Fool’s Quest

“I came to some steps and went down them. And down and down and down. The smell of damp grew stronger and the walls were moist and the steps became slippery. Almost slimy. And then they just stopped. My hands were so cold, but I stood there, tracing each brick and line of mortar. Oh, Fitz. I stood there and wept, for I did not think I had the strength to limp back up all those steps. I think I went a little mad. I pounded on the wall in front of me, and to my shock it gave way. Not much, but a little. I pushed and a brick fell out, and then I pushed and pulled at the next one and finally I had a hole I could wriggle through. I had no idea where I might be and I had to wedge my way out and I could not feel how far I would fall or what I would land on. But there was no help for it, and so I let go and then I fell onto ancient straw matted with damp and who knows what else. When I could get up and grope around, I found I was in a very small chamber. There was a wooden door, with a tiny window. I was terrified then, but the door of that cell was not fastened. I went out and down a corridor. I felt other doors, and I shouted, but no one answered.” He gave an odd laugh. “Such a king he is. Dutiful’s dungeons are full of empty cells!”

I did not speak aloud how happy I was to hear that.

“So out I went, blundering on and on. Then I smelled a torch and I turned a corner and I could sense a bit of light. Torches have to be tended. So there I stayed, and frightened the poor young guard who found me there. But she soon realized who I was and told me that Lady Nettle had had the whole castle and grounds searched for me. And she brought me back up here to my rooms, and Nettle came to see if I was all right.”

And now it was time to fill in the holes in his wondrously porous tale. I started with the obvious question. “Why are you annoyed with Ash?”

The Fool stiffened up like a prim old duchess. “He refused to obey me.”

“What did you ask him to do?”

“To fetch something for me.”

“Fool, this is already becoming tedious.”

He turned his face away from me. “Dragon’s blood,” he said quietly.

“El of the Sea, Fool! Are you mad? With all the changes it already wrought in you, changes that may still be going on, you would take more of it?”

“I wasn’t going to swallow it!”

“Then what?”

He held up his hand and rubbed his sliced fingertips together. “These.”

“Why?”

He took a deep breath. “I’ve told you that I’ve begun to dream again. And that sometimes when I dream, I am a dragon. And in those dreams, I know things. I dream of a place or perhaps a time when a river ran silver with Skill. And dragons drank it and grew strong and intelligent.”

I waited.

“And in other dreams, the silver was gone from the river and it was just water. And the dragons grieved and sought for it, and found a different source for it. Ash described dragon’s blood to me, Fitz. Dark red, with threads of silvery stuff coiling and swirling in it. I think the silver is pure Skill. I think it’s why that dose healed me, almost like a Skill-healing. And that more of it, on my fingertips, might restore them.”

“Do you not recall Verity, with his hands coated in Skill? He did that to himself, knowing he was going to give up his life. Have you forgotten having to glove that hand at all times when you did have touches of Skill on your fingers? Why would you wish for that again?”

He kept his face turned away from me but I thought I knew his motive. He needed to be able to see again. Had he thought to attempt to cure his own blindness? A wave of pity for him washed over me. He wanted his sight so badly. I wished I could give it to him. But I could not without risking losing my own. And I would need my eyes to fulfill my goal. And his.

He had left my question hanging and I let it be. I dragged a chair close to his and sat down. “I need your help,” I said bluntly. As I had known it would, it brought his full attention to me. But he knew me even better than I thought he did.

“We’re going, aren’t we?” he asked almost in wonder. “You’ve finally found your anger. And we will go to Clerres and we will kill them all.”

My anger had always been with me. It had been the fire I needed to forge myself into the proper weapon. My time in that fire had tempered me into what I needed to be. Now my steel had been quenched in grief. But I did not correct him. “Yes. But I need to plan. I need to know all that you know, of how you traveled and how long it took to get there. Details, Fool. When you were so ill and injured, I did not press you. But now you must wring every detail from your memories.”

He shifted about in his chair. “How I came back took far longer than how I went there with Prilkop. Almost as long as it took me to journey here the very first time I came. But I think you have the means to make at least the first leg of our journey as he did.”

“The Skill-pillars.”