I opened myself to the Skill and let it stream through me like water through a sieve, and still I found no trace of the Prince. I stretched myself beneath the flow of the Skill like a hillside full of tiny grasses under sunlight and let it touch each blade of me, and still I could not sense him. I wove myself throughout the Skill, twining over it like ivy, and still I could not separate the lad from its flow.
He had left a sense of himself in the Skill, but like a bootmark in fine dust on a windy day that trace was crumbling to meaningless grains flowing with the Skill. I gathered what I could of him, but it was no more Prince Dutiful than the scent of a flower is the flower. Nevertheless, I took to myself the bits that I recognized and held them fiercely. It was becoming more difficult for me to recall what exactly was the essence of the Prince. I had never known him well, and the body that my body held was rapidly losing its connection to him.
In an effort to find the boy, I engaged completely with the Skill. I did not surrender myself, but I stepped free of all the safety holds that always before I had clung to. It was an eerie feeling. I was a kite cut free and flying, a tiny boat with no hand on the tiller. I had not lost my sense of self, but I had given up the absolute certainty that I could find my way back to my body. Yet it put me no closer to finding Dutiful. It only made me more aware of the vastness that surrounded me and the hopelessness of my task. It would have been easier to net the smoke from an extinguished fire than to gather the boy together again.
And all the while the Skill plucked at me, whispering promises. It was only cold and rushing so long as I resisted it. If I gave in, I knew it would become all warmth and comfort and belonging. If I surrendered to it, I would subside into peaceful existence without individual awareness. What would be so terrible about that? Nighteyes and the Fool were gone. I’d failed in my mission to bring Dutiful back to Kettricken. Molly did not wait for me; she had a life and a love. Hap, I told myself, trying to stir some sense of responsibility. What about Hap? But I knew that Chade would see to Hap’s needs, at first out of a sense of duty to me, but before long for the sake of the boy himself.
But Nettle. What of Nettle?
The answer was terrible. I had already failed her. I knew I could not recover Dutiful, and without him, she was doomed. Did I wish to return to witness that? Could I be aware of it and stay sane? Then a worse thought came to me. In this timeless place, it had all already happened. Even now, she had perished.
That decided me. I let go of the bits of Dutiful and they streamed away from me. How to describe that? As if I stood on a sunny hillside and released a rainbow I had imprisoned in my hand. As he flowed away, I realized that those traces of him had become tangled with my own essence. My being flowed with his. It didn’t matter. FitzChivalry Farseer ribboned away from me, the thread of myself snagged and now unravelling in the streaming Skill.
Once, I had put memories into a stone dragon. I had gratefully thrust away pain and hopeless love and a dozen other experiences. I had given away that part of my life so that the dragon would have enough essence to come to life. This felt different. Imagine bleeding that feels pleasurable and yet is still just as deadly. I passively witnessed the draining.
Now stop that. Warm feminine amusement in the voice that filled my mind. I was helpless to prevent it as she wound the thread of my being around me as if she were gathering yarn back into a skein. I had forgotten how passionately dramatic humans can be at their silliest. No wonder we enjoyed you so. Such ardent little pets as you were.
Who? I could refine the thought no more than that. Her presence left me limp with happiness.
And this is yours too, I suppose. No wait, this is a different one. Two of you here, at once, and coming all apart! Are you lost, then?
Lost. I repeated the thought to her, unable to frame any concept of my own. I was a dandled infant, adored for my mere presence, and it left me helpless with delight. Her love transfused me with warmth. It was something I had never even been able to imagine before: I was loved enough, and valued enough, and I needed nothing more than what I presently had. This enough was more bountiful than plenty, more rich than a king’s gleaming hoard. Never in my life had I experienced this sensation.
Back you go. Be more careful next time. Most of the others would not even notice that they had attracted you.
Like plucking a burr off herself, I thought with dim dismay. While she held me, I was too giddy with pleasure to oppose her, even though I knew she was about to do the unthinkable. Wait wait wait I managed, but the thought was weightless and she gave me no heed. For less than a blink I was aware of Dutiful close beside me.
Then I was back in the horrid confines of my miserable little body. It ached, it was cold and damaged, old damage, new damage, it had never worked that well in the first place, and worst of all, it did not have enough of anything. It was riddled with wants and great gaping needs. In here, I had never had, I would never have enough love or regard or –
I flung myself out of it again.
All that happened was that my body gave a great twitch and fell over on the sand. I could not get out of it. I was cramped and stifling in the ill-fitting flesh that coated and confined me, and I could not find a way out. The discomfort was acute and alarming, akin to having a limb twisted or being choked. The more I struggled, the more I sank into the thrashing limbs of my flesh, until I was hopelessly embedded in my sweating, shaking self. I subsided, feeling the misery of having a physical self. Cold. Sand in the wet waistband of my leggings, sand at the corner of one eye and up my nose. Thirsty. Hungry. Bruised and cut.
Unloved.
I sat up slowly. The fire was nearly out; I’d been gone for quite a time. I got up stiffly and tossed the last piece of wood onto it. The world fell into place around me. My losses engulfed me as completely as the night that surrounded me. I stood perfectly still, mourning the Fool and Nighteyes, but devastated even beyond those losses by my abandonment by … by whatever she had been. It was not like waking from a dream. Rather, it was the opposite. In her, there had been truth and immediacy and the simplicity of being. Plunged back into this world, I sensed it as a tangling web of distractions and annoyances, illusions and tricks. I was cold and my shoulder hurt and the fire was going out, and all those discomforts plucked at me. Larger loomed the problem of Prince Dutiful and how we would get back to Buck and what had become of Nighteyes and the Fool. Yet even those things now seemed but diversions dancing before my eyes to keep my attention from the immense reality beyond them. All of this existence was composed of trivial pains and searing agonies, and each of them was yet another mask between me and the face of the eternal.
Yet the layers of masks were back in place, and must be recognized. My body shivered. The tide was going out again. I could not see anything beyond the ring of our firelight, but I could hear the waters retreat in the rhythm of the falling waves. The unmistakable smell of low tide, of bared kelp and shellfish was in the air.
The Prince lay on his back staring up at the sky. I looked down at him and thought at first that he was unconscious. In the fickle light of my dying fire, I saw only black cavities where his eyes should be. Then he spoke. ‘I had a dream.’ There was wonder and uncertainty in his voice.
‘How nice.’ It was a neutral sneer. I was incredibly relieved that he was back in his body and could speak. To an equal degree, I hated that I was trapped inside my own body again and had to listen to him.
He seemed immune to my nastiness. The edges of his voice were soft. ‘I’ve never had a dream like that. I could feel … everything. I dreamed my father held me together and told me that I was going to be fine. That was all. But the strangest part was, that was enough.’ Dutiful smiled up at me. It was a luminous smile, wise and young. It made him look like Kettricken.
‘I have to find more firewood,’ I said at last. I turned from the light and the fire and the smiling boy and walked away into the darkness.
I didn’t look for wood. The retreating waves had left the sand wet and packed under my bare feet. A fading slice of moon had risen. I looked at it, then up at the sky, and felt my stomach drop. According to the