Fool’s Quest

‘There’s little to tell that I didn’t Skill to you from the festivities. I think you have a quiet but effective pirate trade on the river that is avoiding all tariffs and taxes. And a sea captain ambitious enough to try to extend it to trade with Bingtown.’

‘And you know full well that is not what I need reported! Don’t quibble with me, Fitz. After you asked me about a healer, I tried to reach you again. And I could not, but I could sense how intensely involved you were elsewhere. I thought I was not strong enough to reach you, so I asked Nettle to try. And when neither of us could break in on you, we both came here. What were you doing?’

‘Just,’ I cleared my tight throat, ‘trying to help him heal. One of the boils on his back had opened by itself. And when I tried to clean it for him, I became aware that … that he’s dying, Chade. Slowly dying. There is too much wrong with him. I do not think he can gain strength fast enough for us to heal him. Good food and rest and medicine will, I believe, only delay what is inevitable. He’s too far gone for me to save him.’

‘Well.’ Chade seemed taken aback by my bluntness. He sank down into my chair and drew a great breath. ‘I thought we had all seen that, down at the infirmary, Fitz. It was one reason why I thought you’d want a quieter place for him. A place of quiet and privacy.’ His voice trailed away.

His words made what I faced more real. ‘Thank you for that,’ I said hoarsely.

‘It’s little enough, and sad to say, I doubt that there is more that I could do for either of you. I hope you know that if I could do more, I would.’ He sat up straight, and the rising flames of the fire caught his features in profile. I suddenly saw the effort the old man was putting into even that small gesture. He would sit upright, and he would come up all those steps in the creaking hours before dawn for my sake, and he would try to make it all look effortless. But it wasn’t. And it was getting harder and harder for him to maintain that façade. Cold spread through me as I faced the truth of that. He was not as near death as the Fool was, but he was drifting slowly away from me on the relentless ebb of aging.

He spoke hesitantly, looking at the fire rather than at me. ‘You pulled him back from the other side of death once. You’ve been stingy with the details on that, and I’ve found nothing in any Skill-scroll that references such a feat. I thought perhaps …’

‘No.’ I pushed another dab of unguent into a wound. Only two more to go. My back ached abominably from bending over at my task, and my head pounded as it had not in years. I pushed aside thoughts of carryme powder and elfbark tea. Deadening the body to pain always took a toll on the mind, and I could not afford that just now. ‘I haven’t been stingy with information, Chade. It was more a thing that happened rather than something I did. The circumstances are not something I can duplicate.’ I suppressed a shudder at the thought.

I finished my task. I became aware that Chade had risen and was standing beside me. He offered me a soft grey cloth. I spread it carefully over the Fool’s treated back and then pulled his nightshirt down over it. I leaned forward and spoke by his ear. ‘Fool?’

‘Don’t wake him,’ Chade suggested firmly. ‘There are good reasons why a man falls into unconsciousness. Let him be. When both his body and his mind are ready for him to waken again, he will.’

‘I know you’re right.’

Lifting him and carrying him back to the bed was a harder task than it should have been. I deposited him there on his belly and covered him warmly.

‘I’ve lost track of time,’ I admitted to Chade. ‘How did you stand it in here, all those years, with scarcely a glimpse of the sky?’

‘I went mad,’ he said genially. ‘In a useful sort of way, I might add. None of the ranting and clawing the walls one might expect. I simply became intensely interested in my trade and all aspects of it. Nor was I confined here as much as you might suspect. I had other identities, and sometimes I ventured forth into castle or town.’

‘Lady Thyme,’ I said, smiling.

‘She was one. There were others.’

If he had wanted me to know, he would have told me. ‘How long until breakfast?’

He made a small sound in his throat. ‘If you were a guardsman, you’d likely be getting up from it by now. But for you, a minor noble from a holding that no one’s ever heard of, on your first visit to Buckkeep Castle, well, you’ll be forgiven for sleeping in a bit after last night’s festivities. I’ll pass the word to Ash and he’ll bring you food after you’ve had a bit of a nap.’

‘Where did you find him?’

‘He’s an orphan. His mother was a whore of the particular sort patronized mostly by wealthy young nobles who have … aberrant tastes. She worked in an establishment about a day’s ride from here in the countryside. A useful distance from Buckkeep Town for the sorts of activities a young noble might wish to keep secret. She died messily in an assignation gone horribly wrong, for both her and Ash. An informant thought I might find it useful to know which noble’s eldest son had such proclivities. Ash was a witness, not to her death but to the man who killed her. I had him brought to me and when I questioned him about what he had seen, I found he had an excellent eye for detail and a sharp mind for recalling it. He described the noble right down to the design of the lace on his cuffs. He’d grown up making himself useful to his mother and others in her trade, and thus he has a well-honed instinct for discretion. And stealth.’

‘And the collecting of secrets.’

‘There is that, too. His mother was not a street whore, Fitz. A young noble could take her to the gaming tables or the finer entertainments in Buckkeep Town, and not be shamed by her company. She knew poetry and could sing it to a small lute she played. He’s a lad who has walked in two worlds. He may not have court manners, yet, and one can hear he’s not court-born when he speaks, but he’s not an ignorant alley rat. He’ll be useful.’

I nodded slowly. ‘And you want him to page for me while I’m here so …?’

‘So you can tell me what you think of him.’

I smiled. ‘Not so he can watch me for you?’

Chade opened his hands deprecatingly. ‘And if he does, what would he see that I don’t already know? Consider it part of his training. Set him some challenges for me. Help me hone him.’

And again, what was I to say? He was doing all for the Fool and me that could be done. Could I do less for him? I had recognized the unguent I’d pushed into the Fool’s wounds. The oil for it came from the livers of a fish seldom seen in our northern waters. It was expensive, but he had not flinched from giving it to me. I would not be chary of giving him whatever I could in return. I nodded. ‘I’m going down to my old room to sleep for a bit.’

Chade returned my nod. ‘You have overtaxed yourself, Fitz. Later, when you’ve rested, I’d like a written report on that healing. When I reached for you … well, I could find you, but it was as if you were not yourself. As if you were so immersed in healing the Fool that you were becoming him. Or that the two of you were merging.’

‘I’ll write it down,’ I promised him, wondering how I could describe for him something I didn’t understand myself. ‘But in return, I’ll ask you to select for me new scrolls on Skill-healing and lending strength. I’ve already read the ones you left for me.’

He nodded, well pleased that I’d asked for such things, and left me, slipping out of sight behind the tapestry. I checked on the Fool and found him deeply asleep still. I hovered my hand over his face, loath to touch him lest I wake him but worried that my efforts might have wakened a higher fever in him. Instead, he seemed cooler and his breathing deeper. I straightened, yawned tremendously and then made the error of stretching.

I muffled my yelp of pain. I stood still for a long moment, then carefully rolled my shoulders. I hadn’t imagined it. I reached behind myself and gingerly tugged my shirt free of where it had adhered to my back. I peeled it free and found Chade’s mirror. What I saw confounded me.

The oozing wounds on my back were far smaller than those on the Fool’s, nor were they puffed and reddened with infection. Instead they gaped, seven small injuries as if someone had repeatedly stabbed me with a dagger. They had not bled much; I judged them shallow. And given my propensity to heal quickly, they might very well be gone by the end of tomorrow.

The conclusion I had to reach was obvious. In Skill-healing the Fool’s wounds, I had taken on these small twins. A sudden memory stirred, and I examined my belly. There, just where I had closed the wounds my knife had made on the Fool’s body was a series of reddened dents. I prodded one and winced. Not painful but tender. My whirling thoughts offered me a dozen explanations. In sharing strength with the Fool, had I actually shared flesh with him? Were his wounds closing because mine were opened? I draped my shirt around me, added wood to the fire, gathered my buttony jacket and scuffed down the dusty steps to my old bedchamber. I hoped I would find some answers in the scrolls that Chade had promised me. Until I did, I would keep this small mishap to myself. I had no desire to participate in the experiments that Chade would doubtless envision if he knew of this.

I shut the door and it became undetectable. A glance out of my shuttered window told me that a winter dawn was not far away. Well, I would take what sleep I could still get and be grateful. I added a log to the dying fire on my hearth, draped my ruined finery on a chair, found Lord Feldspar’s sensible woollen nightshirt and sought my boyhood bed. My drowsy eyes travelled the familiar walls. There was the wandering crack in the wall that had always reminded me of a bear’s snout. I had made that gouge in the ceiling, practising a fancy move with a hand axe that had flown out of my grip. The tapestry of King Wisdom treating with the Elderlings had been replaced with one of two bucks in battle. I preferred it. I drew a deep breath and settled into the bed. Home. Despite all the years, this was home, and I sank into sleep surrounded by the stout walls of Buckkeep Castle.

FIVE (#ulink_deda47db-a27c-50f6-afac-13d100306a10)

An Exchange of Substance (#ulink_deda47db-a27c-50f6-afac-13d100306a10)

I am curled warm and snug in the den. Safe. I am tired and if I shift too much, I feel the marks of teeth on my neck and back. But if I am still, then all is well.

In the distance, a wolf is hunting. He hunts alone. It is a terrible sound he makes, desperate and breathless. It is not the full-throated howling of a wolf that calls to his pack. It is the desperate yipping and short breathless howls of a predator who knows his prey is escaping. He would be better to hunt silently, to save his failing strength for running instead of giving tongue.

He is so far away. I curl tighter in the warmth of my den. It is safe here and I am well fed. I feel a fading sympathy for a wolf with no pack. I hear the broken yipping again and I know how the cold air rushes down his dry throat, how he leaps through deep snow, extending his full body, literally flinging himself through the night. I remember it too well, and for an aching moment, I am him.

‘Brother, brother, come, run, hunt,’ he beseeches me. He is too distant for me to know more of his thought than this.

But I am warm, and weary, and well fed. I sink deeper into sleep.

I awoke from that dream a lifetime away from the last time I had hunted with the wolf. I lay still, troubled and feeling the fading threat of it. What had wakened me? What needed to be hunted? And then I became aware of the smell of hot food, bacon and meal-cakes and the reviving fragrance of tea. I twitched fully awake and sat up. The sound that had awakened me had been the closing of my door. Ash had entered, set down a tray, stirred up my fire and fed it, taken my soiled shirt and done it all so silently that I had slept through it. A shudder of dread ran over me. When had I become so complacent and senseless as to sleep through intruders in the room? That was an edge I could ill afford to lose.

I sat up, winced, and then reached behind me to touch my own back. The wounds were closing and had stuck to the mildly itchy wool. I braced myself and plucked the nightshirt free of them, all while berating myself for sleeping too soundly. Ah. Too much to eat, too much to drink, and the exhaustion of a Skill-healing. I decided I could excuse my lack of wariness on those grounds. It did not totally banish the chagrin I felt. I wondered if Ash would report my lapse to Chade, and if he would praise the lad and if perhaps they would laugh about it.

I stood up, stretched cautiously, and told myself to stop being such a child. So Ash had fetched my breakfast and I’d slept through it. It was ridiculous to let it bother me.

I had not expected to be hungry after all I’d eaten the night before, but once I sat down to the food, I found I was. I made short work of it and then decided I would check on the Fool before taking a bit more sleep. The Skill-work I had done last night had taxed me far more than any other endeavour I’d taken on recently. He had been the receiver of that work: had it exhausted him as it had me?

I latched the main door to my room, triggered the secret door and went softly up the stairs, back into a world of candles and hearth-fire twilight. I stood at the top of the steps and listened to the fire burning, something muttering and tapping in a pot on the hearth-hook, and the Fool’s steady breathing. All trace of last night’s activities had been cleared away, but at one end of Chade’s scarred worktable, clean bandaging, various unguents and a few concoctions for the relief of pain had been left out. Four scrolls rested beside the supplies. Chade seemed always to think of everything.

I stood looking down at the Fool for some time. He lay on his belly, his mouth slightly ajar. Lord Golden had been a handsome man. I recalled with the regret of loss the clean planes of his face, his light-gold hair and amber eyes. Scars striated his cheeks and thickened the flesh around his eyes. Most of his hair had succumbed to ill health and filth; what he had left was as short and crisp as straw. Lord Golden was gone, but my friend remained. ‘Fool?’ I said softly.

He made a startled sound somewhere between a moan and a cry, his blind eyes flew open and he lifted a warding hand toward me.

‘It’s just me. How are you feeling?’

He took a breath to answer and coughed instead. When he had finished, he said hoarsely, ‘Better. I think. That is, some hurts have lessened, but the ones that remain are still sharp enough that I don’t know if I’m better or just becoming more adept at ignoring pain.’