Fool's Quest

“I wish I had been able to kill her for you, then, Fool. And for me as well.”

“So I wish also. But there are others. Those who raised and shaped her. Those who gave her power and permission.”

“Yes. So tell me of them.”

More the Fool told me that afternoon, and I listened well. The more he talked, the calmer he became. There were things he knew that might be useful. He knew of the deep spring that supplied the palace with water, and he knew of the four towers where the Council members slept. He knew of the horns that sounded when folk could cross the causeway and enter the fortified city that was the White Island, and of the bell that tolled to warn folk that they must leave or risk being caught by the rising tides. He knew of the walled garden and the great house where the Whites and part-Whites were housed, knowing no other world than that. “Raised like penned cattle thinking the pen is the world. When I first came to Clerres, the Servants kept me apart from their Whites, and I truly believed that I was the only White left in the world. The only White Prophet for this generation.” He sat silent, and then he sighed. “Then the Pale Woman, at that time little more than a girl, demanded to meet me. She hated me from the time she saw me, for I was so certain I was all she was not. She decreed that I must be tattooed as I was. And when they were done, they put me in with the others. Fitz, they hoped I would breed for them. But I was young, too young to be interested in such things, and the tales I told the others of my home and my family, of market days and cows to milk, and pressing grapes for wine … Oh. How they envied me those memories, and how they insisted they must only be tales. By day they mocked me and set me apart, but in the evenings they would gather round me and ask me questions and listen to my tales. They scoffed, even then, but I felt their hunger. At least for a time, I had had all that they had never known. The love of my parents. My sisters’ fond teasing. A little white cat that trotted at my heels. Ah, Fitz, I had been such a happy child.

“And telling them my tales sharpened my own hunger, until I had to take action. And so I escaped. And made my slow way to Buckkeep.” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “To wait to discover you. To begin our tasks.”

And so he spoke, and I was entranced, as he shared so much I had never known of him. I sat and I listened to him, afraid to break the spell of such honesty. When he ceased speaking, I realized the day was dimming to a close. There was still so much I needed to do.

I persuaded him then to let me ring for Ash and have food brought, and perhaps ask for a bath. For I guessed now that he had neither bathed nor changed his clothes since he had returned from his misadventure. When I rose to leave, he smiled at me.

“We’re going there. We’re going to stop them.” It sounded like a promise.

“I am but one man, Fool. Your quest demands an army.”

“Or the father of a stolen and murdered child.”

So he described me, and for a moment my pain and my fury were one emotion. I did not speak but I felt that thin shiver of awareness between us. And he replied to that.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

Later that day I tapped at Chade’s door, and when no one answered, I slipped inside. He was dozing in a cushioned chair before the fire with his stocking feet up on a stool. I stepped to the door of his bedchamber, expecting to find some attendant there, Shine or Steady or a Skill-apprentice.

“We’re alone. For once.”

I startled at his words and turned to look at him. He had not opened his eyes. “Chade?”

“Fitz.”

“You sound much better than the last time I saw you. Almost like your old self.”

He drew a deeper breath and opened his eyes. Awake, he looked more aged than he had asleep. “I am not better. I cannot Skill. Nothing in my body feels right anymore. My joints ache and my stomach seems angry no matter what I eat.” He stared at his feet, propped up in front of the fire. “It’s all catching up with me, my boy. All the years.”

I do not know what made me do it. I went to his chair and sat on the floor beside it, as if I were eleven again and he my master. He set his bony hand on my head and ruffled my hair. “Oh, my boy. My Fitz. There you are. Now. When are you leaving?”

He knew. And for that moment, he was Chade as he had been always to me, knowing everything. It was a relief to speak to someone who understood me from the bones out. “As soon as I can. I’ve waited for weather, I’ve gathered my information and regained my Skill. I’ve tightened my muscles and renewed some skill with a blade. So much time I had to waste.”