Fool's Quest (61 page)

“Chade,” I confirmed and a bark of laughter burst from me, defying my dark spirits. We both laughed aloud and shook our heads.

After a time, Lant asked, “Why
did
he keep Shine a secret, even from me? He managed to bring me to Buckkeep and let me know he was my father. Why not Shine?”

I spoke heavily and reluctantly. Better he asked these questions now than before witnesses. “He has kept her ignorant and hidden from all others because of dangers both to himself and to her. Her family was not pleased to be saddled with his bastard, and yet they did not mind extorting funds for her keep and education. Funds they apparently did not use for her benefit. He was allowed only sporadic access to her. Her grandparents took care of her at first and were, if not kind, at least not cruel. When they died and she was turned over to her mother and her mother's husband—”

“I know some of that,” Lant cut in hastily.

Riddle raised an eyebrow at me.

“About as bad as you can imagine,” I told him, and saw him wince.

“What will Chade do with her now, do you suppose?” he asked me.

“I don't know. I don't even know if he will be mindful enough to recognize her. But I think she would be safest at Buckkeep, given over into Kettricken's care, perhaps. She has always longed to be at court, and I rather imagine her maternal line will be a bit more cautious about crossing Lord Chade's will in that now.”

FitzVigilant took breath to ask a question I knew I wouldn't want to answer. I was glad to hear a galloping horse and see one of my Rousters headed back toward us. “They must have found something!” I touched my heels to Fleeter and she broke into a grudging trot. Riddle's horse surged past us and
No!
I sensed from her.
I am Fleeter. I always lead.

Show them!
I suggested to her, and she lifted into an effortless gallop. She did not allow her mind to touch mine again, and I did not try to push my way in. I did not want to reestablish any sort of a bond, but I was glad that my misuse of her had not broken her spirit.

Sawyer, one of my Rousters, began shouting before we had even reached him. “We've found her trail. I told Reaper to stay off it, but I don't know how long he can resist.”

“Well done,” I told him.

He wheeled his horse and led the way, despite Fleeter's disgruntlement at following him. It felt good to be in motion. We reached a section of the road that wound through a denser area of forest. There another Rouster awaited us, standing in the cold beside his restless horse. “Can we follow it now?” he demanded. I did not answer immediately. I flung myself from Fleeter's back and in a heartbeat Riddle was beside me. I waded into the unbroken snow beside the wallowed trail. “Two horses, one behind the other,” Riddle announced decisively.

“So I read it, too,” I replied. I swung back up into my saddle. “Be wary!” I warned the others. “Shine said some of the mercenaries were still prowling in the area. If you see them, we need to take them alive. I need to talk to them.”

Sawyer gave a tight nod and his partner grunted an assent. A small part of my attention noted that both of them were standing a bit straighter. They exchanged satisfied looks. These two, it seemed, might take a bit of pride in accomplishing a task. Possibly salvageable.

The trail was easy to follow. I focused on that and pushed Fleeter to move as quickly as she could go. The deep snow was trampled but it was not a well-broken path. I kept my head up and watched the encroaching forest for any sign of the mercenaries. Twice Riddle and Lant moved off to inspect other tracks we sighted. Each time they found only deer trails. I wondered if a terrified Shine had only imagined the Chalcedean trackers as she had the ghost in her room.

The forest became denser. Here evergreens towered and laced their branches overhead to steal the afternoon's graying light from us. The snow was shallower but the trail was still plain. We followed it up a slope, weaving among rocky outcroppings and ducking under leaning trees that had grown at angles among the stones. Under these giants, there was little underbrush.

“Fitz!” Lant called and I pulled Fleeter around, thinking he had seen danger. Instead he leaned down from his mount and brushed snow from stone. “There was a town here once. Or something. Look how straight this stone still runs.”

“He's right,” Riddle confirmed before I could even speak. “Most of it's buried in earth as well as snow. But look there. The trees lean in, and it's narrowed, but that might have been a road at one time.”

“It would make sense,” I said, and turned Fleeter back to the trail. Old structures. In the Mountain Kingdom we had often found standing stones near Elderling ruins.

“I smell old smoke,” Riddle declared, and just then Sawyer cried, “There are more tracks over there, sir. Looks like they're headed in the same direction we are!”

I threw caution to the wind and urged Fleeter on. She surged up the steep trail in powerful bounds, and suddenly an abandoned camp was before us. Hasty shelters of branches and evergreen boughs surrounded a blackened place where a small campfire had burned. “Stop!” I called to the others. We dismounted and Perseverance stayed with the horses as we moved forward more slowly. I quested with my Wit but felt no others near. If there had been Chalcedeans stalking Shine last night, they were here no longer. I squatted down to peer into a temporary shelter built of pine boughs. Someone had huddled in there. That was all I could tell.

“Fitz,” Riddle said, his voice soft but urgent. He pointed with a gloved hand.

White coat, pale skin, pale hair. Dead. Sprawled on her back in the snow, the only color a bit of blood coming from her mouth. Riddle and I crouched over her, our heads close together. I slid a hand under her neck and lifted. It wasn't broken.

“That's a hard grip to get or maintain,” he said. “I'm impressed.”

I nodded. Chade's daughter. Cup the back of the neck and drive the pinching fingers in hard to crush the windpipe. No air, choking on her own blood. Not the quickest death in the world nor the quietest, but it had done the job.

I let her fall back into the snow and stood. And there it was, right before me.

I'd seen the looming block of stone but not recognized what it was. The big tree that had grown up beside it had nearly toppled it. At the edge of the camp, the stone leaned drunkenly, one face of it touching the snow that had banked around it. Lichen had begun to encroach on the stone's edges. I approached it slowly, as if it were game to be stalked. Lant and Riddle followed, but my two Rousters stood by with Perseverance as if they could sense danger.

Someone had recently swept the snow from the uppermost face of the stone. A hundred questions pelted me. How had the Servants known this stone was here? Were they Skilled, to be able to use it? Did they know more of that magic than we did? I'd been told there were no Skill-pillars in this area. How was it that the Servants knew of this and we did not? All useful questions, and the answers would have undoubtedly been even more useful. But pondering them now was a waste of time.

“Do you know where it goes? Do you recognize the rune?”

“I do.” It was one of the few that I knew very well. “It goes to a crossroads market beyond the Mountain Kingdom. On our way to find King Verity we followed an Elderling road and came upon it. It's not far from where we found the stone dragons sleeping.” I recalled the place well indeed. Both the Fool and I had briefly fallen under the spell of that place. The memory stone there was strong, and he had seemed to become someone else, a long-ago White who had passed that way, a poet or jester …

I drew off my glove.

“Fitz, no! Contact Nettle first, let her know what you—”

I pressed my hand to the cold black stone.

And nothing happened. I felt astonished. And sick.

“Maybe it's broken.” Riddle spoke doubtfully, and I heard his reluctance to encourage me at all.

“Shine said they went through the stone.” I centered my hand on the rune, dug my fingers into the cold, rough impression. I pushed. Nothing. I could sense nothing from the stone.

Elfbark.

No. I could not allow myself to be dead to the Skill right now. It could not be so, not when Bee might be only two steps through darkness away from me. “No.
No!
”

I rubbed my hand down the face of the cold stone, eroded by age. I felt the skin of my palm snag on it, felt callus sand away. “No!” I shouted.

“Fitz, it might be—”

I do not recall whatever else Riddle might have said. I shoved at the stone, hit it with a fist. I went into a rage. The edges of my vision went red and black. And when I came out of my rage, I had ruined a battle-axe against the Skill-pillar. I did not even recall pulling it from my back sling. My arms, back, and shoulders hurt from the force of the blows but the stone itself showed little sign of my attack, other than a few gray scuffs on its black surface. I was out of breath, and sweat ran down my back to match the tears of frustration that had coursed down my cheeks. I found I was hoarse from roaring curses.

I dropped the useless weapon in the snow and stood, lungs screaming for the air that I gulped, my raw hands braced on my knees. When I could straighten up and look around me, I found all my companions standing in an awestruck circle, at a very safe distance away.

“Fitz?” Riddle's voice was soft.

“What?”

“Why don't you step back from that axe?”

Instead I stooped down and picked it up. I examined the peened-over edge, and then returned it to my back sling. I crouched, scooped up a handful of snow in my raw palm, and ate it. The moisture eased my throat. “I'm done,” I told them wearily.

“What happened?” Lant demanded.

“Stupidity happened,” I told him. “I drank elfbark tea so their wizard could not use the Skill to hide Bee from me, and I deadened my Skill to the point where I can't use a portal. She might be only two steps away, and I cannot take them!”

“What now, sir?” It was one of my Rousters.

What now? I sank down and sat in the snow. It was cold. I didn't care. I tried to master my thoughts. It seemed to take a long time. I looked up at Riddle, who was still keeping his distance.

“I'm staying right here. Perseverance, take Fleeter. She's fast. Ride ahead to Buckkeep Castle. Riddle and Lant, follow as swiftly as you can, but I'll wager the boy will get there first. Go straight to Skillmistress Nettle. Tell her what has happened and ask her to send me Skilled ones who are experienced at using the stones to travel and who know how to use a blade. Riddle and Lant, if you will, give a full report to King Dutiful.”

Per spoke up fearfully. “Sir, I don't know the fastest way.”

He still held the horses' reins. I looked at Fleeter.
Do you know the swiftest way to the stables at Buckkeep? Can you run that far?

I do.
Her Wit was contained.
You still claim we cannot bond, and you ask this of me?

I do.

Then you will grant me a boon. When I ask it.

I promise it will be so,
I replied humbly. She owed me nothing and I needed this so desperately. I held my breath.

I'll take the boy there.

Bear him well, Fleeter.

I know no other way.
She tossed her head, dismissing me.

Thought is swift. The bargain was sealed in that moment. I met Per's gaze. “Trust Fleeter. She knows the way. Go now.”

For an instant our gazes held. Then Per passed the reins of the other horses to Lant. He mounted Fleeter, turned her head, and she bore him away. I spoke to the others. “Sawyer and Reaper. You ride back to Captain Foxglove. Tell her that she and my guard are to take Lady Shine to Buckkeep as swiftly as they can. Sawyer, pick the six best soldiers in the Rousters. Bring them back here, with whatever supplies you can muster for spending the night in the open.” I looked at Riddle, to see if I'd missed anything.

He was scowling. “I don't like leaving you here.”

“There's nothing you can do for me by remaining.”

He tipped his head. “The body?”

I just looked at him.

“We'll take it. Foxglove can sling her over the white horse and take her back to Buckkeep.”

I didn't care. Riddle turned away from me and began to give his orders

The forest seemed a different world after they had left. I'd sent my lightest follower on my swiftest horse. Per would reach Buckkeep before nightfall. I believed Nettle would listen to him. If not, Lant and Riddle would not be far behind. By tomorrow afternoon, someone should arrive who could use the stone. Someone else would go through the portal and face for me whatever lay on the other side. I might be sending them into an ambush, or into a scene of people deranged by a Skill-passage. They might find my child with her mind forever scrambled and leaking. They might find only tracks leading away. Had Dwalia known where she was taking them, or was it a random escape? Did she know how to use the pillars, and was she strong enough with her wizard to take that many followers through safely?

If she was, we were up against an incredibly powerful opponent. If she wasn't, my quest might end with a child who would never recognize me again.

I knew I should build a fire and prepare for the oncoming night. The falling snow was not yet penetrating the interlaced evergreen boughs overhead, but it would. Colors were already fading from the day in the dimmer light of the forest. Pale gray, gray, dark gray, black. I watched it get darker and did nothing. More than once, I set my hand to the runes on the pillar, and hoped. In vain.

I heard my Rousters before I saw them. I could make out from the tone of their conversation that a night in the open, while their fellows traveled on to the comforts of the barracks at Buckkeep Castle, was not appreciated. They were carrying fire, probably from the cook-fire Foxglove had kindled earlier. The light of their makeshift torches wavered and danced as they approached.