I see. I felt Chade weighing my words. Then, Do you think he will be better a day from now? I could give you another day.
I made my thoughts firm. I do not know. But I will take as many days as he needs, Chade. I will not risk him.
Very well. The thought oozed annoyance but also acceptance. If you must.
Indeed, I must, I replied firmly. We will travel when the Fool is stronger. Not before.
Dawn found me hollow with worry. Well I knew that many men who died from battle wounds died days after the battle, from fevers and flux and infection. The journey here had strained his healing and undone many days of rest. The Fool slept heavily, far past midday, and then woke, gummy-eyed and haggard, to drink cup after cup of water. Prilkop insisted that we move him from the floor to his bed. The Fool made the short staggering walk between us, then folded onto the Black Man's bed as if he were exhausted, and almost immediately sank down into sleep. His skin was warm beneath my touch.
“Perhaps it's just one of his changing times,” I told Prilkop. “So I hope. It would be better than infection. He will be feverish and weak for several days, and then shed a layer of skin as if he'd been burned. Underneath, his new skin will be darker. If that is what this is, there's little we can do for him now except keep him comfortable and wait.”
Prilkop touched both his cheeks with a gesture, and then smiled at me, saying, “This I suspected. To some of us, it happens. The discomfort passes.” Then, looking down at the Fool he added, “If that is all of it.” He shook his head. “The injuries to him were many.”
A question came to me and I asked it without pausing to wonder if it were impolite. “Why did you change? Why is the Fool changing? The Pale Woman remained white.”
He lifted his hands, expressing bafflement. “On this, I have thought many times. Perhaps, as we cause change, we change. Other prophets who remain white often speak much, but do little. He and I, in our youths, much change we foretold. Then, out we went and we made changes. And, perhaps, we also changed ourselves.”
“But the Pale Woman also did things to try to make changes.”
He smiled, grimly satisfied. “She tried. She failed. We prevailed. We changed.” Then he tilted his head to one side. “Perhaps. So this old man thinks.” Prilkop glanced over at the sleeping Fool and nodded to himself. “Rest is what he needs. Sleep, and good food. And quiet. You and Thick, go fishing. Fresh fish would be good for him.”
I shook my head. “I don't want to leave him when he's like this.”
Prilkop put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “You make him restless. He feels your worry. To let him rest, you away go.”
Thick spoke up from his corner by the hearth. “We should go home. I want to go home.”
The Fool startled me when he croaked my name. “Fitz.”
I was instantly at his side with water. He did not want to drink it, but I was insistent. When he turned his face from the cup, I took it away. “Was there something else you wanted?”
His eyes were unnaturally bright with fever. “Yes. I want you to go home.”
“He doesn't know what he's saying,” I told Prilkop. “I couldn't take him like this.”
The Fool drew a deep breath. He spoke with an effort. “Yes. I do. Know what I'm saying. Take Thick. Go home. Leave me here.” He coughed and then motioned for more water. He drank it in sips, and then pulled in another deep breath. I let him lie back in his blankets.
“I won't leave you like this,” I promised him. “I'll take as much time as we need here. Don't worry about anything. I'll be right here.”
“No.” He seemed irritable, in that weary way the sick do. “Listen to me. I need to stay. Here. For a time. With Prilkop. I need to understand...when I am, where I am...I need to...Fitz, he can help me. You know I will not die of this. It is only my changing time. But what I need to learn, I must learn alone. Be alone, for a time. I need to think, alone. You understand. I know you do. I was you.” He lifted thinning fingers to rub at his face and cheeks. The dry skin rippled and rolled under his fingers, flaking away from newer, darker skin beneath. He rolled his eyes to Prilkop. “He should go,” he said, as if Prilkop could force me. “He is needed at home. And he needs to be home.”
I sat down on the floor by the bed. I did understand. I remembered the long days of my recovery, after my time in Regal's dungeon. I recalled the uncertainty I had felt. Torture shames a man. To break and scream, to beg, to make promises...unless a man has endured that, perhaps he cannot forgive it in another. The Fool needed time alone, to reassess how he saw himself. I had not wanted Burrich to ask a thousand questions of me; I had not even wanted him to be solicitous and kind. On some instinctive level, he had known that, and had allowed me my days of sitting and staring, unspeaking, over the meadows and hills. It had been difficult to admit I was a human and not a wolf: it had been harder to admit I was still myself.
The Fool extended a thin hand from under his blankets. He patted my shoulder awkwardly, and then ran his fingers down my bearded cheek. “Go home. And shave while you're there.” He managed a faint smile. Then, “Let me rest, Fitz. Just let me rest.”
“Very well.” I tried not to feel that he dismissed me. I turned to Thick. “I'll take you home, then. Dress warmly, but you needn't pack anything. Before the night is over, we'll be in Buckkeep.”
“And warm again?” Thick pressed me. “And with good things to eat? Fresh bread and butter, milk and apples, sweet cakes and raisins? Cheese and bacon? Tonight?”
“I'll do my best. You get ready. And tell Chade for me that we're going home tonight. I'll tell the guard at the gate that we came home early, on the first boat. Because you were cold.”
“I am cold,” he agreed heartily. “But no boats. You promised.”
I hadn't but I nodded anyway. “No boats. Get ready, Thick.” I turned back to the Fool. He had closed his eyes again. I spoke softly. “So. You get your way. As you always seem to. I'll take Thick home. I will be gone for a day. At most, two days. But then I'll come back, and I'll bring back food and wine with me. What would you like? What could you eat?”
“Have you any apricots?” the Fool asked me in a wavering voice. Plainly he had not grasped the whole of what I had told him.
“I'll try to bring you some,” I said, doubting I could but loath to tell him so. I smoothed his hair back from his warm face. His hair felt stiff and dry. I looked at Prilkop. He nodded slowly to my silent plea. Before I left, I tucked the blankets up over his shoulders. Then I stooped, and despite his closed eyes, I pressed my brow to his. “I'm coming back soon,” I vowed. He made no response and perhaps he already slept. I left him there.
Prilkop too made his farewells to us within the cave. “Take care of him,” I told the Black Man. “I'll be back tomorrow. Make sure he eats.”
He shook his head to my words. “Not that soon,” he cautioned me. “Already, you have used the portals too many times, too close together.” He made a motion as if he dragged something out of his chest. “It takes from you, and if you do not have enough left for yourself, it can keep you.”
He peered into my eyes, as if trying to be sure I had understood him. I hadn't, but I nodded and assured him, “I'll be careful.”
“Farewell, Thick man. Farewell, Fool's Changer.” Then, with a tip of his head toward the Fool, he added quietly, “I will watch over him. More than that, none of us can do.” And then, as if embarrassed to ask, he said, “The small man said cheese?”
“Cheese. Yes. I will bring you cheese. And tea, and spices and fruit. As much as I can carry.”
“When it is safe for you to come again, that would be nice.” He was beaming as we thanked him again for all he had done for us, and then left. The wind had come up and the night was chill. Thick had stubbornly refused to abandon his pack, clinging to every single possession in it, so he came laden behind me as we edged up the steep and narrow path to the crack in the rock face. The trickle of moisture had iced it narrow again, and again I had to draw my sword and clash ice away in the darkness. Thick whimpered at the dark and the wind and kept insisting that he wanted to go home, not seeming to connect that I must first open the way so we could.
I was finally able to squeeze through. I pulled Thick after me, though he wedged there for a moment. He followed me in, going slower and slower the closer we came to the unnatural light. “I don't like this,” he warned me. “I don't think this is the way home. This is going in a rock. We should go back.”
“No, Thick, it's all right. It's just an old magic. We'll be fine. Just follow me.”
“You had better be right!” he warned me. He followed me, looking all around himself at every step. The deeper we went, the more cautious he became. When we reached the first Elderling carvings, he gasped and stepped back. “The dragon dreams. Those were in the dragon dreams!” he exclaimed. Then, abruptly, as if I had been tricking him, “Oh, I have been here before. Now I know. But why is it so cold? It didn't used to be so cold.”
“Because we are under ice. That makes it cold. Come on, now. Stop walking so slowly.”
“Not this cold,” he replied cryptically, and followed me again, but no faster than he had before. I thought I had fixed the path in my mind. Despite that, I turned wrong twice. Each time I had to retrace my steps, Thick became more doubtful of me. But eventually, despite his laggard steps and my faulty memory, we reached the map room.
“Don't touch anything,” I warned him. I studied the map and the rune by the four tiny gems near Buckkeep. Those gems, I was convinced, represented the Witness Stones. For generations, they had been regarded as a place of power and truth, a gateway to the gods. Now I suspected I knew the origin of that legend. I fixed the rune carefully in my mind. “Come, Thick,” I told him. “It's time to go home.”
He made no reply, and even when I touched his shoulder, he looked up at me slowly. He had sunk down to sit on the floor. With one hand, he had rubbed the dusty tiles clean to reveal a piece of a pastoral scene. His face had an almost dazed expression. “They liked it here,” he said softly. “They played a lot of music.”
“Put your walls up, Thick,” I bade him, but did not feel that he obeyed me. I took his hand and held it firmly in mine. I wasn't sure he was listening, but as I led him up the stairs to the pillar room, I explained to him several times that we would hold tight to each other and walk through the pillar and be home. His breathing had become deep and even as if he slept heavily. Uneasily I wondered if the city itself were affecting him.
I did not give myself time to wonder if the ancient and worn Witness Stones would still function as Skill-pillars. The Fool had used one, hadn't he, and his Skill was much less than mine. I drew a deep breath, gave Thick's hand a small shake in an attempt to win his attention, and then stepped determinedly into the pillar, drawing him behind me.
Again there was that breathlessly long pause in my being, almost familiar now. There seemed to pass a star-speckled blackness of indeterminate length and then I stepped out onto the grassy sward of the hillside near Buckkeep. Thick was still with me. I felt a moment's giddiness, and Thick stumbled past me and sat down flat on the turf. The warmth of summer touched our skins and the smells of a summer night filled my nostrils. I stood still, letting my eyes adjust. The four Witness Stones loomed behind me, pointing at the night sky. I drew a deep breath of the warm air. I smelled sheep pastured nearby, and the more distant smell of the sea. We were home.
I went to Thick and put a hand on his shoulder. “You're all right,” I told him. “We're home. I told you. Just like stepping through a door.” Then a wave of dizziness swept through me and I pitched forward onto my face. For a little time I lay there, trying not to retch.
“We are all right?” Thick asked me miserably.
“In a moment or two,” I assured him breathlessly. “In a moment or two, we'll be fine.”
“That was as bad as the boat,” he said accusingly.
“But much shorter,” I told him. “Much shorter a time.”
Despite my reassurances, it was some while before we recovered and got to our feet. It was a goodly hike from the Witness Stones to the gates of Buckkeep Castle, and Thick was puffing and complaining long before we got there. The frozen Elderling city and the trip through the pillars seemed to have disoriented him and wearied him. I felt cruel as I hurried him along, tempting him with promises of wonderful food, cold ale, and a warm soft bed. The rising sun lent light to us to avoid most tumbles. Before he had gone far, I was carrying Thick's pack and then his cloak and hat. He would have shed more clothing if I had let him. By the time we reached the gates, we were sweating in our winter clothes on a fair morning.
I think the guards recognized Thick before they did me. I was unshaven and unkempt. I told them we'd been sent home early on a filthy Outislander coastal trader, and that it had been a miserable trip and we were glad to be home. Thick was only too glad to enlarge on my poor opinion of boats. The guards at the gates were full of questions, but I told them that we'd been sent home some time ago and that it had taken us far too long to get here, and that I'd been ordered to report to the Queen before I shared any gossip. They let us through.
It was mostly serving folk and guard up and about at that hour. I got Thick no farther than the kitchens. The men in the guardroom had learned to tolerate the Prince's pet. They would jest with him, roughly, and listen to his tales and measure them by their own. Any brag he made of dragons or magic pillars or Black Men would be taken with a large grain of salt there. I knew I had to leave him and it was perhaps the safest place in the keep for him. Besides, I suspected that his mouth would be too full for much talk. I left him there with a hot meal and the admonition that as soon as he was finished eating, he should either go to bed in his room or seek out Sada, bathe, and let her know, emphatically, that no one on our voyage had died of seasickness.