Assassins Apprentice

Page 51

I took the long way back to the keep, up a path that went through a lightly wooded bit of rocky hillside. Paper birches struggled there, and a few alder, but mostly it was nondescript brush. Sunlight and a light breeze were playing together in the higher branches, giving the day a fey and dappled air. I lifted my eyes to the dazzle of sun through the birch leaves, and when I looked down, the King’s fool stood before me.

I stopped in my tracks, astonished. Reflexively, I looked for the King, despite how ridiculous it would have been to find him here. But the Fool was alone. And outside, in the daylight! The thought made the hair on my arms and neck stand up in my tightened skin. It was common knowledge in the keep that the King’s fool could not abide the light of day. Common knowledge. Yet, despite what every page and kitchen maid nattered knowingly, there stood the Fool, pale hair floating in the light breeze. The blue and red silk of his motley jacket and trousers was startlingly bright against his paleness. But his eyes were not as colorless as they were in the dim passages of the keep. As I received their stare from only a few feet away in the light of day, I perceived there was a blueness to them, very pale, as if a single drop of pale blue wax had fallen onto a white platter. The whiteness of his skin was an illusion also, for out here in the dappling sunlight I could see a pinkness suffused him from within. Blood, I realized with a sudden quailing. Red blood showing through layers of skin.

The Fool took no notice of my whispered comment. Instead, a finger was held aloft, as if to pause not only my thoughts but the very day around us. But I could not have focused my attention more completely on anything, and when he was satisfied of this, the Fool smiled, showing small white separate teeth, like a baby’s new smile in a boy’s mouth.

“Fitz!” he intoned in a piping voice. “Fitz fitz fice fitz. Fatz sfitz. ” He stopped abruptly, and again gave me that smile. I stared back uncertainly, without word or movement.

Again the finger soared aloft, and this time was shaken at me. “Fitz! Fitz fix fice fitz. Fats sfitzes. ” He cocked his head at me, and the movement sent the dandelion fluff of his hair wafting in a new direction.

I was beginning to lose my fear of him. “Fitz,” I said carefully, and tapped my chest with my forefinger. “Fitz, that’s me. Yes. My name is Fitz. Are you lost?” I tried to make my voice gentle and reassuring so as not to alarm the poor creature. For surely he had somehow wandered off from the keep, and that was why he seemed so delighted to find a familiar face.

He took a breath through his nose, and then shook his head violently, until his hair stood out all around his skull like a flame around a windblown candle. “Fitz!” he said emphatically, his voice cracking a little. “Fitz fitzes fyces fitz. Fatzafices. ”

“It’s all right,” I said soothingly. I crouched a bit, though in reality I was not that much taller than the Fool. I made a soft beckoning motion with my open hand. “Come along, then. Come along. I’ll show you the way back home. All right? Don’t be afraid now. ”

Abruptly the Fool dropped his hands to his sides. Then he lifted his face and rolled his eyes at the heavens. He looked back at me fixedly and poked his mouth out as if he wanted to spit.

“Come along now. ” I beckoned to him again.

“No,” he said, quite plainly in an exasperated voice. “Listen to me, you idiot. Fitz fixes fyces fitz. Fatsafices. ”

“What?” I asked, startled.

“I said,” he enunciated elaborately. “Fitz fixes fyce fits. Fat suffices. ” He bowed, turned, and began to walk away from me, up the trail.

“Wait!” I demanded. My ears were turning red with my embarrassment. How do you politely explain to someone that you had believed for years that he was a moron as well as a fool? I couldn’t. So: “What does all that fitzy-ficeys stuff mean? Are you making fun of me?”

“Hardly. ” He paused long enough to turn and say, “Fitz fixes feists fits. Fat suffices. It’s a message, I believe. A calling for a significant act. As you are the only one I know who endures being called Fitz, I believe it’s for you. As for what it means, how should I know? I’m a fool, not an interpreter of dreams. Good day. ” Again he turned away from me, but this time instead of continuing up the path, he stepped off it, into a clump of buckbrush. I hurried after him, but when I got to where he had left the path, he was gone. I stood still, peering into the open, sun-dappled woods, thinking I should see a bush still swaying from his passage, or catch a glimpse of his motley jacket. But there was no sign of him.

And no sense at all to his silly message. I mulled over the strange encounter all the way back to the keep, but in the end I set it aside as a strange but random occurrence.