Fool’s Quest

And so I did. By the time two different serving girls came to guide us to our rooms, I felt a pleasant lassitude. There was no heavy sensation of being drugged, simply the drowsy feeling that I would be easily able to fall asleep.

The serving girls were not Elderlings, but were clad in bright garments similar to those Malta had been wearing. One was all in red, the other in blue. Amber took my arm and I guided her as we followed the girl in blue. Lant came with us. Spark and Perseverance came behind us and I heard Spark take up a conversation with the girl in red. Evidently they had all dined together earlier. “I will move across the river tomorrow,” one girl said to Spark. It seemed the continuance of an earlier conversation. “I decided tonight. The whispering has grown too loud for me to bear. I had hoped, though it seems silly to admit it now, to someday become favored of a dragon and be Changed.” She shook her head. “But I cannot endure it. All day, in the streets, the walls mutter to me. And at night, even in the quiet houses, my dreams are not my own. I will try my luck across the river, although I will miss the lights of the city and the warmth and comfort of these buildings. All winter, the workers there have been clearing land. In spring we will dig and plant. And perhaps this time the crops will prosper.”

The girl in red paused at a door and looked at Lant. “My mistress says she hopes you will find the chambers she ordered for you pleasing, but if you do not, you have but to ring a bell, and someone will come to make it comfortable for you. Oh. And to ring the bell, you need only touch the image of a flower beside the door.” She opened the door and bowed to Lant. “For Lord Lant, this room has been prepared. Perseverance has told us which pack to bring here. You will find the couch adapts to your body. The jug with the figures of fish on it will keep your wash-water warm. A bath will be filling for you. I tell you these things so that you may not be alarmed by them.” Lant listened gravely, nodded to her with great equanimity, bade us good night. and entered. I judged he would soon be asleep.

The girl glanced back at us with a smile. “Your quarters are at the end of the corridor.” She led us on. I was definitely feeling the effects of the soporific. The weariness I had been so long denying was rising in me like an inevitable tide. Yet it was not the aching tiredness that was too familiar to me but only the gentle looming of easy sleep. She stopped at a door that seemed a trifle grander than the one that had led to Lant’s room. The door was neither wood nor stone, but an unfamiliar substance carved in twists and twinings like the bark of a contorted tree. It reminded me of ivory, in a darker tone. “Your chambers,” she said quietly. “When you wake tomorrow, touch the tree image by the door and food will be brought for you.”

“Thank you,” I said. She touched the door and it swung silently open. I entered to find myself in a sitting room. My makeshift pack looked sadly out of place on the delicately carved table in the center of the room. The floor was finished with hundreds of tiny triangular tiles, and the walls were painted to resemble trees. The room smelled like a summer forest. Beyond the sitting room, I saw a chamber with a large bed and beyond that a sight I could scarcely believe. I crossed the bedchamber and stared into the alcove beyond it. A pool twice the size of the bed was filling with steaming water scented with forest herbs. A table beside it was stacked with thick towels, squat pots of soap and ewers of oils, and several Elderling robes in bright colors.

I heard the door shut behind me. I walked toward the water, shedding clothes as I went. I sat down on the floor like a child to pull off my boots, then stood to drop my trousers. I did not hesitate at the water’s edge. The lip of the pond slanted down and I waded into it and then sat down in the deepest end so that the water lapped my unshaven chin. Slowly the warmth penetrated my flesh, and I felt my muscles relax. I leaned back as the water grew deeper until it lifted me and I hung in it. Slowly I cupped water and rubbed my face, and then ducked, rubbing salty sweat from my hair and head. When I came up the Fool was standing at the edge of the pool.

“How deep is it?”

“Not over your head.” I ducked again and came up. Water streamed from my hair and down my back. Had hot water ever felt so good? It was hard to think of anything besides the sensation. “Why didn’t you go to your room?”

“This is my room. Spark and I were here earlier. My things are already in the closet. When the servants asked Perseverance and Spark who you were, they said you were my protector. So they did not separate us.”