Fool's Fate ttm-3

by Robin Hobb

  He nodded, staring as we passed. The Fool stumbled a little and I firmed my grip on him. Behind us, I heard Longwick berating the guards for being distracted from their duty. Slowly, the camp dispersed back to their beds.

  I put the Fool inside his tent, and then went back out, his kerchief in my hand, to gather up a pack of snow for him. When I returned, he had added a bit of oil to the tiny firepot, and the renewed flames danced higher, sending rippling shadows of color across the silken walls. He set a tiny kettle upon it as I watched, and then sat back on his pallet, pinching his nostrils shut with one bloody hand. His nose had almost stopped bleeding but his face was starting to darken where Civil's fists had landed. He leaned back gingerly as if the entire left side of his body were sore.

  "Try this," I told him. I sat down beside him and gently pressed the cold compress against the side of his face. He turned away from it.

  "Please don't! It's icy and I'm already too cold," he complained. Wearily he added, "I'm too cold all the time in this place."

  "Nevertheless," I told him relentlessly. "Just until your nose stops bleeding. And it will keep your face from swelling too much. You'll probably have a black eye anyway."

  "Please, Fitz," he protested feebly and reached up, bare-handed, to seize my wrist in the same moment that my fingertips brushed his cheek.

  The impact of that mutual touch blinded me for an instant, just as if I had stepped out of a dim stable into full direct sunlight. I twitched away from him, the snow bundle falling to the tent floor, and blinked, but the image of what I had seen was imprinted on the inside of my eyelids. I cannot say how I knew what it was I had glimpsed. Perhaps something in that closed circle of touching told me. I drew a shaky breath and reached recklessly toward his face with outstretched fingers.

  "I can heal you," I told him, amazed and breathless with the discovery. The knowledge of my newfound power rushed through my blood, hot as whiskey. "I see what is wrong, the bits that are broken and how the blood pools under your skin where it should not. Fool, I can use the Skill and heal you."

  Again he seized my wrist, but this time it was to hold my hand wide of his face. Again, I felt jolted by that sense of connection as his Skill-imbued fingertips made contact with my skin. He shifted his grip quickly to the cuff of my sleeve. "No," he said quietly, but a smile played over his swollen face. "Did you learn nothing from the 'healing' that we put you through? I have no reserves to burn for the sake of a swift healing. I'll let my own body mend itself, in its own way and time." He let go of my wrist. "But thank you," he added quietly, "for offering."

  A shudder ran over me, as when a horse shakes flies from his coat. I blinked at him, feeling as if I had just awakened. The temptation was slower to fade. There was, I thought wryly, much of Chade in me. Knowing that I could do a thing made me itch to do it. Looking at his bruised face was like looking at a picture hung crooked on a wall. The impulse to right it was instinctive. I sighed. Resolutely, I crossed my arms on my chest and leaned back from him. "You see it, don't you?" he asked me.

  I nodded, and then he shocked me, for his mind was on something completely different. "Word must be sent to the Queen, somehow. Sydel, I think, is innocent. She deserves rescue, and after the misery I have helped cause her, I hope she receives it. I dare not guess which of her parents is the Piebald who worked with Laudwine. Perhaps both did. Sydel is shamed for accidentally falling in with our plans. And Civil is no longer seen as an appropriate match for her, for he has sided with the Farseers."

  Of course. The connections were all there, plain to see when the Fool pointed them out. I reconsidered her parents' apparent reaction to "Lord Golden's" interest in their daughter. Her mother had seemed avid to take advantage of it; her father more cautious. Had they seen him as someone who could give the Piebalds access to Buckkeep society? As a benefactor whose wealth might forward their cause?

  "Why didn't Civil just tell Dutiful, months ago?" I felt outraged. My prince had forgiven Civil, had welcomed him back as a comrade and friend, and he had held back from us this key piece of information. The Fool shook his head. "I don't think Dutiful realizes the full implications, even now. Perhaps some part of him suspects, but he doesn't dare let himself see it. He is true Old Blood, not Piebald. What they did is so monstrous by his standards that he cannot imagine Sydel being connected to such a plot." He leaned over and picked up the snowbag from the floor, regarded it dolefully, and then put it gingerly to the swollen side of his face. "I'm so tired of being cold," he remarked. One-handed, he opened a small wooden box at the end of his pallet, and took out a cup and a bowl that nested together. From beneath them, he took a small cloth bag and shook herbs from it into the cup and bowl. He went on. "It's the only way I can make the pieces fit. Sydel is disgraced in her father's eyes; the engagement is broken. Civil assumes her father caught her in my bed. It is the only explanation he can imagine, and so he blames me for ruining all that was between them. But that isn't it at all. One or both of her parents are Piebalds. They used their close ties with the Bresinga household to intercept messages meant for Civil and return their own. They saw to it that the Prince was hosted invisibly within that household. The gift of the cat for Dutiful was probably delivered through them. The plan for Civil was that he'd wed their daughter, bringing his family's wealth and position to the Piebald cause. Then she failed them, by flirting with me. And we were the mechanism for the whole downfall of that first Piebald plan. That is how she is disgraced." He gave a sigh, leaned back on his bedding, and moved the kerchief to a different spot on his face. "It's small comfort to have worked it out now."

  "I'll see that Kettricken knows of it," I promised him without telling him how I'd attempt to do that.

  "But if we have set one puzzle to rest tonight, we've only encountered a greater one. Who is he, what is he?"

  The Fool's voice was musing.

  "The Black Man?"

  "Of course."

  I shrugged. "Some recluse living on the island, accepting tribute from superstitious folk and ambushing those who don't leave him gifts. That's the simplest explanation." Chade's teaching was that the simplest explanation was often likely to be the right one.

  The Fool shook his head slowly. The look he gave me was incredulous. "No. Surely you cannot believe that. Never have I felt a man so hung about with portents… not since I first encountered you have I felt such a tingle of… of significance. He is important, Fitz, vastly important. Perhaps the most important person we have ever met. Didn't you feel his consequence, hanging like mist in the air?" He held the snow away from his face and leaned forward eagerly. A single scarlet final drop hung from the tip of his nose. I gestured at it and he wiped it carelessly on his bloodstained sleeve.

  "No. I felt nothing like that. In fact — Oh, Eda and El! Why does it come to me only now? I could not see him when the sentry shouted, and when he was pointed out to me, I thought I saw but his shadow. Because I didn't sense him with my Wit. Not at all. He was as blank as a Forged One… He's Forged, Fool. And that means there is no predicting what he might do."

  A chill went over me despite the coziness of the tent. It had been many years since I'd had to deal with Forged Ones, but the unmerciful memories had not faded. One of my tasks as Chade's apprentice assassin had been to kill as many of them as I could, by whatever means was most expeditious. The deaths I had dealt to Six Duchies folk haunted me still, even though I knew there had been no alternative. Forging stole all humanity from its victims and was irreversible.

  "Forged? Oh, surely not!" The Fool's astounded reaction broke my moment of introspection. He shook his head. "No, Fitz. Not Forged. Almost the opposite, if such a thing is possible. I felt in him the weight of a hundred lifetimes, the significance of a dozen heroes. He… displaces fate. Much as you do."

  "I don't understand," I said uneasily. I hated it when the Fool spoke like this. He loved it. He leaned forward, eyes gleaming with enthusiasm. As he spoke, he lifted the kettle from the oil flame and poured steami
ng water into the cup and a bowl. Ginger and cinnamon wafted toward me. "All of time, every sliced instant of it, is rich with vertices of choices. One becomes accustomed to that, to the point at which sometimes even I have to stop and remind myself that I am making choices, even when I do not seem to be. Every indrawn breath is a choice. But sometimes one is reminded of that forcibly, sometimes I meet a person so laden with possibilities and potential that the mere existence of such a being is a jolt to reality. You are like that, still, to me. The sheer improbability of your existence took my breath away. I have discovered relatively few possible futures in which you exist at all. In most of them, you died as a child. In others… well, I do not think I need to tell you all the ways in which you have died in other times. How many times have you been snatched from the jaws of death, in the most unlikely ways? I promise you, Fitz, in other times that parallel ours, you have met your deaths at those moments. Yet here you are, with me still, defying the odds by existing. And by your existence, with every breath you take, you change all time. You are like a wedge driven into dry wood. With every beat of your heart, you are pounded deeper into 'what might be' and as you advance, you crack the future open, and expose a hundred, a thousand new possibilities, each branching into another hundred, another thousand." He paused for breath. Noting my disgruntled expression, he laughed aloud. "Well. Like it or not, you do, my Catalyst. And so also did he feel to me tonight, the Black Man! So many possibilities shimmered around him that I could scarcely see him. He is even more unlikely than you are!" He drew a black kerchief out of his sleeve and wiped all traces of blood from his face, and then his hands. Carefully enfolding the bloody side, he tucked it into his sleeve again. Then he leaned back on his cushions, his eyes staring into the dim shadows at the peak of his tent. "And I have not a clue as to who or what he is. I've never glimpsed him before. What does that mean? Was it only with our coming here that his influence on the future became possible?"

  He picked up the steaming bowl and offered it to me, excusing it with "I only brought one cup. Traveling light, you know." I took it from him, welcoming the warmth against my hands. With an odd jolt, I reminded myself that in the Six Duchies it was summer. Summer seemed an impotent thing here in the Out Islands, camped on a glacier. He picked up the cup and, looking around, frowned slightly. "You took my honey, didn't you? You don't happen to have it with you, do you? It brings out the flavor of the ginger and makes the tea more warming."

  "Sorry. I left it in my tent… no, that's not quite true. I left it outside by the fire last night, and this morning it was gone." I halted, feeling as if I'd just heard a key turn in a lock. "Or taken," I amended. "Fool, the Outislanders left gifts for the Black Man. He didn't take any of them, but honey was one of the things offered. And yours was missing this morning."

  "You think he took mine? You think that he supposed it an offering left by you?"

  The excitement he manifested was out of proportion, I thought, to my speculation. I took a sip of the tea he had made. The ginger was heat. I felt it spread comfortingly through my belly even as his words unnerved me. "More likely someone in our own camp took it. How could he creep amongst our very tents, unseen?"

  "Unseen and unfelt," he corrected me. "You said he is invisible to your Wit. Likely the same is true for the other Witted ones. So. I think he took the honey. And with it, bound his fate to ours. It connects us, you see, Fitz." He drank from his cup, his eyes near closing in enjoyment of the warm liquid as he did so. When he set the cup down, he had nearly drained it. He reached for a bright yellow coverlet that looked as insubstantial as the stuff of his tent walls and draped it around his shoulders, then kicked off his loose boots and pulled his narrow feet up under him. "It connects him to both of us. I think it might be highly significant. Do you see that it could change the outcome of our mission here? Especially if I let it be known that the Black Man had accepted our offering."

  My mind raced through the possibilities. Would such an announcement win the Outislanders to his side? Turn the Narcheska and Peottre against him? Where did it leave me, not only in relation to them but in terms of how Chade saw me? The answers were not comforting. "It could create a greater division in our party than there is now."

  He lifted his cup and drank the rest of the tea before answering. "No. It would only expose the division that already exists." He looked at me and his expression was almost pitying. "This is the culmination of my life's work, Fitz. You cannot expect me to refuse any weapon, any advantage, that fate gives me. If I must die on this cold and forsaken island, at least let me die knowing I've achieved my aim."

  I drank off the tea in the bowl and set it down beside his cup. I spoke firmly. "I'm not going to stay here and listen to this… nonsense. I don't believe any of it."

  But I did. And it tightened my guts more than any cold or danger I'd ever faced.

  "And you think that if you refuse to believe it, it can't come to pass? That is nonsense, Fitz. Accept it, and let's make the best of what time we have left." There was such terrible calm in his voice that I suddenly wanted to strike him. If death was truly lurking in wait for him, he should not be so placid and accepting of it. He should fight it, he should be made to fight it.

  I drew a deep breath. "No. I won't believe it and I won't accept it." A thought came to me and I tried to speak it jokingly, but it came out as a threat. "Remember what I am to you, White Prophet. I'm the Catalyst. I am Changer. And I can change things, even the things that you think are fixed."

  Halfway through my jest, I saw emotion transform his face. I would have halted my words, but once begun, they seemed to proceed of their own accord. The expression on his face was so stark, it was as if I stared at his bared skull bones. "What are you saying?" he demanded in a horrified whisper.

  I looked away from him. I had to. "Only what you've been telling me for most of our lives. You may be the Prophet and foretell things. But I'm the Catalyst. I change things. Perhaps even what you've foretold."

  "Fitz. Please."

  The words drew my gaze back to him. "What?"

  He was breathing through his mouth as if he'd run a race and lost. "Don't do this," he begged me. "Don't try to stop me from doing what I must do. I thought I'd made you understand it, back there on the beach. I could have run away from this. I could have stayed in Buckkeep, or gone back to Bingtown, or even gone home. Or back to where home once was. But I didn't. I'm here. I'm facing it. I'm afraid and I don't deny that. And I know this will be hard for you. But it is what I've been aimed toward, all these years. You understand duty to family and king. You understand it all too well. Please see that this, now, is my duty to what I am. If you set out to defeat me, simply for the sake of keeping me alive, you will render all my life meaningless. All we have gone through up to now will be for nothing. You'll be condemning me to live out my years knowing that I failed. Would you do that to me?"

  He gave me a piteous look. I gave him a few moments to calm before I spoke quietly. "So. You are saying, if I see something killing you, I'm to let it happen? Even if I can prevent it?"

  Suddenly he seemed confused. "I suppose so. "

  "What if it's the wrong thing? What if I see a bear killing you, and you're supposed to die in an avalanche? And I do nothing, so you die in the wrong way, and it's still all for nothing."

  He looked at me blankly for a moment. "But that… No. I think you'll know. When the time comes, I think you'll know what—"

  "And if I don't? If I make a mistake, what then?"

  "I don't..." He faltered to a halt.

  I pounced. "Do you see how stupid this is? I cannot possibly stand by and watch you die, Fool. I know that and you know that. You'd be asking me to be profoundly different from who I am. You'd be making the change, not me. And didn't you once tell me that precipitating the change was my task, not yours? So don't ask it of me. If fate demands that you be dead, well, then I'll probably be dead too. At that point, I doubt if it will matter much to either of us." I stood abruptly. "And tha
t's the last that we're saying about this. This is a discussion that I choose not to have. It's late, and I'm tired. I'm going to bed."

  The change that came over his face shocked me. I saw naked relief in his eyes. I think then I understood just how much he truly feared what he felt he had to face. That he had not revealed it to anyone was as great a show of courage as I have ever known. As I lifted the tent flap, he spoke again. "Fitz. I've really missed you. Don't go. Sleep here tonight. Please." So I did.

  Chapter 16

  Elfbark

  Elfbark, more accurately called delventree bark, is a potent stimulant with the unfortunate additional effect of making the user prey to feelings of despondency and fearfulness. For this reason, it is often used by slaveowners in Chalced to increase the hours that a slave can work while at the same time dampening his spirit. Taken steadily over a long period it is addictive, and some say that even taken sporadically the herb can permanently alter a man's temperament, making him suspicious and defensive even with his closest companions, while eroding his sense of self-worth. Yet even with all these disadvantages, there are times when the risks are worth it for the stamina it may confer in times of necessity. It is less volatile a drug than either carris seed or cindin, in that those two may lead to wild surges of emotion and false euphoria that may prompt actions both foolish and dangerous.

  The best quality of elfbark is obtained from the new branch tips of very old trees. Incise laterally along the twig and then around it at each end of the cut. Slip a fingernail or knife point under the bark edge and carefully loosen it from the branch. The freed bark will immediately curl into a cylinder. Store it thus in a pouch in a cool dry place until the bark has dried enough to be grated into a powder, which can be infused as a tea.

  If the need is immediate, a tea can be made from the freshly harvested bark, but it is far more difficult to judge the strength of the herb's potency from the color of that tea.