Fool's Quest (10 page)

“I'll write it down,” I promised him, wondering how I could describe for him something I didn't understand myself. “But in return, I'll ask you to select for me new scrolls on Skill-healing and lending strength. I've already read the ones you left for me.”

He nodded, well pleased that I'd asked for such things, and left me, slipping out of sight behind the tapestry. I checked on the Fool and found him deeply asleep still. I hovered my hand over his face, loath to touch him lest I rouse him but worried that my efforts might have woken a higher fever in him. Instead, he seemed cooler and his breathing deeper. I straightened, yawned tremendously, and then made the error of stretching.

I muffled my yelp of pain. I stood still for a long moment, then carefully rolled my shoulders. I hadn't imagined it. I reached behind myself and gingerly tugged my shirt free of where it had adhered to my back. Then I found Chade's mirror. What I saw confounded me.

The oozing wounds on my back were far smaller than those on the Fool's; nor were they puffed and reddened with infection. Instead they gaped, seven small injuries as if someone had repeatedly stabbed me with a dagger. They had not bled much; I judged them shallow. And given my propensity to heal quickly, they might very well be gone by the end of tomorrow.

The conclusion I had to reach was obvious. In Skill-healing the Fool's wounds, I had taken on these small twins. A sudden memory stirred, and I examined my belly. There, just where I had closed the wounds my knife had made on the Fool's body, was a series of reddened dents. I prodded one and winced. Not painful but tender. My whirling thoughts offered me a dozen explanations. In sharing strength with the Fool, had I actually shared flesh with him? Were his wounds closing because mine were opened? I draped my shirt around me, added wood to the fire, gathered my buttony jacket, and scuffed down the dusty steps to my old bedchamber. I hoped I would find some answers in the scrolls that Chade had promised me. Until I did, I would keep this small mishap to myself. I had no desire to participate in the experiments that Chade would doubtless envision if he knew of this.

I shut the door and it became undetectable. A peek out of my shuttered window told me that a winter dawn was not far away. Well, I would take what sleep I could still get and be grateful. I added a log to the dying fire on my hearth, draped my ruined finery on a chair, found Lord Feldspar's sensible woolen nightshirt, and sought my boyhood bed. My drowsy eyes wandered the familiar walls. There was the wandering crack in the wall that had always reminded me of a bear's snout. I had made that gouge in the ceiling, practicing a fancy move with a hand axe that had flown out of my grip. The tapestry of King Wisdom treating with the Elderlings had been replaced with one of two bucks in battle. I preferred it. I drew a deep breath and settled into the bed. Home. Despite all the years, this was home, and I sank into sleep surrounded by the stout walls of Buckkeep Castle.

I woke from that dream a lifetime away from the last time I had hunted with the wolf. I lay still, troubled and feeling the fading threat of it. What had woken me? What needed to be hunted? And then I became aware of the smell of hot food, bacon and meal-cakes and the reviving fragrance of tea. I twitched fully awake and sat up. The sound that woke me had been the closing of my door. Ash had entered, set down a tray, stirred up my fire and fed it, taken my soiled shirt, and done it all so silently that I had slept through it. A shudder of dread ran over me. When had I become so complacent and senseless as to sleep through intruders in the room? That was an edge I could ill afford to lose.

I sat up, winced, and then reached behind me to touch my back. The wounds were closing and had stuck to the mildly itchy wool. I braced myself and plucked the nightshirt free of them, all while berating myself for sleeping too soundly. Ah. Too much to eat, too much to drink, and the exhaustion of a Skill-healing. I decided I could excuse my lack of wariness on those grounds. It did not totally banish the chagrin I felt. I wondered if Ash would report my lapse to Chade, if he would praise the lad, and if perhaps they would laugh about it.

I stood up, stretched cautiously, and told myself to stop being such a child. So Ash had fetched my breakfast and I'd slept through it. It was ridiculous to let it bother me.

I had not expected to be hungry after all I'd eaten the night before, but once I sat down to the food, I found I was. I made short work of it and then decided I would check on the Fool before taking a bit more sleep. The Skill-work last night had taxed me far more than any other endeavor I'd taken on recently. He had been the receiver of that work: Had it exhausted him as it had me?

I latched the main door to my room, triggered the secret door, and went softly up the stairs, back into a world of candles and hearth-fire twilight. I stood at the top of the steps and listened to the fire burning, something muttering and tapping in a pot on the hearth-hook, and the Fool's steady breathing. All trace of last night's activities had been cleared away, but at one end of Chade's scarred worktable, clean bandaging, various unguents, and a few concoctions for the relief of pain had been left out. Four scrolls rested beside the supplies. Chade seemed always to think of everything.

I stood looking down at the Fool for some time. He lay on his belly, his mouth slightly ajar. Lord Golden had been a handsome man. I recalled with the regret of loss the clean planes of his face, his light-gold hair and amber eyes. Scars now striated his cheeks and thickened the flesh around his eyes. Most of his hair had succumbed to ill health and filth; what he had left was as short and crisp as straw. Lord Golden was gone, but my friend remained. “Fool?” I said softly.

He made a startled sound somewhere between a moan and a cry, his blind eyes flew open, and he lifted a warding hand toward me.

“It's just me. How are you feeling?”

He took a breath to answer and coughed instead. When he had finished, he said hoarsely, “Better. I think. That is, some hurts have lessened, but the ones that remain are still sharp enough that I don't know if I'm better or just becoming more adept at ignoring pain.”

“Are you hungry?”

“A bit. Fitz, I don't remember the end of last night. We were talking at the table, and now I'm waking up in the bed.” His hand groped toward his lower back and cautiously touched the dressings there. “What's this?”

“An abscess on your back opened. You fainted, and while you could not feel the pain, I cleaned it out and bandaged it. And a few others.”

“They hurt less. The pressure is gone,” he admitted. It was painful to watch his progress as he maneuvered his body to the edge of the bed. He worked to get up with as few motions as possible. “If you would put the food out?” he asked quietly, and I heard his unvoiced request that I leave him to care for himself.

Under the hopping kettle lid I found a layer of pale dumplings over a thick gravy containing chunks of venison and root vegetables. I recognized one of Kettricken's favorite dishes and wondered if she was personally selecting the Fool's menus. It would be like her.

By the time I had set out the food, the Fool was making his way to the hearth and his chair. He moved with more certainty, still sliding his feet lest there be an obstacle, still leading with an outstretched hand, tottering and wavering, but not needing or asking my help. He found the chair and lowered himself into it. He did not allow his back to rest against the chair. As his fingers butterflied over the cutlery, I said quietly, “After you've eaten, I'd like to change the dressings on your back.”

“You won't really ‘like' to do it, and I won't enjoy it, but I can no longer have the luxury of refusing such things.”

“That's true,” I said after his words had fallen down a well of silence. “Your life still hangs in the balance, Fool.”

He smiled. It did not look pretty: It stretched the scars on his face. “If it were only my life, old friend, I would have lain down beside the road and let go of it long ago.”

I waited. He began to eat. “Vengeance?” I asked quietly. “It's a poor motive for doing anything. Vengeance doesn't undo what they did. Doesn't restore whatever they destroyed.” My mind went back through the years. I spoke slowly, not sure if I wanted to share this even with him. “One drunken night of ranting, of shouting at people who were not there”—I swallowed the lump in my throat—“and I realized that no one could go back in time and undo what they'd done to me. No one could unhurt me. And I forgave them.”

“But the difference, Fitz, is that Burrich and Molly never meant to hurt you. What they did, they did for themselves, believing you dead and gone. And for them, life had to go on.”

He took another bite of dumpling and chewed it slowly. He drank a bit of yellow wine and cleared his throat. “Once we were a good distance offshore, the crew did what I had known they would. They took whatever we had that they thought was of value. All the little cubes of memory stone that Prilkop had painstakingly selected and carried so far were lost to him. The crew had no idea what they were. Most could not hear the poetry and music and history that were stored in them. Those who could were alarmed. The captain ordered all the cubes thrown overboard. Then they worked us like the slaves they intended us to become once they found a place to sell us.”

I sat silent and transfixed. The words came from the usually reticent Fool in a smooth flow. I wondered if he had rehearsed his tale during his hours alone. Did his blindness accentuate his loneliness and propel him toward this openness?

“I was in despair. Prilkop seemed to harden every day, muscled by the work, but I was too recently healed. I grew sicker and weaker. At night, huddled on the open deck in the wind and rain, he would look up at the stars and remind me that we were traveling in the correct direction. ‘We no longer look like White Prophets, we two, but when we make shore, it will be in a place where people value us. Endure, and we will get there.' ”

He drank a bit more wine. I sat quietly and waited while he ate some food. “We got there,” he said at last. “And Prilkop was almost correct. When we reached port, he was sold at the slave auction and I …” His voice trickled away. “Oh, Fitz. This telling wearies me. I do not wish to remember it all. It was not a good time for me. But Prilkop found someone who would believe him, and before many days had passed, he came back for me. They bought me, quite cheaply, and his patron helped us complete our journey back to Clerres and our school.”

He sipped his wine. I wondered at the gap in his story. What was too terrible for him to remember?

He spoke to my thought. “I must finish this tale quickly. I have no heart for the details. We arrived at Clerres, and when the tide went out, we crossed to the White Island. There our patron delivered us to the gates of the school. The Servants who opened the doors to us were astonished, for they immediately recognized what we were. They thanked our patron, rewarded him, and quickly took us in. Collator Pierec was the Servant in charge now. They took us to the Room of the Records, and there they leafed through scrolls and scripts and bound pages until they found Prilkop.” The Fool shook his head slowly, marveling. “They tried to reckon how old he was, and failed. He was old, Fitz, very old indeed, a White Prophet who had lived far past the end of his time of making changes. They were astonished.

“And more astonished when they discovered who I was.”

His spoon chased food around his bowl. He found and ate a piece of dumpling, and then a piece of venison. I thought he was making me wait for the tale, and taking pleasure in my suspense. I didn't begrudge him this.

“I was the White Prophet they had discarded. The boy who had been told he was mistaken, that there was already a White Prophet for this time, and that she had already gone north to bring about the changes that must be.” He clattered his spoon down suddenly. “Fitz, I was far more stupid than the Fool you have always named me. I was an idiot, a fatuous, mindless …” He strangled on his sudden anger, knotting his scarred hands and pounding them on the table. “How could I have expected them to greet me with anything except horror? For all the years they had kept me at the school, confined me, drugged me that I might dream more clearly for them … For the hours they spent needling her insidious images into my skin to make me unWhite! For all the days they tried to confuse and confound me, showing me dozens, hundreds of prophecies and dreams that they thought would convince me I was not what I knew myself to be! How could I have gone back there, thinking they would be glad to see me, and quick to acknowledge how wrong they had been? How could I think they would want to know they had made such an immense error?”

He began to weep as he spoke, his blinded eyes streaming tears that were diverted by the scars on his face. Some detached part of me noted that his tears seemed clearer than they had been and wondered if this meant some infection had been conquered. Another, saner part of me was saying softly, “Fool. Fool, it's all right. You are here with me now, and they cannot hurt you anymore. You are safe here. Oh, Fool. You are safe. Beloved.”

When I gave him his old name, he gasped. He had half-risen to stand over the table. Now he sank back down into Chade's old chair and, heedless of his bowl and the sticky table, put his head down on his folded arms and wept like a child. For a moment his rage flared again and he shouted, “I was so stupid!” Then the sobbing stole his voice again. For a time, I let him weep. There is nothing useful anyone can say to a man when such despair is on him. Shudders ran over him like convulsions of sorrow. His sobs came slower and softer and finally ceased, but he did not lift his head. He spoke to the table in a thick, dead voice.

“I had always believed they were mistaken. That they truly had not known.” He gave a final sniff, a sigh, and lifted his head. He groped for his napkin and wiped his eyes with it. “Fitz, they knew. They had always known I was the one. They knew I was the true White Prophet. The Pale Woman was the one they had made. They made her, Fitz, as if they were trying to breed a pigeon with a light head and tail. Or as if you and Burrich were breeding for a colt with the stamina of the stud and the temperament of the dam. They'd created her there in the school, and they'd taught her and filled her with the prophecies and dreams that suited their purposes. They'd made her believe and twisted her dreams to make them foretell what they wanted to happen. And they'd sent her out. And held me back.” His head sank down. He pillowed his brow on his forearms and fell silent.

One of Chade's exercises when he was training me was to put the pieces of something back together. It began with simple things: He'd drop a plate, and I would have to reassemble it to the best of my ability. The challenges advanced. The plate would fall, and I had to look at the pieces and mentally assemble it. Then I would be presented with a bag of pieces of something, broken crockery or cut harness or something of that ilk, and I had to put them back into a whole. After a time, the bag would hold not just the destroyed item but other random bits of things that looked as if they belonged with it. It was a physical exercise to teach my mind to assemble bits of facts and random gossip into a comprehensible whole.

So now my mind was at work, assembling bits so that I could almost hear the snicking of the pieces of a teapot being put back together. The messenger's tale of bearing children who were taken from her meshed with the Fool's tale of the Servants creating their own White Prophets. The race of Whites with their gift of prescience had vanished from our world long ago; the Fool had told me that when we were still boys. He claimed the Whites had begun to intermarry with humans, diluting their bloodlines until those who carried that heritage showed no sign and often were unaware of it. And he had added that only rarely was a child born who, by chance, reflected that ancient heritage. He had been one such, and was fortunate enough that his parents knew what he was. And they knew there was a school at Clerres where children who showed the physical traits of Whites were taken and taught to record their dreams and their flashes or visions of the future. Vast libraries of recorded visions were held there and studied by the Servants so they might learn the events that the future of the world would turn upon. And so, while he was very young, his parents had given him to the Servants to be taught to use his talents for the good of all mankind.