Fool’s Quest

My mouth went dry. I’d never heard the song, but I’d been told of it. In my lifetime, I’d been the subject of two songs. One, “Antler Island Tower,” was a rousing ballad that recounted how I had fought against the Red-Ship Raiders when by treachery they had managed to gain a foothold on Antler Island. It had been composed during the Red-Ship Wars by an ambitious young minstrel named Starling Birdsong. The melody was pleasing and the refrain was memorable. When first it had been sung, the folk of Buckkeep Castle had been willing to believe that enough Farseer blood ran through my bastard veins that I might be a hero, of sorts. But that had been before my fall from grace, before Prince Regal had convinced all of my treachery. Before I’d been thrown into his dungeon on the accusation of killing King Shrewd. Before I had supposedly died there, and vanished from Buckkeep history and public knowledge forever.

Yet there had been a second song, one that not only celebrated my Farseer blood and Wit-magic, but asserted that I had risen from my grave to follow King Verity on his wild quest to wake the Elderlings and bring their aid to the Six Duchies. As in the Antler Island song, strands of truth had been braided with poetry and exaggeration. To my knowledge, only one minstrel had ever sung it in Buckkeep, and he had done so to assert that those with the Old Blood Wit-magic could be as loyal and noble as anyone else. Many of the listeners on that day had not welcomed such an opinion.

Kettricken’s eyes roved over the gallery where the minstrels were gathered. I watched with relief as they exchanged puzzled glances and shrugs. One fellow folded his arms on his chest and shook his head in disgust, evidently displeased that anyone would wish to sing the praises of the Witted Bastard. One harper leaned over the railing to consult a graybeard below. The fellow nodded and even though I could not hear him, I suspected he admitted to having heard the song once, but the eloquent lift of his shoulders denied any real knowledge of the words, tune, or authorship. Just as my heart began to slow and the look of disappointment to settle on Lady Kettricken’s face, a matronly woman dressed in an extravagant gown of blue and green stepped from the crowd. As she made her way forward into the open space before the royal dais, I heard a scattering of applause and then someone cried out, “Starling Birdsong! Of course!”

I wondered if I would have recognized my old lover without that call. Her body had changed with the years, her waist thickening and her curves growing. In the be-buttoned layers of lush fabrics that made up her gown, I did not recognize the tough and pragmatic wandering minstrel who had also followed Verity into the Mountain Kingdom to wake the Elderlings. She had let her hair grow long, and the streaks in it were silver, not gray. She wore jewels on her ears and wrists and fingers, but as she advanced, she was stripping the rings from her hands.

The look of disappointment on Kettricken’s face had been replaced with one of delight. “Well, here is a minstrel of yore who has let many years pass since we last heard her lift her voice. Our own Starling Birdsong, now Lord Fisher’s lady wife! Do you remember the song of which I spoke?”

Despite her years, Starling flourished a curtsy and then rose gracefully. Age had lowered the timbre of her voice, but the music had not left it. “Lady Kettricken, King Dutiful, and Queen Elliania, if it please you, I have heard the song sung but once. And do not think me a jealous minstrel when I say, while the threads of truth ran strong through it, the words rattled against one another as painfully as gravel in a boot, and the tune was stolen from an ancient ballad.” She shook her head, lips folded, and then said, “Even if I recalled every word and note, I would not think it a kindness to you if I sang it.”

She paused, head lowered respectfully. Despite all my misgivings, I almost smiled. Starling. So well she knew how to whet the appetite of an audience! She waited until precisely the moment when Kettricken drew breath to speak; then she raised her head and offered, “But I can sing you a better song, if you would, my lady and once my queen. If you with a nod allow me, if my king and my queen grant permission, my tongue can be freed from its long-imposed silence, and sing to you I shall, of all I know of the Witted Bastard. Of FitzChivalry Farseer, son to Chivalry, loyal to King Verity, and, to the last breath of his days, a truehearted Farseer, despite his ignoble birth!”