Master and Fool (82 page)

Jack caught his
breath. He could clearly see the man's profile: tall, bulky, shoulders
slouched, chin drooping close to the chest it was Crope!

Swinging his feet
to the side, Jack attempted to rise from whatever surface he'd been laid on. He
was ready for the blackout this time, clenching his teeth and pressing knuckles
into wood. He lost the seconds from his feet hanging in midair to his feet
touching stone.

Gathering his
strength about him, he tilted his weight onto his feet. Just like his head, his
body seemed heavier than he remembered. With his hand holding the table, he
tried a step. Not bad really, all things considered. He took another one and
then let go of the table.

Crope had his back
to him and did not see him approach. The distance between them was longer than
Jack had first thought, and the walk gave him a chance to take in his
surroundings. He now knew he was somewhere beneath the palace. The low
ceilings, the distant drip of water, and the mushroomy smell of mold and
excrement gave it all away. How long had passed since he was here last? One
night? One day? Many days? There was no way of knowing. He could remember
nothing after lifting the curtain and coming face-to-face with Baralis.

Still, he was
alive, and that meant Tawl and Melli could be alive as well.

"Mhmp.
"

Jack's thoughts
bounded back to Crope. Close now, he could see the huge servant's shoulders
shaking.

"Mhmp."

The noise came
again, and Jack suddenly realized it was the sound of Crope sobbing. Taking
special care to pad his steps, Jack crept toward a post only paces behind the
servant and the light source.

A stone furnace
blazed with golden light; its metal door flung open to provide air to fuel the
flames. A shovel lay at the side, and to the side of that lay a large heap of
logs, woodchips, and wood dust. Crope was on the opposite side, shoulders
moving up and down, head shaking from side to side. As Jack watched, he reached
inside his tunic and pulled out a wooden box. With hands gentle enough to cup
kittens, Crape sorted through the contents of the box. After a moment, he
pulled something out. From his position behind the beam, Jack couldn't make out
what it was. He saw Crope return the box to his tunic and then move toward the
furnace door.

It was then that
Jack saw the white square in Crape's hand. It was a letter-the bloodred daub of
wax clearly marked it as such.

"Mhmp.
"
Crope held out the letter at arm's length and offered it up to the
furnace.

"Crape."
Jack was hardly aware he'd stepped forward and surprised to his very core that
he'd spoken.

Crope turned
around. The letter was still in his hand, but the flames of the furnace had
already begun to blacken the edges. Crope took one look at Jack and screamed.
His hand whipped from the furnace to his face, and the letter ended up clamped
over his eyes. "Go away. Leave Crope alone. Crope's sorry."

"Crape it's
me, Jack." Jack took another step forward so he was properly in the light.

Screaming again,
Crope moved his hands from his eyes to his ears. "Crope's sorry. Crope
meant to give Jack the letter. Didn't know Jack was going to die."

Guessing that
Crope thought he was a ghost, Jack leant forward and touched Crope's arm.
"I'm alive, Crape. I'm not a ghost."

Crope pulled away.
"Master said bum the body--only burns 'em when they're dead."

Baralis thought he
was dead. Jack pushed the thought aside for a moment; he would think about that
later. For now, he had to find out what was in the letter. Still holding out
his arm, he said gently, "Here, touch me, Crope, I swear to you I'm not
dead."

Crope eyed him
suspiciously. "Ghost's playing tricks on Crope."

"No tricks.
Look." Jack spit into his palm and held it out for Crape to examine.
"Ghosts never spit--everyone knows that."

Edging forward,
hands still clamped to his ears, Crope proceeded to examine the gob of spit.
After a few moments of intense observation, he looked up at Jack's face.
"Jack not dead, then?"

"No. Jack was
alive, but very still."

"Cold, too.
Very cold."

Jack shuddered. He
never wanted to know what had happened after Baralis blasted him.
Never.
Gesturing
toward the letter, he said, "Is that meant for me?"

Crope's hands came
down from his ears. The letter shifted in his fingers as he presented it to
Jack. "Jack's letter. Lucy said only to give it to him if Lam was ever
destroyed."

Lucy? A shiver
started at the base of Jack's spine and worked its way up to his skull. His
heart pounded hard in his chest, Lam's rhythm rang on every beat. "My
mother gave you this letter?"

Crope nodded. He
thrust the letter out once more. "Lucy very sick, made Crope promise to
keep the letter for Jack." Crope's lips widened into a tender smile.
"Lucy gave Crope box. See." He pulled out the box. Seabirds and
seashells were etched upon its lid. "Said the birds reminded her of home.
Crope likes birds."

Jack could barely
hear what Crope was saying. Like a war drum, his heart was sounding an assault.
"You've had this letter for over ten years?"

Crape's face
blushed with pride. "I kept it as safe as Grammy's teeth. Only lost it
once--had to dig it out of the snow."

"And you were
about to burn it because you thought I was dead?"

Crope hung his
head. "Crope's sorry. Crope didn't know." Jack brought his hand up
and took the letter. "Don't be sorry, Crope. You've done what Lucy asked.
She would have been pleased you kept it so long. And she would have thanked
you-just like I'm doing now."

"Lucy was
kind to Crope. She never called him names." Jack nodded absently. As his
fingers slid over the parchment, his mind slid back to the past. Ten years.
Crope was the last person to see his mother alive. Jack remembered him emerging
from her room, his hand tucked beneath his tunic. Was that when she gave him
the letter? he wondered. The hour before she died?

With shaking
hands, he broke the seal. The wax was brittle, splintering into a dozen pieces
that fell tinkling to the floor. Jack unfolded the paper and read the letter.

Dear Jack,

If you are
reading this letter then Larn has been destroyed. If it is you that has brought
about its fall, as I believe it will be, then I owe you the truth, as well as
much, much more.

I was born on
Larn. Daughter to a servant girl and a priest, I grew up to womanhood on the
isle. From as early as I can remember, I tended the seers with my own hands,
washing, feeding, rubbing salve into their wounds. I though nothing of it for
years; to me the seers were just babbling madmen who were somehow less than
human. Then the priests grew to trust me enough to let me tend the new seers,
young men, whose minds had not yet been corrupted by the stone, and whose
bodies were still strong and virile. It was a shock to discover that these
seers were just like me; they could talk, laugh,
cry.
Be afraid.

I grew to know
these young men, and to love one in particular. He was a match for me in age,
and we spent our days holding hands and talking of escape. We loved each other
with the fierce, desperate passion of youth: nothing would come between us.
Then one day, the red fever took me, and I was bedridden for fourteen days.
When I eventually saw my love again, his mind had left him. His seering stone
had robbed his sanity and the seering ropes had eaten his flesh. He didn't
recognize me. I was frantic, screaming, pulling at the ropes, cursing Larn.
When I finally got the rope to loosen, it pulled away a portion of his skin,
exposing the raw flesh beneath. After that I became hysterical. The priests
tried to pull me away and I cursed them, swearing a terrible oath to destroy
the island As I spoke, the cavern began to shake. Someone thrust a rag into my
mouth, and then I was beaten until I was senseless.

When I awoke, I
was in a dungeon, sentenced to die. I think the priests were afraid of me,
afraid of my power and my curse. My mother helped me escape, and I was cast
adrift on a skiff.

A few days
later, I was picked up by a passing ship and taken to Rorn. One of the sailors,
a good man with a good heart, brought me to his house and cared for me. When
the time came for me to leave, he gave me his savings and bid me luck and
helped me on my way. Even now, the thought of his kindness warms me when I am
cold.

After I left
Rorn I traveled as far away from the island as I could. I headed north and then
west, changing my name and my appearance as I went. I finally arrived in the
Four Kingdoms and became a chambermaid at Castle Harvell. Queen Arinalda
favored me, and I was appointed as one of her personal servants.

That was when I
met the king. Lesketh was a tortured man back in those days; he and his wife were
like strangers, torn apart by their inability to conceive a child.

I was lonely,
with no friends and no one to trust, and when King Lesketh stopped to talk to
me in the gardens one day, I was more than flattered I was grateful. Like
everyone else, I heard rumors that the king had affairs with other women, but
Lesketh was so kind and considerate with me that I thought nothing of it. Over
a period of many months we became close. Lesketh would talk to me about the
queen and his problems at court, and I would simply listen, hardly daring to
speak Occasionally I would ask him about faraway lands-my mind always on
Lam--and he would take delight in telling me about all the politics
of
the
day, even bringing scrolls and maps to show me.

Gradually,
there became more between us. We took to meeting in an old hunting lodge in the
woods. And it was there, one wet and gusty evening in late autumn, where
Lesketh first showed me Marod's
Book of Words.
Immeasurably old, with
failed binding and fraying pages, it was, he said, one of the original four
copies of the great scholar's work.

The moment I
took the book in my hands, I felt something change inside me. My whole body
began to tremble and a tight band of pressure wrapped around my forehead like a
vise. The book seemed almost to open itself, and the moment the yellow page
came into view, my eye fell upon the line that would forever change my life:

The stones will
be sundered, the temple will fall.

Straightaway, I
knew what it meant, and even before I'd finished the complete verse, I knew
what I had to do. By predicting the downfall of Larn, Marod had offered me a
chance to redeem my oath. All I had to do was to conceive a child whose destiny
was to fulfill the prophecies in the verse:

When men of honor lose sight of their
cause

When three bloods are savored in
one day
Two houses will meet in wedlock and wealth
And what forms at the join is decay
A man will come with neither father nor mother
But sister as lover
And stay the hand of the plague
The stones will be sundered, the temple will fall
The dark empire's expansion will end at his call
And only the fool knows the truth.

From that day
on, I set about begetting a child with the king. I knew he would never
acknowledge the bastard son of a chambermaid, so the child would be without a
father to claim him-just like the verse stated Without mother would come later.

The night you
were conceived--for the one in the verse was and is you, Jack-the king stole
down to the castle kitchens to see me. We made love in the dark shadows of the
chambermaid's corner, and when we had finished I threw back the shutters to get
some air. That was when I saw the sign in the sky: a star split in two and
falling toward the earth. I knew then that the prophecy had been set in motion.

Just as the
king slipped away, Crape came down into the kitchens. Baralis had sent him to
get some food and drink, and he passed the king on the stairs. I took the
servant aside and begged him not to tell his master of what he had seen.
Reluctantly, he agreed and from that day on Crape and I became friends.

I never saw the
king again after that night. As soon as I knew I was pregnant, I gave up my
position as a chambermaid and took on the lowliest job in the castle. As
ashmaid, I never had to leave the kitchen, so there was no chance I would ever
cross the king's path again. I didn't want him to know I was carrying his
child.

As it turned
out, it didn't matter. Two months later, the queen announced she was with child
and the king fell in love with her all over again. He never made any attempt to
contact me. I was sad for a while, but the prophecy had hold of me, and my life
was no longer my own.

The queen and I
gave birth on the same day. As soon as I learnt that she had also borne a son,
my mind returned to the star in the sky. Two fragments, two conceptions, two
births.

Years passed
and you grew from a baby to a boy, and I loved you more dearly than I could
ever have imagined Over time the prophecy became less important, and months
went by when I never gave the verse more than a passing thought. Then one day I
grew ill. It was as if Marod himself was tapping me on the shoulder, reminding
me to finish what I had started Right from the beginning, I didn't take the
medicines the physicians gave me-for the prophecy to be fulfilled I had to be
gone from your life. It was the hardest decision I ever had to make, but the
prophecy had a life of its own and if I had resisted it then, it would have
taken me later without warning.

As my strength
was taken, I began to think I had made a terrible mistake: I had brought you
into the world with a heavy burden on your back. I had used you, the prophecy
had used you you were nothing but a tool
of
fate. That was when I
decided not to tell you about the verse before I died. I didn't want Marod's
words ruling your life. I wanted to give you the chance for your destiny to be
your own.