“I suppose not.”
Nighteyes sat up beside me with an anxious whine. I quelled my own despair and then quieted him with a touch. “I just wish,” I said quietly, “that I could simply sleep for a time. Alone in my mind, dreaming my own dreams, without fearing where I’ll go or who might attack me. Without fearing that my hunger for the Skill will overcome me. Just simple sleep.” I spoke to her directly, knowing now she understood well what I meant.
“I can’t give you that,” Kettle told me calmly. “All I can give you is the game. Trust it. It’s been used by generations of Skill users to keep such dangers at bay.”
And so I bent to the board once more, and fixed the game in my mind, and when I lay down by the Fool that night, I kept it before my eyes.
I hovered that night, like a nectar bird, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. I could reach a place just short of sleep and keep myself there by contemplating Kettle’s game. More than once, I drifted back to wakefulness. I would become cognizant of the dim light from the brazier and the sleeping forms beside me. Several times I reached out to check the Fool; each time his skin seemed cooler and his own sleep deeper. Kettricken, Starling, and Kettle rotated through watches that night. I noticed that the wolf shared Kettricken’s. They still did not trust me to remain wary through one, and I was selfishly grateful for that.
Just short of dawn, I stirred once more to find all still quiet. I checked the Fool, and then lay back and closed my eyes; hoping to find a few more moments of rest. Instead, in horrific detail, I beheld a great eye, as if the closing of my own eyes had opened this one. I struggled to open my own eyes again, I floundered desperately toward wakefulness, but I was held. There was a terrible pull on my mind, like the sucking pull of an undertow on a swimmer. I resisted with all my will. I could feel wakefulness just above me, like I bubble I could break into, if only I could touch it. But I could not. I struggled, grimacing my face, trying to pull my wayward eyes open.
The eye watched me. One single immense dark eye. Not Will’s. Regal’s. He stared at me, and I knew he took delight in my struggles. It seemed effortless for him to hold me there, like a fly under a glass bowl. Yet even in my panic, I knew that if he could have done more than hold me, he would. He had got past my walls, but had not the power to do more than threaten me. That was still enough to make my heart pound with terror.
“Bastard,” he said fondly. The word broke over my mind like a cold ocean wave. I was drenched in its threat. “Bastard, I know about the child. And your woman. Molly. Tit for tat, Bastard.” He paused and his amusement grew as my terror swelled. “Now, there’s a thought. Has she pretty tits, Bastard? Would I find her amusing?”
“NO!”
I wrenched clear of him, sensing for an instant Carrod, Burl, and Will as well. I flung myself free.
I came awake abruptly. I scrabbled from my bedding and fled outside, bootless and uncloaked. Nighteyes followed at my heels, snarling in every direction. The sky was black and scattered with stars. The air was cold. I drew breath after shuddering breath of it, trying to still the sick fear in me. “What is it?” Starling demanded fearfully. She was on watch outside the tent.
I just shook my head at her, unable to voice the horror of it. After a time, I turned and went back inside. Sweat was coursing down my body as if I had been poisoned. I sat down in my muddle of blankets. I could not stop panting. The more I tried to still my panic, the greater it became. I know about the child. And your woman. Those words echoed and echoed through me. Kettle stirred in her bedding, then rose and came across the tent to sit behind me. She set her hands on my shoulders. “They broke through to you, did they?”
I nodded, tried to swallow with a dry throat.
She reached for a waterskin and handed it to me. I took a drink, almost choked, and then managed another swallow. “Think about the game,” she urged me. “Clear your mind of everything but the game.”
“The game!” I cried out savagely, jerking both the Fool and Kettricken awake. “The game? Regal knows about Molly and Nettle. He threatens them. And I am powerless! Helpless.” I felt the panic building in me again, the unfocused fury. The wolf whined, then growled deep in his throat.
“Can’t you Skill to them, warn them somehow?” Kettricken asked.
“No!” Kettle cut in. “He should not even think of them.”
Kettricken gave me a look that mingled apology and righteousness. “I fear Chade and I were correct. The princess will be safer in the Mountain Kingdom. Do not forget that his task was to fetch her. Take heart. Perhaps even now Nettle is with him, on her way to safety, out of Regal’s reach.”
Kettle called my gaze away from the Queen. “Fitz. Focus on the game. Only on the game. His threats could be a ploy, to trick you into betraying them. Don’t talk about them. Don’t think about them. Here. Look here.” Her trembling old hands moved my blanket away and spread out the gamecloth. She spilled stones into her hand, and plucked out white ones to re-create the problem. “Solve this. Focus on this, and this only.”
It was next to impossible. I looked at the white stones and thought it all a stupid task. What players could be so clumsy and shortsighted as to let the game degrade into such a clutter of white stones? It was not a problem worth solving. But neither could I lie down and sleep. I scarcely dared blink lest I see that eye again. Had it been Regal’s whole countenance or both his eyes it would not perhaps have seemed so awful. But the disembodied eye seemed all-seeing and constant, inescapable. I stared at the game pieces until the white stones seemed to float above the junctures of the lines. One black stone, to bring a winning pattern out of this chaos. One black stone. I held it in my hand, rubbing it with my thumb.
All the next day, as we followed the road down the mountain’s flank, I held the stone in my bare hand. My other arm was about the Fool’s waist, his arm around my neck. These two things kept my mind focused.
The Fool seemed somewhat better. His body was no longer feverish, but he seemed unable to stomach food or even tea. Kettle forced water on him until he simply sat and refused it, shaking his head wordlessly. He seemed as indisposed to talk as I was. Starling and Kettle with her staff led our weary little procession. The Fool and I followed the jeppas, while Kettricken with her bow strung kept our rear guarded. The wolf prowled restlessly up and down the line, now ranging ahead, now loping up our back trail.
Nighteyes and I had gone back to a sort of wordless bond. He understood that I did not wish to think at all, and did his best not to distract me. It was still unnerving to sense him trying to use the Wit to communicate with Kettricken. No sign of anyone behind us, he would tell her as he trotted past on one of his endless trips. Then he would go ranging far ahead of the jeppas and Starling, only to come back to Kettricken and assure her in passing that all was clear ahead of us. I tried to tell myself that she merely had faith that Nighteyes would let me know if he found anything amiss on his scouting trips. But I suspected she was becoming more and more attuned to him.
The road led us very swiftly downward. As we descended the land changed. By late afternoon, the slope above the road was gentling and we began to pass twisted trees and mossy boulders. Snow faded and became patchy on the hillside while the road was dry and black. Dry tufts of grass showed green at their bases just off the shoulder of the road. It was hard to make the hungry jeppas keep moving. I made a vague Wit-effort to let them know that there would be better browsing ahead, but I doubt that I had enough familiarity with them to make any lasting impression on them. I tried to limit my thoughts to the fact that firewood would be more plentiful tonight, and to gratitude that the lower the road carried us the warmer grew the day.