Assassin's Quest

I obliged him by meeting his gaze. Familiar as I was with him, it was still not an easy task. Had those colorless orbs darkened a trifle more? "Perhaps they are a bit darker. No more than ale held up to the light. What will happen to you? Will you continue to have fevers and gain color?"

"Perhaps. I don't know," he admitted after a few moments had passed.

"How could you not know?" I demanded. "What were your elders like?"

"Like you, foolish boy. Human. Somewhere back in my bloodline, there was a White. In me, as rarely happens, that ancient blood is given form again. But I am no more White than I am human. Did you think that one such as I was common to my people'? I have told you. I am an anomaly, even among those who share my mixed lineage. Did you think White Prophets were born every generation? We would not be taken so seriously if we were. No. Within my lifetime, I am the only White Prophet."

"But could not your teachers, with all those records you said they kept, tell you anything of what to expect?"

He smiled, but bitterness was in his voice. "My teachers were too certain that they knew what to expect. They planned to pace my learning, to reveal what they thought I should know when they thought I should know it. When my prophecies were different from what they had planned, they were not pleased with me. They tried to interpret my own words for me! There have been other White Prophets, you see. But when I tried to make them see that I was the White Prophet, they could not accept it. Writing after writing they showed to me, to try to convince me of my effrontery in insisting on such a thing. But the more I read, the more my certainty grew. I tried to tell them my time was nearly upon me.

All they could counsel was that I should wait and study more to be certain. We were not on the best terms when I left. I imagine they were quite startled to find I was gone so young from them, even though I had prophesied it for years." He gave me a strangely apologetic smile. "Perhaps if I had stayed to complete my schooling, we would know better how to save the world."

I felt a sudden sinking in the pit of my stomach. So much had I come to rely on a belief that the Fool, at least, knew what we were about. "How much do you truly know of what is to come?"

He took a deep breath, then sighed it out. "Only that we do it together, Fitzy-fitz. Only that we do it together."

"I thought you had studied all those writings and prophecies …."

"I did. And when I was younger, I dreamed many dreams, and even had visions. But it is as I have told you before; nothing is a precise fit. Look you, Fitz. If I showed you wool and a loom and a set of shears, would you look at it and say, Oh, that is the coat I will someday wear? But once you have the coat on, it is easy to look back and say, Oh, those things foretold this coat."

"What is the good of it, then?" I demanded in disgust.

"The good of it?" he echoed. "Ah. I have never quite thought of it in those terms before. The good of it."

We walked for a time in silence. I could see what an effort it was for him to keep to the pace, and wished vainly there had been a way to keep one of the horses and get it past the slide area.

"Can you read weather sign, Fitz? Or animal tracks?"

"Some, for weather. I am better at animal tracks."

"But in either one, are you always sure you are right?"

"Never. You don't really know until the next day dawns, or you bring the beast to bay."

"So it is with my reading of the future. I never know … Please, let us stop, even if for only a bit. I need to get my breath, and take a sip of water."

I obliged him reluctantly. There was a mossy boulder just off the road, and he seated himself there. Not too far from the road were evergreens of a type I did not know. It rested my eyes to look on trees again. I left the road to sit beside him, and was instantly aware of a difference. As subtle as bees' humming was the working of the road, but when it suddenly ceased, I felt it. I yawned to pop my ears, and suddenly felt more clearheaded.

"Years ago I had a vision," the Fool observed. He drank a bit more water, then passed the skin to me. "I saw a black buck rising from a bed of shining black stone. When first I saw the black walls of Buckkeep rising over the waters, I said to myself, Ah, that is what that meant! Now I see a young bastard whose sigil is a buck walking on a road wrought from black stone. Maybe that is what the dream signified. I don't know. But my dream was duly recorded, and someday, in years to come, wise men will agree as to what it signified. Probably after both you and I are long dead."

I asked a question that had long prickled me. "Kettle says there is a prophecy about my child … the child of the Catalyst …."

"That there is," the Fool confirmed calmly.

"Then you think Molly and I are doomed to lose Nettle to the throne of the Six Duchies?"

"Nettle. You know, I like her name. Very much, I do."

"You did not answer my question, Fool."