Fools Quest, Page 68

  I shut the wardrobe door. No. The candles would not be there.

  There was a stand by her bed, one brought from her old room. The guttered shell of a half-burnt candle was in the holder. I lifted it and smelled the faint scent of lavender. I opened the compartment, and there they were, ranked like waxy sentries. Lavender and honeysuckle and lilac and rose. I would take only four, I promised, and like a child unable to choose, I closed my eyes and reached in to take them at random.

  Instead my fingers brushed paper. I crouched down to look inside. There, wedged to one side of the candles, was an older sheaf of bound paper, given to Bee long ago when she was first mastering her letters. I set a flame to the wick of the candle in the holder and sat down on the floor. I leafed through her book. I saw her own drawings, of flowers and birds and insects, all inked so meticulously and accurately. Leaf after leaf I turned, and suddenly there was a page of writing. Not a journal of her dreams, but accounts of her days. I read it very slowly. For the first time, I learned of how she had freed her bound tongue, a tale she had never entrusted to me. I read of a kitten, encountered again as a cat. For the first time I learned of Wolf-Father and how she had been lost in the spy-labyrinth on the night I had gone to meet Chade. Wolf-Father? Nighteyes, or a child’s imaginings? No. The Wit did not work that way. Then I came to the page that told of how Lant had shamed her and mocked her before the other children and my heart burned with fury.

  I turned the page. Here she had written in a firmer hand. She had recorded the promise I had given to her. “He said he would always take my part. Right or wrong. ”

  It came then. Delayed for weeks, it burst in me. The throat-tearing sorrow that could not yield to tears. The killing fury. The need to rend. I could not make it right, but I could make someone pay for how wrong it had been. They had made me fail her. I had not taken her part. She had been stolen, and I had been helpless, and now she was gone, tattered to lost threads inside a Skill-stone. They had beaten and blinded the Fool, destroyed his courage and damped his merriment to nothing. And what had I done? Next to nothing. In a faraway place they ate and drank and slept and thought not at all of the terrible wrongs they had done.

  Bee had believed in me. Taken comfort and courage from my words that day. As had the Fool. He had come all that way, cold, broken, and alone, to ask me for justice. Justice too long delayed. The sudden fury and the solid resolution to avenge them coursed through me, hotter than any fever. My tears were done.

  Da?

  Nettle broke into my thoughts. I sensed her confusion and worry. I must have spilled over. I could not contain what I was feeling. My hidden decision burst from me. I can delay no longer. I will not see your child born, nor hold my first grandchild in my arms. Nettle, I am sorry. I have to go. I have to avenge her. I have to find the people who sent her killers and I have to avenge her. I’ve no idea how far I must go but go I must.

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  For long moments, I felt nothing from her. She boxed herself in so tightly that all I could sense was that she was still there. She was a hollow of sound, a seashell held to the ear. I waited.

  I knew that you would. I hoped … well. I know you must go. Riddle told me you would have to go. She was silent a time longer. If you could have, you would have gone after her in that moment. Right into the Skill-stone.

  I would.

  Another pause. I will go to King Dutiful and tell him why I think he should not oppose it. And frankly, why opposing it would do no good. Will I see you before you go?

  I will be using the Skill-portals to travel. So I must first return to Buckkeep. I tried to put my thoughts in order. I’ll return by horseback. I will need to consult the Fool as to my route. So, yes, you will see me before I go.

  Silently, we both wondered if I would ever return.

  Actually, when I reached for you tonight, it was to give you news of the Fool. And then I stumbled into your storm.

  News of the Fool?

  He’s missing.

  A lurch of loss. With you or without you, that was what he had said. He wouldn’t leave without me. Would he? He’d been so afraid. And so tired of waiting for me to act. How long has he been missing?

  I don’t know. Since this morning, at least. Kettricken went to call on him, and he was not in his room. At first she was pleased, thinking he had gone to visit Chade or had finally decided to take some air. But this evening, when she went back, he still was not there. Chade does not recall him visiting. No one has seen him.

  Have you asked his serving boy Ash?

  The Fool sent him on an errand to town, to buy smoked fish. He returned after we’d begun to search. He’s as worried as we are.

  I started to lie to her. And stopped myself. Perhaps I was as tired of secrets as Dutiful was. Perhaps I just needed an answer swiftly. Look in the lower parts of the castle. The dungeons.

  What? Why?

  He knew what Chade found there. A Skill-portal incorporated into the foundation. A rune on it that would take him to Aslevjal.

  But he has no Skill! And no reason to go to Aslevjal.

  Nonetheless, can you send someone to search that area?

  I will check, but, Fitz, I don’t think you need worry. Dutiful had a door of iron bars installed across that end of the corridor to make it a bit easier for Chade to keep his promise not to use it anymore. It’s always locked. Dutiful and I are the only ones with keys.

  I doubted that. I knew Chade too well to think there was any door in Buckkeep Castle he could not open. But that did not mean that the Fool would have access to a key. Unless Chade’s former apprentice knew of one. But even if they got past the locked gate, the Fool had not the Skill to enter a pillar.

  Please, just ask the gaolers if they saw him down there. I hesitated, not wishing to add what I knew I must. And please discover if any of your Skill-users are missing. An apprentice or a talented Solo. Anyone who might be restless and willing to be persuaded to try an experiment.

  I felt her distress at the notion. There may be a few, she admitted reluctantly. Skilled folk tend to be odd in some ways. I will try to discover if any are missing. But it is late and most castle folk are abed by now. I may not know until tomorrow.

  I hope to set out by first light tomorrow. Skill to me if there is any news.

  I will. I could feel her thinking separately from me. It was almost a whisper in my mind as she said, Do you remember when you were a wolf and came to me in my dreams?

  Her feelings for me as she had known me then blew like a breeze through our shared thoughts. I had been mysterious and powerful, almost a romantic image in her imagination of me. I felt a pang of loss that I had become so ordinary to her. I remember. Her Skill had first manifested in her ability to manipulate dreams, her own and those of others. I remembered her glass tower. Her gown of butterflies.

  And I remember Shadow Wolf. I knew that he would have to hunt down those who attacked his pack. I knew you would become him again, when you had been alone long enough. A pause in our communication, as if she thought of things too personal to share with me. I could feel her resignation to what I would do. It hurt me. Then, shocking me, I wish I had known her better. I wish I’d given her more time. I always thought there would be more time for us to be sisters. Her blast of sudden fury hit me like a spray of fire. I wish I could go with you and help you kill them!

  Skill-silence. I was stunned. Had I forgotten this was the woman who had stood up to Tintaglia when she was little more than a girl? When her mind engaged mine again, her polished control reminded me of her great-grandfather.

  Riddle will know what must be prepared for your journey. I will put him to that task. And I will prepare Dutiful to accept your decision.

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  And with that thought she left me, drifting away from my thoughts like the scented vapors of an extinguished candle in a cold room. I gathered my feet under me and stood slow
ly. I held the book protectively, as I had not held my daughter. I thought a moment longer and then stooped and blindly chose my candles. I blew out my lights and in the dark, I sniffed one of the unlit candles. Honeysuckle. A long-ago summer day. Molly gathering the white-and-pink blossoms, as busy as her bees in collecting the blossoms that would scent the wax. A memory to hold.

  I returned to my den. I put another log on my fire. I would not sleep in this dark before dawn. I kindled fresh candles and took up my old pack. It held my treasures, the things I would not be parted from. I added Molly’s candles and Bee’s journal. As I put her little journal in beside her book of dreams, I felt I joined two halves of her life. She had lived by day as my child, and by night as dreamer of dreams. I did not want to name her a White Prophet. I did not want to mark her as more the Fool’s than mine. I had not told the Fool she kept a dream journal. I knew he would want to hear me read it, would want to possess it as much as I did. These things were all I had left of my child, and I wanted to keep them to myself.

  I returned to my bedchamber. I went to my locked clothing chest, and from the layer beneath its false bottom I provisioned myself with poisons, unguents, powders, blades, and all that an assassin-turned-avenger might need. For Dutiful had unwittingly freed me. A royal assassin was bound to his king’s word, to slay only as directed. Now I would slay where I would.

  I had a heavy belt, one of doubled leather. Methodically, I filled the concealed compartments. The sheaths that fit inside a boot and hugged my ankle, the ugly bracelet that concealed a garrote, the belt-buckle that when snatched free became a short dagger. The gloves with the brass knuckles sewn into them. So many artful, deadly, nasty little tools, to sort and select and compactly pack. I had to leave room for the supplies I’d already purloined from Chade’s old lair. I would go prepared.

  I carried my tidy pack down to my private den. Outside, darkness still reigned. Soon enough I would rouse Perseverance and bid him ready our horses. Soon enough I would bid Withywoods farewell. I knew I should rest. I could not. I took out Bee’s books and sat down by the fire.

  They were hard to read. It was not her clear handwriting or painstaking illustrations. It was my reaction to the pages. There was too much of Bee in them, too much of what I had lost. I read again the first part of her journal. The references to Molly and her account of the day her mother had died were agonizing for me. I closed that book and carefully set it down. Her dream journal was little better. Here again I found the butterfly man dream. And a reference to the Wolf of the West and how he would come from the Mountains to save all. I turned a page. Here was a dream of a well brimming with silver. Another of a city where the ruler sat on a giant Skull Throne. At the bottom of each page she had carefully judged how likely each dream was to be a true dream and likely to happen. The one of the butterfly man had been extremely likely. The dream of the beggar I had to recognize.

  Alone by the fire, I could admit to myself that Bee had been precognizant to some extent. Some things she had right, such as the butterfly cloak. Others were wrong. The one wearing it had been a woman. Did it mean she was truly more mine than the Fool’s? The Fool, I had always felt, was adept at twisting his strange dreams into predictions that had come true. Often I had not heard about the dream until after the event that shadowed it. But Bee’s seemed almost clear to me, even though each seemed to have parts that did not quite fit with what had happened. The Wolf of the West. I’d heard those words first from the Fool. The Fool and Bee had shared a vision? I recalled what Shine had said, that Bee had been feverish and then shed a layer of skin to become paler. I decided that no matter what she had taken from the Fool, it made her no less the daughter of Molly and me.

  I came to her dream of a city and of standing stones with cleanly carved runes on them. That one, I felt, was obviously not a true dream, even though she had marked it as extremely possible. I had no idea of how many of my private scrolls she had read; likely my accounts were responsible for some of her dreams. I leaned closer, studying her illustration. Yes. The runes were mostly accurate. That was almost the rune for the Elderling city with the map-tower. It had a name now. Kelsingra. Yes. That she would have taken directly from one of my scrolls. She had marked it as likely to happen. So she had foreseen being snatched into a Skill-stone, although she had copied the wrong rune from my papers. The thought that she had foreseen her own end hurt my heart. I could bear to read no more. I closed her book and nestled both of them carefully into my pack.

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  As dawn broke, I did my final task. The hardest farewell of Withywoods.

  The fire had nearly died in my private study. The scroll racks were emptied, their contents either burned or packed for shipment back to the Buckkeep libraries. The secret compartment in my desk had gone undiscovered; if anyone found it now, they would find only emptiness.

  I shut the tall doors, lit a candle, and triggered the hidden door to the spy-passageways. For a long moment I debated. Then I picked up the triptych the Fool had carved of Nighteyes, him, and me. I wondered if the peculiar hinge had been discovered in the course of the repairs, but inside Bee’s tiny den, all was still as she had left it. Nothing had been moved since the last time I’d been here. I smelled a faint scent of cat, but if he was about, he took care not to let me see him. I suspected he laired here now, for Bee’s supply of her mother’s scented candles was not nibbled by mice. I refused to wonder how he came and went. Cats, I knew, had their ways. I took the key to her bedchamber from my pocket and placed it on her shelf with her other keepsakes. Beside it I placed the carving. Here, at least, we would all be together.

  I gave a final look around the hiding place my little child had created, and then left it behind me forever. The children of the keep would perhaps remember how they had hidden in a secret corridor, but they would search the walls of the pantry in vain for a way in. And I would take to my grave the trick of opening the study entry. Let her little things be safe there as long as the walls of Withywoods stood, as she had not been. I navigated the narrow corridor and shut the concealed door behind me.

  Done. All was tidied and finished. I blew out my candle, picked up my pack, and left the room.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Travelers

  For stone remembers. It knows where it was quarried. Always it will work best when installed near its home quarry. Stones that remain near their home quarries will always be the most reliable and they should be used in preference to others whenever possible, even if it means that one must travel by several facets to reach a destination.

  For other crossroads, away from all quarries, let the core stones be brought and allowed to stand, in sun and rain, for at least a score of years. Let each become full of the passage of the sunlight across its face and which stars shine above it. Cut from it then the faces that will remember the place it has stood and the stone core it was cut from.

  To a core stone that has become centered in that place, apply the shaved faces of the stones from the destinations. Mark the runes carefully as to which ones are for arriving and which ones are for departing, lest one enter a stone face backward and face an opposing current. Renew the runes to keep them sharp and clear, to aid the stone in remembering from whence it came and where it must transport the traveler.

  An expert mason must always make the choice. The stone must be strong, and yet rich in the Silver veins through which magic flows. Cut the core stones eight by eight by twenty. See they are well seated in the earth, to absorb the location and to assure that the stones do not lean nor fall.

  Be patient in the aging of a stone. This patience will be repaid for scores of years.

  Summary of opening passages of memory-stone cube 246, a treatise on stoneworking. I have shelved it with the memory stones related to Elderling construction.

  —Skill-apprentice scribe Lofty

  I announced my decision to the kitchen staff before breakfast. None of them seeme
d surprised that I was returning so soon to Buckkeep. In truth, they seemed relieved. Their recovery was slow and the presence of my guard, some of them rough fellows, had been more unnerving than reassuring to them. They would be glad when we were gone.

  I did the final tasks that would finish my duties to Withywoods. I gave orders that as soon as the renovations were finished, the furniture in the Rainbow chambers and most of the east wing should be draped. I told Dixon that he would be making his reports directly to Lady Nettle and Kesir Riddle now. I gave the same directive to each of my overseers. I was pleased to see Shepherd Lin’s bent shoulders straighten a bit as I conveyed full authority for the flock to him. I made arrangements for the packed scrolls to be sent by wagon to Buckkeep with Lant’s and Shine’s things.

  Before noon, all was settled. When I went out to depart, I found not only my horse and a pack animal waiting for me, but Perseverance. “You are certain you don’t wish to stay here?” I asked him, and his impassive face was my answer. Foxglove formed up my guard. I rode away from Withywoods.

  We made good time, despite a wet wind that promised to bring snow by evening. We made our journey back to Buckkeep through unseasonably warmer weather that turned the snow into wet, clinging mush and promised an early spring.

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  As I had feared, the Fool had been found wandering the dark and damp corridors in the foundation of Buckkeep. Nettle Skilled to me that Ash had not been with him and had been extremely relieved when he was returned safely to his chambers. She was concerned for him. I thanked her for letting me know he was safe, and worried for him for the remainder of the journey home.

  We had not even reached the gates of Buckkeep before I heard a shrill cawing and then, “Per! Per! Per!” and Motley came swooping in. She spooked Perseverance’s horse but still managed to land on his shoulder while he was mastering his mount. Our guard laughed among themselves, already familiar with the crow, and Per grinned to be so welcomed. As if enjoying the attention, Motley tweaked the cap from his head and he had to catch it one-handed as she attempted to fling it aside. We rode through the gates unchallenged, and as we drew in our mounts near the stable I was only mildly surprised to see Ash awaiting me.