Fool's Quest (45 page)

He hefted the little pouches. “That's what we are hoping. Nettle thinks that if we can cut him off from the Skill, he may be able to find his center again. That perhaps we can keep whatever is left of him. Thank you.”

He left me there, staring at the door he closed behind him. Whatever was left of him … I rose, Bee's book in my hands, and then sat down slowly. As Chade was, he certainly could not help me find Shine. The first step had to be to stabilize him and persuade him to share Shine's word with us. And I could not help with that. Until then I had to wait.

I was sick with waiting. Waiting had scraped me raw. I could not think about Bee. It was agonizing to imagine what she might be going through. I had told myself, over and over, that it was a useless torment to dwell on thoughts of her in pain, terrified, cold, or hungry. In the hands of ruthless men. Useless. Put my mind to what I might do to get her back. And how I would kill those who had put hands on her.

I was gripping her book savagely. I looked at it. My gift to her, a bound set of good paper between sturdy leather covers with images of daisies pressed in. I sat down with it on my lap and opened the first page. Did I break confidence with her to look at her private writings? Well I knew how often she had spied upon mine!

Each page contained a brief description of a dream. Some were almost poems. Often she had illustrated them. There was the image of a woman sleeping in a flower garden, with bees buzzing around her. On the next page was a drawing of a wolf. I had to smile. It was obviously based on the carving of Nighteyes that had occupied the center of the mantel in my study for years. Under it was a poem-story about the Wolf of the West, who would race to the aid of any of his subjects who called upon him. The next page was plainer. There was a simple border of circles and wheels and a couplet about a man's fate: “All he could dream, all he could fear, given to him in the space of a year.” A few more pages, poems about flowers and acorns. And then, on a page that was a riot of color, her dream of the Butterfly Man. In her illustration, he was truly a Butterfly Man, pale of face, transcendently calm, with the wings of a butterfly protruding from his back.

I closed the book. That dream had come true. Just as the Fool had when he was a lad, she had written down a dream and it became a prophecy. I had buried the Fool's wild talk that Bee was his daughter, born to be a White Prophet. Yet here was the evidence I could scarcely deny.

Then I shook my head. How many times had I accused the Fool of warping one of his prophecies to make it fit the events that followed? Surely this was more of the same. It had not been a “butterfly man” but a woman and a cloak with a pattern that suggested butterflies. I tamped my uneasiness down firmly with a mallet of disbelief. Bee was mine, my little girl, and I would bring her home and she would grow up to be a little Farseer princess. But that thought sent my stomach lurching into a different gulch. I sat for a moment, finding my breath and hugging her book as if it were my child herself. “I will find you, Bee. I will bring you home.” My promise was as empty as the air I breathed it to.

I lived in a space between times. There was the time when Bee was safe. There was the time when she would be safe again. I lived in a terrible abyss of doubt and ignorance. I plummeted from hope to despair, and found no bottom to that dive. Any clatter of boots in the corridor might be a messenger with news of my child. My heart would lift and then it would be only a courier delivering someone's new jacket, and again I'd drop to despair. Uncertainty chewed me and helplessness manacled me raw. And I could let none of it show.

The next three days were as long as any I had ever known. I paced through them like a sentry making endless rounds on the same parapet. As Prince FitzChivalry, I ate meals with my family, but exposed to the eyes of everyone else in the Great Hall. I had never paused to think how little privacy the Farseer royals enjoyed. I received numerous invitations. Ash still tended my room and sorted the missives into piles. Bereft of Chade's guidance, I presented the ones Ash considered important to Kettricken for her guidance. Just as I had once advised her on how to navigate the tricky currents of Buckkeep politics, so she now advised me as to which invitations I must accept, which I should politely decline, and which ones I could postpone.

And so, after an early-morning axe session with my guard, I went out riding with two lesser lords from minor keeps in Buck and accepted the invitation to play a game of cards that evening. All that day, I remembered names and interests and made conversation with words that conveyed almost nothing. I smiled politely and dodged questions with generalities and did my best to be more of an asset than a liability to the Farseer throne. And all the while the thought of my little daughter boiled in the back of my mind.

So far, we had been successful in tamping down rumors and keeping word of what had happened at Withywoods to less than a whisper. I was not sure how we would contain it when the Rousters returned to Buckkeep. It was, I felt, only a matter of time before the connection between Tom Badgerlock and FitzChivalry Farseer became common knowledge. And once that happened, what then?

No one knew that a Farseer daughter had been stolen, and precious few knew that Nettle's younger sister had been kidnapped. We had kept it within the family. To release news of Chalcedean mercenaries able to infiltrate Buck and travel our roads unseen would release panic and outrage that the king was not protecting his folk. Keeping my tragedy unspoken was like swallowing back acid vomit. I despised the man who put a pleasant expression on his face, who held a hand of cards or nodded to a noble lady's discussion of the price of a blooded horse. This was Prince FitzChivalry, as I'd hoped never to be. I recalled Kettricken, head held high and demeanor calm in the days when her rebellious son Dutiful had vanished. I thought of Elliania and her uncle Peottre, keeping the secret of their kin held hostage as they trod the careful dance of betrothing her to Dutiful. Bitter to think that the same folk who had directed the kidnapping of Elliania's mother and small sister were behind the raid on Withywoods. So I was not the first to have to conceal such pain; it could be done, and every morning I looked into the mirror and set my face to stillness. I cut the whiskers from my face instead of my own throat and vowed I would do it well.

Daily, I visited Chade. It was rather like visiting a favorite tree. The delvenbark had quenched his Skill. He no longer dwindled, but it remained to be seen how much of himself he could regain. Steady kept watch over him. I spoke banalities to him. He listened, it seemed, but spoke little in response. A servant brought food for all three of us. Chade fed himself, but would sometimes pause and seem to forget what he had been doing. When I spoke of Shine he seemed to take no more than a polite interest. When I asked directly if he could recall the words with which he had sealed her from the Skill, he looked more puzzled than troubled by the question. When I tried to press him, to insist that he at least remember his daughter, Steady intervened. “You have to let him come back. He has to find the pieces of himself and put them back together.”

“How do you know such things?” I demanded.

“The tiny blocks of memory stone that Chade brought back offered us all sorts of knowledge. Nettle thinks they were cut into small pieces to be safer to use. We do not let anyone experience many of them, and no one explores them alone. As each one is studied, an account is given of what is learned. I was entrusted with one that dealt with those who lost themselves in pursuing knowledge too deeply. I wrote my account of what I learned. And Nettle and I believe it is similar to what has befallen Lord Chade. We hope that if we give him time and rest and keep any more of him from leaking away, he will come back to himself.”

He paused. “Fitz, I can only guess what he is to you. When I lost my father, you did not try to step into his place. But you sheltered my mother and brothers and Nettle to the best of your ability. I do not think it was solely because of your love for my mother. I think you understood all we had lost. I'll always feel indebted to you. And I promise you that I will do all in my power to bring Chade back to us. I know you think he holds the key to regaining Bee. We all hate that we must stand by and do nothing as we wait for word of her. Please trust that what I do now, I do because I believe it is the fastest way to see Chade regain his senses and be able to help us.”

And that comfort, thin as it was, was the best I could gain from those visits.

That night, when I could not sleep, I tried to occupy myself. I read several scrolls on the Skill, and the accounts of what had been learned from the memory blocks. Kettricken and Elliania had put their scribes to scouring the libraries of Buckkeep for any mention of Clerres or White Prophets. Four scrolls awaited me. I skimmed them. Hearsay and legend, with a dollop of superstition. I set them aside for Ash to read to the Fool, and comforted myself by imagining that I could poison all the wells in Clerres. The required amount of toxin would depend on the flow of the water. I fell asleep to my calculations.

The next day slowly ticked by. I passed that day as I had the one before. And another day came, with a storm of wind and snow that would delay the Rousters' return. There had been no word from any of the Witted of soldiers on the road, and nothing from the patrols that Dutiful had dispatched. It was hard to cling to that hope, and harder to let go of it. I told myself that if the storms let up, Thick would get home and we might pry Shine's word from Chade and Skill it to her. I busied myself as best I could, but each moment seemed a day to me.

I went to see the Fool at least twice every day. The dragon's blood continued to affect him, with changes that overtook his body so rapidly they were frightening. The scarring on his face, the deliberate tracks of the torturer across the planes of his cheeks and brow, began to fade. His fingers became straighter, and although he still limped, he did not wince with pain at every step. His appetite was the equal of a guardsman's, and Ash saw to it that he could indulge it.

Spark was most often Ash when I saw her in what had become the Fool's chambers, though now I caught glimpses of her as Spark about the keep. I marveled at what I saw. It was not merely a change of clothing and a frilled cap with buttons. She was an entirely different creature. She was industrious and thoughtful as Ash, but the occasional smile that came and went on her face was all Spark. A sidelong glance from her was not flirtatious but mysterious. Several times I encountered her in Chade's rooms doing minor tidying or bringing cool water to replenish his ewer. Her eyes slid by me at such encounters so I never betrayed that I knew her in any other guise. I wondered if anyone other than Chade, the Fool, and me knew of her duality.

It was Ash I spoke with one morning when I had climbed the stairs after what had become a daily practice bout with my guardsmen. I had come to see how the Fool was doing. I found the Fool garbed in a dressing-gown of black and white, sitting at Chade's worktable as Ash tried valiantly to tame the Fool's growing hair. To see him garbed so woke my memories of his days as Shrewd's jester. The new growth on his scalp stood up like the fuzz on a newly hatched chick's pate, while the hanks that remained of his longer hair hung lank and coarse. As I climbed the final step, I heard Ash say, “It's hopeless. I'm cutting it all to the same length.”

“I suppose that's the best solution,” the Fool agreed.

Ash snipped each lock and set it on the table, where the crow immediately investigated it. I had come near silently, but the Fool greeted me with, “What color is my new hair?”

“Like wheat ready for the harvest,” Ash said before I could respond. “But more like dandelion fluff.”

“So it was when we were boys, always floating in a cloud about his face. I think you will look like a dandelion gone to seed until it is long enough for you to bind.”

The Fool put his hand up to touch it, and Ash pushed it away with an annoyed grunt. “So many changes, so fast. Still, each time I wake I am surprised to find myself clean and warm and fed. The pain is still a constant, but the pain of healing is a bearable thing. I almost welcome the deep aches and even the sharp twinges, for each one tells me that I am getting better.”

“And your vision?” I dared to ask.

He fixed his whirling dragon eyes on me. “I see light and darkness. Little more than that. Yesterday, when Ash walked between me and the hearth fire, I perceived his passing shadow. It is not enough, but it is something. I am trying to be patient. How is Chade?”

I shook my head and then recalled he could not see me do that. “Little change that I can see. The sword cut he took is healing, but slowly. The delvenbark has cut him off from his Skill. I know he was using it to maintain his body. I suspect he was consuming other herbs as well. And now he is not. I do not know if I am imagining that the lines in his face are deeper and the flesh fallen from his cheeks, but—”

“You are not imagining it,” Ash said quietly. “Every time I venture into his room, he seems to have aged. As if every change he did with his magic is falling away, and his true age catching up with him.” He set his scissors down, his task finished. Motley pecked at the shining shears, and then decided to groom her feathers instead. “What good have they done if they save him from dying of the Skill only to let him die of his years?”

I had no answer to that. I had not considered it.

Ash followed it with another question. “And what will become of me if he dies? I know it is a selfish thing to wonder, but wonder I do. He has been my teacher and protector here at Buckkeep Castle. What will become of me if he dies?”

I did not want to think of such an eventuality but I answered as best I could. “Lady Rosemary would assume his mantle. And you would remain an apprentice to her.”

Ash shook his head. “I am not sure she would keep me. I think she dislikes me in direct proportion to how much Lord Chade favors me. I know that she believes he is lenient with me. I think if he were gone, she would dismiss me and take on apprentices more dutiful to her.” In a softer voice, he added, “And then I would be left with the only other profession I have ever studied.”