Fool's Quest (The Fitz and the Fool, #2)

by Robin Hobb

I was startled. “You were?” “I told you. I have never been wise.”

I was hopelessly befuddled. “What does that have to do with it?” He smiled. “You Farseers are an inbred lot. And yet pitiable by Outislander standards.

I found myself speaking softly as if I were telling an old tale to a young child. And giving it a happy ending, when all know that tales never end, and the happy ending is but a moment to catch one’s breath before the next disaster. But I didn’t

I thought about my father. Did he care that I’d been stolen? Would he come after me? I’m right here, Wolf-Father said. I’ve never left you. My other father. We are one.

Hope this mysterious wolf father figure is explained more. I wish it was Nighteyes but I’m not holding my breath

Her words stopped and for a time she breathed like a bellows. Neither the Fool nor I spoke. Finally she said, “Lord Chade asked me who had done it. The lady of the house had refused to say who had bought my mother’s time that evening. I did not know his name but I knew everything else about him. I knew the name of the scent he wore and the pattern of the lace on his cuffs, and that he had a birthmark below his left ear. I do not think I will ever be able to forget exactly how he looked as my mother clutched him to herself so that I could escape.” Her words dwindled away and a long silence followed. She hiccuped, a strangely normal sound at the end of such a dark tale. “So I came here. To work for Lord Chade. I came here as a boy and I live here mostly as a boy, but sometimes he

How is this legal. What a brutal world. And how the duck does Fitz not know about it. He’s lived here his whole life. So thick! Strong back weak mind this one.

“She was a very convincing boy,” the Fool observed. I could not identify the emotion in his voice. I was looking for a smaller container to carry some of the tincture in. “Well, you would know better about that than I would,” I said without thinking. He laughed. “Ah, Fitz, I would indeed.”

On no account should a pregnant woman make any passage. She will emerge with her womb empty. Transporting an unconscious person is to be avoided, and very small children are little better. Curiously, animals seem to fare better in passages than humans

Skill portals can be used as abortion vessels! In a world with no birth control, at all! Wth

The pillars touch a time or place before consciousness. It makes sense that unborn get absorbed back in since they haven’t attained consciousness yet.

The best way I know to stop thinking is to pick up an axe and attempt to kill someone with it.

Fitz you barely think in the first place

A pang of guilt. Dutiful was my king. Did not I owe him obedience? The prince did, I decided. Bee’s father did not.

The rapist was as handsome as ever; his golden hair gleamed in the firelight, and he smiled with his even white teeth.

Geeezuz

I took the key to her bedchamber from my pocket and placed it on her shelf with her other keepsakes. Beside it I placed the carving. Here, at least, we would all be together.

I gave a final look around the hiding place my little child had created, and then left it behind me forever. The children of the keep would perhaps remember how they had hidden in a secret corridor, but they would search the walls of the pantry in vain for a way in.

And I would take to my grave the trick of opening the study entry. Let her little things be safe there as long as the walls of Withywoods stood, as she had not been. I navigated the narrow corridor and shut the concealed door behind me. Done. All was tidied and...

“Lingstras behave as Catalysts for the Servants. Instead of supporting a true White Prophet and allowing him to find his Catalyst and change the world as his vision bids, they study all the prophecies and employ the Lingstras to set the world in a path that will best benefit them. An example. Say there is a prediction that a disease that kills sheep will sweep through an area where all depend on sheep for a livelihood. The sheep will die and the livelihood of all will be destroyed. What might one do?” “One might study to see what cures there are for a sheep plague? Or warn the shepherds to keep their flocks from mingling.” “Or one might seek to gain from it, by buying up wool and good-quality breeding stock, so that when disease makes wool scarce and sheep hard to find, one can sell them at a great profit.” I was silent, shocked a bit.

“They are tremendously wealthy. They have been corrupt for generations, and they use the prophecies to make themselves ever wealthier. They know what to buy to sell later at a much higher price. They manipulate the future, not to make the world a better place but only to add to their wealth. The White Island is their castle, their palace, and their citadel. At low tide, there is a causeway. When the tide comes in, it becomes a sea-swamp. It is called the White Island not for the White Prophets who once were sheltered and taught there, but for the fortified city, all made of bones.” “Bones?” I exclaimed. “Ancient bones of immense sea creatures. The island itself, some say, is a heap of bones. When they existed, they came to that area to breed and to die. The bones, Fitz…ah. I have never been able to imagine a creature so large as to have such bones. But the palisade that surrounds the city is made of thighbones, as tall and stout and hard as stone. Some say they are bones that turned to stone but kept their shape. And that the palisade and some of the structures are older even than the Servants and the legend of the Whites they once served.

Oh, Fitz. You feel so much.

I was no Burrich, to drop a stone dragon to its knees with the power of my Wit.

What? When did Burrich do this

Always behave as if you are the person you wish to be perceived as. I was an emissary from the Six Duchies, a prince of the blood, and I had every right to be welcomed as such.