by Robin Hobb
“I was not much more than a child when I set out. Alone, I made my way to Buckkeep, to seek the Catalyst that only I would recognize. And I found you, and I knew you, though you did not know yourself. I watched the ponderous turning of events and marked how each time you were the pebble that shifted that great wheel from its ancient path. I tried to speak to you of it, but you would have none of it. The Catalyst? Not you, oh, no!” He laughed, almost fondly. He drained off the rest of his brandy at a gulp, then held my cup to my lips. I sipped.
He rose, then, to pace a turn about the room, and then halted to refill his cup. He came back to me again. “I saw it all come to the tottering brink of ruin. But always you were there, the card never dealt before, the side of the die that had never before fallen uppermost. When my king died, as I knew he must, there was an heir to the Farseer line, and FitzChivalry yet lived, the Catalyst that would change all things so that an heir would ascend to the throne. ” He gulped his brandy again and when he spoke the scent of it rode his breath. “I fled. I fled with Kettricken and the unborn child, grieving, yet confident that all would come to pass as it must. For you were the Catalyst. But when word came to us that you were dead . . . ” He halted abruptly. When he tried to speak again, his voice had gone thick and lost its music. “It made of me a lie. How could I be the White Prophet if the Catalyst were dead? What could I predict? The changes that could have been, had you lived? What would I be but a witness as the world spun deeper and deeper into ruin? I had no purpose anymore. Your life was more than half of mine, you see. It was in the interweaving of our doings that I existed. Worse, I came to wonder if any part of the world were truly what I believed it. Was I a white prophet at all, or was it but some peculiar madness, a self-deception to console a freak? For a year, Fitz. A year. I grieved for the friend I had lost, and I grieved for the world that somehow I had doomed. My failure, all of it. And when Kettricken’s child, my last hope, came into the world still and blue, what could it be but my doing somehow?”
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“No!” The word burst from me with a strength I had not known I had. The Fool flinched as if I had struck him. Then, “Yes,” he said simply, carefully taking my hand again. “I am sorry. I should have known you did not know. The Queen was devastated at the loss. And I. The Farseer heir. My last hope crumbled away. I had held myself together, telling myself, well, if the child lives and ascends the throne, perhaps that will have been enough. But when she was brought to bed with naught but a dead babe for all her travails . . . I felt my whole life had been a farce, a sham, an evil jest played on me by time. But now . . . ” He closed his eyes a moment. “Now I find you truly alive. So I live. And again, suddenly, I believe. Once more I know who I am. And who my Catalyst is. ” He laughed aloud, never dreaming how his words chilled my blood. “I had no faith. I, the White Prophet, did not believe my own foreseeing! Yet here we are, Fitz, and all will still come to pass as it was ever meant to do. ”
Again he tipped the bottle to fill his cup. The liquor, when he poured it, was the color of his eyes. He saw me staring and grinned delightedly. “Ah, you say, but the White Prophet is no longer white? I suspect it is the way of my kind. I may gain more color now, as the years pass. ” He made a deprecating motion. “But that is of little import. I have already talked too much. Tell me, Fitz. Tell me all. How did you survive? Why are you here?”
“Verity calls me. I must go to him. ”
The Fool drew in breath at my words, not a gasp, but a slow inhalation as if he took life back into himself. He almost glowed with pleasure at my words. “So he lives! Ah!” Before I could speak more, he lifted his hands. “Slowly. Tell me all, in order. These are words I have hungered to hear. I must know everything. ”
And so I tried. My strength was small and sometimes I felt myself borne up on my fever so that my words wandered and I could not recall where I had left off my tale of the past year. I got as far as Regal’s dungeon, then could only say, “He had me beaten and starved. ” The Fool’s quick glance at my scarred face and the casting aside of his eyes told me he understood. He, too, had known Regal too well. When he waited to hear more, I shook my head slowly.
He nodded, then put a smile on his face. “It’s all right, Fitz. You are weary. You have already told me what I most longed to hear. The rest will keep. For now, I shall tell you of my year. ” I tried to listen, clinging to the important words, storing them in my heart. There was so much I had wondered for so long. Regal had suspected the escape. Kettricken had returned to her rooms to find that her carefully chosen and packed supplies were gone, spirited away by Regal’s spies. She had left with little more than the clothes on her back and a hastily grabbed cloak. I heard of the evil weather the Fool and Kettricken had faced the night they slipped away from Buckkeep.
She had ridden my Sooty and the Fool had battled headstrong Ruddy all the way across the Six Duchies in winter. They had reached Blue Lake at the end of the winter storms. The Fool had supported them and earned their passage on a ship by painting his face and dyeing his hair and juggling in the streets. What color had he painted his skin? White, of course, all the better to hide the stark white skin that Regal’s spies would be watching for.
They had crossed the lake with little incident, and passed Moonseye and traveled into the Mountains. Immediately Kettricken had sought her father’s aid in finding what had become of Verity. He had, indeed, passed through Jhaampe but nothing had been heard of him since. Kettricken had put riders on his trail and even joined in the search herself. But all her hopes had come to grief. Far up in the mountains, she had found the site of a battle. The winter and the scavengers had done their work. No one man could be identified, but Verity’s buck standard was there. The scattered arrows and hewn ribs of one body showed it was men and not the beasts or elements that had attacked them. There were not enough skulls to go with the bodies and the scattering of the bones made the number of dead uncertain. Kettricken had clung to hope until a cloak had been found that she remembered packing for Verity. Her hands had embroidered the buck on the breast patch. A tumble of moldering bones and ragged garments were beneath it. Kettricken had mourned her husband as dead.
She had returned to Jhaampe to pendulum between devastated grief and seething rage at Regal’s plots. Her fury had solidified into a determination that she would see Verity’s child upon the Six Duchies throne, and a fair reign returned to the folk. Those plans had sustained her until the stillbirth of her child. The Fool had scarcely seen her since, save to catch glimpses of her pacing through her frozen gardens, her face as still as the snows that overlaid the beds.
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There was more, shuffled in with his account, of both major and minor news for me. Sooty and Ruddy were both alive and well. Sooty was in foal to the young stallion despite her years. I shook my head over that. Regal had been doing his best to provoke a war. The roving gangs of bandits that now plagued the Mountain folk were thought to be in his pay. Shipments of grain that had been paid for in spring had never been delivered, nor had the Mountain traders been permitted to cross the border with their wares. Several small villages close to the Six Duchies border had been found looted and burned with no survivors. King Eyod’s wrath, slow to stir, was now at white heat. Although the Mountain folk had no standing army as such, there was not one inhabitant who would not take up arms at the word of their Sacrifice. War was imminent.
And he had tales of Patience, the Lady of Buckkeep, brought erratically by word of mouth passed among merchants and on to smugglers. She did all she could to defend Buck’s coast. Money was dwindling, but the folk of the land gave to her what they called the Lady’s Levy and she disposed of it as best she could amongst her soldiers and sailors. Buckkeep had not fallen yet, though the Raiders now had encampments up and down the whole coastline of the Six Duchies. Winter had quieted the war, but spring would bathe the coast in blood once more. Some of the smaller keeps spoke of tre
aties with the Red Ships. Some openly paid tribute in the hopes of avoiding Forging.
The Coastal Duchies would not survive another summer. So said Chade. My tongue was silent as the Fool spoke of him. He had come to Jhaampe by secret ways in high summer, disguised as an old peddler but made himself known to the Queen when he arrived. The Fool had seen him then. “War agrees with him,” the Fool observed. “He strides about like a man of twenty. He carries a sword at his hip and there is fire in his eyes. He was pleased to see how her belly swelled with the Farseer heir, and they spoke bravely of Verity’s child on the throne. But that was high summer. ” He sighed. “Now I hear he has returned. I believe because the Queen has sent word of her stillbirth. I have not been to see him yet. What hope he can offer us now, I do not know. ” He shook his head. “There must be an heir to the Farseer throne,” he insisted. “Verity must get one. Otherwise . . . ” He made a helpless gesture.
“Why not Regal? Would not a child from his loins suffice?”
“No. ” His eyes went afar. “No. I can tell you that quite clearly, yet I cannot tell you why. Only that in all futures I have seen, he makes no child. Not even a bastard. In all times, he reigns as the last Farseer, and ushers in the dark. ”
A shiver walked over me. He was too strange when he spoke of such things. And his odd words had brought another worry into my mind. “There were two women. A minstrel Starling, and an old woman pilgrim, Kettle. They were on their way here. Kettle said she sought the White Prophet. I little thought he might be you. Have you heard aught of them? Have they reached Jhaampe town?”
He shook his head slowly. “No one has come seeking the White Prophet since winter closed on us. ” He halted, reading the worry in my face. “Of course, I do not know of all who come here. They may be in Jhaampe. But I have heard nothing of two such as that. ” He reluctantly added, “Bandits prey on roadside travelers now. Perhaps they were . . . delayed. ”
Perhaps they were dead. They had come back for me, and I had sent them on alone.
“Fitz?”
“I’m all right. Fool, a favor?”
“I like not that tone already. What is it?”
“Tell no one I am here. Tell no one I am alive, just yet. ”
He sighed. “Not even Kettricken? To tell her that Verity lives still?”
“Fool, what I have come to do, I intend to do alone. I would not raise false hopes in her. She has endured the news of his death once. If I can bring him back to her, then will be time enough for true rejoicing. I know I ask much. But let me be a stranger you are aiding. Later, I may need your aid in obtaining an old map from the Jhaampe libraries. But when I leave here, I would go alone. I think this quest is one best accomplished quietly. ” I glanced aside from him and added, “Let FitzChivalry remain dead. Mostly, it is better so. ”
“Surely you will at least see Chade?” He was incredulous.
“Not even Chade should know I live. ” I paused, wondering which would anger the old man more: that I had attempted to kill Regal when he had always forbidden it, or that I had so badly botched the task. “This quest must be mine alone. ” I watched him and saw a grudging acceptance in his face.
He sighed again. “I will not say I agree with you completely. But I shall tell no one who you are. ” He gave a small laugh. Talk fell off between us. The bottle of brandy was empty. We were reduced to silence, staring at one another drunkenly. The fever and the brandy burned in me. I had too many things to think of and too little I could do about any of them. If I lay very still, the pain in my back subsided to a red throb. It kept pace with the beating of my heart.
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“Too bad you didn’t manage to kill Regal,” the Fool observed suddenly.
“I know. I tried. As a conspirator and an assassin, I’m a failure. ”
He shrugged for me. “You were never really good at it, you know. There was a naäivetÉ to you that none of the ugliness could stain, as if you never truly believed in evil. It was what I liked best about you. ” The Fool swayed slightly where he sat, but righted himself. “It was what I missed most, when you were dead. ”
I smiled foolishly. “A while back, I thought it was my great beauty. ”
For a time the Fool just looked at me. Then he glanced aside and spoke quietly. “Unfair. Were I myself, I would never have spoken such words aloud. Still. Ah, Fitz. ” He looked at me and shook his head fondly. He spoke without mockery, making almost a stranger of himself. “Perhaps half of it was that you were so unaware of it. Not like Regal. Now there’s a pretty man, but he knows it too well. You never see him with his hair tousled or the red of the wind on his cheeks. ”
For a moment I felt oddly uncomfortable. Then I said, “Nor with an arrow in his back, more’s the pity,” and we both went off into the foolish laughter that only drunks understand. It woke the pain in my back to a stabbing intensity however, and in a moment I was gasping for breath. The Fool rose, steadier on his feet than I would have expected, to take a drippy bag of something off my back and replace it with one almost uncomfortably warm from a pot on the hearth. That done, he came again to crouch beside me. He looked directly in my eyes, his yellow ones as hard to read as his colorless ones had been. He laid one long cool hand along my cheek and then gentled the hair back from my eyes.
“Tomorrow,” he told me gravely. “We shall be ourselves again. The Fool and the Bastard. Or the White Prophet and the Catalyst, if you will. We will have to take up those lives, as little as we care for them, and fulfill all fate has decreed for us. But for here, for now, just between us two, and for no other reason save I am me and you are you, I tell you this. I am glad, glad that you are alive. To see you take breath puts the breath back in my lungs. If there must be another my fate is twined around, I am glad it is you. ”
He leaned forward then and for an instant pressed his brow to mine. Then he breathed a heavy sigh and drew back from me. “Go to sleep, boy,” he said in a fair imitation of Chade’s voice. “Tomorrow comes early. And we’ve work to do. ” He laughed unevenly. “We’ve the world to save, you and I. ”
21
Confrontations
DIPLOMACY MAY VERY well be the art of manipulating secrets. What would any negotiation come to, were not there secrets to either share or withhold? And this is as true of a marriage pact as it is of a trade agreement between kingdoms. Each side knows truly how much it is willing to surrender to the other to get what it wishes; it is in the manipulation of that secret knowledge that the hardest bargain is driven. There is no action that takes place between humans in which secrets do not play a part, whether it be a game of cards or the selling of a cow. The advantage is always to the one who is shrewder in what secret to reveal and when. King Shrewd was fond of saying that there was no greater advantage than to know your enemy’s secret when he believed you ignorant of it. Perhaps that is the most powerful secret of all to possess.
The days that followed were not days for me, but disjointed periods of wakefulness interspersed with wavery fever dreams. Either my brief talk with the Fool had burned my last reserves, or I finally felt safe enough to surrender to my injury. Perhaps it was both. I lay on a bed near the Fool’s hearth and felt wretchedly dull when I felt anything at all. Overheard conversations rattled against me. I slipped in and out of awareness of my own misery, but never far away, like a drum beating the tempo of my pain was Verity’s Come to me, come to me. Other voices came and went through the haze of my fever but his was a constant.
“She believes you are the one she seeks. I believe it, too. I think you should see her. She has come a long and weary way, seeking the White Prophet. ” Jofron’s voice was low and reasonable.
I heard the Fool set down his rasp with a clack. “Tell her she is mistaken, then. Tell her I am the White Toymaker. Tell her the White Prophet lives farther down the street, five doors down on the left. ”
“I will not make mock of her,” Jofron said seriously. �
�She has traveled a vast distance to seek you and on the journey lost all but her life. Come, holy one. She waits outside. Will not you talk to her, just for a bit?”
“Holy one,” the Fool snorted with disdain. “You have been reading too many old scrolls. As has she. No, Jofron. ” Then he sighed, and relented. “Tell her I will talk with her two days hence. But not today. ”
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“Very well. ” Jofron plainly did not approve. “But there is another one with her. A minstrel. I don’t think she will be put off as easily. I think she is seeking him. ”
“Ah, but no one knows he is here. Save you, me, and the healer. He wishes to be left alone for a time, while he heals. ”
I moved my mouth. I tried to say I would see Starling, that I had not meant to turn Starling away.
“I know that. And the healer is still at Cedar Knoll. But she is a smart one, this minstrel. She has asked the children for news of a stranger. And the children, as usual, know everything. ”
“And tell everything,” the Fool replied glumly. I heard him fling down another tool in annoyance. “I see I have but one choice then. ”
“You will see them?”
A snort of laughter from the Fool. “Of course not. I mean that I will lie to them. ”
Afternoon sun slanting across my closed eyes. I woke to voices, arguing.
“I only wish to see him. ” A woman’s voice, annoyed. “I know he is here. ”
“Ah, I suppose I shall admit you are right. But he sleeps. ” The Fool, with his maddening calm.
“I still would see him. ” Starling, pointedly.
The Fool heaved a great sigh. “I could let you in to see him. But then you would wish to touch him. And once you had touched him, you would wish to wait until he awakened. And once he awakened, you would wish to have words with him. There would be no end to it. And I have much to do today. A toymaker’s time is not his own. ”