The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy: Fool’s Errand, The Golden Fool, Fool’s Fate

‘Choose,’ I told him again.

He met my eyes, looked away, then met them again. When he looked away a second time, I felt some of the fight go out of him. Then his face twisted with misery as he stared past me. ‘But I have to go back to her,’ he gasped out. He drew breath raggedly, and tried to explain. ‘I don’t expect you to understand. You’re nothing but a hound sent to track me down and drag me back. Doing your duty is all you know. But I have to go after her. She is my life, the breath in my body … she completes me. We have to be together.’

Well. You won’t be. I came a knife’s edge away from saying those words, but I did not. Factually, I told him, ‘I do understand. But that doesn’t change what I have to do. It doesn’t even change what you have to do.’

I got off him as Lord Golden approached. ‘Badgerlock, that is Prince Dutiful, heir to the Farseer Throne,’ he reminded me sharply.

I decided to play the role he’d left open for me. ‘And that’s why he’s still got all his teeth. My lord. Most boys who draw knives on me are lucky to keep any.’ I tried to sound both surly and truculent. Let the lad think Lord Golden had me on a short leash. Let him worry that I wasn’t completely under the lord’s control. It would give me an edge of mastery over him.

‘I’ll tend the horses,’ I announced, and stalked away from them into the darkness. I kept one eye and one ear on the shapes of the Fool and the Prince as I dragged off saddles, slipped bits, and wiped the horses down with handfuls of grass. Dutiful got slowly to his feet, disdaining Lord Golden’s offered hand. He brushed himself off, and when Golden asked if he had taken any harm, replied with stiff courtesy that he was as well as could be expected. Lord Golden retreated a short way, to consider the night and allow the lad to collect his shattered dignity. In a short time, Myblack and Malta were grazing as greedily as if they had never seen grass before. I had put the saddles in a row. I removed bedding from Myblack’s saddle-packs and began to make it into pallets near them. If possible, I’d steal an hour of sleep. The Prince watched me. After a moment he asked, ‘Aren’t you going to build a fire?’

‘And make it easier for your friends to find us? No.’

‘But –’

‘It’s not that cold. And there’s no food to cook anyway.’ I shook out the last blanket, then asked him, ‘Do you have any bedding in your saddle-pack?’

‘No,’ he admitted unhappily. I divided the blankets to make three pallets instead of two. I saw him pondering something. Then he added, ‘I do have food. And wine.’ He took a breath, then asked, ‘It seems a fair trade for a blanket.’ I kept a wary eye on him as he approached and began to open his saddle-packs.

‘My prince, you misjudge us. We would not think of making you sleep on the bare earth,’ Lord Golden protested in horror.

‘You might not, Lord Golden. But he would.’ He cast me a baleful glance and added, ‘He does not even accord me the courtesy one man gives to another, let alone the respect a servant should have for his sovereign.’

‘He is a rough man, my prince, but a good servant all the same.’ Lord Golden gave me a warning look.

I made a show of lowering my eyes, but muttered, ‘Respect a sovereign? Perhaps. But not a runaway boy fleeing his duty.’

Dutiful took a breath as if he would reply in fury. Then he let it out as a hiss, but leashed his anger. ‘You know nothing of what you speak about,’ he said coldly. ‘I did not run away.’

Lord Golden’s tone was much gentler than mine had been. ‘Forgive me, my lord, but that is how it must appear to us. The Queen feared at first that you had been kidnapped. But no notes of ransom arrived. She did not wish to alarm her nobles, or to offend the Outislander delegation soon to arrive for your betrothal agreement. Surely you have not forgotten that in nine more nights, the new moon brings your betrothal? For you to be absent at such a time goes beyond mere discourtesy to insult. She doubted that was your intent. Even so, she did not turn out the guards after you, as she might have done. Preferring to be subtle, she asked me to locate you and bring you safely home. And that is our only aim.’

‘I did not run away,’ he repeated stubbornly, and I saw that the accusation had stung him more sharply than I had suspected. Nonetheless, he stubbornly added, ‘But I have no intention of returning to Buckkeep.’ He had taken a bottle of wine from his pack. Now he pulled out food. Smoked fish wrapped in linen, several slabs of hard-crusted honey-cake, and two apples; hardly travelling rations, but the toothsome repast that loyal companions would supply for a prince’s enjoyment. He unfolded the linen on the grass, and began to divide the food into three portions. Dainty as a cat, he arranged the food. I thought it was well done, a show of a gracious nature by a boy in an uncomfortable situation. He uncorked the wine and set it in the middle. With a gesture he invited us, and we were not slow to respond. Little as there was, it was very welcome. The honey-cake was heavy, suety and thick with raisins. I filled my mouth with half my slab and tried to chew it slowly. I was fiercely hungry. Yet even as we attacked the food, the Prince, less hungry, spoke seriously.

‘If you try to force me to return with you, you will only get hurt. My friends will come for me, you know. She will not surrender me so easily, nor I her. And I have no desire to see you get hurt. Not even you,’ he added, meeting my stare. I had thought he intended his words as a threat. Instead, he seemed sincere as he explained, ‘I must go with her. I am not a boy running away from his duty, nor even a man fleeing an arranged marriage. I do not run away from unpleasantness. Instead, I join myself where I most belong … where I was born to belong.’ His careful unfolding of words put me in mind of Verity. His eyes travelled slowly from me to Lord Golden and back again. He seemed to be seeking an ally, or at least a sympathetic ear. He licked his lips as if taking a risk. Very quietly, he asked, ‘Have you ever heard the tale of the Piebald Prince?’

We were both silent. I swallowed food gone tasteless. Was Dutiful mad? Then Lord Golden nodded, once, slowly.

‘I am of that line. As sometimes happens in the Farseer line, I was born with the Wit.’

I did not know whether to admire his honesty, or be horrified at his naïve assumption that he had not just condemned himself to death. I kept my features motionless and did not let my eyes betray my thoughts. Desperately I wondered if he had admitted this to others at Buckkeep.

I think our lack of reaction unnerved him more than anything else we could have done. We both sat quietly, watching him. He took a gambler’s breath. ‘So you see now, why it would be best for everyone if you let me go. The Six Duchies will not follow a Witted king, nor can I forsake what my blood makes me. I will not deny what I am. That would be cowardice, and false to my friends. If I returned, it would only be a matter of time before all knew of my Wit. If you drag me back, it can only lead to strife and division amongst the nobles. You should let me go, and tell my mother you could not find me. That way is best for all.’

I looked down at the last of my portion of fish. Quietly I asked, ‘What if we decided it were best for all if we killed you? Hung you, and cut you in quarters and burned the parts near running water? And then told the Queen we had not found you?’ I looked away from the wild fear in his eyes, shamed by what I had done and yet knowing he must be taught caution. After a space: ‘Know men before you share your deepest secrets with them,’ I counselled him.

Or your kill. He came up on me as quietly as a shadow, his thought light as the wind against my skin. Nighteyes dropped a rabbit, a bit the worse for wear, on the ground beside me. He had already eaten the guts. Casually, he lifted the smoked fish from my hands, gulped it down, and then lay down beside me with a heavy sigh. He dropped his head onto his forepaws. That rabbit started up right under me. Easiest kill I’ve ever made.

The Prince’s eyes opened so wide I could see white all around them. His gaze darted from the wolf to me and back again. I don’t think he had overheard our shared thought, but he knew all the same. He leapt to his feet with an angry cry. ‘You should understand! How can you tear me from not just my bond-beast but the woman who shares that Old Blood kinship with me? How can you betray one of your own?’

I had more important questions of my own. How did you cover that much ground so quickly?

The same way his cat will, and for much the same reason. A wolf can go straight where a horse must go round. Are you ready for them to find you? With my hand resting on his back, I could feel the weariness thrumming through him. He shuddered away my concern as if it were flies on his coat. I’m not that decrepit. I brought you meat, he pointed out.

You should have eaten it all yourself.

A trace of humour. I did. The first one. You don’t think I’d be foolish enough to follow you all this way on an empty belly? That one is for you and the Scentless One. And this cub, if you so will it.

I doubt he will eat it raw.

I doubt there is sense to avoiding a fire. Come they will, and they need no light to guide them. The boy calls to her; it is like breath sighing in and out of him. He yowls it like a mating call.

I am not aware of it.

Your nose is not the only sense that you have that is not as keen as mine.

I stood up, then nudged the eviscerated rabbit with my foot. ‘I’ll make a fire and cook this.’ The Prince was staring at me silently. He was well aware I’d been having a conversation that excluded him.

‘What about drawing pursuit to us?’ Lord Golden asked. Despite his question, I knew he was hoping for the comfort of a fire and hot meat.

‘He’s already doing that.’ I gestured at the Prince with my chin. ‘Having a fire long enough to have some hot food will not make it any worse.’

‘How can you betray your own kind?’ Dutiful demanded again.

I had already puzzled out the answer to that the night before. ‘There are levels of loyalty here, my prince. And my highest loyalty is to the Farseers. As yours should be.’ He was more my own kind than I had the heart to tell him, and I ached for him. Yet my actions did not feel like a betrayal to me. Rather I imposed safe boundaries on him. As Burrich had once done for me, I thought ruefully.

‘What gives you the right to tell me where my loyalty should be?’ he demanded. The anger in his voice let me know that I had touched that very question within him.

‘You’re correct. It’s not my right, Prince Dutiful. It’s my duty. To remind you of what you seem to have forgotten. I’ll find some firewood. You might ponder what will become of the Farseer throne if you simply refuse your duty and vanish.’

Despite his weariness, the wolf heaved himself to his feet and followed me. We went back to the stream’s edge, to look for dead wood carried by higher waters and left to dry all summer. We drank first, and then I dabbed my chest with water where the Prince’s blade had scored me. Another day, another scar. Or perhaps not. It had not even bled very much. I turned from that to looking for dry wood. Nighteyes’ keener night vision helped my lesser senses, and I soon had an armload. He’s very like you, the wolf observed as we made our way back.

Family resemblance. He’s Verity’s heir.

Only because you refused to be. He’s our blood, little brother. Yours and mine.

That struck me into silence for a time. Then I pointed out, You are much more aware of human concerns than you used to be. Time was when you took no notice of such things.

True. And Black Rolf warned us both that we have twined too deeply, and that I am more man than a wolf should be, and you more wolf. We’ll pay for it, little brother. Not that we could have helped it, but that does not change it. We will suffer for how deeply our natures have meshed.

What are you trying to tell me?

You already know.

And I did. Like myself, the Prince had been brought up amongst folk who did not use the Wit. And as I had, unguided, he seemed to have not only fallen into his magic, but to be wallowing in it. Untaught, I had bonded far too deeply. In my case, I had first bonded to a dog when we were both young, and far too immature to consider the implications of such a joining. Burrich had forcibly separated us. At the time, I had hated him for it, a hate that lasted years. Now I looked at the Prince, in the full throes of his obsession with the cat, and counted myself lucky that when I had bonded, there had only been the puppy involved. Somehow, his attachment to his cat had grown to include a young woman of Old Blood. When I took him back to Buckkeep, he would lose not only his companion, but also a woman he believed he loved.

What woman?

He speaks of a woman, one of Old Blood. Probably one of those women who rode with him.

He speaks of a woman, but he does not smell of a woman. Does not that strike you odd?

I pondered that on my way back to camp. I dropped the wood in a small tumble. As I set my fuel and then shaved a dry stick for tinder, I watched the boy. He had tidied away the linen napkin but left out the bottle of wine. Now he sat morosely on a blanket, his knees drawn up to his chin, staring out at the deepening night.

I dropped all my guards and quested towards him. The wolf was right. He keened for his Wit-partner, but I was not sure if he was even aware of doing it. It was a sad little seeking he sent forth, like a lost pup whimpering for its mother. It grated on my nerves, once I was aware of it. It was not just that he would call his friends down on us; it was the whining aspect of it that appalled me. It made me want to cuff him. Instead, as I worked with my tinder and flint, I asked callously, ‘Thinking of your girl?’

His head swivelled towards me, startled. Lord Golden flinched at the directness of my question. I bent deeper to puff gently at the tiny spark I had conjured up. It glowed, then became a pale, licking flame.

The Prince reached for a measure of dignity. ‘I am always thinking of her,’ he said softly.

I tented several skinny sticks over my tiny fire. ‘So. What’s she look like?’ I spoke with a soldier’s crude interest, the inflection learned from many a meal with the guardsmen at Buckkeep. ‘Is she …?’ I made the unmistakable, universal gesture, ‘any good?’

‘Shut up!’ He spat the words savagely.

I leered at Lord Golden knowingly. ‘Ah, we both know what that means. It means he don’t know. At least, not first hand. Or maybe it’s only his hand that knows.’ I leaned back and smirked at him challengingly.

‘Badgerlock!’ Lord Golden rebuked me. I think I had truly scandalized him.

I didn’t take the hint. ‘Well, that’s always how it is, isn’t it? He’s just a moony boy for her. Bet he’s never even kissed her, let alone …’ I repeated the gesture.

The taunting had the desired effect. As I added larger sticks to the flames, the Prince stood up indignantly. The firelight revealed that his colour was high and his nostrils pinched with anger. ‘It isn’t like that!’ he grated. ‘She isn’t some … Not that I expect you to understand anything other than whores! She’s a woman worth waiting for, and when we come together, it will be a higher and sweeter thing than you can imagine. Hers is a love to be earned, and I will prove myself worthy of her.’

Inside, I bled for him. They were a boy’s words, taken from minstrel tellings, a lad’s imaginings of something he had never experienced. The innocence of his passion blazed in him, and his idealistic expectations shone in his eyes. I tried to summon some withering crudity worthy of the role I had chosen, but could not force it past my lips. The Fool saved me.

‘Badgerlock!’ Lord Golden snapped. ‘Enough of this. Just cook the meat.’

‘My lord,’ I acknowledged gruffly. I gave Dutiful a sidelong sneer that he refused to see. As I picked up the stiff rabbit and the knife, Lord Golden spoke more gently to the Prince.

‘Does she have a name, this lady you so admire? Have I met her at court?’ Lord Golden was courteously curious. Somehow the warmth in his voice made it flattering that he would care to ask such a question. Dutiful was instantly charmed, not only despite his earlier irritation with me, but perhaps because of it. Here was a chance for him to prove himself a well-bred gentleman, to ignore my crass interest and reply as politely as if I did not exist.

He smiled as he looked down at his hands, the smile of a boy with a secret sweetheart. ‘Oh, you will not have met her at court, Lord Golden. Her kind is not to be found there. She is a lady of the wild woods, a huntress and a forester. She does not hem handkerchiefs in a garden on a summer’s day, nor huddle within walls by a hearth when the wind begins to blow. She is free to the open world, her hair blowing in the wind, her eyes full of the night’s mysteries.’

‘I see.’ Lord Golden’s voice was warm with a worldly man’s tolerance for a youth’s first romance. He came to sit on his saddle, next to the boy and yet slightly above him. ‘And does this paragon of the forest have a name? Or a family?’ he asked paternally.

Dutiful looked up at him and shook his head wearily. ‘There, you see what you ask? That is why I am so weary of the court. As if I cared whether she has family or fortune! It is she whom I love.’

‘But she must have a name,’ Lord Golden protested tolerantly as I slid my knife blade under the rabbit’s hide and loosened it. ‘Else what do you whisper to the stars at night when you dream of her?’ I peeled the hide from the rabbit as Lord Golden stripped the layers of secrets from the boy’s romance. ‘Come. How did you meet her?’ Lord Golden picked up the wine bottle, drank delicately from it, and then handed it to the Prince.

The lad turned it in his hands thoughtfully, glanced up at Golden’s smile, and drank. Then he sat, the bottle held loosely in his hands, the neck of it pointed towards the small fire that limned his features against the night. ‘My cat took me to her,’ he confided at last. He took another sip of the wine. ‘I had slipped out one night to go hunting with her. Sometimes, I just have to get away on my own. You know what it is like at court. If I say I will ride at dawn, I arise and there are six gentlemen ready to accompany me, and a dozen ladies to bid us farewell. If I say I will walk in the gardens after dinner, I cannot turn a corner in the path without finding a lady writing poetry beneath a tree, or encountering some noble who wishes me to have a word with the Queen on his behalf. It’s stifling, Lord Golden. In truth, I do not know why so many choose to come to court when they do not have to. Had I the privilege of freedom, I would leave it.’ He drew himself up suddenly and looked all around at the night. ‘I have left it,’ he declared abruptly, almost as if it surprised him. ‘I’m here, away from all that pretence and manipulation. And I’m happy. Or I was happy, until you came to drag me back.’ And he glared at me, as if it were all my doing, and Lord Golden an innocent bystander.

‘So. You went out hunting with your cat one night, and this lady …?’ Lord Golden deftly picked up the threads that had interested him.

‘I went out hunting with my cat and –’

The cat’s name? Nighteyes pressed with sudden urgency.

I grunted mockingly. ‘Sounds to me as if the cat and the lady got the same name. “Neverspeakit.”’ I skewered the rabbit on my sword. I didn’t like to cook on the end of my blade; it was bad for the tempering, but to get a green branch I would have had to leave the conversation and go to the forest’s edge and I wanted to hear what he had to say.

The Prince replied scathingly to my comment. ‘I would think that you, as a Piebald, would know that beasts have their own names, which they reveal to you at a time they think is proper. My cat has not shared her true name with me yet. When I am worthy of that confidence, I will have it.’

‘I’m not a “Piebald”,’ I asserted gruffly.

Dutiful ignored me. He took a breath and spoke earnestly to Lord Golden. ‘And the same is true of my lady. I do not need to know her name when it is her essence that I love.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Lord Golden comforted him. He hitched himself closer to the Prince and went on, ‘But I would hear of your first meeting with the fair one. For I confess that at heart, I am as soft a romantic as any court lady weeping at a minstrel’s tale.’ He spoke as if what Dutiful had said was of no consequence. But a profound sense of wrongness washed through me. It was true that Nighteyes had not immediately shared his true name with me, but the cat and the Prince had been together for months. I turned the sword, but the rabbit flopped around on the blade, its body cavity a loose fit, the seared side turning back to the flames. Grumbling, I pulled it out of the fire and burnt my fingers jamming it more firmly onto the weapon. I thrust it back over the flames and held it there.

‘Our first meeting,’ Dutiful mused. A rueful smile curved his mouth. ‘I fear that has yet to happen. In some ways. In all the important ways, I have met her. The cat showed her to me, or rather, she revealed herself to me through the cat.’

Lord Golden cocked his head and gave the boy an interested, if confused look. The lad’s smile widened.

‘It is hard to explain to someone with no experience of the Wit. But I will try. Through my magic, I can share thoughts with the cat. Her senses enhance my own. Sometimes, I can lie abed at night, and surrender my mind to hers, and become one with her. I see what she sees, feel what she feels. It’s wonderful, Lord Golden. Not debased and bestial as others would have you believe. It brought the world to life around me. If there was some way I could share the experience with you, I would, just so that you could understand it.’

The boy was so earnest in his proselytizing. I glimpsed the quick flash of amusement through Lord Golden’s eyes, but I am sure the Prince saw only his sympathetic warmth. ‘I shall have to imagine it,’ he murmured.

Prince Dutiful shook his head. ‘Ah, but you cannot. No one can, who is not born with this magic. That is why all persecute us. Because, lacking this magic, they become filled with envy and it turns to hatred.’

‘I think fear might have something to do with it,’ I muttered, but the Fool shot me a glance that bade me shut up. Chastened, I turned away from them and rotated the smoking rabbit.

‘I think I can imagine your communion with the cat. How wondrous it must be to share the thoughts of such a noble creature! How rich to experience the night and the hunt with one so attuned to the natural world! But I confess, I do not understand how she could reveal this wondrous lady to you … unless she guided you to her?’

How pleasant to feel her filthy claws raking your belly!

Shush.

Cats noble creatures? Spitting, carrion-breathed sneaks.

With difficulty, I ignored Nighteyes’ asides and focused on the conversation while appearing to be engrossed with the rabbit. The Prince was smiling and shaking his head at Lord Golden, totally enraptured now with speaking of his love. Had I ever been that young?

‘It was not like that. One night, as the cat and I moved through a forest of black trees, lit to silver by the moon’s radiance, I perceived we were not alone. It was not that uncomfortable sensation of being watched. This was more like … Imagine if the wind was the breath of a woman on the back of your neck, if the scent of the forest was her perfume, the chuckling of a brook her amusement. There was nothing there I had not seen or heard or felt a hundred times, and yet that night it was more than it had ever been before. At first, I thought I was imagining it, and then, through the cat, I began to know more of her. I felt her watching us as we hunted together, and I knew that she approved of me. When I shared fresh meat with the cat from her kill, I sensed that the woman shared its savour. The cat’s senses sharpen my own, I told you that. But suddenly I was seeing things, not as the cat or as myself, but as she saw things. I saw how the tumbled gap in a stone wall framed a struggling sapling, I saw the infinite pattern in the ripple of moonlight on a stream’s rapids, I saw … I saw the night world as her poetry.’