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.Perhaps the Skill-wave that Fitz spoke of.”“This Skill-wave.you believe it was Verity's doing?” Kettricken's breath was suddenly swift, her color heightened.“Only from him have I ever felt such strength,” I told her.“Then he lives,” she said softly.“He lives.”“Perhaps,” said Kettle sourly.“To blast with Skill like that can kill a man.And it may not have been Verity at all.It may have been a failed effort by Will and Regal to get at Fitz.”“No.I told you.It scattered them like chaff in a wind.”“And I told you.They may have destroyed themselves in trying to kill you.”I had thought that Kettricken would chide her, but both she and Starling stared wide-eyed in astonishment on Kettle's sudden professing of Skill knowledge.“How kind of you both to have warned me so well,” the Fool said with acid courtesy.“I didn't know.” I began my protest, but again Kettle overrode me.“It would have done no good to warn you, save to put your mind to dwelling on it.We can make this comparison.It has taken all our combined effort to keep Fitz both focused and sane on the Skill road.He would never have survived his journey into the city, had not his senses been numbed with elfbark first.Yet these others travel the road and use the Skill beacons freely.Obviously their strength overmatches his by much.Ah, what to do, what to do?”No one replied to her questioning of herself.She looked up suddenly at the Fool and me accusingly.“This cannot be right.It simply cannot be right.The Prophet and the Catalyst, and you are scarcely more than boys.Green to manhood, untrained in Skill, full of pranks and lovesick woes.These are the ones sent to save the world?”The Fool and I exchanged glances, and I saw him take a breath to reply to her.But at that moment, Starling snapped her fingers.“And that is what makes the song!” she exclaimed suddenly, her face transfigured with delight.“Not a song of heroic strength and mighty-thewed warriors.No.A song of two, graced only with friendship's strength.Each possessed of a loyalty to a king that would not be denied.And that in the refrain.'Green of manhood,' something, ah.”The Fool caught my eye, glanced meaningfully down at himself.“Green manhood? I really should have showed her,” he said quietly.And despite everything, despite even the glowering of my queen, I burst out laughing.“Oh, stop it,” Kettle rebuked us, with such discouragement in her voice that I was instantly sober.“It is neither the time for songs nor knavery.Are you both too foolish to see the danger you are in? The danger you put all of us in with your vulnerability?” I watched her as she reluctantly took my elfbark out of her pack again and put her kettle back to boil.“It is the only thing I can think of to do,” she apologized to Kettricken.“What is that?” she asked.“To drug the Fool at least with elfbark.It will deafen him to them, and hide his thoughts from them.”“Elfbark doesn't work like that!” I objected indignantly.“Doesn't it?” Kettle turned on me fiercely.“Then why was it used traditionally for years for just that purpose? Given to a royal bastard young enough, it could destroy any potential for Skill use.Often enough was that done.”I shook my head defiantly.“I've used it for years, to restore my strength after Skilling.So has Verity.And it has never.”“Sweet Eda's mercy!” Kettle exclaimed.“Tell me you are lying, please!”“Why should I lie about this? Elfbark revives a man's strength, though it may bring on melancholy spirits following use.Often I would carry elfbark tea up to Verity in his Skill-tower, to sustain him.” My telling faltered.The dismay on Kettle's face was too sincere.“What?” I asked softly.“Elfbark is well known among Skilled ones as a thing to avoid,” she said quietly.I heard every word, for no one in the tent even seemed to be breathing.“It deadens a man to Skill, so that he can neither use the Skill himself, nor may others reach through its fog to Skill to him.It is said to stunt or destroy Skill talent in the young, and to impede its development in older Skill users.” She looked at me with pity in her eyes.“You must have been strongly talented, once, to retain even a semblance of Skilling.”“It cannot be.” I said faintly.“Think,” she bade me.“Did ever you feel your Skillstrength wax strong after using it?”“What of my lord Verity?” Kettricken suddenly demanded.Kettle shrugged reluctantly.She turned to me.“When did he start using it?”It was hard for me to focus my mind on her words.So many things were suddenly in a different light.Elfbark had always cleared my head of the-pounding that heavy Skilling brought on.But I had never tried to Skill immediately after I had used elfbark.Verity had, I knew that.But how successfully, I did not know.My erratic talent for Skilling.could that have been my elfbark use? Like a lightning bolt was the immense knowledge that Chade had made a mistake in giving it to Verity and me.Chade had made a mistake.It had never occurred to me, somehow, that Chade could be wrong or mistaken.Chade was my master, Chade read and studied and knew all the old lore.But he had never been taught to Skill.A bastard like myself, he had never been taught to Skill.“FitzChivalry!” Kettricken's command jerked me back to myself.“Uh, so far as I know, Verity began to use it in the early years of the war.When he was the only Skill user to stand between us and the Red-Ships.I believe he had never used the Skill so intensely as then, nor been as exhausted by it.So Chade began to give him elfbark.To keep up his strength.”Kettle blinked a few times.“Unused, the Skill does not develop,” she said, almost to herself.“Used, it grows, and begins to assert itself, and one learns, almost instinctively, the many uses to which it may be put.” I found myself nodding faintly to her soft, words.Her old eyes came up suddenly to meet mine.She spoke without reservation.“You are most likely stunted, both of you.By the elfbark.Verity, as a man grown, may have recovered.He may have seen his Skill grow in the time he has spent away from the herb.As you seem to have.Certainly he seems to have mastered the road alone.” She sighed.“But I suspect those others have not used it, and their talents and usage of Skill had grown and outstripped what yours is.So now you have a choice, FitzChivalry, and only you can make it.The Fool has nothing to lose by using the drug.He cannot Skill, and by using it, he may keep the coterie from finding him again.But you.I can give you this, and it will deaden you to the Skill.It will be harder for them to reach you, and much harder for you to reach out.You might be safer that way.But you will be once more thwarting your talent.Enough elfbark may kill it off completely.And only you can choose.”I looked down at my hands.Then I looked up at the Fool.Once more, our eyes met.Hesitantly, I groped toward him with my Skill.I felt nothing.Perhaps it was only my own erratic talent cheating me again.But it seemed likely to me that Kettle had been right; the elfbark the Fool had just drunk had deadened him to me.As Kettle spoke, she had been taking the kettle from the fire.The Fool held his cup out to her wordlessly.She gave him a pinch more of the bitter bark and filled it again with water.Then she looked at me, quietly waiting [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]