Fools Quest, Page 80

  The rest of the meal passed uneventfully. Lant said little except to thank them for the meal and to compliment the food, and I volunteered little more than that. Often I felt Reyn’s eyes upon me, measuring me, and I strove to behave as a Farseer prince should, even as I wondered what sort of a tale Amber had spun around us.

  Our meal over, a servant cleared the table and set out brandy and glasses for us, with a selection of spicy teas offered as well. The brandy was Sandsedge, from the Six Duchies, and I wondered if that was intended as a compliment. I accepted a small glass with pleasure and sincere thanks. Reyn had just opened his mouth to reply when the door opened and a frail old Elderling came in. He moved slowly, a servant at his side and a cane in his hand. He breathed audibly through his nose, and took short cautious steps as he made his way toward the table. His hair was as golden as Malta’s and his scaling as blue as Reyn’s. Even so, I was startled when Malta said brightly, “And here is Phron, come to wish us good night. ”

  Amber could not see but perhaps she could hear Phron’s breathing and his hesitant step as he made his way to the table and then eased himself into a chair. The servant stooped, to ask if he would prefer brandy or tea. “Tea. Please. ” A gasp punctuated the man’s request, for so his voice betrayed him to be. I looked at him afresh. His eyes were an intense blue, and the scaling of blue and silver that marked him was both intricate and fanciful. It was no chance growth, like a calico kitten’s fur. The patterns on his face and bared arms were as deliberate and artful as a tattoo. But the purplish tint to his lips that puffed in and out as he breathed and the dark circles under his eyes were not part of that coloring. Phron. Malta’s son. Not an old man, but a young one made old by illness.

  Malta had gone to her son’s side. She extended a hand to indicate us. “Prince FitzChivalry, Lord Lant, Lady Amber, I am pleased to present our son, Ephron Khuprus. ”

  I stood, took two steps and bowed to him. The closer I got to him, the louder my Wit-sense of him rang. He extended his hand to me, and so I offered mine. He surprised me when he clasped my wrist in the Six Duchies style of warrior greeting warrior, but I returned it. The moment my hand closed against his skin, my awareness of him doubled in a way I had never experienced. It was not comfortable for me and yet it did not seem he was even aware of it. Dragon and boy, boy and dragon rang against my senses in a way I could scarcely stand. And with that doubled sense of him, an even deeper sense of wrong, wrong, wrong within his body. He was weak and breathless, starved and weary from the wrongness. It jangled against my senses unbearably, and thoughtlessly I reached out and touched the error.

  The boy gasped. His head sagged forward on his chest and for a moment he was totally still. We remained as we were, our wrists locked in each other’s grip. I reached to catch his shoulder with my free hand as he sagged toward me. I could not let go as the Skill poured through me and into him.

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  In a long-ago spring in the Mountains, Nighteyes and I had once witnessed an ice dam in a creek giving way. In a thundering roar, the pent-up water had burst through, and in a moment the white of the snowy creek bed had become a brown rush of water, sticks, and even logs tumbling as the flood gushed down the hillside. The Skill-tide that I had sensed all around me, that had surrounded me and prevented me from reaching Nettle, suddenly found an open channel. It coursed through me, powerful and pure and laden with pleasure in making things perfect. The Skill-joy that was as much sensory as it was intellectual flooded my mind and my body. The boy made a strangled sound and perhaps I echoed that muffled cry.

  “Phron!” Malta cried out in alarm and in an instant Reyn was on his feet.

  I shivered as if a chill wind swept through me while Phron’s body aligned itself to my vision. Somewhere a vast distance away, the queen dragon Tintaglia was startled. Was not that human hers to shape? Then she dismissed me, as dragons dismiss humans, and I sensed her no more. But Phron lifted his head and all but shouted his question. “What was that? It felt amazing!” In sudden astonishment, he added, “I can breathe! It doesn’t hurt to breathe, I don’t have to work at it! I can breathe and talk!” Suddenly he released his grip on me and took the four strides that carried him to his father’s worried embrace.

  For myself, I staggered sideways. Lant shocked me when he leapt to my side and caught my elbow to steady me. “What just happened?” he breathed, and all I could do was shake my head.

  Then Phron broke free of Reyn and turned back to me. He took a deep lungful of air in through his mouth and suddenly gave a shout of pure relief. “Was that you?” he demanded of me. “I think it was you, but it felt like what Tintaglia sometimes does, when she comes. She has not been here in, what, five years? When last she put me right, yes, five years. ” He opened and flexed the long digits of his hands, and I guessed that whatever she had done then had restored his hands to him. Malta was weeping wordlessly, tears streaming down her cheeks. Phron turned to her, wrapped his arms around her, and tried to lift her off her feet in a hug. He failed. Months of breathlessness had enfeebled him, but he was smiling now. “I’m better, Mother. Better than I’ve been in years! Don’t weep! Is there food left? Food I can chew and swallow now without gasping? Anything but soup! Anything I can bite and chew. Or crunch! Is there anything crunchy?”

  Malta broke free of his hug, laughing wildly. “I’ll fetch it for you!” And that fine and queenly Elderling was suddenly just a boy’s mother as she darted away from him toward the door. As she went, she was already calling for meat and fresh bread toasted hot and other words that were lost to us in the closing of the door.

  I turned back to find Reyn standing behind me, grinning at his son. He looked to me. “I don’t know why you came here. I don’t know what you did, even though I felt an echo of it. It felt like Tintaglia, she who touched me and made me an Elderling. How did you do it? I thought only a dragon could shape us like that. ”

  “He’s a man of many talents,” Amber said. She stood, pushing back from her chair. Her fingertips trailed the table’s edge as she came toward us, and when she reached us, Lant surrendered his place at my side to her. She took my arm in a way that was too familiar. Molly. Molly had always taken my arm like that, when we walked in the market and she wished my attention, or sometimes when she just wanted to touch me. It was different from how the Fool would sometimes link arms with me back in the days when we had walked side by side. He was Amber in that moment, and his hand rested possessively on my upper arm. I forced myself to stand still and accept it. Like a horse accepting a strange rider, I thought to myself, and reined in my impulse to break free of the touch. I did not know what game he played, and dared not spoil it for him. Very softly I said, “A Skill-healing. And one that was beyond my control. I need to sit down now. ”

  “Of course,” she said, and Lant was already pulling out one of the unclaimed chairs for me. I sat and wondered what had just happened.

  “You look as if you could use this,” I heard Reyn say. He had my glass and was tipping a generous measure of brandy into it. He set it before me and I managed to thank him. I felt as if I’d fallen into a deep and swift current, been tumbled in it, and then pulled back to shore. It surged still, unbearably close to me, coursing through me with a pleasure beyond any appetite I’d ever known. Pull me back, Verity had once said to me. But there was no one near to help me. I was not sure if I wanted help or to let go. The Skill-current beckoned, seething with power and pleasure. Why would I shut that out? I built my wall as if I were pushing a wall of mud against a flood. Did I really want to close myself in? The Fool, or Amber, was standing behind me. I felt hands settle on my shoulders and steady me. I drew a breath and my walls held. I stepped back from temptation.

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  Malta came back into the room, carrying some flat yellow cakes on a platter. Two servants came behind her, bringing a roasted bird and a heaped mound of the dark-orange roots we’d had at dinner. The bo
y’s eyes lit to see them, and his father laughed out loud as he hastily seated himself. He did not wait, but took one of the yellow cakes and bit into it. It was crisp to the point of breaking, and he devoured it with unabashed pleasure as a beaming servant forked a thick slab of meat onto a plate for him and mounded vegetables beside it. He spoke to me around and through a mouthful. “I haven’t been able to eat easily for more than a year. My throat had grown so tight and small inside. It burned when I swallowed. Soup. I could get down thin soup. That was all. ”

  “You had … they would have been right. In a dragon. They grew as if …” I felt very awkward saying it. I knew I’d seen them earlier, in the green dragon’s open maw. “Sacs,” I said. “For spitting poison, I think. Growing in your throat. ”

  “What did you do? And how?” Malta was regarding me with wonder. Wonder touched with fear.

  Amber spoke over my head. “Prince FitzChivalry has the hereditary magic of the Farseer line. Of the royal blood. He can heal. ”

  “Sometimes!” I added hastily. “Only sometimes. ” I found the brandy. My hand was steady enough to pick it up, and I had some.

  “I think,” Reyn spoke slowly, “that I would like for all of us to sit down. I’d like to hear Lady Amber’s tale. To know why you came here. And how. ”

  She squeezed my shoulders, cautioning me to silence, just as Molly would have if she’d thought I was about to offer too much coin for a market purchase. “It would greatly please me to tell you all,” she said, and I was just as glad to let her. I felt relief when she let go of me and we were seated round the table again. Lant had taken his seat and remained remarkably quiet.

  A tale the Fool told him, in the voice of a steady and practical woman. She and I were old friends, she began.

  “That I guessed,” Malta said knowingly. “When first I saw him, I felt as if I already knew him. ” She smiled at me as if we shared a jest. I smiled back, without understanding.

  Amber’s tale skirted and leapt and wove through the truth. She’d come to Buckkeep, and there had a lovely time with all the beautiful money that Jek had sent to her from Bingtown. Too lovely a time, with too much fine brandy (and here she paused to take a sip of golden Sandsedge) and too many games of chance where neither cards nor dice nor scattering pins favored her. She’d lost her fortune and decided to return to her homeland to reunite with her family and to visit friends. Instead she’d encountered old enemies. They’d taken over her ancestral home, and injured her kin. They’d captured her, and tormented her. Blinding her had neither been the least nor the worst of what they did to her. When she could, she escaped them. And fled back to me. To one who could avenge her, and help her free those still kept captive. To FitzChivalry Farseer, a man as adept at killing as he was at healing.

  The tale had enraptured all of them, even Lant. It came to me that this contorted version of the truth of the Fool’s tale was more than he’d heard of it before. Phron was now looking at me with a youngster’s wonder. Reyn sat, elbow on the table, his chin in his hand, and his fingers splayed across his mouth. I could not decide what he was thinking, but Malta was nodding to Amber’s words, and accepted her claims for me with no argument. I controlled my face but ruefully wished she were less extravagant in her praise of me.

  So I was dismayed by Malta’s words when the Fool paused to sip brandy. “There are other children,” she said. She looked directly at me. “Not many. The children born here in Kelsingra are few, and even fewer survive. If you could do for them what you did for Phron, you could ask of us almost any—”

  “Malta, he is a guest—” her husband began, in rebuke, but she interrupted with, “And they are children who suffer daily, and their parents with them. How can I not ask for it?”

  “I understand. ” I said it swiftly, before the Fool could speak. “But I cannot make any promises. What Amber called a healing is more of … an adjustment. It may not be permanent. I may not be able to help any of the other children. ”

  “We need—” Amber began but I cut her off recklessly.

  “We need nothing in return for helping children. The lives of children are not bargaining chips. ”

  “We need,” Amber resumed calmly, “not speak of any bargain or desire of ours until after FitzChivalry has done what he can for the children. ” She turned her blinded visage toward me. “That goes without saying. ”

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  And yet by saying it, she had reminded them that we could have held that back. I tried to watch Malta’s face without seeming to stare. She was nodding slowly and then exchanged an unreadable glance with Reyn. Phron was still eating. Without thinking, I cautioned him, “Slow down. You will have to give your body time to adapt to the change in your diet. ”

  He stopped, fork halfway to his mouth. “I have been so hungry for so long,” he explained.

  I nodded. “But no matter how long you’ve been hungry, your stomach will only hold so much. ”

  “Trust me. That’s very true,” Amber confirmed for him ruefully.

  I glanced at his parents, suddenly aware that I had spoken to their son as if he were mine. Malta had a look of pleading desperation. Reyn was looking down, as if ashamed to hope.

  I made the offer reluctantly. Had not I known what it was to have a child with a baffling difficulty? Had not I felt the pain of a parent who would pay any price to make my child’s life better? “I don’t know that I can help all of them. Or any of them. But I am willing to try,” I said and attempted to keep my trepidation from my voice. It was not just that I was uncertain. It was the disquieting knowledge that my Skill-magic was moving strangely in me. Was it the Skill itself, was it stronger or more focused here in Kelsingra? Or was it me? Was the boundary between me and the Skill-current eroding? I had touched Phron, a boy I’d never met before, and healed him as effortlessly as if I were Thick. No. Not healed, I reminded myself. Adjusted him. With no previous knowledge of how a young Elderling’s body should be. I suddenly wished I had not agreed to try. What if my next effort did not correct but caused an error in a child’s body? What would have become of us if Phron had died choking and gasping at my feet?

  “I have not yet finished my tale,” Amber interjected softly. I was startled to the point of staring. The Fool never volunteered information about himself. Was Amber so different a person?

  “There is more?” Malta was incredulous.

  “It’s quickly told, and perhaps a brief telling is best for you as well as FitzChivalry. The people who held me captive, tormented me, and stole my eyesight knew that I would seek help from my old friend. ” She paused, and my belly turned over in me. He wouldn’t. She did. “They lured FitzChivalry away from his home. And then they attacked it with hired Chalcedean troops, led by a man whose name perhaps you may know. He called himself Duke Ellik. ”

  I actually heard Reyn’s teeth grind. Malta had gone pale under her scarlet scaling. The crimson outline of every scale against her white face was beautiful and frightening. Was Amber unaware of the response she had woken? She spoke on.

  “They shattered his doors, burned his barns and stables, killed and raped and looted. And they stole his daughter. A small child of nine years. Her older cousin they took as well. Lady Shine was able to escape, not without harm, but alive. But little Bee, Lord FitzChivalry’s daughter, a child beyond precious to both of us, they destroyed. ”

  So bald a telling of that tale. I should have been inured to that pain. I should have been past the point where it made me want to rage, to weep, and to strike out at all around me. I found I was gripping the edge of the table, looking down at the edge of it and trying to cling to control as a storm raged within and around me.

  “Destroyed. ” Queen Malta spoke the word faintly.

  “Gone forever,” Amber confirmed.

  Reyn refilled my small blue glass with golden Sandsedge brandy and nudged it carefully toward me. It wouldn’t help but I tried to appreciate the gest
ure. I should not drink it. I’d already had too much, too quickly. I looked into it, swirled it, and my thoughts went to Verity. How often had I seen him make that small gesture? What had he seen there?

  Nothing, Fitz. Nothing at all. Drink up your false courage and move forward. It’s the only direction a man can move in.

  I lifted my eyes, listening. Imagination. I picked up my brandy and drank it down.

  “Children are not bargaining chips,” Reyn confirmed. He looked to his queen. “Yet I am unable to imagine a way to let you understand the depth of our gratitude. ” He paused and added uncomfortably, “Or the wild hope I feel for the other children. I know it must seem greedy of us, but if you will, please, let me summon the parents and speak with them tonight. To tell them that possibly you can help. Perhaps, tomorrow …” He let the request trail away.

  I was shocked at the surge of anticipation I felt. “I can make no promises,” I cautioned him.

  Amber spoke suddenly. “He will need to rest well before he attempts any more. These healings tax him in a way that is difficult to explain. ” She paused and then dared to caution Reyn, “And when you speak to the parents, you must be honest, sir. Tell them there is risk as well, and not just that Prince FitzChivalry may not be able to help. Sometimes his healings take a heavy toll on the one he helps. I speak with a personal knowledge of that! Bid them consider well the gamble. ”

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  “There is also General Rapskal. This will not please him. ” Malta spoke anxiously.

  “Few things do,” Reyn said with a laugh that had no humor in it. “And some few of the dragons may be interested. There are not many here right now. Most are gone to warmer lands, for a season, or a year, or a decade. They do not count time as we do. ”

  “They do not think of children who may need to be shaped or guided in their changes. ” Malta spoke with an edge of bitterness. “Those who have neglected their young Elderlings will express perfunctory regret, of course. ”

  I was not grasping the fullness of what I was hearing, but the offer of rest and time alone tempted me beyond words. I think my weariness must have shown in my face, for Malta added, “I believe that comfortable chambers are ready for you and your young servingfolk. I will do all I may to assure you a night of rest and sweet dreams. ” Her glance met her husband’s, and he nodded and added slowly, “I promise I will caution the parents not to set their hopes too high. And give them a night to consider well their choice: To have you try. Or not. ”