“Be calm. ” I had the Fool's voice. I tried for his lilt of amusement, and almost found it. “All will be well. ”
I found my wrist with his hand. The fingertips knew where to fall. For a moment, our gazes held as we mingled in unity. One person. We had always been one person. Nighteyes had voiced it long ago. It was good to be whole again. I used our strength to pull myself up, to press his brow to mine. I did not close his eyes. Our gazes locked. I felt my frightened breath against his mouth. “Take your body back from me,” I bade him quietly. And so we passed, one into the other, but for a space we had been one. The boundaries between us had melted in the mingling. “No limits,” I recalled him saying, and suddenly understood. No boundaries between us. Slowly I drew back from him. I straightened my back and looked down at the Fool in my arms. For an instant, he gazed clear-eyed at me with only wonder in his face. Then the pain of his wracked body demanded his attention. I saw him clench his eyes to it and wince away from my touch. “I'm sorry,” I said softly. I eased him down onto the cloak. The evergreen boughs that had been his funeral pyre were his mattress now. “You did not have the reserves for me to perform a complete healing. Perhaps, in a day or two . . . ”
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But he already slept. I lifted a corner of the cloak and draped it over his eyes to shield them from the rising sun. I sniffed the air and it came to me that it would be a good time to hunt.
I took the whole morning for the hunt, and came back with a brace of rabbits and some greens. The Fool still lay as I had left him. I cleaned the rabbits and hung the meat to bleed. I set up his tent in the shade. I found the Elderling robe he had once given to me and laid it out inside the tent. I checked on the Fool. He slept on. I studied him critically. Biting insects had found him. They, and the growing strength of the sun on his skin, convinced me that I should move him.
“Beloved,” I said quietly. He made no response. I spoke to him anyway, knowing that sometimes we are aware of the things we hear when we are sleeping. “I'm going to move you. It may hurt. ”
He made no response. I worked my arms under the cloak and lifted him as gently as I could. Still, he cried out wordlessly, squirming in my arms as he tried to escape the pain. His eyes opened as I carried him across the ancient plaza to the tent in the shade of the trees. He looked at me and through me, not knowing me, not truly awake. “Please,” he begged me brokenly. “Please stop. Don't hurt me any more. Please. ”
“You're safe now,” I comforted him. “It's over. It's all done. ”
“Please!” he cried out again, loudly.
I had to drop to one knee to get him inside the tent. He shrieked as the fabric brushed over his raw back in passing. I set him down as gently as I could. “You'll be out of the sun and away from the insects here,” I told him. I don't think he heard me.
“Please. No more. Whatever you want, anything. Just stop. Stop. ”
“It has stopped,” I told him. “You're safe now. ”
“Please. ” His eyes fluttered closed again. He was still. He had never truly wakened.
I went out of the tent. I had to be away from him. I was sick at heart for him, and wretched with my own sudden memories. I had known torture. Regal's methods had been crude but effective. But I had had a small shield that the Fool had lacked. I had known that as long as I held out against him, as long as I could refuse to give him proof that I was Witted, he could not simply kill me. So, I had held firm against the beatings and deprivations; I had not given Regal what he wanted. Giving him that would have allowed him to kill me, without compunction, with the sanction of the Dukes of the Six Duchies. And in the end, when I knew that I could not hold out any longer, I had snatched my death from him, taking poison rather than allowing him to break me.
But for the Fool, there had been nothing he could hold back. He had nothing that the Pale Woman wanted, except his pain. What had she made him beg for, what had she made him promise, only to laugh at his capitulation and begin again on his tormented flesh? I didn't want to know. I didn't want to know, and it shamed me that I fled his pain. By refusing to acknowledge what he had suffered, could I pretend it had not happened?
Little tasks are how I have always hidden from my thoughts. I refilled my water skin with clean cold water from the creek. I stole fuel from the former funeral pyre and built a small cook fire from it. When it was burning well, I set one rabbit to roast on a skewer and the other to bubbling in a pot. I gathered up my strewn winter garments, beat some of the dirt from them, and hung them on bushes to air. In the course of my tasks I found the Rooster Crown where the Fool had apparently flung it in a pique. I brought it back and set it just inside the flap of the tent. I went to the stream and scrubbed myself clean with horsetails and then bound my dripping hair back in a warrior's tail. I did not feel like a warrior. I wondered if I would have felt better if I'd killed her. I thought of going back and killing the Pale Woman and bringing her head to the Fool.
I did not think it would help, or quite likely I would have done it.
I set the rabbit soup aside to cool, and ate the roasted one. Nothing quite compares to fresh meat when one has gone a long time without it. It was bloody near the bone and succulent. I ate like a wolf, immersing myself in the moment and in the sensation of feeding. But eventually I had to toss the last gnawed bone into the fire and contemplate the evening ahead of me.
I took the kettle of soup into the tent. The Fool was awake. He lay on his belly and stared at the corner of the tent. The long light of late afternoon shone through the tent's panels and dappled him with color. I had known he was awake. The renewal of our Skill-bond made it impossible for me not to know. I could block most of the physical pain he felt. It was harder to block his anguish.
“I brought you food,” I said to him.
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After some silence had passed, I told him, “Beloved, you need to eat. And drink. I've brought fresh water. ”
I waited. “I could make tea for you if you'd like. ”
Eventually, I fetched a mug and poured the cooling broth into it. “Just drink this, and I'll stop bothering you. But only if you drink this. ”
Crickets were chirping in the dusk. “Beloved, I mean it. I won't leave you in peace until you at least drink this. ”
He spoke. His voice was flat and he did not look at me. “Could you not call me that?”
“Beloved?” I asked, confused.
He winced to the word. “Yes. That. ”
I sat holding the mug of cold broth in both hands. After a time I said, stiffly, “If that is what you wish, Fool. But I'm still not leaving until you drink this. ”
He moved in the dimness of the tent, turning his head toward me and then reaching a hand for the mug. “She mocked me with that name,” he said quietly.
“Oh. ”
He took the mug awkwardly from me, protecting his torn fingertips from contact. He levered himself up on an elbow, quivering with pain and effort. I wanted to help him. I knew better than to offer. He drank the broth in two long draughts, and then held the mug out to me shakily. I took it and he sank down on his belly again. When I continued to sit there, he pointed out wearily, “I drank it. ”
I took the kettle and the mug out into the night with me. I added more water to the kettle of soup and set it near the fire. Let it simmer until morning. I sat staring into the fire, recalling things I didn't want to think about and chewing on my thumbnail until I bit it too close to the quick and tore it. I grimaced, and then, staring out into the night, shook my head. I had been able to retreat into being a wolf. As a wolf, I had not been humiliated and degraded. As a wolf, I'd kept my dignity and power over my life. The Fool had nowhere to go.
I'd had Burrich, and his calm, familiar ways. I'd had isolation and peace and the wolf. I thought of Nighteyes, and rose, and went to the hunt.
My first night's luck did not hold. I came back to the camp
after sunrise, with no meat, but a shirt full of ripe plums. The Fool was gone. A kettle of tea had been left to stay warm by the fire. I resisted the urge to call out his name and waited, almost patiently, by the fire until I saw him coming up the path from the stream. He wore the Elderling robe and his hair was slicked flat to his skull with water. He walked without grace in a lurching limp and his shoulders were bowed. With difficulty, I restrained myself from going to him. He reached the fire at last and, “I found plums,” I told him.
He took one solemnly and bit into it. “They're sweet,” he said, as if it surprised him. With an old man's caution, he lowered himself to the ground. I saw him run his tongue around the inside of his mouth and winced with him when he found the gap of missing teeth on one side. “Tell me what happened,” he requested quietly.
So I did. I began with her guards throwing me out into the snow, and reported in as much detail as if it were Chade sitting there, nodding to my words. His face changed slowly as I began to speak about the dragons. Slowly he sat up straighter. I felt the Skill-link between us intensify as he reached for my heart to confirm what he was hearing, as if mere words could not be enough to convey it to him. Willingly, I opened myself to him and let him share my experience of that day. When I told him that Icefyre and Tintaglia had mated in flight and then disappeared, a sob shook him. But he was tearless as he asked me incredulously, “Then . . . we triumphed. She failed. There will be dragons in the skies of this world again. ”
“Of course,” I said, and only then realized that he could not have known that. “We walk in your future now. On the path you set for us. ”
He choked again, audibly. He rose stiffly and paced a turn or two. He turned back to me, his heart in his eyes. “But . . . I am blind here. I never foresaw any of this. Always, in every vision, if there was triumph, I bought it with my death. I always died. ”
He cocked his head slowly and asked me, as if for confirmation, “I did die?”
“You did,” I admitted slowly. But I could not help the grin that crept over my face. “But, as I told you in Buckkeep, I am the Catalyst. I am the Changer. ”
He stood still as stone, and when comprehension seeped into him, it was like watching a stone dragon come to wakefulness. Life infused him. He began to tremble, and this time I did not fear to take his arm and help him sit down. “The rest,” he demanded shakily. “Tell me the rest. ”
And so I told him, the rest of that day, as we ate plums and drank his tea and then finished the rabbit broth from the night before. I told him what I knew of the Black Man, and his eyes grew wide. I spoke of searching for his body, and reluctantly told how I had found him. He looked aside from me as I spoke and I felt our Skill-link fade as if he would vanish from my sight if he could. Nonetheless, I told him, and told him too of my encounter with the Pale Woman. He sat rubbing his arms while I spoke of her, and when he asked, “Then, she lives still? She did not die?” his voice shook.
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“I did not kill her,” I admitted.
And, “Why?” he demanded shrilly, incredulously. “But why didn't you kill her, Fitz? Why?”
That outburst shocked me and I felt stupid and defensive as I said, “I don't know. Perhaps because I thought she wanted me to. ” The words seemed foolish to me, but I said them anyway. “First the Black Man and then the Pale Woman said I was the Catalyst for this time. The Changer. I did not want to cause any change to what you had done. ”
For a time, silence held between us. He rocked back and forth, very slightly, breathing through his mouth. After a time, he seemed to calm, or perhaps he only deadened. Then with an effort he tried to conceal, he said, “I'm sure you did what was best, Fitz. I don't hold it against you. ”
Perhaps he meant those words, but I think it was hard for either of us to believe them just then. It dimmed the glow of his triumph and made a small shadowy wall between us. Nevertheless, I continued my account, and when I spoke of how we had come here through a Skill-pillar I'd found in the ice palace, he grew very still. “I never saw that,” he admitted with a shade of wonder. “Never even guessed it. ”
The rest was quickly told. When I came to the Rooster Crown and my shock that it was not some powerful magical talisman, but only five poets frozen in time, he lifted one shoulder as if to excuse his desiring such a frivolous item. “It wasn't for me that I wanted it,” he said quietly.
I sat silent for a moment, waiting for him to enlarge on that. When he did not, I let it go. Even when my tale was done and he realized how completely he had won, he seemed oddly muted. His triumph might have been years ago instead of mere days. The way he accepted it made it seem inevitable instead of a battle hard-won.
Evening had crept up on us. My tale was done, but he made no effort to tell me of what had befallen him. I did not expect him to. Yet the quiet that followed and fell between us was like a telling. It spoke of humiliation, and the bafflement that something done to him could make him feel shamed. I understood it too well. I understood too that if I had tried to tell him that, I would have sounded condescending. Our silences lasted too long. The small sentences, my telling him that I would fetch more firewood, or his observation that the chirring of the insects was actually pleasant after our silent nights on the glacier, seemed to float like isolated bubbles on the quiet that separated us.
At last he said that he was going to bed. He entered the tent and I did the small tasks one does around a camp at night. I banked the fire so the coals would survive until the morning and tidied away our clutter. It was only when I approached the tent that I found my cloak outside it, neatly folded on the ground. I took it and made my own bed near the fire. I understood that he still struggled, and that he wished to be alone. Yet, still, it stung, mostly because I wanted him to be more healed than he was.
Night was deep and I was sleeping soundly when the first shriek burst from the tent. I sat up, my heart pounding and my hand going immediately to the sword on the ground beside me. Before I could draw it from the sheath, the Fool burst from the tent, eyes wide and hair wild. The panic of his breathing shook his entire body and his mouth hung wide in his effort to gulp down air.
“What is it?” I demanded, and he started again, flinching back from me. Then he appeared to come to himself and to recognize my shadow by the banked fire.
“It's nothing. It was a bad dream. ” And then he clutched his elbows and bent over his crossed arms, rocking slightly as if some terrible pain gnawed at his vitals. After a moment, he admitted, “I dreamed she came through the pillar. I woke up and thought I saw her standing over me in the tent. ”
“I don't think she knows what a Skill-pillar is, or how it works,” I offered him. Then I heard how uncertain a reassurance that was, and wished I had said nothing.
He did not reply. Instead he came shivering through the mild night to stand close to the fire. Without asking him, I leaned over and put more wood on it. He stood, hugging himself and watching as the flames woke and took hold of the fuel. Then he said apologetically, “I can't go back in there tonight. I can't. ”
I didn't say anything, but spread my cloak wider on the ground. Cautious as a cat, he approached it. He did not speak as he lowered himself awkwardly to the ground and stretched out between me and the fire. I lay still, waiting for him to relax. The fire mumbled to itself, and despite myself, my eyes grew heavy again. I was just starting the slide toward sleep when he spoke quietly.
“Do you ever get over it? Did you ever get past it?” He asked me so earnestly for there to be a tomorrow that did not possess that shadow.
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I told the hardest truth I had ever had to utter. “No. You don't. I didn't. You won't. But you do go on. It becomes a part of you, like any scar. You will go on. ”
That night, as we slept back to back beneath the stars on my old cloak, I felt him shudder, and then twitch and fight in his sleep. I rolled to face him. Tears s
lid gleaming down his cheeks and he struggled wildly, promising the night, “Please, stop. Stop! Anything, anything. Only please, please stop!”
I touched him and he gave a wild shriek and fought me savagely for an instant. Then he came awake, gasping. I released him and he immediately rolled free of me. On hands and knees, he scuttled away from me, over the stone of the plaza to the forest edge, where he hung his head like a sick dog and retched, over and over, trying to choke up the cowardly words he had said. I did not go to him. Not then.
When he came back, walking, I offered him my water skin. He rinsed his mouth, spat, and then drank. He stood, looking away from me, staring into the night as if he could find the lost pieces of himself there. I waited. Eventually, silently, he came back and sank down onto the cloak beside me. When he finally lay down, he lay on his side, huddled in a ball, facing away from me. Shudders ran over him. I sighed.
I stretched out beside him. I edged closer to him and, despite his resistance, carefully turned him to face me and took him into my awkward embrace. He was weeping silently and I thumbed the tears from his cheeks. Mindful of his raw back, I drew him close, tucked his head under my chin, and wrapped my arms around him. I kissed the top of his head gently. “Go to sleep, Fool,” I told him gruffly. “I'm here. I'll take care of you. ” His hands came up between us and I feared he would push me away. Instead, he clutched the front of my shirt and clung tightly to me.
All that night, I cradled him in my arms, as closely as if he were my child or my lover. As closely as if he were my self, wounded and alone. I held him while he wept, and I held him after his weeping was done. I let him take whatever comfort he could in the warmth and strength of my body. I have never felt less of a man that I did so.
Chapter 30
WHOLE
I write this in my own pen, and plead that you excuse the Mountain hand with which I ink the Six Duchies characters. A formal writ is being prepared by our esteemed Scribe Fedwren, but in this scroll I desired to write to you myself, widow to widow and woman to woman, so that you may know well that I understand that no grant of land or title can make any easier the loss that you have suffered.