by Robin Hobb
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I left the pillar room and, basket on my arm, tried to hasten through the icy labyrinth. My head pounded. I had not imagined the change in temperature. In one corridor, water slipped over the stones of the floor in a shallow running flow. The gentle warming of the chambers and halls lessened and then ceased as I approached the juncture where stone walls met ice. Little black spots danced before my eyes. I stopped and leaned my brow against the icy wall and rested. The spots receded and slowly I felt more myself. The coolness seemed to help. By the time I emerged from the crack in the ice wall onto the narrow path down to the Black Man's cavern, I had my cloak wrapped well about my basket and me.
I made my way down the steep path and knocked again at the Black Man's door. No one answered. I knocked again, hesitated for a time, and then tried the string latch. The door swung open and I entered.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim room. The fire had burned low. The Fool was sleeping heavily on a pallet made up near the hearth. There was no sign of Prilkop. I shut the door quietly, put my basket on Prilkop's low table, and took off my cloak. Silently I moved to the Fool's side and, crouching down, peered into his sleeping face. The darkening of his skin was already apparent. I wanted to wake him and ask him how he was. Sternly I resisted that impulse. Instead, I unloaded the basket, finding a wooden platter for the bread and cheese and a basket for the fruit. Prilkop's water barrel was nearly empty. I put water on to heat for tea, and then took his buckets out and down to the place where the trickle down the rock face came to a slight overhang and fell free. I waited while they filled, and then hauled them up again. By that time, the water was hot, and I made fragrant spice tea.
I think the aroma of the tea was what woke the Fool. He opened his eyes and lay still, staring at the awakened fire for a time. He did not move until I said, “Fool? Are you any better?”
Then he gave a small start and turned his head sharply toward me as he jerked his body into a protective ball. I was sorry to have frightened him, and well understood that reflex. I made no comment on it, saying only, “I've come back, and brought food with me. Are you hungry?”
He pushed his blankets back a little and half sat up, and then sagged back down into his bedding. “I'm getting better. The tea smells good. ”
“No apricots, but I brought you plums. ”
“Apricots?”
“I thought your mind was wandering a bit when you asked me to fetch you apricots. The fever, you know. Still, if there had been any to hand, I'd have filched some for you. ”
“Thank you,” he said. Then, staring at me, “You look different. More than just being clean. ”
“I feel different. But the clean helps, too. I wish I could have brought the Buckkeep steams with me for you. I think they'd do you good. But as soon as you can walk at all, I'll get you home. I've told Kettricken that we'll be putting you up in Chade's old tower room for a time, until you've completely recovered and decided who you'd like to become next. ”
“Who I'd like to become . . . ” He made a small sound of amusement. I could not find the right sort of knife for cutting the bread, so contented myself with tearing off the end of the loaf for him. I took him bread and cheese and a plum, and when the tea had finished steeping, poured him a cup. “Where's Prilkop?” I asked as he sipped at his tea. I was a bit annoyed that he had left the Fool here alone.
“Oh, out and about. He has been investigating the Elderling stronghold, to see what damage has been done to it. We've had more time for talk while you were gone, in the moments when I was awake. There were not many, I think. He told me tales of the old city; they seem interwoven with my dreams. I suspect that is where he is now. He spoke of seeing what damage she had done, and what he could put right. I suspect he did things to make the city less hospitable, in hopes of driving her out. Now he plans to undo them. I asked him, ‘For whom?' and he said, ‘Perhaps just for the sake of putting it right. ' He lived there alone for many years after all the others died. For generations, perhaps. He did not tally the passing years, but I am convinced he has been here a very long time. He welcomed the Pale Woman when she first arrived for he thought she had come with her Catalyst to fulfill Prilkop's goals. ”
He drew breath and sipped at the tea. “Eat first and then tell stories,” I suggested to him.
“Tell me yours while I eat. Something momentous has happened to you. It's in your bearing and eyes. ”
And so I spoke to him, as I could have to no other, divulging all that had befallen me. He smiled but it seemed weighted with sadness, and nodded to himself as if I were but confirming things that he already knew. When I had finished, he tossed his plum pit into the fire and said quietly, “Well. It is nice to know that my last vision and prophecy was a true one. ”
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“So. I'll live happily ever after, as the minstrels sing?”
He twisted his mouth at me and shook his head. “You'll live among people who love you and have expectations of you. That will make your life horribly complicated and they will worry you sick half the time. And the other half, annoy you. And delight you. ” He turned away from me and took up his cup and looked into it, like a hedge-witch reading tea leaves. “Fate has given up on you, FitzChivalry Farseer. You've won. In the future that you now have found, it's almost likely that you'll live to a ripe old age, rather than that fate will try to sweep you from the playing board at every opportunity. ”
I tried to lighten his words. “I was getting a bit tired of being hauled back from death's door and beyond every time I turned around. ”
“It's nasty. I know how nasty now. You've shown me that. ” He almost had his old smile as he asked me, “Let's leave it at this and call it even, shall we? One time pays for all?”
I nodded to that. Then, as if he had to say it swiftly before I interrupted, “Prilkop and I have been talking about what should happen next. ”
I smiled. “A new plan to save the world? One that doesn't involve me dying quite so often?”
“One that doesn't involve you at all,” he said quietly. “You could say that we are going home, after a fashion. Back to the place that shaped us. ”
“You said no one there would remember you; that there was little point to going back there. ” I was starting to feel alarm.
“Not to the home that birthed me; I am sure I am no longer recalled there. But to the place that prepared both of us to face our destinies. It was a sort of school, you might say. I know I've spoken of it to you, and told you too that I ran away from it when they refused to recognize the truth of what I told them. There, I will be well remembered, and Prilkop also. Every White Prophet who has ever passed through there is well remembered. ”
“So let them remember you there. It seems to me they did not treat you well. Why go back?”
“To see that it never happens to any child again. To do what has never been done before, to return, and interpret for them the old prophecies in light of what we now know. To expunge from their libraries all that the Pale Woman planted there, or at least to cast it in a different light. To bring back our experiences of the world to them. ”
I was silent for a long time. “How will you get there?”
“Prilkop says he can use the pillars. Together, we could travel quite a way south before we needed to find another way to travel. We'll get there. Eventually. ”
“He can use the pillars?” I was stunned. “Why did he remain here, in cold and privation, all those years?”
The Fool looked at me as if it were obvious. “I think he can use them, but he dreads them. Even in our language, there are Elderling concepts he has difficulty in explaining to me. The magic that makes the pillars work takes something from you, each time you use it. Not even the Elderlings used them casually. A courier of an important item might use one or even two pillars to travel, but then the task was passed on to another. But that is not the whole of why he stayed. He s
tayed to protect the dragon. And to await the coming of the White Prophet and the Catalyst, the ones he had seen who could, perhaps, finish his task. That was, after all, the focus of his life. ”
“I cannot imagine such devotion. ”
“Cannot you? I think I can. ”
I heard the scrape of the door and Prilkop entered. He looked startled to see me there, as well he might, but then exclaimed something to the Fool. The Fool translated. “He is amazed to see you return here so soon, and asks what pressing business had led you to brave the pillars again. ”
I made a dismissive gesture and spoke to Prilkop. “I wished to bring food for you; see, here is bread and cheese, as you wished, and wine and plums. I had hoped to find you both ready to travel to my home with me. But the Fool still seems weak. ”
“Travel to your home with you?” he asked me, and I nodded, smiling.
He turned to the Fool and spoke softly to him at length in their tongue. The Fool replied more briefly. Then he turned and spoke reluctantly to me. “Fitz. My friend. Please. Come and sit with me by the fire. I need to talk to you. ”
He got up stiffly, draped a blanket loosely around his shoulders, and moved slowly to a grass cushion by the hearth. He eased himself down onto it and I took one beside him. Prilkop was investigating the food. He broke off a piece of cheese, put it into his mouth and then closed his eyes in sheer pleasure. When he opened them again, he bowed his head in thanks to me. I nodded back, pleased to have pleased him. When I turned back to the Fool, he took a deep breath and spoke.
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“Prilkop does not intend to go back to Buckkeep with you. And neither do I. ”
I stared at him, running his words through my mind over and over. They made no sense. “But why? His task here is finished, as is yours. Why remain in such a harsh place? It's cold, and this is summer! Life is hard here, and barren. When winter comes . . . I cannot even imagine wintering here. There is no reason for you to stay here, none at all, and every reason in the world for you to come back to Buckkeep. Why would you want to stay here? I know you wish to return to your ‘school' but surely you could come to Buckkeep first. Rest and recover for a time, and then take ship from there. ”
He looked down at his long hands held loosely in his lap. “I have discussed this at length with Prilkop. There is so much that neither of us knows about this situation, this living beyond our time as White Prophets. He has experienced it longer than I have. He stayed here because it was the last place he had a vision of himself. He stayed in the hopes that his final view of another Prophet and Catalyst coming to finish his task was true. And it was. His last vision was true. ” He looked into the fire and then leaned over to push the end of a piece of driftwood deeper into it. “I had a final vision, too. Of what would be after my death. ”
I waited.
“I saw you, Fitz. I saw you in the midst of what you are currently becoming. It did not seem to me that you were always happy, but I thought you were more complete than before. ”
“What has that got to do with it?”
“It has to do with what I did not see. I was, of course, to be dead. I had seen clearly that my death was a part of your future. No, that sounds cruel, as if my death were a thing you had planned. Rather, say, that my death was a landmark on the journey to where you had gone. You had passed my death and gone on to that life. ”
“I did pass your death. But, as you have told me so often, I am a Catalyst. I brought you back. ”
“Yes. You did. I had never foreseen such a thing. Neither had Prilkop. And in all the records we studied and memorized when we were in training, there is nothing that either of us can recall that foreshadows such a thing. ” He almost smiled. “I should have known that only you could work such a change, a change that may have carried us outside of any future that any White Prophet has ever foreseen. ”
“But—” I began, and he lifted that long cautioning forefinger to halt me.
“Prilkop and I have discussed this. Neither of us thinks I should risk being around you too much. I could make a serious mistake. There is far less chance of my making a mistake if I do not go back with you. ”
“I don't understand. A mistake? What mistake? You're feverish still, and not making sense. ” I was worried and irritated at the same time. I shifted angrily and he reached out a hand and set it on my arm. His touch was almost cool. He was still weak from his changing time but he did not speak from fever. His voice was almost stern, as if he were an old man and I were a willful youngster.
“Yes you do. You understand. You don't want to look at it, but you know it. You are still the Changer, still the Catalyst. Even in the short time you were at Buckkeep, you've proved that. Change is swirling around you like a whirlpool. Restored, you no longer flee it, but seem to attract it. And I, I am blind now, when it comes to seeing what vast changes my influence upon you can cause. So. ” He was silent for a time. I waited him out. “I will not be coming with you. No, wait, don't speak. Let me talk for a time. ”
But instead of speaking, he immediately fell silent. I sat and looked at him and thought how he had changed. The pale moon-faced boy, the lithe and narrow youth, was now visibly a young man. Recent privation had sharpened the angles of his face and the bruises around his eyes from his torment were still fading. But that was only his body. His glance had darkened and his solemnity did not seem a temporary mood but a new gravity of spirit. I let him take his time as he mentally sorted his words. I suspected he was working on a decision, and that however resolute he might claim to be, his heart still teetered on a choice.
“Fitz, I faced my death, not bravely perhaps, but determinedly. Because I had seen what might come after it, and judged it worth the cost. I decided to come to this island, and set in motion the events that would end with the dragon rising. I knew I would die, horribly, in pain and cold. But I also saw the chance for the world to know dragons again, a chance for there to be creatures as arrogant and lovely as humans, so that they might balance one another. I dreamed of a world in which men could not dominate all nature and impose their order upon it. It will not be a peaceful world, and it may be that men will curse me for my role in what happened here. But it will be a world in which both men and dragons are so busy with one another that they cannot subvert all nature to themselves. That was what I saw, in the greater scheme of things. ”
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“Fine!” I was weary of his talk of dragons, and uneasy still about what we had loosed on the world. “So now there will be dragons. Lots of them, from what I saw happening over the battlefield. But why can't you come back to—”
“Hush!” he rebuked me sternly. “Do you think this is easy for me? Do you think that lofty reason is my only one? Do you think it is easy for me to part my ways from yours? No. There is a more personal element that divides my path from yours. It is because of what I glimpsed on a far smaller scale. I saw you, after my death, taking satisfaction in the things and people you had so long denied yourself. Living the life you were meant to have, after my death. You gave me another piece of life. Shall I use it to rob you of yours?” More slowly he added, “I can love you, Fitz, but I cannot allow that love to destroy you and what you are. ” He rubbed at his face wearily, and then exclaimed in annoyance at the skin that peeled away beneath his fingers. He shook the bits from his fingertips, rubbed his face all over vigorously, and then folded his hands into his lap and looked into the fire. I glowered at him, baffled and waiting.
Behind us, Prilkop moved quietly around the room. I heard a clicking sound and glanced behind me. He had opened the neck of a little sack and was taking small blocks of stone out of it. I recognized it at once. Memory stone, cut into uniform cubes like the ones I had glimpsed in the Elderling chamber. I watched as he held one briefly against his temple, then smiled, and set it aside. He repeated the process, and again. It was soon apparent to me he was sorting the blocks into differen
t stacks. He looked up, realizing the Fool and I were watching him. He smiled and held up a cube of stone. “Music. ” Another cube. “Some poetry. ” Another cube. “History. Music, again. ” He proffered one to me, but I waved it aside, uneasy. The Fool, however, reached out to touch it lightly with one Skilled fingertip. He recoiled from it as quickly as if he had been burned, but then smiled at me. “Music, indeed. Like a rushing flood of it. You should try it, Fitz. ”
“We were talking,” I reminded him quietly. “About your coming back to Buckkeep with me. ”
“No. We were talking about my not coming back. ” He tried a smile that failed.
I just looked at him. A short time later he said something, a request, to Prilkop. At almost the same moment, I felt Chade tug at my thoughts. I would speak to the Queen.
I can't right now. Try Thick.
You know all the reasons why that will not work. Please, Fitz. It will not take long.
That is what you said last time. Besides, I am nowhere near the Queen. I went through the pillar. I'm with the Fool.
What? Without warning any of us or consulting with us at all?
I believe my life is still my own.
No. It was a flat denial from Chade. No, it is not, sir. Last night, you drew a line with me, and I sensed you did it with the Queen's approval. You cannot claim that authority one moment, and then shoulder aside from it the next. Crowns cannot be doffed so lightly.
I am not truly the King and you know it.
Too late to take that stance, Fitz! Chade sounded angry. Too late. The Queen offered you the authority and you accepted it.
I did not capitulate. I could not decide if I agreed with him or not. Give me some time. By now, you must be at sea. What can be of such immediate importance now that you have sailed?
It will keep for a time, that is true. But after this, Fitz, you must not absent yourself without warning all of us.