Fool’s Quest

I thought of the times Chade had come to see me. Of how he had brought Riddle through. Nettle, I decided, had known of those visits if Riddle had gone with him. Hadn’t she?

“Does he know what is happening to him? Is he aware he’s doing it?”

“We can’t tell. He isn’t making a lot of sense. He talks. He laughs and speaks of things from the past. Nettle feels he is experiencing his old memories, and then releasing them to the Skill-stream.

“I was sent to you for two reasons. The first was to help you set your walls more tightly; Nettle is afraid that Chade will cling to you and pull your awareness with him as he goes. The second reason is to ask you for delvenbark. The strong stuff from the Out Islands. The kind that completely quenched your Skill when it was fed to you.”

“I don’t have very much left. We used most of it at Withywoods.”

He looked concerned but said, “Well, whatever remains is what we’ll have to use.”

It was still in my traveling bag. It had not been unpacked since they’d all but carried Chade and me to our rooms. I found it, and Bee’s dream book, in the bottom of my pack. I rummaged carefully and took out all but two packets. I looked at the herb packets then reluctantly surrendered them. It was hard to come by. Would the dose save Chade? What if it destroyed the precious ability with the Skill that he had so painstakingly built up over the years? If he could not Skill, how could he help me find Shine in the Skill-stream and use her keyword to unlock her? I clenched my jaw. It was time to trust Nettle. Time to cede respect for her hard-won knowledge. Still, I could not keep from saying to him, “Be careful. It’s very strong.”

He hefted the little pouches. “That’s what we are hoping. Nettle thinks that if we can cut him off from the Skill, he may be able to find his center again. That perhaps we can keep whatever is left of him. Thank you.”

He left me there, staring at the door he closed behind him. Whatever was left of him . . . I rose, Bee’s book in my hands, and then sat down slowly. As Chade was, he certainly could not help me find Shine. The first step had to be to stabilize him and persuade him to share Shine’s word with us. And I could not help with that. Until then I had to wait.

I was sick with waiting. Waiting had scraped me raw. I could not think about Bee. It was agonizing to imagine what she might be going through. I had told myself, over and over, that it was a useless torment to dwell on thoughts of her in pain, terrified, cold, or hungry. In the hands of ruthless men. Useless. Put my mind to what I might do to get her back. And how I would kill those who had put hands on her.

I was gripping her book savagely. I looked at it. My gift to her, a bound set of good paper between sturdy leather covers with images of daisies pressed in. I sat down with it on my lap and opened the first page. Did I break confidence with her to look at her private writings? Well I knew how often she had spied upon mine!

Each page contained a brief description of a dream. Some were almost poems. Often she had illustrated them. There was the image of a woman sleeping in a flower garden, with bees buzzing around her. On the next page was a drawing of a wolf. I had to smile. It was obviously based on the carving of Nighteyes that had occupied the center of the mantel in my study for years. Under it was a poem-story about the Wolf of the West, who would race to the aid of any of his subjects who called upon him. The next page was plainer. There was a simple border of circles and wheels and a couplet about a man’s fate: “All he could dream, all he could fear, given to him in the space of a year.” A few more pages, poems about flowers and acorns. And then, on a page that was a riot of color, her dream of the Butterfly Man. In her illustration, he was truly a Butterfly Man, pale of face, transcendently calm, with the wings of a butterfly protruding from his back.

I closed the book. That dream had come true. Just as the Fool had when he was a lad, she had written down a dream and it became a prophecy. I had buried the Fool’s wild talk that Bee was his daughter, born to be a White Prophet. Yet here was the evidence I could scarcely deny.

Then I shook my head. How many times had I accused the Fool of warping one of his prophecies to make it fit the events that followed? Surely this was more of the same. It had not been a “butterfly man” but a woman and a cloak with a pattern that suggested butterflies. I tamped my uneasiness down firmly with a mallet of disbelief. Bee was mine, my little girl, and I would bring her home and she would grow up to be a little Farseer princess. But that thought sent my stomach lurching into a different gulch. I sat for a moment, finding my breath and hugging her book as if it were my child herself. “I will find you, Bee. I will bring you home.” My promise was as empty as the air I breathed it to.