by Robin Hobb
He began to weep as he spoke, his blinded eyes streaming tears that were diverted by the scars on his face. Some detached part of me noted that his tears seemed clearer than they had been and wondered if this meant some infection had been conquered. Another, saner part of me was saying softly, “Fool. Fool, it’s all right. You are here with me now, and they cannot hurt you anymore. You are safe here. Oh, Fool. You are safe. Beloved. ”
When I gave him his old name, he gasped. He had half-risen to stand over the table. Now he sank back down into Chade’s old chair and, heedless of his bowl and the sticky table, put his head down on his folded arms and wept like a child. For a moment his rage flared again and he shouted, “I was so stupid!” Then the sobbing stole his voice again. For a time, I let him weep. There is nothing useful anyone can say to a man when such despair is on him. Shudders ran over him like convulsions of sorrow. His sobs came slower and softer and finally ceased, but he did not lift his head. He spoke to the table in a thick, dead voice.
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“I had always believed they were mistaken. That they truly had not known. ” He gave a final sniff, a sigh, and lifted his head. He groped for his napkin and wiped his eyes with it. “Fitz, they knew. They had always known I was the one. They knew I was the true White Prophet. The Pale Woman was the one they had made. They made her, Fitz, as if they were trying to breed a pigeon with a light head and tail. Or as if you and Burrich were breeding for a colt with the stamina of the stud and the temperament of the dam. They’d created her there in the school, and they’d taught her and filled her with the prophecies and dreams that suited their purposes. They’d made her believe and twisted her dreams to make them foretell what they wanted to happen. And they’d sent her out. And held me back. ” His head sank down. He pillowed his brow on his forearms and fell silent.
One of Chade’s exercises when he was training me was to put the pieces of something back together. It began with simple things: He’d drop a plate, and I would have to reassemble it to the best of my ability. The challenges advanced. The plate would fall, and I had to look at the pieces and mentally assemble it. Then I would be presented with a bag of pieces of something, broken crockery or cut harness or something of that ilk, and I had to put them back into a whole. After a time, the bag would hold not just the destroyed item but other random bits of things that looked as if they belonged with it. It was a physical exercise to teach my mind to assemble bits of facts and random gossip into a comprehensible whole.
So now my mind was at work, assembling bits so that I could almost hear the snicking of the pieces of a teapot being put back together. The messenger’s tale of bearing children who were taken from her meshed with the Fool’s tale of the Servants creating their own White Prophets. The race of Whites with their gift of prescience had vanished from our world long ago; the Fool had told me that when we were still boys. He claimed the Whites had begun to intermarry with humans, diluting their bloodlines until those who carried that heritage showed no sign and often were unaware of it. And he had added that only rarely was a child born who, by chance, reflected that ancient heritage. He had been one such, and was fortunate enough that his parents knew what he was. And they knew there was a school at Clerres where children who showed the physical traits of Whites were taken and taught to record their dreams and their flashes or visions of the future. Vast libraries of recorded visions were held there and studied by the Servants so they might learn the events that the future of the world would turn upon. And so, while he was very young, his parents had given him to the Servants to be taught to use his talents for the good of all mankind.
But the Servants had not believed he was the one true White Prophet. I had known a little of that. He had confided that they had held him there long past the time when he felt he needed to be out, changing the world’s events to set us all on a better path. I had known that he had escaped them and set out on his own, to become what he had believed he must be.
And now I knew the darker side of that place. I had helped Burrich to select breeding lines for dogs and horses. I knew how it was done. A white mare and a white stallion might not always yield a white foal, but if they did, chances were that if we bred that white offspring to another white horse, or bred it back to a sibling, we would get yet another white foal. And so, if King Shrewd desired it, he could have generations of white horses for his guard. Burrich had been too wise a horse-breeder to inbreed our stock too deeply. He would have been shamed to have a crippled or malformed foal born due to his negligence.
I wondered if the Servants shared his morality in that regard. Somehow I doubted it. So if the Servants desired it, they could likewise breed children with the pale skin and colorless eyes of White Prophets. And in some, prescience would manifest. Through those children, the Servants could gain the ability to glimpse the future and the various paths it might take, depending on events large and small. By the Fool’s account, they had been doing it for generations, possibly since before he was born. So now the Servants had a vast reservoir of possible futures to study. The future could be manipulated, not for the benefit of the world at large, but for the comfort and good fortune of the Servants alone. It was brilliant, and it was obscene.
My mind made the next leap. “How can you fight people who know your next move before you do?”
“Ah. ” He sounded almost pleased. “You grasp it quickly. I knew you would. Even before I give you the final bits, you see it. And yet, Fitz, they don’t. They didn’t see me returning at all. Why? Why would they resort to something as crude as physical torture to find out what I knew? Because you made me, my Catalyst. You created me, a creature outside of any future ever seen. I left you because I knew how potent we were together. I knew that we could change the future of the world, and I feared that if we remained together, with me blind to the future, we might set terrible things in motion. Unintentionally, of course, but all the more powerfully for that. So I left you, knowing it tore your heart as deeply as it tore mine. And blind, even then, to the fact that we had already done exactly that. ”
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He lifted his head and turned his face toward me. “We blinded them, Fitz. I came seeking you, a lost Farseer. In almost every future I could foresee, either you never existed or you died. I knew, I knew that if I could see you through and keep you alive, you would be the Catalyst to set the world into a new and better path. And you did. The Six Duchies remained intact. Stone dragons rose into the air, the evil magic of Forging was ended, and true dragons were restored to the world. Because of you. Every time I snatched you back from the brink of death, we changed the world. Yet all those things the Servants had also glimpsed, even if they believed they were unlikely to come to pass. And when they sent out their Pale Woman to be the false White Prophet, and kept me confined to Clerres, they thought they had guaranteed the outcomes they wished. You would not exist.
“But we thwarted them. And then you did the unthinkable. Fitz, I died. I knew I would die. In all the prophecies I’d ever read in the Clerres library, in all the dream-visions I’d ever had, I died there. And so I did. But in no future foreseen by anyone, ever, in all their trove of prophecies, was I pulled back alive from the other side.
“That changed everything. You flung us into a future unseen. They grope now, wondering what will become of all their plans. For the Servants do not plan for decades, but for generations. Knowing the times and means of their own deaths, they have extended their lives. But we have taken much of that power from them. The White children born since my ‘death’ are the only ones who can look into the future from that time. They grope through the futures where once they galloped. And so they must seek that which they most fear now: the true White Prophet for this generation. They know he is out there, somewhere, beyond their knowledge and control. They know they must seize him soon, or all they have built may come tumbling down. ”
His words rang with his conviction. And yet
I could not keep a smile from my face. “So you changed their world. You are the Catalyst now. Not me. ”
All expression fled his face. He stared past me, his filmed eyes fixed and distant. “Could such a thing be?” he asked in wonder. “Is that what I glimpsed, once, in the dreams where I was not a White Prophet?”
“I have no answer for that. I may no longer be your Catalyst, but I am certain I am not a prophet, either. Come, Fool. The dressings on your back have to be changed. ”
For a time he was very silent and still. Then, “Very well,” he acceded.
I led him across the room to Chade’s table. He sat down on the bench there and his hands fluttered, settled, and then explored the tabletop, finding the supplies Chade had set out for me. “I remember this,” he said quietly.
“Little has changed here over the years. ” I moved to the back of his seat and studied his nightshirt. “The wounds have oozed. I put a cloth on your back, but they’ve soaked through that as well. Your nightshirt is stuck to your back. I’m going to fetch warm water, soak it loose, and clean them again. I’ll fetch you a fresh nightshirt now and set the water to warm. ”
By the time I returned with the basin of water and the clean shirt, the Fool had arranged my supplies for me. “Lavender oil, by the scent of it,” he said, touching the first pot. “Beargrease with garlic in here. ”
“Good choices,” I said. “Here comes the water. ”
He hissed as I sponged it onto his back. I gave the half-formed scabs time to soften and then gave him the choice. “Fast or slow?”
“Slow,” he said, and so I began with the lowest one on his back, a puncture far too close to his spine. By the time I had painstakingly freed the fabric from the oozing wound, sweat had plastered his hair to his skull. “Fitz,” he said through clenched teeth. “Just do it. ”
His knotty hands found the table’s edge and gripped it. I did not rip the shirt free, but I peeled it away from him, ignoring the sounds he made. At one point he hammered on the stone table with his fist, then yelped at that pain and dropped his fist to his lap and his brow to the table. “It’s done,” I told him as I rolled the lifted shirt across his shoulders and let it drape there.
“How bad are they?”
I pulled a branch of candles closer and studied his back. So thin. The bones of his spine were a row of hummocks down his back. The wounds gaped bloodlessly at me. “They’re clean, but open. We want to keep them open so that they heal from the inside out. Brace yourself again. ” He kept silent as I wiped each injury with the lavender oil. When I added the beargrease with garlic, the scents did not blend well. I held my breath. When each had been tended, I put a new cloth over his back, trusting the grease to hold it in place. “There’s a clean shirt here,” I said. “Try not to displace the dressing as you put it on. ”
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I walked to the other end of the room. His injuries had spotted his bedding with blood and fluid. I would leave a note asking Ash to bring fresh linens. Then I wondered if the boy could read, and decided it was likely so. Even if his mother had not demanded it of him for her business, Chade would have immediately set him to learning. For now, I turned his pillows and tugged the bedding straight.
“Fitz?” he called from the worktable.
“I’m here. Just straightening your bedding. ”
“You’d have made a fine valet. ”
I was silent for a moment, wondering if he mocked me.
“Thank you,” he added. And then, “Now what?”
“Well, you’ve eaten and we’ve changed the dressings. Perhaps you’d like to rest some more. ”
“In truth, I am tired of resting. So weary of it, in fact, that I can do nothing except seek my bed again. ”
“It must be very boring. ” I stood still and watched him haltingly totter toward me. I knew he did not want me to offer help.
“Ah, boredom. Fitz, you have no idea how sweet boredom can be. When I think of endless days spent wondering when next they would return to take me, and what new torment they might devise, and if they might see fit to give me food or water before or afterward … well, boredom becomes more desirable than the most extravagant festival. And on my journey here, oh, how I longed for my days to be predictable. To know if the person who spoke to me was truly kind or cruel, to know if there might be food that day, or if I would find a dry place to sleep. Ah. ” He had almost reached me. He halted where he was, and the emotions that passed over his face tore me. Memories he would not share with me.
“The bedstead is right there, to your left. There. Your hand is on it. ”
He nodded to me, and patted and felt his way back to the side of the bed. I had opened the blankets to the linens for him. He turned and sat down on the bed. A smile crossed his face. “So soft. You’ve no idea, Fitz, how much this pleases me. ”
He moved his body so carefully. It reminded me of Patience toward the end of her years. It took him time to maneuver so that he could lift his legs up onto the bed. The loose trousers bared his meager calves and the distorted knobs of his ankles. I winced as I looked at his left foot. To call it a foot was a charity. How he had walked on that I did not know.
“I had a stick to help me. ”
“I didn’t speak that aloud!”
“I heard that little sound you made. You make it when you see anything hurt. Nosy with a scratch on his face. Or the time I had a sack put over my head and took a beating. ” He lay on his side and his hand scrabbled at the bedcovers. I pulled them up over him with no comment. He was silent for a minute and then said, “My back hurts less. Did you do something?”
“I cleaned out the injuries and put dressings on them. ”
“And?”
And why should I lie? “When I touched you to clean the first boil that had broken, I … went into you. And encouraged your body to heal itself. ”
“That’s …” He groped for a word. “… interesting. ”
I had expected outrage. Not his hesitant fascination. I spoke honestly. “It’s a bit frightening, too. Fool, in my previous experiences with Skill-healings, it took a real effort, often the effort of an entire coterie, to find a way into a man’s body and provoke it to work harder at healing itself. So to slip into awareness of your body so easily is unsettling. Something is strange there. Strange in the same way that it was too easy to bring you through the Skill-pillars. You took back our Skill-bond, many years ago. ” It was a struggle to keep rebuke from my voice. “I look back on the night when we came here and I marvel at my foolhardiness in making the attempt. ”
“Foolhardiness,” he said softly, and laughed low. He coughed then and added, “I believe my life was in the balance that night. ”
“It was. I thought I had burned Riddle’s strength to bring you through. But the degree of healing you already showed when we arrived here makes me wonder if it wasn’t something else. ”
“It was something else,” he said decisively. “I can’t claim to know this and yet I feel certain I am right. Fitz, all those years ago when you brought me back from the dead, you found me and put me into your own flesh while you entered my dead body and forced it back into life, as if you were lashing a team to pull a wagon from a swamp. You were ruthless in what you did. Much as you were when you risked all, not just you and me, but Riddle, to bring me here. ”
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I lowered my head. It was not praise.
“We passed each other as we each resumed life in our own bodies. Do you remember that?”
“Somewhat,” I hedged.
“Somewhat? As we passed, we merged and blended. ”
“No. ” Now he was the one who was lying. It was time to speak the truth. “That is not what I recall. It was not a temporary merging. What I recall is that we were one. We were not wholes blending as we passed. We were parts, finally forming a whole. You and me and Nighteyes. One being. ”
He
could not see me and yet he still averted his face, as if I had said a thing too intimate for us to witness. He bowed his head, a small affirmation. “It happens,” he said softly. “A mingling of beings. You’ve seen the results, though you may not have recognized it. I certainly didn’t. That tapestry of the Elderlings that once hung in your room. ”
I shook my head. I’d been a child the first time I’d seen it. It was enough to give anyone nightmares. There was King Wisdom of the Six Duchies, treating with the Elderlings, who were tall, thin beings with unnaturally colored skin, hair, and eyes. “I don’t think that has anything to do with what I’m talking about now. ”
“Oh, it does. Elderlings are what humans may become through a long association with dragons. Or more commonly, what their surviving offspring may become. ”
I saw no connection. “I do recall, long ago, when you tried to convince me that I was part dragon. ”
A smile twisted his weary mouth. “Your words. Not mine. But not so far from what I was theorizing, even if you’ve phrased it very poorly. Many aspects of the Skill put me in mind of what dragons can do. And if some distant ancestor of yours was dragon-touched, so to speak, could it be why that particular magic manifests in you?”
I sighed and surrendered. “I’ve no idea. I don’t even know quite what you mean by ‘dragon-touched. ’ So, perhaps. But I don’t see what that has to do with you and me. ”
He shifted in the bed. “How can I be so tired, and not one bit sleepy?”
“How can you start so many conversations and then refuse to finish any of them?”
He went off into a coughing fit. I tried to tell myself he was feigning it but went to fetch him water anyway. I helped him sit up and waited while he drank. When he lay back down, I took the cup and waited. I said nothing, simply stood by the bed with the cup. After a time I sighed.
“What?” he demanded.
“Do you know things you aren’t telling me?”
“Absolutely. And that will always be true. ”
He sounded so much like his old self and took such obvious pleasure in the words that I felt almost no annoyance. Almost.