“Yes. Better.” It was a lie. I wasn’t better. I was becoming duller. Slower. The complexities of the world that had danced and blossomed all around me but a few moments before were fading to dim simplicity. The chair was just a chair, all echoes of the tree and the forest that had produced it muted to insignificance. Nettle sat on the chair, and she was only Nettle, not a tributary of the rivers that Molly and I had been, or the quiet water where her unborn child turned and formed. I was not better. I was simpler, slower, duller. Human again. As to what I had been in the previous hours, I had no name for it.
I lifted my eyes to Dutiful. He was watching me expectantly. “The Fool,” I prompted him.
“He was near dead. When first he was found, he was mistaken for a beggar or wandering madman. He was taken to the infirmary and given a clean bed to die in. But a young apprentice there recognized him from the night you brought him in. She raised quite a fuss before her master would listen to her, but finally a runner was sent to me.
“By then, Ash had raised the alarm that Lord Golden was missing. We had servants searching the guest wings, but no one had expected him to have gotten as far as the stables. My mother and her personal healer reached the infirmary before I did. She collected him and had him brought to her private parlor. There, her healer attempted to tend to him. At the woman’s touch, he woke shrieking and found enough strength to object strenuously to her efforts. My mother acceded to his wishes and dismissed her healer. Before he lapsed into unconsciousness, he asked to be brought back to Chade’s old den. This was done. And my mother settled herself beside him to keep his death-watch. She left him only when she heard that you and Chade had been attacked, and then lost. She is back with him now.”
“I wish to go to him.” I didn’t need to hear any more. I tried to keep the despair from my voice. I was losing my friend, and possibly my last link to my Bee. If anyone had any clue as to why the Servants of the White Prophets would come to Withywoods and take my daughter, and what their intentions for her were, it was the Fool.
“Not yet,” Nettle asserted. “You need to know what happened before you see him.”
I had not thought my fear could deepen, but it did. “What happened?” I imagined treachery.
“I went to see him, of course.” Dutiful took up his tale. “Whatever strength and life he’d had left he’d expended battling my mother’s healer. He was unresponsive. I tried to reach him with the Skill, and could not. And to my Wit, he remains invisible. My mother was at his side, tending him. And Chade’s lad, Ash. And a crow?”
There was the slightest inflection of a question on his last words. I ignored it. Later, perhaps, there would be time to explain the crow. For now she did not matter.
“The lad was grieved beyond telling. Nearly prostrate with remorse, I thought. I tried to comfort him, telling him that no one blamed him and that I would intercede with Lord Chade to be sure he was not held responsible. But I was mistaken. It was not fear that he had failed in his duty but genuine mourning. My mother told him that we had done all that could be done, and that the Fool himself had decided to let go of this life. The lad kept saying that the Fool was a hero and should not die in such an ignoble way. He wept. We agreed with him but I could tell he was heartsick and our agreement brought him no comfort.
“I knew they would keep a good watch on him, and that I would be summoned if needed. My mother told me that all we could do was comfort his body, and this she was doing, with cool damp cloths to ease the burning of his fever. There was nothing I could do for him. And so I left them there.”
The Fool with a fever. Serious indeed for a man who was usually chill to the touch. Dutiful’s words were an apology. I could not imagine why. He paused in his telling and exchanged a look with Nettle.
“What?” I demanded.
Riddle lifted his head and spoke. “To make it short, Lady Kettricken left to come to the Skill-pillar. And while we were gone, Ash took it upon himself to give Lord Golden something. Evidently it was an elixir or potion or some rare healing draught. He won’t reveal what it was, but only repeats that Lord Chade told him to give the man whatever he might need, and so he did. Whatever he gave him … it changed him.”
Now they were all staring at me as if they expected me to understand something they did not. “It revived him? It killed him?” I was sick of useless words, such thin slices of meaning. “I’m going to him.”
Dutiful opened his mouth, but Riddle was bold enough to shake his head at his king. “Let him go. Words won’t explain it. What a man doesn’t understand, he cannot tell. Let him see.”
