Fool’s Quest

‘Read it,’ the Fool’s whisper urged me.

I unrolled the vellum carefully. This was Verity’s hand, the careful lettering of a man who loved to draw, to make maps and chart terrain, to sketch fortifications and draw battle-plans. He had written large, dark and plain. My king’s hand. My throat tightened. It was a moment before I could speak. My voice was higher as I spoke past tightness.

‘Be it known by my seal on this document and by the testimony of the trusted bearer, Chade Fallstar, that this scroll is the true desire of King-in-Waiting Verity Farseer. In plain words let me say, I leave today on a quest from which I may not return. I leave my queen, Kettricken of the Mountains, with child. If in my absence my father, King Shrewd, should die, I commend my lady to the protection of my nephew, FitzChivalry Farseer. If word of my death be returned, then I desire that he be recognized formally as protector of my heir. If my queen perish and my heir survive, then I stipulate that FitzChivalry Farseer is to reign as regent until such time as my heir is able to assume the throne. And if none survive me, neither father, nor queen nor heir, then it is my will that FitzChivalry Farseer be recognized as my heir. It is not my wish that my younger brother Regal Farseer inherit my crown. I do most ardently urge that my dukes recognize and affirm my will in this matter.’ I paused to catch my breath. ‘And his signature is below it.’

‘And this would have been your crown.’ The Fool’s scarred fingertips traced the rim of the simple circlet. ‘Not a jewel to be touched. And sword-steel, by the feel of it. Wait, wait! Not so plain, perhaps. Here. What is this?’

I took the crown from him and tilted it to the candlelight. It was engraved into the plain circlet. ‘A charging buck.’

‘He gave you that emblem.’

‘Verity did,’ I said quietly. My voice tightened up a notch as I observed, ‘It’s just the charging buck. There is no slash across it to mark me a bastard.’

There was a very long silence. The candles burned and at the other end of the room a log slumped on the hearth. ‘Do you wish it had come to pass?’ the Fool asked me.

‘No! Of course not!’ That would have been like wishing death on Shrewd and Kettricken and her unborn child. ‘But … I do wish I had known. There were times when it would have meant a great deal to me.’ A tear tracked down my cheek. I let it fall.

‘And not now?’

‘Oh, and still now. To know he thought me worthy, to guard his queen and his child. And to step up and claim the throne after him.’

‘Then you never wished to be king?’

‘No.’ Liar. But the lie was so old and so oft repeated that most of the time I believed it.

He gave a small sigh. When I realized it was of relief, not sadness for the smallness of my ambitions, I wondered why. He answered before I asked.

‘When Chade told me you had been formally acknowledged, and that most of the folk there were inclined to lionize you and welcome you home, I worried. And when my fingers touched your crown, I feared.’

‘Feared what?’

‘That you would want to stay here at Buckkeep Castle. That you would enjoy being seen as what you have always been, not the King-in-Waiting but the King-in-the-Shadows.’

Such a title to give me. ‘And that made you fear … what?’

‘That you would be reluctant to leave the acclaim you had finally earned. That you would go without heart to my errand.’

His errand. A return to my old role as assassin. To deflect him from any thoughts of the murders he’d assigned me, I hastily mentioned his other errand. ‘Fool. I will do all I can to find the son you suspect you have left somewhere. Doubtless it would make my task much easier if you could recall for me the women you have lain with who might have borne such a child, and when it might have happened.’

He gave a snort of displeasure. ‘Fitz! Have you listened not at all to what I told you? There is no such woman, nor a child conceived in that way. I told you that.’

My mind reeled. ‘No. No, you didn’t. I am sure that if you had told me such a thing, I would have remembered it. And that I would have immediately asked, as I do now, then how have you made a son?’

‘You don’t listen,’ he said sadly. ‘I explain things, quite clearly, but if it’s not what you expect to hear, you set it aside. Fitz. This crown. Would it fit?’

‘It’s not a crown, not really.’ He had changed the subject again. I knew that he would not explain until he decided to do it. I tried to conceal my relief that he’d let me get away with my deflection as I turned the cold steel in my hands. The last time I’d worn a crown, it had been wooden and decorated with roosters. No. Don’t summon that memory now. I lifted the circlet and set it on my head. ‘It fits, I suppose. I’m not sure how it’s supposed to fit.’

‘Let me touch it.’ He rose and groped his way around the end of the table to where I sat. His hands felt for me, found a shoulder, the side of my face and then fluttered up to my head and the crown there. He lifted it slightly, and then, with no self-consciousness at all, measured the length of my hair. He walked his fingers down my face, touching the break in my nose, the old scar, the scruff of beard on my chin. If anyone else had done it, it would have felt invasive. Insulting. But I knew he was comparing what I looked like now to what he recalled.

He cleared his throat then lifted the circlet in his hands. He spoke more gravely than I had ever heard him as he uttered the words, ‘FitzChivalry Farseer. I crown you King-in-the-Shadows of the Six Duchies.’ He set the circlet on my head, settling it carefully. The steel was cold and heavy. It settled there as if it would never move again. He cleared his throat once more and after a pause he added, ‘You’re a handsome man still, Fitz. Not as pretty as before Regal broke your face. But you’ve aged well, I judge.’

‘That old Skill-healing,’ I shrugged. ‘My body just keeps repairing itself, whether I wish it or not.’

I took off the steel crown and set it on top of the oily canvas that had sheltered it. Light ran along the edge of it like blood on a swordblade.

‘I wish that were my situation,’ the Fool returned. His gaze went back to the candles. For a long time, we were both silent. Then he said softly, ‘Fitz. My eyes. Being blind … they used that. To make me fearful and cowering. I need to see. I dread the thought of setting out on our quest still blinded. I will if I must. But … Could you …’

So much for my deflection. He was still planning murders. I had told him I could not go on his quest, but he persisted in ignoring what I’d said. Let it go. ‘Tell me what they did to your eyes,’ I said as quietly.

He held up a helpless hand. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps they did not even intend to do it, but once it was done, they made full use of it. They … oh, Fitz. There was a beating. And another one. My eyes were swollen shut. And another beating. And—’

I stopped him. ‘And when the swelling went down, you could no longer see.’

He drew in a deep breath. I saw how he fought to tell me a tale of things he wanted only to forget. ‘At first, I kept thinking it was night. Or that I was in a dark cell. They did that some times. If you are in the dark always, you can’t tell how much time has passed. I think, I think that sometimes they brought me water and food at very long intervals, and sometimes they brought me food quickly. To confuse me about time passing. It was a long time before I realized I couldn’t see. And a longer time before I knew it wasn’t going away.’

‘That’s enough. I just needed to know a bit, to help me.’

Another silence. Then he whispered, ‘Will you try now?’

I was silent. To do so would risk my own vision. Could I tell him that now, while such hope burned in his face? He looked more like my old Fool than he had since Aslevjal. His vision was so important to him. Restoring it was key to his locating his son, and his ridiculous quest to assassinate all the Servants was the only purpose that he had left to him. Last night I’d had the triumph of a dream I’d never allowed myself to dream. Could I destroy his hopes today?

I’d be careful. So careful. Surely I’d be able to tell if I were endangering myself?

Was I more like Chade than I wished to be? Did I always want to find out how far I could push the magic, what I could do if no one restrained me? I pushed aside the itching question.

‘Now? Why not?’ I said. I pushed my chair back and walked around the table to him. ‘Face me,’ I told him quietly. Obediently, he turned away from the candles. I pulled one of them closer and studied his face in its flickering light. He had scarring on the tops of his cheeks, right below the deep hollows under his eyes. It was the sort of puckering seen on the faces of men who have been in many fist-fights. The skin splits easily where flesh is a thin layer over bone. I moved my chair, placing it so that I faced him. I sat down. ‘I’m going to touch you,’ I warned him and took his chin in my hand. I turned his face slowly from side to side, studying the scars that meticulous torture and crude battering had left there. I remembered suddenly how Burrich had studied my face after Galen had beaten me. I set two fingers to his face and pressed gently as I traced a circle around his left eye. He winced more than once. Then the right. It was the same. I guessed at bone that had fractured and healed unevenly. In one place, there was a definite dent in his facial bones near his temple. Touching that made me feel queasy. But could that have been what blinded him? I didn’t know. I took a deep breath. I would be careful this time. I vowed I would not risk either of us. I set my hands to both sides of his face. I closed my eyes. ‘Fool,’ I said softly. And just that easily, I found him.

And the Fool was there. The last time, he had been deeply unconscious, unaware of how I moved through him with his blood. Now I felt his hands come to rest on mine. That would help. I knew how his face had looked but he would recall how his face had felt. I started with my fingertips under his eyes. I called to mind the drawings in Chade’s old scrolls from the Flayer, and the human skull that probably still reposed in the cabinet in the corner. I whispered as our hands moved together. ‘When adjacent bone breaks, sometimes it fuses incorrectly. Here. Feel that? We need to undo that.’

And so we worked, not quickly. We moved bone, bit by tiny bit. Where his face had broken, it had healed with ridges and seams. Some reminded me of the cracks one makes when one taps a hard-boiled egg before shelling it. It was not something to be hurried, the painstaking exploration of the bones of his face. As we worked, touch and Skill combined, and we followed one fine crack down from the lower rim of his left eye to his upper jaw. The tops of his cheekbones were a maze of tiny cracks. At the outer corner of his right eye, a hard blow had crushed bone, leaving an indentation that pressed on the tissue beneath it. We worked for some time, moving tiny bits of bone to both ease pressure and fill the hollow.

To describe it makes it seem a simple thing. It wasn’t. The tiny movements of minuscule motes of bone were still a breaking away and a reforming. I clenched my jaws against the Fool’s pain until my own head pounded with it. We did no more than the lower expanses below both his eyes. My strength was flagging and my determination failing me when the Fool lifted his hands from the backs of mine.

‘Stop. Stop, Fitz. I am so tired now. It hurts. And the pain wakens all the memories.’

‘Very well,’ I agreed hoarsely, but it took some time for me to separate my awareness from his body. I felt as if I returned to my own flesh from a long and vivid nightmare. The last step of that withdrawal was my lifting of my hands from his face. When I opened my eyes to regard him, the room swam before me. I felt a moment of terror. I’d gone too far and damaged my sight! But it was only weariness. As I stared, the dim room yielded to my vision. I shuddered with relief. The candles had burned down to half their length. I did not know how much time had passed, but my shirt was sweated to my back and my mouth as dry as if I had run to Buckkeep Town and back. As soon as I released the Fool from my touch, he dropped his face into his hands and cradled it, his elbows on the table.

‘Fool. Sit up. Open your eyes. Tell me if we accomplished anything.’

He obeyed me but he shook his head as he did so. ‘I did not close my eyes. I kept them open. Hoping. But nothing changed.’

‘I’m sorry.’ And I was. I was sorry he was blind and fiercely glad I had not lost my own sight trying to heal his. I had to ask myself how hard I had truly tried. Had I been holding back? I didn’t want to think I had, but I could not find an honest answer. I thought of telling the Fool my fear. What would he ask of me? That I help him regain sight in one eye by giving up one of mine? Would he demand that much of me? Would I agree or deny him? I measured myself and found I was less courageous than I’d believed. And more selfish. I leaned back in my own chair and closed my eyes for a time.

I jolted awake when the Fool touched my arm.

‘So you were asleep. You suddenly became very quiet. Fitz. Will you be all right?’ There was apology in his voice.

‘I will. I’m just very tired. Last night’s … revelation exhausted me. And I didn’t sleep well.’ I reached up to rub my eyes, and flinched at my own touch. My face was swollen and warm to the touch, as if I’d been in a fight.