Or so I had thought. Chade’s erstwhile serving lad went to greet Perseverance, and the crow transferred happily from one boy to the other. I gave my horse over to Patience, who delayed me to say Fleeter was prospering, and then I immediately sought out the Fool’s chambers.
At first there was no answer to my knock. I waited, knocked again, waited, and just as I was about to extract a lock pick from my collar a voice spoke from within. “Who’s there?”
“Fitz,” I said, and waited.
It still took some time for the door to be unlocked and then there was another pause before he opened it.
“Are you well?” I asked anxiously, for he looked haggard.
“As you see,” he replied dispiritedly. He attempted a smile. “I am sure I will be better now that you are home. ”
“I heard of your misadventure. ”
“Ah. That is what you call it. ”
The chambers were chilly, his breakfast tray not yet cleared away, and the fire burning low. “Why is this room so ill kept? I saw Ash outside as I rode in. Has he become slack in his duties?”
“No, no. He has just become somewhat … aggravating to me. He was here this morning. I dismissed him and told him I would not need him until this evening. ”
There was more to this story. I kept my silence as I built up the fire and tidied the hearth, trying to behave normally. The curtains were drawn and I pushed them back to bring light into the room. The Fool looked untidy, as if he had dressed in the dark and forgotten to comb his hair. I stacked his dishes and gave the table a swipe with his napkin. Better. Somewhat. “Well. I’ve just returned from Withywoods and I’m ravenous. Will you come down with me?”
“I … no. I’ve no appetite. But you should go and eat. ”
“I could bring food back here and share it with you. ” Even as a prince, I could still raid the guards’ mess if I chose to.
“No, but thank you. You should go and eat, Fitz. ”
“Enough. What happened? Why did you vanish from your rooms, why were you in the dungeon corridors?”
He crossed the room slowly and groped his way into a chair by the fire. “I got lost,” he said. Then, as if a dammed river had suddenly broken free, he confessed, “I opened the door to the secret passages. The one inside the servant’s chamber. I am sure you remember it from your days there. I thought I could recall the way to Chade’s old rooms. I … there was something there I’d left behind, and Ash would not fetch it for me. So I resolved I would get it myself. But instead I got lost. ”
I tried to imagine being in those chill passages, blind. I shuddered.
“I kept thinking I would find a way back into a room or a proper passage. Twice I came to dead ends and tried to work my way back. Once I came to a narrowed way where not even I could pass. And when I tried to go back from that, I came to the dead end again, and suddenly it seemed to me that I was walled up and lost and no one even knew where to being looking for me. I shouted for help then, until I was hoarse, but I doubt anyone heard me. ”
“Oh, Fool. ” I dashed the dregs of his morning tea onto the fire, and took the bottle of brandy from the mantelpiece. I poured some into the cup and handed it to him.
“Oh. Thank you,” he said and reflectively lifted it to his mouth. He startled when he smelled it. “Brandy?” And before I could reply, he took a healthy swallow.
“How did you get out?”
“I came to some steps and went down them. And down and down and down. The smell of damp grew stronger and the walls were moist and the steps became slippery. Almost slimy. And then they just stopped. My hands were so cold, but I stood there, tracing each brick and line of mortar. Oh, Fitz. I stood there and wept, for I did not think I had the strength to limp back up all those steps. I think I went a little mad. I pounded on the wall in front of me, and to my shock it gave way. Not much, but a little. I pushed and a brick fell out, and then I pushed and pulled at the next one and finally I had a hole I could wriggle through. I had no idea where I might be and I had to wedge my way out and I could not feel how far I would fall or what I would land on. But there was no help for it, and so I let go and then I fell onto ancient straw matted with damp and who knows what else. When I could get up and grope around, I found I was in a very small chamber. There was a wooden door, with a tiny window. I was terrified then, but the door of that cell was not fastened. I went out and down a corridor. I felt other doors, and I shouted, but no one answered. ” He gave an odd laugh. “Such a king he is. Dutiful’s dungeons are full of empty cells!”
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I did not speak aloud how happy I was to hear that.
“So out I went, blundering on and on. Then I smelled a torch and I turned a corner and I could sense a bit of light. Torches have to be tended. So there I stayed, and frightened the poor young guard who found me there. But she soon realized who I was and told me that Lady Nettle had had the whole castle and grounds searched for me. And she brought me back up here to my rooms, and Nettle came to see if I was all right. ”
And now it was time to fill in the holes in his wondrously porous tale. I started with the obvious question. “Why are you annoyed with Ash?”
The Fool stiffened up like a prim old duchess. “He refused to obey me. ”
“What did you ask him to do?”
“To fetch something for me. ”
“Fool, this is already becoming tedious. ”
He turned his face away from me. “Dragon’s blood,” he said quietly.
“El of the Sea, Fool! Are you mad? With all the changes it already wrought in you, changes that may still be going on, you would take more of it?”
“I wasn’t going to swallow it!”
“Then what?”
He held up his hand and rubbed his sliced fingertips together. “These. ”
“Why?”
He took a deep breath. “I’ve told you that I’ve begun to dream again. And that sometimes when I dream, I am a dragon. And in those dreams, I know things. I dream of a place or perhaps a time when a river ran silver with Skill. And dragons drank it and grew strong and intelligent. ”
I waited.
“And in other dreams, the silver was gone from the river and it was just water. And the dragons grieved and sought for it, and found a different source for it. Ash described dragon’s blood to me, Fitz. Dark red, with threads of silvery stuff coiling and swirling in it. I think the silver is pure Skill. I think it’s why that dose healed me, almost like a Skill-healing. And that more of it, on my fingertips, might restore them. ”
“Do you not recall Verity, with his hands coated in Skill? He did that to himself, knowing he was going to give up his life. Have you forgotten having to glove that hand at all times when you did have touches of Skill on your fingers? Why would you wish for that again?”
He kept his face turned away from me but I thought I knew his motive. He needed to be able to see again. Had he thought to attempt to cure his own blindness? A wave of pity for him washed over me. He wanted his sight so badly. I wished I could give it to him. But I could not without risking losing my own. And I would need my eyes to fulfill my goal. And his.
He had left my question hanging and I let it be. I dragged a chair close to his and sat down. “I need your help,” I said bluntly. As I had known it would, it brought his full attention to me. But he knew me even better than I thought he did.
“We’re going, aren’t we?” he asked almost in wonder. “You’ve finally found your anger. And we will go to Clerres and we will kill them all. ”
My anger had always been with me. It had been the fire I needed to forge myself into the proper weapon. My time in that fire had tempered me into what I needed to be. Now my steel had been quenched in grief. But I did not correct him. “Yes. But I need to plan. I need to know all that you know, of how you traveled and how long it took to get there. Details, Fool. When you were so ill and injured, I did not press you
. But now you must wring every detail from your memories. ”
He shifted about in his chair. “How I came back took far longer than how I went there with Prilkop. Almost as long as it took me to journey here the very first time I came. But I think you have the means to make at least the first leg of our journey as he did. ”
“The Skill-pillars. ”
“Yes. We came from the map-room in Aslevjal to Buckkeep, to your Witness Stones. Then we traveled to a place I did not know. Pillars on a windswept cliff. Then to the deserted marketplace … you remember the one, the one that was on the road to the stone dragons? And from there to Kelsingra. And then we went to an island and the city on it. I told you about that. How we landed facedown in the dirt with barely room to scrabble out from under the stone. And how unfriendly the folk were. ”
“Do you recall the name of this place?”
“Furnich, I believe Prilkop called it. But … Fitz, we dare not go that way! They quite likely would have finished toppling the stone by now. ”
“Indeed,” I said to myself, thinking: Furnich. That was a name I had not searched for. Not yet. “And after that?”
“I think I told you about the ship. We bought passage but it was more as if we paid them to kidnap us. From Furnich, we sailed to several places, a wandering voyage. They worked us like the slaves they intended us to be. Fishbones. That was the name of one place, but it was small, just a village. There was one other place, a city. It stank and the cargo we took on there was raw hides, and they stank. That place was called, what was it, something about a tree … Wortletree. That was it!”
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“Wortletree. ” The name rang oddly familiar in my mind. I’d heard it or read it somewhere. It was a place we could find. A destination. “And from there?”
“To Clerres. And then to the White Island. Where the school is also called Clerres. ”
“The White Island. ” More ports to rattle my sailor friends’ brains. More clues to give Kettricken and Elliania. I wanted to rush out of the room with my new information, but I looked at my friend and knew that I could not leave him so abruptly. “Fool. What can I do to make you feel better?”
He turned his face toward me. His golden eyes, so unnerving and so unseeing, seemed to bore into me. “Go with me to Clerres. And kill all of them. ”
“I shall. But we need to plan now. How many people do you expect me to kill, and how shall we accomplish it? Poison? Knives? Explosives?”
My question trigged a terrible joy in his sightless gaze. “As to how, I leave that to the expert. You. How many? Forty, perhaps. Certainly no more than fifty. ”
“Fifty … Fool, that’s a staggering number. ” I had imagined six or even a dozen.
“I know. But they must be stopped. They must!”
“Who were the ones sent for the Unexpected Son? Who would have sent them?”
I could hear his breathing. I poured a bit more brandy into his teacup and he took a healthy swallow of it. “Dwalia was sent, but she would have been eager to go. She is not of the top echelon of Servants but, oh, how she longs to be! She is a Lingstra, rather like an emissary. They are sent on errands, to gather information or to tip events in the direction the Servants think they should go. ”
“I don’t understand. ”
“Lingstras behave as Catalysts for the Servants. Instead of supporting a true White Prophet and allowing him to find his Catalyst and change the world as his vision bids, they study all the prophecies and employ the Lingstras to set the world in a path that will best benefit them. An example. Say there is a prediction that a disease that kills sheep will sweep through an area where all depend on sheep for a livelihood. The sheep will die and the livelihood of all will be destroyed. What might one do?”
“One might study to see what cures there are for a sheep plague? Or warn the shepherds to keep their flocks from mingling. ”
“Or one might seek to gain from it, by buying up wool and good-quality breeding stock, so that when disease makes wool scarce and sheep hard to find, one can sell them at a great profit. ”
I was silent, shocked a bit.
“Fitz, do you remember the first time I came to you and asked you to do something?”
“Fat suffices,” I said quietly.
“A silly poem from a dream I had when I was barely seven. A dream that made you keep a lonely young woman’s lapdog alive, and give her advice to make her step up into her role as a duchess. A little tipping point. But what if someone went there and deliberately poisoned her dog, to set her at odds with her husband. What then?”
“The Six Duchies might have fallen to the Red Ships. ”
“And the dragons might have been extinct forever. ”
A sudden question stung me. “Why are the dragons so important? Why were the Servants so opposed to the dragons being revived?”
“I don’t have the answers to those questions, Fitz. The Servants are a secretive folk. Dragons being absent benefited them somehow. On that, I would wager my life. Yet over and over, my dreams came to me and told me that dragons must be returned to the world, dragons full of beauty and power and might. I did not even know what sort of dragons. Stone dragons? Real dragons? But together we brought them back. And, oh, how the Servants hate us for it. ”
“Is that why they took my child?”
I was surprised when he reached across and put his hand on my forearm. “Fitz. It was an intersection of fates and futures, a very powerful one. If they could discover how much they have injured both of us, they would rejoice. They have struck us down, haven’t they? Dwalia came looking for the Unexpected Son. She was so certain I knew where he could be found. I didn’t, but she was willing to destroy me to find out what I did not know. And she has destroyed both of us, by taking and then losing our child. They have destroyed the hope of this world, the one that could guide us on a better course. We cannot restore that. But if we cannot give the world hope, we can remove some of its despair by killing those who serve only their own greed. ”
“Tell me more about them. ”
“They are tremendously wealthy. They have been corrupt for generations, and they use the prophecies to make themselves ever wealthier. They know what to buy to sell later at a much higher price. They manipulate the future, not to make the world a better place but only to add to their wealth. The White Island is their castle, their palace, and their citadel. At low tide, there is a causeway. When the tide comes in, it becomes a sea-swamp. It is called the White Island not for the White Prophets who once were sheltered and taught there, but for the fortified city, all made of bones. ”
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“Bones?” I exclaimed.
“Ancient bones of immense sea creatures. The island itself, some say, is a heap of bones. When they existed, they came to that area to breed and to die. The bones, Fitz … ah. I have never been able to imagine a creature so large as to have such bones. But the palisade that surrounds the city is made of thighbones, as tall and stout and hard as stone. Some say they are bones that turned to stone but kept their shape. And that the palisade and some of the structures are older even than the Servants and the legend of the Whites they once served.
“But if ever the Servants truly served, they have long ago forgotten that duty. There are ranks of Servants. The bottom level consists of the Servitors. We need not be overly concerned with most of them. They come hoping to rise in the ranks of Servants, but most remain humble servingfolk all their lives. When we destroy those who rule them, they will disperse.
“Some few are the children born to the Servants, the second and third offspring with ambitions. Those may present problems for us. Next come the Collators who read the dreams and sort them and make copies and keep indexes. The Collators are mostly harmless. The clever ones are used as fortune-tellers by the Servants, to fleece folk of their coins by bending prophecies to suit their wishes. Again, they would be little threat
if the upper hierarchy were gone. Like ticks on a dog. If the dog is dead, the ticks starve.
“Then there are the Lingstras, like Dwalia. The Lingstras mostly do as they are told by the Manipulors. And no wickedness is beyond the Lingstras once their masters give their orders. The Manipulors are the ones who take counsel over the massed dreams of hundreds of years, to study them and to discover how best to build the wealth of the Servants. And above the Manipulors is the Council of Four. They are the root of the evil that the Servants have become. All descended from Servants, they have known no other life than wealth and privilege built on the stolen prophecies that should be employed to better the world. They would be the ones who would have decided that they must possess the Unexpected Son, at any cost. ”
And I knew in that moment that they were the four I would kill. I pushed on with my questions. “There were others. Shine said Dwalia called them her luriks. ”
He pinched his lips tightly together. “They can be seen as benighted children who believe too firmly in all they are told. ” The set of his mouth told me he did not agree with that assessment. In a deadlier voice he added, “Or you can see them as traitors to their own kind. They are the children of the Whites who did not breed true, or showed their talent for precognition in strange ways. Vindeliar is an example of that. Some see nothing of the future but are adept at remembering every dream they have ever read. They are like walking libraries of the dream-scrolls, able to cite what they read and tell who dreamed it and when. Others are adept at interpreting an event and listing the dreams that foretold it in various forms. The ones who followed Dwalia and died deserved to die. On that, you can absolutely believe me. ”
“So you have said. Do you remain certain of that?”
“I speak of the ones who held and passed the tools of my misery. The ones who pushed the needles into my back to shoot the burning colors under my skin. The ones who so meticulously incised the slices in my face. The ones who cut the Skill from my fingertips. ” He took a shuddering breath. “Ones who chose to live free of inconvenience by tolerating the agony and degradation of others. ”
I had begun to tremble but not as badly as he did. He shook. I went to him, drew him to his feet, and held him tightly, as much to still my own shaking as his. We had both known the torturer’s touch, and that creates a common ground that is hard for other to understand. “You killed them,” he reminded me. “The ones who tormented you in Regal’s dungeon. When you had the chance, you killed them. ”