Fool's Quest (68 page)

“And as to your dragon, well, there is always killing him. But as he can speak to some humans, and as he has kin among the dragons of Kelsingra, that might not be our best solution.”

“Indeed, it's our last resort. If we kill one, my dukes will see it as the easiest solution. Right now I have forbidden any warlike actions against any dragon.”

“Well, then the only solution is to treat him as you would any ill-mannered guest. Choose what you will give him, offer it freely, and hope he is satisfied with it. Do not make him comfortable. Hope he stays only a short time.” I tried to think of a fresh solution. “Contrast the farms they raid with the ones they leave alone. Find out what conditions they prefer and don't create them.”

“They eat so much,” Dutiful muttered in dismay.

“Too much!” Chade suddenly agreed. We both turned to him. His eyes were bright with anger. He looked directly at me. “There's too much rosemary on this fowl! I can't stomach it. What is worse than a journeyman cook who thinks she knows better than the master! Heavy-handed! That's what she is!”

“Lord Chade, this is not fowl but good venison. And I taste no rosemary in it at all.” Dutiful spoke gently but uselessly to his complaint.

“Pah!” Chade pushed his plate aside. He pointed at me with a finger gone knobbly. “My boy would agree with me, I think! He never liked her stirring the pot, Fitz did not.” He slowly surveyed the room. “Where is Fitz? Where is my boy?”

“I'm right here,” I said hopelessly.

He swung his gaze back to me. “Oh, I doubt that,” he said. He took a slow drink of his wine. As he set it down, he looked at me again and said, “I know my boy. He'd know his duty. He'd feel the spurs. He'd be long gone by now, he would.”

I found a smile and patted his hand. “The impulsive boy that ran through Buckkeep Castle with a bared sword? He's long gone indeed, Lord Chade.”

Chade twitched. For a single moment, his green eyes locked with mine. Then he smiled vacuously. “Just as well,” he sighed slowly, “though sometimes I miss him.”

That night, I slept not at all. I argued with myself and then took out Bee's book. I paged through it slowly, marveling at her illustrations and strange fancies. But not even that could distract me. Chade was right. The headstrong boy I had been would have been on his way a month ago. I reminded myself of the times when I had given in to such impulses. The first time, I'd ended up in Regal's dungeons. The second time, Regal's Skill-coterie had nearly killed me. I could afford no mistakes this time. I well knew it would be my last. So I inventoried my resources. My Skill was restored. My body was hardened, my weapons ready. Spring would soon break. I had seen to all at Buckkeep Castle as well as I could. I would settle my affairs at Withywoods and depart.

The next day I announced that I would return to Withywoods for a visit. No one objected. Nettle filled two panniers with gifts and tokens for the servingfolk. Perseverance would go with me, for I judged he should visit his mother and perhaps remain there.

Our travel day dawned blue and clear. I had invited the Fool to join me. He had refused. I'd expected that. What surprised me was the quiet anger in his voice as he said, “While you dither and dally, I must make ready for my journey back to Clerres. When you said you could not go with me because of Bee, I understood. When you said she was stolen, and you could not leave until she was rescued, I understood. But they destroyed our child and still you do nothing.”

He waited for a response from me, and I think my silence only made his anger deeper. “I do not understand you anymore,” he said quietly. “They destroyed our child. I lie awake and plan vengeance. I push my body to grow strong. Daily I strive for endurance. I am ready the moment that you say we are going to leave here and undertake our journey. And finally you propose a journey to me. To Withywoods.” His tone was one of disgust.

I told him the truth. “I am not convinced that your health would allow you to journey back to Clerres, let alone take the vengeance you desire. You are not ready, Fool.” I did not add that he might never be.

“Yet with you or without you, it is something I must do. I have no choice. And so I make my own plans.”

“We always have choices, even when all of them seem bad.”

“I have only one path,” he insisted. He shook his head, then reached to smooth down the cloud of pale hair that stood up around his face. His voice changed. “Fitz, I have begun to have dreams again. As I did when I was a child.”

“We all have dreams.”

“No. Not everyone has these sorts of dreams. These dreams are to ordinary dreams as drinking wine is to smelling it! They are unmistakably significant.”

“Are they from the dragon blood? I remember that you told me you had dragon-dreams. Of hunting and flying.”

He dismissed my question with a wave of his long-fingered hand. “No. Those were different. These are … Fitz, I know what lies ahead of us. In glimpses. We must be on our way. I dream of the Wolf from the West.”

He watched me carefully as he spoke. The words rang familiarly in my ears but I could not place where I had heard them before. It was my turn to shake my head. “I must go, Fool. There are things there that must be settled.”

He folded his lips. “With you or without you, old friend. With you or without you.”

And so I left him. It seemed a poor way to part and I was silent as we rode away from Buckkeep Castle. I rode a sturdy mare from the stables that did not mind the panniers. Perseverance rode at my stirrup, likewise silent. I think he more dreaded than welcomed the thought of a visit home.

Our journey was uneventful. The weather held fair; my guard was well behaved at the inns and Foxglove seemed pleased with them. As we drew closer to Withywoods my heart grew heavy and Perseverance morose. As we left the road and entered the long driveway, the drooping birches with their burden of snow arched over us and dimmed the day. At one point Perseverance turned his head and stared, and I knew that was where he had fallen to a Chalcedean arrow. Neither of us spoke of it.

We saw the burnt stables before we glimpsed the house. I'd given orders that the remainder of the barn and the bones of those who had perished there be burned on the site. Now the debris had been cleared away, leaving an ashy black area of trampled snow around the stone foundation. New timbers were rising; one end was already closed in. A bulldog came barking and snarling to meet us. A girl ran out to seize his collar and drag him back.

“It's the master!” shouted someone in the stables, and I saw someone hurry toward the house. Several hands came to take my horse and Foxglove's mount and direct the guard where they could stable their beasts. I released Perseverance to help them.

Steward Dixon greeted us in a coat festooned with bone buttons dyed yellow and green, obviously enjoying his elevated status. I could think only that he was not Revel. He told me that all had rejoiced at news of Lady Shun's rescue. He hoped she was doing well, for he recalled her fondly. He hoped she would soon return. I told him quietly she was settled now in Buckkeep. He asked after FitzVigilant and said he was missed. I replied that he, too, was settled in Buckkeep. Then, in an altered tone, he lowered his eyes and said all were saddened to hear of the loss of Lady Bee. “Such a little thing she was, and still so sweet, even if she was odd. Some might say she was not meant for this harsh world.” I stared at him and he turned red. Abruptly he asked if I would rest or take refreshment, but instead I asked him to show me what had been done in my absence. I had already noted that the entry doors had been skillfully repaired.

So he walked me past mended hangings, empty places where tapestries had been removed for repair, reinforced doorjambs, and walls that no longer bore the scars of blades.

My bedchamber had been put to rights. The locked chest where I kept my personal items had withstood the raiders. Next was Bee's room. Dixon spoke as softly as if he were in the presence of a dying man. “I allowed her maid to tidy it, sir, and put all back as it was kept before …” His voice trailed away. He opened the door and waited for me to enter. I looked at the smoothly spread bedding, at the little cloak on its hook and the paired slippers by the hearth. All tidy and neat. Everything there but the child. I reached past Dixon and closed the door. “The key, if you please,” I said to him, and he produced his large ring of keys and indicated it to me. I held out my hand and he stared for a moment before he fumbled it free of the others. I locked the door and pocketed the key.

“Proceed,” I told him and we moved on to Shine's room. It was meticulously tidied as it never had been when she was in residence. “Pack it all up,” I told the luckless steward. “And send it on to her at Buckkeep.”

“As you wish, sir.” He sighed. He knew that he faced a monumental task.

I directed him to do the same for Lant's belongings. Dixon inquired whether I would send a new scribe to be teacher and help to keep the accounts. In my grief I'd neglected to think of such things. The children of the manor deserved better from me. I promised I would.

I dismissed him at the doors of my personal study. The shattered lock had been artfully repaired. Inside, the Fool's carving still rested on the mantel. The scroll racks had been repaired, and someone had attempted to tidy my desk. I had no heart for this yet. I closed and locked the doors and walked away.

Dixon had ordered a fine meal prepared to welcome us. Foxglove complimented him and the kitchen staff, and he glowed. I ate it and then retired to spend the night looking at the ceiling of the room I had shared with Molly. I have never been a man to pray, and if I were, El the heartless god of the sea would be more likely to listen to me than gentle Eda of the fields. But to someone or something or perhaps to Molly, that night I poured out my apologies and deep desire to somehow redeem myself. I promised to exact payment: pain for pain, blood for blood. It seemed to me that nothing and no one listened to me, but in the very darkest hours of the night, I felt Nettle's touch on my thoughts.

Are you all right?

You know I am not.

Yes, I do. Set your walls, Da. You are singing your grief like one of Thick's melodies.

The children of Withywoods need a new tutor. Someone very gentle and kind.

You are right. I will find one for them.

Does all go well with you and the babe?

It does. I have not vomited for two days. I can eat with pleasure once more.

I am so glad to hear it. Good night, then.

So I set my walls and felt my heart batter and break against them like a storm on the seawalls of a shuttered town. I wondered in that dark night if I would ever again feel something other than pain and guilt.

I rose before dawn and followed my old habits to the kitchen. Tavia and Mild were hard at work, as was a youngster named Lea. There was a new kitchen girl, Chestnut. When I commented on this, Tavia recounted that after Elm drank “the remembering tea” she had lost her mind. She was mortally afraid of men now, even her father and brothers. On her quiet days, they kept her in the inglenook, peeling potatoes or doing any undemanding chore. Today, knowing that I might walk into the kitchen, they'd sent her elsewhere, since the sight of grown men made her scream. Lea began to weep. I wished to hear no more.

But Nutmeg, our old cook, had come in to help with last night's meal and she gossiped ruthlessly about the various servants. Shepherd Lin had shocked everyone when he tried to take his own life, but he'd been cut down just in time by one of his own sons. They watched him more closely now even though he claimed it had been a moment of despair and nothing he would attempt again. He had nightmares of throwing bodies into the burning stables. Slight, one of the orchard women, had drowned. Some were saying she'd walked on the thin ice on purpose and others that she was slightly daft after what she'd endured. Servants had quit, and others had been hired. Nutmeg was full of every dreadful detail and I forced myself to sit still and listen long after I longed to flee. These were things I deserved to hear. These things were the fuel that would fire me if my own resolve faltered.

Tavia was white-faced and silent as Nutmeg spoke on. Lea continued to stir something bubbling in a kettle. I did not know if her face was red from the heat of the fire or suppressed emotion. One of the gardeners had been raped by the raiders. He had taken to drink and was almost completely useless now. “Buggered him bloody,” Nutmeg reported darkly. “Man stopped eating for fear he'd have to shit. But he drinks. Oh, does that man drink! The town men, they don't understand. His own brother said to him, he said, ‘I'd have died fighting before they did that to me.' But they weren't here. We're the only ones who can understand.” She was kneading bread dough and she suddenly surprised me with the force with which she slammed it down on the board. She turned her gaze to me, and her old eyes were full of tears.

“We know you'll make them pay, sir. We heard what you done to that Ellik, him on his high horse, looking down on us all. And that pretty boy, with his yellow hair braided like a bride, raping the girls like he couldn't get enough of it. You done them both good, so we heard, and they deserved every bit of it, and more!”

Her voice seemed to be coming from very far away. Who … of course. He had been with me. He'd seen the bodies. And the boy would talk, here at home, among his friends. And my guard would embellish, as all guardsmen did.

“We're proud of you, that we are, and we know you'll go after the rest of them. Track them back to their lair and smoke them out and kill them. Young Per might have finished that Ellik but he told us that you made him pay before he put a blade in him.”

Proud of me. I felt queasy.

Tavia took mercy on me, I think, reminding me that Foxglove would expect me to join her for breakfast. She shooed me out of the kitchen and I went gratefully. In the hall I encountered Perseverance. He looked pallid and his eyes were red-rimmed. I told him he would eat with us and took him to the table to wait for Foxglove. I didn't ask him what tales he had told the Withywoods folk. Instead I asked him how his mother was.

He took a slow breath. “Well, she's not living at Withywoods, sir. Not anymore. She told Shepherd Lin there's nothing left here for her except nightmares and loss. She moved to town, to live with her sister and her husband. Her sister has six children, so they're crowded but she says it's all right. Her sister welcomes the help, for her youngest is colicky and my mother is patient. She takes in sewing and mending. I went to see her, but the moment she opened the door to me, she started weeping. She hugged me and she said she loved me, but then she went to bed very early. My aunt said that seeing me was hard for her, that I remind her of all she has lost. And that she can't forgive herself for how she turned me away from her door and didn't know me.” He suddenly squared his shoulders. “If I may, sir, I'll return to Buckkeep with you when you go. I gave my aunt my pay to give to my mother, and she said it will help her a great deal. Her husband's a good man, but six children and then taking in my mother … I need to step up to my duty. I think the coin I earn is the best way I can help her.”