Fools Errand

  Good hunting. I'm going now, my brother. He spoke with great determination.

  Alone? You can't bring a buck down alone! I sighed with resignation. Wait, I'll get up and come with you.

  Wait for you? Not likely . I've always had to run ahead of you and show you the way.

  Swift as thought, he slipped away from me, running down the hillside like a cloud's shadow when the wind blows. My connection to him frayed away as he went, scattering and floating like dandelion fluff in the wind. Instead of small and secret, I felt our bond go wide and open, as if he had invited all the Witted creatures in the world in to share our joining. All the web of life on the whole hillside suddenly swelled within my heart, linked and meshed and woven through with one another. It was too glorious to contain. I had to go with him; a morning this wondrous must be shared.

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  “Wait!” I cried, and in shouting the word, I woke myself. Nearby, the Fool sat up, his hair tousled. I blinked. My mouth was full of salve and wolfhair, my fingers buried deep in his coat. I clutched him to me, and my grip sighed his last stilled breath out of his lungs. But Nighteyes was gone. Cold rain was cascading down past the mouth of the cave.

  The Tawny Man 2 - Golden Fool

  The Tawny Man 2 - Golden Fool

  The Tawny Man 1 - Fools Errand

  Chapter XXVII

  LESSONS

  Before the Skill can be taught, resistance to the teaching must be eliminated. Some Skillmasters have held that they must know each student a year and a day before teaching can even begin. At the end of that time, the master will know which students are ready to receive instruction. The others, no matter how likely they seemed, are then released back to their previous lives.

  Other masters have held that this technique is a waste of valuable talent and potential. They espouse a more direct path to eliminating the student's resistance, one that does not focus so much on trust as on compliance to the master's will. A strict regimen of austerity becomes the basis for focusing the student's will on pleasing his master. Tools to achieve this humbled attitude are fasting, cold, reduced sleep, and discipline. The use of this method is recommended in times of need when coteries have to be trained and formed quickly and in quantity. The quality of Skilluser created may not be as admirable, but almost every student with any level of talent can be forced to function this way.

  cTH. WEMDEL, JOURNEYMAN TO SKILLMASTER QUILO, “. OBSERVATIONS”

  For a day and a night, the Old Blood healer kept Prince Dutiful in a stupor. I knew it frightened Lord Golden, despite Laurel's efforts to reassure him that she had seen this before and the healer was only doing what needed to be done. For myself, I envied Dutiful. No such comfort was offered me, and very little was said to me. Perhaps part of it was ostracism; when one separates oneself from supporting a society, one loses the support of that society, as well. But I do not think it was completely callous cruelty. I was an adult as well as an outcast, and they expected me to deal with my loss in my own way. As strangers, there was very little they could say, and absolutely nothing they could do that would help me.

  I was aware of the Fool's sympathy, but in a peripheral way. As Lord Golden, he could say little to me. The death of my wolf was an isolating and numbing thing. The loss of Nighteyes' companionship was cutting enough, but with him had gone my access to his keener senses. Sound seemed muted, and night darker, scent and taste dulled. It was as if the world had been robbed of its brightness. He had left me behind to dwell alone in a dimmed and stale place.

  I built a funeral pyre and burned my wolf's body. This obviously distressed the Old Blood folk, but it was my way of mourning and I took it. With my knife, I cut my hair and burned it with him, thick hanks of both black and white. With him went a long, airy lock of tawny gold. As Burrich had once done for Vixen, I stayed the day by the fire, battling the rain that strove to quench it, adding wood whenever it began to die, until even the wolf's bones were ash.

  On the second morning, the healer allowed the Prince to wake. She sat by him, watching him come out of his drugged stupor. I stood aside, but kept my own watch. I saw awareness come back slowly, first to his eyes and then to his face. His hands began to make a little nervous kneading motion, but the healer reached over and stilled them with one of her own. “You are not the cat. The cat died. You are a man, and you must go on living. The blessing of Old Blood is that they share their lives with us. The curse is that those lives are seldom as long as our own. ”

  Then she rose and left him, with no more than that to ponder. In a short time, Deerkin and his fellows mounted and rode away. I noticed that he and Laurel found a time to speak privately before he left. Perhaps they mended some broken family tie. I knew that Chade would ask me what they had said, but I was too dispirited to attempt to spy on them.

  The Piebalds had left several horses behind when they fled. One was given over by the Old Bloods to the Prince's use. It was a little dun creature, its spirit as dull as its hide. It suited Prince Dutiful perfectly, as did the steady drizzle of rain. Before noon, we mounted and began our journey back to Buckkeep.

  I rode alongside the Prince on Myblack. She had recovered from the worst of her limp. Laurel and Lord Golden rode ahead of us. They talked to one another, but I could not seem to follow their conversation. I do not think they spoke softly and privately. Rather, it was part of the deadening of my world. I felt numbed and dazed, halfblind. I knew I was alive because my injuries hurt and the rain was cold. But all the rest of the world, all sense and sensation, was dimmed. I no longer walked fearlessly in the darkness; the wind no longer spoke to me of a rabbit on a hillside or a deer that had recently crossed the road. Food had lost all savor. The Prince was little better. He managed his grief as graciously as I did, with surliness and silence. There was, I suppose, an unspoken wall of blame between us. But for him, my wolf would live still, or at least would have died in kindlier circumstances. I had killed his cat, right before his eyes. Somehow it was even worse that a spiderweb of Skill attached us still. I could not look at him without being aware of just how completely miserable he was. I suspect he could feel my unspoken accusation of him. I knew it was not just, but I was in too much pain to be fair. If the Prince had kept to his name and his duty, if he had stayed at Buckkeep, I reasoned, then his cat would be alive, and my wolf, as well. I never spoke the words aloud. I didn't need to.

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  The journey back to Buckkeep was miserable for all of us. When we reached the road, we followed it north. None of us desired to visit Hallerby and the inn of the Piebald Prince again. And despite Deerkin's assurances that Lady Bresinga and her family had had no hand in the Piebalds'

  plot against the Prince, we stayed well away from their landsand keep. The rains came down. The Old Blood folk had leftus what they could of supplies, but it was not much. At thefirst small town we came to, we spent the night in a dismalinn. There Lord Golden paid handsomely for a messenger totake a scroll by the swiftest way possible to “his cousin” inBuckkeep Town. Then we struck out crosscountry, headingfor the next settlement that offered a ferry across the BuckRiver. The detours took us two extra days. We camped in therain, ate our scanty rations, and slept cold and wet. I knewthe Fool anxiously counted the dwindling days before thenew moon and the Prince's betrothal ceremony. Nonetheless, we went slowly, and I suspected that Lord Goldenbought time for his messenger to reach Buckkeep and alertthe Queen to the circumstances of our return. It might havebeen, also, that he tried to give both the Prince and me sometime to deal with our bereavement before we returned to theclatter and society of Buckkeep Castle.

  If a man does not die of a wound, then it heals in some fashion, and so it is with loss. From the sharp pain of immediate bereavement, both the Prince and I passed into the gray days of numb bewilderment and waiting. So grief has always seemed to me, a time of waiting not for the hurt to pass, but to become accustomed to it.

/>   It did not help my temperament that Lord Golden and Laurel did not find the way as tedious and lonely as the Prince and I did. They rode before us, stirrup to stirrup, and though they did not laugh aloud or sing gay wayfaring songs, they conversed near continuously and seemed to take a good deal of pleasure in one another's company. I told myself that I scarcely needed a nursemaid, and that there were excellent reasons why the Fool and I should not betray the depth of our friendship to either Laurel or Dutiful. But I ached with loss and loneliness, and resentment was the least painful emotion I could feel.

  Three days before the new moon, we eame to Newford.

  As it was named, so it was, a fording and ferry that had not existed on my last journey through this area. It had a large dockyard, and a good fleet of flatbottomed river barges were tied there. The little town around it was new, raw as a scab with its rough timbered houses and warehouses. We did not linger but went straight to the ferry dock and waited in the rain until the evening ferry was ready to cross.

  The Prince held the reins of his nondescript horse and stared silently across the water. The recent rains had swelled the river and thickened it with silt, but I could not find sufficient love of life to be scared of death. The tossing and delay as the ferrymen struggled against the current seemed but one more annoying delay. Delay? I wondered sarcastically to myself. And what did I rush toward? Home and hearth? Wife and children? I had Hap still, I reminded myself, but on the heels of that thought I knew I did not. Hap was a young man striking out on his own. For me to cling to him now and make him the focus of my life would have been the act of a leech. So who was I, when I stood alone, stripped of all others? It was a difficult question.

  The ferry lurched as we scraped gravel, and then men were drawing it in tighter to the bank. We were across. Buckkeep was a day's ride away. Somewhere above the dense clouds, the sliver of old moon lingered. We would reach Buckkeep before Prince Dutiful's betrothal ceremony. We had done it. Yet I felt no sense of elation or even accomplishment. I only wanted this journey to be finished.

  The rain came down in torrents as we reached the landing, and Lord Golden declared firmly that we would go no farther that night. The inn there was older than the town on the other side of the river. Rain masked the other buildings of the hamlet, but I thought I glimpsed a small livery stable, and a scatter of homes beyond it. The inn's signboard was an oar painted on an old tiller, and the lumber of its walls showed weathered gray where its whitewashing had faded. The savage night had crowded the inn near full. Lord Golden and his party were too bedraggled to invoke the assumptions of nobility. Fortunately, he had sufficient coin to buy both the respect and awe of the innkeeper. Merchant Kestrel, as he identified himself, obtained two rooms for us, although one was a small one up under the rafters. This his “sister” gamely declared would suit her admirably, and the merchant and his two servants would have the other. If the Prince had any qualms about traveling in disguise, he did not show them. Hooded and cloaked, he stood dripping on the porch with me until a servingboy came out to tell us that our master's room was ready.

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  As I passed through the entry, I heard a woman's clear voice lifted in song from the common room. Of course, I thought to myself. Of course. Who else could better keep watch at an inn than a minstrel? Starling sang that ancient lay of the two lovers who defied their families and ran off to leap to their deaths for love of one another. I did not even glance into the room, though I saw Laurel had paused to listen by the door. The Prince followed me listlessly up the stairs to a large but rustic chamber.

  Lord Golden had preceded us. An inn boy was making up the fire while two others set up a bathing tub and draft screens in the corner. There were two large beds in the room, and a pallet near the door. There was a window at one end of the room. The Prince walked to it and morosely stared out into the night. There was a rack near the fire, and I fulfilled my role by helping Lord Golden out of his soaked and dirty cloak. I shrugged out of mine, hung them both to dry on the rack, and then pulled his wet boots off as a stream of servants moved in and out of the room, bringing buckets of hot water and a repast of meat pies, stewed fruit, bread, and ale. They all moved with such precision that they reminded me of a troop of jugglers as they swept in as a wave and then likewise receded from the room. When they had vanished out of the door once more, I shut it firmly behind them. The hot water in the tub filled the room with the aroma of bathing herbs and I suddenly longed to lean back in it and seek oblivion.

  Lord Golden's words recalled me to the reality. “My Prince, your bath is ready. Do you require assistance?”

  The Prince stood. He let his wet cloak fall to the floor with a slap. He looked at it for a moment, then picked it up and brought it to the drying rack. He spread it there with the air of a boy used to attending to his own needs. “No assistance. Thank yOu,” he said quietly. He glanced at the food steaming on the table. “Do not wait for me. I do not stand on formalities. I see no sense in your going hungry while I am bathing. ”

  “In that, you are your father's, son,” Lord Golden observed approvingly.

  The Prince inclined his head gravely to the compliment but made no other response.

  Lord Golden waited until Prince Dutiful had vanished behind the screens. From the landlord, he had secured paper, ink, and quill. He sat down at a little table with these supplies, and busied himself silently for some moments. I walked over to the hearth with a meat pie from the table. I ate it standing while the fire at my back steamed some of the wet from my clothes. Lord Golden spoke to me as his quill scratched out a final line. “Well, at least we're out of the weather for a time. I think we shall have a good sleep here, and go on tomorrow, but not too early in the morning. Does that suit you, Tom?”

  “As you wish, Lord Golden,” I replied as he blew on the missive, then rolled it. He tied it with a thread drawn from his oncegrand cloak. He handed it to me, one eyebrow raised.

  I did not mistake his meaning. “I'd rather not,” I said very quietly.

  He left the writing table and went to where the food was spread. He began to serve himself, deliberately clattering dishes and pots as he did so. His voice was soft as he muttered, “And I would rather you did not have to go. But I cannot. Unkempt as I am, there are still folk here that might recognize Lord Golden and mark his interest in theminstrel. I've earned enough scandal to my name on this journey. Have you forgotten my actions at Galekeep? I've all of that to explain away when I return to Buckkeep. Nor can Dutiful go, and as far as I know, Laurel is ignorant of the connection. Starling might recognize her, but would look askance at a note delivered by her. So you it must be, I fear. ”

  I feared the same, and feared more the traitorous part of me that actually wished to go down the stairs and catch the minstrel's eye. There is a part of any man that will do anything to stave off loneliness. It is not necessarily the most cowardly part of a man's soul, but I've seen any number of men do shameful things to indulge it. Worse, I wondered if the Fool were not deliberately sending me down to her. Once before, when loneliness had threatened to devour my heart, he had told her where to find me. It had been a misguided comfort I took in her arms. I vowed I would not do so again.

  But I took the tiny rolled message from his hand and slipped it up my bedraggled sleeve with the artless practice of long years of deceit. The feathers from the treasure beach still rode there, securely strapped to my forearm. That secret, at least, still remained my own, and would until I had time to share it with him privately.

  Aloud, he said, “I see you're restless despite our long day. Go along, Tom. The Prince and I can fend for ourselves for an evening, and you deserve a bit of song and a quiet beer on your own. Go on now, I saw you cast a longing eye that way. We won't mind. ”

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  I wondered whom he thought to deceive. The Prince would know that my heart had no interest in anything but grief just now. In
the Piebald camp, he had seen Lord Golden give way to my command and leave with the wolf. Nevertheless, I loudly thanked my master for his permission, and left the room. Perhaps it was a play we all acted for each other. I went slowly down the stairs. Laurel was coming up as I descended. She gave me a curious look. I tried to think of some words, but nothing came to me. I passed her silently, intending no slight but unable to care if she took offense. I heard her pause on the stair behind me as if she would speak to me, but I continued down.

  The common room was crowded. Some had probably come for the music, for Starling's reputation was grand now, but many others looked to be folk trapped by the downpour and unable to afford a room. They would shelter here for the night, and when the music stopped, doze the storm away at the tables and benches. I managed to get both food and a mug of beer on my assurances that my master would pay for it on the morrow. Then I walked to the hearth end of the room, and crowded myself into a corner table just behind Starling's elbow. I knew it was no coincidence she was here. She had been watching for us to return, and likely she had access to a bird to pass word of us on to Buckkeep. So I was not surprised when she feigned not to notice me, and kept playing and singing.

  After three more songs, she declared she needed to rest her voice and wet her pipes. The servingboy who brought her wine set it on the corner of my table. When she sat down beside me to drink, I passed her Lord Golden 's note under the table. Then I tossed off the last mouthful of beer in my mug and went out to the backhouse.

  She was waiting for me under the dripping eaves when I returned to the inn. “The message has been sent,” she greeted me.

  “I'll tell my master. ” I started to walk past her, but she caught my sleeve. I halted.