Fool's Quest (29 page)

“There you are! Why were you hiding in the fog? Now we can feel each other,” Thick told me companionably. He squeezed my hand and smiled up at me.

The cold shock of reality seizing me was like being flung directly from a fever back to health. Everything that had seemed distant and vaguely sad now assaulted me full-force. My child stolen by folk cruel enough to burn horses alive in my stables. My people dulled down to the sensibilities of sheep. A killing rage rose in me, and Thick took a step back from me. “Stop,” he begged me. “Don't feel that much!”

As soon as he released my hand, the choking miasma of despair sought to fill me. I looked at the ground. Putting up my Skill-walls at that moment was like attempting to lift the real walls of Withywoods. I felt too much to contain: too much anger, frustration, guilt, and fear. My emotions circled one another like savage dogs, tearing at my soul in passing. Block by block, I built my Skill-walls. When I looked up, Thick was nodding at me, his tongue resting on his lower lip. Lant was speaking softly and quickly to Chade, who held him by the shoulders and stared into his face as he spoke. And the Rousters were looking very unhappy at being here at all. I looked at their captain and used my Skill to push my words as well as my voice.

“You didn't want to come here. You were fine traveling down the road until you got to the carriage lane that leads here. Then you wanted to go anywhere else. Now that you are here, you feel miserable and unsettled. You see the signs, as I do, that this holding was attacked by armed men. They came and they went, and left the signs of their passage but no memory of it with my folk. There is a spell … an evil magic has been put over Withywoods, specifically to keep away those who could help us.” I took a steadying breath and straightened my back. “Please, if two of your fellows would find stabling for the horses in the sheep pens and give them whatever fodder you can find, I would be grateful. Then come inside, get warm, have food. Then we will discuss how best to follow people who have left no tracks.”

The captain of the guard regarded me with reservation. His lieutenant rolled his eyes and did not bother to conceal his disdain. Chade lifted his voice. “After you have eaten, go out in pairs and ask of the folk round and about. Look for tracks of a party of mounted soldiers. There will be a reward, in gold, for any who bring me back solid information.”

That motivated them and they were obeying orders before their captain had finished issuing them. Then Chade was beside me hissing, “Inside. Somewhere private. I need to talk to you.” He turned to FitzVigilant. “Take Thick, please, and see he is warmed and fed. Then come and find us.”

Bulen hovered until I pointed at him. “Find Dixon. Tell him to take care of everything, now. Feed those men, see that their horses are treated properly. Tell him I said he should have been at the door. Let him know I am not happy.” In all my days at Withywoods, I'd never spoken that sharply to a servant. Bulen stared at me and then set off at a run.

I led Chade past my splintered doors. His face grew grimmer as we passed a sword-scored wall and a slashed tapestry. We entered my study and I shut the door. For a moment, Chade just looked at me. Then he asked, “How could you have let this happen? I told you I needed her protected. I told you that. I've suggested, over and over, that you have a few house-soldiers or at least a Skilled apprentice here who could have summoned help. You've always been so stubborn, so insistent that you must have everything your way. Now look what you've done. Look what you've done.” His voice trailed and broke on the last words. He staggered to my desk and sat down in my chair. He bowed his face into his hands. I was so stunned by his rebuke that it took me a short time to realize he was weeping.

I had no words to offer in my own defense. It was true. Both he and Riddle had urged me to have some sort of guard, but I'd always refused, believing that I'd left violence behind me at Buckkeep Castle. Believing I could always protect my own. Until I'd left them all without a thought to save the Fool.

He lifted his face from his hands. He looked so old. “Say something!” he ordered me harshly. Tears were wet in the lines of his cheeks.

I bit back the first words that came to my mind. I would not utter another useless apology. “The minds of everyone here have been fogged. I don't know how it was done, nor how a Skill-suggestion lingers to turn folk away and make them discouraged. I don't know if it is even the Skill or a different magic used against us. But no one here recalls an attack, even though the evidence is plain throughout the house. The only one who seems to have clear memory of Winterfest eve is a stable boy named Perseverance.”

“I need to talk to him,” Chade interrupted me.

“I sent him to the steams. He took an arrow through the shoulder. And he has been rattled badly by days spent with folk who no longer recall him and treat him as if he were mad.”

“I care nothing for that!” he shouted. “I want to know what has become of my daughter!”

“Daughter?” I stared at him. Anger burned in his eyes. I thought of Shun, her Farseer features, even her green eyes. So obvious. How could I not have seen it before?

“Of course, my daughter! Why else would I go to such lengths? Why else would I have sent her here, to you, to the one person who I thought I could trust to keep her safe? Only to have you abandon her. I know who did this! Her damned mother and her brothers, but worst of all her stepfather! They've the family feeling of snakes! For years I paid Shun's family, and paid them well, to care for her. But it was never enough for them. Never. They always wanted more—more money, honors at court, grants of land, more than I could possibly give them. Her mother never had any feelings for the child! And once the grandparents were gone, her mother began to threaten her. Her pig of a husband, trying to put his hands on Shun when she was little more than a girl! Then when I removed Shun, and cut off the money, they tried to kill her!” He sputtered to a halt. There was a tap on the door. He brushed his cuff over his eyes and composed his face.

“Enter,” I called, and Tavia came in to announce that there was hot food and drink waiting for us. Even in her deadened state, she seemed to sense the tension in the room, for she withdrew swiftly after her announcement. Chade stared at her bruised face; after she left, his gaze remained fixed on the door, his thoughts miles away. I spoke into the quiet that followed. “And you never saw fit to share any of that with me?”

He flung his attention back to me. “There was never a good time to talk with you! I no longer trust our Skilling to be private, and that first evening at the inn, when I needed to talk to you, you were in such a damnable hurry to leave—”

“To get home to
my
daughter, I might point out!” My guilt was giving way to my own anger. “Chade. Listen to me. This was not an attack by Shun's family. Not unless they are capable of hiring Chalcedeans to do their dirty work. And have a stable full of white horses, and a troop of pale folk to ride them. I believe that whoever came here was actually in pursuit of the Fool. Or the messenger who preceded him.”

“A messenger preceded him?”

“There is much that
I
have not had a good time to share with
you.
So listen to me. We both need to drop our anger and contain our fear. We'll share every scrap of information we have, and then we'll act. Together.”

“If there is anything for me to act upon. You've already told me that my Shine may be dead.”

Shine. Not Shun. Shine Fallstar. It was not a smile but I showed my teeth to him. “We will discover the truth. And face it. And whatever it is, we will go after them. And we will kill them all, like the bastards we are.”

He caught a ragged breath at that, and sat up a bit straighter. I wanted to tell him that I thought perhaps Shun had been taken with Bee. But I did not want to tell him I believed that because a cat had said it might be so. The word of a cat was not to be relied upon. Another tap at the door, and FitzVigilant entered. “I don't mean to intrude, but I'd like to be included.”

I stared at him. How blind I'd been. And how stupid. Of course that was what was special about him. I looked at Chade and spoke recklessly. “And he's yours, too, isn't he?”

Chade stiffened. “And fortunately for you and your careless speech, he knows he is my son.”

“Well, it would have explained a lot to me if I had known!”

“I thought it was obvious.”

“Well, it wasn't. Not for either of them.”

“Would it have made a difference? I gave them into your care. Would you have taken better care of them if you had known?”

“ ‘Them'?” FitzVigilant broke into our sparring. He looked at his father, and in profile, I saw Chade was right. Obvious. If one were looking for it. “ ‘Them'? Do you have another son? I have a brother?”

“No,” Chade replied shortly, but I was in no mood to harbor his secrets any longer.

“No, you don't have a brother. You have a sister. And for all I know, perhaps there are other brothers and sisters that I haven't been informed about.”

“And why would I be required to inform you?” Chade raged at me. “Why is this so surprising to you, that I had lovers, that children were born? For years, I lived in near-isolation, a rat behind the walls of Buckkeep Castle. When finally I could come out, when finally I could eat an elegant meal, dance to music, and, yes, enjoy the company of lovely women, why would I not? Tell me this, Fitz. Is it not purely luck on your part that you don't have a child or two from your past? Or did you remain chaste all those years?”

After a moment, I closed my mouth.

“I thought not,” Chade said acerbically.

“If I have a sister, where is she?” Lant demanded.

“That is what we are here to discover. She was here, supposedly safe in Fitz's care. And now she has vanished.” His bitter words stung me.

“As has my own daughter, a much younger and less capable child,” I pointed out angrily. Then wondered if Bee was truly less capable than Shun. Or Shine. I glowered at him.

At that moment, there was yet another knock on the door. Chade and I both composed our faces. It was a reflex. “Enter,” we chorused, and Perseverance opened the door and stood there, confused. He looked somewhat better, despite still wearing a bloodstained shirt. “This is the stable boy I told you about,” I said to Chade. And to Perseverance, “Come in. I know you've told me your story, but Lord Chade will want to hear it all again, and with every detail you can summon to mind.”

“As you wish, sir,” he replied in a subdued voice and came into the room. He glanced at FitzVigilant and then at me.

“Are you uncomfortable speaking about him while he is here?” I asked. The boy gave a short nod and dropped his head forward. He stared at the floor.

“What did I do?” FitzVigilant demanded in a voice both agonized and affronted. He crossed over to Perseverance so swiftly that the boy shrank back from him while I took two steps forward. “Please!” he cried in a strained voice. “Just tell me. I need to know.”

“Boy, sit down. I need to talk with you.”

I wondered how Chade felt when Perseverance looked at me to see if he was to obey. In response, I nodded at a chair. He sat and then looked up at Chade with very wide eyes. FitzVigilant hovered, his eyes full of trepidation. Chade looked down at Perseverance. “You needn't be afraid, as long as you tell me the exact truth. Do you understand that?”

The lad gave a nod and then dredged up a “Yes, sir.”

“Very good.” He looked at FitzVigilant. “This is too important for me to delay. Would you go and arrange to have food brought here to us? And ask Thick to join us if he has finished eating?”

Lant met his father's eyes. “I'd like to stay and hear what he has to say.”

“I know you would. But your being in the room would color the boy's tale. As soon as I've finished speaking to him, Fitz and Thick and I will be sitting down with you to see if we can clear the cobwebs from your mind. Oh, and I've one more errand for you. Lad”—and here he turned back to my stable boy—“tell me what sort of tracks we should be looking for.”

His eyes flickered to me again. I nodded. “They rode horses, sir. Big ones, to carry heavy loads, the soldiers did, the ones who spoke a foreign tongue. Big hooves, shod well. And there were smaller mounts, white horses, very graceful but sturdy, too. The white horses that pulled the sleighs were taller than the ones the pale folk were riding. Matched pairs. The soldier troops led first, and then the sleighs went, with the riders on white horses following, and then only four soldiers at the very end. But it was snowing that night and the wind was blowing. Almost before they were out of sight, the snow was filling in their tracks and the wind was blowing it smooth.”

“Did you follow them? Did you see which direction they took?”

He shook his head and looked down. “I'm sorry, sir. I was bleeding still, and dizzy. And very cold. I went back to the manor house to try to get help. But no one recognized me. I knew Revel was dead, and my dad and granddad. I went to find my ma.” He cleared his throat. “She didn't know me. She told me to go back up to the manor house and get help there. Finally, when they opened the door, I lied. I said I had a message for Scribe FitzVigilant. So they let me in and took me to him, but he was as bad off as I was. Bulen cleaned up my shoulder and let me sleep by the fire. I tried to talk to them, to get them to go after Bee. But they said they didn't know her, and that I was a crazy beggar boy. The next morning, when I could walk a bit, I saw her horse had come back, so I took Priss and tried to go after her. But they called me a horse thief! If Bulen hadn't told them I was crazy, I don't know what would have happened to me!”

Chade's voice was calming. “You've had a hard time of it, I can tell. I know you told Fitz that you saw Bee in the sleigh. We know they took her. But what of Lady Shun? Did you see aught of her that day?”