Fool's Quest - Страница 50

I blinked my eyes and in the moment before they focused on Dwalia, I saw him. The fog man was sitting in the corner of the tent. I slowly, slowly shifted my gaze in that direction, moving only my eyes. Yes. He was beaming a fatuous smile at me, and when his eyes met mine, he clapped his hands happily. “Brother!” he exclaimed. He laughed heartily, as if we had just shared a wondrous joke. The way he smiled at me let me know that he wanted me to love him as much as he already loved me. No one had loved me that openly since my mother had died. I did not want his love. I stared at him, but he continued to smile at me.

Dwalia scowled, just for an instant, her buttery face melting into sharp disapproval. When I looked at her directly, her smile was in place. “Well,” she said, as if glad of it, “I see that our little game is finished now. You see him, don’t you, Shaysim? Even though our Vindeliar is doing his best, his very best, to be hidden?”

Praise, a question, and a rebuke were all twisted together in that question. The boy’s moon-face only grew jollier. He wriggled from side to side, a happy dumpling of a boy. “Silly. Silly. My brother looks with a different kind of eyes. He sees me. He’s seen me, oh, since we were in the town. With the music and the sweet food and the people dancing.” He scratched his cheek thoughtfully, and I heard the sound of shorn whiskers against his nails. So he was older than I thought, but still boyish. “I wished we had that festival to keep, with dancing and singing and eating sweet things. Why are we not a festival folk, Lingstra?”

“We are not, my lurik. That is the answer. That we are not, just as we are neither cows nor thistles. We are the Servants. We stay to the path. We are the path. The path we walk is for the good of the world.”

“When we serve the world, we serve ourselves.” Dwalia and Odessa spoke these words in harmony. “The good of the world is the good of the Servants. What is good for the Servants is good for the world. We walk the path.”

Their voices ceased, but they stared at Vindeliar almost accusingly. He lowered his eyes and some of the brightness went out of his face. He spoke in a measured cadence, words I was certain he had learned from his cradle days. “He who leaves the path is not a Servant but an obstacle to the good of the world. An obstacle in the path must be evaded. If it cannot be evaded, it must be removed. If it cannot be removed, it must be destroyed. We must stay to the path, for the good of the world. We must stay to the path for the good of the Servants.” He took a huge breath at the end. His round cheeks puffed as he sighed it out. His lower lip remained pushed out in a baby’s pout and he looked at the mounded blankets, not at Dwalia.

She was relentless. “Vindeliar. Has anyone seen a festival for you on this part of the path?”

“No.” A soft, low denial.

“Has anyone ever seen, in any dream, Vindeliar merrymaking at a festival?”

He drew a short breath and his shoulders slumped as he said, “No.”

Dwalia leaned toward him. Her kind look was back on her face. “Then, my lurik, there is no festival on Vindeliar’s path. For Vindeliar to go to a festival would be for Vindeliar to leave the path, or bend it awry. And then what would Vindeliar be? A Servant?”

He shook his blunt head slowly.

“What then?” She was remorseless.

“An obstacle.” He lifted his head and before she could press him, added, “To be evaded. Or avoided. Removed. Or destroyed.” He dropped his voice and his eyes on that last word. I stared at him. I had never seen a man who believed so completely that someone who apparently loved him would kill him for breaking a rule. With a cold rush up my spine, I discovered that I believed it, too. She would kill him if he veered from the path.

What path?

Did they think I had a path? Was I in danger of veering from it? I shifted my stare to Dwalia. Would she kill me, too, for veering from the path?

Dwalia’s gaze snapped to mine, and I could not look away. She spoke softly, kindly. “It’s why we came, Shaysim. To rescue you and keep you safe. Because if we did not, you would become an obstacle to the path. We will take you home, to a safe place where you cannot leave the path by accident, nor change it. By keeping you safe, we will keep the path safe and keep the world safe. As long as the world is safe, you are safe. You don’t have to be afraid.”

Her words terrified me. “What is the path?” I demanded. “How can I tell if I am staying to the path?”

Her smile stretched. She nodded slowly. “Shaysim, I am pleased. This is the first question we always hope to hear from a Servant.”

A lurch and my belly went cold. A servant? I had seen the lives of servants. I’d never imagined being one, and suddenly knew I never wanted to be one. Did I dare say that? Was that leaving the path?

“So, to hear it from a shaysim of your years is remarkable. Shaysims are often blinded to the idea that there may be a path. They see possibilities, and ways that lead to so many divergent paths. Shaysims born out here in the wide world often have difficulty accepting that there is only one true path, a path that has been seen and charted. A path that we all must strive to bring into the world, so that the world may be a better place for all of us.”

The understanding of what she meant rose in me like a tide. Was it a thing I had always known? I recalled with clarity how the beggar in the marketplace had touched me, and suddenly I had seen an infinity of possible futures, all depending on the decision of a young couple I had glimpsed in passing. I had even thought to nudge the future into a direction that seemed wise to me. It would have involved the young man being murdered by highwaymen, and the woman suffering rape and death, but I had seen her brothers riding to avenge her, and encouraging others to join them, and how they had made the highways safe for travelers for decades after their sister had died. Two lives gone in pain and torment, but so many saved.

I came back to the present. The blankets I had clutched had fallen away from me and the winter cold gripped me.

“I see you understand me,” Dwalia said in a honeyed voice. “You are a shaysim, my dear. In some places, they would call you a White Prophet, even if you are not nearly as pale as one of them should be. Still, I trust Vindeliar when he tells me you are the lost son that we seek. You are a rare creature, Shaysim. Perhaps you have not realized that. Few are the folk who are given the gift of seeing what may be. Even rarer are the ones who can look and see the tipping points, the tiny places where a word or a smile or a swift knife set the world on a different course. Rarest of all are the ones like you. Born, it would seem, almost by chance, to folk who do not know what you are. They cannot protect you from making dangerous mistakes. They cannot save you from leaving the path. And so we came to find you. To keep you, and the path, safe. For you can see the moment when all things change, before it happens. And you see who it is, in any cycle, who will be the Catalyst for that time.”

“Catalyst.” I tried the word on my tongue. It sounded like a spice or a healing herb. Both of those were things that changed other things. A spice that flavored a food or an herb that saved a life. Catalyst. Once it had meant my father, in some of his scrolls that I had read.

Dwalia used the word to pry at me. “The one you might use to set the world on a different path. Your tool. Your weapon in your battle to shape the world. Have you seen him yet? Or her?”

I shook my head. I felt sick. Knowledge was welling up in me like vomit rising in my throat. It burned me with cold. The dreams I’d had. The things I’d known to do. Had I provoked the manor children to attack me? When Taffy had struck me, the web of flesh that had kept my tongue tied to the bottom of my mouth had been torn free. I’d gained speech. I’d gone out that day, knowing it must happen if I was going to be able to speak. I rocked in my wrap, my teeth chattering. “I’m so cold,” I said. “So cold.”

I had been ready to trigger that change. Taffy had been my tool to do that to myself. Because I could see the tumbling consequences of being where the other children would see me. I had placed myself where they could catch me. Because I had known that I had to do that. I had to do that to put myself on my path. The path I’d seen in glimpses since before I was born. Anyone could change the future. Every one of us changed the future constantly. But Dwalia was right. Few could do what I could do. I could see, with absolute certainty, the most likely consequences of a particular action. And then I could release the bowstring and send that consequence arrowing into the future. Or cause someone else to do so.

The knowledge of what I could do dizzied me. I didn’t want it. I felt ill with it, as if it were a sickness inside me. Then I was ill. The world spun around me. If I closed my eyes, it went faster. I clutched at the blankets, willing myself to stillness. The cold gripped me so hard I thought I had already died from it.

“Interesting,” Dwalia said. She made no move to aid me, and when Odessa shifted behind her she flung her hand out and down in a sharp motion. The lurik froze where she was, hunching her head between her shoulders like a scolded dog. Dwalia looked at Vindeliar. He cowered into himself. “Watch him. Both of you. But no more than that. This was not predicted. I will summon the others and we will pool our memories of the predictions. Until we know what has been seen of this, if anything has been seen, it is safest to do nothing.”