There was a hedge-witch in those parts, Silva Copperleaf by name, whose charms were of such a strength that their potency lasted not just from year to year, but continued to protect the folk who possessed them for generations. It is said that she made for Baldric Farseer a marvelous sieve such that it purified all waters that passed through it. This was a great boon for a king so often threatened by poisoners.
Above the gate of the waUed town of Eklse, she hung a charm against pestilence, and for many years the grain bins were free- of rats and the stables clean of fleas and other vermin. The town prospered under this protection, until the town elders foolishly built a second gate in their walls, to admit more trade. This opened a way for pestilence to enter the town, and all there perished from the second wave of the Blood Plague.
- SELKIN'S "TRAVELS IN THE six DUCHIES"
High summer found Hap and me just as it had found us for the last seven years. There was a garden to tend, poultry to mind, and fish to salt and smoke against winter's need. Day followed day in its round of chores and meals, sleeping and waking. Starling's departure, I told myself, had effectively quenched the restlessness that Chade's visit had sparked. had spoken to Hap, in a desultory way, of putting him out to an apprenticeship. With an enthusiasm that surprised me, he told me of a cabinetmaker in Buckkeep whose work he had greatly admired. I balked at that, having no desire tovisit Buckkeep Town, but I think he suspected I could not pay such a high prentice fee as a fine workman like Gindast could demand. In that, he was likely correct. When I asked him of any other woodworkers he had noticed, he stoutly replied that there was a boatbuilder in Hammerby Cove whose work was often praised. Perhaps we might try there. This was a far humbler master than the cabinetmaker in Buckkeep. I uneasily wondered if the boy was not tailoring his dreams to the depths of my pockets. His apprenticeship would determine the course of his life's work. I didn't want my lack of coin to condemn him to a trade he found merely tolerable.
Yet despite the boy's interest, the apprenticeship remained a topic for late- night talks by the hearth and little more. Oh, I set aside the small store of coins that remained to me against a prentice fee. I even told the boy that we would make do with fewer eggs for meals if he wished to let the hens set some. There was always a market for chickens, and whatever he got for them he could save toward his fee. Even then, I wondered if it would be enough to buy him a good place. Willing hands and a strong back could buy a lad an apprenticeship, it was true, but the better artisans and craftsmen usually demanded a fee before they would take a likely boy into their shops. It was the way of Buck. The secrets of a man's trade and the good livelihood he made at it were not to be carelessly given to strangers. If parents loved their children, they either raised them in their own trades, or paid well to see them apprenticed to those who had mastered other arts. Despite the humbleness of our fortunes, I was determined to see Hap well placed. That, I told myself, was why I delayed, to muster more coin. It was not that I dreaded parting with the boy. Only that I wished to do well by him.
The wolf did not ask me about the journey I had earlier proposed. I think that, in his heart, he was relieved to see it postponed. There were days when I felt that Starling's words had made an old man of me. Years had done that in, truth to the wolf. I suspected he was very old for his kind, though I had no idea how long a wild wolf usually lived. I wondered, sometimes, if our bond did not lend him an unnatural vitality. Once it even crossed my mind that perhaps he used up my years to lengthen his own. Yet that thought came not with any resentment that he might borrow my days but with hope that we might still have a good long span together. For once the boy was apprenticed out, whom else did I have in the world besides Nighteyes?
For a time, I wondered if Chade might come to call again, now that he knew the way, but the long days of sum- mer simmered away and the trail to our cabin remained empty. I went to market with the boy twice, taking fledged chickens and my inks and dyes and such roots and herbs as I thought might be unusual there. Nighteyes was as pleased! to remain at home, for he disliked not only the long walk to the trade crossroads but the dust and noise and confusion of the crowded market. I felt much the same about it but forced myself to. go anyway. We did not do as well as I had hoped, for folk at the small market we frequented were more accustomed to trade in goods than to buy with coin. Still, I was pleasantly surprised at how many folk recalled Tom Badgerlock, and commented that it was good to see: me come to market again.
It was the second time we went to market that we chanced to meet Hap's hedge-witch from Buckkeep. We had set our wares out on the tail of our pony cart in the market. Midway through the morning, she found us there, exclaiming with pleasure at seeing Hap again. I stood quietly to one side, watching them talk. He had told me Jinna was pretty, and so she was, but I confess I was startled to find her closer to my age than his. I had supposed her a girl who had turned his head when they met in Buckkeep. Instead she was a woman nearing her middle years, with hazel eyes, a scattering of freckles, and curly hair that shaded from auburn to brown. She had the round and pleasant figure of a mature woman. When he told her that her charm against pickpockets had been stolen from him before the day was out, she laughed aloud, an open hearty laugh. Then she calmly replied to him that that was exactly how the charm was intended to work. His purse had been protected when the thief took the charm instead of it.
When Hap glanced about to include me in the conversation, her eyes had already found me. She was regarding me with that expression parents usually reserve for possibly dangerous strangers. When I smiled and nodded to Hap's introduction and offered her good day, she visibly relaxed and her smile expanded to include me. She stepped closer as she did so, peering up at my face, and I realized her eyesight was not keen.
She had brought her wares to market, and spread her mat in the shadow of our cart. Hap helped her arrange her charms and potents, and the two of them made a merry day of our marketing after that, exchanging news since Springfest. I listened in as Hap told her of his apprenticeship plans. When he spoke to Jinna, it became very clear to me just how much he had wished for the cabinetmaker in Buckkeep rather than the boatbuilder in Hammerby Cove. I found myself pondering if there was yet some way it might be arranged, not only the higher fee but for someone other than myself to negotiate the apprenticeship on his behalf. Could Chade be persuaded to help me in such an endeavor? From there my mind wandered to what the old man might ask of me in return. I was deep in such thoughts when Hap's elbow in my ribs jolted me from my wandering.
"Tom!" he protested, and I instantly perceived that in some way I had embarrassed him. Jinna was looking at both of us expectantly.
"Yes?"
"See, I told you it would be fine with him," Hap crowed.
"Well, I do thank you, as long as you are sure it would be no trouble," Jinna replied. "It's a long road, with inns both far spaced and expensive to one such as myself." av, I nodded my agreement to the statement, and in the next few minutes of conversation, I realized that Hap had extended the hospitality of our cottage to her the next time I she happened to pass our way. I privately sighed. Hap loved the novelty of our occasional guests, but I still regarded any I new stranger as a potential risk. I wondered how long I would have to live before my secrets were so old that they no longer mattered.
I smiled and nodded as they conversed, but added little. Instead, I found myself studying her as Chade had taught me but I found nothing to suggest she was anything other than the hedge-witch she claimed to be.
Which is to say that I knew very little of her at all. Hedge-witches and — wizards are fairly common at any market, fair, or festival. Unlike the Skill, common folk attach no awe to hedge-magic. Unlike the Wit, it does not mark the practitioner for execution. Most folk seem to regard it with both tolerance and skepticism. Some of those who claim the magic are complete and unapologetic charlatans, j These are the ones who pull eggs from the ears of the gullible, tell fortunes of vast riches and lofty marriages for j milkmaids, sell love potions that are mostly lavender and j chamomile, and peddle luck charms made from dismembered rabbits. They are harmless enough, I suppose.
Jinna was not, however, one of those. She had no friendly patter of talk to attract the passing folk, nor was she dressed in the gaudy veils and jewelry that such frauds usually affected. She was clad as simply as a forester, her tunic shades of green over buckskin-brown trousers and soft shoes. The charms she had set out for sale were concealed within the traditional bags of colored fabric: pink for love charms, red to rouse lagging passions, green for good crops, and other colors whose significance I did not know. She offered packets of dried herbs as well. Most were ones I knew and they were correctly labeled as to their virtues: slippery-elm bark for sore throats, raspberry leaves for morning sickness and the like. Mixed amongst the herbs were fine crystals of something which Jinna claimed increased their potency. I suspected salt or sugar. Several pottery dishes on her mat held polished disks of jade or jasper or ivory, inscribed with runes for luck or fertility or peace of mind. These were less expensive than the constructed charms, for they were merely general good wishes, though for an extra copper or two Jinna would «hone» the pocket stone to the individual customer's desire.
She did a fairly lively trade as the long morning ventured toward afternoon. Several times customers inquired about the covered charms, and at least three made purchases with good silver. If there was a magic to the gadgets she sold them, it was one that neither my Wit nor my Skill could detect. I caught a glimpse of one of the charms; it was an intricate assembly of glittering beads and small rods of wood and, I thought, a tuft of feathers. She sold it to a man wishing to attract good fortune to himself and his home as he sought a wife. He was a broad man, muscled as a plowman and homely as a sod roof. He looked about my age, and I silently wished him well in his quest.
The market was well into its day when Baylor arrived. He came with his cart and ox, and six trussed piglets to sell. I did not know the man well, despite the fact that he was as close to a neighbor as Hap and I had. He lived in the next vale and ran his hogs there. I seldom saw him. In the fall, we sometimes made a trade, a slaughter-pig in exchange for chickens or labor or smoked fish. Baylor was a little man, skinny but strong, and ever suspicious. He gave us a glare for a greeting. Then, despite the close quarters, he forced his cart into place alongside ours. I did not welcome his company. The Wit gives one an empathy for other living creatures. I had learned to shield myself from it, but could not close it off completely. I knew that his ox was rubbed raw by the badly fitting harness, and felt the terror and discomfort of the immobilized and sun-scorched piglets in the cart.
So it was as much self-defense as neighborliness for me C-BV, to greet him with, "Good to see you again, Baylor. Fine litter of piglets. Best get some water into them to make them lively, and they should fetch a good price."
He gave them a careless glance. "No sense stirring them up, or taking the chance they'll get loose. Like as not they'll be meat before the day is out anyway."
I took a breath, and with an effort kept from speaking. The Wit is more curse than gift, I sometimes think. Perhaps the hardest part of possessing it is witnessing so completely the casual cruelty of humans. Some speak of the savagery of beasts. I will ever prefer that to the thoughtless contempt some men have toward animals.
I was willing to let our conversation end, but he came to inspect our trade goods. He made a small disparaging noise, as if surprised we had bothered to come to market at all. Then, catching my eye, he observed heavily, "These are good piglets, but there were three more in the litter. One was bigger than these."
Then he paused, waiting. His eyes never left my face. Uncertain of what he expected, I replied, "Sounds like a nice, big litter."
"Aye. It was. Until the three disappeared."
"A shame," I rejoined. When he kept his stare on me, I added, "Lost while ranging with the sow, were they?"
He nodded. "One day there were ten. The next day, seven."
I shook my head. "A shame."
He took a step closer to me. "You and the boy. You wouldn't have happened to see them? I know sometimes my sow ranges almost to your stream."
"I haven't." I turned to Hap. The boy had an apprehensive look on his face. I noticed that Jinna and her customer had fallen silent, their interest caught by Baylor's intent tone. I hated to be the center of such attention. I felt the blood begin to rise in me, but I pleasantly asked my boy, "Hap, have you seen any sign of three of Baylor's piglets?"
"Not so much as a track or a pile of dung," he replied gravely. He held himself very still when he spoke, as if a sudden movement could precipitate danger.
I turned back to Baylor. "Sorry," I said.
"Well." He observed heavily, "That's strange, isn't it? I know you and your boy and that dog of yours range all about those hills. I would have thought you'd have seen something." His remark was oddly pointed. "And if you saw them, you'd know them for mine. You'd know they weren't strays, free for the taking." His eyes had never left my face.
I shrugged, trying to keep my calm. But now other folk were pausing in their business, watching and listening. Baylor's eyes suddenly ranged round the audience, and then came back to me.
"So you're sure you haven't seen my pigs? Not found one stuck or hurt somewhere? Not found it dead and used it for dog meat?"
It was my turn to glance about. Hap's face had gone red. Jinna looked distinctly uncomfortable. My anger surged that this man would dare to accuse me of theft, no matter how indirect his words were. I took a breath and managed to hold my temper. In a low, gratingly civil voice, I replied, "I haven't seen your pigs, Baylor."
"You're sure?" He took a step closer to me, mistaking my courtesy for passivity. "Because it strikes me odd, three disappearing all at once. A wolf might take one, or one the sow might misplace, but not three. You haven't seen them?"
I had been leaning on the tail of the cart. I stood up straight, to my full height, my feet set solidly wide. Despite my effort at control, I could feel my chest and neck growing tight with anger.
Once, long ago, I had been beaten badly, to the point of death. Men seem to react to that experience in one of two ways. Some become cowed by it, never to offer physical resistance again. For a time, I had known that abject fear. Life had forced me to recover from it: I had learned a new reaction. The man who becomes most efficiently vicious first is most likely to be the man left standing. I had learned to be that man. "I'm getting tired of that question," I warned him in a low growl.
In the busy market, a quiet circle surrounded us. Not only Jinna and her customer were silent, but across the way the cheese merchant stared at us, and a baker's boy with a tray full of fresh wares stood silent and gawking. Hap was still, eyes wide, face gone to white and red. But most revealing was the change in Baylor's face. If a snarling bear had suddenly towered over him, he could not have looked more cowed. He fell back a step, and looked aside at the dust. "Well. Of course, if you haven't seen them, well, then
"I haven't seen them." I spoke forcefully, cutting him off. The sounds of the market had retreated into a distant hum. I saw only Baylor. I stalked a step closer.
"Well." He backed another pace, and dodged around his ox so the beast was between us. "I didn't think you had, of course. You'd have chased them back my way, for certain. But I wanted to let you know about it. Odd, isn't it, for three to go missing at once? Thought I'd let you know, in case you'd had chickens disappearing." From conciliating his voice went suddenly to conspiring. "Like as not we've had Witted ones about in our hills, thieving my beasts as only they can. They wouldn't have to chase them down, just spell the sow and the piglets and walk right off with them. Everyone knows they can do that. Like as not»
My temper flared. I managed to divert it into words. I spoke quietly, biting off each word. "Like as not the piglets fell down a creek bank and were swept away, or got separated from the sow. There's fox and cats and wolverine in those hills. If you want to be sure of your stock, keep a better watch on them."
"I had a calf go missing this spring," the cheese merchant suddenly said. "Cow strayed off pregnant, and came home two days later, empty as a barrel." He shook his head. "Never found a trace of that calf. But I did find a burnt-out firepit."
"Witted ones," the baker's boy chimed in sagely. "They caught one over to Hardin's Spit the other day, but she got away. No telling where she is now. Or where she was!" His eyes gleamed with the joy of his suspicions.
"Well, that explains it, then," Baylor exclaimed. He shot a triumphant look my way, then hastily looked aside from my expression. "That's the way of it, then, Tom Badgerlock. And I only wanted to warn you, as neighbors do for one another. You keep good watch on those chickens of yours." He nodded judiciously, and across the way, the cheese merchant nodded as well.
"My cousin was there, at Hardin's Spit. He saw that Wit whore just sprout feathers and fly. The ropes fell away from her and off she went."
I didn't even turn my head to see who spoke. The normal movement and noise of the market had resumed around us, but now the gossip hummed with jolly hatred of the Witted. I stood isolated, the warm summer sun beating down on my head just as it did the hapless piglets in Baylor's cart. The surging of my heart was like a shaking inside me. The moment in which I might have killed him had passed like a fever breaking. I saw Hap wipe sweat from his brow. Jinna put a hand on his shoulder and said something quietly to him. He shook his head, his lips white. Then he looked at me and gave me a shaky smile. It was over.
But the gossip in the market went on. All around me, the market chuckled along, healed by the prospect of a common enemy. It made me queasy, and I felt small and shamed that I did not shout out at the injustice of it all. Instead, I took up Clover's lead. "Mind our trade, Hap. I'm going to water the pony."
Hap, still silent and grave, nodded to me. I felt his eyes on me as I led Clover away. I took my time at the task, and when I came back, Baylor made a point of smiling and greeting me. All I could manage was a nod. It was a relief when a butcher bought all Baylor's piglets on condition that he deliver them to the man's shop. As the sore ox and the miserable piglets left, I let out a sigh. My back ached with the tension I'd been holding.
"Pleasant fellow," Jinna observed quietly. Hap laughed aloud, and even I broke a sour smile. Later we shared our hard-boiled eggs, bread, and salt fish with her. She had a pouch of dried apples and a smoked sausage. We made a picnic of it, and when I laughed at some jest of Hap's, she made me blush by saying, "You look a vicious man when you scowl, Tom Badgerlock. And when you knot your fists, I'd not want to know you. Yet when you smile or laugh aloud, your eyes put the lie to that look."
Hap snickered to see me flush, and the rest of the day passed in good companionship and friendly barter. As the market day wound to a close, Jinna had done well for herself. Her supply of charms had dwindled measurably. "Soon it will be time to go back to Buckkeep Town, and turn my hand to making more. It suits me better than the selling, though I do like traveling about and meeting new folk," she observed as she packed up what was left of her wares.
Hap and I had exchanged most of our goods for things we could use at home, but had gained little in actual coin for his apprenticeship fee. He tried to keep the disappointment from his face but I saw the shadow of his worry in his eyes. What if our coins were not sufficient even for the boatbuilder? What then of his apprenticeship? The question haunted me as well.
Yet neither of us voiced it. We slept in our cart to save the cost of an inn and left the next morning for home. Jinna came by to bid us farewell and Hap reminded her of his offer of hospitality. She assured him she would remember, but her eyes caught at mine as she did so, as if uncertain of how truly welcome she would be. Perforce I must nod and smile and add my hope that we would see her soon.
We had a fine day for the journey home. There were high clouds and a light wind to keep the summer day from being oppressive. We nibbled at the honeycomb that Haphad received for one of his chickens. We talked of nothing: that the market was much larger than the first time I had been there, that the town had grown, that the road was more traveled than it had been last year. Neither of us spoke of Baylor. We passed the fork in the road that once would have taken us to Forge. Grass grew on that trail. Hap asked if I thought folk would ever settle there again. I said I hoped not, but that sooner or later, the iron ore would bring someone with a short memory there. From there, we progressed to tales of what had happened at Forge and the hardships of the Red Ship War. I told them all as tales I had heard from another, not because I enjoyed the telling of them, but because it was history the boy should know. It was something everyone in the Six Duchies should always recall, and again I resolved to make an attempt at a history of that time. I thought of my many brave beginnings, of the stacked scrolls that rolled about on the shelves above my desk, and wondered if I would ever complete any of them.
An abrupt question from Hap broke me rudely from my musing.
"Was I a Red Ship bastard, Tom?" My mouth hung ajar. All my old pain at that word shone fresh in Hap's mismatched eyes. Mishap, his mother had named him. Starling had found him, a scavenging orphan that no one in his village would claim. That was as much as I knew of him. I forced honesty. "I don't know, Hap. You could have been Raider-born." I used the kinder term.
He stared straight ahead now, walking steadily as he spoke. "Starling said I was. I'm an age to be one, and it might be why no one save you would take me in. I'd like to know. I'd like to know who I am."
"Oh," I finally said into the dangling silence. He nodded hard, twice. His voice was tight when he added, "When I said I'd have to tell you about her, Starling said I had the same Forged heart as my raping father."
I suddenly wished he were smaller, so I could catch him up mid-stride and hug him. Instead, I put my arm around his shoulders and forced him to a halt. The pony ambled along without us. I didn't make him meet my eyes nor did I let my voice become too grave. "I'm going to give you a gift, son. This is knowledge it took me twenty years to gain, so appreciate that I'm giving it to you while you're young." I took a breath. "It doesn't matter who a man's father is. Your parents made a child, but it's up to you to make the man you'll be." I held his gaze for a moment. Then, "Come on. Let's go home."
We walked on, my arm across his shoulders for a time, until he reached up to clap me on the shoulder. I let him go then, to walk on his own and silently finish his thinking. It was the best I could do for him. My thoughts of Starling were not charitable.
Night caught us before we reached the cottage, but there was a moon and both of us knew the road. The old pony meandered along placidly and the clopping of her hooves and the creaking of the two-wheeled cart made an odd sort of music. A summer rain began to fall, damping the dust and cooling the night. Not far from home, Nighteyes came nonchalantly to meet us, as if mere chance had brought him out upon the road. We journeyed companion-ably together, the boy in silence, the wolf and I in the effortless communion of the Wit. We absorbed the other's experiences of the day like an indrawn breath. He could not grasp my worry for the boy's future.
He can hunt and he can fish. What more does he need to know? Why send one of our own off to another pack, to learn their ways? We are diminished by the loss of his strength. We grow no younger, you and.
My brother, that is perhaps the strongest reason why he should go. He must begin to make his own way in the world, so that when the time comes for him to take a mate, he can provide well for her and their children.
What of you and me? We will not help him in that providing? We will not watch the cubs while he hunts, or bring back our kill to share? Are we not pack with him?
Among human packs, this is the way of it. It was an answer I had given him many times in our years together. I knew how he interpreted it. It was a human custom that made no sense, and he need not waste time trying to understand it.
What of us, then, when he is gone? I've told you. Perhaps we shall travel again. Ah, yes. Leave a cozy den and a predictable food supply. That makes as much sense as sending the boy away.
I let his thought hang unanswered, for he was right. Perhaps the restlessness Chade had stirred in me had been the last gasp of my youth. Perhaps I should have bought that wife-finding charm from Jinna. From time to time I had considered the idea of looking for a wife, but it seemed too perfunctory a way to take a mate. Some did so, I knew, merely seeking out a woman or man who had similar goals and no excessively irritating habits. Such partnerships often grew into loving relationships. But having once experienced a relationship not only founded on years of knowing one another but blessed with the heady intoxication of genuine love, I did not think I could ever settle for anything else. It would not be fair to ask another woman to live in Molly's shadow. In all the years that Starling had intermittently shared herself with me, I had never thought to ask her to marry me. That thought gave me pause for a moment: had Starling ever hoped that I would? Then the moment of wondering passed and I smiled grimly to myself. No. Starling would have found such an offer baffling, if not laughable.
The last part of our journey was darker, for the track to our cottage was narrow and overshadowed on both sides by trees. Rain dripped from the leaves. The cart jounced along. "Should have brought a lantern," Hap observed, and I grunted agreement. Our cottage was a darker hummock in the shadowed hollow we called home.
I went inside and kindled a fire and put our traded goods away. Hap took a light and settled the pony. Nighteyes immediately sighed down onto the hearth, as close to the fire as he could get without singeing his coat. I put on the kettle and added the few coins we had gained to Hap's small hoard. It wasn't going to be enough, I grudgingly admitted. Even if Hap and I hired ourselves out the rest of the summer to bring in hay and other crops, it still wouldn't be enough. Nor could we both work that way, unless we were resigned to our own chickens and garden perishing from neglect. Yet if only one of us hired out, it might be another year, perhaps longer, before we had saved enough.
" should have started saving for this years ago," I observed sourly as Hap came in from outside. He set the lantern on its shelf before dropping into the other chair. I nodded at the pot on the table and he poured himself a cup of tea. The stacked coins on the table were a pitiful wall between us.
"Too late to think that way," he observed as he took up his cup. "We have to start from where we are."
"Exactly. Do you think you and Nighteyes could manage here for the rest of the summer while I hired out?"
He met my gaze levelly. "Why should you be the one to hire out? The money would go for my apprenticeship."
I experienced an odd little shift in perception. Because I was "bigger and stronger and could earn more" was no longer true. His shoulders were as wide as mine, and in any test of endurance, his young back would probably hold out better. He grinned sympathetically as he saw me grasp what he already knew. "Perhaps because it is something that I'd like to give you," I said quietly, and he nodded, understanding what those words really meant.
"You've already given me more than I could ever pay back. Including the ability to go after this for myself."
Those were the words we went to bed on, and I was smiling as I closed my eyes. There is monstrous vanity in the pride we take in our children, I told myself. I had bumbled along with Hap, never really giving much thought to what I was or was not teaching him about being a man.
Then one evening, a young man meets my eyes and tells me that he can fend for himself if he needs to, and I feel the warm flush of success. The boy had raised himself, I told myself, but I still smiled as I fell asleep.
Perhaps my expansive mood left me more open than usual, for I Skill- dreamed that night. Such dreams occasionally came to me, more taunting my addiction than assuaging it, for they were uncontrollable things that offered brief glimpses with none of the satisfaction of full contact. Yet this dream was tantalizing with possibility, for I felt that I rode with an individual mind rather than sampling the stray thoughts of a crowd.
It seemed as much memory as vision. In the dream, I ghosted through the Great Hall at Buckkeep. Scores of elegant folk decked out in their finest clothes filled the hall. Music wafted through the air and I glimpsed dancers, but I moved slowly through standing folk conversing with one another. Some turned to greet me as I passed, and I murmured my responses, but my eyes never lingered on their faces. I did not wish to be here; I could not have been more uninterested. For a moment, my eye was caught by a fall of gleaming bronze hair. The girl's back was to me. Several rings rode on the slender hand that lifted to nervously tug her collar straight. As if she felt my gaze, she turned. She had caught my eyes on her, and she blushed pink as she curtseyed deeply to me. I bowed to her, proffered some greeting, and moved on through the crowd. I could feel her looking after me; it annoyed me.
Even more annoying was to see Chade, so tall and elegant as he stood on the dais beside and slightly behind the Queen's chair. He too had been watching me. He bent now to whisper something in her ear, and her eyes came unerringly to me. A small gesture of her hand beckoned me to join them there. My heart sank. Would I never have time that was my own, to do as I pleased? Bleakly and slowly, I moved to obey her.
Then the dream changed, as dreams will. I sprawled on a blanket before a hearth. I was bored. It was so unfair. Below, they danced, they ate, and here I was… A ripple in the dream. No. Not bored, simply not engaged with anything. Idly I unsheathed my claws and inspected them. A bit of bird down was caught under one of them. I freed it, then cleaned my whole paw thoroughly before dozing off before the fire again.
What was that? Amusement tinged the sleepy thought from Nighteyes, but to reply to him would have required more effort than I was willing to make. I grumbled at him, rolled over, and burrowed back into sleep.
In the morning I wondered at my dream but briefly, dismissing it as a mixture of errant Skill and my own boyhood memories of Buckkeep mingling with my ambitions for Hap. As I did the morning chores, the dwindling firewood stack caught my attention. It needed replenishing, not only for the sake of summer's cooking and night comfort, but to begin a hoard against winter's deep cold. I went in to breakfast, thinking I would attend to it that day.
Hap's neatly packed carry-sack leaned beside the door. The lad himself had a freshly washed and brushed air to him. He grinned at me, suppressed excitement in his smile as he dqlloped porridge into our bowls. I sat down at my place at the table and he took his place opposite me. "Today?" I asked him, trying to keep reluctance from my voice.
"I can't start sooner," he pointed out pleasantly. "At market, I heard the hay was standing ready at Gormen. That's only two days from here."
I nodded slowly, at a loss for words. He was right. More than right, he was eager. Let him go, I counseled myself, and bit back my objections. "I suppose there's no sense in delaying it," I managed to say. He took this as both encouragement and an endorsement. As we ate, he speculated that he could work the hay at Gormen, and then perhaps go on to Divden and see if there was more work to be had there.
"Divden?"
jsr
"Three days past Gormen. Jinna told us about it, remember? She said their barley fields looked like an ocean when the wind stirred the growing grain. So I thought I might try there."
"Sounds promising," I agreed. "And then you'd come home?"
He nodded slowly. "Unless I heard of more work." "Of course. Unless you heard of more work." In a few short hours, Hap was gone. I'd made him pack extra food, and take some of the coins with him in case of extreme need. He'd been impatient with my caution. He'd sleep by the roadside, he told me, not in inns. He told me that Queen Kettricken's patrols kept the highwaymen down, and that robbers would not bother with poor prey like himself. He assured me that he would be fine. At Nighteyes' insistence, I asked him if he wouldn't take the wolf with him. He smiled indulgently at this, and paused at the door to scratch Nighteyes' ears. "It might be a bit much for the old fellow," he suggested gently. "Best he stays here where you two can look after one another until I get back." As we stood together and watched our boy walk down the lane to the main road, I wondered if I had ever been so insufferably young and sure of myself, but the ache in my heart had the pleasant afterglow of pride.
The rest of the day was oddly difficult to fill. There was work to be done, but I could not settle into it. Several times, I came back to myself, realizing I was simply staring off into the distance. I walked to the cliffs twice, for no more reason than to look out over the sea, and once to the end of our lane to look up and down the road in both directions. There was not even dust hanging in the air. All was still and silent as far as I could see. The wolf trailed me disconsolately. I began a half-dozen tasks and left them all half-done. I found myself listening, and waiting, without knowing for what. In the midst of splitting and stacking firewood, I halted. Carefully not thinking, I raised my axe and drove it into the FOOL'S ERR AND chopping block. I picked up my shirt, slung it over my sweaty shoulder, and headed toward the cliffs.
Nighteyes was suddenly in front of me. What are you doing?
Taking a short rest.
No you're not. You're going down to the cliffs, to Skill.
I rubbed the palms of my hands down the sides of my trousers. My thoughts were formless. "I was just going there for the breeze."
Once you're there, you'll try to Skill. You know you will. I can feel your hunger as plainly as you do. My brother, please. Please don't.
His thought rode on a keening whine. Never had I seen him so desperate to dissuade me. It puzzled me. "Then I won't, if it worries you so."
I wrenched my axe out of the chopping block and went back to work. After a time, I became aware I was attacking the wood with ferocity far beyond the task's need. I finished splitting the tumble of logs and began the tedious chore of stacking it so it would dry and yet shed rain. When that was done, I picked up my shirt. Without thinking, I turned toward the sea cliffs. Instantly the wolf was blocking my path.
Don't do this, brother. already told you I wouldn't. I turned aside from him, denying the frustration I felt. I weeded the garden. I hauled water from the stream to replenish the kitchen barrel. I dug a new pit, moved the privy, and filled the old pit with clean earth. In short, I burned through work as a lightning fire burns through a summer meadow. My back and arms ached, not just with weariness but with the complaints of old injuries, and still I dared not be still.- The Skill-hunger tugged at me, refusing to be ignored.
As evening came, the wolf and I went fishing for our supper. Cooking for one person seemed foolish, yet I forced myself to set out a decent meal and to eat it. I tidied up and then sat down. The long hours of the evening stretched before me. I set out vellum and inks, but could not settle tothe task of writing anything. My thoughts would not order themselves. I finally dragged out the mending and began to doggedly patch, sew, or darn every garment that needed it.
Finally, when my work began to blear before my eyes, I went to bed. I lay on my back, my arm flung over my face, and tried to ignore the fishhooks that were set and dragging at my soul. Nighteyes dropped beside the bed with a sigh. I trailed my other arm over the side of the bed, resting my hand on his head. I wondered when we had crossed the line from solitude to loneliness.
It's not loneliness that eats at you like this.
There seemed nothing to say to that. I passed a difficult night. I forced myself out of bed shortly after dawn. For the next few days, I spent the mornings cutting alder for the smokehouse, and the afternoons catching fish to smoke. The wolf gorged himself on entrails, but still watched greedily as I salted the slabs of red fish and hung them on hooks over the slow fire. I put more green alder on to thicken the smoke and shut the door tightly. Late one afternoon, I was at the rain barrel, washing slime, scales, and salt from my hands when Nighteyes suddenly turned his head toward the lane.
Someone comes.
Hap? Hope surged in me.
No.
I was surprised at the strength of my disappointment. I felt an echo of the same from the wolf. We were both staring down the shaded lane when Jinna came in sight. She paused a moment, unnerved perhaps by the intensity of our gazes, then lifted a hand in greeting. "Hello, Tom Badgerlock! Here I am, to take up your offer of hospitality."
A friend of Hap's, I explained to Nighteyes. He still hung back and regarded her warily as I went to meet her.
"Welcome. I didn't expect to see you so soon," I said, and then heard the awkwardness of my words. "An unexpected pleasure is always the most welcome," I added to mend the moment, and then realized that such gallantry was just as inappropriate. Had I completely forgotten how to deal with people?
But Jinna's smile put me at ease. "Seldom do hear such honesty harnessed with such fair words, Tom Badger-lock. Is that water cool?"
Without waiting for an answer, she strode up to the rain barrel, unknotting the kerchief at her throat as she did so. She walked like a woman used to the road, weary at the end of the day, but not overly taxed by her journey. The bulging pack high on her back was a natural part of her. She damped her kerchief and wiped the dust from her face and hands. Moistening it more generously, she wiped the back of her neck and her throat. "Oh, that's better," she sighed gratefully. She turned to me with a smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. "At the end of a long day's walk, I envy folk like you with a settled life and a place to call your own."
"I assure you, folk like me just as often wonder if life would not be sweeter as travelers. Won't you come in and be comfortable? I was just about to start the evening meal."
"Many thanks." As she followed me to the door of the cabin, Nighteyes shadowed us at a discreet distance. Without turning to look at him directly, she observed, "A bit unusual, a wolf as a watchdog."
I often lied to people, insisting that Nighteyes was merely a dog that looked like a wolf. Something told me this would be an insult to Jinna. I gave her the truth. "I adopted him as a cub. He's been a good companion to me."
"So Hap told me. And that he does not like to be stared at by strangers, but will come to me when he's made up his mind about me. And as usual, I'm telling a tale by starting in the middle. I passed Hap upon the road a few days ago. He was in high spirits, with every confidence that he will find work and do well. I do believe he will; the boy has such a friendly, engaging manner that I cannot imagine anyone not welcoming him. He assured me again of a warm welcome here, and of course he spoke true."
She followed me into my cabin. She slung her pack to j the floor and leaned it up against the wall, then straightened and stretched her back with a relieved groan. "Well. What are we cooking? You may as well let me help, for I'm never content to sit still in a kitchen. Fish? Oh, I've a wonderful herb for fish. Have you a heavy pot with a tight-fitting lid?"
With the ease of the naturally gregarious, she took over half the dinner chores. I had not shared kitchen tasks with a woman since my year among the Witted folk, and even then, Holly had been a near-silent companion at such times. Jinna talked on, clattering pots and pans and filling my small home with her bustle and friendly gossip. She had the rare knack of coming into my territory and handling my possessions without me feeling displaced or uneasy. My feelings bled over to Nighteyes. He soon ventured into the cabin, and assumed his customary attentive post by the table. She was unruffled by his intent stare, and accepted his adeptness at catching the fish trimmings she tossed his way. The fish was soon simmering in a pot with her herbs. I raided my garden for young carrots and fresh greens while she fried thick slabs of bread in lard.
It seemed that dinner appeared on the table with no real effort from anyone. Nor had she neglected to prepare bread for the wolf as well, though I think Nighteyes ate it more out of sociability than hunger. The poached fish was moist and savory, spiced as much with her conversation as the herbs. She did not chatter endlessly, but her stories encouraged responses, and she listened with as much appreciation as she gave to the food. The dishes were cleared from the table with as little effort. When I brought out the Sandsedge brandy, she exclaimed delightedly, "Now, this is the perfect end to a good meal."
She took her brandy to the hearth. Our cooking fire had burned low. She added another piece of wood, more for light than warmth, and settled herself on the floor beside the wolf. Nighteyes didn't even twitch an ear. She sipped her brandy, gave an appreciative sigh, then gestured with her cup. My scroll- cluttered desk was just visible through the open door of my study. " knew you made inks and dyes, but from what I see, you employ them as well. Are you a scribe of some kind?"
I gave a desultory shrug. "Of sorts," admitted. "I do not attempt the fancy work, though do simple illustration. My lettering is no better than passable. For me, there is a satisfaction in taking knowledge and committing it to paper, where it is accessible to all."
"To any who can read," Jinna amended my words.
"That is true," I conceded.
She cocked her head at me and smiled. "I don't think approve."
I was startled, not just that she disagreed with such a thing, but that she could do it so pleasantly. "Why not?"
"Perhaps knowledge should not be available to all. Perhaps it should be earned, parceled out from master to worthy student only, rather than committed to paper where anyone who chances upon it may claim it for himself."
"I confess to some of the same doubts myself," I replied, thinking of the Skill- scrolls that Chade now studied. "And yet have known of cases in which a master died an untimely death, and all she knew went with her, before it could be passed on to her chosen pupil. Generations of knowledge were lost in one death."
She was silent for a time. "Tragic," she admitted at last. "For though masters of a skill may share a great deal of knowledge, each has his own secrets, destined only for hisown apprentices."
"Consider someone such as yourself," I went on, pushing my advantage in the discussion. "You practice a trade that is as much an art, woven of secrets and skills shared only by those others who practice hedge-magic. You have no apprentice at all that have seen. Yet I would wager there are aspects of your magic that are yours alone, ones that would die with you if you perished tonight."
She looked at me for a still moment, then took anothersip of her brandy. "There's a chill thought to dream on," she replied wryly. "Yet there is this also, Tom. I have no letters. I could not put my knowledge in such a form, unless someone such as yourself aided me. And then I would not be certain if you had truly put down what I know, or what you thought I had told you. That is half of teaching an apprentice: making sure the youngster learns what you said, not what she thinks you said."
"Very true," I had to agree. How often had I thought I understood Chade's directions, only to come to disaster when I tried to mix the concoction on my own? Another little ripple of uneasiness went through me, as I thought of Chade trying to teach Prince Dutiful from the scrolls. Would he teach what some forgotten Skillmaster had committed to paper, or only his understanding of it? I pulled my thoughts back from the unsettling notion. I had no duty there. I had warned him; that was as much as I could do.
Conversation lagged after that, and Jinna soon sought rest in Hap's bed. Nighteyes and went out to shut up the chicken house for the night and make our evening round of our smallholding. All was well and calm in the peaceful summer night. I cast one longing look toward the cliffs. The waves would be lace-edged silver tonight. I forbade it to myself and felt Nighteyes' relief at my decision. We added more green alder branches to the slow fire in the smokehouse. "Bedtime," I decided.
On nights such as this, we used to hunt together.
That we did. It would be a good night for hunting. The moon will make the game restless and easy to see.
Nevertheless, he followed me as I turned back toward the hut. Regardless of how well we both recalled it, neither of us were the young wolves we once had been. Our bellies were full, the hearth was warm, and rest might ease the dull ache in Nighteyes' haunches. Dreams of hunting would have to suffice tonight.
I awoke to the morning sounds of Jinna ladling water into a kettle. When I came out into the kitchen, she had already set the kettle to boil over the stirred fire. She looked over her shoulder as she was slicing bread. "I hope you don't feel that I've made myself too much at home," she offered.
"Not at all," I replied, but it did feel a bit odd. By the time I had seen to my animals and returned with the day's eggs, hot food was steaming on the table. When we had eaten, she helped with the tidying up.
She offered me thanks for the hospitality, and added, "Before I go, perhaps we might do a bit of trading. Would you consider a charm or two from my stock in exchange for some of your yellow and blue inks?"
I found that I was glad to delay her leaving, not only because her company was pleasant, but because I had always been intrigued by hedge-magic. Here was an opportunity, perhaps, for a closer look at the tools of her trade. We went first to my workbench in the shed, where I packaged up pots of yellow, blue, and a small quantity of red ink for her. As I sealed the pots with wooden stoppers and wax, she explained that using colors on some of her charms seemed to increase their efficacy, but that this was an area in which she was still making discoveries. I nodded to her words, but much as I longed to, I refrained from asking more details. It did not seem polite.
When we returned to the house, she set the pots of dye on the table, and opened her own pack. She spread a number of her bagged charms on the table. "What will you choose, Tom Badgerlock?" she asked with a smile. "I have charms for verdant gardens, for hunter's luck, for healthy babes that's small use to you, let me put that one back. Ah. Here's one you might find useful."
She whisked the cover off a charm. As she did so, Nighteyes let out a low growl. His hackles stood as he stalked to the door and nosed it open. I found myself backing away from the object she revealed. Short rods of wood marked with shrieking black symbols were fastened to each other at chaotic angles. Ominous beads were dangerously interspersed with them. A few tortured tufts of fur, twisted and fixed with pitch, clung to it. The object both offended and distressed me. I would have fled if I had dared take my eyes off it. I abruptly felt the wall of the cabin against my back. I pressed against it, knowing that there was a better path to escape, but unable to think what it was.
"I beg your pardon." Jinna's gentle words came from a vast distance. I blinked, and the object was gone, mantled in cloth and hidden from my sight. Outside the door, Nighteyes' low growl rose to a whistling whine and ceased. I felt as if I had surfaced from deep waters. "It had not occurred to me," Jinna apologized as she thrust the charm deep into her pack. "It's intended to keep predators away from chicken houses and sheep pens," she explained.
I got my breath back. Her gaze did not meet mine. Apprehension hung like a miasma between us. I was Witted, and now she knew it. How would she employ that knowledge? Would she merely be disgusted?Trightened? Scared enough to bring destruction down on me? I imagined Hap returning to a burned-out cabin.
Jinna suddenly looked up and met my eyes as if she had overheard my thoughts. "A man is as he is made. A man can't help how he's made."
"That's so," I muttered in response, shamed at how relieved I felt. I managed to step away from the wall and toward the table. She didn't look at me. She rooted through her pack as if the incident had never occurred.
"So, then, let's just find you something a bit more appropriate." She sorted through her bagged charms, stopping sometimes to pinch at the contents to freshen her memory of what was inside. She chose one in a green pouch and placed it on the table. "Will you take one to hang near your garden, to encourage your green things to prosper?"
I nodded mutely, still recovering from my fear. Moments ago, I would have doubted the power of her charms. Now I almost feared their potency. I clenched my teeth as she unveiled the garden charm, but as I stared at it, I felt nothing. When I met her eyes, I found sympathy there. Her gentle smile was reassuring.
"You'll have to give me your hand so I can tune it to you. Then we'll take it outside and adjust it for your garden. Half this charm is for the garden, and half for the gardener. It's that which is between the gardener and his bit of soil that makes a garden. Give me your hands."
She seated herself at my table and held her own hands out to me, palms up. I took the chair opposite hers and, after an awkward hesitation, placed my palms atop hers.
"Not that way. A man's life and ways are told in the palms of his hands, not the backs."
Obediently, I turned my hands over. In my apprentice days, Chade had taught me to read hands, not to tell fortunes, but to tell a man's past. The calluses of a sword differed from those of a scribe's pen or a farmer's hoe. She bent close over my hands, staring at them intently. As she scanned my palms, I wondered if her eyes would discover the axe I had once borne, or the oar I had wielded. Instead, } she studied my right hand intently, frowned, then transferred her gaze to my left. When she looked up at me, her face was a picture. The smile that twisted her face was a j. rueful one. r" You're an odd one, Tom, and no mistake! Were they not both at the ends of your arms, I'd say these were the hands of two different men. It's said that your left hand tells what you were born with, and your right hand what you; have made of yourself, but even so, such differences in a man's two hands I've seldom seen! Look what I see in this hand. A tender-hearted boy. A sensitive young man. And, then… Your lifeline stops short on your left hand." As she spoke, she let go of my right hand. She set her forefinger to my left palm, and her nail traced a tickling line to where my life ended. "Were you Hap's age, I'd be fearing I was looking i at a young man soon to die. But as you're sitting there! across from me, and your right hand bears a nice long life- j.
line, we'll go by it, shall we?" She released my left hand, and took my right in both of hers.
"I suppose so," I conceded uncomfortably. It was not only her words that made me ill at ease. The simple warm pressure of her hands gripping mine had made me suddenly aware of Jinna as a woman. I was experiencing a very adolescent response to it. I shifted in my chair. The knowing smile that flickered over her face discomfited me even more. "So. An avid gardener, I see, one devoted to the knowing of many herbs and their uses."
I made a neutral noise. She had seen my garden, and could be speculating based on what grew there. She studied my right hand a bit more, sweeping her thumb across it to smooth the lesser lines away, and then cupping my fingers in her own and encouraging my hand to close slightly to deepen the folds. "Left or right, it's not an easy hand to read, Tom." She frowned to herself, and compared the two again. "By your left hand, I'd say you'd had a sweet and true love in your short life. A love that ended only in your death. Yet here in your right hand, I see a love that wends its way in and out of all your many years. That faithful heart has been absent for a time, but is soon to return to you again." She lifted her clear hazel eyes to mine to see if she had scored true. I shrugged one shoulder. Had Hap been telling her tales of Starling? Scarcely what I would call a faithful heart. When I said nothing, she returned her attention to my hands, her gaze going from one to the other. She frowned slightly, raising a furrow between her brows. "Look here. See this? Anger and fear, shackled together in a dark chain… it follows your lifeline, a black shadow over it."
I pushed aside the uneasiness her words roused in me. I leaned forward to look into my own hand. "It's probably just dirt," I offered.
She gave a small snort of amusement and shook her head again. But she did not return to her ominous peering. Instead she covered my hand with her own and met my eyes. "Never have I seen two palms so unlike on the same man. I suspect that sometimes you wonder if you even know who you are yourself."
"I'm sure every man wonders that from time to time." It was oddly difficult to meet her nearsighted gaze.
"Hm. But you, perhaps, have more honest reason to wonder it than others. Well," she sighed. "Let me see what I can do."
She released my hands, and I drew them back. I rubbed them together under the table as if to erase the tickling of her touch. She took up her charm, turned it several times, and then unfastened a string. She changed the order of the beads on the string, and added an extra brown bead from her pack. She retied the string, and then took out the pot of yellow ink I had traded her. Dipping a fine brush in it, she outlined several black runes on one of the dowels, bending close over it to peer at her work. She spoke as she worked. "When next I come to visit, I expect you to tell me this has been your best year ever for plants that bear their fruits aboveground where the sun ripens them." She blew on the charm to dry the ink, then put away both pot and brush. "Come, now, we have to adjust this to the garden."
Outside, she sent me to find and cut a forked branch at least as tall as myself. When I returned with it, I found she had dug a hole at the southeast comer of my garden plot. I set the pole in it as she directed, and filled in the hole. She hung the charm from the right fork of the branch. When the wind stirred it, the beads rattled gently and a small bell chimed. She tapped the bell with a fingertip. "It discourages some birds."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome. This is a good spot for one of my charms. It pleases me to leave it here. And when next I come, I shall be interested to see how well it has worked for you."
It was the second time she had mentioned visiting again. The ghost of my court manners nudged me. "Andwhen next you come, you shall find yourself as welcome as you were this time. I shall look forward to your visit."
The smile she gave me dimpled her cheeks more deeply. "Thank you, Tom. I shall certainly stop here again." She cocked her head at me and spoke with sudden frankness. "I know you are a lonely man, Tom. That won't always be so. I could tell that, at first, you doubted the power of my charms. You still doubt the truth of what I can see in the palm of a man's hand. I don't. Your one true love is stitched in and out and through your life. Love will return to you. Don't doubt that."
Her hazel eyes met mine so earnestly that I could neither laugh nor frown at her. So I nodded mutely. As she shouldered her pack and strode off down the lane, I watched her go. Her words tugged at me, and hopes long denied struggled to grow. I thrust them away from me. Molly and Burrich belonged to one another now. There was no place for me in their lives.
I squared my shoulders. I had chores to do, wood to stack, fish to put by, and a roof to mend. It was another fine summer day. Best use it while I had it, for while summer smiles, winter is never far away.
THE TAWNY MAN
There is some indication, in the earliest accounts of the territories that eventually became the Six Duchies, that the Wit was not always a despised magic. These accounts are fragmentary, and the translations of these old scrolls are often disputed, but most of the master scribes will agree that at one time there were settlements where the preponderance of folk were born with the Wit and actively practiced its magic. Some of these scrolls would indicate that these folk were the original inhabitants of the lands. This may be the source of the name that the Witted people apply to themselves: Old Blood.
In those times, the lands were not so settled. Folk relied more on hunting and collecting of wild bounty than on harvesting what they had themselves planted. Perhaps in those days a bond between a man and a beast did not seem so uncanny, for folk provided for themselves much as the wild creatures did.
Even in more recent histories, accounts of Witted folk being slain for their magic are rare. Indeed, that these executions are recorded at all would seem to indicate that they were unusual, and hence noteworthy. It is not until after the brief reign of King Charger, the so-called Piebald Prince, that we find the Wit referred to with loathing and an assumption that its practice merits death. Following his reign, there are accounts of widespread slaughter of Witted folk. In some cases, entire villages were put to death. After that time of carnage, either those of Old Blood were rare, or too wary to admit that they carried the Wit magic.
Beautiful summer days followed, one after another, like blue and green beads on a string. There was nothing wrong with my life. I worked in my garden, I finished the repairs to my long-neglected cottage, and in the early mornings and the summer twilight, I hunted with the wolf. I filled my days with good and simple things. The weather held fine. I had the warmth of the sun on my shoulders as I labored, the swiftness of wind against my cheeks when I walked the sea cliffs in the evening, and the richness of the loamy earth in my garden. Peace but waited for me to give myself up to it. The fault was in me that I held back from it.
Some days, I was almost content. The garden grew well, the pea pods swelling fat, the beans racing up their trellis. There was meat to eat as well as some to set by, and daily the cottage became more snug and tidy. I took pride in what I accomplished. Yet sometimes I would find myself standing by Jinna's charm in the garden, idly spinning the beads on it as I gazed toward-the lane. Waiting. It was not so bad to wait for Hap to return when I was not so aware of waiting. But waiting for the boy's return became an allegory for my whole life. When he did come back, what then? It was a question I had to ask myself. If he had succeeded, he would return only to leave again. It was what I should hope for. If he had not succeeded in earning his prentice fee, then I would have to rack my wits for another way to gain the money. And all the while, I would be waiting still. Waiting for Hap to return would transform itself into waiting for Hap to leave. Then what? Then… something more, my heart suggested, then it would be time for something more, but I could not put my finger on what stirred this restlessness in my soul. At the moments when I became conscious of that suspension, all of life chafed against me. Then the wolf would heave himself to his feet with a sigh and come to lean against me. A thrust of his muzzle would put his broad-skulled head under my hand.
Stop longing. You poison today's ease, reaching always for tomorrow. The boy will come back when he comes back. What is there to grieve over in that? There is nothing wrong with either of us. Tomorrow will come soon enough, one way or another.
I knew he was right, and I would, usually, shake it off and go back to my chores. Once, I admit, I walked down to my bench overlooking the sea. But all I did was sit down on it and stare out across the water. I did not attempt to Skill. Perhaps, after all the years, I was finally learning that there was no comfort for loneliness in such reaching.
The weather continued fine, each morning a cool, fresh gift. Evenings, I reflected as I took slabs of fish from their hooks inside the smoker, were more precious than gifts. They were rest earned and tasks completed. They were satisfaction, when I let them be. The fish were done to my liking, a hard shiny red on the outside, but enough moisture left trapped within to keep a good flavor. I dropped the last slab into a net bag. There were already four such bags hanging from the rafters in the cottage. This would finish what I knew we needed for the winter. The wolf followed me inside and watched me climb up on the table to hang the fish. I spoke over my shoulder to him. "Shall we get up early tomorrow and go looking for a wild pig?"
I didn't lose any wild pigs. Did you?
I looked down at him in surprise. It was a refusal, couched as humor, but a refusal all the same. I had expected wild enthusiasm. In truth, I myself had little appetite for such a strenuous hunt as a pig would demand. I had offered it to the wolf in the hope of pleasing him. I had sensed a certain listlessness in him of late, and suspected that he mourned Hap's absence. The boy had been a lively hunting companion for him. I feared that in comparison, I was rather dull. I know he felt my query as I gazed at him, but he had retreated into his own mind, leaving only a distracted haze of thoughts.
"Are you well?" I asked him anxiously.
He turned his head sharply toward the door. Someonecomes.
"Hap?" I jumped down to the floor.
A horse.
I had left the door ajar. He went to it and peered out, ears pricked. I joined him. A moment passed, and then I heard the steady thudding of hoofbeats. Starling?
Not the howling bitch. He did not disguise his relief that it was not the minstrel. That stung a bit. Only recently had I fully realized how much he had disliked her. I said nothing aloud, nor did I form the thought toward him, but he knew. He cast me an apologetic glance, then ghosted out of the house.
I stepped out onto the porch and waited, listening. A good horse. Even at this time of day, there was life in its step. As horse and rider came into view, I took a breath at the sight of the animal. The quality of her breeding shouted from her every line. She was white. Her snowy mane and tail flowed as if she had been groomed but moments before. Silky black tassels bound in her mane complemented the black and silver of her harness. She was not a large mare, but there was fire in the way she turned a knowing eye and a wary ear toward the invisible wolf that flanked her through the wood. She was alert without being afraid. She began to lift her hooves a bit higher, as if to assure Nighteyes that she had plenty of energy to either fight or flee.
The rider was fully worthy of the horse. He sat her well, and I sensed a man in harmony with his mount. His garments were black, trimmed in silver, as were his boots. It sounds a somber combination, did not the silver run riot as embroidery around his summer cloak, and silver edge the white lace at his cuffs and throat. Silver bound his fair hair back from his high brow. Fine black gloves coated his hands like a second skin. He was a slender youth, but just as the lightness of his horse prompted one to think of swiftness, so did his slimness call to mind agility rather than fragility. His skin was a sun-kissed gold, as was his hair, and his features were fine. The tawny man approached silently save for the rhythmic striking of his horse's hooves. When he drew near, he reined in his beast with a touch, and sat looking down on me with amber eyes. He smiled.
Something turned over in my heart.
I moistened my lips, but could find no words, nor breath to utter them if I had. My heart told me one thing, my eyes another. Slowly the smile faded from his face and his eyes. A still mask replaced it. When he spoke, his voice was low, his words emotionless. "Have you no greeting for me, Fitz?"
I opened my mouth, then helplessly spread wide my arms. At the gesture that said all I had no words for, an answering look lit his face. He glowed as if a light had been kindled in him. He did not dismount but flung himself from his horse toward me, a launch aided by Nighteyes' sudden charge from the wood toward him. The horse snorted in alarm and crow-hopped. The Fool came free of his saddle with rather more energy than he had intended, but, agile as ever, he landed on the balls of his feet. The horse shied away, but none of us paid her any attention. In one step, I caught him up. I enfolded him in my arms as the wolf gamboled about us like a puppy.
"Oh, Fool," I choked. "It cannot be you, yet it is. And I do not care how."
He flung his arms around my neck. He hugged me fiercely, Burrich's earring pressing cold against my neck. For a long instant, he clung to me like a woman, until the wolf insistently thrust himself between us. Then the Fool went down on one knee in the dust, careless of his fine clothes as he clasped the wolf about his neck. "Nighteyes!" he whispered in savage satisfaction. "I had not thought to see you again. Well met, old friend." He buried his face in the wolf's ruff, wiping away tears. I did not think less of him for them. My own ran unchecked down my face.
He flowed, to his feet, every nuance of his grace as familiar to me as the drawing of breath. He cupped the back of my head and, in his old way, pressed his brow to mine. His breath smelled of honey and apricot brandy. Had hefortified himself against this meeting? After a moment he drew back from me but kept a grip on my shoulders. He stared at me, his eyes touching the white streak in my hair and running familiarly over the scars on my face. I stared just as avidly, not just at how he had changed, his coloring gone from white to tawny, but at how he had not changed. He looked as callow a youth as when I had last seen him near fifteen years ago. No lines marred his face.
He cleared his throat. "Well. Will you ask me in?" he demanded.
"Of course. As soon as we've seen to your horse," I replied huskily.
The wide grin that lit his face erased all years and distance between us. "You've not changed a bit, Fitz. Horses first, as it ever was with you."
"Not changed?" I shook my head at him. "You are the one who looks not a day older. But all else…" I shook my head helplessly as I sidled toward his horse. She high-stepped away, maintaining the distance. "You've gone gold, Fool. And you dress as richly as Regal once did. When first I saw you, I did not know you."
He gave a sigh of relief that was half a laugh. "Then it was not as I feared, that you were wary of welcoming me?"
Such a question did not even deserve an answer. I ignored it, advancing again on the horse. She turned her head, putting the reins just out of my reach. She kept the wolf in view. I could feel the Fool watching us with amusement. "Nighteyes, you are not helping and you know it!" I exclaimed in annoyance. The wolf dropped his head and gave me a knowing glance, but he stopped his stalking.
I could put her in the barn myself if you but gave me the chance.
The Fool cocked his head slightly, regarding us both quizzically. I felt something from him: the thinnest knife-edge of shared awareness. I almost forgot the horse. Without volition, I touched the mark he had left upon me so long ago; the silver fingerprints on my wrist, long faded to a av, pale gray. He smiled again, and lifted one gloved hand, the finger extended toward me, as if he would renew that touch. "All down the years," he said, his voice going golden as his skin. "You have been with me, as close as the tips of my fingers, even when we were years and seas apart. Your being was like the hum of a plucked string at the edge of my hearing, or a scent carried on a breeze. Did not you feel it so?"
I took a breath, fearing my words would hurt him. "No," I said quietly. "I wish it had been so. Too often I felt myself completely alone save for Nighteyes. Too often I've sat at the cliff's edge, reaching out to touch anyone, anywhere, yet never sensing that anyone reached back to me."
He shook his head at that. "Had I possessed the Skill in truth, you would have known I was there. At your very fingertips, but mute."
I felt an odd easing in my heart at his words, for no reason I could name. Then he made an odd sound, between a cluck and a chirrup, and the horse immediately came to him to nuzzle his outstretched hand. He passed her reins to me, knowing I was itching to handle her. "Take her. Ride her to the end of your lane and back. I'll wager you've never ridden her like in your life."
The moment her reins were in my hands, the mare came to me. She put her nose against my chest, and took my scent in and out of her flaring nostrils. Then she lifted her muzzle to my jaw and gave me a slight push, as if urging me to give in to the Fool's temptation. "Do you know how long it has been since I was astride any kind of a horse?" I asked them both.
"Too long. Take her," he urged me. It was a boy's thing to do, this immediate offering to share a prized possession, and my heart answered it, knowing that no matter how long or how far apart we had been, nothing important had changed between us.
I did not wait to be invited again. I set my foot to the stirrup and mounted her, and despite all the years, I could feel every difference there was between this mare and my old horse, Sooty. She was smaller, finer-boned, and narrower between my thighs. I felt clumsy and heavy-handed as I urged her forward, then spun her about with a touch of the rein. I shifted my weight and took in the rein and she backed without hesitation. A foolish grin came over my face. "She could equal Buckkeep's best when Burrich had the stables prime," I admitted to him. I set my hand to her withers, and felt the dancing flame of her eager little mind. There was no apprehension in her, only curiosity. The wolf sat on the porch watching me gravely.
"Take her down the lane," the Fool urged me, his grin mirroring mine. "And give her a free head. Let her show you what she can do."
"What's her name?"
"Malta. I named her myself. I bought her in Shoaks, on my way here."
I nodded to myself. In Shoaks, they bred their horses small and light for traveling their broad and windswept plains. She'd be an easy keeper, requiring little feed to keep her moving day after day. I leaned forward slightly. "Malta," I said, and she heard permission in her name. She sprang forward and we were off.
If her day's journey to reach my cabin had wearied her, she did not show it. Rather it was as if she had grown restive with her steady pace and now relished the chance to stretch her muscles. We flowed beneath the overarching trees, and her hooves making music on the hard-packed earth woke a like song in my heart.
Where my lane met the road, I pulled her in. She was not even blowing; instead she arched her neck and gave the tiniest tug at her bit to let me know she would be glad to continue. I held her still, and looked both up and down the road. Odd, how that small change in perspective altered my whole sense of the world around me. Astride this fine animal, the road was like a ribbon unfurled before me. The day was fading, but even so I blinked in the gentling light, seeing possibilities in the blueing hills and the mountains edging into the evening horizon. The horse between my thighs brought the whole world closer to my door. I sat her quietly, and let my eyes travel a road that could eventually take me back to Buckkeep, or indeed to anywhere in the entire world. My quiet life in the cabin with Hap seemed as tight and confining as an outworn skin. I longed to writhe like a snake and cast it off, to emerge gleaming and new into a wider world.
Malta shook her head, mane and tassels flying, awakening me to how long I had sat and stared. The sun was kissing the horizon. The horse ventured a step or two against my firm rein. She had a will of her own, and was as willing to gallop down the road as to walk sedately back to my cabin. So we compromised; I turned her back up my lane, but let her set her own pace. This proved to be a rhythmic canter. When I pulled her in before my cabin, the Fool peeked out the door at me. "I've put the kettle on," he called. "Bring in my saddle pack, would you? There's Bingtown coffee in it."
I stabled Malta beside the pony and gave her fresh water and such hay as I had. It was not much; the pony was an adept forager, and did not mind the scrubby pasturage on the hillside behind the cabin. The Fool's sumptuous tack gleamed oddly against the rough walls. I slung his saddle pack over my shoulder. The summer dusk was thickening as I made my way back to my cabin. There were lights in the windows and the pleasant clatter of cooking pots. As I entered to set the pack on my table, the wolf was sprawled before the fire drying his damp fur and the Fool was stepping around him to set a kettle on the hook. I blinked my eyes, and for an instant I was back in the Fool's hut in the Mountains, healing from my old injury while he stood between the world and me that I might rest. Then as now he created reality around himself, bringing order and peace to a small island of warm firelight and the simple smell of hearth bread cooking.
He swung his pale eyes to meet mine, the gold of them mirroring the firelight. Light ran up his cheekbones and dwindled as it merged with his hair. I gave my head a small shake. "In the space of a sundown, you show me the wide world from a horse's back, and the soul of the world within my own walls."
"Oh, my friend," he said quietly. No more than that needed to be said.
We are whole.
The Fool cocked his head to that thought. He looked like a man trying to recall something important. I shared a glance with the wolf. He was right. Like sundered pieces of crockery that snick back together so precisely that the crack becomes invisible, the Fool joined us and completed us. Whereas Chade's visit had filled me with questions and needs, the Fool's presence was in itself an answer and a satisfaction.
He had made free with my garden and my pantry. There were new potatoes and carrots and little purple and white turnips simmering in one pot. Fresh fish layered with basil steamed and rattled a tight-fitting lid. When I raised my brows to that, the Fool merely observed, "The wolf seems to recall my fondness for fresh fish." Nighteyes set his ears back and lolled his tongue out at me. Hearth cakes and blackberry preserves rounded out our simple meal. He had ferreted out my Sandsedge brandy. It waited on the table.
He dug through his pack and produced a cloth bag of dark beans shining with oil. "Smell this," he demanded, and then put me to crushing the beans while he filled my last available pot with water and set it to boil. There was little conversation. He hummed to himself and the fire crackled while pot lids tapped and occasional escaping drips steamed away on the fire. The pestle against the mortar made a homey sound as I ground the aromatic beans. We moved for a space in wolf time, in the contentment of the present, not worrying about what had passed or what was to come. That evening remains for me always a moment to cherish, as golden and fragrant as brandy in crystal glasses.
With a knack I've never attained, the Fool made all the food ready at once, so that the deep brown coffee steamed alongside the fish and the vegetables, while a stack of hearth cakes held their warmth under a clean cloth. We sat down to the table together, and the Fool set out a slab of the tender fish for the wolf, who dutifully ate it though he would have preferred it raw and cold. The cabin door stood open on a starry night; the fellowship of shared food on a pleasantly mild evening filled the house and overflowed.
We heaped the dirty dishes aside to deal with later, and took more coffee out onto the porch. It was my first experience of the foreign stuff. The hot brown liquid smelled better than it tasted, but sharpened the mind pleasantly. Somehow we ended up walking down to the stream together, our cups warm in our hands. The wolf drank long there of the cool water, and then we strolled back, to pause by the garden. The Fool spun the beads on Jinna's charm as I told him the tale of it. He flicked the bell with a long fingertip, and a single silver chime spun spreading into the night. We visited his horse, and I shut the door on the chicken house to keep the poultry safe for the night. We wandered back to the cabin and I sat down on the edge of the porch. Without a word, the Fool took my empty cup back into the house.
When he returned, Sandsedge brandy brimmed the cup. He sat down beside me on one side; the wolf claimed a place on the other side, and set his head on my knee. I took a sip of the brandy, silked the wolf's ears through my fingers, and waited. The Fool gave a small sigh. "I stayed away from you as long as I could." He offered the words like an apology.
I lifted an eyebrow to that. "Any time that you returned to visit me would not have been too soon. I often wondered what had become of you."
He nodded gravely. "I stayed away, hoping that you would finally find a measure of peace and contentment."
"I did," I assured him. "I have."
"And now I have returned to take it away from you." He did not look at me as he said those words. He stared off into the night, at the darkness beneath the crowding trees. He swung his legs like a child, and then took a sip of his brandy.
My heart gave a little lurch. I had thought he had come to see me for my own sake. Carefully I asked, "Chade sent you, then? To ask me to come back to Buckkeep? I gave him my answer."
"Did you? Ah." He paused a moment, swirling the brandy in his cup as he pondered. "I should have known that he would have been here already. No, my friend, I have not seen Chade in all these years. But that he has sought you out but proves what I dreaded. A time is upon us when the White Prophet must once more employ his Catalyst. Believe me, if there were any other way, if I could leave you in peace, I would. Truly I would."
"What do you need of me?" I asked him in a low voice. But he was no better at giving me a straight answer now than when he had been King Shrewd's Fool and I was the King's bastard grandson.
"I need what I have always needed from you, ever since I discovered that you existed. If I am to change time in its course, if am to set the world on a truer path than it has ever followed before, then I must have you. Your life is the wedge use to make the future jump from its rut."
He looked at my disgruntled face and laughed aloud at me. "I try, Fitz, indeed I do. I speak as plainly as I can, but your ears will not believe what they hear. I first came to the Six Duchies, and to Shrewd's court all those years ago, to seek a way to fend off a disaster. I came not knowing how I would do it, only that must. And what did discover? You. A bastard, but nonetheless an heir to the Farseer line. In no future that I had glimpsed had I seen you, yet when I recalled all I knew of the prophecies of my kind, I discovered you, again and again. In sideways mentions and sly hints, there you were. And so I did all that I could to keep you alive, which mostly was bestirring you to keep yourself alive. I groped through the mists with no more than a snail's glinting trail of prescience to guide me. I acted based on what I knew I must prevent, rather than what I must cause. We cheated all those other futures. I urged you into danger and I dragged you back from death, heedless of what it cost you in pain and scars and dreams denied. Yet you survived, and when all the cataclysms of the Cleansing of Buck were done, there was a trueborn heir to the Farseer line. Because of you. And suddenly it was as if I were lifted onto a peak above a valley brimmed with fog. I do not say that my eyes can pierce the fog; only that I stand above it and see, in the vast distance, the peaks of a new and possible future. A future founded on you."
He looked at me with golden eyes that seemed almost luminous in the dim light from the open door. He just looked at me, and I suddenly felt old and the arrow scar by my spine gave me a twist of pain that made me catch my breath for an instant. A throb like a dull red foreboding followed it. I told myself I had sat too long in one position; that was all.
"Well?" he prompted me. His eyes moved over my face almost hungrily.
"I think I need more brandy," I confessed, for somehow my cup had become empty.
He drained his own cup and took mine. When he rose, the wolf and I did also. We followed him into the cabin. He rucked about in his pack and took out a bottle. It was about a quarter empty. I tucked the observation away in my mind; so he had fortified himself against this meeting. I wondered what part of it he had dreaded. He uncorked the bottle and refilled both our cups. My chair and Hap's stool were by the hearth, but we ended up sitting on the hearthstones by thedying fire. With a heavy sigh the wolf stretched out between us, his head in my lap. I rubbed his head, and caught a sudden twinge of pain from him. I moved my hand down him to his hip joints and massaged them gently. Nighteyes gave a low groan as the touch eased him.
How bad is it?
Mind your own business.
You are my business.
Sharing pain doesn't lessen it.
I'm not sure about that.
"He's getting old." The Fool interrupted our chained thoughts.
"So am I," I pointed out. "You, however, look as young as ever."
"Yet I'm substantially older than both of you put together. And tonight I feel every one of my years." As if to give the lie to his own words, he lithely drew his knees up tight to his chest and rested his chin atop them as he hugged his own legs.
If you drank some willow-bark tea, it might ease you.
Spare me your swill and keep rubbing.
A small smile bowed the Fool's mouth. "I can almost hear you two. It's like a gnat humming near my ear, or the itch of something forgotten. Or trying to recall the sweet taste of something from a passing whiff of its fragrance." His golden eyes suddenly met mine squarely. "It makes me feel lonely."
"I'm sorry," I said, not knowing what else I could say. That Nighteyes and I spoke as we did was not an effort to exclude him from our circle. It was that our circle made us one in a fundamental way we could not share.
Yet once we did, Nighteyes reminded me. Once we did, and it was good.
I do not think that I glanced at the Fool's gloved hand. Perhaps he was closer to us than he realized, for he lifted his hand and tugged the finely woven glove from it. Hisno illlong-fingered, elegant hand emerged. Once, a chance touch of his had brushed his fingers against Verity's Skill-impregnated hands. That touch had silvered his fingers, and given him a tactile Skill that let him know the history of things simply by touching them. I turned my own wrist to look down at it. Dusky gray fingerprints still marked the inside of my wrist where he had touched me. For a time, our minds had been joined, almost as if he and Nighteyes and I were a true Skill coterie. But the silver on his fingers had faded, as had the fingerprints on my wrist and the link that had bonded us.
He lifted one slender finger as if in a warning. Then he turned his hand and extended it to me as if he proffered an invisible gift on those outstretched fingertips. I closed my eyes to steady myself against the temptation. I shook my head slowly. "It would not be wise," I said thickly. "And a Fool is supposed to be wise?" "You have always been the wisest creature I've known." I opened my eyes to his earnest gaze. "I want it as I want breath itself, Fool. Take it away, please."
"If you're sure… no, that was a cruel question. Look, it is gone." He gloved the hand, held it up to show me, and then clasped it with his naked one.
"Thank you." I took a long sip of my brandy, and tasted a summer orchard and bees bumbling in the hot sunshine among the ripe and fallen fruit. Honey and apricots danced along the edges of my tongue. It was decadently good. "I've never tasted anything like this," I observed, glad to change the subject.
"Ah, yes. I'm afraid I've spoiled myself, now that I can afford the best. There's a good stock of it in Bingtown, awaiting a message from me to tell them where to ship it."
I cocked my head at him, trying to find the jest in his words. Slowly it sank in that he was speaking the plain truth. The fine clothes, the blooded horse, exotic Bingtown coffee, and now this… "You're rich?" I hazarded sagely.
"The word doesn't touch the reality." Pink suffused his amber cheeks. He looked almost chagrined to admit it.
"Tell!" I demanded, grinning at his good fortune.
He shook his head. "Far too long a tale. Let me condense it for you. Friends insisted on sharing with me a windfall of wealth. I doubt that even they knew the full value of all they pressed upon me. I've a friend in a trading town, far to the south, and as she sells it off for the best prices such rare goods can command, she sends me letters of credit to Bingtown." He shook his head ruefully, appalled at his good fortune. "No matter how well I spend it, there always seems to be more."
"I am glad for you," I said with heartfelt sincerity.
He smiled. "I knew you would be. Yet, the strangest part perhaps is that it changes nothing. Whether I sleep on spun gold or straw, my destiny remains the same. As does yours."
So we were back to that again. I summoned all my strength and resolve. "No, Fool," I said firmly. "I won't be pulled back into Buckkeep politics. I have a life of my own now, and it is here."
He cocked his head at me, and a shadow of his old jester's smile widened his lips. "Ah, Fitz, you've always had a life of your own. That is, precisely, your problem. You've always had a destiny. As for it being here…" He shied a look around the room. "Here is no more than where you happen to be standing at the moment. Or sitting." He took a long breath. "I haven't come to drag you back into anything, Fitz. Time has brought me here. It's carried you here as well. Just as it brought Chade, and other twists to your fortunes of late. Am I wrong?"
He was not. The entire summer had been one large kink in my smoothly coiling life. I didn't reply but I didn't need to. He already knew the answer. He leaned back, stretching his long legs out before him. He nibbled at his ungloved thumb thoughtfully, then leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes.
"I dreamed of you once," I said suddenly. I had not been planning to say the words.
He opened one cat-yellow eye. "I think we had this conversation before. A long time ago."
"No. This is different. I didn't know it was you until just now. Or maybe I did." It had been a restless night, years ago, and when I awakened the dream had clung to my mind like pitch on my hands. I had known it was significant, and yet the snatch of what I had seen had made so little sense, I could not grasp its significance. "I didn't know you had gone golden, you see. But now, when you leaned back with your eyes closed… You or someone were lying on a rough wooden floor. Your eyes were closed; you were sick or injured. A man leaned over you. I felt he wanted to hurt you. So I…"
I had repelled at him, using the Wit in a way I had not for years. A rough thrust of animal presence to shove him away, to express dominance of him in a way he could not understand, yet hated. The hatred was proportionate to his fear. The Fool was silent, waiting for me.
"I pushed him away from you. He was angry, hating you, wanting to hurt you. But I pressed on his mind that he had to go and fetch help for you. He had to tell someone that you needed help. He resented what I did to him, but he had to obey me."
"Because you Skill-burned it into him," the Fool said quietly.
"Perhaps," I admitted unwillingly. Certainly the next day had been one long torment of headache and Skill-hunger. The thought made me uneasy. I had been telling myself that I could not Skill that way. Certain other dreams stirred uneasily in my memory. I pushed them down again. No, I promised myself. They were not the same.
"It was the deck of a ship," he said quietly. "And it's quite likely you saved my life." He took a breath. "I thought something like that might have happened. It never made sense to me that he didn't get rid of me when he could have. Sometimes, when I was most alone, I mocked myself that I could cling to such a hope. That I could believe I was so important to anyone that he would travel in his dreams to protect me."
"You should have known better than that," I said quietly.
"Should I?" The question was almost a challenge. He gave me the most direct look I had ever received from him. I did not understand the hurt I saw in his eyes, nor the hope. He needed something from me, but I wasn't sure what it was. I tried to find something to say, but before I could, the moment seemed to pass. He looked away from me, releasing me from his plea. When his eyes came back to mine, he changed both his expression and the subject.
"So. What happened to you after I flew away?"
The question took me aback. "I thought… but you said you had not seen Chade for years. How did you know how to find me, then?"
By way of answer, he closed his eyes, and then brought his left and right forefingers together to meet before him. He opened his eyes and smiled at me. I knew it was as much answer as I would get.
"I scarcely know where to begin."
"I do. With more brandy."
He flowed effortlessly to his feet. I let him take my empty cup. I set a hand on Nighteyes' head and felt him hovering between sleep and wakefulness. If his hips still troubled him, he was concealing it well. He was getting better and better at holding himself apart from me. I wondered why he concealed his pain.
Do you wish to share your aching back with me? Leave me alone and stop borrowing trouble. Not every problem in the world belongs to you. He lifted his head from my knee and with a deep sigh stretched out more fully before the hearth. Like a curtain falling between us, he masked himself once more.
I rose slowly, one hand pressed against my back to still my own ache. The wolf was right. Sometimes there waslittle point to sharing pain. The Fool refilled both our cups with his apricot brandy. I sat down at the table and he set mine before me. His own he kept in his hand as he wandered about the room. He paused before Verity's unfin' ished map of the Six Duchies on my wall, glanced into the nook that was Hap's sleeping alcove, and then leaned in the door of my bedchamber. When Hap had come to live with me, I had added an additional chamber that I referred to as my study. It had its own small hearth, as well as my desk and a scroll rack. The Fool paused at the door to it, then stepped boldly inside. I watched him. It was like watching a cat explore a strange house. He touched noth-ing, yet appeared to see everything. "A lot of scrolls," he observed from the other room.
I raised my voice to reach him. "I've been trying to write a history of the Six Duchies. It was something that Patience and Fedwren proposed years ago, back when I was a boy. It helps to occupy my time of an evening." "I see. May I?"
I nodded. He seated himself at my desk, and unrolled the scroll on the stone game. "Ah, yes, I remember this."
"Chade wants it when I am finished with it. I've sent him things, from time to time, via Starling. But up until a month or so ago, I hadn't seen him since we parted in the Mountains."
"Ah. But you had seen Starling." His back was to me. I wondered what expression he wore. The Fool and the minstrel had never gotten along well together. For a time, they had made an uneasy truce, but I had always been a bone of contention between them. The Fool had never approved of my friendship with Starling, had never believed she had my best interests at heart. That didn't make it any easier to let him know he had always been right.
"For a time, I saw Starling. On and off for, what, seven or eight years. She was the one who brought Hap to me about seven years ago. He's just turned fifteen. He's not home right now; he's hired out in the hopes of gaining more coin for an apprenticeship fee. He wants to be a cabinetmaker. He does good work, for a lad; both the desk and the scroll rack are his work. Yet I don't know if he has the patience for detail that a good joiner must have. Still, it's what his heart is set on, and he wants to apprentice to a cabinetmaker in Buckkeep Town. Gindast is the joiner's name, and he's a master. Even I have heard of him. If I had realized Hap would set his heart so high, I'd have saved more over the years. But»
"Starling?" His query reined me back from my musings on the boy.
It was hard to admit it. "She's married now. I don't know how long. The boy found it out when he went to Springfest at Buckkeep with her. He came home and told me." I shrugged one shoulder. "I had to end it between us. She knew I would when I found out. It still made her angry. She couldn't understand why it couldn't continue, as long as her husband never found out."
"That's Starling." His voice was oddly nonjudgmental, as if he commiserated with me over a garden blight. He turned in the chair to look at me over his shoulder. "And you're all right?"
I cleared my throat. "I've kept busy. And not thought about it much."
"Because she felt no shame at all, you think it must all belong to you. People like her are so adept at passing on blame. This is a lovely red ink on this. Where did you get it?"
"I made it."
"Did you?" Curious as a child, he unstopped one of the ink bottles on my desk and stuck in his little finger. It came out tipped in scarlet. He regarded it for a moment. "I kept Burrich's earring," he suddenly admitted. "I never took it to Molly."
"I see that. I'm just as glad you didn't. It's better that neither of them know I survived."
"Ah. Another question answered." He drew a snowy kerchief from inside his pocket and ruined it by wiping the red ink from his finger. "So. Are you going to tell me all the events in order, or must I pry bits out of you one at a time?"
I sighed. I dreaded recalling those times. Chade had been willing to accept an account of the events that related to the Farseer reign. The Fool would want more than that. Even as I cringed from it, I could not evade the notion that somehow I owed him that telling. "I'll try. But I'm tired, and we've had too much brandy, and it's far too much to tell in one evening."
He tipped back in my chair. "Were you expecting me to leave tomorrow?"
"I thought you might." I watched his face as I added, "I didn't hope it."
He accepted me at my word. "That's good, then, for you would have hoped in vain. To bed with you, Fitz. I'll take the boy's cot. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin to fill in nearly fifteen years of absence."
The Fool's apricot brandy was more potent than the Sandsedge, or perhaps I was simply wearier than usual. I staggered to my room, dragged off my shirt, and dropped into my bed. I lay there, the room rocking gently around me, and listened to his light footfalls as he moved about in the main room, extinguishing candles and pulling in the latchstring. Perhaps only I could have seen the slight unsteadiness in his movements. Then he sat down in my chair and stretched his legs toward the fire. At his feet, the wolf groaned and shifted in his sleep. I touched minds gently with Nighteyes; he was deeply asleep and welling contentment.
I closed my eyes, but the room spun sickeningly. I opened them a crack and stared at the Fool. He sat very still as he stared into the fire, but the dancing light of the flames lent their motion to his features. The angles of his face were hidden and then revealed as the shadows shifted. The gold of his skin and eyes seemed a trick of the firelight, but I knew they were not.
It was hard to realize he was no longer the impish jester who had both served and protected King Shrewd for all those years. His body had not changed, save in coloring. His graceful, long-fingered hands dangled off the arms of the chair. His hair, once as pale and airy as dandelion fluff, was now bound back from his face and confined to a golden queue. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the chair. Firelight bronzed his aristocratic profile. His present grand clothes might recall his old winter motley of black and white, but I wagered he would never again wear bells and ribbons and carry a rat-headed scepter. His lively wit and sharp tongue no longer influenced the course of political events. His life was his own now. I tried to imagine him as a wealthy man, able to travel and live as he pleased. A sudden thought jolted me from my complacency.
"Fool?" I called aloud in the darkened room.
"What?" He did not open his eyes but his ready reply showed he had not yet slipped toward sleep.
"You are not the Fool anymore. What do they call you these days?"
A slow smile curved his lips in profile. "What does whocall me when?"
He spoke in the baiting tone of the jester he had been. If I tried to sort out that question, he would tumble me in verbal acrobatics until I gave up hoping for an answer. I refused to be drawn into his game. I rephrased my question. "I should not call you Fool anymore. What do you want me to call you?"
"Ah, what do I want you to call me now? I see. An entirely different question." Mockery made music in his voice.
I drew a breath and made my question as plain as possible. "What'is your name, your real name?"
"Ah." His manner was suddenly grave. He took a slow breath. "My name. As in what my mother called me at my birth?"
"Yes." And then I held my breath. He spoke seldom of his childhood. I suddenly realized the immensity of what I had asked him. It was the old naming magic: if I know how you are truly named, I have power over you. If I tell you my name, I grant you that power. Like all direct questions I had ever asked the Fool, I both dreaded and longed for the answer.
"And if I tell you, you would call me by that name?" His inflection told me to weigh my answer.
That gave me pause. His name was his, and not for me to bandy about. But, "In private, only. And only if you wished me to," I offered solemnly. I considered the words as binding as a vow.
"Ah." He turned to face me. His face lit with delight. "Oh, but I would," he assured me.
"Then?" I asked again. I was suddenly uneasy, certain that somehow he had bested me yet again.
"The name my mother gave me, I give now to you, to call me by in private." He took a breath and turned back to the fire. He closed his eyes again but his grin grew even wider. "Beloved. She called me only 'Beloved. "
"Fool!" I protested.
He laughed, a deep rich chuckle of pure enjoyment, completely pleased with himself. "She did," he insisted.
"Fool, I'm serious." The room had begun to revolve slowly around me. If I did not go to sleep soon, I would be sick.
"And you think I am not?" He gave a theatrical sigh. "Well, if you cannot call me 'Beloved, then I suppose you should continue to call me 'Fool. For I am ever the Fool to your Fitz."
"Tom Badgerlock."
"What?"
"I am Tom Badgerlock now. It is how I am known."
He was silent for a time. Then, "Not by me," he replied decisively. "If you insist we must both take different names now, then I shall call you 'Beloved. And whenever I call you that, you may call me 'Fool. " He opened his eyes and rolled his head to look at me. He simpered a lovesick smile, then heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Good night, Beloved. We have been apart far too long."
I capitulated. Conversation was hopeless when he got into these moods. "Good night, Fool." I rolled over in my bed and closed my eyes. If he made any response, I was asleep before he uttered it.