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“So do I. Fitz, I should have listened to you. Maybe Shrewd was right when he said no. All those years ago. Envy cut me like a knife when he said you might have the Skill-training. They’d denied it to me, you know. And I’d wanted it so. So much.” He gave me a sickly smile. “And then … I got what I wanted. Or perhaps it got me.”

There was a brisk tap at the door. The healer. I felt a burst of relief that ebbed as rapidly as it had risen when Nettle swept into the room. I felt her Skill come with her as if it were a strong perfume. It flavored the air in the room, and I could not step back from it. She looked at me in dismay. “Not you, too,” she begged. She drew a sharp breath. “I could feel him spilling out into the Skill. I’ve summoned the others. I didn’t expect to find you here, spilling with him.”

I stared at her. “No. I’m fine. But Chade has a high fever. I think his wound has become toxic. He’s hallucinating.” I spoke quickly.

She looked at me pityingly. “No,” she said quietly. “It’s worse than that. And I think you know that. It’s the Skill. Once, you told me that it was like a great river, and that if a Skill-user wasn’t careful, she could be swept away in it. You warned me of the danger of that pull.” She met my eyes and lifted her chin. “Not that long ago, I caught you at it. Tempting yourself with it. Letting yourself unravel into that flow of threads.”

It was true. Allowing oneself to flow into the Skill-current was intoxicating. The sense of merging and belonging beckoned as pain and worries flowed away. It felt powerful and right. I’d been tempted, and more than once. I would have felt ashamed if I had not been so frightened. And so desperate. “We have to pull him back,” I told her. I teetered on the edge of telling her why it was so important. Then feared that even if she knew, she would not let us try.

“No. Not we. You have to stay well back from this, Da. Because I’ve sensed it in you since you came back from Withywoods. The current tugs at you both.” She took in a breath, her hand set on the barely visible rise of her belly. “Oh, that Thick were here now. But even if the weather holds fine, he is still two days away.” She put her attention back on me. “It would probably be best if you left. And set your walls as tightly as you can.”

I couldn’t go. Chade had clutched the blankets to his throat and was watching her as if he were a small boy and she had a switch behind her back. “I brought him poppy. For the pain. If we dull the pain, he might have more control.”

She shook her head. “He can’t have it. We think that right now, the pain is what is keeping him here, in his body. It’s reminding him he has a body.”

“He seemed fine when we spoke earlier. Well, in pain from his wound, but he made sense. We took counsel together …”

She was shaking her head at me. There was another tap at the door and Steady entered. He nodded to me and actually smiled. “Fitz! I’m glad that at last you can be yourself here at Buckkeep Castle.”

“Thank you,” I said inanely. My gaze was on Chade. He was staring up at the portrait of his brother, his mouth moving soundlessly as if he spoke to him. But Steady’s full attention was on his sister as he asked Nettle, “Should you be trying this? Shouldn’t you be resting?”

She smiled at him wearily. “Steady, I’m pregnant, not ill. Where are the others?”

He tipped his head toward me as if we were sharing a joke. “When she snaps her fingers, she expects the king to come at a trot. He’ll be here soon, Nettle.”

“It will be only the three of you? That’s not much of a Skill-coterie. You’ll need me here.” I tried not to sound as desperate as I felt. I reached my hand toward Chade, thinking that if we touched, I could reach him. Nettle sharply slapped it aside.

“No. We have two Solos we can summon if we think that we need their help. Amethyst and Hardy are not very sociable but both are strong in the Skill. For now, I think those most familiar with Lord Chade can best call him back and bind him up. But not you.” Nettle answered my question and then pointed at the door. I opened my mouth to object and she told me, “You can’t help us. You will only distract us, and that includes distracting Chade. And you may make yourself more vulnerable than you already are. Chade is hemorrhaging into the Skill-stream. And he’s actively trying to draw you with him, whether you realize it or not.”

“I have to stay. You have to bring him back to his senses. Then, wise or not, he and I must attempt to Skill together.”

Nettle narrowed her eyes at me. “No. The very fact that you are asking this shows me that you are strongly drawn to it.”

I met her gaze. Oh, Molly, would that you could look at me with that same stubborn look your daughter wears. I steeled my heart. Loyalty to the Farseer reign Chade had always taught me. Above all things, even loyalty to Chade. Right now, my judgment was clearer than his. “That’s not it at all. It’s not the Skill-yearning. It’s Bee. A short time ago, when we were talking, Chade revealed to me that his daughter Shun—Shine—has the Skill. She is untrained. And worse, he sealed her to the Skill lest she be vulnerable.” The anger on Nettle’s face was building to fury. More frightening was Chade’s lack of reaction to my betrayal. He was watching the wall again, his mouth hanging ajar. “He has been unable to reach her, to Skill the unlocking word to her so she can help us find her. He did not know if it was because he was weak or because the danger all around her has made her put up her Skill-walls. Together, we were going to try to break through to her.”

“After I’d told both of you to refrain from Skilling?”

“I’d forgotten that,” I said honestly.

“You expect me to believe that?” She bit off the words one by one.

“It’s true! The chance to find Bee was all I thought of.”

Her look softened slightly. No, I had imagined that, for her next words were, “And knowing that, you did not think to immediately come to me, the Skillmistress, to seek my advice and expertise in this matter?” She folded her lips tightly, then, as if against her will, asked me, “Do you have any respect for me at all?”

“Of course I do!”

“You love me as your daughter. I don’t doubt that. But respecting my knowledge and ability, I doubt that—” She stopped herself suddenly. She was still for a moment and then asked me calmly, “What was the word to open Shine?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

She nodded gravely. “Perfect.” She pointed to the door. “Now go. I have work to do here.”

“I can help. He trusts me. I know the shape of him, I can find him and bring him back.”

“No. You can’t. Even now, you are spilling and you don’t even know it. You are tangled with him somehow. And he is holding on to you, trying to pull you with him.”

I opened myself, trying to feel if what she said was true. Was there a tugging? Pulling me in or …?

“Stop that!” Nettle hissed at me, and I snapped my walls back into place.

“Pull me back,” Chade said quietly. Every hair on my body stood erect.

“Verity?” I whispered. I took an inadvertent step toward him, looking into his green eyes, seeking the dark-brown gaze of the king I had served. My mind darted back to a Skill-dream, of my weary king crouched by a river of pure and shining magic, plunging his hands and arms into the silvery burning flow. And then begging me to help him, to pull him back from the draw of that liquid magic.

“Stay back, boy!” he cautioned me as my daughter stepped between Chade and me. She put both her hands on my chest.

“Da. Look at me!” she commanded, and when my gaze met hers, she promised, “If I must, I will call the guard and have you removed from this room. If I must, I will force elfbark tea down your throat until you cannot muster even a thread of Skill. I will not lose you. I need you and my sister needs you.”

“Bee,” I said quietly, and as a wave retreats from the beach, all desire for the Skill ebbed from me. I looked at Chade’s glittering eyes and felt ill.

“Save him,” I begged her. “Please. Save him.”

Then I turned on my heel and left them there.

Chapter Twenty
Marking Time

...

Taking an unSkilled person through a portal can be accomplished, if it is absolutely necessary. But the dangers to both the Skilled escort and those being transported cannot be exaggerated. The focus of the Skilled one must be divided between the destination and those he escorts. Close physical contact can make the transition easier. Simply holding hands may be sufficient for two who know each other well, and is the recommended method.

On very rare occasions, it may be necessary for an escort to take more than one unSkilled person through one of the corridors. The hazard to both Skilled one and those who accompany him will increase with each additional person or creature. An apprentice should never attempt this. A journeyman, no more than two beings, and only in dire circumstance. The limit for a master is not set, but no more than five living beings are advised.

The dangers are several: That the journey will not be completed, and all will be lost within the passage. That the Skilled one will emerge exhausted, even to the point of dying shortly afterward (recall the account, by Skill-journeyman Bells, of the death of Skillmaster Elmund). That those accompanying the Skilled one will emerge deranged in mind. Or not emerge at all.