Fool's Errand

Wool blankets itch even more when you sweat. I rolled over to stare at a different patch of darkness. I wouldn't think about Hap just now. There was no point to worrying about disasters that hadn't happened yet. Unwillingly, I let j my mind wander back to Chade's Skillscrolls and the present crisis. I had expected three or four scrolls. What he had shown me were several chests of scrolls, in various degrees of preservation. Even he had not been through all of them, though he thought he had them somewhat sorted into topics and levels of difficulty. He had presented me with a large table with three scrolls unrolled on it. My heart sank. The lettering on two of the scrolls was so archaic I could barely decipher it. The other seemed more recent, but almost immediately I encountered words and phrases that made no sense to me. It recommended an “anticula trance” and suggested a helpful infusion made from an herb called “Shepherd's Wort.” I'd never heard of it. The scroll further cautioned me to beware of “dividing my partner's selfbarrier” as I might then “diffuse his anma.” I looked up to Chade in bewilderment. He instantly divined my problem. “I thought you would know what it meant,” he said defeated!

I shook my head. “If Galen ever knew what these words and terms meant, he never divulged them to me.”

Chade gave a snort of contempt. “I doubt our 'Skillmaster' could even read these characters.” He sighed. “Half of any trade is understanding the vocabulary and idiom that the practitioners use. With time, we might piece it together with clues from the other scrolls. But we have precious little time. With every passing moment, the Prince may be carried farther from Buckkeep.”

“Or he may never even have left the town. Chade, you have cautioned me many times not to take action simply for the sake of taking action. If we rush forth, we may be rushing in the wrong direction. First think, then act.”

It had felt so strange to remind my master of his own wisdom. I had watched him grudgingly .nod to it. While he pored over the archaic lettering, muttering as his pen flowed a clear translation onto paper, I had carefully read the more accessible scroll. Then I had read it again, hoping it would make more sense. On my third attempt, I found myself nodding off over the old, blurred lettering. Chade had leaned across the table to clasp my wrist gently. “Go to bed, boy,” he ordered me gruffly. “Lack of sleep makes a man stupid, and this will demand your best wits.” I had conceded and left him there, still hunched over his pen and paper.

I shifted onto my back. I ached from all the stairs I had climbed today. Well, as long as I could not sleep, I might as well see what good I could do. I closed my eyes to the pressing darkness and composed myself. I emptied my mind of my concerns, and tried only to recall the last dream I had had of the boy and the cat. I conjured up their exhilaration at the night and the hunt. I summoned my recollection of the scents that had flavored the air, and reached for the indefinable aura of a dream not my own. Almost I could enter that dream, but that was not what I sought. I tried to recall a tenuous Skilllink I had not been aware of at the time I experienced it.

Prince Dutiful. The son of my body. These titles in my mind had no impressions attached to them, yet oddly they interfered with what I was trying to do. My preconceived notions of Dutiful, my possessive idealizations of what my natural son would be like, stood between me and the frail threads of the Skilllink I sought to untangle. From somewhere in the keep, the stone bones of the castle carried a stray bit of music to my ears. It distracted me. I blinked at the dark before me. I had lost all sense of time; night stretched eternally around me. I hated this windowless room, shut of from the natural world. I hated the confinement I had to endure. I had lived with the wolf too long to find it tolerable, In frustration, I abandoned the Skill and reached out with the Wit for my companion. He still had up the guard he had so often employed of late. I could sense him sleeping, and as I leaned against his walls, I felt the dull thunder of pain in his hips and back. I withdrew quickly when I sensed that my focusing on his pain was bringing it to the forefront of his mind. I had sensed no fear or foreboding in him, only weariness and aching joints. I wrapped him in my thoughts, drawing gratefully on his senses.

I'm sleeping, he grumpily informed me. Then, You're worried about something?

It's nothing. I just wanted to know you were fine.

Oh, yes, we're fine. We've had a lovely day of walking down a dry, dusty road. Now we're sleeping at the edge of it, Then, more kindly, he added, Don't worry about things you can't change. I'll be with you soon.

Watch Hap for me.