Fool's Quest - Страница 83

My nails were sinking into my palms. It was the worst and most dangerous way to use the stones, according to Prilkop. Years ago, he had cautioned me against making such a passage twice in the space of less than two days. I had not listened, and I had been lost in the stones for weeks as a result. Chade had been taking very grave risks indeed.

“We only discovered it when he went missing. For a day and a half we could not find him, and then he came staggering up out of the dungeons, half out of his mind, with a sack of memory stones slung over his shoulder.”

I knew a jolt of anger. “And no one thought to tell me this?”

He looked surprised. “That would not have been my decision. I know nothing of why you were not told. Perhaps he begged them not to. Nettle, Dutiful, and Kettricken were extremely angry and frightened by the incident. That, I think, was when he truly stopped his experiments.” He shook his head. “Except for the amount of time he was spending delving into the cubes of memory stone he had brought back. He had them in his apartments, and we think he was using them in lieu of sleep. When Nettle confronted him about his absentmindedness, he explained what he was doing. When she ordered them removed to the library, and limited his access to them, he was furious. But not as a man is furious: more like a child deprived of a favorite toy. That was over a year ago. We thought he had mastered his thirst for the Skill. Perhaps he had, but maybe these last two trips, too close together, woke it again.”

I thought of the times Chade had come to see me. Of how he had brought Riddle through. Nettle, I decided, had known of those visits if Riddle had gone with him. Hadn’t she?

“Does he know what is happening to him? Is he aware he’s doing it?”

“We can’t tell. He isn’t making a lot of sense. He talks. He laughs and speaks of things from the past. Nettle feels he is experiencing his old memories, and then releasing them to the Skill-stream.

“I was sent to you for two reasons. The first was to help you set your walls more tightly; Nettle is afraid that Chade will cling to you and pull your awareness with him as he goes. The second reason is to ask you for delvenbark. The strong stuff from the Out Islands. The kind that completely quenched your Skill when it was fed to you.”

“I don’t have very much left. We used most of it at Withywoods.”

He looked concerned but said, “Well, whatever remains is what we’ll have to use.”

It was still in my traveling bag. It had not been unpacked since they’d all but carried Chade and me to our rooms. I found it, and Bee’s dream book, in the bottom of my pack. I rummaged carefully and took out all but two packets. I looked at the herb packets then reluctantly surrendered them. It was hard to come by. Would the dose save Chade? What if it destroyed the precious ability with the Skill that he had so painstakingly built up over the years? If he could not Skill, how could he help me find Shine in the Skill-stream and use her keyword to unlock her? I clenched my jaw. It was time to trust Nettle. Time to cede respect for her hard-won knowledge. Still, I could not keep from saying to him, “Be careful. It’s very strong.”

He hefted the little pouches. “That’s what we are hoping. Nettle thinks that if we can cut him off from the Skill, he may be able to find his center again. That perhaps we can keep whatever is left of him. Thank you.”

He left me there, staring at the door he closed behind him. Whatever was left of him … I rose, Bee’s book in my hands, and then sat down slowly. As Chade was, he certainly could not help me find Shine. The first step had to be to stabilize him and persuade him to share Shine’s word with us. And I could not help with that. Until then I had to wait.

I was sick with waiting. Waiting had scraped me raw. I could not think about Bee. It was agonizing to imagine what she might be going through. I had told myself, over and over, that it was a useless torment to dwell on thoughts of her in pain, terrified, cold, or hungry. In the hands of ruthless men. Useless. Put my mind to what I might do to get her back. And how I would kill those who had put hands on her.

I was gripping her book savagely. I looked at it. My gift to her, a bound set of good paper between sturdy leather covers with images of daisies pressed in. I sat down with it on my lap and opened the first page. Did I break confidence with her to look at her private writings? Well I knew how often she had spied upon mine!

Each page contained a brief description of a dream. Some were almost poems. Often she had illustrated them. There was the image of a woman sleeping in a flower garden, with bees buzzing around her. On the next page was a drawing of a wolf. I had to smile. It was obviously based on the carving of Nighteyes that had occupied the center of the mantel in my study for years. Under it was a poem-story about the Wolf of the West, who would race to the aid of any of his subjects who called upon him. The next page was plainer. There was a simple border of circles and wheels and a couplet about a man’s fate: “All he could dream, all he could fear, given to him in the space of a year.” A few more pages, poems about flowers and acorns. And then, on a page that was a riot of color, her dream of the Butterfly Man. In her illustration, he was truly a Butterfly Man, pale of face, transcendently calm, with the wings of a butterfly protruding from his back.

I closed the book. That dream had come true. Just as the Fool had when he was a lad, she had written down a dream and it became a prophecy. I had buried the Fool’s wild talk that Bee was his daughter, born to be a White Prophet. Yet here was the evidence I could scarcely deny.

Then I shook my head. How many times had I accused the Fool of warping one of his prophecies to make it fit the events that followed? Surely this was more of the same. It had not been a “butterfly man” but a woman and a cloak with a pattern that suggested butterflies. I tamped my uneasiness down firmly with a mallet of disbelief. Bee was mine, my little girl, and I would bring her home and she would grow up to be a little Farseer princess. But that thought sent my stomach lurching into a different gulch. I sat for a moment, finding my breath and hugging her book as if it were my child herself. “I will find you, Bee. I will bring you home.” My promise was as empty as the air I breathed it to.

I lived in a space between times. There was the time when Bee was safe. There was the time when she would be safe again. I lived in a terrible abyss of doubt and ignorance. I plummeted from hope to despair, and found no bottom to that dive. Any clatter of boots in the corridor might be a messenger with news of my child. My heart would lift and then it would be only a courier delivering someone’s new jacket, and again I’d drop to despair. Uncertainty chewed me and helplessness manacled me raw. And I could let none of it show.

The next three days were as long as any I had ever known. I paced through them like a sentry making endless rounds on the same parapet. As Prince FitzChivalry, I ate meals with my family, but exposed to the eyes of everyone else in the Great Hall. I had never paused to think how little privacy the Farseer royals enjoyed. I received numerous invitations. Ash still tended my room and sorted the missives into piles. Bereft of Chade’s guidance, I presented the ones Ash considered important to Kettricken for her guidance. Just as I had once advised her on how to navigate the tricky currents of Buckkeep politics, so she now advised me as to which invitations I must accept, which I should politely decline, and which ones I could postpone.

And so, after an early-morning axe session with my guard, I went out riding with two lesser lords from minor keeps in Buck and accepted the invitation to play a game of cards that evening. All that day, I remembered names and interests and made conversation with words that conveyed almost nothing. I smiled politely and dodged questions with generalities and did my best to be more of an asset than a liability to the Farseer throne. And all the while the thought of my little daughter boiled in the back of my mind.

So far, we had been successful in tamping down rumors and keeping word of what had happened at Withywoods to less than a whisper. I was not sure how we would contain it when the Rousters returned to Buckkeep. It was, I felt, only a matter of time before the connection between Tom Badgerlock and FitzChivalry Farseer became common knowledge. And once that happened, what then?

No one knew that a Farseer daughter had been stolen, and precious few knew that Nettle’s younger sister had been kidnapped. We had kept it within the family. To release news of Chalcedean mercenaries able to infiltrate Buck and travel our roads unseen would release panic and outrage that the king was not protecting his folk. Keeping my tragedy unspoken was like swallowing back acid vomit. I despised the man who put a pleasant expression on his face, who held a hand of cards or nodded to a noble lady’s discussion of the price of a blooded horse. This was Prince FitzChivalry, as I’d hoped never to be. I recalled Kettricken, head held high and demeanor calm in the days when her rebellious son Dutiful had vanished. I thought of Elliania and her uncle Peottre, keeping the secret of their kin held hostage as they trod the careful dance of betrothing her to Dutiful. Bitter to think that the same folk who had directed the kidnapping of Elliania’s mother and small sister were behind the raid on Withywoods. So I was not the first to have to conceal such pain; it could be done, and every morning I looked into the mirror and set my face to stillness. I cut the whiskers from my face instead of my own throat and vowed I would do it well.