Fool’s Quest

“Good keepers and friends, you hear Lady Amber! Step back, give him room!” Malta’s voice came from across the room. Closer to me were other voices.

“Please, kind prince!”

“My hands, if only you would mend my hands!”

“I wish to look like a woman again, not a lizard! My prince, please, please!”

In a lower voice, I heard the Fool give his orders. “Spark, Per, stand before him and hold them back. Push them back! Lant, where are you? Lant?”

“People of Kelsingra! Keep order. Step back from the prince, give him room!” There was anxiety in Reyn’s voice, bordering on fear.

It was hard to use my eyesight when the Skill flowed so strongly all around me, far more potent than any of my senses, far stronger even than my Wit. My eyes were poor things, relying on light to show me the outer shapes of things. Still, I looked for Lant and found him at my side, struggling to take something from his pocket. In front of me, Spark and Per had linked arms and stood between me and a wall of pushing people. They could not hold them back, not when such need consumed them. I closed my eyes and stopped my ears. Such senses only confused me when I could blanket the room with Skill and know so much more.

Amber’s gloved hand still gripped mine and her free hand was on my chest now, trying to push me back and away from the reaching hands. It was a hopeless gesture. The room was large and the people had flowed to surround us. There was no “back” now, only a noose of desperate people struggling toward us.

As mobs go, it was a small one, and no one meant me harm. Some pushed toward me out of hunger and need. Some strove to be first, others only to see what wonder I would next work, and some pushed to try and break through the wall of people in front of them so that they might have a chance to beg a boon of their own. One woman pushed because she did not want another woman to reach me and have her face changed, lest she win the man they both desired. Rapskal was in the thick of it, with Kase and Boxter, not to find order but to see if somehow Amber would betray that she was sighted, for he was certain she had been to the Silver well, and he was consumed with hatred that anyone would attempt to steal Silver from the dragons.

“Fitz. Fitz! Fitz! You have to stop. Set your walls, come back to yourself. Fitz!”

I had forgotten my body. It was shaking all around me and Lant’s arms were around my chest, trying to hold me up. “Get away from us!” Lant roared, and for a moment the press of the crowd lessened. But those who could see me collapsing were pushed forward by those who wished to know what was happening. This I knew in a dispassionate way. I would fall, Lant would go down holding on to me, the grim youngsters trying to hold back the crowd would stumble backward, and we would be trampled.

The Skill told me that Amber had been pushed up under my arm. “Fitz,” the Fool said by my ear. “Fitz, where are you? I can’t feel you. Fitz, put up your walls! Please, Fitz. Beloved.”

“Give him this!” Lant cried out to her.

None of it mattered. Skill was a spreading pool and I was spreading with it. There were others here, diluted and mingled. They’d enjoyed what I had done. I sensed that there were some here who were larger and more intact, larger souls that were more defined. Older and wiser. I couldn’t be one of them. There wasn’t enough of me. I’d spread and disperse. Mingle. I could just let go. It would be like the sweetsleep. Stop the worries, give up the guilt. The worst were the sharp-edged hopes that I still clung to. The hope that somewhere, somehow, Bee still existed and would tumble intact from a Skill-pillar. But it was far more likely that she was here in this amorphous mingling. Perhaps letting go was the closest I’d ever get to reuniting with her.

Being Fitz had never been that enticing an existence.

Fingers prying at my lips, pressing on my teeth. Bitterness in my mouth. The Skill-tide that had surged so strongly against me became a lapping of calmer water. I tried to recede with it.

The touch of fingers on my wrist burned. Burned exquisitely, pain and ecstasy inseparable.

BELOVED!

The word echoed through me, rebounded from my fraying edges, found and bound me. I was there, trapped in an exhausted and shaking body, trembling as Lant hugged me from behind and held me upright. His hand was over my mouth and I tasted elfbark. Dry powder coated my lips. Per and Spark, arms locked, faced out into the press. They were crowded up against Amber, pushing her against me.

The Fool embraced me, his head bowed on my chest. One of his arms was around my neck, holding on to me. I clutched an empty glove in one hand. Slowly and dully, I lifted that hand to look at the glove. The Fool’s hand, his fingers gleaming silver, clutched my wrist, burning my identity into me. The bond was shockingly and completely renewed.