Fool's Quest

I stood for a time staring off into the darkness as the wind chilled and stiffened my body. Where had they taken my child and why? What good was it to be a prince if he was as helpless as a penniless bastard?

I turned and walked slowly up the carriageway to the manor, feeling as if I breasted an icy winter storm. I did not want to go to this place. With every step, I felt more downhearted. I went slowly to one of the firewood stacks and filled a sling of my cloak with enough wood for what remained of the night. My steps dragged as I carried it up the steps of my home.

Chapter Twelve

The Shaysim

Corioa, the first Servant, wrote thus of his White Prophet: “He is not the first to come, nor will he be the last. For to every generation is given one who walks among us and, by virtue of his ability to see all the possibilities, guides us to the best future there may be. I have chosen to call myself his Servant, and to record the dreams of my pale master, and to keep count of the ways in which he makes the crooked path straight and safe.”

So Corioa was the first to name himself Servant. Some think he was also Terubat’s Catalyst. As to that, the records from that day are so fragmented that this Servant thinks it an unsafe assumption.

And contrary to many Servants who have gone before me, and been the primary recorders of the deeds of the White Prophet of their days, I will state clearly what some may rebuke me for. Must there be only one? And if this is so, who determines who that single White Prophet is from among those who show us a pale face and colorless eyes? And exactly when, pray tell, does a “generation” begin and end?

I ask these questions not to spread discord or doubt, but only to plead that we Servants open our eyes as wide as those of the White Prophets we serve. Let us admit there are many, many futures. At countless crossroads, the future becomes the past and an infinite number of possibilities die as an infinite number are born.

So let us no longer call the pale child Shaysa, Who Is the One, as we used to name him in our most ancient tongue. Let us call him Shaysim, Who May Be the One.

Let us no longer be blind to our own vision. Let us recognize that when the Servants select, as we must, the Shaysa, then we have determined the fate of the world.

—Servant Cetchua, of the 41st Line

We traveled.

They were a bigger group than I had thought. There were the soldiers, about twenty of them, and Dwalia’s followers, also about twenty. I rode in the big sleigh, and we followed two other smaller ones full of supplies. The soldiers and Dwalia’s followers rode horseback. We traveled by night for the most part. We did not move quickly, for we avoided the king’s highway, instead crossing pastures and following wandering farm roads. We seemed to skirt forest and cross unsettled land, avoiding the farmsteads I sometimes glimpsed. Darkness and cold and the steady thudding beat of the trotting team filled my senses. At other times, the team dragged us through unbroken snow, surging forward with the sleigh sawing and tipping behind them.

I felt cold all the time, even when I was well bundled in furs and robes. When they put up the tents during the day and told me to sleep, I was so cold I could not relax my muscles. Yet the cold I felt had nothing to do with my body. I think it was the same cold that had stilled Shun. She was still as ice on a lake. Even when she moved, she walked like a stiffened corpse. She didn’t speak and scarcely tended to herself. One of Dwalia’s girls took it upon herself to drape Shun in a heavy white fur coat. The same girl, Odessa, would put food into her hands or push a mug of hot soup into her grip. Then sometimes Shun would eat and sometimes she would sit and hold the mug until the hot soup went scummy and cold. Odessa would take the mug and dump the soup back into the shared pot. And Shun, cold and empty, would crawl across the blankets and skins back to the far corner of the tent.

Odessa had long dark hair that was thin, and patchy, pale white skin, and eyes the color of sour milk. One of her eyes wandered in its socket. Her bottom lip sagged open. It was hard for me to look at her. She looked diseased, and yet she moved as if she were healthy and strong. She sang softly as she rode her white horse by our sleigh, and sometimes laughed aloud with her companions at night. Yet there was a wrongness about her, as if she had been born half-finished. I tried not to stare at her. It seemed that whenever I did turn my head to look at her, her wandering eye was already gazing at me.

By day, we camped in the forest, usually well away from the road. Even in the darkest night, when snow fell and the wind blew, the teams and the riders pushed on. One of the pale folk was always at the front, and they followed her without question. A dim part of my mind speculated that they were retracing their steps, returning as they had come. I tried to wonder where they had come from, and why, but my thoughts were as thick as cold porridge.