Fool's Quest - Страница 152

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And now I knew the source of Lord Golden’s stream of income in his wild gambling days at Buckkeep court. What he had invested wisely in Bingtown, he spent with a shocking profligacy in Buckkeep Town. Because he had known then that he was going to die and saw no point in saving any of it. Oh, this was good. So many bits and pieces of the Fool’s lives were being handed to me. I smiled at Amber across the table and somehow she knew, for she showed me her teeth. “It helped me through a difficult time,” Amber responded congenially.

Malta spoke delicately. “I cannot help but notice that life has put you through many changes since last I saw you. I mourn that you have lost your sight. And I had not realized that you had had enough contact with dragons to undergo a change.”

There was a baggage train of questions packed into that comment. I waited. “I promised you my story when I came to you, and you have waited so patiently. Let us finish eating, then, and I shall tell it.” Ah, so I was not the only one he used his delaying tactic upon.

The rest of the meal passed uneventfully. Lant said little except to thank them for the meal and to compliment the food, and I volunteered little more than that. Often I felt Reyn’s eyes upon me, measuring me, and I strove to behave as a Farseer prince should, even as I wondered what sort of a tale Amber had spun around us.

Our meal over, a servant cleared the table and set out brandy and glasses for us, with a selection of spicy teas offered as well. The brandy was Sandsedge, from the Six Duchies, and I wondered if that was intended as a compliment. I accepted a small glass with pleasure and sincere thanks. Reyn had just opened his mouth to reply when the door opened and a frail old Elderling came in. He moved slowly, a servant at his side and a cane in his hand. He breathed audibly through his nose, and took short cautious steps as he made his way toward the table. His hair was as golden as Malta’s and his scaling as blue as Reyn’s. Even so, I was startled when Malta said brightly, “And here is Phron, come to wish us good night.”

Amber could not see but perhaps she could hear Phron’s breathing and his hesitant step as he made his way to the table and then eased himself into a chair. The servant stooped, to ask if he would prefer brandy or tea. “Tea. Please.” A gasp punctuated the man’s request, for so his voice betrayed him to be. I looked at him afresh. His eyes were an intense blue, and the scaling of blue and silver that marked him was both intricate and fanciful. It was no chance growth, like a calico kitten’s fur. The patterns on his face and bared arms were as deliberate and artful as a tattoo. But the purplish tint to his lips that puffed in and out as he breathed and the dark circles under his eyes were not part of that coloring. Phron. Malta’s son. Not an old man, but a young one made old by illness.

Malta had gone to her son’s side. She extended a hand to indicate us. “Prince FitzChivalry, Lord Lant, Lady Amber, I am pleased to present our son, Ephron Khuprus.”

I stood, took two steps and bowed to him. The closer I got to him, the louder my Wit-sense of him rang. He extended his hand to me, and so I offered mine. He surprised me when he clasped my wrist in the Six Duchies style of warrior greeting warrior, but I returned it. The moment my hand closed against his skin, my awareness of him doubled in a way I had never experienced. It was not comfortable for me and yet it did not seem he was even aware of it. Dragon and boy, boy and dragon rang against my senses in a way I could scarcely stand. And with that doubled sense of him, an even deeper sense of wrong, wrong, wrong within his body. He was weak and breathless, starved and weary from the wrongness. It jangled against my senses unbearably, and thoughtlessly I reached out and touched the error.

The boy gasped. His head sagged forward on his chest and for a moment he was totally still. We remained as we were, our wrists locked in each other’s grip. I reached to catch his shoulder with my free hand as he sagged toward me. I could not let go as the Skill poured through me and into him.

In a long-ago spring in the Mountains, Nighteyes and I had once witnessed an ice dam in a creek giving way. In a thundering roar, the pent-up water had burst through, and in a moment the white of the snowy creek bed had become a brown rush of water, sticks, and even logs tumbling as the flood gushed down the hillside. The Skill-tide that I had sensed all around me, that had surrounded me and prevented me from reaching Nettle, suddenly found an open channel. It coursed through me, powerful and pure and laden with pleasure in making things perfect. The Skill-joy that was as much sensory as it was intellectual flooded my mind and my body. The boy made a strangled sound and perhaps I echoed that muffled cry.

“Phron!” Malta cried out in alarm and in an instant Reyn was on his feet.

I shivered as if a chill wind swept through me while Phron’s body aligned itself to my vision. Somewhere a vast distance away, the queen dragon Tintaglia was startled. Was not that human hers to shape? Then she dismissed me, as dragons dismiss humans, and I sensed her no more. But Phron lifted his head and all but shouted his question. “What was that? It felt amazing!” In sudden astonishment, he added, “I can breathe! It doesn’t hurt to breathe, I don’t have to work at it! I can breathe and talk!” Suddenly he released his grip on me and took the four strides that carried him to his father’s worried embrace.

For myself, I staggered sideways. Lant shocked me when he leapt to my side and caught my elbow to steady me. “What just happened?” he breathed, and all I could do was shake my head.

Then Phron broke free of Reyn and turned back to me. He took a deep lungful of air in through his mouth and suddenly gave a shout of pure relief. “Was that you?” he demanded of me. “I think it was you, but it felt like what Tintaglia sometimes does, when she comes. She has not been here in, what, five years? When last she put me right, yes, five years.” He opened and flexed the long digits of his hands, and I guessed that whatever she had done then had restored his hands to him. Malta was weeping wordlessly, tears streaming down her cheeks. Phron turned to her, wrapped his arms around her, and tried to lift her off her feet in a hug. He failed. Months of breathlessness had enfeebled him, but he was smiling now. “I’m better, Mother. Better than I’ve been in years! Don’t weep! Is there food left? Food I can chew and swallow now without gasping? Anything but soup! Anything I can bite and chew. Or crunch! Is there anything crunchy?”

Malta broke free of his hug, laughing wildly. “I’ll fetch it for you!” And that fine and queenly Elderling was suddenly just a boy’s mother as she darted away from him toward the door. As she went, she was already calling for meat and fresh bread toasted hot and other words that were lost to us in the closing of the door.

I turned back to find Reyn standing behind me, grinning at his son. He looked to me. “I don’t know why you came here. I don’t know what you did, even though I felt an echo of it. It felt like Tintaglia, she who touched me and made me an Elderling. How did you do it? I thought only a dragon could shape us like that.”

“He’s a man of many talents,” Amber said. She stood, pushing back from her chair. Her fingertips trailed the table’s edge as she came toward us, and when she reached us, Lant surrendered his place at my side to her. She took my arm in a way that was too familiar. Molly. Molly had always taken my arm like that, when we walked in the market and she wished my attention, or sometimes when she just wanted to touch me. It was different from how the Fool would sometimes link arms with me back in the days when we had walked side by side. He was Amber in that moment, and his hand rested possessively on my upper arm. I forced myself to stand still and accept it. Like a horse accepting a strange rider, I thought to myself, and reined in my impulse to break free of the touch. I did not know what game he played, and dared not spoil it for him. Very softly I said, “A Skill-healing. And one that was beyond my control. I need to sit down now.”

“Of course,” she said, and Lant was already pulling out one of the unclaimed chairs for me. I sat and wondered what had just happened.

“You look as if you could use this,” I heard Reyn say. He had my glass and was tipping a generous measure of brandy into it. He set it before me and I managed to thank him. I felt as if I’d fallen into a deep and swift current, been tumbled in it, and then pulled back to shore. It surged still, unbearably close to me, coursing through me with a pleasure beyond any appetite I’d ever known. Pull me back, Verity had once said to me. But there was no one near to help me. I was not sure if I wanted help or to let go. The Skill-current beckoned, seething with power and pleasure. Why would I shut that out? I built my wall as if I were pushing a wall of mud against a flood. Did I really want to close myself in? The Fool, or Amber, was standing behind me. I felt hands settle on my shoulders and steady me. I drew a breath and my walls held. I stepped back from temptation.

Malta came back into the room, carrying some flat yellow cakes on a platter. Two servants came behind her, bringing a roasted bird and a heaped mound of the dark-orange roots we’d had at dinner. The boy’s eyes lit to see them, and his father laughed out loud as he hastily seated himself. He did not wait, but took one of the yellow cakes and bit into it. It was crisp to the point of breaking, and he devoured it with unabashed pleasure as a beaming servant forked a thick slab of meat onto a plate for him and mounded vegetables beside it. He spoke to me around and through a mouthful. “I haven’t been able to eat easily for more than a year. My throat had grown so tight and small inside. It burned when I swallowed. Soup. I could get down thin soup. That was all.”

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