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I will. I could feel her thinking separately from me. It was almost a whisper in my mind as she said, Do you remember when you were a wolf and came to me in my dreams?

Her feelings for me as she had known me then blew like a breeze through our shared thoughts. I had been mysterious and powerful, almost a romantic image in her imagination of me. I felt a pang of loss that I had become so ordinary to her. I remember. Her Skill had first manifested in her ability to manipulate dreams, her own and those of others. I remembered her glass tower. Her gown of butterflies.

And I remember Shadow Wolf. I knew that he would have to hunt down those who attacked his pack. I knew you would become him again, when you had been alone long enough. A pause in our communication, as if she thought of things too personal to share with me. I could feel her resignation to what I would do. It hurt me. Then, shocking me, I wish I had known her better. I wish I’d given her more time. I always thought there would be more time for us to be sisters. Her blast of sudden fury hit me like a spray of fire. I wish I could go with you and help you kill them!

Skill-silence. I was stunned. Had I forgotten this was the woman who had stood up to Tintaglia when she was little more than a girl? When her mind engaged mine again, her polished control reminded me of her great-grandfather.

Riddle will know what must be prepared for your journey. I will put him to that task. And I will prepare Dutiful to accept your decision.

And with that thought she left me, drifting away from my thoughts like the scented vapors of an extinguished candle in a cold room. I gathered my feet under me and stood slowly. I held the book protectively, as I had not held my daughter. I thought a moment longer and then stooped and blindly chose my candles. I blew out my lights and in the dark, I sniffed one of the unlit candles. Honeysuckle. A long-ago summer day. Molly gathering the white-and-pink blossoms, as busy as her bees in collecting the blossoms that would scent the wax. A memory to hold.

I returned to my den. I put another log on my fire. I would not sleep in this dark before dawn. I kindled fresh candles and took up my old pack. It held my treasures, the things I would not be parted from. I added Molly’s candles and Bee’s journal. As I put her little journal in beside her book of dreams, I felt I joined two halves of her life. She had lived by day as my child, and by night as dreamer of dreams. I did not want to name her a White Prophet. I did not want to mark her as more the Fool’s than mine. I had not told the Fool she kept a dream journal. I knew he would want to hear me read it, would want to possess it as much as I did. These things were all I had left of my child, and I wanted to keep them to myself.

I returned to my bedchamber. I went to my locked clothing chest, and from the layer beneath its false bottom I provisioned myself with poisons, unguents, powders, blades, and all that an assassin-turned-avenger might need. For Dutiful had unwittingly freed me. A royal assassin was bound to his king’s word, to slay only as directed. Now I would slay where I would.

I had a heavy belt, one of doubled leather. Methodically, I filled the concealed compartments. The sheaths that fit inside a boot and hugged my ankle, the ugly bracelet that concealed a garrote, the belt-buckle that when snatched free became a short dagger. The gloves with the brass knuckles sewn into them. So many artful, deadly, nasty little tools, to sort and select and compactly pack. I had to leave room for the supplies I’d already purloined from Chade’s old lair. I would go prepared.

I carried my tidy pack down to my private den. Outside, darkness still reigned. Soon enough I would rouse Perseverance and bid him ready our horses. Soon enough I would bid Withywoods farewell. I knew I should rest. I could not. I took out Bee’s books and sat down by the fire.

They were hard to read. It was not her clear handwriting or painstaking illustrations. It was my reaction to the pages. There was too much of Bee in them, too much of what I had lost. I read again the first part of her journal. The references to Molly and her account of the day her mother had died were agonizing for me. I closed that book and carefully set it down. Her dream journal was little better. Here again I found the butterfly man dream. And a reference to the Wolf of the West and how he would come from the Mountains to save all. I turned a page. Here was a dream of a well brimming with silver. Another of a city where the ruler sat on a giant Skull Throne. At the bottom of each page she had carefully judged how likely each dream was to be a true dream and likely to happen. The one of the butterfly man had been extremely likely. The dream of the beggar I had to recognize.

Alone by the fire, I could admit to myself that Bee had been precognizant to some extent. Some things she had right, such as the butterfly cloak. Others were wrong. The one wearing it had been a woman. Did it mean she was truly more mine than the Fool’s? The Fool, I had always felt, was adept at twisting his strange dreams into predictions that had come true. Often I had not heard about the dream until after the event that shadowed it. But Bee’s seemed almost clear to me, even though each seemed to have parts that did not quite fit with what had happened. The Wolf of the West. I’d heard those words first from the Fool. The Fool and Bee had shared a vision? I recalled what Shine had said, that Bee had been feverish and then shed a layer of skin to become paler. I decided that no matter what she had taken from the Fool, it made her no less the daughter of Molly and me.

I came to her dream of a city and of standing stones with cleanly carved runes on them. That one, I felt, was obviously not a true dream, even though she had marked it as extremely possible. I had no idea of how many of my private scrolls she had read; likely my accounts were responsible for some of her dreams. I leaned closer, studying her illustration. Yes. The runes were mostly accurate. That was almost the rune for the Elderling city with the map-tower. It had a name now. Kelsingra. Yes. That she would have taken directly from one of my scrolls. She had marked it as likely to happen. So she had foreseen being snatched into a Skill-stone, although she had copied the wrong rune from my papers. The thought that she had foreseen her own end hurt my heart. I could bear to read no more. I closed her book and nestled both of them carefully into my pack.

As dawn broke, I did my final task. The hardest farewell of Withywoods.

The fire had nearly died in my private study. The scroll racks were emptied, their contents either burned or packed for shipment back to the Buckkeep libraries. The secret compartment in my desk had gone undiscovered; if anyone found it now, they would find only emptiness.

I shut the tall doors, lit a candle, and triggered the hidden door to the spy-passageways. For a long moment I debated. Then I picked up the triptych the Fool had carved of Nighteyes, him, and me. I wondered if the peculiar hinge had been discovered in the course of the repairs, but inside Bee’s tiny den, all was still as she had left it. Nothing had been moved since the last time I’d been here. I smelled a faint scent of cat, but if he was about, he took care not to let me see him. I suspected he laired here now, for Bee’s supply of her mother’s scented candles was not nibbled by mice. I refused to wonder how he came and went. Cats, I knew, had their ways. I took the key to her bedchamber from my pocket and placed it on her shelf with her other keepsakes. Beside it I placed the carving. Here, at least, we would all be together.

I gave a final look around the hiding place my little child had created, and then left it behind me forever. The children of the keep would perhaps remember how they had hidden in a secret corridor, but they would search the walls of the pantry in vain for a way in. And I would take to my grave the trick of opening the study entry. Let her little things be safe there as long as the walls of Withywoods stood, as she had not been. I navigated the narrow corridor and shut the concealed door behind me.

Done. All was tidied and finished. I blew out my candle, picked up my pack, and left the room.

Chapter Thirty-Two
Travelers

...

For stone remembers. It knows where it was quarried. Always it will work best when installed near its home quarry. Stones that remain near their home quarries will always be the most reliable and they should be used in preference to others whenever possible, even if it means that one must travel by several facets to reach a destination.

For other crossroads, away from all quarries, let the core stones be brought and allowed to stand, in sun and rain, for at least a score of years. Let each become full of the passage of the sunlight across its face and which stars shine above it. Cut from it then the faces that will remember the place it has stood and the stone core it was cut from.

To a core stone that has become centered in that place, apply the shaved faces of the stones from the destinations. Mark the runes carefully as to which ones are for arriving and which ones are for departing, lest one enter a stone face backward and face an opposing current. Renew the runes to keep them sharp and clear, to aid the stone in remembering from whence it came and where it must transport the traveler.

An expert mason must always make the choice. The stone must be strong, and yet rich in the Silver veins through which magic flows. Cut the core stones eight by eight by twenty. See they are well seated in the earth, to absorb the location and to assure that the stones do not lean nor fall.

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