Fool’s Fate. Робин Хобб

The air was thick with the aromas of long human habitation. There were food smells, stews and smoked meat and spilled wine and the odour of cured hides and gathered people. It could have been a stench, but it was not. Rather, it was a homey smell, of safety and family.

      The entrance gave immediately onto a great room, with supporting pillars as the only dividers. There were three hearths, all with cook-fires on them. The stone-flagged floor was strewn with fresh rushes. Benches and shelves ran around the walls. The lower benches were wide, and the rolled sleeping skins proclaimed that these were beds by night and seating and tables by day. The higher, shallower shelves above the benches held foodstuffs and personal possessions. Most of the light in the room came from the hearths, though there were ineffectual candles in sconces on many of the pillars. In the far left corner, a wide staircase wound up into the dimness. It was the only access I could see to the upper regions of the house. It made sense. Even if an attacking force gained control of this level of the mothershouse, the folk above would have only one entrance to defend. Invaders would pay dearly to gain the upper floors of the mothershouse.

      All this I saw through the gathered people. Folk of every age were clustered everywhere and there was a sense of anticipation in the air. We were obviously late. At the end of the long room, before the largest hearth, Prince Dutiful waited. Ranged on his side of the hearth were Chade and his Wit-coterie, and beyond them, his guard drawn up in three rows. The Narwhal clan-folk parted to make way for us to assume our correct positions. Web and Swift advanced to stand with Cockle the minstrel and Civil and his Wit-cat. I took a place at the end of the front row of guardsmen.

      Elliania was not there. Those gathered on the other side of the hearth were mostly women. Peottre was the only adult man in his prime. There were a few old grandfathers, four lads about the Narcheska’s age, and then six or seven boys ranging down to toddlers clinging to their mothers’ skirts. Had the Red Ship War so decimated the Narwhal Clan?

      The Boar warriors from the ship were present, but they stood in a group off to one side, witnesses to rather than participants in whatever was about to happen. The people who crowded the rest of the room were almost entirely Narwhal Clan, as evinced by their jewellery, clothing adornments and tattoos. The exceptions seemed to be almost entirely males standing alongside women, and were probably men who had married into the clan or were partners in a less formal arrangement with a Narwhal woman. I saw Bears, Otters and one Eagle amongst them.

      Without exception, the women were strikingly arrayed. Those who did not wear jewellery of gold or silver or precious stone were still bedecked with ornaments of shell, feather and seeds. The artful arrangement of their hair had not been neglected, and added substantially to the height of several women. Unlike Buckkeep, where the women seemed to shift their finery in mysteriously feminine co-ordination, I saw a wide variety of styles. The only unifying theme to the beaded or embroidered or woven patterns of their dress seemed to be the brightness of the colours and the Narwhal motif.

      Those in the first circle, I surmised, were relatives of the Narcheska, while those who stood closest to the hearth would be her most immediate family. They were almost all women. All of the Narwhal women shared an intent, almost fierce air. The tension in that part of the room was palpable. I wondered which one was her mother, and wondered, too, what we awaited.

      Absolute silence fell. Then four Narwhal clansmen carried a wizened little woman down the stairs and into the hall. She rode in a chair fashioned from twisty pieces of gleaming willow-wood and cushioned with bearskins. Her thin white hair was braided and pinned in a crown to her head. Her eyes were very black and bright. She wore a red robe and the narwhal motif was repeated in tiny ivory buttons sewn all over it. The men set her chair down, not on the floor, but upon a heavy table where she could remain seated and still look out over all those who had gathered in her house. With a small whimper of complaint, the old woman straightened herself in the chair, sitting tall and gazing at the folk who had gathered. Her pink tongue wet her wrinkled lips. Heavy fur slippers dangled on her skinny feet.

      ‘Well! Here we all are!’ she proclaimed.

      She spoke the words in Outislander, loudly, as old folks who are going deaf are prone to do. She did not seem as mindful of the formality of the situation, nor as tense as the other women.

      The Great Mother of the Narwhal Clan leaned forward, her gnarled hands gripping the twisted wood of the chair arms. ‘So. Send him out, then. Who seeks to court our Elliania, our Narcheska of the Narwhals? Where is the warrior bold enough to seek the mothers’ permission to bed with our daughter?’

      I am sure those were not the words Dutiful had been told to expect. His face was the colour of beetroot as he stepped forward. He made a warrior’s obeisance before the old woman and spoke in clear Outislander as he proclaimed, ‘I stand before the mothers of the Narwhal Clan, and seek permission to join my line with yours.’

      She stared at him for a moment and then scowled, not at him, but at one of the young men who had borne her chair. ‘What is a Six Duchies slave doing here? Is he a gift? And why is he trying to speak our language and doing such a horrible job of it? Cut his tongue out if he attempts it again!’

      There was a sudden silence, broken by a wild whoop of laughter from someone in the back of the room, quickly muffled. Somehow, Dutiful kept his aplomb, and was wise enough not to attempt to explain himself to the incensed Mother. A woman from the Narcheska’s contingent stepped to the Mother’s side and stood on tiptoe, whispering frantically to her. The Mother waved her off irritably.