Fool's Quest

I considered my bed. I ached all over. My head was throbbing. My brow was puckered, and not with thought. I found the looking-glass in Lord Feldspar’s traveling trunk. The slash on my brow was a wrinkled seam in my skin. The healer had botched his stitches. Picking them out myself would be long and painful. Later. Think about something else. Something that didn’t hurt.

I would, I thought, go and find some food. No. Prince FitzChivalry would not wander down to the kitchens looking for cold roast or a dollop of soup from the cauldron kept for the guardsmen. I sat down on the edge of the bed. Or would he? Who could predict what Prince FitzChivalry would do? I leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. Patience, I thought to myself, had not changed to suit Buckkeep Castle but had remained her adorable, eccentric self. A regretful smile bent my mouth. No wonder my father had loved her so. I’d never considered how she had managed to remain herself despite the constraints of court life. Could I be as free as she had been? Set my own rules within the court? I closed my eyes to think about it.

Chapter Nineteen

The Strategy

… but the island is surrounded by a magic, so that only those who have been there can return there. No stranger can find his way. Yet, rarely, pale children are born, and without ever having been there, they recall the path, and so they importune their parents until they are taken there, to grow slowly old and wise.

On that island, in a castle built of giants’ bones, lives a white seer, surrounded by her servants. She has predicted every possible end of the world, and her servants write down every word she utters, scribing it with bird’s-blood ink onto parchment made from sea-serpent hide. It is said that her servants are fed on the flesh and blood of sea serpents, so that they may remember pasts far beyond their own births, and these, too, they record.

If a stranger wishes to go there, he must find for a guide one born there, and he must be sure to take with him four gifts: one of copper, one of silver, one of gold, and one made from the bone of a man. And those of copper and gold cannot be simple coins, but must be rare jewelry, made by the cleverest of smiths. With these tokens, each in a pouch of black silk tied with a white ribbon, the traveler must approach the guide and speak the following charm: “With copper I buy your speaking, with silver I buy your thoughts, with gold I buy your memories, and with a bone I bind your body so that you must accompany me on a journey to the land of your birth.” Then that one will take from the seeker the four pouches and speak to him and remember true and guide him to his birth-home.

But even then, the traveler’s way may not be easy, for while the guide is bound to take him to Clerrestry, nothing can bind him to take him by the straightest road, nor to speak to him in plain talk.

—An Outislander minstrel’s tale, recorded by Chade

I twitched awake to a soft tapping. I was dressed, on the bed. Light through the shutters on my window told me it was day. I rubbed my face, trying to wake myself, and then wished I hadn’t. The puckering seam on my brow was sore now. The tapping came again.

“Ash?” I called softly, and then realized it was coming from the hidden door rather than the one that gave onto the corridor. “Fool?” I queried, and in response heard “Motley, Motley, Motley.” Ah. The crow. I triggered the door and, as it swung open, she hopped out into my room.

“Food, food, food?” she asked.

“I’m sorry. I’ve nothing here for you.”

“Fly. Fly, fly, fly!”

“Let me look at you first.”

She hopped closer to me and I went down on one knee to inspect her. The ink seemed to be lasting. I could not see any white on her. “I’ll let you out, for I know you must ache to fly. But if you are wise you will avoid your own kind.”

She said nothing to that but watched me as I went to the window and opened it. It was a blue-sky day. I looked out over castle walls topped with an extra rampart of snow. I had expected it to be dawn. It wasn’t. I had slept all the night and part of the morning away. She hopped to the sill and launched without a backward glance. I closed the window and then secured the secret door. The cold air on my face had tightened the faulty stitches. They had to come out. The Fool was blind, and taking them out myself would require holding a mirror with one hand and picking at them with the other. I certainly did not want to call back the healer who had done this to me.

Without thinking, I reached for Chade. Could you help me remove the stitches in my brow? My body is trying to heal and the stitches are puckering the flesh.

I felt him there, at the end of my Skill-thread. He drifted like a gull riding the breeze. Then he said softly, I can see the warmth of the flames through the spy-hole. It’s cold here but I must stay for the whole watch. I hate him so. I want to go home. I just want to go home.