The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy Omnibus (250 page)

The Fool extended a thin hand from under his blankets. He patted my shoulder awkwardly, and then ran his fingers down my bearded cheek. ‘Go home. And shave while you’re there.’ He managed a faint smile. Then, ‘Let me rest, Fitz. Just let me rest.’

‘Very well.’ I tried not to feel that he dismissed me. I turned to Thick. ‘I’ll take you home, then. Dress warmly, but you needn’t pack anything. Before the night is over, we’ll be in Buckkeep.’

‘And warm again?’ Thick pressed me. ‘And with good things to eat? Fresh bread and butter, milk and apples, sweet cakes and raisins? Cheese and bacon? Tonight?’

‘I’ll do my best. You get ready. And tell Chade for me that we’re going home tonight. I’ll tell the guard at the gate that we came home early, on the first boat. Because you were cold.’

‘I am cold,’ he agreed heartily. ‘But no boats. You promised.’

I hadn’t but I nodded anyway. ‘No boats. Get ready, Thick.’ I turned back to the Fool. He had closed his eyes again. I spoke softly. ‘So. You get your way. As you always seem to. I’ll take Thick home. I will be gone for a day. At most, two days. But then I’ll come back, and I’ll bring back food and wine with me. What would you like? What could you eat?’

‘Have you any apricots?’ the Fool asked me in a wavering voice. Plainly he had not grasped the whole of what I had told him.

‘I’ll try to bring you some,’ I said, doubting I could but loath to tell him so. I smoothed his hair back from his warm face. His hair felt stiff and dry. I looked at Prilkop. He nodded slowly to my silent plea. Before I left, I tucked the blankets up over his shoulders. Then I stooped and despite his closed eyes, I pressed my brow to his. ‘I’m
coming back soon,’ I vowed. He made no response and perhaps he already slept. I left him there.

Prilkop too made his farewells to us within the cave. ‘Take care of him,’ I told the Black Man. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow. Make sure he eats.’

He shook his head to my words. ‘Not that soon,’ he cautioned me. ‘Already, you have used the portals too many times, too close together.’ He made a motion as if he dragged something out of his chest. ‘It takes from you, and if you do not have enough left for yourself, it can keep you.’

He peered into my eyes, as if trying to be sure I had understood him. I hadn’t, but I nodded and assured him, ‘I’ll be careful.’

‘Farewell, Thick man. Farewell, Fool’s Changer.’ Then, with a tip of his head toward the Fool, he added quietly, ‘I will watch over him. More than that, none of us can do.’ And then, as if embarrassed to ask, he said, ‘The small man said, “cheese”?’

‘Cheese. Yes. I will bring you cheese. And tea, and spices and fruit. As much as I can carry.’

‘When it is safe for you to come again, that would be nice.’ He was beaming as we thanked him again for all he had done for us, and then left. The wind had come up and the night was chill. Thick had stubbornly refused to abandon his pack, clinging to every single possession in it, so he came laden behind me as we edged up the steep and narrow path to the crack in the rock face. The trickle of moisture had iced it narrow again, and again I had to draw my sword and clash ice away in the darkness. Thick whimpered at the dark and the wind and kept insisting that he wanted to go home, not seeming to connect that I must first open the way so we could.

I was finally able to squeeze through. I pulled Thick after me, though he wedged there for a moment. He followed me in, going slower and slower the closer we came to the unnatural light. ‘I don’t like this,’ he warned me. ‘I don’t think this is the way home. This is going in a rock. We should go back.’

‘No, Thick, it’s all right. It’s just an old magic. We’ll be fine. Just follow me.’

‘You had better be right!’ he warned me. He followed me, looking all around himself at every step. The deeper we went, the more
cautious he became. When we reached the first Elderling carvings, he gasped and stepped back. ‘The dragon dreams. Those were in the dragon dreams!’ he exclaimed. Then, abruptly, as if I had been tricking him, ‘Oh, I have been here before. Now I know. But why is it so cold? It didn’t used to be so cold.’

‘Because we are under ice. That makes it cold. Come on, now. Stop walking so slowly.’

‘Not this cold,’ he replied cryptically, and followed me again, but no faster than he had before. I thought I had fixed the path in my mind. Despite that, I turned wrong twice. Each time I had to retrace my steps, Thick became more doubtful of me. But eventually, despite his laggard steps and my faulty memory, we reached the map room.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ I warned him. I studied the map and the rune by the four tiny gems near Buckkeep. Those gems, I was convinced, represented the Witness Stones. For generations, they had been regarded as a place of power and truth, a gateway to the gods. Now I suspected I knew the origin of that legend. I fixed the rune carefully in my mind. ‘Come, Thick,’ I told him. ‘It’s time to go home.’

He made no reply, and even when I touched his shoulder, he looked up at me slowly. He had sunk down to sit on the floor. With one hand, he had rubbed the dusty tiles clean to reveal a piece of a pastoral scene. His face had an almost dazed expression. ‘They liked it here,’ he said softly. ‘They played a lot of music’

‘Put your walls up, Thick,’ I bade him, but did not feel that he obeyed me. I took his hand and held it firmly in mine. I wasn’t sure he was listening, but as I led him up the stairs to the pillar room, I explained to him several times that we would hold tight to each other and walk through the pillar and be home. His breathing had become deep and even as if he slept heavily. Uneasily I wondered if the city itself were affecting him.

I did not give myself time to wonder if the ancient and worn Witness Stones would still function as Skill-pillars. The Fool had used one, hadn’t he, and his Skill was much less than mine. I drew a deep breath, gave Thick’s hand a small shake in an attempt to
win his attention, and then stepped determinedly into the pillar, drawing him behind me.

Again there was that breathlessly long pause in my being, almost familiar now. There seemed to pass a star-speckled blackness of indeterminate length and then I stepped out onto the grassy sward of the hillside near Buckkeep. Thick was still with me. I felt a moment’s giddiness, and Thick stumbled past me and sat down flat on the turf. The warmth of summer touched our skins and the smells of a summer night filled my nostrils. I stood still, letting my eyes adjust. The four Witness Stones loomed behind me, pointing at the night sky. I drew a deep breath of the warm air. I smelled sheep pastured nearby, and the more distant smell of the sea. We were home.

I went to Thick and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re all right,’ I told him. ‘We’re home. I told you. Just like stepping through a door.’ Then a wave of dizziness swept through me and I pitched forward onto my face. For a little time I lay there, trying not to retch.

‘We are all right?’ Thick asked me miserably.

‘In a moment or two,’ I assured him breathlessly. ‘In a moment or two, we’ll be fine.’

‘That was as bad as the boat,’ he said accusingly.

‘But much shorter,’ I told him. ‘Much shorter a time.’

Despite my reassurances, it was some while before we recovered and got to our feet. It was a goodly hike from the Witness Stones to the gates of Buckkeep Castle, and Thick was puffing and complaining long before we got there. The frozen Elderling city and the trip through the pillars seemed to have disoriented him and wearied him. I felt cruel as I hurried him along, tempting him with promises of wonderful food, cold ale and a warm soft bed. The rising sun lent light to us to avoid most tumbles. Before he had gone far, I was carrying Thick’s pack and then his cloak and hat. He would have shed more clothing if I had let him. By the time we reached the gates, we were sweating in our winter clothes on a fair morning.

I think the guards recognized Thick before they did me. I was unshaven and unkempt. I told them we’d been sent home early on a filthy Outislander coastal trader, and that it had been a miserable
trip and we were glad to be home. Thick was only too glad to enlarge on my poor opinion of boats. The guards at the gates were full of questions, but I told them that we’d been sent home some time ago and that it had taken us far too long to get here, and that I’d been ordered to report to the Queen before I shared any gossip. They let us through.

It was mostly serving folk and guards up and about at that hour. I got Thick no further than the kitchens. The men in the guardroom had learned to tolerate the Prince’s pet. They would jest with him, roughly, and listen to his tales and measure them by their own. Any brag he made of dragons or magic pillars or Black Men would be taken with a large grain of salt there. I knew I had to leave him and it was perhaps the safest place in the keep for him. Besides, I suspected that his mouth would be too full for much talk. I left him there with a hot meal and the admonition that as soon as he was finished eating, he should either go to bed in his room or seek out Sada, bathe, and let her know, emphatically, that no one on our voyage had died of seasickness.

I took a roll of fresh bread with me and devoured it on my way to the barracks. The warm summer air seemed laden with scent after my long weeks in the cold. Our guards’ section of the long, low barrack house was dusty and deserted. I rid myself of my heavy woollen clothes. I longed to stop to wash and shave, but instead simply pulled on a fresh guard’s uniform. I longed even more to fall face down on my bed there but knew that I needed to see the Queen as soon as possible. I knew, too, that she would not be expecting me yet.

I found my way to the hall that led to the larders and storage rooms for the kitchen. When no one else was in sight I entered the storage room that had the cupboard with the false back in it. It was also where the hams and smoked sausages were stored, and I helped myself to a sausage before I closed the false door behind me and began my weary ascent of the dark stairs. I went by touch, feeling my way, for the steps were pitch black. I had finished my sausage by the time I reached the entry to Chade’s tower room. I opened the door and stepped in.

Darkness and a musty smell greeted me. I encountered the
worktable with my hip, cursed the bruise and then groped my way to the hearth. I found the tinderbox on the end of the mantel. When I finally had a tiny flame going in the neglected hearth, I quickly lit the half-burnt candles from the mantel candelabrum to give me some light. I fed up the fire, more for light than warmth. The room was dismal, dusty and dank after weeks with no fire in the hearth. The flames would freshen the air.

I was aware of Gilly an instant before he burst into the room from one of his own hiding places, full of enthusiasm at the thought that the sausage-bringers had finally returned. When he discovered that I had only the smell and a lick or two of grease on my fingers, he gave me a nip of rebuke and tried to climb up my leg.

‘Not now, friend. I’ll bring you treats later. First, I must see the Queen.’ I hastily smoothed my hair back into a short warrior’s tail. I wished there was time to do better, but I knew Kettricken would tolerate my unkempt appearance more than she would my dawdling to change it. I entered the secret corridors and made my way to the door that gave onto the Queen’s privy room and thence to her private sitting room. I paused to listen carefully at the door before I opened it, not wishing to walk in on her if she had any company. I nearly fell when Kettricken jerked the door open.

‘I heard your footstep. I’ve been waiting for you, oh, it seems like the entire day. I am so glad you are home, Fitz. So glad to see someone to whom I may speak freely.’

Kettricken was not the calm and rational queen I knew. She looked haggard and anxious. The usually serene room was almost disorderly. The wicks of the white candles that burned on her low table needed trimming, and a forgotten wine-glass, still a quarter full, idled on the table. There was a pot of tea on the table and cups for us, with a crumble of tea herbs spilled beside it. Two scrolls relating to the Out Islands and their customs were on the corner of the table.

Later, I would discover that it was not just the sporadic and cryptic reports that Chade and Dutiful had sent her through Nettle that had frayed her, but a civil uprising between Old Blood and Piebalds that had erupted in the Six Duchies in our absence. For the last three weeks, she had dealt with murders and retaliations
followed by more slaughter. Although there had been no killings reported in the last six days, she still dreaded a knock at her chamber door and a messenger’s baton presented to her. It was ironic that she had forced a measure of tolerance for the Witted on her nobles, only to have the Witted turn on one another.

But that was not discussed that morning. She begged a full report of me, so that she might have a better foundation for the decisions Dutiful and Chade were demanding from her. I obediently began it, only to have her interrupt with questions of how my first encounter with the Hetgurd related to what was happening now, and whether I thought Elliania’s people would resent our taking of her to be our queen and whether Elliania herself came willingly to Dutiful’s side.

After the fifth such interruption, she caught herself. ‘I am sorry.’ She had seated herself on a low bench beside the table. I could see her frustration that I had not been a witness to the party’s return to Aslevjal and Elliania’s mothershouse. I could not give her my view of the Outislander reactions to the dragon, for I had not seen them.

She started to ask another question. I held up a hand. ‘Why not let me contact Prince Dutiful or Lord Chade? That is why I came home. Let us have them answer your immediate questions, and then, if need be, I will report in full, all that I saw and did.’

She smiled. ‘You take this magic for granted now. It still surprises me. Nettle has done her best for us, and she is a fine young woman. But Chade is so secretive, and Dutiful’s messages seemed awkward. If you would reach for my son. Please.’

There followed for me the most wearying morning of Skilling that I’d ever endured. I had built stamina for the magic, but for the first time in my life, I came to understand just how earlier coteries had served their rulers. Knowing it was closest to her heart, I reached first for Dutiful, who was delighted to find me safely home. There followed from him an outpouring to his mother that I could scarcely keep up with. At first, it was awkward, for he spoke to her as son to mother, with a familiarity that was proper to such a relationship but difficult for me. As he conveyed his thoughts on the events, it was also taxing for me to refrain from
correcting him, for it was inevitable that his views did not perfectly coincide with mine.