Fool's Quest - Страница 143

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He lay on his back, staring up at me and panting. His blind eyes were wide and the torchlight danced in their golden depths. The skirts he wore were flung wide around him, like a collapsed tent.

I heard Per’s sleepy voice raised in query, and Lant shouting at him to build up the fire, pack the pot with snow, get it melting, and bring a blanket for him to put around Spark. I’d let them create and manage that chaos. They were doing as much for Spark as I knew to do. Keep her warm and try to get food into her. I moved carefully to the Fool’s right side, away from the dangerously silvered hand. “Fool,” I said in as even a voice as I could muster. “Fool, can you hear me? Can you speak to me?”

“The dragon!” His words shuddered on a gasp. “Is the dragon coming?”

I lifted my eyes to the night sky. I saw nothing except stars frozen and twinkling in the darkness. “There is no dragon that I can see.”

“It chased us. And we ran, with Spark gripping my hand and dragging me through the streets. They were crowded with Elderlings laughing and talking, and we ran and ran, we ran right through all of them. Spark shouted they weren’t real, that only the dragon was. But one of them was real, I think. One Elderling. I felt that arrow.” He paused, panting for breath.

“Were you hit? Was Spark?”

“I don’t know.” With his right hand, he plucked at the loose fabric of the shoulder of his blouse. “I felt it, as if someone had seized me hard for just a moment and then let go. Spark kept running, dragging me along, and I tried to keep up. Then she shouted, ‘The pillar!’ and I slapped it. And here we are. Oh, here we are, Fitz. Don’t be angry at me. Please don’t be angry.”

“I’m not angry,” I lied. “I’m terrified for both of you.” That was rock-hard truth. I spoke carefully. “Fool, it looks as if you have Skill on your left hand. As Verity did when he carved the dragons. I’m going to help you stand and walk you to the fire. Don’t touch yourself with that hand and don’t touch me.” The failing light of the torch licked along his brightly shining fingers. I’d never discovered precisely where Verity had obtained so much of the raw magic. My king had coated both his hands in it, the better to shape a dragon from stone. The raw Skill had penetrated his flesh and stolen the focus of his mind. By the time we found him, he had scarcely recognized his queen. Kettricken had wept to see him so, but all he had cared for at that moment was to carve his dragon.

“Yes,” he said, and his smile was beatific and frightening in the torchlight. He held his silvered fingers up, and I shrank back from them. “That much I managed. Against all odds. I brought a glove with me, in the wild hope I might succeed. It’s in the pocket of my skirt.”

“Right or left side?”

“Right,” he said and feebly patted there.

I did not want to touch his garments. I didn’t know how he had gotten raw Skill on his left hand but I feared it might be spattered elsewhere. I thrust the base of my branch, which now had but a single dancing flame on it, into the snow and found the edge of a white glove peeking from a pocket concealed in the voluminous skirts. I tugged it free. “Put your right hand on my wrist so you can feel what I’m doing. I’m holding the glove open. Oh, Fool, be so careful. I don’t want that stuff on me.”

“If you could feel it as I do, you would,” he said. “It burns so sweetly.”

“Fool, I beg you, be careful of me.”

“I will. As I so seldom have before. Hold the glove wide, Fitz.”

And I did. “Don’t let your left hand touch the outside of it. Don’t touch your left hand with your right.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

I muttered a small curse that expressed my doubt about that, and he appalled me by laughing. “Give me the glove,” he added. “I can do it myself.”

I watched him anxiously, worried that he would silver either his right hand or the outside of the glove. I was not confident of the failing torchlight but I thought he had managed. “Can you stand and walk?”

“I put on a glove. Wasn’t that enough for you?”

“I suppose it was.” I maneuvered an arm around him and hauled him to his feet. It took more effort than I’d expected and I abruptly realized the weight of the skirts and the fur-lined cloak he wore. “This way. We have a fire.”

“I can sense it.”

He was not steady on his feet but he walked. “Sense it? Or see the light against the dark?”

“Both, and more. I think it’s a dragon-sense, from the dragon blood. I smell the fire, I see the light it gives off, but more. There’s something I can’t quite describe. It’s not my eyes, Fitz, but I sense warmth. The warmth of your body, and the greater heat of the fire. I can tell you that Lant stands to the left of it, and Perseverance crouches by Spark. Is she all right?”

“Let’s find out,” I suggested, swallowing my fears. I had the Wit so I knew what it was to have a sense that others did not possess. If he said he could sense my warmth, why doubt him? I knew that on the far side of the market-circle, a bitch fox watched us from the darkness of the forest edge. My Wit told me that. I would not dispute what his “dragon-sense” told him.

My heart sank as I steadied the Fool toward the fire. Spark sprawled in the snow, making pathetic little sounds, like a kitten mewling for its mother. Her hands scrabbled and her booted feet kicked uselessly. Per was hunkered down beside her. The conflict on his face was as shifting as the firelight. Fear. Sympathy. Uneasiness. Confusion.

“There’s a log here. Behind you. A little more. Sit down.”

The Fool sat, more abruptly than I intended. Uneasiness rippled through me as he carefully gathered his skirts around him. The white glove on his left hand was feminine, as was his movement as he adjusted the hood of his cloak. I saw Lant’s lip twitch, as if he were a cat smelling something foul. I felt a surge of irritation with him. “Spark. How is she?” I asked Perseverance, and he flinched at the name.

“I don’t know.”

I crouched down beside the girl and spoke for the Fool’s benefit. “She’s not unconscious. Her eyes are open and she’s making sounds. But there is no awareness in her eyes.” I lifted my gaze to Per. “May I please have the butterfly cloak? Let’s keep her as warm as we can.”

Without hesitation, he stood up, shed the garment, and handed it to me. I took off one of the cloaks I was wearing and gave it to him. He bundled into it gratefully as I tucked one edge of the butterfly cloak under Spark, rolled her onto it, and then snugged it around her, leaving only her face bare. She looked like a brightly colored cocoon. Her sounds grew softer and became a high soft humming. Her twitching eased. “Tell me everything,” I commanded the Fool.

He pulled his cloak more closely around himself. Even in the cold winter air, I could smell the mustiness of it. It was thick wool, lined with fur, from Lady Thyme’s closet. The heavy woolen skirts he wore came down to the top of his boots, which were leather, cut more for a city street than a snowy forest. He brushed his short, pale hair back from his brow and gave a small sigh. “You left me. You told me you were going to do it, and I heard in your voice that you meant it. So I immediately made my other arrangements. I wasn’t happy to do it, Fitz, but you left me no choice. I persuaded Spark that my place was beside you, as indeed it is in this venture. Lady Rosemary had dismissed her, to fend for herself in Buckkeep Castle, so it took little effort to make her completely mine. I persuaded her to attempt a foray back into Chade’s old quarters. She procured the dragon’s blood for me.”

“Why dragon’s blood?”

“Hush. Let me speak.” He looked unerringly at Lant. “There are tea herbs in that pack we left. Left front pocket.” He glanced over at the pot. “The water will boil soon.” Lant did not move instantly, but then he rose and turned toward the tent. “There are two cups in the pack also. The tea is a restorative one. It may help Spark,” he called after Lant, then shifted his attention back to me. “The clothing was easier. No one bothered us about that. It’s from Lady Thyme’s wardrobe, of course. Spark said the lock on the door was a good one, but old. And she had been taught how to outwit locks. Once we were in, we took the greater part of an afternoon to select what we wished. And Spark proved to have a knack at adjusting clothing for size. That was what took the most time. She had to move it, a garment or two at a time, down to my rooms, and there she worked on the cutting and fitting and hemming. We were mostly finished with it the last time you came battering at the door. I dared not let you in for fear you would immediately guess our plan.”

It did not escape me that he had deflected my question about dragon’s blood. I’d have to corner him later and pester it out of him. Lant came back with the tea herbs. He glanced at me and I nodded, and he went about that task. Per had drawn closer to listen to the tale. The Fool turned his blind eyes in the boy’s direction and smiled at him. Per bowed his head. I did not blame him. The Fool’s golden gaze had become a daunting thing to meet.

“How did you get to the Witness Stones?” I could not imagine the blind Fool and the burdened girl making that trek.

“We didn’t.” The Fool spoke starkly. “In the dark of night, we dressed warmly and Spark shouldered our pack. She had obtained a walking staff for me. And we went down to the dungeons of Buckkeep. It was a trick to get past the guards, but when they changed for the night, we managed it. And Spark had done it before, following Chade. She knew where to take us. Dutiful had put an iron grate across that corridor, and locked it securely, but again Spark knew the trick of opening it. And once we were through, we took our first big gamble. She spread dragon blood on the palm of my hand, then held tight to me. I pressed my palm to the old Skill-stone, the one that whoever rebuilt Buckkeep Castle from an Elderling ruin had used in the foundation. And it worked. We stepped out in Aslevjal.”

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