Fool's Quest (37 page)

“I brought food,” Riddle announced even as the scent of it dizzied me with longing.

“Just let him eat first,” Dutiful advised as if I were an ill-mannered dog or perhaps a very small child. “He's sharing his hunger with the whole castle.” And again, I could think of no words. Thoughts were too fast for words and too complex. There was too much to say, more than anyone could ever say in a lifetime about even the simplest things. But before I could despair about that, Riddle put the food in front of me. I recognized it as having come from the guard's mess, the simple hearty food one could find there at any hour of the day or night. A thick brown soup, lumpy with vegetables and chunks of meat, good brown bread with a chewy crust. Riddle had not skimped when he had buttered two slabs of that, nor on the wedges of orange cheese beside them. The flagon of ale on the tray had spilled over a bit, wetting the edge of the bread. I didn't care.

“He's going to choke,” someone said, but I didn't.

“Fitz?” said Dutiful.

I turned to look at him. It was strange to remember that there were people in the room. Devouring the meal had been such a consuming experience, it was startling to discover the world could hold more sensory information than that. My eyes wandered over his face, finding my features in his, and then Kettricken's.

“Are you feeling a bit more yourself?” he asked. I wondered how much time had passed. I found I was breathing hard. Eating that fast was hard work. No one else had spoken since his last words. Was that how time was truly measured? In how many people spoke, in how much information was shared? Perhaps it was measured in how much food one ate. I tried to pare my thoughts down to something that might fit in words.

“I think I feel better,” I said. No. That wasn't true. I thought nothing of the kind. Better than what? My thoughts raced away from me again. Someone was touching me. Nettle. She had moved behind me and set her hands on my shoulders. She was making my walls stronger. Making me one thing, one separate person instead of the taste of the bread and the sound of the fire crackling. Separating me out from everything else.

“I'm going to talk,” Dutiful said. “And I'm going to hope you are listening, and that you can find the sense of my words better than Chade can. Fitz. Fitz, look at me. You were almost a day in the stones. You told us you were coming, and we waited for you, and you didn't emerge. Nettle reached out to try and find you, and with Steady's strength and Riddle helping her she found you and held you together until I could reach into the stone and draw you out. Eda and El, that was strange! I felt I found your hand and pulled you out of the earth itself!

“Chade was still bleeding, and so were you, but not as badly. If you are concerned for the bodies you left behind, well, that has been tended to. Chade's emissary was still at Withy, and we gave him the mission of conveying to the rest of the Rousters that unknown persons had attacked you, and that their fellows had given their lives to win you safe passage to the stones. For now, they need hear nothing of treachery, though I'll wager that some of them will know or suspect there were traitors in their band. I required them all to take an oath of silence on the topic of what happened at Withywoods, witnessed by FitzVigilant in my stead. There is no sense panicking folk over the idea that invisible raiders may attack anywhere. And after brief thought, I have directed Lady Rosemary to undertake whatever quiet work she feels is needed to bring justice to Shun's stepfather. Shun! Such a name!

“I have put out a notice to all our patrols to be looking for sleighs bearing a small girl and a young woman, and folk on white horses, and also to ask at every ferry crossing and ice bridge if anyone like that has been seen. They cannot simply vanish, and I think it unlikely they can have passed our borders yet. We will find and recover both Bee and Lady Shun.”

The words he spoke made pictures in my mind. I looked at all of them carefully. They were things we wished to be so, and perhaps might never be. Nonetheless, they were pictures that pleased me greatly. “Thank you,” I said at last. The words were thin, insubstantial as wind. They didn't convey what I felt. I took a breath.
“Thank you.”

Riddle slapped his hand over his heart and gawked at me. Nettle lowered her face and breathed deeply for several breaths. Dutiful sank down slowly to sit on the floor.

“Is that what it feels like? The Skill?” Riddle spoke.

Nettle shook her head. “No. I don't know what to call that. Well, yes, it is the Skill, but it is the Skill as a hammer's blow rather than as a finger tap. Dutiful, what can we do? He's more dangerous than Thick. If he goes on like this, he may damage some of the newer Skill-apprentices who cannot wall him out.”

Even with my walls raised, I sensed their agitation. “It's coming clearer,” I offered them. “I'm coming back to myself. I will be better by morning, I think.” I used only the words, sliced thin as paper. They all looked relieved.

I attempted a question. “How is Chade?”

Nettle shook her head. “He is caught in fascination. With everything. The weave of the blanket. The shape of his spoon. His wound is bad. We would like to do a Skill-healing on him once he has rested a bit, but Thick is still at Withywoods, and we are reluctant to let anyone use the stones to travel now. We were hoping you would feel well enough to help, but …”

“Tomorrow,” I said, and hoped it would be true. I was remembering how to do this. Package a tiny bit of thought in a word and let it out of my mouth. Strange. I had never known that when I spoke I Skilled a tiny bit with the words, to make the meaning more clear. But only the tiniest bit. I'd opened my heart and let them feel the rush of gratitude I felt that they would try to help me. I should not do that. I could not recall when I had learned that. Had I ever learned it, or had it just always been so? They were all staring at me.
Words. Use words.

“I hope to have recovered more by tomorrow. And perhaps be able to tell you what I experienced inside the stones. And help to heal Chade.”

An urgent thought bubbled up in me. How could I have forgotten him? “The Fool. Does he live still?”

A glance between Dutiful and Nettle. A secret fear. “What's happened? He's dead, isn't he?” It was a terrible thing for me to even imagine. A tremor of sorrow rose bubbling in me. I tried to catch it, to hold it in.

Dutiful paled. “No, Fitz. He's not dead. Please, don't feel that! Such sorrow. No, he's not dead. But he's … changed.”

“He's weak? Dying?” I thought of the secret Skill-healings I'd practiced on him. Had they gone wrong, come undone somehow?

Dutiful spoke quickly, as if to stem my emotions by giving me information. “Ash was tending to him. Lord Chade had told him to do whatever the Fool needed, to give the Fool whatever might do him good. Or so the lad took his command. You know that in his zeal to follow you, Lord Golden escaped his room and somehow managed to get as far as the stables. How, I cannot imagine. When he was found the next morning, he was nearly dead of the cold and his injuries.”

“I knew that,” I affirmed.

Dutiful looked relieved at my swift response. “You are coming back to us, aren't you? You sound clearer in your words. More alert. Thank Eda you are better. I feared that neither one of you would completely return to us.”

“Yes. Better.” It was a lie. I wasn't better. I was becoming duller. Slower. The complexities of the world that had danced and blossomed all around me but a few moments before were fading to dim simplicity. The chair was just a chair, all echoes of the tree and the forest that had produced it muted to insignificance. Nettle sat on the chair, and she was only Nettle, not a tributary of the rivers that Molly and I had been, or the quiet water where her unborn child turned and formed. I was not better. I was simpler, slower, duller. Human again. As to what I had been in the previous hours, I had no name for it.

I lifted my eyes to Dutiful. He was watching me expectantly. “The Fool,” I prompted him.

“He was near dead. When first he was found, he was mistaken for a beggar or wandering madman. He was taken to the infirmary and given a clean bed to die in. But a young apprentice there recognized him from the night you brought him in. She raised quite a fuss before her master would listen to her, but finally a runner was sent to me.

“By then, Ash had raised the alarm that Lord Golden was missing. We had servants searching the guest wings, but no one had expected him to have gotten as far as the stables. My mother and her personal healer reached the infirmary before I did. She collected him and had him brought to her private parlor. There, her healer attempted to tend to him. At the woman's touch, he woke shrieking and found enough strength to object strenuously to her efforts. My mother acceded to his wishes and dismissed her healer. Before he lapsed into unconsciousness, he asked to be brought back to Chade's old den. This was done. And my mother settled herself beside him to keep his death-watch. She left him only when she heard that you and Chade had been attacked, and then lost. She is back with him now.”

“I wish to go to him.” I didn't need to hear any more. I tried to keep the despair from my voice. I was losing my friend, and possibly my last link to my Bee. If anyone had any clue as to why the Servants of the White Prophets would come to Withywoods and take my daughter, and what their intentions for her were, it was the Fool.

“Not yet,” Nettle asserted. “You need to know what happened before you see him.”

I had not thought my fear could deepen, but it did. “What happened?” I imagined treachery.

“I went to see him, of course.” Dutiful took up his tale. “Whatever strength and life he'd had left he'd expended battling my mother's healer. He was unresponsive. I tried to reach him with the Skill, and could not. And to my Wit, he remains invisible. My mother was at his side, tending him. And Chade's lad, Ash. And a crow?”

There was the slightest inflection of a question on his last words. I ignored it. Later, perhaps, there would be time to explain the crow. For now she did not matter.

“The lad was grieved beyond telling. Nearly prostrate with remorse, I thought. I tried to comfort him, telling him that no one blamed him and that I would intercede with Lord Chade to be sure he was not held responsible. But I was mistaken. It was not fear that he had failed in his duty but genuine mourning. My mother told him that we had done all that could be done, and that the Fool himself had decided to let go of this life. The lad kept saying that the Fool was a hero and should not die in such an ignoble way. He wept. We agreed with him but I could tell he was heartsick and our agreement brought him no comfort.

“I knew they would keep a good watch on him, and that I would be summoned if needed. My mother told me that all we could do was comfort his body, and this she was doing, with cool damp cloths to ease the burning of his fever. There was nothing I could do for him. And so I left them there.”

The Fool with a fever. Serious indeed for a man who was usually chill to the touch. Dutiful's words were an apology. I could not imagine why. He paused in his telling and exchanged a look with Nettle.

“What?” I demanded.

Riddle lifted his head and spoke. “To make it short, Lady Kettricken left to come to the Skill-pillar. And while we were gone, Ash took it upon himself to give Lord Golden something. Evidently it was an elixir or potion or some rare healing draught. He won't reveal what it was, but only repeats that Lord Chade told him to give the man whatever he might need, and so he did. Whatever he gave him … it changed him.”

Now they were all staring at me as if they expected me to understand something they did not. “It revived him? It killed him?” I was sick of useless words, such thin slices of meaning. “I'm going to him.”

Dutiful opened his mouth, but Riddle was bold enough to shake his head at his king. “Let him go. Words won't explain it. What a man doesn't understand, he cannot tell. Let him see.”

I stood, staggered sideways a few steps, and was glad to catch myself before Dutiful could seize my arm. When a man's pride is all he has left, he holds it closely. I did not care that they watched as I went to the drapes and triggered the hidden door. I was sick of secrets. Let them all spill out into the daylight. But it wasn't daylight now. It was night. Let the secrets spill into the night? I shook my head. I had been doing something. Going to the Fool. I clutched my thoughts tightly.

I ascended the stairs. I knew they followed. The room above was yellow with candlelight and hearth fire. I smelled the resinous fragrance of the Mountain forests and suspected that Kettricken burned incense from her home. It cleared my mind and as I entered the chamber, it struck me that I had never seen it so warm and welcoming. My eyes swept over the changes. The crow perched on one of the chairbacks, dozing in the warmth from the fire. “Fitz—Chivalry!” she greeted me. Ash sat on the floor by the hearth at Kettricken's feet. He gave me a doleful look and then turned his gaze back to the fire. My former queen was ensconced in Chade's old chair. She had draped a colorful Mountain coverlet over it. On the table beside her, a fat blue teapot painted with leaping hares steamed. Her braided hair was pinned high on her head, and the cuffs of her simple blue gown were folded back as if she were ready to do the day's scrubbing. She turned to me, a mug of aromatic tea in her hands. Her eyes were concerned but her mouth smiled. “Fitz! I am so relieved you have returned to us, and so worried for little Bee! And for Chade's daughter!”

I made no answer to her greeting. My gaze was snagged on the man who sat beside her. He was slender and upright, but his posture was still uncertain. An invalid still, he was robed in soft gray wool; a loose hood covered his head. I could not tell if he could see me or not. The eyes he turned on me were no longer clouded and gray; they gleamed a faint gold as if the firelight reflected in them. He extended a hand toward me. The knuckles were still swollen and his hands were bone-gaunt, but his fingers moved with a shadow of their old grace. He turned his hand palm up and reached toward me. “Fitz?” he asked, and I knew then he could not see me. Yet I had the uncanny feeling he could sense me.