Free The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince by Hobb Robin Page B

At first, his dukes and duchesses spoke amongst themselves, saying: “Perhaps he will take another wife and get another heir for the throne, for he is not too old a man to father another child, or even five.” But the years came and went, and he showed no sign of this. Then they began to say, “Then surely he will name his brother’s son, Canny Farseer, as heir to the Farseer throne.” Many a noble daughter was presented to Canny Farseer as a suitable wife, with many a parent thinking that the daughter they placed before him now might sit upon the Farseer throne later.
    Of the Piebald Prince little was noised about outside the castle at Buckkeep. Yet the truth of it must be told, even if minstrels have lied and said he was a twisted little half-man, wicked in his lies and cruel to his nurses. The truth makes a shorter tale: Charger was both as handsome and as ugly a child as has ever walked the earth. He was well made in form and in manner, save for the blotching of his flesh, and this discoloring was over his whole body, not just his face. For all the discoloration, his features were Farseer, resembling both his mother and his grandfather far more than his father. As for his temperament, he was as stubborn as his mother in having his own way, and near as silent as his father. For though it was seldom whispered, no one now doubted that Lostler the Stablemaster had sired the boy.
    Now this was the manner of his marking: the left side of his face was colored as anyone might expect it to be. The right was blotched the color of an over-ripe berry, from brow to chin, but not around his mouth. His hair was black, and dark brown his eyes. At the nape of his neck another blotch began, and trickled like spilled wine over his left shoulder. On his left arm, he was marred with three blots, and one was shaped like a bird with outstretched wings. On the back of his right leg the color went from the back of his thigh to just below his knee. Now some will say that the splotches of colors were just the same as the Spotted Stud wore, as like to the places on the horse as a man’s body can be. But by the time this was noised about, the horse was long dead, and man’s memory is a chancy thing when the evidence is not before his eyes. So as to the truth of that, I will not vouch. I think it more likely that the blood of the Stableman and the stallion had soaked the princess and marked the babe in her womb. For such things do happen, as is well known.
    I had the raising of him for his infancy. And when the day came that Charger and Redbird could sit and listen, I was the one who took him and my own boy beside him, down to the hearth in the Great Hall where the children took their lessons from Scribe Willowby. Even then, the law was that no child in Buckkeep could be denied learning, so no one thought to turn away either bastard, royal or red. And Willowby, being a just man, soon perceived that the Piebald Prince had a quick mind. The scribe himself appealed to the king for a proper tutor for the boy. I feared then that he would be taken from me, and my son and I turned out to find a new livelihood. But instead when the boy was moved down the stairs to a set of rooms on the same floor as the king, Redbird and I joined him there, likely because they were empty and no one thought to forbid us from doing so.
    Now from the beginning, Charger had from his father the tongue of the beasts. This was a magic that in those days some folk owned to having with no shame, for at that time the degradations it might lead to were not well known. So folk would openly claim the Wit, and some made their living from having it, as huntmasters and beast-healers and swineherds and the like, and the Piebald Prince had the Wit in plenty. Humans might shun him for the patches that marred his face and body, but not beasts. They came to him as bees to nectar. Birds came through the windows to perch on the edge of his cradle. This is a truth I will swear to, for I saw it