Fool's Quest (69 page)

That did not sound right to me and yet something in his face convinced me it should be so. Lea brought us tea and looked very wide-eyed to see Perseverance seated at the table beside me, in his fine livery with my charging buck on his breast. She smiled at him shyly. He straightened his jerkin casually and I suddenly saw him with new eyes. He'd gone away a stable boy and returned a young man in service to a prince. A young man who had killed their nemesis and come home with coin in his pockets for his mother.

When Foxglove joined us, her face was grave. She kept silent while Lea brought her fresh tea and set out bread, butter, and jam for us. When the girl left the room, she spoke. “I had no idea what had happened here, Fitz. Small wonder you seemed so dazed when you returned to Buckkeep. The girl who tended to my things used to be Lady Shine's maid. And helped with your little girl, she said. Oh, Fitz! I didn't understand the half of what had befallen you. Please forgive me.”

I stared uncomprehending at her. Lea came back with porridge and left again
.
“Forgive what?”

“I was distant with you after … I saw your handiwork, Fitz, on those two men. Now I understand. That's all I wanted to say.”

I nodded as if I agreed. I just wanted everyone to stop talking. I ate food I had no appetite for.

The rest of the day dragged by. I did the things I had come to do. I inspected the rebuilding of the stables and requested a few changes. I found a man in the village who knew about training dogs and asked him to help the stable girl turn the bulldog into a useful animal. I reviewed which horses and stock had been burned to death and which needed to be replaced. I asked the resident Skill-user to relay my decisions to Lady Nettle. I told Cinch that his position as stablemaster was now permanent. The other hands seemed relieved to have someone properly in charge of things. I arranged for our accounts in Withy and Oaksbywater to be settled and thanked the merchants for allowing us to trade on credit for so long.

All the ordinary business, all that I had neglected, I put in order now. I arranged that the accounts would be sent monthly to Riddle at Buckkeep. Nothing would I leave undone. Dixon was doing a credible job as steward; he showed me his tidy book of accounts and I decided to leave him in place. He could not help that he was not Revel. It was time to stop disliking him for taking the job of a man who had died.

I had come expecting to stay ten days. By the second day I was ready to return to Buckkeep. It was evening and I was in my personal den. I was gathering from there the more personal things I would take back to Buckkeep with me. I had a lively fire going on the hearth and was feeding it my old scrolls at a steady rate. I would leave nothing of myself. I did not expect that I would ever return here to live. Most days I did not expect to return to live anywhere. And so I gathered my treasures from the chest in my room, my keepsakes of Molly and the few I had of Bee, and packed them carefully with the Fool's carvings and the more valuable scrolls that Chade had sent me for translation.

I looked at the objects I had assembled to take back to Buck with me. It was a pitifully small collection to define a man's life. The carvings the Fool had made for me in better times. The last shirt Molly had sewn for me, too precious ever to wear.

I thought of the things I would leave here. Everything of Molly's that I had given over to Bee would remain in her room. Her hairbrush and comb. The herb books, with the carved and painted images that Molly had used to teach Bee to read. I imagined she had been wearing Molly's belt and small knife when she was taken. Doubtless discarded by her captors and lost forever now. I closed my eyes. I wanted her scent. I had let Bee take all the candles. She had squirreled them away in her room. A few, I decided. I would take only a few, as a keepsake of both of them.

I made my way through the quiet manor. It was a cold and empty place, a nutshell emptied of its meat, a bottle drained of brandy. The house was full of a darkness that my candlelight could not disperse. I paused before Bee's door, and tried to pretend for that instant that she slept warm and safe in her bed. But I unlocked the door to a chill room that smelled of disuse.

I looked first in the fine new wardrobe that Revel had devised for her. There was a precision in its tidiness that had nothing to do with a child. My heart smote me and tears ran down my face as I saw that her maid Careful had put away the treasures I'd bought my little girl in town that day. Here was a little drawer full of seashells. The red belt decorated with flowers. The boots that had been too big for her. The bag of treasures I'd sent her from Buckkeep hung on a hook. Never opened, never amazing. Her new boots, delivered for a child who would never wear them. She would have fled in what she wore that day, low house shoes, no warm cloak, no gloves. I had not thought of that, of how she must have fled through deep snow in whatever she had worn to her lessons.

I shut the wardrobe door. No. The candles would not be there.

There was a stand by her bed, one brought from her old room. The guttered shell of a half-burnt candle was in the holder. I lifted it and smelled the faint scent of lavender. I opened the compartment, and there they were, ranked like waxy sentries. Lavender and honeysuckle and lilac and rose. I would take only four, I promised, and like a child unable to choose, I closed my eyes and reached in to take them at random.

Instead my fingers brushed paper. I crouched down to look inside. There, wedged to one side of the candles, was an older sheaf of bound paper, given to Bee long ago when she was first mastering her letters. I set a flame to the wick of the candle in the holder and sat down on the floor. I leafed through her book. I saw her own drawings, of flowers and birds and insects, all inked so meticulously and accurately. Leaf after leaf I turned, and suddenly there was a page of writing. Not a journal of her dreams, but accounts of her days. I read it very slowly. For the first time, I learned of how she had freed her bound tongue, a tale she had never entrusted to me. I read of a kitten, encountered again as a cat. For the first time I learned of Wolf-Father and how she had been lost in the spy-labyrinth on the night I had gone to meet Chade. Wolf-Father? Nighteyes, or a child's imaginings? No. The Wit did not work that way. Then I came to the page that told of how Lant had shamed her and mocked her before the other children and my heart burned with fury.

I turned the page. Here she had written in a firmer hand. She had recorded the promise I had given to her. “He said he would always take my part. Right or wrong.”

It came then. Delayed for weeks, it burst in me. The throat-tearing sorrow that could not yield to tears. The killing fury. The need to rend. I could not make it right, but I could make someone pay for how wrong it had been. They had made me fail her. I had not taken her part. She had been stolen, and I had been helpless, and now she was gone, tattered to lost threads inside a Skill-stone. They had beaten and blinded the Fool, destroyed his courage and damped his merriment to nothing. And what had I done? Next to nothing. In a faraway place they ate and drank and slept and thought not at all of the terrible wrongs they had done.

Bee had believed in me. Taken comfort and courage from my words that day. As had the Fool. He had come all that way, cold, broken, and alone, to ask me for justice. Justice too long delayed. The sudden fury and the solid resolution to avenge them coursed through me, hotter than any fever. My tears were done.

Da?

Nettle broke into my thoughts. I sensed her confusion and worry. I must have spilled over. I could not contain what I was feeling. My hidden decision burst from me.
I can delay no longer. I will not see your child born, nor hold my first grandchild in my arms. Nettle, I am sorry. I have to go. I have to avenge her. I have to find the people who sent her killers and I have to avenge her. I've no idea how far I must go but go I must.

For long moments, I felt nothing from her. She boxed herself in so tightly that all I could sense was that she was still there. She was a hollow of sound, a seashell held to the ear. I waited.

I knew that you would. I hoped … well. I know you must go. Riddle told me you would have to go.
She was silent a time longer.
If you could have, you would have gone after her in that moment. Right into the Skill-stone.

I would.

Another pause.
I will go to King Dutiful and tell him why I think he should not oppose it. And frankly, why opposing it would do no good. Will I see you before you go?

I will be using the Skill-portals to travel. So I must first return to Buckkeep.
I tried to put my thoughts in order.
I'll return by horseback. I will need to consult the Fool as to my route. So, yes, you will see me before I go.

Silently, we both wondered if I would ever return.

Actually, when I reached for you tonight, it was to give you news of the Fool. And then I stumbled into your storm.

News of the Fool?

He's missing.

A lurch of loss. With you or without you, that was what he had said. He wouldn't leave without me. Would he? He'd been so afraid. And so tired of waiting for me to act.
How long has he been missing?

I don't know. Since this morning, at least. Kettricken went to call on him, and he was not in his room. At first she was pleased, thinking he had gone to visit Chade or had finally decided to take some air. But this evening, when she went back, he still was not there. Chade does not recall him visiting. No one has seen him.

Have you asked his serving boy Ash?

The Fool sent him on an errand to town, to buy smoked fish. He returned after we'd begun to search. He's as worried as we are.

I started to lie to her. And stopped myself. Perhaps I was as tired of secrets as Dutiful was. Perhaps I just needed an answer swiftly.
Look in the lower parts of the castle. The dungeons.

What? Why?

He knew what Chade found there. A Skill-portal incorporated into the foundation. A rune on it that would take him to Aslevjal.

But he has no Skill! And no reason to go to Aslevjal.

Nonetheless, can you send someone to search that area?

I will check, but, Fitz, I don't think you need worry. Dutiful had a door of iron bars installed across that end of the corridor to make it a bit easier for Chade to keep his promise not to use it anymore. It's always locked. Dutiful and I are the only ones with keys.

I doubted that. I knew Chade too well to think there was any door in Buckkeep Castle he could not open. But that did not mean that the Fool would have access to a key. Unless Chade's former apprentice knew of one. But even if they got past the locked gate, the Fool had not the Skill to enter a pillar.

Please, just ask the gaolers if they saw him down there.
I hesitated, not wishing to add what I knew I must.
And please discover if any of your Skill-users are missing. An apprentice or a talented Solo. Anyone who might be restless and willing to be persuaded to try an experiment.

I felt her distress at the notion.
There may be a few,
she admitted reluctantly.
Skilled folk tend to be odd in some ways. I will try to discover if any are missing. But it is late and most castle folk are abed by now. I may not know until tomorrow.

I hope to set out by first light tomorrow. Skill to me if there is any news.

I will.
I could feel her thinking separately from me. It was almost a whisper in my mind as she said,
Do you remember when you were a wolf and came to me in my dreams?

Her feelings for me as she had known me then blew like a breeze through our shared thoughts. I had been mysterious and powerful, almost a romantic image in her imagination of me. I felt a pang of loss that I had become so ordinary to her
. I remember.
Her Skill had first manifested in her ability to manipulate dreams, her own and those of others. I remembered her glass tower. Her gown of butterflies.

And I remember Shadow Wolf.
I knew that he would have to hunt down those who attacked his pack. I knew you would become him again, when you had been alone long enough.
A pause in our communication, as if she thought of things too personal to share with me. I could feel her resignation to what I would do. It hurt me. Then, shocking me,
I wish I had known her better. I wish I'd given her more time. I always thought there would be more time for us to be sisters.
Her blast of sudden fury hit me like a spray of fire.
I wish I could go with you and help you kill them!

Skill-silence. I was stunned. Had I forgotten this was the woman who had stood up to Tintaglia when she was little more than a girl? When her mind engaged mine again, her polished control reminded me of her great-grandfather.

Riddle will know what must be prepared for your journey. I will put him to that task. And I will prepare Dutiful to accept your decision.

And with that thought she left me, drifting away from my thoughts like the scented vapors of an extinguished candle in a cold room. I gathered my feet under me and stood slowly. I held the book protectively, as I had not held my daughter. I thought a moment longer and then stooped and blindly chose my candles. I blew out my lights and in the dark, I sniffed one of the unlit candles. Honeysuckle. A long-ago summer day. Molly gathering the white-and-pink blossoms, as busy as her bees in collecting the blossoms that would scent the wax. A memory to hold.

I returned to my den. I put another log on my fire. I would not sleep in this dark before dawn. I kindled fresh candles and took up my old pack. It held my treasures, the things I would not be parted from. I added Molly's candles and Bee's journal. As I put her little journal in beside her book of dreams, I felt I joined two halves of her life. She had lived by day as my child, and by night as dreamer of dreams. I did not want to name her a White Prophet. I did not want to mark her as more the Fool's than mine. I had not told the Fool she kept a dream journal. I knew he would want to hear me read it, would want to possess it as much as I did. These things were all I had left of my child, and I wanted to keep them to myself.