Fool's Fate ttm-3

by Robin Hobb

She dropped her head lower and I saw every muscle in her back go tight. Then she gave a single nod. Peottre towered over us, his arms crossed on his chest. I looked up at him and met his gaze. Then I sat down on the floor behind the Narcheska and carefully laid both my hands flat to her back. By an act of will, I kept them there. The palms of my hands felt the warm back of a young girl, but my Skill felt dragons and serpents writhing beneath my fingers. "More than ink is beneath her skin," I said, but did not know what it was that I sensed there.

  Elliania spoke with an effort. "She made the inks from her own blood. So that they would always belong to her and obey her."

  "She's bad," Thick said darkly.

  Elliania had given us the piece of knowledge we needed. Even so, it was a grueling evening of Skill-work. I did not know Elliania well, and Thick was loath to touch her. He lent us his strength, but every intricate figure had to be separately driven out from her. Her mother and sister sat and watched silently. Peottre stayed a time, then went out and walked, came back, and then went out again. I did not blame him. I wished I did not have to witness it. Foul-smelling ink oozed reluctantly from the pores on her back. Worse, it hurt her. She clenched her teeth, and then pounded wordlessly on the earth. Her long black hair, pulled forward to be out of our way, grew heavy with perspiration. Dutiful sat facing her, his hands on her shoulders to brace her, while I painstakingly traced each illustration with my fingertip, calling on her skin to push out the Pale Woman's foulness. As I did so, I saw again the Fool's back, so exquisitely and cruelly marked, and thanked the fates that his had been forced on him before the Pale Woman had gained and perverted the Skill-learning. I could not understand why her tattoos so resisted us. By the time the last clawed foot had been forced from her skin, I was exhausted, but her back was smooth and clear.

  "It's done," I said wearily, and lifted the blanket to drape her again. She took in a breath that was almost a sob and Dutiful gingerly gathered her into his arms.

  "Thank you," he said to me quietly, and then, to Elliania, "It's all finished. She can never hurt you again." I knew a moment's uneasiness, wondering if that were true. But before I could voice any doubts, we heard a welcome cry from outside the tent. "Sail! Sail sighted, two sails. One flies the Boar and the other is the Bear!"

  Chapter 27

  Doors

  The more I delve into the affairs and associations of Lord and Lady Grayling, the more I am convinced that your suspicions are well founded. Although they have conceded to the Queen's "invitation " for young Lady Sydel to spend time at the Buckkeep Court, they did not do so graciously or eagerly. Her father was more determined to be hard-hearted in this matter than her mother. Her mother was truly scandalized that he sent her off with no garb fit for an ordinary day at court, let alone for feasting or dancing. The allowance he allotted her is also insufficient for a milkmaid. I believe he hopes that she will embarrass herself at court sufficiently to be sent home.

  The woman he chose as her maid is not to be trusted. I suggest that a grievance against Opal be discovered and that she be dismissed from Buckkeep as swiftly as possible. Take care that her gray housecat leaves with her. Sydel herself seems guilty of little more than being young and flighty. I do not think, for those reasons, that she even knows her parents have declared as Piebalds, let alone is privy to any of their plotting.

  Spy's report, unsigned

  Favorable tides had brought the ships to us sooner than we had expected. But if we were surprised to see the ships so soon, the crews of the ship were equally shocked at the size of the party that awaited them on the shore. The boats they put over to come to shore were crowded with folk anxious to discover the news. So many of our men met them on the beach that the boats were literally picked up clear of the water and run far up the sand before the crews could disembark. The uproar sounded like a battle as every man strove to tell the tale his own way to our amazed transport. There was laughter, chest thumping, and shoulder slapping as each man strove to be the first to tell the tale. Above all was the joyous roar of Arkon Bloodblade as he shared the Narwhal triumph. His reunion with Oerttre was more restrained and formal than I had expected it to be. Father he might be to Elliania, but he had never been formally wed to Oerttre, nor had he sired Kossi. So he rejoiced in their return as a friend, not as a father and husband, and it seemed more the satisfaction that a warrior took in the triumph of an ally.

  Later, I would discover that the Narcheska had promised much to her father in terms of crops, trade, and other favors. The Boar Clan lands were rocky and steep, fine lands for grazing swine but not for growing field crops.

  Bloodblade had eight young nieces of his own clan to provide for, and these Boar youngsters would prosper because of the Narwhal triumph.

  But all I knew at the time was that once more, rejoicing and triumph surrounded young Swift and me, making our sorrow all the deeper in comparison. Worse, I had made a resolution last night, one that felt so precisely correct that I knew nothing would turn me aside from it. So, while men whooped outside and overshouted one another telling their portions of the tale, I spoke quietly to Swift as we sat in dimness under draped canvas beside his unresponsive father.

  "I won't be going back with you. Can you take care of your father without me?"

  "Can I… what do you mean, you won't be coming back with us? What else can you do?"

  "Stay here. I need to go back to the glacier, Swift. I want to find a way into her underground palace. At the least, I want to find my friend's body and burn it. He hated to be cold. He would not wish to be entombed forever in ice."

  "And what else do you hope to do? There is something you are not saying."

  I took a deep breath, thought of a lie, and then set it down. Enough lies for one lifetime. "I hope to look on the Pale Woman's body. I hope to find her dead, to know that she died for all she has done to us. And if I find her living, I hope to kill her."

  It was a small and simple promise I'd made to myself. I doubted it would be easy to carry out, but it was the only comfort I could find to offer myself.

  "You look a different man when you talk like that," Swift said in a hushed voice. He leaned close to me. "When you talk like that, you have a wolf's eyes."

  I shook my head and smiled. At least, my teeth showed. "No. No wolf wastes time on vengeance, and that is what this is. Vengeance, pure and simple. When people look most vicious, what you are seeing is not their animal side. It is the savagery that only humans can muster. When you see me loyal to my family, then you see the wolf."

  He touched a finger to his dangling earring. He knit his brows and asked, "Do you want me to stay with you?

  You should not face this alone. And, as you have seen, I did not lie. I am good with a bow."

  "You are indeed. But you have other duties, more pressing ones. Burrich has no chance at all if he stays here.

  Get him onto the ship and back to Zylig. They may have skilled healers there. At the very least, they will have a place that is warm, with decent food and a clean bed for him."

  "My father is going to die, FitzChivalry. Let us not pretend otherwise."

  Oh, the power that lurks in the naming of names. I let go. "You are right, Swift. But he need not die in the cold, under a piece of flapping canvas. That much we can give him."

  Swift scratched his head. "I want to do my father's will in this. I think he would tell me to stay with you. That I cannot be as useful to him as I could be to you."

  I thought about it. "Perhaps he would. But I do not think your mother would tell you that. I think you need to be with him. He may rally again, before the end, and what words he may have for you could be precious ones. No, Swift. Go with him. Be with him, for me." He did not reply, but bowed his head to my words.

  Even as we spoke, men were dismantling our camp and loading it aboard the ship. I think it shocked Swift when it was the Outislanders who came for him and Burrich. Bear came, to incline his head gravely to the boy and ask the honor of transporting him and his father
aboard the Hetgurd ship. "Demon-slayers," he named both of them, and I think it shocked Swift to realize that he had been left to grieve in isolation out of respect, not out of negligence. The Owl, their bard, sang them aboard the Bear ship, and though he twisted the words in their bard's tongue, still I heard with throat-choking pride of the man who had brought the dragon-demon to its knees and the boy who slew it to set the Pale Woman's hostages free. Web, I noted, rode out in the boat with them, and would be taking ship with Swift. This comforted me. I did not want the lad to be alone among strangers, no matter how they might honor him when Burrich died, and I feared he would not live to see Zylig port. Then the Prince was at my side, demanding to know which ship I was embarking upon. "You are welcome on either, but it will be close quarters no matter which you choose. They did not expect to carry off this many people. We shall be packed like salt fish in a keg. Chade, in his wisdom, has chosen to separate me from the Narcheska, so I will be on the Bear ship. Chade goes on the Boar ship with Peottre and his women, for he hopes to further advance the final negotiations of our alliance during the voyage."

  I had to smile, despite my heavy heart. "Alliance, you still call it? It has begun to look like a wedding to me. And have you given Chade reason to think it best to separate you from Elliania for the voyage to Zylig?"

  He raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth quirking. "Not I! It was Elliania who proclaimed she was satisfied as to her challenge to me to be worthy of her, and declared that she now regarded me as her husband. I do not think her mother was entirely pleased, but Peottre declined to oppose her. Chade has tried to explain to Elliania the necessity of my vowing to her in my 'mothershouse,' but she will have none of that. She asked him, 'And what is a man, to oppose a woman's will in this matter?' "

  "I would have loved to hear his reply to that," I said.

  "He said, 'Truly, lady, I do not know. But my queen's will is that her son shall not bed with you until you have stood before her and her nobles in her house, and proclaimed that you are satisfied he is worthy of you.' "

  "And did she accept that?"

  "Not graciously." The Prince was obviously flattered by his bride-to-be's eagerness. "But Chade has extracted a promise from me that I will act with restraint. Not that Elliania has made that easy for me. Ah, well. So I sail on the Bear ship and she on the Boar. Chade will be on the Boar, and we think Thick, for the Outislanders have made much of him and his Eda's Hands. So. Which one for you? Come on the Bear. You can be with Burrich and Swift and me."

  "Neither ship will I board. But I'm glad to hear you'll be on the Bear ship with Swift. This is a hard time for him. He may bear it better among friends."

  "What do you mean, neither?"

  Time to announce it. "I'm staying here, Dutiful. I need to go back and try to find the Fool's body." He blinked, considering it, and then, in an act of understanding that warmed me, simply accepted that I had to do it. "I'll stay with you, of course. And you'll need some men, if you're hoping to tunnel down through the dragon pit."

  It touched me that he did not argue the necessity of it, and that he offered to delay his own triumph. "No. You go on. You've a narcheska to claim and an alliance to create. I'll need no one, for I'm hoping to go back in where Riddle and the others came out."

  "That's a fool's errand, Fitz. You'll never find it again. I listened to Riddle's answers as closely as you did." I smiled at his choice of words. "Oh, I think I will. I can be tenacious about things like this. All I ask is that you leave me what food you can spare and any extra warm clothing you have. It may take me some time to accomplish this."

  He looked uncertain at those words. "Lord FitzChivalry, forgive me for saying this, but this may be a rash risk of yourself, for no gain. Lord Golden is beyond feeling anything. There is little chance you will find a way back in, let alone find his body. I do not think I am wise to allow this."

  I ignored his final statement. "And that is another thing. You will be going back to enough chaos. You scarcely need Lord FitzChivalry's resurrection in the midst of it. I suggest that you meet quietly with your Wit coterie and still all their tongues about me. I've already spoken to Longwick. I don't think I need worry about Riddle. Everyone else is dead."

  "But… the Outislanders know who you are. They've heard you called by that name."

  "And it has no significance for them. They won't recall my true name any more than I can recall Bear's or Eagle's. I'll simply be the crazy one who stayed on the island."

  He threw his hands wide in a gesture of despair. "And we are still back to you remaining on this island. For how long? Until you starve? Until you find that your quest is as futile as mine was?"

  I pondered it briefly. "Give me a fortnight," I said. "Then arrange for a boat to come back here for me. If I haven't succeeded in a fortnight, I'll give it up and come home."

  "I don't like this," he grumbled. I thought he would argue further, but then he countered with "A fortnight. And I won't wait to hear from you, so do not Skill to me to beg for more time. In a fortnight, there will come a boat to this beach to take you off. And regardless of your success or failure, you will meet it and board it. Now, we have to hurry, before they've finished loading everything."

  But in the end, that was an idle fear. The crews were actually unloading things from the ships to make more room for the extra passengers. Chade grumbled and swore at my stubbornness, but in the end, he had to give way to me, mostly because I would not change my mind and everyone else was in a great rush to leave on the change of the tide.

  It was still surpassing strange to stand on the shore and watch the ships borne away on the tide's change. Heaped behind me on the beach was a miscellaneous dump of equipment. I had far too many tents and sleds for one man to use, and an adequate if very uninteresting supply of food. In the time between the ships' vanishing and the fall of night, I picked through what they had left me, loading what I thought I'd actually use into my own battered old pack. I put in extra clothing, as much food as I thought I would need, and my feathers from the Others beach. Longwick had left me a very serviceable sword; I think it had been Deft's. I had Longwick's own belt knife. The Fool's tent and bedding I kept, setting it up for my night's shelter, and his cooking supplies, as much because they were his as because they were the lightest to pack. Chade, I found to my amusement, had left me a small keg of his blasting powder. As if I'd risk tinkering with that again! My hearing was still not what it should have been. Yet, in the end, I did put a pot of it into my pack.

  I built up a good fire for myself that night. Driftwood was not plentiful on the beach, but there was only one of me to warm, so I indulged myself. I had expected to find the peace that isolation usually brought to me. Even when my spirits were darkest, solitude and the natural world had always comforted me. But tonight, I did not feel that. The restless humming of the submerged stone dragon was like a simmering reminder of the Pale Woman's evil. I wished there were a way to still it, to cleanse the evil carving back to honest stone again. I made up a generous pot of hot porridge for myself and recklessly sweetened it with some barley sugar that Dutiful had left for me.

  I had just taken my first mouthful when I heard footsteps behind me. I choked and sprang to my feet, drawing my sword. Thick stepped into the circle of my firelight, grinning sheepishly. "I'm hungry." I swayed with the shock of it. "You can't be here. You're supposed to be on the ship, going back to Zylig."

  "No. No boats for me. Can I have some dinner?"

  "How did you stay behind? Does Chade know? Does the Prince? Thick, this is impossible! I have things to do, important things to do. I can't look after you right now."

  "They don't know yet. And I'll look after myself!" he huffed. I'd hurt his feelings. As if to prove he could, he went to the heap of abandoned cargo and rummaged until he came up with a bowl. I sat, staring at the flames, feeling completely defeated by fate. He came back into my firelight and sat down on a stone across from me. As he dished up more than half the porridge for himself, he a
dded, "It was easy to stay. I just sent with Chade, with Chade at Prince, and with Prince, with Prince at Chade. They believed me and got on the boats."

  "And no one else noticed you were missing?" I asked skeptically.

  "Oh. I went don't see me, don't see me at the others. It was easy." He resumed eating with pragmatic enjoyment of the food. He was obviously pleased with how clever he'd been. Between mouthfuls he asked, "How did you trick them into letting you stay?"

  "I didn't trick them. I stayed because I had a task I had to do. I still do. They'll be back for me in a fortnight." I put my head into my hands. "Thick. You've done me a bad turn. I know you didn't mean to, but it's bad. What am I going to do with you? What did you plan to do when you stayed here?"

  He shrugged and spoke through the porridge. "Not get on a boat. That's what I planned. What did you plan to do?"

  "I planned to go on a long walk, back to the icy place. And kill the Pale Woman if I could find her. And bring back Lord Golden's body, if I could find it."

  "All right. We can do that." He leaned forward and looked into the porridge pot. "Are you going to eat that?"

  "It seems not." My appetite had fled, along with all thoughts of peace. I watched him eat. I had two choices. I knew I could not leave him alone on the beach while I went off to hunt the Pale Woman. It would have been like leaving a small child to look after himself. I could remain here with him on the beach for a fortnight until the boat that Dutiful had promised to send back for me arrived. Then I could send Thick off with it, and try to resume my tasks. By then, autumn would be upon this northern island. Falling snow would join the blowing snow to obscure all signs of passage. Or I could drag him along with me, proceeding at his plodding, torturous pace, taking him into danger. And taking him, also, into a very private part of my life. I did not want him to be there when I recovered the Fool's body. It was a task I wished and needed to do alone.