Fool’s Quest

I returned to my bedchamber. I went to my locked clothing chest, and from the layer beneath its false bottom I provisioned myself with poisons, unguents, powders, blades, and all that an assassin-turned-avenger might need. For Dutiful had unwittingly freed me. A royal assassin was bound to his king’s word, to slay only as directed. Now I would slay where I would.

I had a heavy belt, one of doubled leather. Methodically, I filled the concealed compartments. The sheaths that fit inside a boot and hugged my ankle, the ugly bracelet that concealed a garrote, the belt-buckle that when snatched free became a short dagger. The gloves with the brass knuckles sewn into them. So many artful, deadly, nasty little tools, to sort and select and compactly pack. I had to leave room for the supplies I’d already purloined from Chade’s old lair. I would go prepared.

I carried my tidy pack down to my private den. Outside, darkness still reigned. Soon enough I would rouse Perseverance and bid him ready our horses. Soon enough I would bid Withywoods farewell. I knew I should rest. I could not. I took out Bee’s books and sat down by the fire.

They were hard to read. It was not her clear handwriting or painstaking illustrations. It was my reaction to the pages. There was too much of Bee in them, too much of what I had lost. I read again the first part of her journal. The references to Molly and her account of the day her mother had died were agonizing for me. I closed that book and carefully set it down. Her dream journal was little better. Here again I found the butterfly man dream. And a reference to the Wolf of the West and how he would come from the Mountains to save all. I turned a page. Here was a dream of a well brimming with silver. Another of a city where the ruler sat on a giant Skull Throne. At the bottom of each page she had carefully judged how likely each dream was to be a true dream and likely to happen. The one of the butterfly man had been extremely likely. The dream of the beggar I had to recognize.

Alone by the fire, I could admit to myself that Bee had been precognizant to some extent. Some things she had right, such as the butterfly cloak. Others were wrong. The one wearing it had been a woman. Did it mean she was truly more mine than the Fool’s? The Fool, I had always felt, was adept at twisting his strange dreams into predictions that had come true. Often I had not heard about the dream until after the event that shadowed it. But Bee’s seemed almost clear to me, even though each seemed to have parts that did not quite fit with what had happened. The Wolf of the West. I’d heard those words first from the Fool. The Fool and Bee had shared a vision? I recalled what Shine had said, that Bee had been feverish and then shed a layer of skin to become paler. I decided that no matter what she had taken from the Fool, it made her no less the daughter of Molly and me.

I came to her dream of a city and of standing stones with cleanly carved runes on them. That one, I felt, was obviously not a true dream, even though she had marked it as extremely possible. I had no idea of how many of my private scrolls she had read; likely my accounts were responsible for some of her dreams. I leaned closer, studying her illustration. Yes. The runes were mostly accurate. That was almost the rune for the Elderling city with the map-tower. It had a name now. Kelsingra. Yes. That she would have taken directly from one of my scrolls. She had marked it as likely to happen. So she had foreseen being snatched into a Skill-stone, although she had copied the wrong rune from my papers. The thought that she had foreseen her own end hurt my heart. I could bear to read no more. I closed her book and nestled both of them carefully into my pack.

As dawn broke, I did my final task. The hardest farewell of Withywoods.

The fire had nearly died in my private study. The scroll racks were emptied, their contents either burned or packed for shipment back to the Buckkeep libraries. The secret compartment in my desk had gone undiscovered; if anyone found it now, they would find only emptiness.

I shut the tall doors, lit a candle, and triggered the hidden door to the spy-passageways. For a long moment I debated. Then I picked up the triptych the Fool had carved of Nighteyes, him, and me. I wondered if the peculiar hinge had been discovered in the course of the repairs, but inside Bee’s tiny den, all was still as she had left it. Nothing had been moved since the last time I’d been here. I smelled a faint scent of cat, but if he was about, he took care not to let me see him. I suspected he laired here now, for Bee’s supply of her mother’s scented candles was not nibbled by mice. I refused to wonder how he came and went. Cats, I knew, had their ways. 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.