Fool's Assassin - Страница 122

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“I can see,” he cried out. “My sight has come back to me. I can see! Oh, my light, my sun, where have you come from? Where have you been?”

He gathered me to his breast and embraced me and I was glad of it. The beauty and the possibility of glory that blossomed all around me flowed from him through me. This, this was how it was supposed to be done. Not in tiny glimpses, not as unconnected dreams. Everywhere I looked, possibilities multiplied. It reminded me of the first time my father had lifted me to his shoulder and I suddenly realized how much farther he could see from his height. But now I saw, not just from a better vantage, not just to a distance, but to all times. It was comforting to be held safe at the middle of that swirling vortex. I did not fear as I allowed my sight to follow the myriad threads. One caught my attention. The kissing girl would marry that boy, crowned with orange blossoms, and bear him nine children at a farm in a valley. Or not. She might dally with him for a time, and marry another, but her memory of this moment would add sweetness to every pie she baked, and the love she had known would be shared with chickens and cats until she died, barren, at seventy-two. But no. They would run away together, this very night, and lie together in the forest, and the next day, on the road to Buckkeep, they would both die, he of an arrow wound and she would be raped and torn and cast aside to die in a ditch. And because of that, her older brothers would band together and become the Oaksby Guard. During the time of their patrols, they would take the lives of fifty-two highwaymen and save over six hundred travelers from pain and death. The numbers were plain. It was suddenly so very simple. All I had to do was give them a tiny nudge. If I smiled at them as they strolled the village green and told them, “You shine with love. Love should not wait. Run away tonight!” they would see me as a harbinger and take my advice. His pain would last but a moment, and hers only hours. Less time than she would spend struggling in childbirth for her first child. I had the power. I had the power and the choice. I could do so much good in the world. So much good. There were so many choices I could make for the good of the world. I would start with the holly-crowned girl.

He clutched me tighter and spoke by my ear. “Stop. Stop. You must not! Not without great thought and then … even then … there is so much danger. So much danger!”

He turned my eyes, and the threads splintered into a thousand more threads. It was not as simple as I had thought. For every thread I tried to follow became a multitude, and the moment I chose one thread from that multitude, it shattered again into yet more possibilities. She might say the wrong word to him and he would murder her this afternoon. She told her father she had kissed him and her father blessed them. Or cursed them. Or drove her from her home into the storm, to die of cold in the night.

Some are far more likely than others, but each has at least one chance to be real. So each path must be studied so carefully before any path is chosen. The path you observed, where they both must die? If we were dedicated to this creation of the Oaksby Guard, we would look and look. There are, always, other time paths that lead to the same end. There will be some more destructive and ugly, and some less so.

I had thought he was speaking aloud to me. I became aware that his thoughts were seeping into me through the bond we shared. He poured knowledge from his mind to mine as if he were a pitcher and I the cup. Or the thirsty garden that only been waiting, all this time, for this nourishment.

And the paths change, they change constantly. Some vanish, impossible now, and others grow more likely. That is why the training takes so many years. So many years. One studies, and one pays attention to the dreams. Because the dreams are like guideposts for the most significant moments. The most significant moments.…

He took his attention from me, and it was as if someone had torn a warm cloak from me in the midst of an ice storm. He stared with his blind eyes, terror and joy stamped on his scarred face. “The wolf comes,” he recited. “His teeth are a knife, and the flying drops of blood are his tears.”

Then my vision faded to the same sort of sight one has in deep twilight before the last light of the day fades. All colors were muted and shadows prevailed, hiding all detail from me. I thought I would die. All possibility was hidden, masked and limited to a single instant of time. I felt I could not move. Life was stiff and limited and slow. Time had been a limitless ocean, spreading out in every direction, and I had been a seabird, free to wheel and flit from one moment to a thousand other possibilities. Now I was mired in a tiny puddle, struggling to experience even one second fully, blinded to the future consequences of any action I might take. I stopped and stood and let life happen around me.

Chapter Thirty
Collision

...

My wolf taught me as much as I ever taught him. But strive as he might, he never completely succeeded in teaching me to exist in the now as he did. When we spent quiet snowy nights sprawled on the hearth before a comfortable fire, the wolf had no need of conversation or a scroll to read. He simply enjoyed the comfort of warmth and resting. When I would rise to pace the small room, or pull a burnt stick from the embers to scratch idly on the hearthstones or take up paper and pen, he would lift his head, sigh, and then put it back down and resume his enjoyment of the evening.

When we hunted together, I would move nearly as silently as he did, watching, always watching for the flick of an ear or the shift of a hoof, that tiny motion that would betray a deer standing poised in the brush, waiting for us to pass by. I would flatter myself that I was completely in the now, tuned exclusively to the hunt. And so intent would I be on that watch that I would startle when, with a pounce and a shake, Nighteyes would kill a crouched rabbit or huddled grouse that I had walked right past. I always envied him that. He was open to all the information that the world offered him, a scent, a sound, a tiny movement, or just the brush of life against his Wit-sense. I never achieved his ability to open himself to everything, to be aware of all that was happening, all at once.

I hadn’t taken more than a step before Riddle was up and beside me. He caught at my arm. His mouth was a flat line as I turned to him. He spoke quietly, almost without inflection, as if he himself had no idea how to feel about his words. “I need to say this before we go fetch Bee. Fitz, it isn’t working. In fact, it’s exactly what Nettle feared. You’re a good man. And my friend. I hope you can remember that I’m your friend as I say this. You’re not a good … you aren’t able to be a good father. I have to take her back to Buckkeep with me. I promised Nettle that I would see how things were going for both of you. She didn’t trust herself to decide; she was afraid she’d be too critical.”

I pushed down my sudden flare of anger. “Riddle. Not now. And not here.” Later, I’d think about his words and what they meant. I shrugged free of his hand on my arm. “I need to find Bee. She’s been gone too long.”

He caught at my sleeve and I had to turn back to him. “Exactly. But until I pointed it out, you hadn’t noticed that. The second time today that she’s been put into danger.”

Shun had a fox’s ears. She was eavesdropping. Behind us, she made a small sound between disgust and amusement and spoke for me to hear. “And he says you are not fit to teach his daughter,” she observed to FitzVigilant snidely. I nearly turned to her but the wolf in my heart leapt to the forefront. Find the cub. Nothing else matters.

Riddle had also heard her. He dropped his grip on my sleeve and started toward the door. I was two steps behind him. All manner of thoughts raced through my mind. Oaksbywater was not a large town, but all sorts of folk would be converging on it for Winterfest. All sorts of people, bent on having a good time. And for some of them, a good time could involve hurting my little girl. I barked my hip on a table’s edge and two men shouted as their beer leapt over the rims of their mugs. Then Shun was stupid enough to seize my sleeve. She had come after me and Lant trailed her. “Riddle can find Bee. Holder Badgerlock, we need to settle this once and for all.”

I ripped my sleeve from her grip so abruptly that she cried out and clutched her hand to her chest. “Did he hurt you?” FitzVigilant exclaimed in horror.

Riddle had reached the door and was waiting for two very large patrons to come in before he could go out. He leaned to look around them. Then, “No! Stop! Put her down!” Riddle roared the words as he slammed through the two men trying to come into the tavern and out the door. I lunged away from Shun and crossed the crowded tavern in a stumbling run. The door stood wide open and I bolted through it. I gazed wildly around the busy commons. Where had Riddle gone, what had he seen? Folk were treading calmly through the snow, a dog sat scratching itself, and the driver of the emptied wagon in front of the inn chirruped to his team. Past the wagon I caught a glimpse of Riddle, running through startled idlers toward a ragged beggar who had lifted my small daughter in his crooked dirty hands and held her tight to his breast. His mouth was by her ear. Trapped against him, she was not struggling. Instead she was very, very still, her feet dangling, her face looking up into his, her lax hands open and held wide as if begging something from the sky.

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