The Golden Fool (Tawny Man, #2)

by Robin Hobb

I was still not ready to speak of whatever-it-was that had plucked both Dutiful and myself from the Skill current and reassembled us.

Send me a message from the Fool with the word “lavender” in it.’ My heart jolted in my chest. ‘I thought you said the word to use was “horse”.’ I said. Chade paused at the door of my room. I knew I had rattled him, yet he tried to cover it. ‘Did I? But that seems too common a word, you know. Lavender suits me better. You’re far less likely to write that to me by accident. Farewell.’

It cut me deeply that he would be himself to humour Chade, but not me. If, I reminded myself sourly, the Fool was indeed who he truly was.

‘Enough!’ I thought he intended for us to pause and breathe. Instead, he lowered the tip of his blade to touch the ground and announced, ‘I think that you have come back to what you used to be. Whatever that was, Tom.’ ‘I don’t understand,’ I said after a moment of watching him blowing. He dragged in a deeper breath. ‘When first we began to whet our blades on one another, I felt you were a fighter trying to recall what it was to be a fighter. Now you simply are. You’ve stepped back into your old skin, Tom Badgerlock. I can keep up with you, but only that. And full glad will I be to continue to sharpen my skills against you. But if you want a true challenge to your skills, or someone to teach you something new, you’ll have to look beyond Wim now.’ And then he transferred his blade to his left hand and stepped forward to clasp hands with me. I felt a surge of warmth throughout my whole body. It had been years since I had felt a glow of pride such as that, and yet it was not for myself, but that this veteran fighter saw fit to honour me with such words. I went from the practice courts still bearing every problem that I had brought there with me, but buoyed with the idea that perhaps I possessed the wherewithal to face them.

‘Were not you yourself whispering them to me, even as you told the riddle?’ he asked. Now the King was as perceptive as he was merry. That very night he took the boy back with him to Buckkeep and delivered him over to the Skillmistress, saying, ‘This merry lad comes to you well started on the Skill-path. Find others like him, and train for me a coterie that can laugh as well as Skill.’ And so the boy became known as Merry and the coterie that formed around him was Merry’s Coterie.

Starling operated solely out of her own needs. She was a good musician, even excellent, but she did not have the brilliance that led to eternal fame. She was also a woman who could not bear children, and thus would always fear losing her man to another woman’s charms and fertility.

Perhaps that had been a great part of my charm for her; that I had always found her desirable, that I had never wearied of her body. In addition, I had been something that she had possessed, a powerful secret that she was privy to, as well as a lover and a man who never asked more of her than what she so casually offered. Bereft of my unquestioning enthusiasm for her body, and faced with her husband’s fading ardour, she had begun to wonder if her desirability was fading.

‘Do you still care for me, at all?’ I knew I could not let that question hang unanswered for long. And, in fact, the truth was right before me. ‘Yes. I do.’ I met her eyes as we walked. ‘You’ve hurt me sometimes. You’ve said some cruel things to me, and acted in ways I don’t approve of. And I’ve done the same to you. But, it’s as you said, Starling: fifteen years. When people have that much history together, they tend to take everything for granted. We accept as given the faults as well as the graces. How many songs have you sung before my hearth, for me alone? How many meals have I cooked for you? Fifteen years of knowing one another goes past likes and dislikes, into simple being. We’ve been careless of one another’s feelings, even as Chade and I are careless of one another. Because we trust that what we are and what we know from all the years are more important than words flung in anger.’

‘Well, you think wrong. I will tell you when our agreement is over. And when our agreement is over, it will be because you have ceased to be useful to me. And you will know when you have ceased to be useful to me, because you will cease to be alive. Do you take my hint, Civil Bresinga? Be useful, boy. For your mother’s sake, if not for your own. What titbits do you have for me?’ ‘For my mother’s sake, I have nothing for you. Nor ever will again.’ Civil’s voice shook with both fear and determination.

Laudwine’s voice was almost lazy as he said, ‘Well, boy, either you are foolish or you do not listen well. Answer me this. What are you if you are not one of us?’ ‘Free,’ Civil snarled. ‘Wrong. Dead. Kill him, Padget.’

The words woke the wolf in me. The pain was not banished; it simply became unimportant. Kill first; lick your wounds later. And make your snarl larger than his. ‘I won’t kill you,’ I promised pleasantly. ‘I’m just going to lop off your other hand and let you live.’

Then I was slipping, sliding away from them all into the dark. Keep watch, Nighteyes, I begged him, but there was no answer and no wolf stood over me.

Sleep brought Nighteyes’ old nightmares of a filthy cage and a keeper who beat him.

No. Leave me alone. His hands went away. ‘He doesn’t want us to do this,’ Dutiful reported uncertainly. ‘I don’t care!’ Chade’s voice was furious. ‘He isn’t allowed to die. I won’t permit it.’ Suddenly, the words were louder, shouted right by my ear. ‘Fitz, do you hear me? Do you hear me, boy? I’m not going to let you die, so you might as well cooperate. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and fight to live.’

I’d always meant to make everything right with everyone before I died. ‘Patience, mother,’ I said, but no one heard me. Perhaps I didn’t even speak the words aloud.

A flash of grey moved in the tall grasses. Nighteyes! I called to him. He turned and looked back at me. He showed his teeth in a snarl, warning me back. I tried to move forward but again I was drawn back up to the surface. I thrashed helplessly, a fish on a line, but my body moved not at all.

The silvering magic had faded with time, yet enough of it remained on his fingertips that I had seen the Fool use it in his woodcarving. It allowed him to know, intimately, whatever those fingers touched, be it wood or plant or beast. Or me. Long ago, he had left his fingerprints on my wrist. Lord Golden’s gloves always kept his Skill-fingers covered, protected from casual contact. Yet now the hands that touched the skin of my back were bared.

‘We have failed him. He’s dying.’ ‘No, oh no. Not my boy, not my Fitz. Please, no.’ Light as leaves, the old man’s hands settled on me.

Then his hands seemed to sink inside me and the heat of his touch burned like liquor running through my veins. Someone gasped, and then I felt, I felt the Fool join his mind to Chade’s. They linked in me. It was a feeble thing, this Skilling effort. The old man’s voice cracked as he cried out, ‘Dutiful. Take my hand. Lend me strength.’ Dutiful joined them. It disrupted everything. Light exploded into blackness. ‘Get Thick!’ someone shouted.

I heard the howling of wolves. It...

I screamed, my whole body screamed with the force of the light surging through me. I was a broken limb jerked straight, a dammed river released, snarled hair roughly combed. Rightness tore through me. The cure was worse than the malady. My heart stopped. Voices cried out in dismay. Then my heart slammed into motion again. Air scorched into my lungs.

I passed through an instant of wild wakefulness in which I saw all, knew all, felt all. They surrounded me in a circle. The Fool’s Skilled fingers were pressed to my back. Chade gripped his free hand, and in turn his hand held Dutiful’s. Dutiful clenched Thick’s chubby wrist in his hand and Thick stood, stock-still and stolid, immobile and yet roaring like a bonfire. Chade’s eyes were wide, showing the whites all round and his clenched teeth were bared in a snarl of joy. Dutiful’s face was white with fear, his eyes squeezed shut. And the Fool, the Fool was gold gleaming and joy and a flight of jewelled dragons across a pure blue sky. And the Fool screamed suddenly, shrill as a woman, ‘Stop! Stop! Stop! It’s too much, we’ve gone too far!’

My body stole from itself and I felt it do it, but could not stop the process. And so I was made whole, but at a cost to the strength of that whole. Like a wall built without sufficient mortar, strength was sacrificed to the paucity of materials.

The old man, the golden lord, the prince and the idiot stared down at me,

Thus was Dutiful’s Coterie formed, and it was as poor a way for any five folk to be joined as I could imagine. Not since Crossfire’s Coterie of cripples had there been such a sadly mismatched assortment of Skill-users. The Fool had no true Skill of his own, only the silver shadows on his fingertips and the thread of Skill-awareness we had shared for so long. Thick possessed it in ample quantity but had neither knowledge nor any ambition to gain knowledge to use it well. I had Skill, but as always it faded and then fountained unpredictably, untrained and unreliable. And Chade, gods help us all, had discovered his own talent in the waning of his years. He flourished it like a boy waving a wooden sword, with no concept of what a true edge could do. He had knowledge, and ambition like a floodtide, and yet he did not have the intrinsic understanding that Thick did. Only in our prince did Skill balance both intellect and ambition, and there it was Wit-tainted.

Instead, I recalled memories I had not known I held. I ran with a pack of wolves, shadowing them over the hills. I watched their lives and longed to join them. But always, somewhere, a thread tugged at me, reminding me that eventually I would have to come back.

When I did so, I became aware of the tapestry on the wall facing me. It had been freshly cleaned and mended, but as ever an elongated King Wisdom stared down at me as he made treaty with the Elderlings.

‘It’s night,’ I said stupidly. ‘Yes. Very late at night. Go to sleep now, Fitz.’ ‘What are you doing here so late at night?’ ‘Watching you sleep.’ It didn’t make sense. She had deliberately wakened me. ‘But the milk and the bread?’ ‘I had my page fetch them for me, telling him I could not sleep. Because, in truth, I could not. And then I brought them here, for you.’ She sounded almost defensive. ‘There is a good amidst all this evil that has befallen you. It has made me recall vividly just how much I owe you, and how much I value you.’ She looked down at me for a moment. ‘If I lost you,’ she said unwillingly, ‘I would lose the only one who knows the whole of my story. The only one who looks at me and knows all I went through with my king.’

And neither of them loved him as we did.’

‘Go to sleep, FitzChivalry.’ And when she kissed my mouth, it was like a long drink of cool water, and I knew the kiss was not for me, but for the man we both had lost. ‘Rest and grow strong again,’ she admonished me,

The Witness Stones have stood on the cliffs near Buckkeep Castle for as long as Buckkeep Castle has existed, and likely for longer. Tall and black, the four stones thrust up in a quadrangle from the rocky earth.

‘Civil’s groom met with a most unfortunate accident. He was found dead in a stud horse’s stall, kicked to death. Why he would have gone into the stall at all is a mystery.’ I nodded. Another thread tied off. ‘And Civil’s mother and his holdings?’ Chade looked away from me. ‘The tragic news reached us the day after you were taken prisoner. Lady Bresinga died of food poisoning. A number of her guests and servants died with her. It was horribly sad, but not the least bit shameful or scandalous. Her body was discovered first, but over the next few days, others sickened and swiftly died. Tainted fish is what I heard. Lady Bresinga’s body was sent to her mother’s home for burial. Civil is attending to that sad duty.

I have fainted from pain before, but never, I think, from pure surprise. As it was, I did not lose consciousness completely, but crumpled to sit in a heap on the floor. ‘Tom?’ Lord Golden asked in annoyance and surprise. I had no attention for him. I slid the mirror across the rug to me and stared down into it. Then I touched my face. The scar I had borne for so long was gone. My nose was not precisely straight, but the long-ago break was far less evident.

The sword-wound was gone, yes, but gone also was the ancient, pulling scar the festered arrowhead had left in my back. I inspected the place where my neck met my shoulder. Years ago, a Forged one had bitten a chunk from me there, leaving a puckered scar. The flesh was smooth.

At the door, the ferret leaped out to challenge me. Gilly did a wild dance, inviting me to battle for the territory. ‘You can have it,’ I told him. ‘You’d probably win anyway.’ Ignoring his rushes at my feet,

When I awoke, the ferret was sleeping under my chin.

What a man started with the Skill and his will, the body often took over. The body understood healing. Yet it also understood that sometimes hasty repairs were more important than perfect ones, that closing the wound might be more important than smooth skin afterwards. So the scroll put it. The body understood conserving one’s strength and reserves against tomorrow’s needs. The scroll cautioned Skill-users to be wary of ignoring the body’s own tendencies, and to be circumspect with how ardently they pursued a repair.

The Skill-healing seems to have put right a lot of old damage. It interests me that you do not have a headache after Skilling. It will interest me even more if you cease having to fear seizures.’

Do you think, then, that the Skill might be used on Thick? To repair what is wrong and make him normal?’ Chade shook his head slowly. ‘“Different” is not “wrong”, Fitz. Thick’s body recognizes itself as correct. His differences are no more to him than … well, here I am guessing, but I suspect that just as one man is tall and another is short, so it is with Thick. His body grew to some plan of its own. Thick is what he is. Perhaps we should just be grateful that we have him, even if he is different.’

Yes, the Bingtown Traders had a dragon-breeding plantation far up the Rain Wild River. One, or perhaps two, full-grown dragons had been seen in flight. They were variously described as blue, silver or blue and silver. The Bingtown Traders fed the dragons, and in return, the dragons guarded Bingtown Harbour. But they would not fly out of sight of shore; which was why the Chalcedean ships still were able to menace and plunder Bingtown’s trading fleet. The dragon-breeding farm was tended by a race of changelings, half-dragon and half-human. It was in the midst of a beautiful city, where wondrous gems glowed from the walls at night.

Yet the old wooden circlet seemed too humble to have come from a city of marvels and magic. When he had shown the ancient crown to me, I had recognized it immediately, having seen it once before, in a dream. In my vision, it had been colourfully painted and bright feathers had stood up above the circlet to nod in the breeze. A woman had worn it, pale even as the Fool had been pale then, and the folk of some ancient Elderling city had paused in their celebration to listen and laugh at her mocking words. I had interpreted her status as a jester. Now I wonder if I had missed a subtler meaning. I looked at them, spread like a fan, and a sudden shiver ran over me. They linked us, I knew with a sudden chill. They linked the Fool and me, not only to one another, but to another life.

Perhaps our relationship had changed too profoundly for us to relate as Fitz and the Fool. Perhaps Tom Badgerlock and Lord Golden were all that was left to us.

‘Do you know what it means when she names you Sacrifice like that? Do you know how my mother thinks of you?’ He pushed the bread toward me. ‘You should eat. You look awful.’ He took a breath. ‘When she names you Sacrifice, it means that she thinks of you as the rightful king of the Six Duchies. She probably has since my father died. Or went into his dragon.’

“The Tom-cat that Burrich adopted seems to be making himself at home.” “Near stepped on Burrich’s Tom-cat as he ran through the courtyard yesterday. He seems to get bigger every day.” That’s how they named you in the letters, against spies and even, at first, against Patience reading them. In the last one, you are just “Tom”. “Tom had crossed Burrich and been walloped for it. He seemed remarkably unrepentant. In truth, Burrich is the one I pitied.”

Tom. And Patience had, I thought, so carelessly hung that name on me. And I had kept it and little known its history.

The body of the human does not vanish; indeed, it remains very vulnerable at such times and may even appear dead. Extreme physical damage to a human’s body or imminent death may make a human consciousness take refuge in his Wit-beast’s body. Old Blood folk disparage this practice and strongly urge against it.

The same is true for a human who takes in the fleeing soul of his animal partner. Such an act is regarded as extreme selfishness as well as being both immoral and unwise.

Fish? Fennel asked me. Jinna says cheese. Cheese isn’t fish, but it’s better than nothing.

‘We have to go on the Prince’s quest with him. To Aslevjal. To find Icefyre. Then we must prevent the Prince from slaying him. Instead we must free the black dragon trapped beneath the ice so he can rise, to become Tintaglia’s consort. So that they can mate and there can be real dragons in the world again.’

‘This time, on Aslevjal.’ A terrified smile trembled at the corners of his mouth. ‘It is my turn to die.’