Fool's Errand (23 page)

Although Chalced has long claimed rightful domain of the land up to the Rain River, and has frequently asserted that Bingtown too lies within its reign, we saw no signs of any settlements on that coast. Nighteyes and I traveled a long and inhospitable way north. Three days past the Rain River, we seemed to leave the strangeness behind, but we journeyed another ten days before we encountered a human settlement. By then, regular washing in brine had healed many of our sores, and my thoughts seemed more my own, but we presented the aspect of a weary beggar and his mangy dog. Folk were not welcoming to us.

My footsore journey north through Chalced persuaded me that folk there are the most inimical in the world. I enjoyed Chalced fully as much as Burrich had led me to believe I would. Even its magnificent cities could not move me. The wonders of its architecture and the heights of its civilization are built on a foundation of human misery. The reality of widespread slavery appalled me.

I paused in my tale to glance at the freedom earring that hung from the Fool’s ear. It had been Burrich’s grandmother’s hard-won prize, the mark of a slave who had won freedom. The Fool lifted a hand to touch it with a finger. It hung next to several others carved of wood, and its silver network caught the eye.

“Burrich,” the Fool said quietly. “And Molly. I ask you directly this time. Did you ever seek them out?”

I hung my head for a moment. “Yes,” I admitted after a time. “I did. It is odd you should ask now, for it was as I crossed Chalced that I was suddenly seized with the urge to see them.”

One evening as we camped well away from the road, I felt my sleep seized by a powerful dream. Perhaps the images came to me because in some corner of her heart, Molly still kept a place for me. Yet I did not dream of Molly as a lover dreams of his beloved. I dreamed of myself, I thought, small and hot and deathly ill. It was a black dream, a dream all of sensations without images. I lay curled tight against Burrich’s chest, and his presence and smell were the only comforts I knew in my misery. Then unbearably cool hands touched my fevered skin. They tried to lift me away, but I wiggled and cried out, clinging to him. Burrich’s strong arm closed around me again. “Leave her be,” he commanded hoarsely.

I heard Molly’s voice from a distance, wavering and distorted. “Burrich, you’re as sick as she is. You can’t take care of her. Let me have her while you rest.”

“No. Leave her beside me. You take care of Chiv and yourself.”

“Your son is fine. Neither of us is ill. Only you and Nettle. Let me take her, Burrich.”

“No,” he groaned. His hand settled on me protectively. “This is how the Blood Plague began, when I was a boy. It killed everyone I loved. Molly. I couldn’t bear it if you took her away from me and she died. Please. Leave her beside me.”

“So you can die together?” she demanded, her weary voice going shrill.

There was terrible resignation in his voice. “If we must. Death is colder when it finds you alone. I will hold her to the last.”

He was not rational, and I felt both Molly’s anger and her fear for him. She brought him water, and I fussed when she half-sat him up to drink it. I tried to drink from the cup she held to my mouth, but my lips were cracked and sore, my head hurt too badly, and the light was too bright. When I pushed it away, the water slopped on my chest, icy cold, and I shrieked and began to wail. “Nettle, Nettle, hush,” she bade me, but her hands were cold when she touched me. I wanted nothing of my mother just then, and knew an echo of Nettle’s jealousy that another child claimed the throne of Molly’s lap now. I clutched at Burrich’s shirt and he held me close again and hummed softly in his deep voice. I pushed my face against him where the light could not touch my eyes, and tried to sleep.

I tried so desperately to sleep that I pushed myself into wakefulness. I opened my eyes to my breath rasping in and out of my lungs. Sweat cloaked me, but I could not forget the tightness of my hot, dry skin in the Skill-dream. I had wrapped my cloak about me when I lay down to sleep; now I fought clear of its confines. We had chosen to sleep away the deep of the night on a creek bank; I staggered to the water and drank deeply. When I lifted my face from the water, I found the wolf sitting very straight and watching me. His tail neatly wrapped all four of his feet.

“He already knew I had to go to them. We set out that night.”

“And you knew where to go, to find them?”

I shook my head. “No. I knew nothing, other than that when they first left Buckkeep, they had settled near a town called Capelin Beach. And I knew the, well, the ‘feel’ of where they lived then. With no more than that, we set out.

“After years of wandering, it was odd to have a destination, and especially to hurry toward it. I did not think about what we did, or how foolish it was. A part of me admitted it was senseless. We were too far away. I’d never get there in time. By the time I arrived, they would be either dead or recovered. Yet having begun that journey, I could not deviate from it. After years of fleeing any who might recognize me, I was suddenly willing to hurl myself back into their lives again? I refused to consider any of it. I simply went.”

The Fool nodded sympathetically to my account. I feared he guessed far more than I willingly told him.

After years of denying and refusing the lures of the Skill, I immersed myself in it. The addiction clutched at me and I embraced it in return. It was disconcerting to have it come back upon me with such force. But I did not fight it. Despite the blinding headaches that still followed my efforts, I reached toward Molly and Burrich almost every evening. The results were not encouraging. There is nothing like the heady rush of two Skill-trained minds meeting. But Skill-seeing is another matter entirely. I had never been instructed in that application of the Skill; I had only the knowledge I had gained by groping. My father had sealed off Burrich to the Skill, lest anyone try to use his friend against him. Molly had no aptitude for it that I knew. In Skill-seeing them, there could be no true connection of minds, but only the frustration of watching them, unable to make them aware of me. I soon found that I could not achieve even that reliably. Disused, my abilities had rusted. Even a short effort left me exhausted and debilitated by pain, and yet I could not resist trying. I strove for those brief connections and mined them for information. A glimpse of hills behind their home, the smell of the sea, black-faced sheep pastured on a distant hill—I treasured every hint of their surroundings, and hoped they would be enough to guide me to them. I could not control my seeing. Often I found myself watching the homeliest of tasks, the daily labor of a tub of laundry to be washed and hung, herbs to be harvested and dried, and yes, beehives to tend. Glimpses of a baby Molly called Chiv whose face reflected Burrich’s features cut me with both jealousy and wonder.

Eventually I found a village called Capelin Beach. I found the deserted cottage where my daughter had been born. Other folk had lived here since then; no recognizable trace of them remained to my eyes, but the wolf’s nose was keener. Nevertheless, Molly and Burrich were long gone from there, and I knew not where. I dared not ask direct questions in the village, for I did not want anyone to bear word to Burrich or Molly that someone was looking for them. Months had passed in my journeying. In every village I passed, I saw signs of new graves. Whatever the sickness had been, it had spread wide and taken many with it. In none of my visions had I seen Nettle; had it carried her off, as well? I spiraled out from Capelin Beach, visiting inns and taverns in nearby villages. I became a slightly daft traveler, obsessed with beekeeping and professing to know all there was to know on the topic. I started arguments so others would correct me and speak of beekeepers they had known. Yet all my efforts to hear the slightest rumor of Molly were fruitless until late one afternoon I followed a narrow road to the crest of the hill, and suddenly recognized a stand of oak trees.

All my courage vanished in that instant. I left the road and skulked through the forested hills that flanked it. The wolf came with me, unquestioning, not even letting his thoughts intrude on mine as I stalked my old life. By early evening, we were on a hillside looking down on their cottage. It was a tidy and prosperous stead, with chickens scratching in the side yard and three straw hives in the meadow behind it. There was a well-tended vegetable garden. Behind the cottage were a barn, obviously a newer structure, and several small paddocks built of skinned logs. I smelled horse. Burrich had done well for them. I sat in the dark and watched the single window glow yellow with candlelight, and then wink to blackness. The wolf hunted alone that night as I kept my vigil. I could not approach and I could not leave. I was caught where I was, a leaf on the edge of their eddy. I suddenly understood all the legends of ghosts doomed to forever haunt some spot. No matter how far I roamed, some part of me would always be chained here.

As dawn broke, Burrich emerged from the cottage door. His limp was more pronounced than I recalled it, as was the streak of white in his hair. He lifted his face to the dawning day and took a great breath, and for one wolfish instant, I feared he would scent me there. But he only walked to the well and drew up a bucket of water. He carried it inside, then returned a moment later to throw some grain to the chickens. The smoke of an awakened fire rose from the chimney. So. Molly was up and about also. Burrich went out to the barn. As clear as if I were walking beside him, I knew his routine. After he had checked every animal, he would come outside. He did, and drew water, packing bucket after bucket into the barn.

My words choked me for an instant. Then I laughed aloud. My eyes swam with tears but I ignored them. “I swear, Fool, that is when I came closest to going down to him. It seemed as unnatural a thing as I had ever done, to watch Burrich work and not toil alongside him.”

The Fool nodded, silent and rapt beside me.

“When he came out, he was leading a roan stallion. It astonished me. ‘Buckkeep’s best,’ shouted every line of his body. His spirit was in the arch of his neck, his power in his shoulders and haunches. My heart swelled in me just to see such a horse, and to know he was in Burrich’s keeping rejoiced me. He turned the horse loose in a paddock, and then hauled yet more water to the trough there.

“When he next led Ruddy out, much of the mystery was cleared for me. I did not know, then, that Starling had hunted him down and seen to it that both his horse and Sooty’s colt were given over to him. It was just good to see man and horse together again. Ruddy looked to have settled into good-natured stability; even so, Burrich did not paddock him next to the other stud, but put him as far away as possible. He hauled more water for Ruddy, then gave him a friendly thump and went back into the cottage.

“Then Molly came out.”

I took another breath and held it. I stared out at the ocean, but that was not what I saw. The image of she who had been my woman moved before my eyes. Her dark hair, once wild and blowing to the wind, was braided and pinned sedately to her head, a matron’s crown. A little boy toddled unsteadily after her. Basket on her arm, she moved with placid grace toward the garden. Her white apron draped her swelling pregnancy. The swift and slender girl was gone, but I found this woman no less attractive. My heart yearned after her and all she represented: the cozy hearth and the settled home, the companionship of the years to come as she filled her man’s home with children and warmth.

“I whispered her name. It was so strange. She lifted her head suddenly, and for one sharp moment I thought she was aware of me. But instead of looking up to the hill, she laughed aloud, and exclaimed, ‘Chivalry, no! Not good to eat.’ She stooped slightly, to pull a handful of pea flowers from the child’s mouth. She lifted him, and I saw the effort it cost her. She called back to the cottage, ‘My love, come fetch your son before he pulls the whole garden up. Tell Nettle to come and pull some turnips for me.’

“Then I heard Burrich call back, ‘A moment!’ An instant later, he stood in the doorway. He called over his shoulder, ‘We’ll finish the washing-up later. Come help your mother.’ I watched him cross the yard in a few strides and snatch up his son. He swung him high, and the child gave a whoop of delight as Burrich landed him on his shoulder. Molly set a hand atop her belly and laughed with them, looking up at them both with delight in her eyes.”

I stopped speaking. I could no longer see the ocean. Tears blinded me like a fog.

I felt the Fool’s hand on my shoulder. “You never went down to them, did you?”

I shook my head mutely.

I had fled. I had fled the sudden gnawing envy I felt, and I fled lest I glimpse my own child and have to go to her. There was no place down there for me, not even on the edges of their world. I knew that. I had known it since first I knew they would marry. If I walked down to that door, I would carry destruction and misery with me.

I am no better than any other man. There was bitterness in me, and anger at both of them, and the stark awareness of how fate had betrayed us all. I could not blame them for turning to each other. Neither did I blame myself for the anguish I felt that by that act, they had excluded me forever from their lives. It was done and over, and regrets were useless. The dead, I told myself, have no right to regret. The most I can claim for myself is that I did walk away. I did not let my pain poison their happiness, or compromise my daughter’s home. That much strength, I found.

I drew a long breath and found my voice again. “And that is the end of my tale, Fool. Next winter caught us here. We found this hut and settled into it. And here we have been ever since.” I blew out a breath and thought over my own words. Suddenly none of it seemed admirable.

His next words rattled me. “And your other child?” he asked quietly.

“What?”

“Dutiful. Have you seen him? Is not he your son, just as much as Nettle is your daughter?”

“I . . . no. No, he is not. And I have never seen him. He is Kettricken’s son and Verity’s heir. So Kettricken recalls it, I am sure.” I felt myself reddening, embarrassed that the Fool had brought this up. I set my hand to his shoulder. “My friend, only you and I know of how Verity used me . . . my body. When he asked my permission, I misunderstood his request. I myself have no memory of how Dutiful was conceived. You must recall; I was with you, trapped in Verity’s misused flesh. My King did what he did to get himself an heir. I do not begrudge it, but neither do I wish to remember it.”