I took the secret passage from there down to the chamber I had occupied when I had been Lord Golden's servant. I listened carefully before I triggered the concealed door. All was quiet on the other side, and I hoped that the Fool was not there. But no sooner had I closed the portal to the hidden access than he opened the outer door of the room. I blinked at him. He wore a simple tunic and leggings, all in black, with low black shoes. The light from the window gilded his hair. Daylight reached past his silhouette into the tiny room and revealed my old cot heaped with possessions I had abandoned when I left his service. The wonderful sword he had given me nestled upon a mound of colorful and extravagant garments tailored for me. I gave the Fool a puzzled look. “Those are yours,” he said quietly. “You should take them.”
“I doubt I'd ever have occasion to dress in such styles again,” I said, and then heard how hard a rejection that sounded.
“You never know,” he said quietly, looking away. “Perhaps one day Lord FitzChivalry will again walk the halls of Buckkeep Castle. If he did, those colors and cuts would suit him remarkably well.”
“I doubt any of that would ever come to be.” That too sounded cold, so I tempered it with “But I thank you all the same. And I will take them, just in case.” All the awkwardness fell on me again like a smothering curtain.
“And the sword,” he reminded me. “Don't forget the sword. I know it's a bit showy for your taste but...”
“But it's still one of the finest weapons I've ever drawn. I'll treasure it.” I tried to smooth over the slight of my first refusal. I saw now that by leaving it behind when I shifted my den, I'd hurt his feelings.
“Oh. And this. Best that this come back to you now, too.” He reached to unfasten the carved wooden earring that Lord Golden always wore. I knew what was concealed within it: the freedom earring that had passed from Burrich's grandmother to Burrich, to my father, and eventually to me.
“No!” I gripped his wrist. “Stop this funeral rite! I've told you, I've no intention of letting you die.”
He stood still. “Funeral rite,” he whispered. Then he laughed. I could smell the apricot brandy on his breath.
“Take charge of yourself, Fool. This is so unlike you that I scarcely know how to talk to you anymore,” I exclaimed in annoyance, feeling the anger that uneasiness can trigger in a man. “Can't we just relax and be ourselves in the days we have left?”
“The days we have left,” he echoed. With a twist of his wrist, he effortlessly freed himself from my grip. I followed him back into his large and airy chamber. Stripped of his possessions, it seemed even larger. He went to the brandy decanter and poured more for himself, and then filled a small glass for me.
“In the days we have left before we sail,” I expanded my words for him as I took the glass. I looked around the chamber. Necessities had been left in place: a table, chairs, a desk. All else was either gone or in the process of being cleared out. Rolled tapestries and rugs were fat sausages against the wall. His workroom stood open, bare and empty, all his secrets tidied away. I walked into the room, brandy in hand. My voice reverberated oddly as I said, “You've eradicated every trace of yourself.”
He followed and we stood together looking out the window. “I like to leave things tidy. One must leave so many things incomplete in life that I take pleasure in finishing those I can.”
“I've never known you to wallow in emotion like this before. It almost seems that you are enjoying this.” I tried not to sound disgusted with him.
A strange smile twisted his mouth. Then he took a deep breath as if freed of something. “Ah, Fitz, in all the world, only you would say something like that to me. And perhaps you are right. There is drama in facing a definite end; I've never encountered these sensations before...yet, in a like situation, I think you would be untouched by them. You tried to explain to me once how the wolf always lived in the present and taught you to take every possible satisfaction you could from the time that you had. You learned that well. While I, who have always lived trying to define the future before I reach it, suddenly espy a place beyond which all is black. Blackness. That is what I dream of at night. And when I deliberately sit down and try to reach forward, to see where my path might go, that is all I see. Blackness.”
I did not know what to say to him. I could see him trying to shake off his desperation as a dog might try to shake a wolf's grip from his throat. I took a sip of the brandy. Apricots and the heady warmth of a summer day flooded me. I recalled our days at my cottage, the brandy on my tongue reawakening the pleasure of that simpler time. “This is very good,” I said to him without thinking.
Startled, he stared at me. Then he abruptly blinked away tears and the smile he gave me was genuine. “Yes,” he said quietly. “You are right. This is very good brandy, and nothing that is to come can change that. The future cannot take from us the days we have left...unless we let it.”
He had passed some sort of crossroads within himself and was more at peace. I took another swallow of the brandy as I stared out over the hills behind Buckkeep. When I glanced at him, he was looking at me with a fondness I could not bear. He would not have looked at me so kindly if he knew how I deceived him. And yet his terror of the days to come only firmed in me my judgment that I had made the best decision for him. “A shame to rush this, but Chade and the others will be waiting.”
He nodded gravely, lifted his glass in a small toast to me, and then tossed off the brandy. I followed his example and then had to stand still while the liquor spread heat throughout me. I took a deep breath, smelling and tasting apricots. “It is very good,” I told him again.
He smiled small. “I'll leave all the remaining bottles to you,” he offered very quietly, and then laughed when I glared at him. Yet his step seemed lighter as he followed me through the labyrinth of corridors and stairs that threaded between the walls of Buckkeep. As I moved through the dimness, I wondered how I truly would feel, did I know the hour and day of my death. Unlike Lord Golden, there would be very few possessions for me to disperse. I numbered my treasures to myself, thinking I owned nothing of significance to anyone but myself; then I realized abruptly it wasn't true. With a pang of selfish regret, I resolved to correct that. We reached the concealed entrance to the Seawatch Tower. I unseated the panel and we emerged from the hearth.
The others had already gathered so I had no opportunity for a private word to prepare Chade. Instead, as we stepped out, the Prince exclaimed with delight and came forward to welcome Lord Golden. Thick was more cautious, scowling suspiciously. Chade sent me one glance full of rebuke, and then smoothed his face and exchanged greetings with the Fool. But after that first moment of welcome, awkwardness ensued. Thick, unsettled by having a stranger in our midst, wandered aimlessly about the room instead of settling into his place at the table. I could almost see the Prince trying to fit Lord Golden, even dressed so simply, into the role of King Shrewd's Fool as he had heard the Queen tell the tale. Chade finally said, almost bluntly, “So, my dear fellow, what brings you here to join us? It's wonderful to see you, of course, but we've still much to learn and little time in which to learn it.”
“I understand,” the Fool replied. “But there is also little time for me to share with you what I know. So I came hoping for a bit of your time, privately, after the lesson.”
“I think it's wonderful that you've come,” the Prince broke in artlessly. “I think you should have been included from the first. You were the one who let us link our strength and go through you to heal Tom. You've as much a right to be a member of this coterie as anyone here.”
The Fool looked touched by Dutiful's comments. He looked down at his hands, neatly gloved in black, rubbed his fingertips together almost idly, and then admitted, “I don't have any true Skill of my own. I only used what was left of the touch I'd taken from Verity. And my own knowledge of...Tom.”
At the mention of his father's name, the Prince had perked up like a foxhound catching a scent. He leaned closer to the Fool, as if his knowledge of King Verity were something that could be absorbed from him. “Nonetheless,” he assured Lord Golden, “I look forward to journeying with you. I think you may be a valuable member of this coterie, regardless of your level of Skill. Will you not join us for the day's lesson and let us explore the extent of your ability?”
I saw Chade torn. The Fool offered a possibility of greater power for the coterie, which Chade craved; but he feared the Fool's opposition to our basic mission to take the dragon's head. I wondered if there was an element of jealousy in how his eyes darted from the Fool to me. The Fool and I had always been close, and Chade knew he wielded a friend's sway over me. Yet now, more than ever, Chade desired to rule me.
His greed for the Skill won out. He added his voice to Dutiful's. “Please, Lord Golden, take a seat with us. If nothing else, you may find our efforts amusing.”
“Well, then, I shall,” the Fool declared almost gladly. He pulled out a chair and sat down expectantly. I wondered if any of the others could see the darker tides running behind the placid affability he presented to them. Chade and I took the chairs on either side of him while Dutiful persuaded Thick to come and join us at the table. When he was settled, four of us simultaneously took a deep breath and reached for that state of openness where we could all reach the Skill. As we did so, I had an insight both affirming and alarming. The Fool was an intruder here. In our short time of striving to become a coterie, we had achieved a unity. I had not perceived it until the Fool interrupted it. As I joined my awareness to Dutiful's and Thick's, I could feel Chade fluttering like a frantic butterfly at the edge of our union. Thick reached a reassuring hand to draw him into firmer contact with the rest of us. He belonged with us, but the Fool did not.
He was not so much a presence as an absence. I had noticed years ago that he was invisible to my Wit-sense. Now, as I deliberately reached toward him with the Skill, it was like trying to lift sun dazzle off a still pond.
“Lord Golden, do you avoid us?” Chade asked very softly.
“I am here,” he replied. His words seemed to ripple softly in the room, as if I felt them as well as heard them.
“Give me your hand,” Chade suggested. He set his own, palm up, on the table, outstretched toward my friend. It seemed as much a challenge as an invitation.
I felt a minuscule tickle of fear. It quivered along the Skill-bond between the Fool and me, letting me know that link still existed. Then the Fool lifted his gloved hand and set it in Chade's.
I could feel him then, but not in any way that is easy to describe. If our combined Skill was a quiet pool, then the Fool was a leaf floating upon it. “Reach for him,” Chade suggested, and we all did. My awareness of the Fool's uneasiness grew stronger via our bond, but I did not think the others could sense that. They could almost touch him, but he parted before them and joined after them, as if they dragged their fingers through water. It disturbed his presence without making it accessible to them. His fear intensified. I reached along our bond surreptitiously, trying to discover what frightened him.
Possession. He did not wish to be touched in a way that might let another possess him. Belatedly I recalled what Regal and his coterie had once done to him. They had found him, through the link I shared with him, and taken a bit of his consciousness and used it against me, to spy upon me and gain knowledge of Molly's whereabouts. That betrayal still shamed and pained him. He still carried that burden of guilt for something that had happened so long ago. It stabbed deeper that soon he would know that I had betrayed him, as well.
It wasn't your fault. I offered him comfort through our link. He refused it. Then, as if from a distance and yet clear, his thoughts reached mine.
I knew it would happen. I'd foretold it myself, when I was a child. That the one closest to you would betray you. Yet I could not believe that it would be me. And so I fulfilled my own prophecy.
We all survived.
Barely.
“Are you Skilling to one another?” Chade asked testily. I both heard and felt his words.
I took a deeper breath and sank deeper into the Skill. “Yes,” I breathed. “I can reach him. But only just. And only because we have been Skill-linked before.”
“Would you have more than this?” The Fool's voice was less than a whisper. I discerned a challenge in his words, but could not understand it.
“Yes, please. Try,” I bade him.
Beside me at the table, I was aware of the Fool making some small movement but my vision was unfocused on the room and I had no warning of his intentions until his hand settled on my wrist. His fingertips unerringly found their own faded gray fingerprints, left on my flesh so many years ago. His touch was gentle, but the sensation was an arrow in my heart. I physically spasmed, a speared fish, and then froze. The Fool ran through my veins, hot as liquor, cold as ice. For a flashing instant, we shared physical awareness. The intensity of it went beyond any joining I'd ever experienced. It was more intimate than a kiss and deeper than a knife thrust, beyond a Skill-link and beyond sexual coupling, even beyond my Wit-bond with Nighteyes. It was not a sharing, it was a becoming. Neither pain nor pleasure could encompass it. Worse, I felt myself turning and opening to it, as if it were my lover's mouth upon mine, yet I did not know if I would devour or be devoured. In another heartbeat, we would be one another, know one another more perfectly than two separate beings ever should.
He'd know my secret.
“No!” I cried before he could discover my plot against him. I wrenched myself free, mind and body. For a long time I fell, until I struck the cold stone floor. I rolled under the table to escape that touch, gasping. My time of blackness seemed to last for hours, yet it was only an instant before Chade dragged my curled body from under the table. He propped me against his chest as he knelt beside me. Dimly I was aware of him demanding, “What happened? Are you hurt? What did you do to him, Fool?”