I didn’t care. Riddle turned away from me and began to give his orders
The forest seemed a different world after they had left. I’d sent my lightest follower on my swiftest horse. Per would reach Buckkeep before nightfall. I believed Nettle would listen to him. If not, Lant and Riddle would not be far behind. By tomorrow afternoon, someone should arrive who could use the stone. Someone else would go through the portal and face for me whatever lay on the other side. I might be sending them into an ambush, or into a scene of people deranged by a Skill-passage. They might find my child with her mind forever scrambled and leaking. They might find only tracks leading away. Had Dwalia known where she was taking them, or was it a random escape? Did she know how to use the pillars, and was she strong enough with her wizard to take that many followers through safely?
If she was, we were up against an incredibly powerful opponent. If she wasn’t, my quest might end with a child who would never recognize me again.
I knew I should build a fire and prepare for the oncoming night. The falling snow was not yet penetrating the interlaced evergreen boughs overhead, but it would. Colors were already fading from the day in the dimmer light of the forest. Pale gray, gray, dark gray, black. I watched it get darker and did nothing. More than once, I set my hand to the runes on the pillar, and hoped. In vain.
I heard my Rousters before I saw them. I could make out from the tone of their conversation that a night in the open, while their fellows traveled on to the comforts of the barracks at Buckkeep Castle, was not appreciated. They were carrying fire, probably from the cook-fire Foxglove had kindled earlier. The light of their makeshift torches wavered and danced as they approached.
Both Sawyer and Reaper had returned with six extra Rousters. “Make camp,” I told them, and they did. They built a fire where Dwalia’s had burned. Three shelters were thrown up rapidly, from tree limbs and pine boughs. They’d brought bedrolls, and they floored the shelter with those. They had food and they shared it among themselves. I had no appetite, but when they melted water for drinking, I heated some and made a tea for us. They exchanged some sidelong glances and did not drink until after I did. Evidently FitzVigilant or Perseverance had made complaint about my trickery.
Long after they had gone to bed, I sat and stared at the fire. I do not know how often I stood and walked to the stone and put my hand on it. It was foolish. I could feel that my Skill was quenched. It was the same ear-stoppered mental isolation that I had felt on Aslevjal the first time I’d accidentally eaten Outislander elfbark. I tried to reach out with the Skill without success. I unfolded my Wit, and sensed the sleeping men and an owl hunting nearby, and very little else. Toward dawn I crawled into the tumbledown shelter the Servants had left, and slept. I woke after the others were long risen. My head hurt and my spirits were less than low. I was cold and hungry and angry with myself.
I walked to the stone and put my hand on the rune.
Nothing.
The morning passed. More snow fell. I dismissed four of the Rousters to go and find meat. I wasn’t hungry but it gave them something to do. We had seen no sign of anyone else in the forest and they were chafing with boredom. The sun wandered the sky behind a layer of clouds. The hunters came back with two grouse. They cooked them. They ate them. I drank tea. The afternoon meandered toward evening. Too much time had passed. Was no one coming?
The light was going away when they arrived and I saw the reason why they had taken so long. Riddle led the way, and Nettle rode behind him. She sat her horse, but a litter followed: she’d probably disdained it. A full coterie of six Skill-users, armed and armored, followed them. And the baggage train, and attendants appropriate to Nettle’s station, trailed after them. I went to meet them. Her public greeting to me was restrained, but I read anger, weariness, disappointment, and sorrow on her face. Riddle was subdued to stillness.
She allowed Riddle to hand her down from her horse but I sensed the chill between them and knew I was the cause. She looked at me, not him, as she said, “The Skill-pillar?”
I led the way wordlessly. All around us her entourage was busy setting up a camp with a stout tent for her. I heard the ring of hatchets as firewood was gathered and horses were led away. Her coterie trailed her, their faces grim. When we reached the Skill-pillar, I touched the rune once again. “I know where it goes.”
“The ancient marketplace on the trail to the stone dragons,” Nettle said. She met my gaze and said, “Did you think I would not know that?”
“I would like to describe it for the coterie, so they can know what to expect as they emerge from the pillar.”