Golden Fool (62 page)

“What of Henja? Did the Prince tell you that I saw her?”

His face grew graver. “He did. But . . . is it possible you were mistaken? For my spies in town have heard not a whisper of her.”

I forced myself to consider the memory of that glimpse. “I was hurt and it was dark.
But . . . I do not think I was mistaken. And I believe she was the woman who was there when Thick was. She offered gold to Padget and Laudwine for the Fool and me . . . I think. It was hard to decide what she was trying to buy from them. Laudwine didn’t like her. She seems to be involved in all of this somehow.”

Chade lifted a hand, palm up. “If she is, she has covered her tracks well. There is no sign of her in Buckkeep Town that I can discover.”

That was small comfort. His spies had not found Laudwine, either. I kept that complaint to myself.

“We still have a Piebald spy here in Buckkeep. The man who led Thick to Laudwine.”

Chade’s voice was neutral. “Civil’s groom met with a most unfortunate accident. He was found dead in a stud horse’s stall, kicked to death. Why he would have gone into the stall at all is a mystery.”

I nodded. Another thread tied off. “And Civil’s mother and holdings?”

Chade looked away from me. “The tragic news reached us the day after you were taken prisoner. Lady Bresinga died of food poisoning. A number of her guests and servants died with her. It was horribly sad, but not the least bit shameful or scandalous. Her body was discovered first, but over the next few days, others sickened and swiftly died. Tainted fish is what I heard. Lady Bresinga’s body was sent to her mother’s home for burial. Civil is attending to that sad duty. Prince Dutiful sent his own honor guard with him as a token of the high esteem he holds him in. Civil understands that when the details have been settled, he will return to Buckkeep, to remain at Buckkeep Castle until he reaches his majority. Galekeep will be shuttered, though our Lady Queen has lent Civil staff and a steward to maintain the place in his absence.”

I nodded slowly. The Prince might call Civil friend, but he would be Chade’s well-kept and pampered prisoner for the next few years. It was an apt solution. He could perceive it as protection or as a cage. All had been neatly managed. I wondered if Lady Rosemary had found a sudden reason to visit her friend at Galekeep, or if the spy that Chade had in place there had done the poisoning. It would have been difficult for Rosemary to travel, burned as she was. Then I suddenly turned to look at Chade. He met my scrutiny with a puzzled expression. I leaned forward suddenly and, before he could draw back, touched his cheek. No paint came off on my fingers. Sound, pink flesh. No trace of healing burns.

“Oh, Chade,” I rebuked him, and my voice shook with shock. “Have a care, man! You charge in blindly and none of us know the cost. None of us.”

He allowed himself a smile. “I care little for the cost, when I know the benefit so well already. My burns are healed. For the first time in years, I walk with no pains in my knees and hips. I sleep free of pain at night. I even see more clearly.”

“You are not doing this alone.”

He looked at me, refusing to answer, and I knew the answer.

“You’ve been tapping Thick’s strength,” I accused him in a low voice.

“He doesn’t mind.”

“You don’t know the dangers. He doesn’t understand the risks.”

“And neither do you!” he replied sharply. “Fitz, there are times to be cautious and times to be bold. The time has come for us to take these risks. We need to discover all the Skill truly can do. When the Prince goes on his quest to slay Icefyre, you will go with him. And you must know the Skill’s powers by then, and must be capable of wielding them. This”—and he slapped his chest soundly—“this is a miracle and a wonder. If we had had this at our disposal when Shrewd was ill, he never would have died. Think what that would have meant!”

“Yes, think,” I rejoined. “Think of Shrewd, alive still and ruling here. Then ask yourself, why isn’t that so? For he was not trained by Galen. Solicity was his Skillmistress. Can not we assume that he knew far more of the Skill than we do? Perhaps even how to prolong his life? So then, let us ask, why did he not do it? Why did not Solicity herself do it? Did they know that there was a price attached to that, a price too high to pay?”

“Or did he merely lack a coterie to assist him in his efforts?” Chade countered.

“He could have used Galen’s Coterie, if that was the case.”

“Pah! You don’t know that, and neither do I. Why must you be so pessimistic? Why must you always assume the worst?”

“Maybe I learned caution from a wise old man. One who is now behaving foolishly.”

Chade’s cheeks flushed pink. Anger lit his eyes. “You are not yourself. Or, perhaps it is even worse than that. You
are
yourself. Listen to me, you whelp. I watched my brother die. I watched King Shrewd dwindle, and I was beside him in the days when he did not know that his mind wandered, and I was beside him in the days when he was cognizant of the weakness of his body and his mind, and shamed to tears by it. I do not know which days were worse to witness. If he had had the Skill to change that, he would have done it, no matter the cost. This is Skill knowledge that was lost to us. I intend to regain it. And to use it.”

I think he expected me to roar back at him. I half-expected myself to, and perhaps I would have if I had not felt such a combination of weakness, despair, and fear. Chade had frightened me badly when his health and mind were failing and I feared we might lose his wealth of information and connections. Now, health-filled and bright-eyed, with ambition burning in him, he terrified me. I had known this side of Chade existed, known that he had always hungered to master the Skill. I had never known I’d have to confront that appetite. I took two deep breaths and spoke quietly. “Is that decision yours to make?”

A frown furrowed his brows. “What do you mean? Who else should make it?”

“The Skillmaster, perhaps, should say how the Skill is applied at Buckkeep. Especially among inexperienced students.” I met his gaze sternly. In truth, he was the one who had pushed me into accepting the responsibility of the position. I wondered if he winced now at how his own stubbornness in this had turned to bite him.

He was incredulous. “You’re saying you’d forbid me this? And expect me to obey you?” Hands on his knees, he leaned forward in his chair to confront me.

I did not want to meet him head-on in a clash of wills. I had not the strength just now. I turned the question. “There was another Farseer who tried to use the Skill to his own ends. He himself was neither strong nor talented with the Skill, but he used the strength of his coterie to gain his ends. He used them ruthlessly, regardless of what it did to them, how it drained them or twisted their own wills. Will you become another Regal?”

“I am nothing like Regal!” Chade spat at me. “For one thing, his interest was all for himself. You know that I have spent my entire life laboring tirelessly for the Farseer reign. And for another difference, I
will
develop my own Skill. I will not long be dependent on another’s strength.”

“Chade.” My voice came out in a cracked whisper. I cleared my throat, but still spoke weakly. “Perhaps you will develop your own Skill. But not if you go on as you have, experimenting alone, taking chances with yourself, and now risking Thick, who has no concept of the danger you may represent.” I wasn’t sure he was listening to me. He was staring past me, his green eyes going far. I spoke on anyway, hearing my own voice failing and starting to rasp. “You need to learn the dangers of the magic, Chade, before you wade into it and start using it for your own ends. The Skill is not a toy, nor is it something that any user should employ solely for his own benefit.”

“It wasn’t fair!” Chade protested suddenly. “They denied me the teaching, the teaching that I should have had. I was as much a Farseer as Shrewd. I should have been taught.”

I was tiring rapidly. I had to win this, or at least fight him to a draw before I collapsed back into my bed. “No. It wasn’t fair,” I agreed. “But using Thick as your crutch and tool is not fair, either. Nor will it replace the proper teaching you should have had. That you must get for yourself. Thick is strong with the Skill, and has no concept of what dangers that may present to him. Nor has he the will to resist your using his magic for your own purposes. He will not warn you when you are taking too much from him, and you will not know you have taken it until it is too late. It is wrong of you to tap his strength as if he were a bullock hitched to your cart. He may be simple, but in Skill at least, he is our equal. He’s a member of our coterie. As such you should be brothers, regardless of your varying abilities.”

“Coterie?” The slack-jawed look of astonishment on Chade’s face suddenly made me realize that he had not seen what was obvious to me.

“Coterie,” I repeated. “You. Me. Dutiful. The Fool. And Thick.” I paused, waiting for him to say something. Instead, I heard the soft sound of the Fool’s chair being pushed back from his desk. And the even quieter sounds of his feet as he crossed the room to stand near us. I wondered what expression he wore, but I didn’t look away from Chade’s gaze. When he continued silent, I reminded him, “Chade. I was there. I was not in full possession of myself, I know, but I would have had to be dead to have been unaware of what happened to me. What you all united to do to me. Didn’t you understand that that was how a coterie functioned? The pooling of strength and abilities to achieve some goal. That was what you did. Thick’s strength. Your knowledge of a man’s internal structure. Dutiful’s control and purpose. And the Fool’s link to me. All were necessary to do what you did. And can do again, if needed. Dutiful has his coterie. Not much of one, in many ways, but a coterie, nonetheless. But only if we function as one. If you lead Thick astray, to use him as your personal reservoir of strength, you’ll destroy us before we find our potential.”

I halted. My mouth was dry, and I’d run out of breath. At any other time, I would have been horrified to discover how weak I was. At the moment, I could not afford to spare it a thought. I felt I had come to a balancing point with the old man. For so many years, he had been my mentor and guide. As his apprentice, I had seldom questioned his wisdom or his ways; I had always been certain that he knew what was best. Yet, since summer, I had seen that his bright mind was failing and his memory not as tightly taloned as once it had been. But worse for both of us, I had begun to consider his decisions and even his thought processes from a man’s perspective. I was no longer willing to concede to him that he knew best in everything. And when I applied the perspective of my thirty-odd years to the decisions he had made for me and for the Farseers in the past, I was not sure that I agreed with them any longer. Now that I could see his wisdom was not absolute, I felt more justified in demanding that he recognize there were areas in which I knew more than he did. It was a strange equality I sought to claim, one that did not assert I knew as much as he did, but rather that, although he was still wiser than I in many things, there were areas in which he must give way to me.

For so long he had been my mentor and above question. Now it was hard for both of us that I saw him as a man. I hated that I had become aware of his flaws. I never wanted to be the one to hold a mirror to him and point them out. I had to admit to myself, difficult as it was, that he had always been ambitious and eager for power. Limited by politics in his quest for his magic, scarred by an accident that doomed him to working unseen, he had still become a powerful force. It was his will that had sustained the Farseer throne in the days when King Shrewd was failing and his two remaining sons vied for his throne. It had been Chade’s network of spies and servants who had assisted Queen Kettricken in retaining her power until her son could come of age. He was close now, so close, to putting another Farseer-born heir on the throne.

Yet I could look at him and see that these successes would not be enough for him. He would not count any achievement a true victory until he had acquired for himself the things he had always hungered for. Power he had now, and the trappings that went with it. He could openly wield it, and folk accepted it as his right as the Queen’s Councilor. Yet within the esteemed advisor there still lurked the deprived bastard, the disinherited child. No triumph would ever be enough for him until he mastered the Skill, yes, and let others know that he had mastered it.

I feared he would undermine all else he had engineered in attaining that one goal. His determination could blind him. And so I watched him as he weighed my words and thought his own thoughts about them. I studied him as I waited. He could not reverse the march of the years. Not even the Skill could make him young again. But perhaps, as Kettle had done, he could halt the progression of aging, and repair the damage it had done to him. His hair was as white, the lines in his face graven as deep. But the knobbiness of his knuckles had subsided, and his cheeks were flushed with robust health. The whites of his eyes were clear.

As I watched him, I saw him come to a decision. And my heart sank as he rose hastily, for in his rush to leave I saw his desire to end the conversation. “You are not well yet, Fitz,” he said as he stood. “It will be days until you are strong enough to continue teaching Dutiful and Thick what you know of the Skill. And those days represent time I am not willing to waste. Therefore, while you are recuperating, I will continue my own explorations of the Skill. I will be circumspect, I promise you. I will risk no one except myself. But having begun this, having felt the first touch of what it can mean to me, I will not draw back. I will not.”

He started toward the door. I drew a ragged breath. I was very nearly at the end of my strength. “Don’t you understand, Chade? What you feel is the pull all Skill students are warned against! You venture into the Skill current at your peril. If we lose you, the strength of the whole coterie is diminished. If you take Thick with you, the coterie is destroyed entirely.”

His hand was on the latch. He did not turn to look back at me. “You need your rest, Fitz, not to work yourself up like this. When you are feeling better, then we will discuss this again. You know I am a cautious man. Trust me in this.” And then he was gone, closing the door behind him. He moved swiftly, like a child hurrying out of the room to escape a scolding. Or a man fleeing a truth he did not want to hear.