Fool's Quest - Страница 43

I saw a litter of objects on the floor of the passage ahead and smelled urine. When I reached a spill of unused candles and the mouse-gnawed remains of a loaf of bread, I was completely puzzled. I traveled on toward the pantry exit. There were burnt candle stubs discarded on the floor, a wet shawl that was not Bee’s moldering in a pile, and then I found the pantry entry door ajar. I shouldered it wider and squeezed out, then shut it firmly behind me. Not even I could see where it had been.

This time of year, there should have been a store of hams and smoked fish and strings of sausages swinging from the storage hooks. There was nothing. Taken as plunder? Sausages? It made no sense. I knew of no one who would attack Withywoods. Adding that the culprits had stolen sausages only made the riddle ridiculous.

I stepped from the pantry into the kitchen. A scullery maid was there, her winter shawl flung around her shoulders over her nightdress. Lark. That was her name, a second cousin to Cook Nutmeg and a recent hire. “Oh! Holder Badgerlock! Where did you come from? We didn’t expect you home so soon, sir!”

“Obviously not! Where is my daughter? And where is Lady Shun?”

“Sir, I’m sure I don’t know. I thought you had gone to Buckkeep Castle to see Lady Nettle. And I don’t know Lady Shun. Still new here, sir.”

“What happened here while I was gone?” I met her question with one of my own.

She pulled her shawl more warmly around her shoulders. “Well, sir, you went to town. Scribe FitzVigilant returned and told us you had decided to travel on to Buckkeep Castle. And then we had the Winterfest. And the fire in the stables. And that fight, though no one saw that. Someone was drunk probably, or several someones. Scribe Lant couldn’t even say who stabbed him or why. Some of the other men were knocked about, a black eye here, a tooth gone there. You know how menfolk are. And then we had that messenger, who I think is less than a half-wit, with his parcels for folk no one’s heard of. And now, tonight, you popping out of the pantry. And that’s all I know, sir. Oh, and the steward, shouting us out of bed and telling us to bring you a tray with hot tea and some food to your study. Is that why you’re here in the kitchen, sir? Was there something else you wanted?”

I turned away from her prattling and ran once more through the halls of my home. My heart pounded in my ears and I was thirsty but there was no time to stop to drink. I was trapped in a hideous, twisted nightmare, a dragon-tainted dream in which nothing made sense and I could not wake. Bee’s room was empty, the hearth fire burned out to ashes and the stones long cold, her wardrobe dragged open and her little tunics flung about. I looked under her bed, crying her name hopelessly. I felt I could not drag enough air into my lungs. I could not order my thoughts. I suddenly, desperately wanted to just curl up on her bed and sleep. Not think about any of this.

No. Onward.

I found Lady Shun’s room in the same sort of chaos it always was. I could not tell if it had been ransacked. Her bed was cold and unslept in, the bedding dragged half onto the floor. One of the hangings had been torn loose. On I went. My chamber had been rummaged through as well. I didn’t care. Where was my child? I left the corridors of bedrooms and ignored the few sleepy and frightened servants I passed in the hall as I ran again to the schoolroom and the scribe’s quarters adjacent to it. I flung open the door to FitzVigilant’s room and felt an unmanning wave of relief when he sat up in his bed. “What is it?” he demanded, face pale and eyes wide. “Oh. Badgerlock! Back so soon?”

“Thank Eda! Lant, where are they, where are Shun and Bee? What happened to the stables?”

The growing consternation on his face made me want to strike him. “The stables burned down on Winterfest eve. I suppose someone was careless with a lamp. Shunanbee? What is that?”

I was gasping for air now. “Lady Shun. My daughter, Lady Bee, my little girl. Where are they? Did they perish in the fire?”

“Holder Badgerlock, calm yourself. I do not know the ladies you speak of. Surely your stepdaughter is Lady Nettle, the Skillmistress at Buckkeep Castle?”

He sat up slowly and painfully, his blankets falling back to reveal heavy bandaging around his chest. It startled me. “What happened to you?” I demanded.

His eyes flew wide and for a moment his pupils became so large I felt I looked into blackness inside his head. Then he rubbed his face with both hands and when he looked at me again, a sickened and awkward smile spread over his face. “So embarrassing to admit this. I drank too much on Winterfest eve. I was found after the fire. Somehow I took a stab wound. Possibly from a hayfork or a tool of some kind during the fire? It seems to have missed anything vital, but given the injuries I was already recovering from, it has made me an invalid again. I must apologize to Lady Nettle that I have been quite unable to function as an instructor for the children since then.”

I staggered to a chair and sat down. The room whirled round me. Lant regarded me with deep concern. I could not stand his stupefied sympathy. I wanted to pound his face to a bloody ruin with my fists. I closed my eyes and reached out to the king’s Skill-coterie.

I have been in howling storms in which a shout is reduced to a whisper, moved across the sea’s featureless face in a gray fog that does not yield to human eyes. That was what I found. My Skill was quenched, damped like wet firewood that will not catch regardless of the flame put to it. I focused, I strained my Skill to a needle-point, then flung it wide to the sky. Nothing. I was trapped in my body. I could not reach for help. I wondered suddenly how I could be sure I was not in a dream of a dragon’s making. Could I be sure I was not trapped inside the Skill-pillar and this all some insane illusion of my own making? What test could I give myself?

“Where is Revel?” I demanded of FitzVigilant. Again he stared at me blankly. “I told Dixon to bring you and Revel, and meet me in my private study. Oh.” Perhaps it was unreasonable to expect him to find me here in Lant’s room. I rose. “Get up, Lant. I need you with me.”

Something flickered in his eyes. I thought he would whine and protest that he was hurt and it was the middle of the night. Instead I think I glimpsed, finally, the man that Nettle and Riddle had claimed him to be. “Give me a moment,” he said quietly. “And I will be with you. In your private study?”

“The estate study,” I amended.

I left him there, rising slowly and stiffly from his bed. My boots rang in the halls as I strode back to the study. Time after time, I saw the marks that suggested there had been armed invaders in my home. A long score down the paneling as if an edged weapon had been parried aside and dragged there. A broken wall sconce.

The double doors to the estate study had been battered open. Inside the room, a tray with a steaming pot of tea and sliced meat, bread, and cheese awaited me. There were slashes in the hangings that covered the doors to the garden, and something dark had stained the carpet. The wolf in me woke. I took a deep snuff of the room. Old blood. That was blood, on the floor of my study. The wolf within me crouched low and every sense I possessed suddenly flared. There was danger here still. Be still, be silent and watchful.

Dixon, Revel’s assistant, arrived, bearing a tray with brandy on it. “It’s so pleasant to have you home again, sir, even on such short notice. I went to your private study, but when you were not there, I brought your food here.” His words said one thing, his tone quite another. He was a short, stout man, dressed impeccably, even at this late hour. He smiled at me.

Contained. Time to be contained. Everything I felt was compressed into a cold stone box. I needed answers. “Thank you. Put it on the table and sit down, Dixon.”

I waited until he had tentatively settled on a chair. He looked around and gave a tiny sigh of disapproval. The put-upon servant summoned late by the unworthy master. I watched him with every fiber of my being as I asked him, “Where is Steward Revel tonight?”

I got what I had feared. That wash of confusion across his face, his dilated pupils, and then a shamed laugh as he said, “Sir, I don’t know of whom you speak. I am steward for Withywoods. Or have I displeased you so that this is how you tell me I am replaced?”

“Not at all. Revel was steward before you, of course. Do you recall him now?”

The confusion again and a flickering of fear on his features. Then his face smoothed. “I’m sorry, sir, I do not. I think … perhaps he had left before I was hired?”

“Lady Shun spoke highly of you.”

Confusion crawled toward panic. “Sir, I don’t know—”

“And little Lady Bee.” I pressed blindly on, not knowing what I was seeking, but willing to crack the man like a nutshell to get at the knowledge I needed.

“Bee …”

“Who set fire to the stables?”

He made a sound without words.

“Who attacked the manor? Did they take Lady Bee and Lady Shun? Kill them? What happened?”

The man’s head bobbed and his chest heaved. His lips puffed in and out with his audible breathing. He rocked back and forth in his chair, his mouth working wordlessly. Froth began to gather at the corner of his mouth.

“Holder Badgerlock! Sir! Please!” A shrill young voice full of anxiety. Out in the corridor, another outraged voice shouted, “You, boy, come back here! Don’t you dare go in there!”