Fools Quest Read online

  “After a time, a long time, I realized there was no sound from them. No questions. But I was answering them. Telling them what they needed to know. I was screaming your name, over and over. And so they knew. ”

  “Knew what, Fool?”

  “They knew your name. I betrayed you. ”

  His mind was not clear, that was obvious. “Fool, you gave them nothing they did not know. Their hunters were already there, in my home. They’d followed your messenger. That was how the blood got on the carving. How you felt me there with you. They’d already found me. ” As I said those words, my mind went back to that long-ago night. The Servants’ hunters had tracked his messenger to my home and killed her there before she could deliver the Fool’s words to me. That had been years ago. But only weeks before, another of his messengers had reached Withywoods and conveyed his warning and his plea to me: Find his son. Hide him from the hunters. That dying messenger had insisted she was being pursued, that the hunters were hot on her trail. Yet I’d seen no sign of them. Or had I not recognized the signs they had left? There had been hoofprints in a pasture, the fence rails taken down. At the time, I’d dismissed it as coincidence, for surely if they’d been tracking the messenger, they would have made some attempt to determine her fate.

  “Their hunters had not found you,” the Fool insisted. “They’d trailed their prey there, I think. But they were not looking for you. The Servants who tormented me had no way of knowing where their hunters were at that moment. Not until I screamed your name, over and over, did they know how important you were. They had thought you were only my Catalyst. Only someone I had used. And abandoned … For that would be what they expected. A Catalyst to them is a tool, not a true companion. Not a friend. Not someone who shares the prophet’s heart. ” We both held a silence for a time.

  “Fool, there is something I do not understand. You say you have no knowledge of your son. Yet you seem to believe he must exist, on the word of those at Clerres who tormented you. Why would you believe they knew of such a child when you did not?”

  “Because they have a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand predictions that if I succeeded as a White Prophet, then such an heir would follow me. Someone who would wreak even greater changes in this world. ”

  I spoke carefully. I didn’t want to upset him. “But there were thousands of prophecies that said you would die. And you did not. So can we be sure these foretellings of a son are real?”

  He sat quietly for at time. “I cannot allow myself to doubt them. If my heir exists, we must find him and protect him. If I dismiss the possibility of his existence, and he does exist and they find him, then his life will be a misery and his death will be a tragedy for the world. So I must believe in him, even if I cannot tell clearly how such a child came to be. ” He stared into darkness. “Fitz. There in the market. I seem to recall he was there. That I touched him and in that moment, I knew him. My son. ” He drew a ragged breath and spoke in a shaky voice. “All was light and clarity around us. I could not only see, I could see all the possibilities threading away from that moment. All that we might change together. ” His voice grew weaker.

  “There was no light. The winter day was edging toward evening, and the only person near you was … Fool. What’s wrong?”

  He had swayed in his chair and then caught his face in his hands. Then he said in a woeful voice. “I don’t feel well. And … my back feels wet. ”

  My heart sank. I moved to stand behind him. “Lean forward,” I suggested quietly. For a wonder, he obeyed me. The back of his nightshirt was wet with something that was not blood. “Lift up your shirt,” I bade him, and he tried. With my help, we bared his back, and again he did not protest. I lifted a candle high. “Oh, Fool,” I said before I could think to control my voice. A large and angry swelling next to his spine had split open and was leaking a thin, foul fluid down his scarred and bony back. “Sit still,” I told him and stepped away to the water warming by the fire. I soaked my napkin in it, wrung it out, and then warned him, “Brace yourself,” before applying it to the sore. He hissed loudly, and then lowered his forehead onto his crossed arms on the table.

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  “It’s like a boil. It’s opened and draining now. I think that might be good. ”

  He gave a small shudder but said nothing. It took me a moment to realize he was unconscious. “Fool?” I said, and touched his shoulder. No response. I reached out with the Skill and found Chade. It’s the Fool. He’s taken a turn for the worse. Is there a healer you can send up to your old rooms?

  None that would know the way, even if any were awake at this hour. Shall I come?

  No. I’ll tend to him.

  Are you certain?

  I’m sure.

  Probably better not to involve anyone else. Probably better it was only him and me, as it had been so often before now. While he was unaware of pain, I lit more candles to give me light, and brought a basin. I cleansed the wound as well as I could. He was limp and still as I trickled water onto it and sponged away the liquid that flowed out. It did not bleed. “No different from a horse,” I heard myself say once through my gritted teeth. Cleaned, the split boil gaped on his back as if some vile mouth had opened in his skin. It went deep. I forced myself to look at his abused body. There were other suppurations. They bulged, some shiny and almost white, others red and angry and surrounded by a network of dark streaks.

  I was looking at a dying man. There was too much wrong with him. To think that somehow food and rest could bring him closer to healing was folly. It would prolong his dying. The infections that were destroying him were too widespread and too advanced. He might even now be dead.

  I set my hand to the side of his neck, placing two of my fingers on the pulse point there. His heart was still beating: I felt it there in the feeble leaping of his blood. I closed my eyes and held my fingers there, taking a peculiar comfort in that reassuring beat. A wave of dizziness passed through me. I had been awake too long, and drunk too much at the feast long before I’d added brandy with the Fool to the mix. I was suddenly old, and tired beyond telling. My body ached with the years I’d heaped on it and the tasks I’d demanded of it. The ancient, familiar pain of the arrow scar in my back, so close to my spine, twitched to wakefulness and grew to an unavoidable deep throb, as if someone’s finger were insistently prodding the old injury.

  Except that I no longer had that scar. Or the pain from it. That realization whispered into my awareness, light as the first clinging snowflakes on a window. I did not look at it, but accepted what was happening. I let my breathing slow and remained very still inside my own skin. Inside our skin.

  I slipped my awareness from my own body into the Fool’s and heard him make a soft sound, a wounded man disturbed in deepest sleep. Do not worry. I am not after your secrets.

  But even the mention of secrets roused him. He struggled a little, but I remained still and I do not think he could find me. When he subsided, I let my awareness tendril throughout his body. Gently. Go softly, I told myself. I let myself feel the pain of his back injury. The boil that had drained was not as dangerous as the ones that had not. It had emptied itself but the poisons from some of the others were working deeper into his body and he had no strength to fight them.

  I turned them back. I pushed them out.

  It did not take that much effort. I worked carefully, asking as little of his flesh as I could. In some other place, I set my fingers to the sores and called up the poison. Hot skin strained to the breaking point opened under my touch, and the poisons trickled out. I used my Skill-strength in a way that I had not known it could be used, yet it seemed so obvious to me there and in that moment. Of course it worked this way. Of course it could do this.

  “Fitz. ”

  “Fitz!”

  “FITZ!”

  Someone seized me and jerked me back. I lost my balance and fell. Someone tried to catch me, failed, and I struck the floor har
d. It knocked the wind out of me. I gasped and wheezed and then opened my eyes. It took a moment for me to make sense of what I saw. The dying firelight illuminated Chade standing over me. His face was seized with horror as he stared down at me. I struggled to speak and could not. I was so weary, so very tired. Sweat was drying on my body, and my clothing clung to me where it was soaked. I lifted my head and became aware that the Fool was slumped forward on the table. The red light of the fire showed pus oozing from a dozen injuries on his back. I rolled my head and my gaze met Chade’s horrified stare.

  “Fitz, what were you doing?” he demanded, as if he had caught me in some foul and disgusting act.

  I tried to draw breath to respond. He looked away from me and I became aware that someone else had entered the room. Nettle. I knew her as she brushed against my Skill-sense. “What happened here?” she demanded, and then as she stepped close enough to see the Fool’s bared back, she gasped in dismay. “Did Fitz do this?” she demanded of Chade.

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  “I don’t know. Build up the fire and bring more candles!” he ordered in a trembling voice as he sank into the chair I had left empty. He set his shaking hands on his knees and leaned down toward me. “Boy! What were you doing?”

  I’d remembered how to pull air into my lungs. “Trying to stop …” I pulled in another breath. “… the poisons. ” It was so hard to roll over. I ached in every fiber of my body. When I set my hands to the floor to try to lever myself up, they were wet. Slippery. I lifted them and brought them up to my eyes. They were dripping with watery blood and fluid. Chade shoved a table napkin into my hands.

  Nettle had thrown wood on the fire, and it was catching. Now she kindled fresh candles and replaced the ones that had burned to stubs. “It stinks,” she said, looking at the Fool. “They’re all open and running. ”

  “Heat clean water,” Chade told her.

  “Shouldn’t we summon the healers?”

  “Too much to explain, and if he dies it were better that it did not have to be explained at all. Fitz. Get up. Talk to us. ”

  Nettle was like her mother, stronger than one expected a small woman to be. I had managed to sit up, and she seized me under my arms and helped me to my feet. I caught my weight on the chair and nearly overset it. “I feel terrible,” I said. “So weak. So tired. ”

  “So now perhaps you know how Riddle felt after you burned his strength so carelessly,” she responded tartly.

  Chade took command of the conversation. “Fitz, why did you cut the Fool like this? Did you quarrel?”

  “He didn’t cut the Fool. ” Nettle had found the water I’d left warming by the fire. She wet the same cloth I’d used earlier, wrung it out, and wiped it gingerly down the Fool’s back. Her nose wrinkled and her mouth was pinched tight in disgust at the foul liquids she smeared away. She repeated the action and said, “He was trying to heal him. All of this has been pushed from the inside out. ” She spared me a disdainful glance. “Sit on the hearth before you fall over. Did you give a thought to simply using a pulling poultice on this instead of recklessly attempting a Skill-healing on your own?”

  I took her suggestion and attempted to collapse back to the hearth in a controlled fashion. As neither of them was looking at me, it was a wasted effort. “I didn’t,” I said, beginning an attempt to explain that I had not, at first, intended to heal him. Then I stopped. I wouldn’t waste my time.

  Chade had suddenly sat forward with an enlightened expression on his face. “Ah! Now I understand. The Fool must have been strapped to a chair with spikes protruding from the back, and the strap slowly tightened to force him gradually onto the spikes. If he struggled, the wounds became larger. As the strap was tightened, the spikes went deeper. These old injuries appear to me as if he held out for quite a long time. But I would suspect there was something on the spikes, excrement or some other foul matter, intended to deliberately trigger a long-term infection. ”

  “Chade. Please,” I said weakly. The image he painted made me queasy. I hoped the Fool had remained unconscious. I did not really want to know how the Servants had caused his wounds. Nor did I want him to remember.

  “And the interesting part of that,” Chade went on, heedless of my plea, “is that the torturer was employing a philosophy of torment that I’ve never encountered before. I was taught that for torture to be effective at all, the victim must be allowed an element of hope: hope that the pain would stop, hope that the body could still heal, and so on. If you take that away, what has the subject to gain by surrendering his information? In this case, if he was aware that his wounds were deliberately being poisoned, once the spikes had pierced his flesh, then—”

  “Lord Chade! Please!” Nettle looked revolted.

  The old man stopped. “Your pardon, Skillmistress. Sometimes I forget …” He let his words trail away. Nettle and I both knew what he meant. The type of dissertation he had been delivering was fit only for an apprentice or fellow assassin, not for anyone with normal sensibilities.

  Nettle straightened and dropped the wet cloth in the bowl of water. “I’ve cleaned his wounds as well as water can. I can send down to the infirmary for a dressing. ”

  “No need to involve them. We have herbs and unguents here. ”

  “I’m sure you do,” she responded. She looked down on me. “You look terrible. I suggest we ask a page to fetch you breakfast in your room below. He’ll be told that you overindulged last night. ”

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  “I’ve just the lad for the job,” Chade declared abruptly. “His name is Ash. ”

  He flicked a glance at me, and I did not betray to Nettle that I’d already met the lad. “I’m sure he’ll do fine,” I agreed quietly, even as I wondered what plan Chade was unfolding.

  “Well, then, I’ll leave you two. Lord Feldspar, I’ve been informed by Lady Kettricken that you begged for a brief audience with her tomorrow afternoon. Don’t be late. You should join those waiting outside her private audience chamber. ”

  I gave her a puzzled glance. “I’ll explain,” Chade assured me. More of his plans unfurling. I held in a sigh and smiled weakly at Nettle as she left. When Chade rose to seek out his healing herbs and unguents, I unfolded myself gingerly. My back was stiff and sore and the elegant shirt was pasted to me with sweat. I used what water was left in the pot to cleanse my hands. Then I tottered over to claim a seat at the table.

  “I’m surprised Nettle knew the way here. ”

  “Dutiful’s choice. Not mine,” Chade replied brusquely. He spoke from across the room. “He’s never liked my secrets. Never fully understood how necessary they are. ”

  He came back from a cupboard holding a blue pot with a wooden stopper in it, and several rags. When he opened it, the pungency of the unguent stung my nose and somewhat cleared my head. I rose and before he could touch the Fool, I took the rags and medicine from him. “I’ll do it,” I told him.

  “As you wish. ”

  It troubled me that the Fool was still unaware of us. I set my hand to his shoulder and quested slightly toward him.

  “Ah-ah!” Chade warned me. “None of that. Let him rest. ”

  “You’ve grown very sensitive to Skill-use,” I commented as I scooped some of the unguent onto the rag and pushed it into one of the smaller wounds on the Fool’s back.

  “Or you’ve grown more careless in how you use it. Think on that, boy. And report to me while you repair what you’ve done. ”

  “There’s little to tell that I didn’t Skill to you from the festivities. I think you have a quiet but effective pirate trade on the river that is avoiding all tariffs and taxes. And a sea captain ambitious enough to try to extend it to trade with Bingtown. ”

  “And you know full well that is not what I need reported! Don’t quibble with me, Fitz. After you asked me about a healer, I tried to reach you again. I could not, but I could sense how intensely involved you were elsewh
ere. I thought I was not strong enough, so I asked Nettle to try to reach you. And when neither of us could break in on you, we both came here. What were you doing?”

  “Just”—I cleared my tight throat—“trying to help him heal. One of the boils on his back opened by itself. And when I tried to clean it for him, I became aware that … that he’s dying, Chade. Slowly dying. There is too much wrong with him. I do not think he can gain strength fast enough for us to heal him. Good food and rest and medicine will, I believe, only delay what is inevitable. He’s too far gone for me to save him. ”

  “Well. ” Chade seemed taken aback by my bluntness. He sank down into my chair and drew a great breath. “I thought we had all seen that, down at the infirmary, Fitz. It was one reason why I thought you’d want a quieter place for him. A place of peace and privacy. ” His voice trailed away.

  His words made what I faced more real. “Thank you for that,” I said hoarsely.

  “It’s little enough, and sad to say I doubt there is more I could do for either of you. I hope you know that if I could do more, I would. ” He sat up straight, and the rising flames of the fire caught his features in profile. I suddenly saw the effort the old man was putting into even that small gesture. He would sit upright, and he would come up all those steps in the creaking hours before dawn for my sake, and he would try to make it all look effortless. But it wasn’t. And it was getting harder and harder for him to maintain that façade. Cold spread through me as I faced the truth of that. He was not as near death as the Fool was, but he was drifting slowly away from me on the relentless ebb of aging.

  He spoke hesitantly, looking at the fire rather than at me. “You pulled him back from the other side of death once. You’ve been stingy with the details on that, and I’ve found nothing in any Skill-scroll that references such a feat. I thought perhaps …”

  “No. ” I pushed another dab of unguent into a wound. Only two more to go. My back ached abominably from bending over my task, and my head pounded as it had not in years. I pushed aside thoughts of carryme powder and elfbark tea. Deadening the body to pain always took a toll on the mind, and I could not afford that just now. “I haven’t been stingy with information, Chade. It was more a thing that happened rather than something I did. The circumstances are not something I can duplicate. ” I suppressed a shudder at the thought.