Fool’s Quest

“But the difference, Fitz, is that Burrich and Molly never meant to hurt you. What they did, they did for themselves, believing you dead and gone. And for them, life had to go on.”

He took another bite of dumpling and chewed it slowly. He drank a bit of yellow wine and cleared his throat. “Once we were a good distance offshore, the crew did what I had known they would. They took whatever we had that they thought was of value. All the little cubes of memory stone that Prilkop had painstakingly selected and carried so far were lost to him. The crew had no idea what they were. Most could not hear the poetry and music and history that were stored in them. Those who could were alarmed. The captain ordered all the cubes thrown overboard. Then they worked us like the slaves they intended us to become once they found a place to sell us.”

I sat silent and transfixed. The words came from the usually reticent Fool in a smooth flow. I wondered if he had rehearsed his tale during his hours alone. Did his blindness accentuate his loneliness and propel him toward this openness?

“I was in despair. Prilkop seemed to harden every day, muscled by the work, but I was too recently healed. I grew sicker and weaker. At night, huddled on the open deck in the wind and rain, he would look up at the stars and remind me that we were traveling in the correct direction. ‘We no longer look like White Prophets, we two, but when we make shore, it will be in a place where people value us. Endure, and we will get there.’ ”

He drank a bit more wine. I sat quietly and waited while he ate some food. “We got there,” he said at last. “And Prilkop was almost correct. When we reached port, he was sold at the slave auction and I . . .” His voice trickled away. “Oh, Fitz. This telling wearies me. I do not wish to remember it all. It was not a good time for me. But Prilkop found someone who would believe him, and before many days had passed, he came back for me. They bought me, quite cheaply, and his patron helped us complete our journey back to Clerres and our school.”

He sipped his wine. I wondered at the gap in his story. What was too terrible for him to remember?

He spoke to my thought. “I must finish this tale quickly. I have no heart for the details. We arrived at Clerres, and when the tide went out, we crossed to the White Island. There our patron delivered us to the gates of the school. The Servants who opened the doors to us were astonished, for they immediately recognized what we were. They thanked our patron, rewarded him, and quickly took us in. Collator Pierec was the Servant in charge now. They took us to the Room of the Records, and there they leafed through scrolls and scripts and bound pages until they found Prilkop.” The Fool shook his head slowly, marveling. “They tried to reckon how old he was, and failed. He was old, Fitz, very old indeed, a White Prophet who had lived far past the end of his time of making changes. They were astonished.

“And more astonished when they discovered who I was.”

His spoon chased food around his bowl. He found and ate a piece of dumpling, and then a piece of venison. I thought he was making me wait for the tale, and taking pleasure in my suspense. I didn’t begrudge him this.

“I was the White Prophet they had discarded. The boy who had been told he was mistaken, that there was already a White Prophet for this time, and that she had already gone north to bring about the changes that must be.” He clattered his spoon down suddenly. “Fitz, I was far more stupid than the Fool you have always named me. I was an idiot, a fatuous, mindless . . .” He strangled on his sudden anger, knotting his scarred hands and pounding them on the table. “How could I have expected them to greet me with anything except horror? For all the years they had kept me at the school, confined me, drugged me that I might dream more clearly for them . . . For the hours they spent needling her insidious images into my skin to make me unWhite! For all the days they tried to confuse and confound me, showing me dozens, hundreds of prophecies and dreams that they thought would convince me I was not what I knew myself to be! How could I have gone back there, thinking they would be glad to see me, and quick to acknowledge how wrong they had been? How could I think they would want to know they had made such an immense error?”

He began to weep as he spoke, his blinded eyes streaming tears that were diverted by the scars on his face. Some detached part of me noted that his tears seemed clearer than they had been and wondered if this meant some infection had been conquered. Another, saner part of me was saying softly, “Fool. Fool, it’s all right. You are here with me now, and they cannot hurt you anymore. You are safe here. Oh, Fool. You are safe. Beloved.”