Fool's Assassin - Страница 123

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I passed Riddle and somehow my knife was in my hands. I heard a sound, a roaring like a beast and a roaring in my ears. Then my arm was around the beggar’s throat, pulling his face away from my daughter’s, and as I bent his head back with the crook of my elbow, I plunged my knife into his side, once, twice, three times at least. He screamed as he let go of her, and I dragged him back with me, away from my child in her red-and-gray shawl, fallen like a torn rose in the snow.

Riddle was there in an instant, wise enough to snatch my daughter from the snowy ground and fall back with her. His right arm held her to his heart while his left had his own knife at the ready. He looked all around, seeking some other foe or target. Then he glanced down at her, took two steps back, and shouted, “She’s fine, Tom. A bit stunned but fine. No blood!”

Only then did I become aware of people shouting. Some were fleeing the violence, others converging in a circle around us as eager as crows at a killing. I still held the beggar in my arms. I looked down into the face of the man I had killed. His eyes were open, grayed over and blind. Row of scars lined his face in lovingly inflicted lines. His mouth was crooked. The hand that clutched still at my strangling arm was a bird’s claw of crookedly healed fingers.

“Fitz,” he said quietly. “You’ve killed me. But I understand. I deserve it. I deserved worse.”

His breath was foul and his eyes like dirty windows. But his voice had not changed. The world rocked under my feet. I stumbled back, and sat down hard in the snow, the Fool in my arms. I realized where I was, under the oak, in the bloody snow where the dog had bled. Now the Fool bled. I felt the warm blood from his wounds soaking my thighs. I dropped my knife and pressed my hand to the punctures I had made. “Fool,” I croaked, but I had no breath to make words.

He moved one hand, blindly groping, asking with infinite hope, “Where did he go?”

“I’m right here. Right here. And I’m sorry. Oh, Fool, don’t die. Not in my arms. I could not live with that. Don’t die, Fool, not at my hands!”

“He was here. My son.”

“No, only me. Just me. Beloved. Don’t die. Please don’t die.”

“Did I dream?” Tears spilled slowly from his blind eyes. They were thick and yellow. The breath of his whisper was foul. “Can I die into that dream? Please?”

“No. Don’t die. Not by my hand. Not in my arms,” I begged. I was curled forward over him, nearly as blind as he was as I fought the blackness at the edges of my vision. This was too terrible to live through. How could this be? How could this be? My body longed for unconsciousness, and my mind knew I had but a knife’s edge of a chance. I could not survive this if he did not.

He spoke again, and blood was on his tongue and lips as he formed the words. “Dying in your arms … is still dying.” He breathed two breaths. “And I cannot. Must not.” The blood crested his lips and began to trickle over his chin. “Much as I’ve wished to. If you will. If you can. Keep me alive, Fitz. Whatever the cost to us. To you. Please. I need to live.”

A Skill-healing, even in the best of circumstances, is a difficult thing. It’s usually accomplished by a circle of Skill-users, a coterie, who are familiar with one another and are capable of loaning one another strength. The knowledge of how a man’s body is put together is essential to it, for in severe instances one must decide what injuries are most deadly and deal with those first. Ideally, before the healing is attempted, all will have been done to accomplish an ordinary healing, wounds cleansed and bound, with a patient who is rested and well fed. Ideally. I knelt in the snow, the Fool in my lap, surrounded by chattering onlookers, while Riddle held my terrified daughter in my arms. I lifted my eyes to Riddle and spoke clearly. “I’ve made a terrible mistake. I’ve hurt an old friend who meant my child no harm. Care for Bee and keep these others back. I wish to say a prayer to Eda.”

It was a believable excuse, and there were enough followers of Eda present that they could persuade the others to give me quiet and space. No one had shouted for the city guard: It was entirely possible that few realized I’d actually stabbed the beggar. Riddle’s astonished gaze reproached me, but for a wonder he obeyed, and I suddenly knew just how deep our friendship actually went. He called out loudly for people to give me space, and then, turning, I saw him shout and beckon FitzVigilant to his side. Shun was following the scribe, walking like a cat in wet snow. I saw him speaking earnestly to both of them, taking command, and knew he would handle it all.

I closed my eyes and bent my head as if in prayer.

I plunged into the Fool’s body. We no longer had a Skill-link; for an instant his boundaries opposed me. I summoned Skill-strength I scarcely knew I possessed and breached his defenses. He made a low sound, of objection or pain. I ignored it. This was a body I knew intimately, having once worn it. It was like and unlike a man’s, with differences that were both subtle and crucial. To close the wounds I had caused and stem that bleeding was not a complicated feat, and I made it my first task. Undo the damage I had done to him. It took focus, and my willing his body to make that healing a priority worth burning his scanty reserves. So I stopped his bleeding, and felt him dwindle and weaken as his body accelerated that healing. For while the Skill is a powerful magic, it does not do the healing. The body does, under the Skill’s direction, and there is always a cost to the body’s reserves.

Almost immediately I saw my mistake. I moved through his body with his blood, finding old damage and bad repairs and places where his body had trapped poisons and sealed them off in a vain effort to control their spread. One of my knife plunges had pierced such a toxic pocket, and now it leaked blackness into his blood, and his pumping heart was carrying the poison all through his body. The wrongness was spreading; I felt his body’s weary physical alarm, and then a peculiar resignation began to spread through him. It was not his mind but his body that knew his life was at an end. A strange pleasure began to spread through him, a final comforting that the flesh offered the mind. It was soon to be over; why spend your last moments in alarm? Almost that lure of peace drew me in.

“Fool. Please!” I quietly begged him to rally. I opened my own eyes to look into his face. For a long moment, the world spun around us. I could not focus; the healing had taken more from me than I had realized at the moment.

I drew a shuddering breath and widened my eyes. It had never been easy to meet his eyes when they were colorless. Even as they had acquired tint and had moved from a pale yellow to gold, it had been hard to read what was behind that gaze. Now his eyes were occluded, grayed in what I knew had been a deliberate blinding. I could not see into his heart any more than he could see out of them. I had only his voice to go by. It was breathy and full of resignation.

“Well. A bit longer we shall have together. But at the last, we fail, my Catalyst. None have tried harder than we did.” His tongue, bloodied still, moved over his chapped and peeling lips. He took breath and smiled with scarlet teeth. “Nor paid a higher price for that failure. Enjoy what good is left in your life, old friend. Evil times will soon be upon you. It was good to be near you. A last time.”

“You can’t die. Not like this.”

A thin smile curved his lips. “Can’t die? No, Fitzy, I can’t live. Would that I could, but I can’t.” His eyelids, as dark as if they had been bruised, closed uselessly over his clouded eyes. I lifted my gaze. Time had passed. How much, I could not tell, but the light had changed. Some of the village folk had fallen back into a wondering circle, but as many had decided there was little to see; the beginnings of Winterfest beckoned, and they had gone on their ways. Riddle still stood there, a dazed Bee in his arms, flanked by Shun and FitzVigilant. Shun huddled shivering in her wraps, her face a mask of righteous anger. FitzVigilant looked completely confused. I looked directly at Riddle and spoke heedless of who might hear or wonder.

“I must take him to Buckkeep Castle. To the Skill-coterie for healing. Through the pillars. Will you help me?”

Riddle looked down at Bee in his arms and then back at me. “She’s fine,” he said, and I heard his rebuke that I had not even asked about that. But surely, if she were not, he would have told me that instantly? I felt a twinge of anger at him that faded immediately. I didn’t have the right to be angry at him, nor the time to be anything but desperate. I stared at him. He shook his head, denying me, but said, “I’ll help you however I can. As always I have.”

I gathered my feet under me and stood with little effort. The Fool weighed nothing, nothing at all. He had always been slight and limber but now he was skeletal and bound with scars and rags. The gawkers were staring at me intensely. I could not afford to care about that. I advanced toward Riddle. He stood his ground but both Shun and FitzVigilant retreated from what they thought was the body of a smelly old beggar.

I darted my eyes at FitzVigilant. “Get our team and wagon. Bring it here. “

Shun began with, “But what about the green—?”

I just looked at her and she closed her lips. “Go!” I reminded FitzVigilant, and he went. When he was two steps away, Shun decided to go with him. Good.

“Bee. Bee, look at me. Please.”

She had had her face buried in Riddle’s neck. Now she slowly lifted it and stared at me. Blue eyes of ice in a pale face; the red in her shawl was a shocking contrast. “Bee, this man didn’t mean to frighten you. I told you about him once. Remember? He’s an old friend of mine, someone I have not seen in many years. Riddle knew him as Lord Golden. I knew him as the Fool when we were children together. One thing I am certain of: He would never, ever hurt a child. I know you were frightened, but he meant you no harm.”

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