The Tawny Man Trilogy 3-Book Bundle: Fool's Errand, Golden Fool, Fool's Fate

by Robin Hobb

Silence can ask all the questions, where the tongue is prone to ask only the wrong one.

“He once told me that you were incapable of completely trusting anyone. That wanting to trust, and fearing to, would always divide your soul.

Deliberately I turned my thoughts to the place and the people who were once encompassed in the word HOME. When I wallow in something dead to reawaken the savor of it, you rebuke me.

What is your loyalty to that pain? To abandon

Leave old pains alone. When they cease coming to call, do not invite them back.”

“There is nothing dishonorable about abandoning pain. Sometimes peace is most quickly found when a man simply stops avoiding it.”

He glanced over at me, caught my eyes on him, and stared back at me, a strange avidity in his face. His look was so intense I glanced aside from it.

The openness of that golden gaze combined with the bond between us, gold and silver twining. I recognized and rejected a truth I did not want to know.

His voice seemed to grow truer in my ears, and I knew he sang the song of an exile longing for his homeland.

If coin was exchanged, I never saw it. It is always best not to see what is meant to be concealed.

It was the merest trickle of thought between us, sieved through his pain and caution. It was like rain after a drought. I cursed myself for all the years we had shared this, and I had let my soul go yearning after the Skill. The end of this sharing loomed before me, and I only now perceived the full sweetness of all we had known. My wolf was a tottering step or two from death. I would likely kill myself, or be killed, before the

afternoon was over. The dilemma of what one of us would do when the other died had been snatched away from us, and replaced with the reality. Neither of us would go on forever.

I saw Malta brought to the Fool. He took her reins but did not mount her. Instead, he led her in a slow walk, one that matched the pace Nighteyes could sustain. I stared after them, a man and a horse and a wolf walking away from me. Their figures dwindled smaller, and I became aware of Dutiful standing in the circle of my arm, his breathing matching mine. Life walked away from me, and I embraced death here. “I’m

so sorry,” I whispered by his ear. “I’ll make it fast.” He already knew. My son’s reply was the barest stirring of air. “Not yet. A small corner still belongs to me. I can hold her off for a time, I think. We will let them get as far as they can.”

I felt our bond go wide and open, as if he had invited all the Witted creatures in the world in to share our joining. All the web of life on the whole hillside suddenly swelled within my heart, linked and meshed and woven through with one another. It was too glorious to contain. I had to go with him; a morning this wondrous must be shared. “Wait!” I cried, and in shouting the word, I woke myself. Nearby, the Fool sat up, his hair tousled. I blinked. My mouth was full of salve and wolf-hair, my fingers buried deep in his coat. I clutched him to me, and my grip sighed his last stilled breath out of his lungs. But Nighteyes was gone. Cold rain was cascading down past the mouth of the cave.

He asked the next question quickly, as if it were important to ask, so important that he feared the answer. “Will you be staying?” “Staying?” “Will I see you around Buckkeep Castle?” He sat down suddenly at the table across from me and met my eyes directly with Verity’s blunt stare. “Tom Badgerlock. Will you teach me?”

Always. I am no one’s brother. I am no man’s son. I am not anyone’s best friend.”

To be loved, in a familiar, unfearing way. To be someone’s best friend, even if that someone was only a cat.

“Oh, poor

deprived lad.” He lifted his head and glowered at me. I returned his look levelly. Then a slow smile came to his face. “Spoken like a true friend,” he said.

I abruptly heard the echo of the wolf’s values in my thoughts. I caught my breath for a moment, and then let the pain pass.

How can anyone let an animal seize his heart so completely, when their lives are so short? What can you gain that is worth all the pain each time your partner dies?”

When she was settled, she glanced over at me and our eyes met for the first time since I had knocked. She started, and then leaned closer, peering at me. “Oh, Tom!” she exclaimed in a voice of deep sympathy. She leaned toward me,

studying my face. “Poor man, what’s happened to you?” Empty as a hollow log when the mice are eaten. “My wolf died.”

“Will you be all right?” she asked me. It was not an empty question; she genuinely listened for my reply. “In time,” I told her, and for the first

time, I admitted that was true. As disloyal as the thought felt, I knew that as time passed, I would be myself again.

The death of Nighteyes gutted me. I walked wounded through my life in the days that followed, unaware of just how mutilated I was.

The strangest part was my slow realization that I chose that isolation.

Nothing will ever make his death better. All I can look forward to is becoming accustomed to being alone.”

“I perceive something about myself now; I came because I wanted you to know that I knew you were in pain. Not because I could heal you of it, but because I wanted you to be aware that I shared that pain through our connection. I suspect there is an aspect of selfishness to that; that I wished you also to be aware of it, I mean. A burden shared not only can lighten it; it can form a bond between those who share it. So that no one is left to bear it alone.”

It was only when fate granted that to me that I realized the cost of it. I could set aside my responsibilities to others and live my life as I pleased only when I also severed my ties to them. I could not have it both ways.

To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibilities, to be bound by the rules of that group.

To recognize you are the source of your own loneliness is not a cure for it. But it is a step toward seeing that it is not inevitable, and that such a choice is not irrevocable.

“It’s too late to apologize,” I told him seriously. “I’ve already forgiven you.”

Strange, how being left out of a secret always feels like a betrayal of trust.

won’t even see what is put right on the table before you. Men. If it was raining soup, you’d be out there with a fork.”

“We could have gone all our lives and never had this conversation. Now you have doomed us both to recall it forever.”

“Have you ever suddenly realized that there was someone you loved, but presently did not like very much?”

A crack had been opened. Tomorrow’s possibilities were gaining strength, growing in the light of Web’s optimism. I wondered if they could grow enough to cast their shadows over the weeds of yesterday’s wrongs.

Perhaps having the courage to find a better path is having the courage to risk making new mistakes.

She wept as she went, she wept as she spoke the words, and she wept as she returned. For two days and two nights, the tears did not cease to flow from her eyes, and he allowed her this mourning. Then Hoquin said to her, “Wild-eye, cease your tears.” And she did. Because she must.

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.

And I set no limits on that love. “It’s too much,” I said brokenly. “No one can give that much. No one.”

But most jarring for me was that it evoked a memory I both did and did not recognize: another time and an older woman, prying something fascinating and shiny from my chubby-fisted grasp, while saying, “No, Keppet. Not for little boys.”

First memory of anything before 6! His NAME!

I sat down heavily on the pyre beside him. Rigor had kept his body in its defensive curl. I could do nothing about that. I wished that I could have smoothed the lines of terror and pain from his face before I sent him on his way. I pushed his golden hair back from his tawny forehead. “Oh, Beloved,” I said. I bent and kissed his brow in farewell. And then, grasping the rightness of that foreign tradition, I named him as myself. For when I burned him, I knew I would be ending myself, as well. The man I had been would not survive this loss. “Good-bye, FitzChivalry Farseer.”

I lifted the crown to the sun. Through my flowing tears, it shone iridescent, and the feathers seemed to waver gently in the summer breeze. Then, with an almost physical wrench, I tore it out of time’s destined path. I clapped it firmly upon my own brow. As the world spun around me, I lay my body down on my funeral pyre, wrapped my arms around my friend, and gave myself over to whatever awaited me beyond it.

I edged closer to him and, despite his resistance, carefully turned him to face me and took him into my awkward embrace. He was weeping silently and I thumbed the tears from his cheeks. Mindful of his raw back, I drew him close, tucked his head under my chin, and wrapped my arms around him. I kissed the top of his head gently. “Go to sleep, Fool,” I told him gruffly. “I’m here. I’ll take care of you.” His hands came up between us and I feared he would push me away. Instead, he clutched the front of my shirt and clung tightly to me. All that night, I cradled him in my arms, as closely as if he were my child or my lover. As closely as if he were my self, wounded and alone. I held him while he wept, and I held him after his weeping was done. I let him take whatever comfort he could in the warmth and strength of my body. I have never felt less of a man that I did

so.

And yet, it was not going to be easy. None of it was going to be easy. Yet, with an odd sideways tilt of my heart, I realized I was anticipating it, that I believed that beyond the sorrow we would share at Burrich’s death, there might eventually be something else.

then the Fool said quietly, “Fitz, home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there anymore.”