Fool's Assassin - Страница 130

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“No questions?” the Fool asked of the dim room.

He was the one, I thought, who should have questions. Starting with, Why did you stab me? “I thought you were asleep.”

“Soon.” He sighed the weight of the world away. “You take me on such faith, Fitz. Years pass, I step back into your life, and you kill me. And then save me.”

I didn’t want to talk about how I had knifed him. “Your messenger reached me.”

“Which one?”

“A pale girl.”

He was silent and then spoke in a voice full of sorrow. “I sent seven pairs of messengers to you. Over eight years, I sent them to you. And only one got through?”

Seven pairs. Of fourteen messengers, one had reached me. Perhaps two. A great wave of dread rose in me. What had he fled, and did it still pursue him? “She died soon after reaching me. Those who chased her had shot some sort of parasites into her, and they were eating her from the inside.”

He was silent for a long time. “They love that sort of thing. Slow pain that inevitably gets worse. They love it when those they torment hope and beg for death.”

“Who loves it?” I asked quietly.

“The Servants.” All life had gone from his voice.

“The servants?”

“They used to be servants. When the Whites existed, their ancestors served the Whites. The prophet folk. My ancestors.”

“You’re a White.” There was little written of them, and what I knew, I had learned mostly from the Fool. Once, they had lived alongside and among humanity. Long-lived and gifted with prophecy and the ability to see all futures. As they had dwindled and interbred with humans, they had lost their unique characteristics, but every few generations one such as he was born. A true White, such as the Fool, was a rarity.

He made a small sound of skepticism in his throat. “So they would have you believe. And me. The truth is, Fitz, that I am a creature with enough White blood in me that it manifests almost completely.” He took a deep breath as if to say more and then sighed deeply instead.

I was confused. “That wasn’t what you told me years ago.”

He turned his head on the pillow, as if he could look at me. “That wasn’t what I believed, years ago. I didn’t lie to you, Fitz. I repeated to you the lie I had been told, the lie I believed all my life.”

I told myself I had never believed it anyway. But I had to ask him, “Then you are not a White Prophet? And I am not your Catalyst?”

“What? Of course I am. And you are! But I am not a full White. No full Whites have walked this world for hundreds of years.”

“Then … the Black Man?”

“Prilkop? Far older than me, and probably of purer blood. And like the Whites of old, as he aged, he darkened.”

“I thought he darkened as he was able to fulfill his mission as a White Prophet? That as much as he was successful in setting the world on a better path, so he darkened?”

“Oh, Fitz.” He sounded weary and sad. After a long pause, he said, “I don’t know. That’s what the Servants took from me. Everything I thought I knew, every certainty. Have you ever stood on a sandy beach when the tide is coming in? Felt the waves come up around your feet and suck the sand from under you? That’s my life now. With every day, I feel I sink deeper into uncertainty.”

A hundred questions filled my mind. And I suddenly knew that, yes, I had believed that he was a prophet and I was his Catalyst. I had believed it, and I had endured the things he had foretold for me, and I had trusted. And if it had all been a lie, a deception practiced on him that he had perpetuated upon me in turn? No. That was what I could not believe. It was what I must not believe.

“Is there anything more to eat? Suddenly I’m hungry again.”

“I’ll see.” I rolled off the bed and went to the hearth. Whoever Chade had dispatched had been thorough. There was a covered pot on the kettle hook, swung to the edge of the coals where it would stay warm but not burn. I hooked it over the hearth and peeked in. A chicken had been stewed down to a morass of thready flesh in a thick brown broth. Onion and celery and parsnip mingled together in a friendly sauce. “Stewed chicken,” I told him. “Shall I bring you some?”

“I’ll get up.”

His answer surprised me. “Earlier today, when I brought you here so quickly, I thought you balanced on the knife’s edge of death. Now you sound almost like yourself.”

“I’ve always been tougher than I looked.” He sat up slowly and swung his legs out, feet groping for the floor. “But don’t deceive yourself. I doubted I would have survived longer than a couple more nights in the cold. I scarcely remember the last few days. Cold and hunger and pain. No difference between night and day, save that nights were colder.” He stood and swayed. “I don’t know where you are,” he complained helplessly.

“Stand still,” I bade him, as if he could do otherwise. I put a small table near Chade’s old chair, and then guided the Fool to his seat. I found dishes and cutlery on a shelf; Lady Rosemary kept a much more orderly lair than Chade had. I brought him a bowl of the chicken and a spoon, and then found a bottle of brandy and some cups. “How hungry are you?” I asked, eyeing what was left in the pot. My own appetite had wakened at the smell of the food. The toil of the Skill-journey I had mostly transferred to Riddle, but it had still been a long and taxing time since I’d last eaten.

“Eat something,” the Fool replied, having sensed my dilemma.

I dished out food for myself and sat down in Lady Rosemary’s chair with my bowl on my knee. The Fool lifted his head. “Do I smell brandy?”

“It’s to the left of your bowl.”

He set down his spoon and a tremulous smile claimed his mouth. “Brandy with Fitz. By a fire. In clean clothes. With food. One last time, and almost I could die happy.”

“Let’s avoid the dying part, and have the rest.”

His smile grew stronger. “For a time, old friend. For a time. Whatever you did to me before we entered the stones, and Riddle’s sacrifice, then food and warmth and rest have pulled me back from that brink. But we shall not deceive each other. I know the rot I carry inside myself. I know you saw it.” He lifted a claw-like hand to scratch his scarred cheek. “It isn’t a happenstance, Fitz. They deliberately created that within me, just as they etched my face with scars and tore the Skill from my fingertips. I do not fancy that I have escaped. They set a slow death to work inside me and then pursued me as I tottered away, striving to see that I always exerted myself to exhaustion each day, always threatening those who might aid me. I fancy I traveled faster and farther than they thought I would, but even that may be a fantasy. They plot in convolutions far beyond what you or I could imagine, for they have a map of the maze of time, drawn from a hundred thousand prophecies. I do not ask why you stabbed me because I already know. They set it in motion, and waited for you to do their evil will. They sought to hurt you as much as to kill me. No one’s fault but theirs. Yet you are still the Catalyst, and you turn my dying into an infusion of strength.” He sighed. “But perhaps even that is their will, that you find me and bring me here. Is this a pebble, Fitz, that triggers the avalanche? I don’t know. I long to see as I once did, long to pick my way through a swirling mist of possibilities. But that is gone, lost to me when you brought me back from the dead.”

I could not think of anything to say to that. I had long ago learned that with both the Fool and Chade, the quickest way to provoke silence was to ask too many questions. Left alone, they always shared more with me than perhaps they intended. And so I ate a portion of the chicken and drank Chade’s brandy and wondered about the Servants and his unexpected son and even the messengers he had sent who had not reached me.

He finished the chicken in the pot, clattering his spoon about inside the dish to be sure that he’d had every bite. I refilled his brandy cup. “There is broth on the left side of your mouth,” I told him quietly. It had given me great pain to see him eat both so ravenously and so untidily. When I took his bowl away, I wiped the spatters and drips from the table. I had hoped not to shame him, but as he wiped his face he admitted, “I eat like a starved dog. A blind starved dog. I’m afraid I’ve learned to get as much food into me as quickly as I can. It’s hard to unlearn something so deliberately taught to me.” He sipped from his cup and leaned his head back on the chair. His eyes were closed, but it was only when his lax hand twitched and his cup nearly fell that I realized he was falling asleep where he sat.

“Back to bed,” I told him. “If you eat and rest for a few days, perhaps we can begin small healings to set you back on the path to health.”

He stirred and when I took his arm, he tottered to his feet. “As soon as we can, please begin. I must get stronger, Fitz. I must live and I must defeat them.”

“Well. Let’s begin by getting a night’s sleep,” I suggested to him.

I guided him back to the bed and saw him well covered. I tried to be quiet as I tidied the room and added wood to the fire. I refilled my brandy cup. It was blackberry brandy, and of a much better quality than I’d ever been able to afford when I was a youngster. Nonetheless, the lingering taste of berries and blossoms put me in mind of those days. I sank down into Chade’s chair with a sigh and stretched out my feet toward the fire.

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