Fool's Quest

“Are you sure you want to be out here? They won’t wake up for some time.”

She ignored me, and I decided to do the same to her. She was a crow. She could look after herself. She’d either wait for the others to wake or fly back to Buckkeep Castle. I watered all the horses and put more hay for the other four beasts before I saddled Fleeter.

“Are you ready?” I asked her and felt her cheery response. I wondered if she could sense the energy of the carris seed coursing through me and if it affected her willingness for our mission. I could certainly sense its effect on her.

It’s good to move, she assured me.

“It’s good to be doing something,” I agreed. I took my frustration and helplessness and used them as fuel for my growing anger at Bee’s captors. We had a bit more of a climb and then we’d pass over through the pass called the Maiden’s Waist and down into the valley beyond. There was a village on the other side of the hills and probably a cleared road. I still wasn’t sure that I’d find them before the king’s troops, but it would be close. “I have to be there,” I told Fleeter.

Then we shall, she agreed. I gave her loose reins and we swiftly left the cabin behind us.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Parting Ways

The dream begins with a distant bell tolling. In this dream, I am myself. I am trying to run away from something, but I can only run in a circle. I rush as fast as I can, trying to run away, but always I find I am running directly back to the most dangerous place. When I tumble too close, they reach out and catch me. I do not see who they are. Only that they capture me. There is a staircase of black stone. She puts on a glove, slipping her hand into his anguish. She opens the door to the staircase, and grips me by the wrist as she drags me down. The door slams shut behind us, soundlessly.

We are in a place where the emptiness is actually made of other people. They all begin speaking to me at once, but I plug my ears and close my eyes.

—Dream Journal of Bee Farseer

Everything changed once Ellik had Vindeliar in his control. I was not sure of the reason for this, save that he seemed to take pleasure in the distress it caused the luriks and Dwalia. The night he seized the fog boy and kept him over at his camp, we did not load the sleighs or travel at all. He told us nothing and left us waiting.

Ellik went to greet his soldiers and Vindeliar. He welcomed Vindeliar to his fire and to the meat his men had taken that day. His standing soldiers ringed them so that we could not see what went on. Lingstra Dwalia stood at the edge of our firelight and stared toward them, but did nothing to interfere. Ellik kept his voice low. We heard him speak, and then Vindeliar striving to answer him. At first Ellik sounded affable, then serious, and finally angry. Soon we could hear Vindeliar sobbing, his voice rising high on his words, but I could not make out what he told them. I did not hear anything to make me think they physically struck him. But sometimes the men would erupt into a roar of laughter at something. Dwalia’s fists kneaded her skirts, but she did not speak to any of us. Two of Ellik’s men stood near our fire, watching her. Once, when she took two steps toward them, one drew his blade. He smiled as he did it, inviting her to come closer. She stopped and when she turned back to our campfire, they both laughed.

It was a very long night. When morning came, perhaps she thought they might give Vindeliar back to us. They did not. Half of the soldiers went to their bedrolls, but the others put more wood on their fire and kept watch on the fog man. When it was clear that Ellik had gone to sleep, she turned to us. “Go to bed,” she ordered us angrily. “Tonight we will travel again, and you should be rested.”

But few of us slept. Before the winter sun reached noon, we were awake and moving nervously about our campsite. Ellik arose, and we saw the guard around Vindeliar change, as did the two men watching our campsite. The pale Servants tried not to stare at them. No one wished to invite their scrutiny. With straining ears and sidelong glances, we tried to hear Ellik’s orders for his men. “Hold them here,” I heard Ellik say as he mounted his horse. “When I return, I expect to find all exactly as I left it.” Dwalia’s anxiety soared when Ellik ordered an additional horse saddled for Vindeliar. We watched in dread as Ellik rode away, trailed by four of his men surrounding Vindeliar. They rode toward the town in broad daylight.

I think that was the most frightening day, for Ellik was away and his soldiers were left watching us. And oh, how well they watched us. With sidelong glances and smirks, with pointing fingers that dismissed some of the luriks and hands that sketched the measure of breasts or buttocks of another, they watched us. They did not speak to us, or touch any of us with their hands, which somehow made the strokes of their eyes and their muttered words all the more threatening.