The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,53

side she looked about normal. Old and deep-lined, cool blue eyes fixed on the horizon.

“The cold has a wonderful way of clearing the mind.” Not the witchy croak Rikke had expected. A young voice, smooth and full of music. “It fixes you on what counts. Draws your attention inwards.”

“So… you do it to gather your magic… or something?”

“I do it because fools rarely follow a woman into cold water with their problems.” She turned, and Rikke could only stare, because her face was just the way she’d seen it in her vision.

A great pink-grey scar ran down the centre of her buckled forehead, from hairline to mouth, one eye and one brow higher than the other, as though her skull had been entirely split and set back together by a drunken surgeon. There was a crazy zigzag of stitches through the puckered skin. Stitches of golden wire that gleamed in the morning sun.

“I am Caurib,” she said, in that soft, soft voice. “Or I was. A sorceress, from the utmost North. Or I was. Now I am the witch of the forbidden lake.” She turned back to the horizon. “I find that suits me better.”

Rikke had grown up in the North where a man with no scars was no man at all, but she never before saw a scar the like of this. She looked down at the water, already settling around her own sharp shin bones and holding a dark reflection of herself. “What happened to you?”

“An axe happened, as axes do.”

“Didn’t see it coming, then?”

Caurib slowly raised one brow. Looked like it took some effort, skin stretching around the stitches. “I do not need to tell you that the Long Eye comes when it comes. If you are hoping it will keep you safe from all life’s axes, you will be disappointed. But then it is the fate of hope to end in disappointment, as it is the fate of light to end in darkness and life in death. They are still worth something while they last.”

Rikke wiggled her numb toes and watched the ripples spread. “Bit of a bleak message.”

“If you sought optimism from a hermit whose head is stitched together with golden wire then you are a bigger fool even than you look. Which would be quite an achievement.”

Rikke stole a glance sideways, but Caurib was looking ahead again. “I thought what I saw in the visions, the golden wire, might be, you know…”

“I do not know. Try saying the words.”

“A metaphor?”

“For what?”

“I just see the visions, I don’t understand them.”

The witch gave a hiss of disgust. “It is not the seer’s task to understand her visions, girl, any more than it is the potter’s task to understand her clay.”

“I’m guessing…” Rikke winced as she tried to shift her foot on the slippery lake bed and caught her toe on a pointed rock. “We’re not actually talking about pots now? Or are we talking about pots now?”

The witch gave a hiss of disappointment. “It is the potter’s task to impose her will upon the clay. To shape the clay into something useful. Or something beautiful.”

“So… I have to impose my will upon my visions? Shape them into something beautiful?”

“Ah! A ray of sunshine penetrates the long night of your ignorance.” The witch gave a hiss of scorn. She could do a lot with a hiss. “And I only had to waste half my morning explaining it to you.”

“But—”

“I am not your mentor, girl, nor your teacher, nor your wise grandmother. You want me to give you the rules, but there are no rules. You are like those old fools the magi, who want to chain the world with laws. You are like those old fools the Eaters, who want to cage the world with prayers. You are like these new fools who want to bind the world with iron and make it obey. The Long Eye is magic, girl!” She raised her withered arms, screaming it towards the mountains. “It is the devil that cannot be caged! It is the demon that breaks all chains!” She let her arms drop. “If there were rules it would not be magic.”

“Guess I’ll have to find my own answers, then,” said Rikke, mournfully.

Caurib looked down at her feet, hidden in the lake. “Fear is like cold water. A little is a fine thing, it fixes you on what counts. But too much will freeze you. You must make a box inside your mind, and put your fear inside, and