The Farseer Trilogy (The Farseer Trilogy, #1-3)

by Robin Hobb

The hand was hard and rough, trapping mine within it. And yet it was warm, and not unkind as it held mine.

And so I came to Buckkeep, sole child and bastard of a man I’d never know. Prince Verity became King-in-Waiting and Prince Regal moved up a notch in the line of succession. If all I had ever done was to be born and discovered, I would have left a mark across all the land for all time. I grew up fatherless and motherless in a court where all recognized me as a catalyst. And a catalyst I became.

Boy and pup, we sat, watching Burrich’s stillness. When he finally raised his face, I was astounded to see that he looked as if he had been crying. Like my mother, I remember thinking, but oddly I cannot now recall an image of her weeping. Only of Burrich’s grieved face.

“Fitz,” he began, and then paused. He took a deep breath and started again. “Fitz, this is wrong. It’s bad, very bad, what you’ve been doing with this pup. It’s unnatural. It’s worse than stealing or lying. It makes a man less than a man. Do you understand me?”

queer

My tongue was dry in my mouth and Nosy cowered at my feet. “But I don’t know,” I protested. “How can I know what I’ll do, until I’ve done it? How can I say?” “Well, if you can’t say, I can!” he roared, and I sensed then in full how he had banked the fires of his temper, and also how much he’d drunk that night. “The pup goes and you stay. You stay here, in my care, where I can keep an eye on you. If Chivalry will not have me with him, it’s the least I can do for him. I’ll see that his son grows up a man, and not a wolf. I’ll do it if it kills the both of us!”

Afterward, Burrich took pains to see that I was given no chance to bond with any beast. I am sure he thought he’d succeeded, and to some extent he did, in that I did not form an exclusive bond with any hound or horse. I know he meant well. But I did not feel protected by him, but confined. He was the warden that ensured my isolation with fanatical fervor. Utter loneliness was planted in me then, and sent its deep roots down into me.

I missed Nosy with a keenness as great as if Burrich had severed a limb from my body. But neither of us ever spoke of that.

“You’ll be up with the sun from now on, boy. You’ll learn from me in the morning. Caring for a horse, and mastering it. And how to hunt your hounds properly, and have them mind you. A man’s way of controlling beasts is what I’ll teach you.” The last he emphasized heavily and paused to be sure I understood. My heart sank, but I began a nod, then amended it to “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t be scared, now. There’s nothing to be afraid of. And, anyway,” he said, and I heard him relenting, “they’ve only told us that you’re to have a room up at the keep. No one’s said that you’ve got to sleep in it every night. Some nights, if things are a bit too quiet for you, you can find your way down here. Ey, Fitz? Does that sound right to you?”

aw

I learned to lie very well. I do not think it was taught me accidentally.

“I’m just so alone now,” I heard myself say, and even to me it sounded like a feeble complaint.

“Enough of that,” he warned me sternly. “That’s not a thing for a man to do. And it won’t solve whatever is chewing on your soul.

It was as if Burrich had died. A cold force animated his body, performing all his tasks flawlessly but without warmth or satisfaction. Underlings who had formerly vied for the briefest nod of praise from him now turned aside from his glance, as if shamed for him. Only Vixen did not forsake him. The old bitch slunk after him wherever he went, unrewarded by any look or touch, but always there. I hugged her once, in sympathy, and even dared to quest toward her, but I encountered only a numbness frightening to touch minds with. She grieved with her master.

The gender of the Fool has been disputed. When directly questioned on this matter by a younger and more forward person than I am now, the Fool

replied that it was no one’s business but his own. So I concede.

I thought of the kinship that I had shared with horses and dogs when I knew Burrich was not around. I remembered Nosy, in a mingling of warmth and grief. I had never been so close, before or since, to another living creature. Would this new training in the Skill take that away from me? “What’s the matter, boy?” Chade’s voice was kindly, but concerned. “I don’t know.” I hesitated. But not even to Chade could I dare to reveal my fear. Or my taint. “Nothing,

“My mother was a soldier when I was conceived.

slay

I tell you, Fitz, I’d sooner see … I’d sooner see you Forged. Yes, don’t look so shocked, that’s truly how I feel. And as for Galen … Look, Fitz, don’t even mention it to him. Don’t speak of it, don’t even think of it near him. It’s little that I know about the Skill and how it works. But sometimes … oh, sometimes when your father touched me with it, it seemed he knew my heart before I did, and saw things that I kept buried even from myself.” A sudden deep blush suffused Burrich’s dark face, and almost I thought I saw tears stand in his dark eyes. He turned aside from me to the fire, and I sensed we were coming to the heart of what he needed to say. Needed, not wanted. There was a deep fear in him, one he denied himself.

I sank into my shame. Helplessly, I began to sob. I merited such treatment as he had given me. I deserved worse. Only a misplaced pity had kept Galen from killing me. I had wasted his time, had taken his painstaking instruction and turned it all to selfish indulgence. I fled myself, going deeper and deeper within, but finding only disgust and hatred for myself layered throughout my thoughts. I would be better off dead. Were I to throw myself from the tower roof, it would still not be enough to destroy my shame, but at least I need no longer be aware of it.

And to no one did I dare speak openly of my emerging proclivity for the Wit, the ancient beast magic, said to be a perversion and a taint to any who used it.

To Burrich, the Wit that sometimes left me open to the minds of animals was a perversion, a disgusting weakness that no true man indulged. He had all but admitted to the latent ability for it, but staunchly insisted that he never used it himself. If he did, I had never caught him at it. The opposite was never true. With uncanny perception, he had always known when I was drawn to an animal. As a boy, my indulgence in the Wit with a beast had usually led to a rap on the head or a sound cuff to rouse me back to my duties. When I had lived with Burrich in the stables, he had done everything in his power to keep me from bonding to any animal. He had succeeded always, save twice. The keen pain of losing my bond companions had convinced me Burrich was right. Only a fool would indulge in something that inevitably led to such loss. So I was a fool, rather than a man who could turn aside from the plea of a beaten and starved cub.

It was unthinkable. To tell her those things would hurt and shame her. She would have felt permanently dirtied by the touch we had shared. I told myself that I could stand to have her despise me, but I could not stand to have her despise herself. I told myself that I clenched my lips shut because it was the nobler thing to do, to keep these secrets to myself was better than to let the truth destroy her. Did I lie to myself, then? Don’t we all?

I lay there, with her arms twined warm around me, with the length of her body warming my side, and promised myself that I would change. I would stop being all those things, and then I would never need tell her. Tomorrow, I promised myself, I would tell Chade and Shrewd that I would no longer kill for them. Tomorrow, I would make Nighteyes understand why I must sever my bond with him. Tomorrow.

“Just a moment, Molly. I’ve cramped a muscle.” Which one? Smirking.

I hadn’t spoken so plainly of her to Burrich in a long time. A line creased his brow, but he took the bloodied moon. “What would your father say to me?” he wondered aloud as I turned wearily away from him. “I don’t know,” I told him bluntly. “I never knew him. Only you.”

relief in it as well. I was deathly tired of all the lies I lived. Burrich rode on silently, not looking at me. “I did not intend for it to happen. It just did.” An explanation. Not an apology. I gave him no choice. Nighteyes was being very jocular about Burrich’s silence. I put my hand on Sooty’s neck, took comfort in the warmth and life there. I waited. Burrich still said nothing. “I know you will never approve,” I said quietly. “But it is not something I can choose. It is what I am.”

Gods, what have they done to you, to mark you so? What has become of me, that I did not even know you though I carried you in my arms?”

this. I am glad, glad that you are alive. To see you take breath puts the breath back in my lungs. If there must be another my fate is twined around, I am glad it is you.”

i love gay people

I watched its gay prancing with a retroactive desire to have possessed such a thing of brightly painted wood and finely sanded edges. “I want my daughter to have things such as that,” I heard myself say aloud. “Well-made toys and soft bright shirts, pretty hair ribbons and dolls to clutch.” “She will,” he promised me gravely. “She will.”

an arm around me. I moved closer to him gratefully, sharing warmth. The sympathy of my wolf wrapped me. I waited for the Fool to say something comforting. He was too wise to try. I fell asleep longing for words that did not exist.

cuddlong....

Who, O light of my life,

STAWP

“The Fool is a woman, and she is in love with you.”

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.

gay

I quietly asked the Fool, “Why do you allow Starling to believe you are a woman?” He turned to me, waggled his eyebrows and blew me a kiss. “And am I not, fair princeling?” “I’m serious,” I rebuked him. “She thinks you are a woman and in love with me. She thought that we had a tryst last night.” “And did we not, my shy one?” He leered at me outrageously. “Fool,” I said warningly.

i love themmmm

“That is one thing that in all my years among your folk I have never become accustomed to. The great importance that you attach to what gender one is.” “Well, it is important …” I began. “Rubbish!” he exclaimed. “Mere plumbing, when all is said and done. Why is it important?”

I should have left it alone. I did not. “It is only that she thinks that you love me,” I tried to explain. He gave me an odd look. “I do.” “I mean, as a man and a woman love.” He took a breath. “And how is that?”

He cocked his head and the next words held a challenge. “And do you not return that to me?” He waited. I desperately wished I had never started this discussion. “You know I love you,” I said at last, grudgingly. “After all that has been between us, how can you even ask? But I love you as a man loves another man.…” Here the Fool leered at me mockingly. Then a sudden glint lit his eyes, and I knew that he was about to do something awful to me. He leaped to the top of a fallen log. From that height, he gave Starling a triumphant look and cried dramatically, “He loves me, he says! And I love him!” Then with a whoop of wild laughter he leapt down and raced ahead of me on the trail.

homosegguahs

I lifted her hand and softly kissed the fingers that had been broken on my account. “I do not confuse what was done to you with who you are,” I offered. “When I look at you, I see Starling Birdsong the minstrel.” She nodded her face against me, and I knew it was as I surmised. She and I shared that fear. We would not live as victims.

The Fool, the Fool, only the Fool. I sought for him, I almost found him. Oh, he was passing strange, and surpassing strange. He darted and eluded me, like a bright gold carp in a weedy pool, like the motes that dance before one’s eyes after being dazzled by the sun. As well to clutch at the moon’s reflection in a still midnight pond as to seek a grip on that bright mind. I knew his beauty and his power in the briefest flashes of insight. In a moment I understood and marveled at all that he was, and in the next I had forgotten that understanding.

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.

He finally lifted his eyes to hers. His look was incredulous. “You’d marry me? As I am? Old? Poor? Scarred?” “You are none of those things to me. To me, you are the man I love.”

ugh i love them

He put his unskilled hand, not to my shoulder, but to the side of my neck. Instinctively, he was right. Skin to skin, I knew him better.

“Hurry,” I bid him. He embraced me almost convulsively, and shocked me when he kissed my mouth.

GASPED

No one is quite sure where the Fool went or what became of him after that. Starling believes he returned to his homeland. Perhaps. Perhaps, somewhere there is a toymaker who makes puppets that are a delight and a marvel. I hope he wears an earring of silver and blue. The fingerprints he left on my wrist have faded to a dusky gray. I think I will always miss him.

nah