Fool’s Quest

The bear would have them. His maw gaped wide and then he reared back, batting wildly at the crow as she flapped her wings in his face and stabbed at him with her beak. It was the instant that Spark needed. She pushed the Fool through the pillar and turned to flee, but the Fool gripped her wrist and dragged her in after him. She went screaming, the fluttering crow fleeing with her. The charging bear slammed into cold black stone, and then fell back from it, mystified and angry. He swiped at it, the long black claws screaming against the face of the pillar. They were gone, to safety or oblivion, I could not tell. And Lant and I had one chance to live as the bear turned and chose his fresh targets.

“Trees!” I said to Lant. He needed no other word. I followed him as he plowed through the snow toward a vast evergreen. It had no low branches. I gave him a leg up and then followed. For a city boy, he climbed well. “Higher!” I shouted to him. Up we went, stocking feet digging into rough bark, fingernails bending and breaking as we climbed a stretch of trunk bereft of branches. He reached a thick branch. “Move over!” I panted and he did.

If the bear had been younger or smaller, we’d have been in grave danger. As it was, he made several attempts to follow us, digging his claws into the bark and ripping chunks of it free, then hurling himself against the trunk so that the tree shook from his onslaught. When he could not reach us, he turned his fury on our tents. Mine presented no challenge to him. He shredded and tossed it, rooted through it for food, and then roared at the fabric still tangled in his sore tooth. He moved away from it with a festoon of canvas collaring him between his massive head and the hunch of his shoulders. I looked away as he attacked the Elderling tent, unable to bear its destruction.

“What stuff is that made of?” I heard Lant marvel and dared to look down. The bear had collapsed the tent and now battled the yielding fabric, rolling in a tangle of bear, dragons, and serpents. His wrestling bared our still-burning fire-pot, our bedding, and the rest of our supplies. He slashed at the fabric but I saw no rents in it. “We’ll have nothing left!” Perseverance cried from his tree, and I shouted back, “We’ll have our lives. Stay put, boy!”

I think the bear eventually felt he had vanquished the tent. He went back to our supplies, spilling and spoiling and eating and then roaring his fury at the pain. I hated what he was doing to us, and yet felt a pang of anguish for him. His death awaited him this season, and it would not be an easy one for the old fellow.

It was when he tore open my pack and I saw Bee’s precious books fall into the snow that I gave a cry of loss and started down the trunk. Lant seized the back of my collar. “No,” he said.

“Let go!”

“Try to follow the advice you gave your stable boy. Don’t give up your life for a thing, no matter how precious.”

He was not well seated on the tree, and for one berserk moment I wanted to jerk him free and let him drop to the snow below. Instead I leaned my forehead against the rough bark and to my shame great tremors of loss and shame shook me. Lant kept his grip on me, fearing, I think, that I would simply let go and fall. I did not. I clung there while breakers of loss pounded me. I cursed the sorrow that would not let go of me, that ambushed me and unmanned me every time it woke. The books were things, not my child. The candles scattered like ivory bones across the snow were not Molly. But they were all I had left of my wife and my child.

From far away, I felt a plucking of Skill. Fitz? Are you alive?

Yes, I replied dully to Dutiful. I live. Not that I wish to, but I live.

Danger? His Skilling was thin as smoke.

I let down my walls, suddenly aware that I’d raised them against the whispering memories of the plaza and the Skill-road. The Skill is swift as thought. In a heartbeat, he knew all that had befallen us.

I can send help to you. I can . . . and whatever he was offering wafted away.

No. Send no one. We have to follow the Fool. I pushed the thought hard and wondered if he received it. The decision I had not known I was going to make was now obvious. As soon as the bear left, we’d salvage what we could and use the portal to go to Kelsingra. If the Fool and Spark had made it there, I was certain they would need help. If they hadn’t, at least I would know. I could not leave Lant and Per here and go alone, for they’d be without shelter or supplies now, and it was likely the bear would come back. So, we would go on. I hoped there would not be a red dragon waiting for us on the other side.