Fool's Quest (44 page)

“Fitz,” he greeted me. “You were gone so long.”

I shut the door behind me. “How bad is the pain?” I took the vial out of my pocket as I spoke. His mouth was pinched white and I could smell the distress in his sweat.

“It's bad.” He was breathing through his open mouth.

“Ash has gone for the healer. Or rather, I should say Spark has.”

His brief smile was a grimace. “Ah. Well, better that you know. Did you bring the poppy?”

“Yes. But perhaps we should wait for the healer?”

He gave his head a quick shake. “No. I need it, boy. I can't think. And I can't keep them out.”

“Keep who out?” I looked around his room hastily. Nothing here to mix with the poppy to make it go down more easily.

“You know,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “The ones from the stones.”

That froze me where I stood. In two strides I was beside his bed. I touched his brow. Hot and dry. “Chade, I don't know what you mean. You have a fever. I think you might be hallucinating.”

He stared at me. His eyes were glittery green. “No one spoke to you during our passage? No one tries to speak to you now?” They weren't questions. They were accusations.

“No, Chade.” I feared for him.

He chewed on his lower lip. “I recognized his voice. All these years gone, but I knew my brother's voice.”

I waited.

His fingers beckoned me closer. He flicked them toward the portrait on the wall. He whispered, “Shrewd spoke to me, in the stones. He asked if I were coming to join him now.”

“Chade, your wound has gone foul and your fever has gone up. Your mind is wandering.” Why did I bother speaking the words? I knew he would not accept them. Just as I knew with plummeting despair that he could not Skill with me just now.

“You could come with us, Fitz. Whisper away with us. You'd find it a kinder awareness.” He spoke in a tone so like old King Shrewd's that a chill ran down my spine. It was too late. If I helped him reach out with the Skill right now, would he open Shine? Or willfully tatter us both away to nothing?

“Chade. Please.” I did not even know what I was asking him for. I took a breath. “Let me look at that wound.”

He shook his head slowly. “It's not the wound, Fitz. It's not the infection. At least, not that one. It's the Skill. That's what festers in me now.” He paused. He stared at the wall, taking long, slow breaths. I could not resist the impulse. I turned to look at the portrait. Nothing there. Only paint on canvas. Then he asked me, “Do you remember August Farseer?”

“Of course I do.” He'd been nephew to King Shrewd, and nephew to Chade, too, I supposed. Son of their younger sister, who had died giving birth to him. Not much older than me when we had both been sent off to the Mountain Kingdom. He was supposed to be the intermediary for Verity to speak his vows to the Mountain princess Kettricken. But even at that early stage, Regal's treachery had been at work. Verity had not meant to burn out August's mind when he had Skilled through him to assure Kettricken that he was an honorable man, and had had nothing to do with her brother's assassination. But he had. After that, August had come and gone like a flame dancing above a guttering wick. Some days he had seemed sensible. On others his mind had wandered like an old man succumbing to dotage. The Farseer throne had quietly moved him away from the court. I recalled now that he had died at Withywoods in the early days of the Red-Ship War. By then his passing had scarcely been noticed, for his mind had long since departed.

“So do I. Fitz, I should have listened to you. Maybe Shrewd was right when he said no. All those years ago. Envy cut me like a knife when he said you might have the Skill-training. They'd denied it to me, you know. And I'd wanted it so. So much.” He gave me a sickly smile. “And then … I got what I wanted. Or perhaps it got me.”

There was a brisk tap at the door. The healer. I felt a burst of relief that ebbed as rapidly as it had risen when Nettle swept into the room. I felt her Skill come with her as if it were a strong perfume. It flavored the air in the room, and I could not step back from it. She looked at me in dismay. “Not you, too,” she begged. She drew a sharp breath. “I could feel him spilling out into the Skill. I've summoned the others. I didn't expect to find you here, spilling with him.”

I stared at her. “No. I'm fine. But Chade has a high fever. I think his wound has become toxic. He's hallucinating.” I spoke quickly.

She looked at me pityingly. “No,” she said quietly. “It's worse than that. And I think you know that. It's the Skill. Once, you told me that it was like a great river, and that if a Skill-user wasn't careful, she could be swept away in it. You warned me of the danger of that pull.” She met my eyes and lifted her chin. “Not that long ago, I caught you at it. Tempting yourself with it. Letting yourself unravel into that flow of threads.”

It was true. Allowing oneself to flow into the Skill-current was intoxicating. The sense of merging and belonging beckoned as pain and worries flowed away. It felt powerful and right. I'd been tempted, and more than once. I would have felt ashamed if I had not been so frightened. And so desperate. “We have to pull him back,” I told her. I teetered on the edge of telling her why it was so important. Then feared that even if she knew, she would not let us try.

“No. Not
we.
You have to stay well back from this, Da. Because I've sensed it in you since you came back from Withywoods. The current tugs at you both.” She took in a breath, her hand set on the barely visible rise of her belly. “Oh, that Thick were here now. But even if the weather holds fine, he is still two days away.” She put her attention back on me. “It would probably be best if you left. And set your walls as tightly as you can.”

I couldn't go. Chade had clutched the blankets to his throat and was watching her as if he were a small boy and she had a switch behind her back. “I brought him poppy. For the pain. If we dull the pain, he might have more control.”

She shook her head. “He can't have it. We think that right now, the pain is what is keeping him here, in his body. It's reminding him he
has
a body.”

“He seemed fine when we spoke earlier. Well, in pain from his wound, but he made sense. We took counsel together …”

She was shaking her head at me. There was another tap at the door and Steady entered. He nodded to me and actually smiled. “Fitz! I'm glad that at last you can be yourself here at Buckkeep Castle.”

“Thank you,” I said inanely. My gaze was on Chade. He was staring up at the portrait of his brother, his mouth moving soundlessly as if he spoke to him. But Steady's full attention was on his sister as he asked Nettle, “Should you be trying this? Shouldn't you be resting?”

She smiled at him wearily. “Steady, I'm pregnant, not ill. Where are the others?”

He tipped his head toward me as if we were sharing a joke. “When she snaps her fingers, she expects the king to come at a trot. He'll be here soon, Nettle.”

“It will be only the three of you? That's not much of a Skill-coterie. You'll need me here.” I tried not to sound as desperate as I felt. I reached my hand toward Chade, thinking that if we touched, I could reach him. Nettle sharply slapped it aside.

“No. We have two Solos we can summon if we think that we need their help. Amethyst and Hardy are not very sociable but both are strong in the Skill. For now, I think those most familiar with Lord Chade can best call him back and bind him up. But not you.” Nettle answered my question and then pointed at the door. I opened my mouth to object and she told me, “You can't help us. You will only distract us, and that includes distracting Chade. And you may make yourself more vulnerable than you already are. Chade is hemorrhaging into the Skill-stream. And he's actively trying to draw you with him, whether you realize it or not.”

“I have to stay. You have to bring him back to his senses. Then, wise or not, he and I must attempt to Skill together.”

Nettle narrowed her eyes at me. “No. The very fact that you are asking this shows me that you are strongly drawn to it.”

I met her gaze.
Oh, Molly, would that you could look at me with that same stubborn look your daughter wears.
I steeled my heart. Loyalty to the Farseer reign Chade had always taught me. Above all things, even loyalty to Chade. Right now, my judgment was clearer than his. “That's not it at all. It's not the Skill-yearning. It's Bee. A short time ago, when we were talking, Chade revealed to me that his daughter Shun—Shine—has the Skill. She is untrained. And worse, he sealed her to the Skill lest she be vulnerable.” The anger on Nettle's face was building to fury. More frightening was Chade's lack of reaction to my betrayal. He was watching the wall again, his mouth hanging ajar. “He has been unable to reach her, to Skill the unlocking word to her so she can help us find her. He did not know if it was because he was weak or because the danger all around her has made her put up her Skill-walls. Together, we were going to try to break through to her.”

“After I'd told both of you to refrain from Skilling?”

“I'd forgotten that,” I said honestly.

“You expect me to believe that?” She bit off the words one by one.

“It's true! The chance to find Bee was all I thought of.”

Her look softened slightly. No, I had imagined that, for her next words were, “And knowing that, you did not think to immediately come to me, the Skillmistress, to seek my advice and expertise in this matter?” She folded her lips tightly, then, as if against her will, asked me, “Do you have any respect for me at all?”

“Of course I do!”

“You love me as your daughter. I don't doubt that. But respecting my knowledge and ability, I doubt that—” She stopped herself suddenly. She was still for a moment and then asked me calmly, “What was the word to open Shine?”

“He didn't tell me.”

She nodded gravely. “Perfect.” She pointed to the door. “Now go. I have work to do here.”

“I can help. He trusts me. I know the shape of him, I can find him and bring him back.”

“No. You can't. Even now, you are spilling and you don't even know it. You are tangled with him somehow. And he is holding on to you, trying to pull you with him.”

I opened myself, trying to feel if what she said was true. Was there a tugging? Pulling me in or …?

“Stop that!” Nettle hissed at me, and I snapped my walls back into place.

“Pull me back,” Chade said quietly. Every hair on my body stood erect.

“Verity?” I whispered. I took an inadvertent step toward him, looking into his green eyes, seeking the dark-brown gaze of the king I had served. My mind darted back to a Skill-dream, of my weary king crouched by a river of pure and shining magic, plunging his hands and arms into the silvery burning flow. And then begging me to help him, to pull him back from the draw of that liquid magic.

“Stay back, boy!” he cautioned me as my daughter stepped between Chade and me. She put both her hands on my chest.

“Da. Look at me!” she commanded, and when my gaze met hers, she promised, “If I must, I will call the guard and have you removed from this room. If I must, I will force elfbark tea down your throat until you cannot muster even a thread of Skill. I will not lose you. I need you and my sister needs you.”

“Bee,” I said quietly, and as a wave retreats from the beach, all desire for the Skill ebbed from me. I looked at Chade's glittering eyes and felt ill.

“Save him,” I begged her. “Please. Save him.”

Then I turned on my heel and left them there.

The best way I know to stop thinking is to pick up an axe and attempt to kill someone with it. I had no potential targets in the vicinity, but I've always had a vivid imagination. I took myself down to the practice yards and looked for Foxglove.

The day was clear and cold. She was well bundled, but had her charges already steaming as they went through drill after drill. She carried a wooden practice sword and employed it without restraint as she wandered down the rows of her combatants. “This arm is unguarded, flopping about and begging to be cut off,” she told one as I arrived and gave him a sound thwack to remind him of it. I stood at the edge of her territory and waited for her to notice me.

I think she was aware of me for some time but let me watch what she was doing before she approached me. It seemed to me that she had already added five new recruits to my Bastard's badge. She gave all of them permission to breathe and crossed the practice yard to me. “Well. I can't exactly be proud of my work yet, but they're coming along. I immediately put out the word that we'd be willing to take on some experienced guardsmen. We've attracted some who were put out of their units as being a bit too old or too damaged by old wounds. I'll give them a chance and we'll see who we will keep.”

“Any axemen?” I asked her.

She lifted one brow. “Lily there told me she used an axe. I've not seen her with one yet, so I can't say. Vital looks as if he might be one. Someday. Why? Do you feel as if we'll have need for that sort of guardsman in your company?”

“I thought I might find a practice partner.”

She stared at me for a moment. Then she took in a breath through her nose, stepped forward, and with no hesitation felt my upper right arm and then my forearm. Her backhand to my belly took me by surprise but I didn't lose my wind. “Are you sure you want to do this? It's not very princely.” I looked at her and after a moment, she nodded. “Very well. Lily!”

The woman she summoned was my height and well muscled. Foxglove sent her off for practice axes with weighted wooden bits. Then she asked me, “In those garments?”

I didn't want to go back up to my chambers and change. Too much time, too many thoughts nagging to explode in my brain. “It will be fine,” I said.

“No. It won't. I think there are some leather jerkins in the equipment storage. Go now so you don't keep Lily waiting.” As I turned to go, she added, “Here's something to think about. Your mind will remember how to do something and you will think you can still do it. Your body will try. And fail. Don't hurt yourself today. It will come back to you. Not quickly, and not all of it, but enough.”

I didn't believe her. But long before the end of her practice drills with her recruits, I did. Lily thrashed me. Even when I imagined her as one of the Chalcedean mercenaries who had taken my little girl, I could not defeat her. The wooden practice axe, weighted with lead to give it heft, weighed as much as a horse. I was not sure if it was mercy or pity that made Foxglove summon Lily to work with Vital. As soon as Lily left, she suggested I go to the steams and then rest. I tried not to slink as I left the scene of my defeat. The work had done its task of keeping me unaware of whatever Skill-cure they were working on Chade, but left me in a pit of bleakness that made my elfbark darkness look like a merry sleigh ride. I'd just proved to myself that even if I had the opportunity this moment to reclaim my daughter, she'd probably watch me die in the attempt. I think my morose expression kept anyone from speaking to me in the steams. I might appear to be the midst of my fourth decade of life to others, but it had been more than thirty years since I'd been the muscled oarsman and warrior I'd been in my twenties. My body reflected the life I'd lived for the past twenty years as a gentleman farmer.

When I stumped up to the door of my chamber, I found Steady leaning against the door. I unlocked it and without a word he followed me inside. When I closed the door behind us, he spoke. “That's going to be an amazing black eye by tomorrow.”

“Probably.” I looked at Burrich and Molly's son. The bottom of my despair opened and I fell through it. Burrich's eyes, Molly's mouth … “I don't know how to save your little sister. Today, for one moment, we had that chance with Chade. And it's gone now. I don't know where Bee is and even if I did, I doubt I can win her back. My Skill is tattering, I can't wield a blade like I used to. Just when she needs me most, I can't help her.” The useless, stupid words tumbled from my mouth. His face went almost blank. Then he took two short steps toward me, seized me by my upper arms, and put his face close to mine. “Stop it,” he snarled. “You're drowning us all in hopelessness when we need to be strong. Fitz, after my father died, you came to us. And you were the one who taught me to be a man. In El's name, live up to that! Get your walls up! And hold them.”

I felt like a man who suddenly realizes his purse has been cut. That sudden surprise and moment of checking to see if I could be mistaken. No. My walls were down and indeed I'd been letting my emotions overflow like a river in flood. I slammed them up and then realized that I'd drawn on Steady's strength to do so. True to his name, he stood before me like a rock, clutching my arms. “Have you got them?” he asked me gruffly, and I nodded. “Hold them, then,” he ordered, and released me, stepping back. I thought he staggered a little, but at my concerned look he smiled. “I caught my heel on your rug. That's all.”

I sat down on the edge of my bed and checked my walls again. “Are they tight enough?” I asked him and he nodded slowly. “I'm not myself,” I said, hating the feeble excuse.

“No. You're not, Tom … Fitz. We all hate that we have to wait and hope for word, but it's all we can do. No one blames you for what happened. How could anyone have foreseen it? We are up against a magic as unstoppable as when the Red Ships were Forging our towns.” He smiled small. “Or so I suspect. That was before my time.”

I nodded at him, unconsoled.

He sat down beside me. “Do you remember anything unusual about your passage through the stones?”

“I think Chade fainted just as he pulled me into the stone, so he was not using his Skill to help us make the passage.” I didn't like to remember it. “I was aware that we were in a passage. Aware of my identity in a way I hadn't been before when traveling through the stones. I was trying to hold on to Chade and keep him together. But to do that, I had to let down my own walls. If you know what I mean.”

He nodded, his brow furrowed. He spoke slowly. “You know that I'm not talented in the Skill. I sense it. I have a lot of strength that I can lend, but I can't do much in the way of directing it. I can help someone else, but not really initiate it.”

I nodded.

“I'm not really sure that I'm Skilled at all. I think I'm just a person who can give strength. Like my father.”

I nodded again. “Burrich excelled at that.”

He swallowed. “I scarcely knew my little sister. Withywoods was far away, and she seemed to not really be a part of my life. I saw her a few times, but she seemed, well, too simple. As if she'd never really be a person. And so I didn't get to know her. I regret that now. I want you to know that if you need my strength in any way, you've but to ask me for it.”

I knew he was sincere. And I knew there was precious little he could do for me. “Then look after your older sister and protect her in any way you can. I do not know what lies ahead for me. Be here for her and protect her.”

“Of course.” He looked at me as if I were slightly daft. “She's my sister. And I'm part of the King's Own Coterie. What else would I do?”

What else indeed? I felt a bit foolish. “When you left Chade, was he better?”

His face grew grave. He looked down and then lifted his eyes to meet my gaze squarely. “No. He's not.” He ran his fingers back through his hair, then took a deep breath and asked me, “How much do you know of his activities with the pillars and stones?”

My heart sank. “Next to nothing, I imagine.”

“Well, he has always had a very keen interest in Aslevjal. He was convinced that the Elderlings had left a great amount of knowledge behind in those little blocks of memory stone and in the carvings on the walls. And so he would go there. At first, he would let the coterie know where he was going and how long he expected to be gone. But as his visits became more frequent, Nettle endeavored to restrict him, saying that as Skillmistress she had the right to do so. He countered that the knowledge he was gaining was well worth the risk to ‘one old man' as he put it. It took King Dutiful stepping in to stop his travels.

“Or so we thought. He was no longer leaving Buckkeep and going up to the Witness Stones. No. He had discovered from his studies of the markings that there was another passage-stone, one that apparently been incorporated into the building of Buckkeep Castle itself. Or perhaps it was originally there. We have hints that sometimes portal-stones were actually inside strongholds. There is some information that leads us to believe there was a circle of passage-stones built into the Great Hall of the Duke of Chalced's throne room. Long since toppled, our spies say … Oh. Sorry. Down in the dungeons of the keep, in one wall, there is a stone and on it is carved the rune for Aslevjal. He had been using it, and often. To conceal his use of it, he would leave Buckkeep late at night, and return by morning.”

My nails were sinking into my palms. It was the worst and most dangerous way to use the stones, according to Prilkop. Years ago, he had cautioned me against making such a passage twice in the space of less than two days. I had not listened, and I had been lost in the stones for weeks as a result. Chade had been taking very grave risks indeed.

“We only discovered it when he went missing. For a day and a half we could not find him, and then he came staggering up out of the dungeons, half out of his mind, with a sack of memory stones slung over his shoulder.”

I knew a jolt of anger. “And no one thought to tell me this?”

He looked surprised. “That would not have been my decision. I know nothing of why you were not told. Perhaps he begged them not to. Nettle, Dutiful, and Kettricken were extremely angry and frightened by the incident. That, I think, was when he truly stopped his experiments.” He shook his head. “Except for the amount of time he was spending delving into the cubes of memory stone he had brought back. He had them in his apartments, and we think he was using them in lieu of sleep. When Nettle confronted him about his absentmindedness, he explained what he was doing. When she ordered them removed to the library, and limited his access to them, he was furious. But not as a man is furious: more like a child deprived of a favorite toy. That was over a year ago. We thought he had mastered his thirst for the Skill. Perhaps he had, but maybe these last two trips, too close together, woke it again.”

I thought of the times Chade had come to see me. Of how he had brought Riddle through. Nettle, I decided, had known of those visits if Riddle had gone with him. Hadn't she?

“Does he know what is happening to him? Is he aware he's doing it?”

“We can't tell. He isn't making a lot of sense. He talks. He laughs and speaks of things from the past. Nettle feels he is experiencing his old memories, and then releasing them to the Skill-stream.

“I was sent to you for two reasons. The first was to help you set your walls more tightly; Nettle is afraid that Chade will cling to you and pull your awareness with him as he goes. The second reason is to ask you for delvenbark. The strong stuff from the Out Islands. The kind that completely quenched your Skill when it was fed to you.”

“I don't have very much left. We used most of it at Withywoods.”

He looked concerned but said, “Well, whatever remains is what we'll have to use.”

It was still in my traveling bag. It had not been unpacked since they'd all but carried Chade and me to our rooms. I found it, and Bee's dream book, in the bottom of my pack. I rummaged carefully and took out all but two packets. I looked at the herb packets then reluctantly surrendered them. It was hard to come by. Would the dose save Chade? What if it destroyed the precious ability with the Skill that he had so painstakingly built up over the years? If he could not Skill, how could he help me find Shine in the Skill-stream and use her keyword to unlock her? I clenched my jaw. It was time to trust Nettle. Time to cede respect for her hard-won knowledge. Still, I could not keep from saying to him, “Be careful. It's very strong.”