The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy Omnibus (168 page)

In the dream, I had become the wolf. All four of my legs were soon bound by the clinging stuff and I must needs stop and chew myself clear of it. For some reason, the thread tasted of anise, a pleasant enough flavour in moderation, but choking by the mouthful. When I finally reached the glass tower my chest was wet and my jaws dripped saliva. I gave myself a shake, droplets flying, and then asked her, ‘Aren’t you going to invite me to come up?’

She did not reply. She leaned on the parapet of her balcony and stared out over the countryside. I looked behind me, down to where the brambles waved above the banked fog in the deep valleys. Was the fog creeping closer? When Nettle continued to ignore me, I trotted around the base of the tower. In the old tale, there was no door, and Nettle had recreated it faithfully. Did that mean she had had a lover who had been faithless to her? My heart turned over in me and for a moment I forgot the purpose of my visit. When I had circled the tower, I sat down on my haunches and looked up at the figure on the balcony. ‘Who has betrayed you?’ I asked her.

She continued to stare out and I thought she would not answer. But then, without looking down at me, she replied, ‘Everyone. Go away.’

‘How can I help you if I go away?’

‘You can’t help me. You’ve told me that often enough. So you might as well just go away and leave me alone. Like everyone else.’

‘Who has gone away and left you alone?’

That brought a furious glare. She spoke in a low voice full of hurt. ‘I don’t know why I thought you might remember! My brother, for one. My brother Swift, who you said would soon be coming home to us. Well, he hasn’t! And then my stupid father decided to go look for him. As if a man with fogged eyes can go look for anything! And we told him not to go, but he did. And something happened, we don’t know what, but his horse came home without him. So I went out on my horse, despite my mother shrieking at me that I wasn’t to leave, and I tracked his horse’s trail back and found Papa by the side of the road, bruised and bloody and trying to crawl home dragging one leg. So I brought him home, and then my mother scolded me again
for disobeying her. And now my father is in bed and all he does is lie there and stare at the wall and not speak to anyone. My mother forbade any of us from bringing him any brandy. So he won’t talk to us or tell us what happened. Which makes my mother furious at all of us. As if it were my fault.’

Halfway through this tirade, her tears had begun to stream down her face. They dripped from her chin and ran over her hands and trickled down the wall of the tower. Slowly they solidified into opal strands of misery. I reared up on my hind legs and clawed at them, but they were too smooth and too shallow for me to gain any purchase. I sat down again. I felt hollow and old. I tried to tell myself that the misery in Molly’s home had nothing to do with me, that I had not caused it and could not cure it. And yet, the roots of it ran deep, did they not?

After a time, she looked down at me and laughed bitterly. ‘Well, Shadow Wolf? Aren’t you going to say you can’t help me with that? Isn’t that what you always say?’ When I could think of no reply, she added in an accusing tone, ‘I don’t know why I even speak to you. You lied to me. You said my brother was coming home.’

‘I thought he was,’ I replied, finding words at last. ‘I went to him and I told him to go home. I thought he had.’

‘Well, perhaps he tried to. Perhaps he started this way, and was killed by robbers, or fell in a river and drowned. I don’t suppose you ever considered that ten is a bit young to be out on the roads alone? I suppose you never thought that it might have been kinder if you had brought him home safely to us, instead of “sending” him? But no, that might have been inconvenient to you.’

‘Nettle. Stop. Let me speak. Swift is safe. Alive and safe. He is still here, with me.’ I paused and tried to breathe. The inevitability of what must follow those words sickened me.
Here it comes, Burrich
, I thought to myself.
All the pain I ever tried to save you. All tied up in a tidy package of misery for you and your family.

For Nettle asked, as I knew she must, ‘And where is “safe with you”? And how do I know he is safe? How do I know you are a true thing at all? Perhaps you are like the rest of this dream, a thing I made. Look at you, man-wolf! You are not real and you offer me false hope.’

‘I am not real as you see me,’ I replied slowly. ‘But I am real. And once upon a time, your father knew me.’

‘Once upon a time,’ she said scornfully. ‘Another tale from Shadow Wolf. Take your silly stories away.’ She took a shuddering breath and fresh tears started down her face. ‘I’m not a child any longer. Your stupid stories can’t help me.’

So I knew I had lost her. Lost her trust, lost her friendship. Lost my chance of knowing my child as a child. Terrible sadness welled up in me, but it was laced with the music of brambles growing. I glanced behind me. The thorn vines and fog had crept higher. Was it just my own dream threatening me, or had Thick’s music become even more menacing? I didn’t know. ‘And I came here seeking your help,’ I reminded myself bitterly.

‘My help?’ Nettle asked in a choked voice.

I had spoken without thinking. ‘I know I don’t have the right to ask you for anything.’

‘No. You don’t.’ She was looking past me. ‘What is that, anyway?’

‘A dream. A nightmare, actually.’

‘I thought your nightmares were about falling.’ She sounded intrigued.

‘That’s not my nightmare. It belongs to someone else. He is … it’s a very strong nightmare. Strong enough to spread out from him and take over the dreams of other people. It’s threatening lives. And I don’t think the man whose dream it is can control it.’

‘Just wake him up, then.’ She offered the solution disdainfully.

‘That might help, for a little time. But I need a more permanent solution.’ For a brief moment, I considered telling her that the man’s nightmare endangered Swift as well. I pushed the thought aside. There was no use frightening her, especially when I wasn’t sure she could help me.

‘What did you think I could do about it?’

‘I thought you could help me go into his dream and change it. Make it pleasant and calm. Convince him that what is happening to him won’t kill him, that he’ll be fine. Then his dreams might be calmer. And we could all rest.’

‘How could I do that?’ And then, more sharply, ‘And why
should I do that? What do you offer me in exchange, Shadow Wolf?’

I did not like that it had come down to barter, but I had only myself to blame. It was cruellest of all that the only thing I had to offer her would bring pain and guilt for her father. I spoke slowly. ‘As to how, you are very strong in the magic that lets one person walk into another person’s dreams and change them. Strong enough, perhaps, to shape my friend’s dream for him, even though he himself is also very strong in magic. And very frightened.’

‘I have no magic’

I ignored her words. ‘As for why … I have told you that Swift is with me, and safe. You doubt me. I don’t blame you, for it appears I have failed you in my earlier assurance. But I will give you words, to say to your father. They will … they will be hard for him to hear. But when he hears them, he will know that what I say is true. That your brother is alive and well. And with me.’

‘Tell me the words, then.’

For one brief Chade-ish moment, I thought of demanding that first she help me with Thick’s dreaming. Then I harshly rejected that notion. My daughter owed me exactly what I had given her: nothing. Perhaps there was also the fear that if I did not speak to her then, I would lose my courage. Uttering those words was like touching my tongue to a glowing coal. I spoke them. ‘Tell him that you dreamed of a wolf with porcupine quills in his muzzle. And that the wolf said to you, “As once you did, so I do now. I shelter and guide your son. I will put my life between him and any harm, and when my task is done, I will bring him safely home to you”.’

I had cloaked my message as best I could, under the circumstances. Nettle still struck far too close to the truth when she eagerly asked, ‘My father cared for your son, years ago?’

Some decisions are easier if you don’t allow yourself time to think. ‘Yes,’ I lied to my daughter. ‘Exactly.’

I watched her mull this for a moment. Slowly her tower of glass began to melt into water. It flowed, warm and harmless, past my feet until her balcony had descended to the ground. She offered me her hand to help her climb over the railing. I took it, touching and yet not touching my daughter for the first time in her life.
Her tanned fingers rested briefly on my black-clawed paw. Then she stood clear of me and looked down at the fog and creeping briars that were ascending the hillside toward us.

‘You know I’ve never done anything like this before?’

‘Neither have I,’ I admitted.

‘Before we go into his dream, tell me something about him,’ she suggested.

The fog and bramble crept ever closer. Whatever I told her about Thick would be too much, and yet for her to enter his dream ignorant might be dangerous to all. I could not control what Thick revealed to her in the context of the dream. For one fleeting second, I wondered if I should have consulted Chade or Dutiful before seeking Nettle’s aid. Then I smiled grimly to myself. I was Skillmaster, was I not? In that capacity, this decision was mine alone.

And so I told my daughter that Thick was simple, a man with the mind and heart of a child, and the strength of an army when it came to Skill-magic. I even told her that he served the Farseer Prince, and that he journeyed with him on a ship. I told her how his powerful Skill-music and now his dreams were undermining morale on the ship. I told her of his conviction that he would always be seasick and that he would likely die from it. And as I told her these things, the thorns grew and twined toward us, and I watched her quickly drawing her own conclusions from what I said; that I was on board the ship also, and therefore that her brother was with me, on a sea-voyage with the Farseer Prince. Rural as her home was, I wondered how much she had heard of the Narcheska and the Prince’s quest. I didn’t have to wonder long. She put the tale together for herself.

‘So that is the black dragon that the silver dragon keeps asking you about. The one the Prince goes to slay.’

‘Don’t speak her name,’ I begged her.

She gave me a disdainful look that mocked my foolish fears. Then, ‘Here it comes,’ she said quietly. And the brambles engulfed us.

They made a crackling sound as they rose around our ankles and then our knees, like fire racing up a tree. The thorns bit into
our flesh and then a dense fog swirled up about us, choking and menacing.

‘What is this?’ Nettle exclaimed in annoyance. Then, as the fog stole her from my sight, she exclaimed, ‘Stop it. Shadow Wolf, stop it right now! This is all yours; you made this mess. Let go of it!’

And she wrested my dream from me. It was rather like having someone snatch away your blankets. But most jarring for me was that it evoked a memory I both did and did not recognize: another time and an older woman, prying something fascinating and shiny from my chubby-fisted grasp, while saying, ‘No, Keppet. Not for little boys.’

I was breathless in the sudden banishment of my dream, but in the next instant we literally plunged into Thick’s. The fog and brambles vanished, and the cold salt water closed over my head. I was drowning. No matter how I struggled I could not get to the top of the water. Then a hand gripped mine and as Nettle hauled me up to stand beside her, she exclaimed irritably, ‘You are so gullible! It’s a dream, and that’s all it is. Now it’s my dream, and in my dream we can walk on the waves. Come on.’

She said it and it was so. Still, I held on to her hand and walked beside her. All around us, the water stretched out, glittering shoreless from horizon to horizon. Thick’s music was the wind blowing all around us. I squinted out over the water, wondering how we would ever find Thick in the trackless waves, but Nettle squeezed my hand and announced clearly through Thick’s wild song, ‘We’re very close to him now.’

And that, too, was so. A few steps more and she dropped to her knees with an exclamation of pity. The blinding sunlight on the water hid whatever she stared at. I knelt beside her and felt my heart break.

He knew it too well. He must have seen it, sometime. The drowned kitten floated just beneath the water. Too young even for his eyes to be opened, he dangled weightlessly in the sea’s grip. His fur floated around him, but as Nettle reached in to grip him by the scruff of the neck and pull him out, his coat sleeked suddenly flat with the water. He dangled from her hand, water streaming from his tail and paws and dribbling from his nose and open red
mouth. She cupped the little creature fearlessly in her hand. She bent over him intently, experimentally flexing the small rib cage between her thumb and forefingers. Then she held the tiny face close to hers and blew a sudden puff of air into the open red mouth. In those moments, she was entirely Burrich’s daughter. So I had seen him clear birth-mucus from a newborn puppy’s throat.

‘You’re all right now,’ she told the kitten authoritatively. She stroked the tiny creature, and in the wake of her hand, his fur was dry and soft. He was striped orange and white, I suddenly saw. A moment before, I thought he had been black. ‘You’re alive and safe, and I will not let any evil befall you. And you know that you can trust me. Because I love you.’

At her words, my throat closed up and choked me. I wondered how she knew them to say. All my life, without knowing it, I had wanted someone to say those words to me, and have them be true and believable. It was like watching someone give to another the gift you had always longed for. And yet, I did not feel bitterness or envy. All I felt was wonder that at sixteen, she would have that in her to give to another. Even if I could have found Thick in his dream, even if someone had told me those were the words I must say, the words he most desperately needed to hear, I could not have said them and made them true as she did. She was my daughter, blood of my blood, and yet the wonder and amazement she made me feel at that moment made her a creation entirely apart from me.