’s Fate

SIX Revelations

I first dreamed the Destroyer when I was still on Aslevjal Island. Beloved’s Catalyst had returned for a second time. I believe his presence triggered both my dreaming and the vision of the Destroyer. In that dream, the Destroyer was a fist gripping a flame. The hand opened and the flames flared tall but instead of giving off light, they brought darkness. And everything I had ever known was destroyed.

It had been so long since I had dreamed a Dream that I told myself I had imagined that it was significant. Had not I just achieved all my goals? Why would a dream so dark come to me amid my triumph? Nonetheless, I was moved to say to the White Prophet and his Catalyst that the time had come for them to part. One of them, at least, accepted the truth of my words, but I saw that they both lacked the will to do what they must. I undertook to separate them.

The writings of Prilkop the Black

My recovery was slower than from any physical injury I had experienced in decades. Clearly my old Skill-healing did not repair whatever the Skill itself had drained from me. Focusing my thoughts was a challenge, and I tired easily. And my afternoon with General Rapskal had taxed me gravely. Even in this so-called ‘quiet’ building, the Skill-current sang and surged around me. But that did not mean there was not work to do. Information to gather, regardless of barriers. No matter how weary I was.

That night I sent Perseverance down to the kitchens to beg brandy and a glass for me. He had returned with a large bottle of Sandsedge. ‘Carot is from the Rain Wilds and very hampered by thick scales on his face and hands,’ he had informed me as he set out the bottle and two glasses. ‘He said you deserved only the best, and asked me to remember him to you.’ I’d sighed. My steady refusals to attempt any more healings had not stopped the requests and courtship of those afflicted with dragon changes. With an understanding shrug, Per left me alone in my room and went off to bed.

I was sitting on the bed, bottle beside me and glass in hand when Amber came in after a late dinner with Malta. I greeted her after I drained the last drops of brandy from my glass. ‘Did you have a pleasant evening?’ I asked her in a slow voice.

‘Pleasant enough. Little to show for it. IceFyre has been gone for months now; Malta isn’t sure when he left. All know that Heeby doesn’t speak to anyone except Rapskal, and Malta had heard that Rapskal had called on you and was concerned for you.’

‘I hope you told her I was fine. Though truly, I shouldn’t have ventured out into Kelsingra. The Skill-current out there is like being tumbled down a river full of boulders. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been trained to be aware of it and use it, or because there is so much Silver here. Perhaps I made myself vulnerable to it somehow, when I did those healings and let it course through me without restraint.’ I lifted the bottle. ‘Will you have some?

‘Some what?’ She sniffed the air. ‘Is that Sandsedge brandy?’

‘It is. I’ve only one glass but there are cups still on the table.’

‘I will, then. It would be shameful to make you drink alone.’

I kicked my boots off, let them thud to the floor. I let the bottle’s neck clink on the lip of my glass as I dribbled a bit more into it. Then I lay back on the bed, staring up at the dimmed ceiling. Stars gleamed against a deep blue sky. They were not the only illumination in the room. The walls had become a forestscape. White flowers gleamed on the swooping branches of trees. I spoke to the stars. ‘So much Skill coursing through this city, and I dare not use it at all.’

I did not watch as Amber discarded her skirts and wiped paint from her face. When I felt someone sit down on the edge of the bed, it was the Fool in plain leggings and a simple shirt. He had brought a teacup from the table. ‘And you still dare not venture to help any of the dragon-touched folk? Not even with the smallest complaint? Scales growing down over the eyes, for example?’

I sighed. I tapped the neck of the bottle light on the edge of his teacup to warn him, and then filled it well. ‘I know the man you speak of. He has come twice to talk to me, once to beg, once with coin. Fool, I dare not. I am besieged by the Skill. If I open my gates to it, I will fall.’ I moved over on the bed. He took two generous sips from his cup to lower the level of the brandy before taking a place beside me. I set the bottle on the bed between us.

‘And you cannot reach out to Nettle or Dutiful at all?’ He leaned back on the pillows beside me and held the teacup in both hands on his chest.

‘I dare not,’ I repeated. ‘Think of it this way. If there is water sloshing in my boat, I don’t drill a hole in the bottom to let it out. For then the ocean would surge in.’ He did not reply. I shifted in the bed and added, ‘I wish you could see how beautiful this chamber is. It is night in here, with the stars illuminated on the ceiling, and the walls have become a shadowed forest.’ I hesitated, needing to ease into the topic. Do it. ‘It makes me grieve for Aslevjal. The Pale Woman’s soldiers destroyed so much beauty there. I wish I could have seen it as it was.’

The Fool held a long silence. Then he said, ‘Prilkop often spoke of the beauty that was lost when she invaded Aslevjal and made it hers.’

‘Then he was there before she was?’

‘Oh, long before. He’s very old. Was very old.’ His voice went dark with dread.

‘How old?’

He made a small, amused noise. ‘Ancient, Fitz. He was there before IceFyre buried himself. It shocked him that the dragon would do so, but he dared not oppose him. IceFyre was seized by the idea that he must burrow into the ice and die there. The glacier had claimed most of Aslevjal when Prilkop first arrived there. Some few Elderlings still came and went, but not for long.’

‘How could anyone live that long?’ I demanded.

‘He was a true White, Fitz. Of a much older and purer bloodline than existed when I was born. Whites are long-lived and terribly hard to kill. You have to work at it to kill a White or permanently disable one. As the Pale Woman did with me.’ He sipped noisily from his teacup, and then tipped it to take a healthy drink from it. ‘What they did to me in Clerres … it would have killed you, Fitz. Or any other human. But they knew that, and were always careful not to go too far. No matter how much I hoped they would.’ He drank again.

I’d come to the topic I wanted to explore but not by the path I’d hoped. I could already feel the tension in him. I looked around and asked, ‘Where is that bottle?’

‘It’s here.’ He groped beside him on the bed then passed it to me, and I tipped a bit into my glass. He held out his cup and I sloppily refilled it.

He scowled as he shook brandy from his fingertips, and then sipped it down to where it would not spill. For a time, neither of us spoke. I counted his breaths, and heard them slow and become deeper.

Beside me in the darkness, he lifted his gloved hand. He let the teacup balance on his chest by itself. Gingerly he pulled at the fingertips of the glove with his other hand, until his silvered hand was bared. He held it up and turned it first one way and then the other. ‘Can you see it?’ I asked him curiously.

‘Not as you do. But I can perceive it.’

‘Does it hurt? Thymara said it would kill you, and Spark told me that Thymara is one of the few Elderlings allowed to work with Silver and knows more of it than anyone. Not that she has mastered the artful way of the old Elderlings.’

‘Really? I had not heard that.’

‘She attempts to learn from the memories stored in the city. But it is dangerous to listen too closely to them. Lant hears the city whisper. Spark hears it singing. I’ve warned them to avoid deliberate contact with places where memories are stored.’ I sighed. ‘But I am certain they have at least sampled some of what is there.’

‘Oh, yes. Spark told me that some of the serving girls do nothing in their free time except seek out the erotic remembrances that a certain Elderling left stored in a statue of herself. Malta and Reyn disapprove, and with reason. Years ago, I heard a rumour about the Khuprus family, that Reyn’s father spent too much time in a buried Elderling city among such stones. He died of it. Or rather, he became immersed in it and then his body died from lack of care. They call it drowning in memories.’ He sipped from his cup.

‘And we call it drowning in the Skill. August Farseer.’ I spoke aloud the name of a cousin long lost.

‘And Verity, in a much more dramatic way. He did not drown in someone else’s memories but submerged himself in a dragon, taking all his memories with him.’

I was quiet for a time, thinking about his words. I lifted my glass to my lips and then paused to say, ‘A hedge-witch once told me that all magic is related—like a circle—and people may have this arc of it, or that. No one gets it all. I’ve got the Skill and the Wit, but I can’t scry. Chade can, or could. I think. He never fully admitted it to me. Jinna could make charms for people, but despised my Wit as a dirty magic …’ I watched his silvered hand turning. ‘Fool. Why did you silver your hand? And why did you ask for more Silver?’

He sighed. His free hand shook out his glove and held it open as his silvered hand crept into it. He took up his cup in both hands. ‘To have the magic, Fitz. To be able to use the pillars more easily. To be able to shape wood again, as I once did. To touch someone or something and know it, from the bones out, as I once could.’ He drew in a deep breath and sighed it out. ‘When they tormented me … When they skinned my hand …’ He faltered. He took a slow sip of his brandy and said in a careless voice, ‘When I had no Skill on my fingers, I missed it. I wanted it back.’

‘Thymara said it would kill you.’

‘It was slow death for Verity and Kettle. They knew it. They raced to create the dragon and enter it before the Silver could kill them.’

‘But you lived for years with Silver on your fingertips.’

‘And you bore the marks of my fingers on your wrist for years. You didn’t die of it. Nor has Malta from my touch on her neck.’

‘Why not?’

He scowled at his teacup and drank to lower the level of brandy in it before he shifted onto his side to face me. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps because I am not fully human. Perhaps because of the White heritage. Perhaps because you were trained to master the Skill. Perhaps because for you, like Malta, it was the barest brush of Silver on your skin. Or, for her, perhaps Tintaglia’s dragon-changes made her immune.’ He smiled. ‘So perhaps because there is something of a dragon in you. Elderling blood, from long ago. I suspect it entered the bloodlines of the Farseers when the first Holder came to the shores of what would be Buck. Perhaps the walls of Buckkeep are not as heavily infused with Skill as the walls of Kelsingra, but we both know there is some of it, in the Skill-pillars and in the oldest stones of the castle. Perhaps you are immune to it because you grew up with it, or perhaps you were born that way.’ He shook his head against the bed that had relaxed to cushion him. ‘We don’t know. But I think this,’ he held his gloved hand aloft and rubbed his fingertips together, ‘will be very useful to me when we reach Clerres.’

‘And the vials of Silver you asked for?’

‘Truthfully, I wished them for a friend. To improve his lot in life. And perhaps to win a favour of him.’

I trickled some brandy into my glass and refilled his teacup. We both drank. ‘Do I know this friend?’

He laughed aloud. It was a sound that had become so rare that I smiled to hear it, even when I did not know the reason. ‘No, you don’t know him yet. But you will.’ He looked at me with his pale gold eyes and I felt he could see me. ‘And you may find you have much in common,’ he said, and laughed again, a bit loosely. I didn’t ask. I knew better than to think he might answer a direct question. He surprised me when he asked, ‘You have never considered it? Adding a bit of Skill to your fingers?’

‘No.’ I thought of Verity, his hands and forearms coated with Silver, unable to touch his lady or hold her. I thought of the times when something, a fern or a leaf, had brushed against the Fool’s old fingerprints on my wrist and I’d had a disconcerting moment of full awareness of it. ‘No. I think I have enough problems with the Skill without making myself even more vulnerable to it.’

‘Yet you wore my fingerprints for years. And became very upset with me when I removed them.’

‘True. Because I missed that link with you.’ I took a sip of brandy. ‘But how did you remove them from my skin? How did you recall the Skill to your fingertips?’

‘I just did. Can you tell me how you reach out to Nettle?’

‘Not in a way you would understand. Not unless you had the Skill.’

‘Exactly.’

Silence fell between us for a time. I worked on my walls and felt the muttering of the city become a soft murmuring and then fade to blessed silence. Peace filled me for a moment. Then guilt welled up to fill the space the city’s muttering had occupied. Peace? What right had I to peace when I had failed Bee so badly?

‘Do you want me to take them back?’

‘What?’

‘My fingerprints on your wrist. Do you want me to take them back again?’

I thought briefly. Did I? ‘I never wanted you to remove them when you did. And now? I fear that if you put your hand to my wrist, we might both be swept away. Fool, I told you that I felt besieged by the magic. My latest encounter with the force of the Skill has left me very wary. I think of Chade and how he crumbled in the last few months. What if that were suddenly me? Not remembering things, not keeping my thoughts organized? I can’t let that happen. I have to keep my focus.’ I sipped from my glass. ‘We—I—have a task to complete.’

He made no response. I was staring at the ceiling but from the corner of my eye, I watched him drain his teacup. I offered him the bottle and he poured more for himself. Now was as good a time as any. ‘So, tell me about Clerres. The island, the town, the school. How will we get in?’

‘As for my getting in, that’s not a problem. If I show myself in a guise they recognize, they will be very anxious to take me back in and finish what they began.’ He tried for laughter, but abruptly fell silent.

I wondered if he had frightened himself. I sought for a distraction. ‘You smell like her.’

‘What?’

‘You smell like Amber. It’s a bit unnerving.’

‘Like Amber?’ He lifted his wrist to his nose and sniffed. ‘There’s barely a trace of attar of roses there. How can you smell that?’

‘I suppose there’s still a bit of the wolf in me. It’s noticeable because you usually have no scent of your own. Oh, if you are filthy, I smell the dirt on your skin and clothes. But not you, yourself. Nighteyes sometimes called you the Scentless One. He thought it very strange.’

‘I had forgotten that. Nighteyes.’

‘To Nighteyes. To friends long gone,’ I said. I lifted my glass and drained it, as did he. I quickly refilled his cup, and chinked the bottle against the lip of my glass.

We were both quiet for a time, recalling my wolf, but it was a different kind of silence. Then the Fool cleared his throat and spoke as if he were Fedwren teaching the history of Buck. ‘Far to the south and across the sea to the east is the land from which I came. I was born to a little farming family. Our soil was good; our stream seldom ran dry. We had geese and sheep. My mother spun the wool, my parents dyed it, my fathers wove with it. So long ago, those days, like an old tale. I was born to my mother late in her life and I grew slowly, just as Bee did. But they kept me, and I stayed with them for many years. They were old when they took me to the Servants at Clerres. Perhaps they thought themselves too old to care for me any longer. They told me I had to become what I was meant to be, and they feared they had kept me too long from that calling. For in that part of the world, all know of the White Prophets, though not all give the legends credence.

‘I was born on the mainland, on Mercenia, but we journeyed from island to island until we reached Clerres. It’s a very beautiful city on a bay on a large island named Kells in the old tongue. Or Clerres. Some call it the White Island. Along that coast and on several of the islands are beaches littered with immense bones. They are so old they have turned to stone. I myself have seen them. Some of those stony bones were incorporated into the stronghold at Clerres. For it is a stronghold, from a time before the Servants. Once, a long narrow peninsula of land reached out to it. Whoever built the castle at Clerres cut away that peninsula, leaving only a narrow causeway that leads to it—a causeway that vanishes daily when the tide is in and reappears as the tide goes out. Each end of the causeway is stoutly gated and guarded. The Servants regulate who comes and who goes.’

‘So they have enemies?’

He laughed again. ‘Not that I have ever heard. They control the flow of commerce. Pilgrims and merchants and beggars. Clerres attracts all sorts of folk.’

‘So we should approach it from the sea, in a small boat, at night.’

He shook his head and sipped more brandy. ‘No. The towers above are manned at all times with excellent archers. Toward the sea, there are tall pilings of stone, and nightly the lamps on them are lit. They burn bright. You cannot approach from the sea.’

‘Go on,’ I said with a sigh.

‘As I told you. All manner of folk come there. Merchants from far ports, people anxious to know their futures, folk who wish to become Servants of the Whites, mercenaries to join the guard. We will hide among them. In the daily flood of people seeking Clerres, you will be unnoticed. You can blend with the fortune-seekers who at every low tide cross the causeway to the castle.’

‘I would rather enter by stealth. Preferably during darkness.’

‘There might be a way,’ he admitted. ‘There is an ancient tunnel under the causeway. I don’t know where one enters it, or where the tunnel opens. I told you that some of the young Whites carried me out in secrecy.’ He shook his head and took a healthy swallow of his brandy. ‘I thought they were my friends,’ he said bitterly. ‘Since then, I have had to wonder if they did not serve the Four. I think they freed me as one uncages a messenger pigeon, knowing it will fly home. I fear they will expect me. That they will have foreseen my return and be ready for me. What we attempt to do, Fitz, will disrupt every future they have ever planned. There will have been many dreams about it.’

I rolled my head to look at him. He was smiling strangely. ‘When first you brought me back from death, I told you I was living in a future that I’d never foreseen. I had never dreamed of anything beyond my death. My death, I knew, was a certainty. And when I travelled with Prilkop, back to Clerres, I had no dreams. I was certain that my time as a White Prophet was over. Had not we achieved all I’d ever imagined?’

‘We did!’ I exclaimed and raised my glass. ‘To us!’ We drank.

‘As the years passed, my dreams came back to me, but fitfully. Then Ash gave me the dragon-blood elixir, and my dreams returned as a flood. Powerful dreams. Visions that warned of strong divergences in what may be, Fitz. Twice I have dreamed of a Destroyer who comes to Clerres. That would be you, Fitz. But if I have dreamed such a thing, then will others have done so also. The Servants may expect us. They may even have deliberately set in motion that I will come back to them, and bring my Catalyst with me.’

‘Then we must make sure they do not see you.’ I feigned an optimism I did not feel. Telling an assassin he is expected is the worst news that can be delivered. I ventured toward something I had long wondered about. ‘Fool. When we were changing the world, putting it into a “better track” as you used to say … how did you know what we should and should not do?’

‘I didn’t, exactly.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I saw you in the futures I wanted. But not often. At first, your survival was very unlikely. So my first task was to find you, and keep you alive as long as possible. To create a greater likelihood that you would exist in more possible futures. Do you see what I mean?’ I didn’t, but I made an agreeable noise. ‘So. To keep a bastard alive, find a powerful man. Win him to my side. I put into King Shrewd’s head the thought that you might be useful in the future; that he should not let Regal destroy you, or he would not have you as a tool to possibly use later.’

I recalled Regal’s words the first time he saw me. ‘Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered well what you can’t do once you’ve done it.’

‘Almost exactly right,’ he said, and hiccupped, and then chuckled. ‘Oh, King Shrewd. I never foresaw that I would come to care for him so much, Fitz, nor that he would be fond of me. Or you!’ He yawned and added, ‘But he did.’

‘So, what can we do, to make it less likely they expect us?’

‘We could not go.’

‘Yes, there’s that.’

‘We could delay going for twenty years or so.’

‘I’d likely be dead. Or very old.’

‘True.’

‘I don’t want to take the others into this. Lant and the youngsters. I never meant for you to come along, let alone them. I hope that in Bingtown we can put them on a ship home.’

He shook his head, disapproving that plan. Then he asked, ‘Do you think that somehow you will manage to leave me behind as well?’

‘I wish I could, but I fear that I must have you with me, to help me find my way. So be useful, Fool. Tell me of this tunnel. Is it guarded as well?’

‘I think not, Fitz. I can tell you so little. I was blinded and broken. I did not even know the names of those took me out of there. When I realized they were moving me, I thought they were taking me to the dung-tank on the level of the lowest dungeons. It is a vile place, always stinking of filth and death. All the waste of the castle flows into a vat set into the floor. If you have displeased the Four that is where they will dump your dismembered body. Twice a day the tank floods with the incoming tide. A chute slants down and under the castle wall, into the bay. And when the tide goes out, it carries with it the filth, the excrement, the little strangled babies they did not find worthy of life …’

His voice cracked as he said, ‘I thought that was why they had come. To cut me in pieces and throw me in with all the other waste. But they hushed me when I cried out and said they had come to save me, and they rolled me onto a blanket and carried me out. During the times when I was conscious I heard the drip of water and smelled the sea. We went down some steps. They carried me a long way. I smelled their lantern. Then up some steps and out onto a hillside. I smelled sheep and wet grass. The jolting hurt me terribly. They carried me over rough ground for a painfully long time and then out onto a dock where they gave me over to sailors on a ship.’

I stored in my mind the little he had given me. A tunnel under the causeway that ended in a sheep pasture. Not much of use. ‘Who were they? Would they be willing to help us?’

‘I don’t know. Even now, I can’t recall it clearly.’

‘You must,’ I told him. I felt him flinch and feared I had pushed him too hard. I spoke more gently. ‘Fool, you are all I have. And there is so much I need to know about this “Four”. I must know their weaknesses, their pleasures, their friends. I must know their habits, their vices, their routines and desires.’

I waited. He remained silent. I tried another question. ‘If we can choose but one to kill, which one do you most wish dead?’ He was silent. After a time, I asked him quietly, ‘Are you awake?’

‘Awake. Yes.’ He sounded more sober than he had. ‘Fitz. Was this how it was with Chade? Did you two take counsel with one another and plan each death?’

Don’t talk about this. Too private even to tell the Fool. I’d never spoken of it to Molly. The only one who had ever witnessed me engaged in my trade was Bee. I cleared my throat. ‘Let it go for tonight, Fool. Tomorrow I will beg paper from the keepers and we can begin to draw the stronghold. As much as you remember. For tonight, we need to sleep.’

‘I won’t be able to.’

He sounded desperately unhappy. I was exhuming all he had buried. I handed him the bottle. He drank from the neck. I took it back and did the same. It was unlikely that I would sleep either. I hadn’t intended to get drunk. It was supposed to be a ploy. A scheme, to trick my friend. I drank more and took a breath. ‘Have you any allies there, within the walls?’

‘Perhaps. Prilkop was alive, the last time I saw him. But if he lives, he is likely a prisoner.’ A pause. ‘I will try to order it all in my mind and tell it to you. But, it is hard, Fitz. There are things I can’t bear to recall. They only come back to me in nightmares …’

He fell silent. Digging information out of him felt as cruel as digging bits of bone from a wound.

‘When we left Aslevjal to return to Clerres?’ he said suddenly. ‘That was Prilkop’s idea. I was still recovering from all that had happened. I did not feel competent to chart my own course. He had always wanted to return to Clerres. Longed for it, for so many years. His memories of that place were so different to mine. He had come from a time before the Servants were corrupt. From a time when they truly served the White Prophet. When I told him of my time there, of how I had been treated, he was aghast. And more determined than ever that we must return, to set things right.’ He shifted suddenly, wrapping his arms around himself and hunching his shoulders forward. I rolled toward him. In the faint light of the ceiling’s stars, he looked very old and small. ‘I let him persuade me. He was … I hope he is … very large-hearted, Fitz. Unable, even after he had seen all Ilistore did, to believe that the Servants now served only greed and hatred.’

‘Ilistore?’

‘You knew her as the Pale Woman.’

‘I did not know she had another name.’

At that, a thin smile curved his mouth. ‘You thought that when she was a babe, she was called the Pale Woman?’

‘I … well, no. I’d never really thought about it. You called her the Pale Woman!’

‘I did. It’s an old tradition or perhaps a superstition. Never call something by its true name if you wish to avoid calling its attention to you. Perhaps it goes back to the days when dragons and humans commonly coexisted in the world. Tintaglia disliked that humans knew her true name.’

‘Ilistore,’ I said softly.

‘She’s gone. Even so I avoid her name.’

‘She is gone.’ I thought of her as I had last seen her, her arms ending in blackened sticks of bone, her hair lank about her face, all pretence of beauty gone. I did not want to think of that. I was grateful when he began to speak again, his words soft at the edges.

‘When I first returned to Clerres with Prilkop, the Servants were … astonished. I have told you how weak I was. Had I been myself, I would have been much more cautious. But Prilkop anticipated only peace and comfort and a wonderful homecoming. We crossed the causeway together, and all who saw his gleaming black skin knew what he must be: a prophet who had achieved his life’s work. We entered and he refused to wait. We walked straight into the audience chamber of the Four.’

I watched his face in the dim light. A smile tried to form, faded. ‘They were speechless. Frightened, perhaps. He announced plainly that their false prophet had failed, and that we had released IceFyre into the world. He was fearless.’ He turned toward me. ‘A woman screamed and ran from the room. I cannot be sure, but I think that was Dwalia. That was how she heard that the Pale Woman’s hands had been eaten, and how she had died in the cold, starved and freezing. Ilistore had always despised me, and that day I secured Dwalia’s hatred as well.

‘Yet almost immediately, the Four gave us a veritable festival of welcome. Elaborate dinners, with us seated at the high table with them. Entertainments were staged, and intoxicants and courtesans offered to us, anything they imagined we might desire. We were hailed as returning heroes rather than the two who had destroyed the future they had sought.’

Another silence. Then he took a breath. ‘They were clever. They requested a full accounting of all I had accomplished, as one might expect they would. They put scribes at my disposal, offered me the finest paper, beautiful inks and brushes so that I might record all I had experienced out in the greater world. Prilkop was honoured as the eldest of all Whites.’

He stopped speaking and I thought he had drowsed off. I had not had near as much brandy as he had. My ploy had worked too well. I took the teacup from his lax hand and set it gently on the floor.

‘They gave us sumptuous chambers,’ he went on at last. ‘Healers tended me. I regained my strength. They were so humble, so apologetic for how they had doubted me. So willing to learn. They asked me so many questions … I realized one day that, despite all their questions and flattery, I had managed to … minimize you. To tell my history as if you were several people rather than one. A stableboy, a bastard prince, an assassin. To keep you hidden from them, save as a nameless Catalyst who served me. I allowed myself to admit that I did not trust them. That I had never forgotten or forgiven how they had mistreated and restrained me.

‘And Prilkop, too, had misgivings. He had watched the Pale Woman for years as she claimed Aslevjal. He had seen how she courted her Catalyst, Kebal Rawbread, with gifts—a silver throat-piece, earrings of gold set with rubies, gifts that meant that she had substantial wealth at her disposal. The wealth of Clerres had been made available to her that she might set the world on their so-called true Path. She was no rogue prophet, but their emissary sent out to do their will. She was to destroy IceFyre and put an end to the last hope to restore dragons to the world. Why, he asked me, would they welcome the two who had dashed their plans?

‘So, we conspired. We agreed that we must not give them any clues that led back to you. Prilkop theorized that they were looking for what he called junctions—places and people that had helped us shift the world into a better future. He speculated that they could use the same places and people to push the world back into the “true Path” they had desired. Prilkop felt you were a very powerful junction, one to be protected. At that point, the Four were still treating us as honoured guests. We had the best of everything, and freedom to roam the castle and the town. That was when we smuggled out our first two messengers. They were to seek you out and warn you.’

I rallied my bleary brain. ‘No. The messenger said you wanted me to find the Unexpected Son.’

‘That came later,’ he said softly. ‘Much later.’

‘You always said I was the Unexpected Son.’

‘So I thought then. And Prilkop, too. You will recall how earnestly he advised us to part, lest we accidentally continue to work unpredictable change in the world, changes we could neither predict nor control.’ He laughed uneasily. ‘And so we have done.’

‘Fool, I care nothing for anyone’s vision of a better future for this world. The Servants destroyed my child.’ I spoke into the darkness. ‘I care only that they have no future at all.’ I shifted in the bed. ‘When did you stop believing that I was the Unexpected Son? And if those prophecies do not pertain to me, what of all we did together? If we were guided by your dreams, and yet I was not the one your dreams foretold …’

‘I’ve wrestled with that.’ He sighed so heavily I felt his breath against my face. ‘Prophetic dreams are riddling things, Fitz. Puzzles to be solved. Often enough you have accused me of interpreting them after the fact, bending them to fit what truly happened. But the prophecies of the Unexpected Son? There are many. I have never told you all of them. In some, you wore a buck’s antlers. In others, you howled like a wolf. The dreams said you would come from the north, from a pale mother and dark father. All those prophecies fitted. I cited all those dreams to prove that the bastard prince that I had aided was the Unexpected Son.’

‘You aided me? I thought I was your Catalyst.’

‘You were. Don’t interrupt. This is difficult enough without interruptions.’ He paused again to lift the bottle. As he lowered it, I caught it before it fell. ‘I know you are the Unexpected Son. In my bones, I knew it then, and I know it now. But they insisted you were not. They hurt me so badly that I could not believe what I knew. They twisted my thoughts, Fitz, just as much as they torqued my bones. They said that some of their Clerres-bred Whites were still having dreams of the Unexpected Son. They dreamed him as a figure of dark vengeance. They said that if I had fulfilled those prophecies, the dreams would not be continuing. But they were.’

‘Maybe they still mean me.’ I stoppered the bottle and lowered it carefully to the floor. I set my glass beside it. I rolled to face him.

I had meant it as a jest. His sharp intake of breath told me it was anything but humorous to him. ‘But—’ he objected and then stopped speaking. He bowed his head forward suddenly, almost butting it into my chest. He whispered as if he feared to speak the words loud. ‘Then they would know. They would certainly know. Oh, Fitz. They did come and find you. They took Bee, but they had found the Unexpected Son, as they had claimed the dreams predicted they would.’ He choked on those last words.

I set my hand on his shoulder. He was shaking. I spoke quietly. ‘So they found me. And we will make them very sorry they found me. Did not you tell me that you had dreamed me as Destroyer? That is my prediction: I will destroy the people who destroyed my child.’

‘Where is the bottle?’ He sounded utterly discouraged and I decided to take mercy on him.

‘We drank it. We’ve talked enough. Go to sleep.’

‘I cannot. I fear to dream.’

I was drunk. The words tumbled from my mouth. ‘Then dream of me, killing the Four.’ I laughed stupidly. ‘How I would have loved to kill Dwalia.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Now I understand why you were angry at me for walking away from the Pale Woman. I knew she would die. But I understand why you wished me to kill her.’

‘You were carrying me. I was dead.’

‘Yes.’

We were both quiet for a time, thinking of that. I had not been this drunk in a long time. I started to let my awareness slide away.

‘Fitz. After my parents left me at Clerres, I was still a child. Just when I needed someone to care for me, to protect me, I had no one.’ His voice, always controlled so carefully, was thickening with tears. ‘My journey to Buckkeep, when I first fled Clerres to discover you. It was horrible. The things I had to do, the things that were done to me – all so that I could get to Buck. And find you.’ He sobbed in a breath. ‘Then, King Shrewd. I came there hoping only to manipulate him to get what I needed. You, alive. I had become what the Servants had taught me to be, ruthless and selfish. Set only on levering people and events to my will. I came to his court, ragged and half-starved, and gave him a letter with most of the ink washed away, saying that I had been sent as a gift to him.’

He sniffed and then dragged his arm across his eyes. My eyes filled with tears for him. ‘I tumbled and pranced and walked on my hands. I expected him to mock me. I was prepared to be used however he desired if I could but win your life from him.’ He sobbed aloud. ‘He … he ordered me to stop. Regal was beside his throne, full of horror that a creature such as I was admitted to the throne room. But Shrewd? He told a guardsman, “Take that child to the kitchens, and see him fed. Have the seamstresses find some clothes to fit him. And shoes. Put shoes on his feet”.

‘And all that he commanded was done for me. It made me so wary! Oh, I didn’t trust him. Capra had taught me to fear initial kindness. I kept waiting for the blow, for the demand. When he told me I could sleep on the hearth in his bedchamber, I was certain he would … But that was all he meant. While Queen Desire was gone, I would be his companion in the evening, to amuse him with tricks and tales and songs, and then sleep on his hearth and rise in the morning when he did. Fitz, he had no reason to be so kind to me. None at all.’

He was weeping noisily now, his walls completely broken. ‘He protected me, Fitz. It took months for him to gain my trust. But after a time, whenever Queen Desire was travelling and I slept on the hearth, I felt safe. It was safe to sleep.’ He rubbed his eyes again. ‘I miss that. I miss that so badly.’

I did, I think, what anyone would have done for a friend, especially as drunk as we both were. I remembered Burrich, too, and how his strength had sheltered me when I was small. I put my arm around the Fool and pulled him close. For an instant, I felt that unbearable connection. I lifted my hand away and shifted so that his face rested on my shirt.

‘I felt that,’ he said wearily.

‘So did I.’

‘You should be more careful.’

‘I should.’ I secured my walls against him. I wished I didn’t have to. ‘Go to sleep,’ I told him. I made a promise I doubted I could keep. ‘I will protect you.’

He sniffed a final time, wiped his wrist across his eyes and gave a deep sigh. He groped with his gloved hand, and clasped my hand, wrist to wrist, the warriors’ greeting. After a time, I felt his body go slack against mine. His grip on my wrist loosened. I kept mine firm.

Protect him. Could I even protect myself any more? What right did I have to offer him such a vain promise. I hadn’t protected Bee, had I? I took a deep breath and thought of her. Not in the shallow, wistful way one recalls a sweet time, long past. I thought of her little hand clasping my fingers. I recalled how thickly she spread butter on bread, and how she held her teacup in both hands. I let the pain wash fresh against me, salt in fresh slashes. I recalled her weight on my shoulder and how she gripped my head to steady herself. Bee. So small. Mine for so short a time. And gone now. Just gone, into the Skill-stream and lost forever. Bee.

The Fool made a small sound of pain. For an instant, his hand tightened on my wrist, and then fell slack again.

And for a time, as I stared up at the false night sky, I kept a drunken watch over him.