’s Quest

FIVE An Exchange of Substance

I am curled warm and snug in the den. Safe. I am tired and if I shift too much, I feel the marks of teeth on my neck and back. But if I am still, then all is well.

In the distance, a wolf is hunting. He hunts alone. It is a terrible sound he makes, desperate and breathless. It is not the full-throated howling of a wolf that calls to his pack. It is the desperate yipping and short breathless howls of a predator who knows his prey is escaping. He would be better to hunt silently, to save his failing strength for running instead of giving tongue.

He is so far away. I curl tighter in the warmth of my den. It is safe here and I am well fed. I feel a fading sympathy for a wolf with no pack. I hear the broken yipping again and I know how the cold air rushes down his dry throat, how he leaps through deep snow, extending his full body, literally flinging himself through the night. I remember it too well, and for an aching moment, I am him.

‘Brother, brother, come, run, hunt,’ he beseeches me. He is too distant for me to know more of his thought than this.

But I am warm, and weary, and well fed. I sink deeper into sleep.

I awoke from that dream a lifetime away from the last time I had hunted with the wolf. I lay still, troubled and feeling the fading threat of it. What had wakened me? What needed to be hunted? And then I became aware of the smell of hot food, bacon and meal-cakes and the reviving fragrance of tea. I twitched fully awake and sat up. The sound that had awakened me had been the closing of my door. Ash had entered, set down a tray, stirred up my fire and fed it, taken my soiled shirt and done it all so silently that I had slept through it. A shudder of dread ran over me. When had I become so complacent and senseless as to sleep through intruders in the room? That was an edge I could ill afford to lose.

I sat up, winced, and then reached behind me to touch my own back. The wounds were closing and had stuck to the mildly itchy wool. I braced myself and plucked the nightshirt free of them, all while berating myself for sleeping too soundly. Ah. Too much to eat, too much to drink, and the exhaustion of a Skill-healing. I decided I could excuse my lack of wariness on those grounds. It did not totally banish the chagrin I felt. I wondered if Ash would report my lapse to Chade, and if he would praise the lad and if perhaps they would laugh about it.

I stood up, stretched cautiously, and told myself to stop being such a child. So Ash had fetched my breakfast and I’d slept through it. It was ridiculous to let it bother me.

I had not expected to be hungry after all I’d eaten the night before, but once I sat down to the food, I found I was. I made short work of it and then decided I would check on the Fool before taking a bit more sleep. The Skill-work I had done last night had taxed me far more than any other endeavour I’d taken on recently. He had been the receiver of that work: had it exhausted him as it had me?

I latched the main door to my room, triggered the secret door and went softly up the stairs, back into a world of candles and hearth-fire twilight. I stood at the top of the steps and listened to the fire burning, something muttering and tapping in a pot on the hearth-hook, and the Fool’s steady breathing. All trace of last night’s activities had been cleared away, but at one end of Chade’s scarred worktable, clean bandaging, various unguents and a few concoctions for the relief of pain had been left out. Four scrolls rested beside the supplies. Chade seemed always to think of everything.

I stood looking down at the Fool for some time. He lay on his belly, his mouth slightly ajar. Lord Golden had been a handsome man. I recalled with the regret of loss the clean planes of his face, his light-gold hair and amber eyes. Scars striated his cheeks and thickened the flesh around his eyes. Most of his hair had succumbed to ill health and filth; what he had left was as short and crisp as straw. Lord Golden was gone, but my friend remained. ‘Fool?’ I said softly.

He made a startled sound somewhere between a moan and a cry, his blind eyes flew open and he lifted a warding hand toward me.

‘It’s just me. How are you feeling?’

He took a breath to answer and coughed instead. When he had finished, he said hoarsely, ‘Better. I think. That is, some hurts have lessened, but the ones that remain are still sharp enough that I don’t know if I’m better or just becoming more adept at ignoring pain.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘A bit. Fitz. I don’t remember the end of last night. We were talking at the table, and now I’m waking up in the bed.’ His hand groped toward his lower back and cautiously touched the dressings there. ‘What’s this?’

‘An abscess on your back opened. You fainted, and while you could not feel the pain, I cleaned it out and bandaged it. And a few others.’

‘They hurt less. The pressure is gone,’ he admitted. It was painful to watch his progress as he manoeuvred his body to the edge of the bed. He worked to get out of the bed with as few motions as possible. ‘If you would put the food out?’ he asked quietly, and I heard his unvoiced request that I leave him to care for himself.

Under the hopping kettle lid I found a layer of pale dumplings over a thick gravy containing chunks of venison and root vegetables. I recognized one of Kettricken’s favourite dishes and wondered if she were personally selecting the Fool’s menus. It would be like her.

By the time I had set out the Fool’s food, he was making his way to the hearth and his chair. He moved with more certainty, still sliding his feet lest there be an obstacle, still leading with an outstretched hand, tottering and wavering, but not needing nor asking my help. He found the chair and lowered himself into it. He did not allow his back to rest against the chair. As his fingers butterflied over the cutlery, I said quietly, ‘After you’ve eaten, I’d like to change the dressings on your back.’

‘You won’t really “like” to do it, and I won’t enjoy it, but I can no longer have the luxury of refusing such things.’

‘That’s true,’ I said after his words had fallen down a well of silence. ‘Your life still hangs in the balance, Fool.’

He smiled. It did not look pretty: it stretched the scars on his face. ‘If it were only my life, old friend, I would have lain down beside the road and let go of it long ago.’

I waited. He began to eat. ‘Vengeance?’ I asked quietly. ‘It’s a poor motive for doing anything. If you take vengeance it doesn’t undo what they did. Doesn’t restore whatever they destroyed.’ My mind went back through the years. I spoke slowly, not sure if I wanted to share this even with him. ‘One drunken night of ranting, of shouting at people that were not there,’ I swallowed the lump in my throat, ‘and I realized that no one could go back in time and undo what they’d done to me. No one could unhurt me. And I forgave them.’

‘But the difference, Fitz, is that Burrich and Molly never meant to hurt you. What they did, they did for themselves, believing you dead and gone. And for them, life had to go on.’

He took another bite of dumpling and chewed it slowly. He drank a bit of yellow wine and cleared his throat. ‘Once we were a good distance offshore, the crew did what I had known they would. They took whatever we had that they thought was of value. All the little cubes of memory-stone that Prilkop had painstakingly selected and carried so far were lost to him then. The crew had no idea what they were. Most could not hear the poetry and music and history that were stored in them. Those who could were alarmed. The captain ordered all the cubes thrown overboard. Then they worked us like the slaves they intended us to become once they found a place to sell us.’

I sat silent and transfixed. The words came from the usually reticent Fool in a smooth flow. I wondered if he had rehearsed his tale during his hours alone. Did his blindness accentuate his loneliness and propel him toward this openness?

‘I was in despair. Prilkop seemed to harden every day, muscled by the work, but I was too recently healed. I grew sicker and weaker. At night, huddled on the open deck, in the wind and rain, he would look up at the stars and remind me that we were travelling in the correct direction. ‘We no longer look like White Prophets, we two, but when we make shore, it will be in a place where people value us. Endure, and we will get there.’

He drank a bit more wine. I sat quietly and waited while he ate some food. ‘We got there,’ he said at last. ‘And Prilkop was almost correct. When we reached port, he was sold at the slave auction and I …’ His voice trickled away. ‘Oh, Fitz. This telling wearies me. I do not wish to remember it all. It was not a good time for me. But Prilkop found someone who would believe him, and before many days had passed, he came back for me. They bought me, quite cheaply, and his patron helped us complete our journey back to Clerres and our school.’

He sipped his wine. I wondered at the gap in his story. What was too terrible for him to remember?

He spoke to my thought. ‘I must finish this tale quickly. I have no heart for the details. We arrived at Clerres, and when the tide went out, we crossed to the White Island. There our patron delivered us to the gates of the school. The Servants who opened the doors to us were astonished for they immediately recognized what we were. They thanked our patron and rewarded him and quickly took us in. Collator Pierec was the Servant who was in charge, now. They took us to the Room of the Records, and there they leafed through scrolls and scripts and bound pages until they found Prilkop.’ The Fool shook his head slowly, marvelling. ‘They tried to reckon how old he was, and failed. He was old, Fitz, very old indeed, a White Prophet who had lived far past the end of his time of making changes. They were astonished.

‘And more astonished when they discovered who I was.’

His spoon chased food around his bowl. He found and ate a piece of dumpling, and then a piece of venison. I thought he was making me wait for the tale, and taking pleasure in my suspense. I didn’t begrudge him this.

‘I was the White Prophet they had discarded. The boy who had been told he was mistaken, that there was already a White Prophet for this time, and that she had already gone north to bring about the changes that must be.’ He clattered his spoon down suddenly. ‘Fitz, I was far more stupid than the Fool you have always named me. I was an idiot, a fatuous mindless …’ He strangled on his sudden anger, knotting his scarred hands and pounding them on the table. ‘How could I have expected them to greet me with anything except horror? For all the years they had kept me at the school, confined me, drugged me that I might dream more clearly for them … For the hours they spent needling her insidious images into my skin to make me unWhite! For all the days they tried to confuse and confound me, showing me dozens, hundreds of prophecies and dreams that they thought would convince me I was not what I knew myself to be! How could I have gone back there, thinking they would be glad to see me, and quick to acknowledge how wrong they had been? How could I think they would want to know they had made such an immense error?’

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 any more. 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.

‘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 it 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 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 of it 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 when he was born 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 that 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 a 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 colourless 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 powerful 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.’

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 you either 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 outcome 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 I.’

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 clean 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. ‘Bear grease 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 bear grease with garlic, the scents did not blend well. I held my breath. When each had been tended, I put a clean 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.’

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 afterwards … 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 manoeuvre so that he could lift his legs up onto the bed. The loose trousers bared his meagre 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, my previous experiences with Skill-healings were that it took a real effort, often the effort of an entire coterie, to find a way into a man’s body and provoke his body 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 deciding to make 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 weren’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.’

I lowered my head. It was not praise.

‘We passed one another 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 I, and Nighteyes. One being.’

He could not see me and yet he still averted his face from me, as if I had said a thing that was 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 coloured skin and 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. There are many aspects of the Skill that 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. I took the cup while he lay back down 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.

‘I mean about this. About what bonds us in such a way that I can take you with me through a Skill-pillar, and almost without effort enter your body to heal it?’

‘Almost?’

‘I was exhausted afterward, but that was from the healing, I think. Not from the joining.’ I would say nothing of what it had done to my back.

I thought he would detect I was holding something back. Instead he spoke slowly. ‘Because perhaps the joining already exists and always does.’

‘Our Skill-bond?’

‘No. You haven’t been listening.’ He sighed. ‘Think again about the Elderlings. A human lives long in the company of dragons, and eventually he begins to take on some of the traits of the dragon. You and I, Fitz, lived in close company for years. And in that healing that was actually a snatching back from death, we shared. We mingled. And perhaps we became, as you claim, one being. And perhaps we did not completely sort ourselves back into our own separate selves as thoroughly as you think. Perhaps there was an exchange of our very substances.’

I thought about this carefully. ‘Substances. Such as flesh? Blood?’

‘I don’t know! Perhaps. Perhaps something more essential even than blood.’

I paused to sort the sense from his words. ‘Can you tell me why it happened? Is it dangerous to us? Something we must try to undo? Fool, I need to know.’

He turned his face toward me, took a breath as if he were going to speak, then paused and let it out. I saw him thinking. Then he spoke simply, as if I were a child. ‘The human that lives too long near the dragon takes on aspects of the dragon. The white rose that is planted for years beside the red rose begins to have white blossoms threaded with red. And perhaps the human Catalyst who is companion to a White Prophet takes on some of his traits. Perhaps, as you threatened, your traits as a Catalyst have infected me as well.’

I studied his face for signs of a jest. Then I waited for him to mock me for my gullibility. Finally I begged him, ‘Can you just explain?’

He blew out a breath. ‘I’m tired, Fitz. And I’ve told you as clearly as I can what I think may be happening. You seem to think we are becoming or were “one thing” as you so gracefully put it. I think that our essences may be seeping across to the other, creating a bridge between us. Or perhaps it’s a vestige of the Skill-bond we once shared.’ He leaned his poor head back on the pillows. ‘I can’t sleep. I’m weary and tired, but not sleepy. What I am is bored. Horribly bored with pain and darkness and waiting.’

‘I thought you just said that being bored—’

‘Is lovely. Horribly lovely.’

Well, at least he was showing signs of his old self. ‘I wish I could help you. Sadly, there isn’t much I can do about your boredom.’

‘You already did something for me. The sores on my back are much better. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. And now I fear I must leave you for a time. I’m supposed to meet with Lady Kettricken, as Lord Feldspar of Spiretop. I will need to dress for that role.’

‘And you must go right now?’

‘I should, if I’m to be properly dressed and in line for a private audience with her. I’ll come back afterwards. Try to rest.’

With regret, I turned away. I knew how the time must drag for him. He had always been a lively fellow, a juggler, a tumbler, adept at sleight-of-hand, with a mind as quick and clever as his fingers. He had cavorted through King Shrewd’s court, quick with a witty retort, always a part of the gay whirl that Buckkeep society had been when I was very young. Now sight and clever fingers and agile body had all been taken from him. Darkness and pain were his companions.

‘After Prilkop’s benefactor bought me from my “owner”, at an insultingly low price I might add, we were fairly well treated. His new patron was not a noble but a fairly wealthy landowner. It was only by the greatest of good fortune that the man was well-versed in the lore of the White Prophets.’

He paused. He knew I had halted, intrigued by his words. I tried to calculate how much time had passed. It was difficult to tell in the perpetual twilight of the room. ‘I have to leave soon,’ I reminded him.

‘Do you truly?’ he asked, a mocking lilt in his voice.

‘I do.’

‘Very well.’

I turned.

‘For ten days, we rested and were well fed in his home. He arranged new garments for us, packed provisions, and then he himself drove the horse and cart to Clerres. It was a journey of nearly a month to get there. Sometimes we camped, and at other times we were able to stay at inns. Both Prilkop and I worried greatly at what the man was sacrificing of pocket and time to get us there, but he would always say he was honoured to do it. Our road led us through a mountain pass, nearly as frozen and cold as a Buckkeep winter, and then down, down we went. I began to recognize the scents of the trees and I knew the names of the wayside flowers from my boyhood. Clerres itself had grown a great deal since last I had seen it, and Prilkop was astounded that the place he remembered as the simple village of Clerres had grown to an edifice of walls and towers and gardens and gates.

‘Yet so it was. The school had prospered, and in turn the city had prospered, for there was a trade now in the searching of prophecies to give advice to merchants and would-be brides and builders of sailing ships. From far and near they came, to pay a fee in the hope of getting an audience with the Head Servant, and then to tell their tale to him. And if he judged them worthy, they could buy a licence for a day or three or twenty, and cross the causeway to the White Island. There, one of the acolyte Servants would be put to researching the prophecies to see if any pertained to that particular venture or wedding or voyage.

‘But I am getting ahead of myself.’

I clenched my teeth and then let him win. ‘Actually, you’ve gone backward in your telling, as you well know. Fool, I desperately want to hear this story, but I must not be late to my audience.’

‘As you wish.’

I had taken four steps when he added, ‘I only hope I am not too weary later to tell you the rest.’

‘Fool! Why are you being like this?’

‘Do you really want to know?’ The old lilt of mockery was back in his voice.

‘Yes.’

He spoke more softly and soberly than he had before. ‘Because I know it makes you feel better when I mock you.’

I turned to look back at him, denial on my lips. But some trick of the firelight showed him to me as he was. Not at all like my friend of old. He looked like a badly-carved puppet of himself, something as battered and ragged as a beloved old toy. The light touched the scars on his face, the grey-painted eyes and straw-thatch of hair on his skull. I couldn’t utter a word.

‘Fitz, we both know I teeter on a knife’s edge. It’s not if I will fall, but when. You are keeping me balanced there and alive. But when it happens, as I fear it must, it will not be your fault. Nor mine. Neither of us could have steered this fate.’

‘I’ll stay if you want me to.’ I threw aside all thoughts of courtesy to Kettricken and duty to Chade. Kettricken would understand, and Chade would have to live with it.

‘No. No, thank you. Suddenly I am feeling ready to sleep.’

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ I promised him.

His eyes had closed, and perhaps he already slept. I left quietly.