Fool’s Assassin

The Skill-reaching was a shout inside my mind, an anxious cry that was inaudible to anyone else in the market. I knew in an instant that it was Nettle and that she was full of worry. The Skill was like that: so much information conveyed in an instant. A part of my mind noted that she called me FitzChivalry, not Tom Badgerlock or Tom or even Shadow Wolf. She never called me Father or Papa. I’d lost the right to those titles years ago. But “FitzChivalry” spoke of matters that had more to do with the Farseer crown than with our family ties.

What’s wrong? I settled myself on the bench and fixed an empty smile on my face as I Skill-reached across the distance to Buckkeep Castle on the coast. I saw the uplifted branches of the oak against the blue sky, but was also aware of a darkened room around Nettle.

It’s Chade. We think he took a fall and perhaps struck his head. He was found sprawled on the steps to the Queen’s Garden this morning. We don’t know how long he had been there, and we’ve been unable to rouse him. King Dutiful wishes you to come at once.

I’m here, I assured her. Let me see him.

I’m touching him now. You can’t feel him? I couldn’t and Dutiful couldn’t, and Thick was completely flummoxed. “I see him but he’s not there,” he said to us.

Fear sent cold tendrils from my belly up to my heart. An old memory of Verity’s Queen, Kettricken, falling down those same steps—victim of a plot to kill her unborn child in the fall—filled my mind. I immediately wondered if Chade’s fall had been an accident at all. I tried to hide the thought from Nettle as I reached through her to grope for Chade. Nothing. I can’t sense him. Does he live? I asked, scrabbling for some semblance of calm. I pushed my Skill, and became more aware of the room where Nettle sat beside a draped bed. The curtained windows made it dim. There was a small brazier burning somewhere; I smelled the piercing smoke of restorative herbs. I sat out in the fresh air but felt the stuffiness of the closed room all around me. Nettle drew a breath and showed me Chade through her eyes. My old mentor was laid out as straight beneath his blankets as if he were stretched on a funeral pyre. His face was pale, his eyes sunken, and a bruise darkened one temple and swelled his brow on that side. I could see King Dutiful’s councilor through my daughter’s eyes, but had no fuller sense of him.

He breathes. But he will not wake and none of us has any sense of him being here. It’s as if I’m touching—

Dirt. I finished the thought for her. That was how Thick had expressed it years ago, when I had begged him and Dutiful to reach out with the Skill and help me heal the Fool. He had been dead to them. Dead and already turning back into earth. But he’s breathing?

I already told you he was! Frantic impatience bordering on anger tinged her words. Fitz, we would not have reached for you if this was a simple healing. And if he were dead, I’d tell you that. Dutiful wants you to come right now, as soon as possible. Even with Thick lending strength to them, the Skill-coterie has not been able to reach him. If we can’t reach him, we can’t heal him. You are our last hope.

I’m at Oaksbywater market. I’ll need to go back to Withywoods, pack a few things, and get a saddle horse. I’ll be there in three days, or less.

That won’t do. Dutiful knows that you won’t like the idea, but he wants you to come by the stone portals.

I don’t do that. I asserted it strongly, already knowing that for Chade, I would risk it, as I had not in all the years since I had been lost in the stones. The thought of entering that gleaming blackness raised the hair on the back of my neck and my arms. I was terrified to the point of illness just thinking of it. Terrified. And tempted.