Fool’s Quest

Someone lifted a blanket and tucked it around me. It was Shun. I could not bear to look at her for the spinning, but I knew her scent. She put another something over me. A fur, a heavy one. I felt a tiny bit warmer. I drew my body up into a ball. I wondered if I could speak without vomiting. “Thank you.” I said. Then, “Please. Don’t touch me. Don’t move me. It makes the dizziness worse.”

I focused my eyes on a corner of the blanket. I willed it to be still, and for a miracle, it was. I breathed slowly, carefully. I needed to be warm but even more, I needed the spinning to stop. A hand touched me, an icy hand on my neck. I cried out wordlessly.

“Why don’t you help him? He’s sick. He burns with fever.” Her voice sounded sleepy but I knew she was not. Not really. Her anger was too strong for her to be sleepy. Could the others hear that, too?

Odessa spoke. “We are to do nothing until Lingstra Dwalia returns to instruct us. Even now, you may have disrupted the path.”

Another blanket settled over me. “Do nothing, then. Don’t stop me.”

Shun lay down beside me. I wished she wouldn’t. I feared that if she nudged me or moved me, the vertigo would come roaring back.

“We obeyed.” The fear in Vindeliar’s voice was like a bad taste in the air. “Lingstra cannot be angry with us. We obeyed and did nothing.” He lifted his hands to cover his eyes. “I did nothing to help my brother,” he moaned. “I did nothing. She can’t be angry.”

“Oh, she can be angry,” Odessa said bitterly. “She can always be angry.”

Very carefully, I let my eyes close. The spinning slowed. It stopped. I slept.

Chapter Thirteen Chade’s Secret

This is the dream of the flame horses. It is a winter evening. It’s not night but it’s dark. An early moon is rising over the birch trees. I hear a sad song with no words, and it is like a wind in the trees. It keens and moans. Then the stables burst into flames. Horses scream. And then two horses race out. They are on fire. One is black and one is white, and the flames are orange and red, whipped by the wind of the horses’ own passage. They race out into the night. The black one falls suddenly. The white one races on. Then suddenly the moon opens its mouth and swallows the white horse.

This dream makes no sense to me and no matter how I try, I cannot draw a picture for it. So this dream is recorded only in words.

—Dream Journal of Bee Farseer

I woke on the floor of the study, not far from where the stable boy slept on. I had not wanted to sleep, and I certainly could not have borne sleeping in my own room. But I had taken blankets from my bed, and Bee’s book from her hiding place, and returned to the estate study. I’d fed the fire to sustain it through what was left of the night and then spread my blankets. I’d settled down and held her book in my hands. I thought about reading it. Was that breaching her trust in me? I’d leafed through it, not settling on any section but marveling at her tidy lettering, her precise illustrations, and how many pages she had filled.

In a bizarre hope that she might have had time to leave some account of the attack, I went to the last page of her journal. But it stopped well short of our trip to Oaksbywater. There was a sketch of a barn cat. The black one with the kinked tail. I’d closed the book, pillowed my head on it, and fallen asleep. The sound of footsteps in the corridor had woken me. I sat up, aching, and the weight of my worries fell on me again. Bleak discouragement soaked me. I’d already failed and there was nothing I could do to change that. Bee was dead. Shun was dead. Perhaps they were worse than dead. It was my fault and I could find neither anger nor ambition to do anything about it.

I went to the window and pushed back the drape. The skies were finally clear and blue. It was an effort to gather my thoughts. Chade would be coming today, with Thick. I tried to make plans, to decide to ride to meet him or make preparations for his arrival. I couldn’t find the mental order to do either. On the hearth, Perseverance slept on. I made myself cross the room and add wood to the fire. I welcomed the blue sky but knew it meant the days would be colder.