Golden Fool (42 page)

My eyes fell on a heavy pottery bowl, upside down on the corner of the table. There was a dead rat under it. Well, there was most of a dead rat under. I’d taken it from the ferret last night. From a sound sleep, a Wit scream of hideous pain had awakened me. It was not the ordinary snuffing of a small creature’s life. Anyone with the Wit had to become inured to those constant ripples. Usually, little creatures went like popping bubbles. Among animals, death is a daily chance one takes in the course of living. Only a human bonded to a creature could have given such a roar of dismay, outrage, and sorrow over a creature’s death.

Once jolted awake by it, I had given up all hope of going back to sleep. It was as if my wound of losing Nighteyes had suddenly been torn afresh. I had arisen and, loath to awaken the Fool, had instead come up to the tower. On the way I had encountered the ferret dragging the rat. It had been the largest, most glossily healthy rat I had ever seen. After a chase and a tussle, the ferret had surrendered it to me. There was no way I could prove that this dead rat had been someone’s Wit-beast, but my suspicions were strong. I had saved it to show it to Chade. I knew we had a spy sneaking about within the keep’s walls. Laurel’s lynched sprig of laurel was proof enough of that. Now it seemed possible that the rat and his Wit-partner had not only penetrated to the royal residence, but knew something of our hidden lairs. I hoped the old man would come to the tower this evening.

I now turned to the two old Skill scrolls we’d been piecing together. They were more challenging than the Icefyre vellums, and yet more satisfying to work on. Chade believed the two were part of the same work, based on the apparent age of the vellum and the style of lettering used. I believed they were two separate works, based on the choice of words and the illustrations. Both were faded and cracked, with portions of words or whole sentences unreadable. Both were in an archaic lettering that gave me headaches. Beside each scroll was a clean piece of vellum, with Chade’s and my line-for-line translations of the two. Looking at them, I realized that my handwriting predominated now. I glanced at Chade’s latest contribution. It was a sentence that began “The use of elfbark.” I frowned at that, and found the corresponding line in the old scroll. The illustration beside it was faded, but it was definitely not elfbark. The word Chade had translated as “elfbark” was partially obscured by a stain. But squinting at it, I had to agree that “elfbark” did seem the most likely configuration of the letters. Well, that made no sense. Unless the illustration did not pertain to that part of the text. In which case, the piece I had translated might be all wrong. I sighed.

The wine rack swung open. Chade entered, followed by Thick bearing a tray of food and drink. “Good evening,” I greeted them, and carefully set my work to one side.

“Good evening, Tom,” Chade greeted me.

“Evening, master,”
dogstink
Thick echoed him.

Don’t call me that.
“Good evening, Thick. I thought you and I were going to meet here earlier today.”

The half-wit set the tray down on the table and scratched himself. “Forgot,” he said with a shrug, but his little eyes narrowed as he said it.

I gave Chade a glance of resignation. I had tried, but the old man’s surly stare seemed to say I had not tried hard enough. I tried to think of a way to be rid of Thick so I could discuss the rat with Chade.

“Thick? Next time you bring up wood for the fire, could you bring an extra load? Sometimes in the evening, it gets quite cold up here.” I gestured at the dwindling flames. I’d had to let it die down, as there was no more wood to fuel it.

Cold dogstink.
The thought reached me clearly but he simply stood and stared at me slackly as if he had not understood my words.

“Thick? Two loads of firewood tonight. All right?” Chade spoke to him, a bit more loudly than was needed and saying each word clearly. Could he not sense how much that annoyed Thick? The man was simple, but not deaf. Nor stupid, really.

Thick nodded slowly. “Two loads.”

“You could go get it right now,” Chade told him.

“Now,” Thick agreed. As he turned to go, he gave me a brief glance from the corner of his eyes.
Dogstink. More work.

I waited until he had gone before I spoke to Chade. He had set the tray on the table opposite from the scrolls. “He doesn’t try to assault me with the Skill anymore. But he uses it to insult me, privately. He knows you cannot hear him. I don’t know why he dislikes me so much. I’ve done nothing to him.”

Chade lifted one shoulder. “Well, you will both just have to get past that and work together. And you must begin soon. The Prince must have some sort of Skill coterie to accompany him on this quest, even if it’s only a serving man he can draw strength from. Court Thick, Fitz, and win him. We need him.” When I met his words with silence, he sighed. Glancing about, he offered, “Wine?”

I indicated my cup on the table. “No, thank you. I’ve been drinking hot tea this evening.”

“Oh. Very good.” Chade walked around the table to see what I was working on. “Oh. Did you finish the Icefyre scrolls?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. I don’t think we’re going to find anything useful in them. They seem to be very vague about the actual dragon. Mostly accounts of earthquakes that proved that the dragon would punish someone if he didn’t do what was just, and so the man realizes that he had best behave in a righteous way.”

“Nevertheless, you should finish reading them. There might be something in there, some hidden mention of a detail that could be useful.”

“I doubt it. Chade, do you think there even is a dragon? Or might not this be Elliania’s ploy to delay her marriage, by sending the Prince off to slay something that doesn’t exist?”

“I am satisfied that some sort of creature is encased in ice on Aslevjal Isle. There are a number of passing mentions of it being visible in some of the very old scrolls. A few winters of very deep snowfalls and an avalanche seem to have obscured it. But for a time, travelers in that area would go far out of their way to stare into the glacier and speculate on what they were seeing inside it.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Oh, good. Perhaps this will be more a task for shovels and ice saws than for a prince and a sword.”

A smile flickered briefly over Chade’s face. “Well, if it comes to moving ice and snow swiftly, I think I’ve come up with a better technique. But it still needs refinement.”

“So. That was you on the beach last month?” I had heard rumors of another lightning blast, this one witnessed by several ships out in the harbor. This explosion had happened in the deep of night during a snowstorm. It befuddled all who spoke of it. No one had seen lightning streak through the sky, nor would expect to on such a night. But no one could deny hearing the blast. A sizable amount of stone and sand had been moved by it.

“On the beach?” Chade asked me as if mystified.

“Let it go,” I conceded, almost with relief. I had no wish to be included in his experiments with his exploding powder.

“As we must,” Chade agreed. “For we have other things to discuss, things of much greater importance. How is the Prince progressing with his Skill lessons?”

I winced. I had not informed Chade that the Prince had not been coming to them. I hedged at first, reminding him, “I’ve been reluctant to let him do any actual Skilling while the scaled Bingtowner is still here. So we had only been studying the scrolls—” Then I suddenly saw little sense in withholding the truth, and no future at all in lying to Chade. “Actually, he hasn’t come to any of his lessons since the farewell banquet. I think he’s still angry at discovering I’d placed a Skill command on him.”

Chade scowled at the news. “Well. I’ll take steps to correct the young man. Regardless of how ruffled his feathers are, he had best put himself to that task. Tomorrow, he will be there. I will arrange that he will be able to spend an extra hour with you each morning and not be missed. Now. As to Thick. You must get to the task of teaching him, Fitz, or at least getting him to obey you. I leave how you do that to you, but I suggest that bribes will work better than threats or punishments. Now. On to our next task: how do you propose that we begin looking for other Skill candidates?”

I sat down and crossed my arms on my chest. I tried to hold in my anger as I asked, “Then you’ve found a Skillmaster to teach other candidates if you find them?”

He knitted his brows at me. “We have you.”

I shook my head. “No. I teach the Prince at his request. And you’ve coerced me into trying to teach Thick. But I am not a Skillmaster. Even if I had the knowledge to be one, I would not be one. I cannot. You are asking me for a lifetime commitment. You’re asking me to eventually take on an apprentice who would assume the duties of a Skillmaster when I died. There is no possible way I could take on a class of students and instruct them in the Skill without revealing to all of them who I am. I won’t do that.”

Chade stared at me, mouth slightly ajar at my contained anger. It seemed to give my words momentum.

“Furthermore, I’d prefer that you let me settle my quarrel with the Prince in my own way. It will go better so. It’s a personal matter, between him and me. As for when and where I will be able to teach Thick? Never and nowhere,” I said shortly. “He doesn’t like me. He’s unpleasant, ill-mannered, and smelly. And, if you haven’t noticed before, he’s a half-wit. A bit dangerous to trust him with the Farseer magic. But even if he weren’t all those things, he has rejected all my efforts to teach him anything.” That was true, I defended it to myself. He had quickly terminated all of my halfhearted attempts at conversation, leaving me in a cloud of Skilled insults. “And he’s strong. If I push him, he may take that dislike of me to a violent level. Frankly, he scares me.”

If I had thought to provoke Chade to anger, I failed. He slowly sat down across from me and took a sip from his wineglass. He regarded me silently for a moment, then shook his head. “This won’t do, Fitz,” he said in a low voice. “I know that you doubt you can instruct the Prince and create a coterie for him in the time we have, but as it is something we must do, I have faith you will find a way.”

“
You
are convinced the Prince needs a coterie at his side before he undertakes this quest. I’m not even sure this is a real quest, let alone that a coterie will be able to assist him better than a troop of soldiers with shovels.”

“Nevertheless, sooner or later the Prince will need a coterie. You might as well begin to create one now.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms on his chest. “I’ve an idea of how to find likely candidates for a coterie.”

I stared at him silently. He blithely ignored my refusal to be Skillmaster. His next words incensed me.

“I could simply ask Thick. He easily located Nettle. Perhaps if he put his mind to it and was rewarded for each success, he could find others.”

“I really want nothing to do with Thick,” I said quietly.

“A shame,” Chade replied as softly. “For I’m afraid this is no longer a matter for discussion between you and me. Let me say this plainly: it is your queen’s command for us. We met for several hours this morning, discussing Dutiful and his quest. She shares my opinion that he must have a coterie to accompany him. She asked what candidates we had. I told her Thick and Nettle. She wishes their training to begin at once.”

I crossed my arms on my chest for a moment and held my silence in. I was shocked, and not just by Nettle being included. I knew that in the Mountain Kingdom, babes such as Thick must have been were usually exposed shortly after birth. I had surmised that she would be dismayed at the thought of such a man serving her son. In fact, I had been relying on her to refuse him. Once more, my queen had surprised me.

When I was sure I could speak in a steady voice, I asked, “Has she sent for Nettle yet?”

“Not yet. The Queen wishes to handle this matter herself, with great tact. We know that if she requests this, Burrich may refuse again. If she commands it, well, neither of us can decide what response he might make to that. She wishes both Burrich and the girl to agree to this. And thus the precise way to phrase the summons will demand thought, but right now, the Bingtown delegation takes every spare moment she has. When they have departed, she will invite both Burrich and Nettle here to explain the need to both of them. And perhaps Molly as well.” Very carefully he added, “Unless, of course, you would like to broach the matter to them for the Queen. Then Nettle could begin her lessons sooner.”

I took a breath. “No. I would not. And Kettricken should not waste her time considering how to approach them. Because I won’t teach Nettle to Skill.”

“I thought you might feel that way. But feelings no longer have anything to do with it, Fitz. It is our queen’s command. We have no choice except to obey.”

I slid down in my chair. Defeat rose like bile in the back of my throat. So. There it was. The command of my queen was that my daughter be sacrificed to the need of the Farseer heir. Her peaceful life and the security of her home were as nothing before the needs of the Farseer throne. I’d stood here before. Once, I would have believed I had no choice except to obey. But that had been a younger Fitz.

I took a moment and considered it. Kettricken, my friend, the wife of my uncle Verity, was a Farseer by virtue of marriage. The vows I had sworn as a child and a youth and as a young man bound me to the Farseers, to serve as they commanded me, even to giving up my life. To Chade, my duty seemed clear. But what was a vow? Words said aloud with good intentions of keeping them. To some, they were no more than that, words that could be discarded when the situation or the heart changed. Men and women who had vowed faithfulness to one another dallied with others or simply abandoned their mates. Soldiers under oath to a lord deserted in the cold and lean winters. Noblemen vowed to one cause cast off their obligations when another side offered them more advantage. So. Truly, was I bound to obey her? I found that my hand had strayed to the little fox pin inside my shirt.

There were a hundred reasons I did not wish to obey her, reasons that had nothing to do with Nettle. The Skill, I had told Chade before, was a magic better left dead. Yet I had allowed myself to be persuaded to teach Dutiful. Reading the Skill scrolls had not made me more secure in my decision to teach him. The scope of the Skill that I had glimpsed from these forgotten scrolls was vaster than anything Verity had ever dared imagine. Worse, the more I read, the more I realized that what we had was not the Skill library, but only the remaining fragments of it. We had the scrolls that spoke of the duties of instructors, and the scrolls that delineated the most sophisticated uses of the Skills. There must have been other Scrolls, ones that spoke of the basics and how a Skill-user could build his abilities and control to the level demanded for the most advanced purposes. But we did not have those ones. El alone knew what had become of them. The bits and pieces of Skill knowledge that I had glimpsed had convinced me that the magic offered abilities almost on a footing with the powers of the gods. With the Skill, one could injure or heal, blind or enlighten, encourage or crush. I did not think I was wise enough to wield such authority, let alone decide who should inherit it. The more Chade read, the more eager and avid he became for the magic that had been denied to him by his illegitimate birth. He frightened me, often, with his enthusiasm for all the Skill seemed to offer. It frightened me in a different way that he insisted on venturing into the magic alone. That he had lately said nothing made me hope he had had no success.