Fool’s Quest

“Oh.” I leaned back in the water and scrubbed at my face again. I wondered how unkempt I had appeared to the King and the Queen of the Elderlings. I hadn’t given it a thought earlier. And I realized I cared little what they thought of me. I pushed wet hair from my face, stood up, and shook water from my head. I was suddenly sleepy and the wide bed beckoned. “I’m going to bed. If you go in the pool, don’t drown.”

I walked to the shallow end and waded out. I took a towel from the stack but barely found the will to dry myself before walking toward the bed.

“Sleep well, Fitz,” the Fool said. And he was the Fool again.

“That tea. I can sleep, Fool. I can let go of everything. Stop worrying. Worrying doesn’t solve anything. I know that. In one way I know it but in another it seems wrong. It seems as if I don’t think about all the things that hurt, all the things I’ve done wrong, then I don’t really care. Tormenting myself with Bee’s death won’t bring her back. Why do I have to remember it all the time?” The bed was large and flat. There were no pillows and no coverings. I sat down on it, my towel around my shoulders. The surface was firm and slightly warm. Very slowly, it gave to the weight of my body. I lay back on it. “Molly is dead. Bee is gone. I can’t feel Nighteyes anymore. I should just accept those things and go on. Maybe. Or maybe you’re right. I should go kill all of the Servants. I’ve nothing better to do with what is left of my life. Why not do that?” I closed my eyes. When I spoke, I could hear the slurring of my words. I groped after what I was trying to say. “I’m like you now. I’ve gone beyond the end of my life, to a place where I never expected to be.”

His voice was kind. “Don’t fight it, Fitz. Don’t question it. For one night, let it all go.”

I did. I tumbled into sleep.

Chapter Thirty-Seven Heroes and Thieves

Scrying is a little-respected magic and yet I have found it a small and useful talent to have. Some use a ball of polished crystal. That is well and good, for those who can afford such things. But for a boy born to a hardscrabble patch of dirt scarcely worth the name of farm, a milk pail with some water in the bottom to reflect the blue sky above works well enough. It was my hobby when I was a smallish boy. In a life that consisted largely of chores and boredom, staring into a milk pail and marveling at what I saw was a fascinating pastime. My stepfather thought me daft when he caught me at it. I was astonished to find that neither he nor my mother found anything fascinating in the water, while I watched a boy much like me but younger growing up in a castle.

—My Early Days, Chade Fallstar

I woke. I lay in the darkness. I could not remember that I had dreamed, yet words rang in my ears still. Verity says you gave up hope too easily. That you always did.

Bee’s voice? If that message was the pleasant dream the Elderling tea had promised me, it was a sad misrepresentation of what the tea actually did. I stared up at a ceiling painted a dark gray. Stars had been painstakingly dotted over the entire surface. As I stared at them through slitted eyes, the deep of night became darkest blue. I blinked. I was staring up at the sky. I was warm, cradled in softness. I smelled forest. Someone slept beside me.