Fool's Quest (85 page)

I was shocked at the surge of anticipation I felt. “I can make no promises,” I cautioned him.

Amber spoke suddenly. “He will need to rest well before he attempts any more. These healings tax him in a way that is difficult to explain.” She paused and then dared to caution Reyn, “And when you speak to the parents, you must be honest, sir. Tell them there is risk as well, and not just that Prince FitzChivalry may not be able to help. Sometimes his healings take a heavy toll on the one he helps. I speak with a personal knowledge of that! Bid them consider well the gamble.”

“There is also General Rapskal. This will not please him.” Malta spoke anxiously.

“Few things do,” Reyn said with a laugh that had no humor in it. “And some few of the dragons may be interested. There are not many here right now. Most are gone to warmer lands, for a season, or a year, or a decade. They do not count time as we do.”

“They do not think of children who may need to be shaped or guided in their changes.” Malta spoke with an edge of bitterness. “Those who have neglected their young Elderlings will express perfunctory regret, of course.”

I was not grasping the fullness of what I was hearing, but the offer of rest and time alone tempted me beyond words. I think my weariness must have shown in my face, for Malta added, “I believe that comfortable chambers are ready for you and your young servingfolk. I will do all I may to assure you a night of rest and sweet dreams.” Her glance met her husband's, and he nodded and added slowly, “I promise I will caution the parents not to set their hopes too high. And give them a night to consider well their choice: To have you try. Or not.”

Amber nodded to that for me. “Prince FitzChivalry does not have unlimited abilities. He has not been able to restore my sight, but much else that was wrong with me, he set right.”

Malta nodded. “It grieved me when first I saw that you had lost your vision and been subjected to ill use. You have told us what befell you, but not why you have taken on some semblance to an Elderling. I know that you and Tintaglia had some doings, some years ago. I assume she is the one who began your changes?”

I wished Amber could have seen Malta's expression. She dreaded the wrong answer, but Amber danced all around a question as lightly as the Fool could. “We did. It was many years ago, and she was more prone, then, to honor her debts to mere people. She persuaded the good folk of Trehaug to supply me for an expedition.”

“I recall something of that,” Malta replied. And then, as if both relieved by Amber's tale and recalling her duties as a hostess, she added, “If you will excuse me, there is a small comfort I wish to send you.”

“And I am off also,” Reyn added. “Please, for now, be comfortable here.”

They left the room together, Malta's hand on Reyn's arm. Phron sauntered after them, the remainder of the cakes in his custody. At the door he paused, turned, and swept us a surprisingly gracious bow for a young man clutching a plate. I had to smile, and then the door closed behind them.

For a time, the three of us sat in silence, each occupied with our own set of worries. Amber asked softly, “Whyever did you do it, Fitz? Why attempt such a healing on your own and for a boy you scarcely know?” She leaned back in her chair and patted her own cheeks. “When I grasped what was happening, I was terrified.”

“He took my hand and it just … happened. We connected in the Skill and I do not think I could have refrained from correcting his body.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Lant observed, and Amber choked on a laugh.

Then a servant entered bearing a tray with a large silver pot on it surrounded by tiny white cups, followed by Spark and Per. The servant poured each of us a tiny cup of dark and steaming liquid. “A gift from the king and queen. Sweetsleep tea.” She wished us a good night and departed.

I lifted a cup and sniffed it. I passed it to Amber. “Are you familiar with this? It's like a very dark tea, but thicker.”

She smelled it, and then took a delicate sip. “I've had this before, in Bingtown. Sweetsleep. It's supposed to make one sleep well with very pleasant dreams. It allows you to forget your cares. It's very expensive. It's quite a compliment to be served this.”

“It is,” Perseverance confirmed heartily. “The serving woman who brought us here was astonished at being told to prepare it for you. It came all the way from Jamaillia, a gift to the king and queen from the Satrap himself! ‘Like drinking gold to have this tea,' she said.”

“I would welcome a deep sleep,” Lant said quietly. “With pleasant dreams, for a change.” He took up his cup and sipped from it. We watched him. He licked his lips. “It's nice. An edge of bitter and then it tastes sweet.”

Amber was taking slow sips of hers. She paused as if she could see me watching her. “It's safe,” she said quietly. “Traders will drive a hard bargain with you, but poison is not part of their ethic. Nor do I think Reyn and Malta would do harm to the man who saved their son. Or to the man they hope will save the children of Kelsingra.”

Spark had been watching Amber. Without hesitation, she raised her cup to her lips and tasted it. “I like it,” she proclaimed and took another sip.

“You're not drinking it, are you?” Amber smiled at me across the table. There was a bit of a challenge in that smile.

“I'm a cautious fellow,” I reminded her.

“Fitz. There's a time for caution. And a time to try something new. Something that might let you have a good night's sleep.” I do not know how she sensed my hesitation. “Hospitality,” she said quietly. “Do not turn away a very gracious gift. I promise you, it's no more than a restful tea. Less harmful than carryme. Courtesy demands we enjoy it.” She lifted her tiny cup and sipped from it.

Perseverance looked to me. I shrugged and tasted mine. It was pleasant, the bitter followed by the sweet. The boy watched me and then took his down in a series of slow sips. “Fitz, drink it,” Amber said in the Fool's voice. “Trust my judgment in this. It will not harm you and may do you much good.”

And so I did. By the time two different serving girls came to guide us to our rooms, I felt a pleasant lassitude. There was no heavy sensation of being drugged, simply the drowsy feeling that I would be easily able to fall asleep.

The serving girls were not Elderlings, but were clad in bright garments similar to those Malta had been wearing. One was all in red, the other in blue. Amber took my arm and I guided her as we followed the girl in blue. Lant came with us. Spark and Perseverance came behind us and I heard Spark take up a conversation with the girl in red. Evidently they had all dined together earlier. “I will move across the river tomorrow,” one girl said to Spark. It seemed the continuance of an earlier conversation. “I decided tonight. The whispering has grown too loud for me to bear. I had hoped, though it seems silly to admit it now, to someday become favored of a dragon and be Changed.” She shook her head. “But I cannot endure it. All day, in the streets, the walls mutter to me. And at night, even in the quiet houses, my dreams are not my own. I will try my luck across the river, although I will miss the lights of the city and the warmth and comfort of these buildings. All winter, the workers there have been clearing land. In spring we will dig and plant. And perhaps this time the crops will prosper.”

The girl in red paused at a door and looked at Lant. “My mistress says she hopes you will find the chambers she ordered for you pleasing, but if you do not, you have but to ring a bell, and someone will come to make it comfortable for you. Oh. And to ring the bell, you need only touch the image of a flower beside the door.” She opened the door and bowed to Lant. “For Lord Lant, this room has been prepared. Perseverance has told us which pack to bring here. You will find the couch adapts to your body. The jug with the figures of fish on it will keep your wash-water warm. A bath will be filling for you. I tell you these things so that you may not be alarmed by them.” Lant listened gravely, nodded to her with great equanimity, bade us good night. and entered. I judged he would soon be asleep.

The girl glanced back at us with a smile. “Your quarters are at the end of the corridor.” She led us on. I was definitely feeling the effects of the soporific. The weariness I had been so long denying was rising in me like an inevitable tide. Yet it was not the aching tiredness that was too familiar to me but only the gentle looming of easy sleep. She stopped at a door that seemed a trifle grander than the one that had led to Lant's room. The door was neither wood nor stone, but an unfamiliar substance carved in twists and twinings like the bark of a contorted tree. It reminded me of ivory, in a darker tone. “Your chambers,” she said quietly. “When you wake tomorrow, touch the tree image by the door and food will be brought for you.”

“Thank you,” I said. She touched the door and it swung silently open. I entered to find myself in a sitting room. My makeshift pack looked sadly out of place on the delicately carved table in the center of the room. The floor was finished with hundreds of tiny triangular tiles, and the walls were painted to resemble trees. The room smelled like a summer forest. Beyond the sitting room, I saw a chamber with a large bed and beyond that a sight I could scarcely believe. I crossed the bedchamber and stared into the alcove beyond it. A pool twice the size of the bed was filling with steaming water scented with forest herbs. A table beside it was stacked with thick towels, squat pots of soap and ewers of oils, and several Elderling robes in bright colors.

I heard the door shut behind me. I walked toward the water, shedding clothes as I went. I sat down on the floor like a child to pull off my boots, then stood to drop my trousers. I did not hesitate at the water's edge. The lip of the pond slanted down and I waded into it and then sat down in the deepest end so that the water lapped my unshaven chin. Slowly the warmth penetrated my flesh, and I felt my muscles relax. I leaned back as the water grew deeper until it lifted me and I hung in it. Slowly I cupped water and rubbed my face, and then ducked, rubbing salty sweat from my hair and head. When I came up the Fool was standing at the edge of the pool.

“How deep is it?”

“Not over your head.” I ducked again and came up. Water streamed from my hair and down my back. Had hot water ever felt so good? It was hard to think of anything besides the sensation. “Why didn't you go to your room?”

“This is my room. Spark and I were here earlier. My things are already in the closet. When the servants asked Perseverance and Spark who you were, they said you were my protector. So they did not separate us.”

“Oh.” I leaned back in the water and scrubbed at my face again. I wondered how unkempt I had appeared to the King and the Queen of the Elderlings. I hadn't given it a thought earlier. And I realized I cared little what they thought of me. I pushed wet hair from my face, stood up, and shook water from my head. I was suddenly sleepy and the wide bed beckoned. “I'm going to bed. If you go in the pool, don't drown.”

I walked to the shallow end and waded out. I took a towel from the stack but barely found the will to dry myself before walking toward the bed.

“Sleep well, Fitz,” the Fool said. And he was the Fool again.

“That tea. I can sleep, Fool. I can let go of everything. Stop worrying. Worrying doesn't solve anything. I know that. In one way I know it but in another it seems wrong. It seems as if I don't think about all the things that hurt, all the things I've done wrong, then I don't really care. Tormenting myself with Bee's death won't bring her back. Why do I have to remember it all the time?” The bed was large and flat. There were no pillows and no coverings. I sat down on it, my towel around my shoulders. The surface was firm and slightly warm. Very slowly, it gave to the weight of my body. I lay back on it. “Molly is dead. Bee is gone. I can't feel Nighteyes anymore. I should just accept those things and go on. Maybe. Or maybe you're right. I should go kill all of the Servants. I've nothing better to do with what is left of my life. Why not do that?” I closed my eyes. When I spoke, I could hear the slurring of my words. I groped after what I was trying to say. “I'm like you now. I've gone beyond the end of my life, to a place where I never expected to be.”

His voice was kind. “Don't fight it, Fitz. Don't question it. For one night, let it all go.”

I did. I tumbled into sleep.

I woke. I lay in the darkness. I could not remember that I had dreamed, yet words rang in my ears still.
Verity says you gave up hope too easily. That you always did.

Bee's voice? If that message was the pleasant dream the Elderling tea had promised me, it was a sad misrepresentation of what the tea actually did. I stared up at a ceiling painted a dark gray. Stars had been painstakingly dotted over the entire surface. As I stared at them through slitted eyes, the deep of night became darkest blue. I blinked. I was staring up at the sky. I was warm, cradled in softness. I smelled forest. Someone slept beside me.

I lifted my head and stared. The Fool. Only the Fool. In sleep, with his strange, blinded eyes hidden, I could see the lines of Lord Golden's face with the coloring of my boyhood friend. But as the ceiling above me continued in its mimicry of dawn, I began to see the fine scaling along his brows. I wondered if it would progress until he looked fully like an Elderling or if the dragon's blood had finished with him. He wore an Elderling robe of white or pale silver; it was hard to tell in the dawn light. His bared hand clasped his gloved hand to his breast as if to keep watch over it while he slept. His head was bowed over his hands, and he frowned in his sleep. His knees were drawn up to his chest, as if to protect himself from a kick. Men who have been tortured are slow to sleep carelessly. His curled body was too close to how I had found him, dead and frozen in the Pale Woman's icy halls. I stared at him until I was sure I could see him breathing. Foolish. He was fine.

I rolled cautiously away from him and sat up on the edge of the bed. I stood up slowly. I felt well rested, with no aching muscles. I was neither too warm nor too cold. I looked around the room. The magic of the Elderlings was all round me. How easily I had accepted it last night. How swiftly I had dropped my guard. “Sweetsleep,” I muttered to myself.

I rose and left the Fool sleeping and went to the smaller room. The pool had drained itself, and my discarded clothing was where I had dropped it. One boot stood and the other sprawled on its side. I moved slowly, gathering my things and trying to clear my brain at the same time. I felt peculiar. One at a time, I gathered my worries with my clothing. Even drunk, I'd never behaved as selfishly as I had last night. It bothered me. I found fresher clothes in my pack, donned them, and tidied my discarded clothing. The water in the ewer was warm. There was a looking-glass and, beside it, brushes. I persuaded my hair into a warrior's tail and decided that it would be easier to have a beard than to shave. I turned my face from side to side, studying the gray in my whiskers. So be it.

“Fitz?”

“I'm right here. Up and dressed.”

“I … dreamed.”

“You said the tea would do that, give pleasant dreams.”

I turned to find him sitting up on the bed. The Elderling gown was silvery. It reminded me of very fine chain mail. Or fish scales.

“I dreamed of both of us here. Walking in this city, laughing and talking. But so long ago. In a time of dragons, when the city was fine and unshattered.” He paused, his mouth slightly ajar. He said softly, “The air smelled like flowers. It was like that first time. In the Mountains at the market-circle.”

“We are deep in an Elderling city. The buildings are impregnated with Skill and memories. I'm not surprised you had such a dream.”

“It was a very sweet dream,” he said softly. He stood and slowly groped his way toward me.

“Wait. Let me come for you.” I reached his side and, taking his hand, I set it on my arm. “I'm sorry I left you to fend for yourself last night.”

“I was fine.”

“I didn't mean to be so thoughtless.” And yet, how good it had felt. To think only of my own needs and no one else's. How selfish, I rebuked myself. I guided him to the ewer of wash-water.

“Don't apologize. The sweetsleep affected you exactly as I knew it would.”

His pack was overturned, Amber's wardrobe spilled out across the floor. “Do you want me to put your clothing back in the pack?” I asked him.

He straightened from washing his face with one hand, groped for and found a drying cloth. “Sweet Eda, no! I'll have Spark repack our things. Fitz, you've never had respect for fabric or lace. I won't trust you with it now.” He came toward me, his hands fluttering before him. His bared hand touched my shoulder, and then he crouched down over the spilled pack. He found garments by touch, considering texture. He paused once to hold up a skirt. “Is this blue? Or turquoise?”

“Blue,” I said, and he set it aside. “Are you hungry? Shall I ring for food?”

“Please,” he said as he shook out a white blouse.

I think he listened to my boots on the tiles, for just as I reached the entry to the sitting room, he said, “If you would shut the door?”

I did so and then explored the room. I judged that the heavy furniture of dark wood had come from Bingtown. I found a flower painted on a twining vine on a trellis that framed the door. It was slightly raised, and I touched it. The petals blushed from pink to red and back again. I stepped back from it. I heard nothing, no bell in the distance. I walked to the window. I looked out in puzzlement, for the garden below was in riotous bloom. Out there, a fountain splashed and a caged bird hopped from perch to perch. Flowers blossomed. Another step, and my perspective of the window changed. Despite the bird's motion and the flowers nodding in the breeze, there was no window. More Elderling magic.

I tapped on the door to the bedchamber. “I've rung for food.”

“You may come in,” Amber's voice replied. And when I entered, she was seated before the mirror she could not see, pushing a brush through her short pale hair and then patting at it. She seemed to feel me looking at her. “Does it bother you?” she asked me.

I did not ask her what she meant. “Strange to say, no. You are you. Fool, Lord Golden, Amber, and Beloved. You are you, and we know each other as well as any two people can.”

“Beloved,” she said, and smiled sadly. I did not know if she repeated my word, or if the Fool called me by his own name. She dropped her hands to the top of the table, gloved one atop the bared one. “There was a time,” she began, “when you would have hated this masquerade.”

“There was,” I agreed. “And this is a different time.”

She smiled at that. And nodded. She turned her head as if glancing at me. “Did you … would you like to be the Fitz you were last night? The man who had only himself to care for?”

I did not answer swiftly. I could have blamed it on the tea, or claimed not to recall it. But I did. Perhaps it had been the tea, but he was right. I had simply let go of everything and everyone and thought only of myself. Once, it was all I had longed for. I wanted to be free of obligations to family, to duty to the Farseer throne: I'd wanted to do only what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it. Last night I'd had a taste of that. I had no idea how the Fool had found his way around an unfamiliar room, how he had washed himself or found the garments he'd slept in. I'd abandoned him to his own diminished resources.

“I don't think you'd like him much,” I replied ashamedly.

“On the contrary. Why do you think I urged you to drink it?” Slowly he held out a hand to me. “Fitz. Would you come here?”

I walked over to him. “I'm here.”

His gloved hand groped over my belly and then found my hand. He took it in his. He sighed. “I hate what I do to you. What I've done to your life. I am dependent on you, now more than ever, though I have always needed my Catalyst to accomplish anything. I am ashamed when I think of the danger, pain, and loss I've caused you. I hate knowing that you are ever mindful of me and my needs.”

“Loss?” I was confused.

“But for me, you might never have lost Molly for all those years.”

“No. I'd have been dead instead.”

His laugh was a hoarse bark. “True. But against all odds, I became fond of you early in our acquaintance. The look on your face when Shrewd pushed that pin through the front of your jerkin. You gave him your heart, as I had given him mine, and for a moment I knew purest envy. Because I suddenly wanted you for my own. Not just as my Catalyst. As my friend.”

“We've been that.”

“And more. And that was what the Servants never grasped until I betrayed you. That you were more to me than my Catalyst. Yet even I did not realize the full import of that closeness. That a child who was as much mine as yours and Molly's would be the result. A child given to us. Because I used you so mercilessly. And a child stolen, because I betrayed you.”

“Fool. Stop. You gave me as much as you took from me.” The look of abject apology on his face was making me uncomfortable.

“Not really, Fitz. Not really.”

“You saved my life. More than once.”

“After endangering it, usually. Fitz. If you save a colt's life because you intend later to ride it into battle, it tinges the act with a high degree of selfishness.”

There was a knock at the door. He released my hand. For a moment longer, I stood still. He spoke quietly. “Last night, you had one night without feeling obligations. For one night, you were able to let go of your grief. For one night, I released you to think only of yourself. One night of living as most men do every day. A very small respite.” He patted my chest. “You should see who is at the door.”

When I answered it, it was Spark. “I thought perhaps Lady Amber would need my assistance,” she said, and Amber immediately called to her to come and help. She hurried past me, pulling the door almost shut behind her, and for a time I listened to a lady give directions to her maid. When a second knock was a servant with a little wheeled table, they both emerged. Spark had painted Amber's lips and rouged the tops of her cheeks. It more accented the pale scaling than concealed it, but I said nothing.

“I can serve them,” Spark suggested and the servant girl seemed only too happy to leave. Spark uncovered platters and poured tea for us both, and I sat down to a simple breakfast with Amber. Porridge with raisins cooked in it, and honey to sweeten it. Bacon. Stewed dried plums.

“Spark, have you eaten?” I asked the girl. She looked surprised.

“Of course. Hours ago, with the other servingfolk. They've made us very welcome. Everyone is very fond of Ephron. You are the hero of the day.”

“Hero,” I said softly. So strange.

“The bacon tastes a bit odd,” Amber observed.

“It's bear. Bear bacon,” I told her. There was a folded sheet of pale-blue paper on the tray as well. I unfolded it and perused it quickly. “There's a note here, from Queen Malta. She asks that as soon as we have breakfasted, we join her downstairs. The children will be waiting there.” I tried to keep foreboding from my voice as I relayed the message.

“You will do your best, Fitz. You've warned them.”

“Warning does not prevent disappointment,” I said. Of Spark, I asked, “Do you know if Perseverance is awake yet? And if Lord Lant has been summoned as well?”

“Yes to both, sir. Perseverance has leapt at the chance to be shown a bit of the city by one of the other serving boys. And Lant, I believe, went with them.”

I had not foreseen that. “Very well,” I said faintly. How befuddled had I been last night, not to have warned them to stay close? Some of my trepidation must have shown on my face for Spark added, “I'm sure they'll be safe, sir. What you did for the prince last night? It was all the servants could gossip about this morning. They were very impressed and eager to be kind to us.”

“I wish Lant and Per had been a bit more cautious,” I grumbled. Amber lifted one shoulder in a delicate shrug.

Spark seemed to already know her way about the Greeting Hall. Amber put her hand on my arm and I followed Spark down the passage I recalled from the night before. “There are no windows at all,” I observed. “Only painted images of windows with views that move as if real when one pauses to look at them.”

“I'd dearly love to see them,” Amber said wistfully in the Fool's voice.

“I wish you could,” I rejoined, and her grip on my arm tightened for a moment.

As soon as we reached the ground floor, a serving man came to meet us. “This way, if you please. King Reyn and Queen Malta await you in the Reception Hall.”

But when we approached the door of the chamber, General Rapskal stood before it, his arms crossed on his chest. Now that I was somewhat rested and alert, not to mention recovered from our Skill-portal journey, he looked less imposing. Part of that was that he had no dragon with him. Amber's grip on my arm tightened slightly. “What is it?”

I lifted my voice. “General Rapskal. So nice to meet you under more pleasant circumstances.”

“You escort a thief.”

My smile was bland. “I do not take your meaning, sir.”

His gaze flickered to Amber, lingered for a moment on her eyes, and then came back to me. “Perhaps not. But you shall.”

He pushed away from the wall he had leaned on and stood blocking our way. The servant who had been leading us gave a small gasp of dismay and scampered away. No help from that quarter, then. I set my weight on the balls of my feet. Amber felt that slight shift and lifted her hand from my arm so I'd be free to move quickly if I had to.