from Farrow, and delegated to lesser tasks that involved the cleaning and maintenance of the keep. The former guards were erratically paid, had lost respect among and for themselves, and were too often idle or occupied with degrading tasks. The Lady Patience, ostensibly because they were not otherwise busied, began to solicit
