The Golden Fool (Tawny Man, #2)

by Robin Hobb

At the core of the White Prophet heresy is the concept that for ‘every age’ (and this space of time is never defined) there is born a White Prophet. The White Prophet comes to set the world on a better course. He or she (and in this duality of gender we may see some borrowing from the true faith of Sa) does this by means of his or her Catalyst. The Catalyst is a person chosen by the White Prophet because he stands at a juncture of choices. By changing what happens to the Catalyst in his lifetime, the White Prophet enables the world to follow a truer, better course of history.

Nor can any of the adherents of this heresy explain the idea that the world and time roll in a circular track, endlessly repeating itself.

‘We do know there was a Pale Woman advising Kebal Rawbread for much of the Red Ship Wars. But we assumed that she perished alongside him. What could she have to do with Elliania? And even if she had lived, why should she attempt to be a part of our matchmaking, let alone have an interest in you or Lord Golden?

I still got headaches, though they did not compare to the ones that had previously afflicted me.

In dress, I went back to the plain blue of a Buck guardsman, with a purple and white tunic for the times when I must show myself as belonging to the Queen. I derived an inordinate amount of pleasure from openly wearing her fox badge on my breast. It matched the fox pin I wore within my shirt and above my heart.

We discovered that Gilly loved raisins as much as Thick did. The ferret’s pleading dance for them could reduce Thick to tears of laughter. We all began to put on flesh, Thick probably more than was good for him. He became as round and his hair as glossy as a noble lady’s fat little lapdog. Blessed now with food, care and acceptance, a placid and sweet nature sometimes showed in the little man. I enjoyed those simple hours with him.

I missed him, but also dreaded confronting him eventually. I did not want him to read in my eyes that I had betrayed him to Chade. It was for his own good, I excused myself. Dragons be damned. If simply keeping him away from Aslevjal would keep him alive, then his displeasure would be a small cost.

this waking dream? From Buckkeep, Chade answered joyously. From Buckkeep comes this call, oh ye Skilled ones! Awake and come to Buckkeep, so that your magic may be awakened and you may serve your prince! To Buckkeep? Nettle echoed.

like a trumpet call from the distance, a far voice: I know you now. I see you now.

the Princess would have the dancing bear for her very own. Such a begging has not been heard for many a year, but at last she prevailed and her father gave the bear’s keeper a whole handful of gold coins for the beast. And the Princess herself took hold of the chain that went to the bear’s ring, and led the great, hulking creature up to her own bedchamber. But in the depth of the night, while all else in the keep slept, the boy rose up and threw off his bearskin. And when he showed himself to the Princess, she found him as comely a youth as she had ever seen. And it was not so much that he had his way with her, as that she had hers with him.

One man armed with the right word may do what an army of swordsmen cannot. Mountain proverb

In the beginning of the world, there were the Old Blood folk and the beasts of the fields, the fish in the water and the birds of the sky. All lived together in balance if not in harmony. Among the Old Blood folk, there were but two tribes. One was comprised of the blood-takers, who were the people who bonded to creatures who ate the flesh of other creatures. And the other folk were the blood-givers, and they bonded to those who ate only plants. The two tribes had nothing to do with each other, no more than a wolf has to do with a sheep; that is, they met only in death. Yet each respected the other as an element of the land, just as a man respects both a tree and a fish.

So it was when the daughter of a blood-taker, bonded to a fox, fell in love with the son of a blood-giver, bonded to an ox. What harm, they thought, could come of their love? They would do no injury to one another, neither woman to man nor fox to ox. And so they both went apart from their own peoples, lived in their love and in time brought forth children of their own. But of their children, the first son was a blood-taker and the first daughter was a blood-giver. And the third was a poor witless child, deaf to every animal of every kind and doomed always to walk only in his own skin. Great was the sorrow of the family when their eldest son bonded to a wolf and their eldest daughter to a deer. For his wolf killed her deer, and she took the life of her brother in recompense. Then they knew the wisdom of the oldest ways, for a predator cannot bond with prey. But worse was to come, for their witless child sired only witless children, and thus were born the folk who are deaf to all the beasts of the world.

When Queen Kettricken gently asked of him how he wished to be known then, Swift had lifted his pale face and answered quietly but firmly, ‘Witted. It is what I am and will not deny.’ ‘Swift Witted it shall be then,’ she had replied with a smile.

Even as I spoke to her and she focused on me, I felt my dream self assume the shape she always gave me. I sat down and curled my tail around my forefeet. I grinned at her wolfishly. I do not look like this, you know. How would I know what you look like? she asked me peevishly. You tell me nothing about yourself. Abruptly, there were daisies growing at her feet. A tiny blue bird alighted in a branch over her head and sat fanning its delicate wings. I asked her curiously. Her hands closed around the treasure she clasped. She pressed it to her chest, concealing it within her heart. Had she fallen in love, then? Let me see if I can guess yours, I offered playfully. It pleased me unreasonably to think of my daughter in love and treasuring that first secret realization. I hoped the young man was worthy of her. She looked alarmed. No. Stay away from it. It isn’t even mine. It was only entrusted to me. Has a young man, perhaps, spoken his heart to you? I hazarded merrily. Her eyes widened in dismay. Go away! Don’t guess.

Instead the creature leapt into her hair. It dug its claws in, tangling itself in her tresses. It grew suddenly larger, the size of a cat, and wings sprouted from its shoulders. Nettle shrieked and swatted at it, but it clung there. It lifted its head, suddenly at the end of a long neck and regarded me with spinning silver eyes. Small but perfect, a blue dragon sneered at me. Its voice changed terribly. Alien and freezing, it rasped against my soul. ‘Tell me your secret, Dream Wolf!’ it demanded. ‘Tell me of a black dragon and an island! Tell me now or I tear her head from her shoulders.’

I do not know what she did. It was not so much that she shifted her shape out of the dream as that she trapped the dragon. It became blue glass in her hands, and then she flung it from her. It struck the soil at my feet and exploded in a storm of sharp fragments. The pain of the cuts it dealt me jabbed me back into wakefulness. I sat up with a gasp,

I feared not only that something from the Skill-current had found us both, but also I feared the Skill-talent I had sensed in Nettle as she had saved us both from its deadly regard.

How I wish that our prince were setting out with a traditional coterie of six trained Skill-users at his beck and call. Instead we are five, and one is the Prince himself.’ ‘Four, for we leave Lord Golden behind,’ I pointed out. ‘Four,’ Chade agreed sourly. He looked at me and Nettle’s name hung, unuttered, between us. Then, as if to himself, he said, ‘And there is no time now to train any others. In truth, there is scarcely time enough to train those we have.’

For a teetering instant, I feared he would misunderstand my words. Then I knew that he would know exactly what I meant by them. For years, he had shown that he understood my feelings, in the silences he kept. Before we parted company, I had to repair, somehow, the rift between us. The words were the only tool I had. They echoed of the old magic, of the power one gained when one knew someone’s true name.

‘You said once that I might call you Beloved, if I no longer wished to call you Fool.’ I took a breath. ‘Beloved, I have missed your company.’

‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘I suppose that if you were going to have an appropriate name for me, it would still be Fool. So let us leave it at that, Fitzy. To you, I am the Fool.’ He looked into the fire and laughed softly. ‘It balances, I suppose. Whatever is to come for us, I will always have these words to recall now.’ He looked at me and nodded gravely, as if thanking me for returning something precious to him.

‘Then, good night, Fool.’ I opened the door and went out into the corridor. ‘Good night, beloved,’ he said from his fireside chair. I shut the door softly behind myself.

write, I sand the wet ink, I consider my own words. Then I burn them. Perhaps when I do so, the truth goes up the chimney as smoke. Is it destroyed, or set free in the world? I do not know.

My father’s raising was given over, all those many years ago, to my grandfather’s half-brother, Chade. In his turn, my father gave me over to his right-hand man to rear. And when I became a father, I entrusted that the same hand could best raise my daughter in safety. Instead, I took in another man’s son and made Hap mine. Prince Dutiful, my son and yet not mine, also came to be my student. And in time, Burrich’s own son came to me, to learn from me that which his own father would not teach him. Each circle spins off a circle of its own.

In each cycle, we may correct old errors, but I think we make as many new ones. Yet what is our alternative? To commit the same old errors again? Perhaps having the courage to find a better path is having the courage to risk making new mistakes.