“Your school,” I guessed. “Where you wish to return. ”
He paused, head cocked, then nodded. “Yes. Our school. ” He gave me a sad look. “Where we must return. That what we have learned may be recorded. For others, yet to come. Very important this is. ”
“I understand. ”
The Black Man looked at me kindly. “No. You don't. ” He studied the map again, and then, as if speaking to himself, said, “The letting go is hard. Yet, this you must do. Both of you. Let go. If not, you will make more changes. Blindly. If, because of him, things you do make changes, what comes of them? No one can say. Even a little thing. You bring to him bread. He eats. If you do not bring this bread, someone else eats it. See, a change. A little change. To him, you give your time, your talk, your friendship. Who then does not receive your time? Hm? A big change, maybe, I think. Let go, Fool's Changer. Your time together is over. Done. ”
It was none of his concern and I very nearly told him so. But he looked at me so kindly and sympathetically that my anger died almost as soon as I felt it.
“Let us go back,” he suggested. I started to nod and then Thick broke into my thoughts.
Fitz? Have you finished yet? The Queen is still waiting.
I sighed wearily. I'd best go take care of it, and then beg some time for myself. I've finished. I'll bring the Skill scrolls home with me this time. Meet me at the Witness Stones and help me carry them.
No! I'm eating raspberry tart! With cream.
After the tart, then. I felt a sudden sympathy for Thick's unwillingness to interrupt his meal to rush and find me. Prilkop had reached the end of the steps. He glanced up at me quizzically. “I have to go back to my home for a time,” I told him. “Please tell the Fool that I will come back as soon as I can. I'll bring more food then, fresh fruit and bread. ”
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Prilkop looked alarmed. “Not through the portal stones? So soon? Not wise is that. Foolish, even. ” He made a beckoning gesture at me. “Come to Prilkop's home. A night, a day, a night, a day, and then go back through the stones. If you must. ”
“I fear I must go now. ” I did not want to see the Fool or talk to him again until I had found a way around all his arguments.
“Changer? You can do this? You have done this before?”
“Several times. ”
He came back up the steps toward me, his brow lined with anxiety. “Never have I seen this done so often, so close together. Be careful, then. Do not come back too soon. Rest. ”
“I've done this before,” I insisted. I recalled how I had been in and out of the Skill-stones with Dutiful on that long-ago day we fled the Others beach. “Do not fear for me. ”
Despite my brave words, I wondered if I were being foolish in going through the Skill-stones once again. Whenever I look back on that moment, I wonder whatever possessed me. Was it the press of hurt that the Fool had taken our link away? I truly think not. I think it was more likely too little sleep for too many days.
I climbed back up the steps to the Skill-pillar. The Black Man followed me anxiously. “Sure you are? Sure of this?”
I stooped and took up the necks of both bags. “I'll be fine,” I assured him. “Tell the Fool I will be back. ” I gripped the necks of both bags in one hand. I opened my other palm wide and pushed into the pillar. I stepped into a starry night.
Chapter 35
RESUMPTION
In that last dance of chances
I shall partner you no more.
I shall watch another turn you
As you move across the floor.
In that last dance of chances
When I bid your life good-bye
I will hope she treats you kindly.
I will hope you learn to fly.
In that last dance of chances
When I know you'll not be mine
I will let you go with longing
And the hope that you'll be fine.
In that last dance of chances
We shall know each other's minds.
We shall part with our regrets
When the tie no longer binds.
Fate took a final swipe at me. That is how I have come to think of it. Perhaps the gods wanted to reinforce Prilkop's warning to me.
I felt a very mild surprise. I saw eternal blackness and a scattering of lights of various brightnesses. It was like lying on my back on a tower top and staring up into a summer night. Not that I thought of it that way at the time. At the time, I drifted through stars. But I did not fall. I did not think, I did not wonder. I was simply there. A brighter star there was, and I was drawn to it. I could not tell if I got closer to it, or if it approached me. I could not have told anything, for while I was aware of these things, they did not seem to have any significance. I felt a suspension of life, of interest, a suspension of all feelings. When finally the star was close, I attempted to fasten myself to it. This act did not seem to involve any will or intention on my part. Rather, it was like a smaller drop of water starting to blend with another one close by. But she plucked me free of herself, and in that moment of her considering me, I once more came to awareness of self.
What? You again? Are you really so intent on remaining here? You are far too small, you know. Unfinished. There is not enough of you to exist by yourself here. Do you know that?
Know that? Like a child learning language, I echoed her final words, trying to pin meaning to them. Her kindness to me fascinated me, and I did long to immerse myself in her. To me, she seemed made of love and acceptance. I could let go of my boundaries, if she would allow me, and simply mingle what I had been with what she was. I would know no more, think no more, and fear no more.
Without my speaking, she seemed to know my mind. And that is what you would truly wish, little one? To stop being yourself, before you have even completed yourself? There is so much more you could grow to be.
To be, I echoed, and suddenly the simple words took force and I existed again. I knew a moment of full realization, as if I had surfaced from a very deep dive and taken a full deep breath of air. Molly and Nettle, Dutiful and Hap, Patience and Thick, Chade and Kettricken, all of them came back to me in a wave of possibilities. Fear mingled wildly with hope as to what I could become through them.
Ah. I thought perhaps there was something more for you. Then you wish to go back?
Go back.
Where?
Buckkeep. Molly. Nettle. Friends.
I do not think the words had meaning for her. She was beyond all that, beyond the sorting of love into little individual persons or places. But I think my longing was what she could read.
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Very well, then. Back you go. Next time, be more careful. Better yet, do not let there be a next time. Not until you are ready to stay.
Very abruptly, I had a body. It sprawled facedown in grass on a chill hillside. Somehow, I still gripped the two bags I had slung over my shoulder. They were on top of me. I closed my eyes. The grass was tickling my face and dust was in my nose. I breathed in the intricacy of earth and grass, sheep and manure, and my amazement at their network stole all my thoughts. I think I slept.
It was dawn when next I came awake. I was shaking with cold, despite the blanketed scrolls on top of me. I was stiff and my skin was wet with dew. I sat up with a groan, and the world spun lazily around me until I lay back down again. The sheep that lifted their heads in surprise to see me stir were fat with wool. I got to my hands and knees and then tottered upright, staring around me like a new foal as I tried to make the ends of my life meet. I took deep slow breaths, but felt little better. I decided that food and a real bed would put me right, and that I'd find that at Buckkeep Castle.
I shouldered one sack and dragged the other. At least, such was my intention. I went three steps and down I went. I felt, if anything, worse than when I had first emerged from the stones. Prilko
p was right, I decided grudgingly, and wondered uneasily how long it would be before I dared make a return trip through the portals. But I had more immediate problems to solve.
I groped out with the Skill. I could barely focus enough to wield it, and when I found Thick's music and then Thick, he was already in contact with Dutiful and Chade. I tried to break in and could not. Their thoughts rattled against mine. They did not seem to be passing information, but attempting some Skill-exercise. I became aware of Nettle, floating like a faint perfume. She caught at their circle, almost held, then wafted away again. In the disappointed silence that followed her failed attempt, I found a place for my faint Skilling.
Thick. I'm not well. Can you come to meet me at the Witness Stones? Bring a pony, or even a donkey and cart. I'm not sure I could sit up to ride. I have two large sacks of scrolls.
I felt a wordless blast of amazement from all of them. And then, a pelting of questions: Where are you?
Where have you been?
Are you hurt? Were you attacked by something?
Held prisoner?
I just came through the stones. I'm weak. Sick. Prilkop said, don't use the stones too often. And then I let it go, feeling wretchedly nauseous and dizzy. I lay down on my side in the grass. The morning was cold, and I pulled one of the blanket sacks half over me and lay still, shivering.
They all came. I heard sounds and opened my eyes and found myself looking at Nettle's shoes and riding skirt. A healer annoyed me by feeling me all over for broken bones and peering into my eyes. He asked if I had been attacked. I managed to shake my head. Chade said, “Ask him where he has been for the last month. We have been expecting these scrolls since before we arrived back at Buckkeep. ” I closed my eyes and held my tongue. Then the healer and his helper lifted me into the back of a cart. The bundles of scrolls were placed beside me. The cart lurched off down the tussocky hillside. Chade and Dutiful rode on one side of it, looking grave. Thick came behind on a stocky pony, managing it well enough. Nettle rode a mare, obviously one of Burrich's breeding. Several mounted guards followed, with the edgy look of men who had expected to confront at least a minor enemy and still had dwindling hopes of a skirmish. I had said little, fearing to say too much before ears that should not hear it.
My mind churned like a team stuck in mud. It dragged out the old legends of standing stones. Lovers fled angry parents into them, and returned a year or a decade later, to find all grievances forgotten. They were the gates to the land of the Pecksies, where a year might pass as a day. Or a day as a year. I recalled, hazily, my time in the starry blackness. How much time had passed? A few weeks? Chade had mentioned a month. Obviously enough time had passed that they had returned to Buckkeep from Mayle. For here they were. I smiled faintly at that “swift” leap of logic.
When we reached Buckkeep, Chade led off the guards with the trove of scrolls. The Prince took my hand and thanked me for a job well done, as if I were any guardsman who had completed a difficult task at risk to himself. Hand to hand, he pushed his Skilling into my mind. I could barely hear him. Come to see you soon. Rest now.
Nettle and Thick followed him as he strode away and I was assisted into the infirmary, where I was very content to lie still and think of nothing. I believe that several days passed. It was hard to keep track of things like time. The headaches and dizziness passed, but the vagueness lingered. I had been somewhere and experienced something vast and I knew that, but could not find any words for it, even to explain it to myself. It was so large and foreign an event that it challenged all the meaning and order that I gave to the rest of my life. Small things stole my attention: the dance of motes in a beam of sunlight, the twisted wool woven to form my blanket, the grain of the wood in the frame of my bed. It wasn't that I could not Skill; it was more that I could not see the point of it, nor gather the energy and focus to do it.
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They fed me well and let me rest. Visitors came and went and left almost no impression on me. Once I opened my eyes to see Lacey looking down on me with stern disapproval. I closed them. The healer could do nothing for me and often loudly observed in my vicinity that he thought I was a lazy malingerer. They brought an old, old woman to see me. After our eyes met, she nodded vigorously and said, “Oh, yes, he has that Pecksie-nibbled look to him. The Pecksies took him underground and fed on him. It's known they have a hole up there, near the Witness Stones. They'll take a new lamb or a child, or even a strong man if he's in his cups when he wanders about up there. ” She nodded sagely and advised, “Give him mint tea and cook his meat with garlic until he reeks of it. They can't abide that, and they'll soon enough let him go. When his nails have grown long enough to be cut, and he cuts them, that'll set him free. ”
And so they fed me a meal of garlicky mutton with mint tea, and then pronounced me cured and turned me out of the infirmary. Riddle was waiting for me. He told me that I looked like a mooncalf. He took me to the steams, crowded with noisy guardsmen laughing far too loudly, and then in the guardsmen's act of ultimate purification, took me to the complete chaos of the guards' tables and effortlessly persuaded me to drink ale with him until I had to stagger outside and vomit. The level of shouted conversation and laughter made me feel oddly alone. One young guardsman asked me six times where I had been, and finally I simply said, “I got lost coming back,” which made me the cleverest fellow at the table for nearly an hour. If he had expected it to shake loose my tale from me, it failed. Yet, oddly enough, I felt better, as if my body's violent protest over the mistreatment had persuaded me that, yes, I was human and had to make allowances for it. I woke the next day in the barracks, stinking and sweaty, and went back to the steams. I scraped my fouled beard from my face and scrubbed myself with salt and then washed all over with cold water. I dressed in a fresh guard's uniform, for my trunk had returned with the rest of the quest's company and gear, and then ate a very simple and small breakfast of porridge in the crowded and noisy guardroom. Just outside the door of the guards' mess, the kitchen rattled and clanged as if a battle were going on there, with whole companies of kitchen help attacking their tasks.
Feeling more like myself than I had in days, I used the concealed door near the laundry court to enter Chade's labyrinth and made my way up to the workroom.
I found the worktable lined with oily scrolls spread out for cleaning and copying. There were fresh apples in a basket by the hearth chairs. They had not been ripe when last I was in this room. That little fact rocked me more than I expected it to. I sat down, focused myself, and reached for Chade. Where are you? I need to report. I need someone to help me make sense of this.
Ah! Excellent to hear you. I would very much welcome your report. We are in Verity's tower. Can you make the climb?
I think so. But not swiftly. Wait for me.
I made the climb, but they did have to wait for me. When I emerged from the side of the hearth, I received a shock, for Lady Nettle, unmistakably Lady Nettle in her green gown and lace collar, was seated at the great table with Chade, Dutiful, and Thick. She looked only mildly surprised to see me emerge. I lifted a strand of cobwebs from across my eyes and shook it from my fingers into the hearth. Then, uncertain of my role, I offered a guard's courteous bow to all of them and stood as if awaiting orders.
“Are you quite all right?” Dutiful asked me and came to offer me his arm to my seat at the table. I was too proud to take it, and even seated at the table, I was uncertain of how to proceed. Chade marked my furtive glances at Nettle, for he burst into a laugh and said, “Fitz, she's a member of the coterie now. You must have expected it to come to this. ”
I glanced at her. Her look was like a knife, and her words as cold and sharp as she sank them into me. “I know your name, FitzChivalry Farseer. I even know that I am your bastard daughter. My mother knew no Tom Badgerlock, you see. So, while you were in the infirmary, she went to see who had claimed to be her old friend. Then she came away and told me all. All.
”
“She does not know ‘all,' ” I said faintly. Abruptly I could think of no more to say. Chade got up hastily, poured brandy and brought it to me. My hand shook so that I could scarcely raise it to my mouth.
“Well, your mother named you well,” Dutiful observed acidly to her.
“As did yours,” Nettle replied sweetly.
“Enough, both of you. We will set this aside while Fitz tells us where he was while guards combed the entire kingdom for him. ” Chade spoke quite firmly.
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“Molly is here? At Buckkeep?”
“Everyone is here at Buckkeep. The whole world came for Harvest Fest. Tomorrow night. ” Thick spoke with satisfaction. “I get to help with the apple press. ”
“My mother is here. And all my brothers. Who know nothing of any of this, and my mother and I have decided it is best that it remain that way. They are here because my father will be honored at Harvest Fest for his role in the slaying of the dragon. As will Swift, and the rest of the Wit coterie. ”
“Good. I am glad of that,” I said, and I was, but my words came out dully. It was not just the shock of discovering that Harvest Fest was tomorrow. I felt plundered of dignity and control of my life. And oddly freed by it. The decision of when and how to tell Molly that I lived had been taken from me. She had seen me. She knew I lived. Perhaps the next move was hers. And the thought that followed that plunged me into an abyss. Perhaps she had already made it. She had walked away from me.
“Fitz?” I became aware that Chade had spoken to me several times when he touched me on the arm. I twitched and came back to awareness of the people at the table. Dutiful looked sympathetic, Nettle distant, and Thick bored. Chade rested a hand on my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Would you report to the coterie on where you have been and what happened to you? I have my suspicions, but I'd like them confirmed. ”
Habit made me begin from the last time he'd heard from me. I was blithely telling them of entering the Black Man's abode when I suddenly became reluctant to share all the Fool had said. So I looked at my hands on the table and summarized it, leaving out as many of the intimate details as I could. Of those who sat at the table, only Chade perhaps had a glimmering of what my parting from the Fool meant. Without thinking, I said aloud, “But I did not go back, and you say I've been gone over a month. I do not know what they will make of that absence. I want to go back, but now I fear the pillars as I never have before. ”