Fool's Fate

by neetha Napew

  Peottre called a halt in the gray of evening and we made a quiet camp. We used two of the tents to erect a makeshift shelter around the sled that the injured men were on so we would not have to move them. The other two were able to speak and eat, but Burrich was still and quiet. I brought Swift food and drink, and sat with him for a time, but after a while, I sensed that he wished to be alone with his father. I left him there and went out to walk under the stars.

  There is no true dark to a night in that land. Only the brightest of the stars showed. The night was cold and the constant wind blew, heaping loose snow against the shelters. I could not think of anywhere I wanted to be or anything I wanted to do. Chade and the Prince were crowded into the Narcheska’s tent with Peottre’s family. There was triumph and rejoicing there; both were foreign emotions to me. The Hetgurd men and the recovered Outislanders were having a reunion of sorts. I walked past a tiny fire where Owl was matter-of-factly burning a dragon-and-serpent tattoo off a man’s forearm. The smell of roasting flesh rode the wind while the man grunted and then roared with the pain. Dutiful’s Wit coterie, sans Swift, had also crammed themselves into a small tent. I heard Web’s deep voice as I went past and caught the gleam of a cat’s eye peering out. Doubtless they shared the Prince’s triumph. They had freed the dragon and he’d won the Narcheska’s regard.

  Longwick sat alone before a small fire in front of a darkened tent. I wondered where he had got the brandy I smelled. I nearly walked past him with a silent nod, but something in his face told me that here was where I belonged tonight. I hunkered down and held my hands over the tiny fire. “Captain,” I greeted him.

  “Of what?” he retorted. He rolled his head back with a crackling sound, and then sighed. “Hest. Riddle. Deft. Doesn’t say much for me that all the men who accompanied me here are dead and I still live.”

  “I’m still alive,” I pointed out to him.

  He nodded. Then he gestured with his chin toward the tent and said, “Your half-wit’s in there, asleep. He looked a bit lost tonight, so I took him in.”

  “Thanks.” I knew a moment of guilt, and then asked myself if I should have left Burrich to tend Thick. And reflected that perhaps having someone to oversee had been the best thing for Longwick. He shifted, and then offered me a brandy flask. It was a soldier’s flask, dented and scratched, his own hoard of spirits, and a gift to be respected. I drank from it sparingly before returning it to him.

  “Sorry about your friend. That Golden fellow.”

  “Yes.”

  “You went back a ways.”

  “We were boys together.”

  “Were you? Sorry.”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope that bitch died slow. Riddle and Hest were good men.”

  “Yes.” I wondered if she had died at all. If she were still alive, could she be any threat to us? Dragon, Rawbread, and Forged servants had all been taken from her. She was Skilled, but I could think of no way she could use that against all of us. If she was alive, she was as alone as I was. Then I sat for a time, wondering which I hoped: whether she was dead or alive and suffering? Finally, it came to me. I was too tired to care.

  Some time later, Longwick asked me, “Are you really him? Chivalry’s Bastard?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded slowly to himself, as if that explained something. “More lives than a cat,” he said quietly.

  “I’m going to bed,” I told Longwick.

  “Sleep well,” he said, and we both laughed bitterly.

  I found my pack and bedding and took it into Longwick’s tent. Thick stirred slightly as I made my bed alongside him. “I’m cold,” he mumbled.

  “Me, too. I’ll sleep against your back. That will help.”

  I lay down in my blankets but I didn’t sleep. I wondered useless things. What had she done to the Fool? How had she killed him? Had he been completely Forged before she killed him? If she’d sent him into the dragon, did that mean he’d felt some final pain when the stone dragon died? Stupid, stupid questions.

  Thick shifted heavily against my back. “I can’t find her,” he said quietly.

  “Who?” I asked sharply. The Pale Woman was large in my thoughts.

  “Nettle. I can’t find her.”

  My conscience smote me. My own daughter, the man who had raised her dying, and I hadn’t even thought of reaching out to her.

  Thick spoke again. “I think she’s afraid to go to sleep.”

  “Well. I can’t blame her.” Only myself.

  “Are we going back home now?”

  “Yes.”

  “We didn’t kill the dragon.”

  “No. We didn’t.”

  There was a long pause and I hoped he had gone back to sleep. Then he asked me quietly, “Are we going home on a boat?”

  I sighed. His childish concern was the only thing that could have weighed me heavier. I tried to find sympathy for him. It was difficult. “It’s the only way we can go home, Thick. You know that.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “Me, neither.” He sighed heavily. After a time he said, “So this was our adventure. And the prince and the princess get married and live happily ever after, with many children to warm them in their old age.”

  He had probably heard that phrase thousands of times in his life. It was a common way for a minstrel to end a hero tale.

  “Perhaps,” I said cautiously. “Perhaps.”

  “What happens to the rest of us?”

  Longwick came into the tent. Quietly he began to make up his bed. From the way he moved, I suspected he had finished his brandy.

  “The rest of us go on with our lives, Thick. You’ll go back to Buckkeep and serve the Prince. When he becomes the King, you’ll be at his side.” I reached to find his happy ending. “And you’ll live well, with pink sugar cakes and new clothes whenever you need them.”

  “And Nettle,” he said with satisfaction. “Nettle is at Buckkeep now. She’s going to teach me how to make good dreams. At least, that’s what she said. Before the dragon and all.”

  “Did she? That’s good.”

  With that, he seemed to settle for the night. In a short time, his breathing took on the slower rhythm of sleep. I closed my eyes and wondered if Nettle could teach me how to make good dreams. I wondered if I’d ever have the courage to meet her. I didn’t want to think about her right now. If I thought about her, then I had to think about telling her about Burrich.

  “What will you do, Lord FitzChivalry?” Longwick’s question in the dark was like a voice out of the sky.

  “That isn’t me,” I said quietly. “I’ll go back to the Six Duchies and be Tom Badgerlock.”

  “Seems like a lot of people know your secret now.”

  “I think they are all men who know how to hold their tongues. And will do so, at Prince Dutiful’s request.”

  He shifted in his blankets. “Some might do so merely at Lord FitzChivalry’s request.”

  I laughed in spite of myself, then managed to say, “Lord FitzChivalry would greatly appreciate that.”

  “Very well. But I think it’s a shame. You deserve better. What of glory? What of men knowing what you have done and who you are, and giving you the acclaim you deserve for your success? Don’t you want to be remembered for what you’ve done?”

  I didn’t need to think long. What man has not played that game, late at night, staring into the fire’s embers? I had been down the road of what might have been so often that I knew every crossroad and pitfall in it. “I’d rather be forgotten for the things people think I’ve done. And I’d give it all if I could forget the things I failed to do.”

  And there we left it.

  I suppose I must have slept at some point, because I awoke in the predawn gray. I crawled from my blankets to keep from disturbing Thick and went immediately to Burrich’s bedside. Swift slept curled beside him, holding his father’s hand. My Wit-sense of the Stablemaster told me that he was sinking away fro
m us. He was going to die.

  I went to Chade and Dutiful and woke them. “I want something from you,” I told them. Dutiful peered at me blearily from his blankets. Chade sat up slowly in his bedding, alerted by my voice that this was a serious matter.

  “What?”

  “I want the coterie to try to heal Burrich.” When no one spoke, I added, “Now. Before he slips any further away.”

  “The others are going to realize that you and Thick are more than what you seem,” Chade pointed out to me. “It is why I have left my own injury alone. Not that it compares to Burrich’s.”

  “All my secrets seem to have spilled out on this island anyway. If I must live with those consequences, then I’d like to have something to show for it. For all I’ve lost here. I’d like to send Swift home to Molly with his father.”

  “Her husband,” Chade reminded me quietly.

  “Don’t you think I know that, don’t you think I see all the possible consequences?”

  “Go wake Thick,” the Prince suggested as he threw back his blankets. “I know you want to hurry, but I suggest you get him a good breakfast before we try this. He can’t focus on anything when he’s hungry. And mornings are not his best time. So let’s at least feed him.”

  “Shouldn’t we think this through a bit before—” Chade began, but Dutiful cut him off.

  “This is the only thing Fitz has ever asked of me. He’s getting it, Lord Chade. And he’s getting it now. Well, as close to now as I can manage. As soon as Thick has had some breakfast.” He began to dress, and with a groan, Chade threw back his blankets.

  “You act as if I hadn’t thought of this myself. I have. Chivalry sealed Burrich to the Skill. Doesn’t anyone besides me remember that?” Chade asked wearily.

  “We can try,” Dutiful replied stubbornly.

  And we did. It seemed to take an eternity to get a breakfast made for Thick, and while he consumed it in his careful and thorough way, I tried to explain to Swift what I wanted to do. I feared to give him too much hope, and at the same time, I wanted him to understand the risks of what we did. If our attempt at mending Burrich’s crumpled body was too much for his physical reserves and he died, I did not want the lad to think we had killed him recklessly.

  I had thought it would be a difficult thing to explain. More difficult was getting Swift to pause and consider what I was telling him. I tried to call him aside to speak to him, for the Bear was not far away, tending the Outislander injured. But Swift refused to leave his father’s side for even a moment so finally I spoke to him where he sat. At the first mention that Prince Dutiful might be able to use the Farseer magic to mend his father’s body, Swift became so avid that I am sure my cautions and warnings of possible failure went right past him. The boy looked like a castaway, his eyes dark-circled and sunken in grief. Whatever sleep he had taken last night had not rested him. When I asked him if he had eaten, he just shook his head as if such an idea exhausted him.

  “When will you start?” he demanded of me for the third time, and I surrendered. “As soon as the rest of them get here,” I told him, and almost at that moment, Chade lifted the flap of the rough tent we had erected over the sled and entered. Dutiful and Thick crowded in behind him. The number of people in the crude shelter now threatened to collapse it, and with an impatient gesture, Dutiful suggested, “Let’s get this down and out of the way. It will be more distraction than shelter while we work.”

  So, while Swift chewed his lip impatiently, Longwick and I took down the screening canvas and bundled it up for transport. By the time we had finished, rumor of what we were doing had begun to trickle through the camp and all gathered to watch. I did not relish working in front of everyone, let alone revealing to all how intimate my connection to the Prince was. Yet there was no help for it.

  We gathered around Burrich’s body. It was hard to persuade Swift to step aside and let me put my hands on him, yet Web at last drew him back. He stood behind the lad and held him as if he were a much younger boy. Wit and arms, he wrapped him in a comforting embrace, and I sent him a grateful look. He nodded to me, acknowledging it and bidding me begin.

  Chade and Dutiful and Thick joined hands, looking like men about to play some child’s game. I shivered with dread of what we were about to attempt and tried to ignore the avid attention of the onlookers. Cockle the minstrel was wide-eyed and tense with focus. The Outislanders, both Hetgurders and rescued, watched us with suspicion. Peottre stood at a slight distance, his women around him, his face solemn and intent.

  When I was a few years older than Swift I had tried, at Burrich’s suggestion, to draw Skill-strength from him as my father had. I had failed, and not just because I had not known what I was doing. My father had used Burrich as a King’s Man, as a source of physical strength for his Skill-work. But any man so used also becomes a conduit to the user, and so Chivalry had sealed Burrich off to other Skill-users, so that no one could use him as a means to attack Chivalry or spy on him. Today, I would pit my strength and that of Dutiful’s coterie against my father’s ancient barricade and see if I could break past it into Burrich’s soul.

  I reached a hand toward the coterie and Thick took it. I set my other hand on Burrich’s chest. My Wit told me that he lingered in his body reluctantly. The animal that Burrich dwelt in was hopelessly injured. If his body had been a horse, Burrich would have put it down by now. That was an unsettling thought and I pushed it aside. Instead, I tried to set my Wit aside and hone my Skill to the sharpness of a blade. I banished all other thoughts and sought for some place to pierce him with that awareness.

  I found none. I sensed the rest of the coterie, sensed their anxiety and hovering readiness, but I could find no place to apply that eagerness. I could sense Burrich there, but my awareness of him skated over the surface, unable to penetrate. I did not know how my father had sealed him and had no idea how to undo it. I do not know how long I strove to break past his walls. I only know that at length, Thick dropped my hand, to wipe a sweaty palm down the front of his jerkin. “That one’s too hard,” he proclaimed. “Do this easy one instead.”

  He did not ask anyone permission, but leaned in past Burrich to set his hand on the shoulder of one of the injured Outislanders. I was not even holding Thick’s hand, but in that instant I knew the Outislander. He had been the Pale Woman’s slave for he knew not how many years. He wondered if his son had prospered in his mother’s house, and wondered too about his sister’s three sons. He had promised to teach them swordmanship, all those years ago. Had anyone stepped forward to do that duty for him?

  These thoughts tormented him as much as his injury, a sweeping sword wound that Bear had dealt him. It had laid open the flesh of his chest and bitten deep into his upper arm. He’d lost a lot of blood and that weakened him. If he could find the strength to live, his body would heal. Then, without regard to that, his flesh began to knit itself up. The man gave a roar and lifted a hand to clutch at his closing wound. Just like a rent garment sewing itself up, his flesh reached for the severed ends of itself. Bits that were dead or past repair were expulsed from him. In a sort of horror, I watched the pads of flesh on the man’s face melt away. Luckily for us, he was a burly man, possessed of the reserves that his body now burned.

  He sat up suddenly on his pallet, and wrenched the caked bandages from his body, throwing them aside. All the witnesses gasped. His newly healed flesh shone, not with the poreless sheen of a scar but with the health of a child’s body. It was a pale and hairless stripe down his swarthy body. He stared down at himself, and then, with a rough laugh of amazement, he thumped himself on the chest as if to convince himself of its soundness. A moment later, he had swung his legs over the side of the sled and hopped off it, to caper barefoot in the snow. An instant later, he was back, to sweep Thick off his stubby legs and swing him in a wide circle before setting the astonished little man back on his feet. In his own language, he thanked him, calling him Eda’s Hands, an Outislander phrase I did not understand. It conveyed som
ething to Bear, though, for he instantly went to the other wounded man on the sled and, throwing back the man’s coverings, gestured at him, for Thick to come to him.

  Thick didn’t even glance at the rest of us. I scarcely had a thought to spare for him or what he did. My gaze was fixed on Swift, who stared at me with eyes gone blank and hopeless. I held out a useless hand to him, palm up. He swallowed and looked away from me. Then he came, not to me, but to Burrich. He took his place beside his father and picked up his darkening hand. He looked at me, a question in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, through the exclamations of amazement as the second Outislander stood, healed of his injuries. “He is sealed. My father closed him off to other Skill-users. I cannot get in to help him.”

  He looked away from me, his disappointment so deep that it bordered on hatred; not necessarily hatred of me, but of the moment, of the other men who were rising, renewed, and of those who rejoiced over them. Web had moved away from Swift, to allow him his anger. I saw no sense in trying to speak any more to him just then.

  Thick seemed to have mastered the knack of Skill-healing, and with moderate supervision from Dutiful he moved on to heal the two men who had burned off their Pale Woman tattoos the night before. Pale smooth skin replaced oozing and blistered flesh. From being an object of disdain, Thick was suddenly the prince of their regard and a living embodiment of Eda’s Hands. I heard the Bear begging Prince Dutiful’s pardon for their former disrespect of his servant. They had not realized that he possessed Eda’s gift, and now they understood the great value the Prince placed on him and why he would have brought him to a battle. It hurt me to see Thick suddenly bask in their approval just as he had cringed before their disdain. I felt somehow betrayed that he could so swiftly forget how they had spurned him. Yet, I was glad that he could, even as I recognized the contradiction of it. Almost, I wished I could be as simple as he was, and accept that people truly meant the expressions they wore.