Fool’s Quest

‘Fitz, what were you doing?’ he demanded, as if he had caught me in some foul and disgusting act.

I tried to draw breath to respond. He looked away from me and I became aware that someone else had entered the room. Nettle. I knew her as she brushed against my Skill-sense. ‘What happened here?’ she demanded, and then as she stepped close enough to see the Fool’s bared back, she gasped in dismay. ‘Did Fitz do this?’ she demanded of Chade.

‘I don’t know. Build up the fire and bring more candles!’ he ordered in a trembling voice as he sank into the chair I had left empty. He set his shaking hands on his knees and leaned down toward me. ‘Boy! What were you doing?’

I’d remembered how to pull air into my lungs. ‘Trying to stop …’ I pulled in another breath, ‘the poisons.’ It was so hard to roll over. I ached in every fibre of my body. When I set my hands to the floor to try to lever myself up, they were wet. Slippery. I lifted them and brought them up to my eyes. They were dripping with watery blood and fluid. Chade shoved a table napkin into my hands.

Nettle had thrown wood on the fire and it was catching. Now she kindled fresh candles and replaced the ones that had burned to stubs. ‘It stinks,’ she said, looking at the Fool. ‘They’re all open and running.’

‘Heat clean water,’ Chade told her.

‘Shouldn’t we summon the healers?’

‘Too much to explain, and if he dies it were better that it did not have to be explained at all. Fitz. Get up. Talk to us.’

Nettle was like her mother, stronger than one expected a small woman to be. I had managed to sit up and she seized me under my arms and helped me to my feet. I caught my weight on the chair and nearly overset it. ‘I feel terrible,’ I said. ‘So weak. So tired.’

‘So now perhaps you know how Riddle felt after you burned his strength so carelessly,’ she responded tartly.

Chade took command of the conversation. ‘Fitz. Why did you cut the Fool like this? Did you quarrel?’

‘He didn’t cut the Fool.’ Nettle had found the water I’d left warming by the fire. She wet the same cloth I’d used earlier, wrung it out, and wiped it gingerly down the Fool’s back. Her nose wrinkled and her mouth was pinched tight in disgust at the foul liquids she smeared away. She repeated the action and said, ‘He was trying to heal him. All of this has been pushed from the inside out.’ She spared me a disdainful glance. ‘Sit on the hearth before you fall over. Did you give a thought to simply putting a pulling poultice on this instead of recklessly attempting a Skill-healing on your own?’

I took her suggestion and attempted to collapse back to the hearth in a controlled fashion. As neither of them was looking at me, it was a wasted effort. ‘I didn’t,’ I said, beginning an attempt to explain that I had not, at first, intended to heal him. Then I stopped. I wouldn’t waste my time.

Chade had suddenly sat forward with an enlightened expression on his face. ‘Ah! Now I understand. The Fool must have been strapped to a chair with spikes protruding from the back, and the strap slowly tightened to force him gradually onto the spikes. If he struggled, the wounds became larger. As the strap was tightened, the spikes went deeper. These old injuries appear to me as if he held out for quite a long time. But I would suspect there was something on the spikes, excrement or some other foul matter, intended to deliberately trigger a long-term infection.’

‘Chade. Please,’ I said weakly. The image he painted made me queasy. I hoped the Fool had remained unconscious. I did not really want to know how the Servants had caused his wounds. Nor did I want him to remember.

‘And the interesting part of that,’ Chade went on heedless of my plea, ‘is that the torturer was employing a philosophy of torment that I’ve never encountered before. I was taught that for torture to be effective at all, the victim must be allowed an element of hope; hope that the pain would stop, hope that the body could still heal, and so on. If you take that away, what has the subject to gain by surrendering his information? In this case, if he was aware that his wounds were deliberately being poisoned, once the spikes had pierced his flesh, then—’

‘Lord Chade! Please!’ Nettle looked revolted.

The old man stopped. ‘Your pardon, Skillmistress. Sometimes I forget …’ He let his words trail away. Nettle and I both knew what he meant. The type of dissertation he had been delivering was fit only for his apprentice or fellow assassin, not for anyone with normal sensibilities.

Nettle straightened and dropped the wet cloth in the bowl of water. ‘I’ve cleaned his wounds as well as water can. I can send down to the infirmary for a dressing.’

‘No need to involve them. We have herbs and unguents here.’

‘I’m sure you do,’ she responded. She looked down on me. ‘You look terrible. I suggest we ask a page to fetch you breakfast in your room below. He’ll be told that you over-indulged last night.’

‘I’ve just the lad for the job,’ Chade declared abruptly. ‘His name is Ash.’

He flicked a glance at me and I did not betray to Nettle that I’d already met the lad. ‘I’m sure he’ll do fine,’ I agreed quietly, even as I wondered what plan Chade was unfolding.

‘Well, then I’ll leave you two. Lord Feldspar, I’ve been informed by Lady Kettricken that you begged for a brief audience with her tomorrow afternoon. Don’t be late. You should join those waiting outside her private audience chamber.’

I gave her a puzzled glance. ‘I’ll explain,’ Chade assured me. More of his plans unfurling. I held in a sigh and smiled weakly at Nettle as she left. When Chade rose to seek out his healing herbs and unguents, I unfolded myself gingerly. My back was stiff and sore and the elegant shirt was pasted to me with sweat. I used what water was left in the pot to cleanse my hands. Then I tottered over to claim a seat at the table.

‘I’m surprised Nettle knew the way here.’

‘Dutiful’s choice. Not mine,’ Chade replied brusquely. He spoke from across the room. ‘He’s never liked my secrets. Never fully understood how necessary they are.’

He came back from a cupboard with a blue pot with a wooden stopper in it, and several rags. When he opened it, the pungency of the unguent stung my nose and somewhat cleared my head. I rose and before he could touch the Fool, I took the rags and medicine from him. ‘I’ll do it,’ I told him.

‘As you wish.’

It troubled me that the Fool was still unaware of us. I set my hand to his shoulder and quested slightly toward him.

‘Ah-ah!’ Chade warned me. ‘None of that. Let him rest.’

‘You’ve grown very sensitive to Skill-use,’ I commented as I scooped some of the unguent onto the rag and pushed it into one of the smaller wounds on the Fool’s back.

‘Or you’ve grown more careless in how you use it. Think on that, boy. And report to me while you repair what you’ve done.’

‘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

An Exchange of Substance

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.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘A bit. Fitz. I don’t remember the end of last night. We were talking at the table, and now I’m waking up in the bed.’ His hand groped toward his lower back and cautiously touched the dressings there. ‘What’s this?’

‘An abscess on your back opened. You fainted, and while you could not feel the pain, I cleaned it out and bandaged it. And a few others.’

‘They hurt less. The pressure is gone,’ he admitted. It was painful to watch his progress as he manoeuvred his body to the edge of the bed. He worked to get out of the bed with as few motions as possible. ‘If you would put the food out?’ he asked quietly, and I heard his unvoiced request that I leave him to care for himself.

Under the hopping kettle lid I found a layer of pale dumplings over a thick gravy containing chunks of venison and root vegetables. I recognized one of Kettricken’s favourite dishes and wondered if she were personally selecting the Fool’s menus. It would be like her.

By the time I had set out the Fool’s food, he was making his way to the hearth and his chair. He moved with more certainty, still sliding his feet lest there be an obstacle, still leading with an outstretched hand, tottering and wavering, but not needing nor asking my help. He found the chair and lowered himself into it. He did not allow his back to rest against the chair. As his fingers butterflied over the cutlery, I said quietly, ‘After you’ve eaten, I’d like to change the dressings on your back.’

‘You won’t really “like” to do it, and I won’t enjoy it, but I can no longer have the luxury of refusing such things.’

‘That’s true,’ I said after his words had fallen down a well of silence. ‘Your life still hangs in the balance, Fool.’

He smiled. It did not look pretty: it stretched the scars on his face. ‘If it were only my life, old friend, I would have lain down beside the road and let go of it long ago.’

I waited. He began to eat. ‘Vengeance?’ I asked quietly. ‘It’s a poor motive for doing anything. If you take vengeance it doesn’t undo what they did. Doesn’t restore whatever they destroyed.’ My mind went back through the years. I spoke slowly, not sure if I wanted to share this even with him. ‘One drunken night of ranting, of shouting at people that were not there,’ I swallowed the lump in my throat, ‘and I realized that no one could go back in time and undo what they’d done to me. No one could unhurt me. And I forgave them.’