Fool's Fate Part 39

I crawled out of the tent and then stood, stretching and looking out over the waves. I felt an odd sense of peace. My dolorous mission was still before me, but I had reclaimed a part of my life that I thought I had spoiled. I walked a little away from the tent to relieve myself, almost enjoying the chill of the packed wet sand under my bare feet. But when I turned back to the tent, all my equanimity fled.

Twisted into the sand, inches from the tent flap, was the Fool's honey jar.

I recognized it in that instant, and recalled well how it had disappeared from outside my tent on my first night on this island. I scanned the beach hastily and then the cliffs above us, looking for any sign of another person. There was nothing. I crept up on the honey jar as if it might bite me, all the while searching for even the tiniest sign of who had come and left so silently in the night. But the encroaching waves had wiped the beach clean of any sign of his pa.s.sage. The Black Man had once more eluded me.

At last I picked it up. I took out the stopper, expecting I knew not what, but found it perfectly empty, with not even a trace of its former sweetness left within. I took it inside the tent and packed it carefully away with the Fool's other possessions, even as I pondered what it might mean. I thought of Skilling of my strange discovery to Chade and Dutiful, but at length I decided I would say nothing of it to anyone for now.

I found little wood that morning, and so Thick and I had to be content with salt fish and cold water for breakfast. The supplies that had seemed more than adequate for one man now seemed to be dwindling all too swiftly. I took a deep breath and tried to be a wolf. For now, there was fine weather and enough food for the day, and I should take advantage of that to continue my journey without whining for more. Thick seemed in a genial mood until I began to pack up the tent. Then he complained that all I wanted to do was to walk down the beach every day. I bit my tongue and did not remind him that he was the one who had chosen, uninvited, to stay behind and link his life to mine. Instead, I told him that we did not have much farther to go. That seemed to encourage him, for I did not mention that I would be looking for whatever marks Riddle and the others might have left when they clambered down to the sand. He had mentioned a cliff, and I hoped their pa.s.sage had left some trace that wind and tide had not yet obscured.

So on we tramped, and I tried to take pleasure in the freshness of the day and the ever-changing countenance of the sea, even as I kept one eye on the cliffs that backed us. Yet the sign that suddenly greeted me was, I was sure, no doing of Riddle or of his companions. It was freshly scratched on the stone of the cliffs, unweathered by wind or water, and its meaning was unmistakable. A crude dragon cavorted over an arched serpent. Above them, an arrow pointed straight up.

It seemed to me that whoever had made the marks had chosen for us a fairly easy climb from the beach to the clifftops. Even so, I went up first and unenc.u.mbered while Thick waited placidly on the beach below. At the top of the wind-scoured cliffs, there was a thin edge of bare ground. Stubborn gra.s.ses tufted there amidst a crunchy sort of moss. A sort of shallow meadow bloomed beyond it, of gra.s.ses and lichen-crusted rocks and pessimistic bushes. I had climbed up, knife in teeth, but no one, friend or enemy, awaited me there. Instead, there was only the barren sweep of cold wind from the crouching glacier.

I returned to the beach, to bring up first our packs and then Thick. He did well enough at climbing, but was hampered by his shorter stature and stockier girth. Eventually, however, we stood on the clifftop together. "Well," he exclaimed when he had finished puffing. "And now what?"

"I'm not sure," I said, and looked about, guessing that whoever had left us such a plain sign on the cliff would not abandon us now. It took me a moment to see it. I do not think it was intended to be subtle, but rather that there was little to work with. A row of small beach stones was set in a line. One end of it pointed toward the place we had just climbed up. The other end pointed inland.

I handed Thick his pack and then settled my own on my shoulders. "Come on," I said. "We're going that way." I pointed.

He followed my finger with his eyes and then shook his head in disappointment. "No. Why? There's nothing there but gra.s.s. And then snow."

I had no easy explanation. He was right. In the distance, the plain of stubby gra.s.s gave way to snow and then looming ice. Beyond them, a rock face shone with a frosting of ice and snow. "Well, that's where I'm going," I said. And I struck out. I set an easy pace, but avoided looking back. Instead, I listened, and with my Wit, quested for an awareness of him. He was following, but grudgingly. I slowed my pace enough to allow him to catch up. When he was alongside me, I observed companionably, "Well, Thick, I think that today we will have answers to at least a few of our questions."

"What questions?"

"Who or what is the Black Man?"

Thick looked stubborn. "I don't really care."

"Well. It's a lovely day. And I'm not just hiking on the beach anymore."

"We're hiking toward the snow."

He was right, and soon enough we reached the outlying edges of it. And there, plainly, were the tracks of the Black Man, going and coming. Without commenting on them, I followed them, Thick trudging at my heels. After a short time, Thick observed, "We aren't poking the snow. We might fall right through."

"As long as we follow these tracks, I think we're safe," I told him. "This isn't the true glacier yet."

By early afternoon, we had followed the tracks across a windswept plain of snow and ice to a rocky cliff wall. Towering and forbidding, it defied the wind. Ice made columns down its face and had wedged cracks into it. At the base of it, the tracks turned west and continued. We followed. Night grayed the sky and I pushed on doggedly, giving Thick sticks of salt fish when he complained of being hungry. As the twilight grew deeper around us, even my curiosity lagged along with my energy. At length, we halted. I felt sheepish as I turned to Thick and said, "Well, I was wrong. We'll set up the tent here for the night, shall we?"

His tongue and lower lip pouted out and he beetled his brows at me in disappointment. "Do we have to?"

I glanced around, at a loss for what else I could offer him. "What would you like to do?"

"Go there!" he exclaimed and pointed. I lifted my eyes to follow the stubby finger. My breath caught in my chest.

I had been keeping my eyes on the tracks. I had not lifted my gaze to the looming cliff wall. Ahead of us, and halfway up the bluff, a wide crack had been fitted with a door of gray wood. The rest of the crack had been filled in with rocks of various sizes. The door had been left ajar and yellow firelight shone within. Someone was in there.

With renewed haste, we followed the tracks to where they suddenly doubled back to follow a steep footpath that worked up and across the face of the cliff. Calling it a footpath was generous. We had to go in single file and our packs b.u.mped against the rock as we negotiated it. Nevertheless, it was a well-used trail, kept free of debris and treacherous ice. Where trickles of ice from above had attempted to cross the path, they had been chopped off short and brushed away. It appeared to be a recent effort.

Despite these signs of hospitality, I was full of trepidation when I stood at last before the door. It had been constructed of driftwood, hand-planed and pegged together painstakingly. Warmth and an aroma of cooked food wafted out from it. Although it was ajar and the s.p.a.ce in front of it small, still I hesitated. Thick didn't. He shoved past me to push the door open. "h.e.l.lo!" he called hopefully. "We're here and we're cold."

"Please, enter do," someone replied in a low and pleasant voice. The accent on the words was odd, and the voice seemed husky as if from disuse, but the welcome was plain in the tone. Thick didn't hesitate as he stepped inside. I followed him more slowly.

After the dimness of the night, the fire in the stone hearth seemed to glare with light. At first, I could make out no more than a silhouette seated before the fire in a wooden chair. Then the Black Man slowly stood and faced us. Thick drew in his breath audibly. Then, with a show of recovery and manners that astounded me in the little man, he said carefully, "Good evening, Grandfather."

The Black Man smiled. His worn teeth were as yellow as bone in his black, black face. Lines wreathed his mouth and his eyes nestled deep in their sockets, like s.h.i.+ning ebony disks. He spoke, and after a time my mind sorted out his badly accented Outislander. "I know not how long I've been here. Yet this I know. This is the first time that anyone has entered and called me 'Grandfather.'"

When he stood, it was without apparent effort, and his spine was straight. Yet age was written all over his countenance, and he moved with the slow grace of a man who protects his body from shocks. He gestured to a small table. "Guests I seldom have, but my hospitality I would offer despite what is lacked. Please. Food I have made. Come."

Thick didn't hesitate. He shrugged out of his pack, letting it slide to the floor without regret. "We thank you," I said slowly as I carefully removed my own and set both of them to one side. My eyes had adjusted to the light. I do not know if I would have called his residence a cave or a large crevice. I could not see a ceiling, and I suspected that smoke traveled up but not out. The furnis.h.i.+ngs were simple but very well made, with both the craft and attention of a man who had much time to learn his skills and apply them. There was a bedstead in a corner, and a larder shelf, a water bucket and a barrel, and a woven rug. Some of the items appeared to have been salvaged, windfalls from the beach, and others were obviously made from the scanty resources of the island. It bespoke a long habitation.

The man himself was as tall as I was, and as solidly black as the Fool once had been white. He did not ask our names or offer his, but served soup into three stone bowls that he had warmed by the fire. He spoke little at first. Outislander was the language we used; yet it was not native to any of us. The Black Man and I worked at communicating. Thick spoke Duchy-tongue but managed to make himself understood. The table was low, and our chairs were cus.h.i.+ons with woven reed covers stuffed with dry gra.s.s. It was good to sit down. His spoons were made of polished bone. There was fish in the soup, but it was fresh, as were the boiled roots and meager greens. It tasted very good after our long days of dried or preserved food. The flat bread that he set out with it startled me and he grinned when he saw me looking at it.

"From her pantry to mine," he said, with no apology. "What I needed I took. And sometimes more." He sighed. "And now it is done. Simpler, my life will be. Yours, lonelier, I think."

It suddenly seemed to me that we were in the middle of a conversation, with both of us already knowing, without words, why we had come together. So I simply said, "I have to go back for him. He hated the cold. I cannot leave his body there. And I must be sure that this is finished. That she is dead."

He nodded gravely to the inevitable. "That would be your path, and you that path must tread."

"So. You will help me, then?"

He shook his head, not regretfully but inevitably. "Your path," he repeated. "The path of the Changer belongs to you only."

A s.h.i.+ver ran down my back that he called me that. Nevertheless, I pressed him. "But I do not know the way into her palace. You must know a way, for I saw you there. Cannot you at least show me that?"

"The path will find you," he a.s.sured me, and smiled. "In darkness it cannot hide itself."

Thick held up his empty bowl. "That was good!"

"More, then?"

"Please!" Thick exclaimed, and then heaved a great sigh of pleasure as the man refilled his bowl. He ate his second serving more slowly. There was no talk as the Black Man rose and set a battered old kettle full of water over the fire. He fed the fire larger, and I watched the driftwood catch and burn with occasional licks of odd colors in the flames. He went to a shelf and carefully considered three little wooden boxes there. I arose hastily and went to my pack.

"Please, allow us to contribute something to the meal. I have tea herbs here."

When he turned to me, I saw that I had guessed correctly. It was as if I had offered another man jewels and gold. Without hesitation, I opened one of the Fool's little packets and offered it to him. He leaned over it to smell it, and then closed his eyes as a smile of purest pleasure came over his face.

"A generous heart you have!" he exclaimed. "A memory of flowers grows here. Nothing brings to mind the memories so much as fragrance."

"Please. Keep it all, to enjoy," I offered him, and he beamed with delight, his black eyes s.h.i.+ning.

He made tea with a rare caution, crumbling the herbs to powder and then steeping them in a tightly covered container. When he removed the lid and the fragrance of the tea steamed up, he laughed aloud in delight, and, just as people do when a small child laughs, Thick and I joined in for sheer pleasure in his enjoyment. There was an immediacy about him that was very charming, so that it was almost impossible for me to find the focus to worry and fret. He shared out the tea, and we drank it in tiny sips, savoring both the fragrance and the flavor. By the time we were finished, Thick was yawning prodigiously, which somehow increased my own weariness.

"A place to sleep," our host announced, and gestured Thick toward his own bedstead.

"Please, we have our own bedding. You need not give up your bed to us," I a.s.sured him, but he patted Thick on the shoulder and again gesticulated at the bed.

"You will be comfortable. Safe and sweet the dreaming. Rest well."

Thick needed no other invitation than that. He had already taken off his boots. He sat down on the bed and I heard the creak of a rope framework. He lifted the coverlet and crawled in and closed his eyes. I believe he went to sleep in almost that instant.

I had already begun to spread out our bedding near the fire. Some of it was the Fool's Elderling-made stuff, and the old man examined it carefully, rubbing the thin coverlet between his finger and thumb wistfully. Then, "So kind you are, so kind. Thanks you." Then he looked at me almost sadly and said, "Your path awaits. May fortune be kind, and the night gentle." Then he bowed to me in what was obviously a farewell.

In some confusion, I glanced at his door. When I looked back at him, he nodded slowly. "I will keep the watch," he a.s.sured me, gesturing toward Thick.

Still I stood staring at him, confused. He took a breath and then paused. I could almost see him pus.h.i.+ng his thoughts into words I could understand. He touched both hands to his cheeks and then held his black palms out to me. "Once, I was the White. The Prophet." He smiled to see my eyes widen, but then sadness came into his dark gaze. "I failed. With the old ones, I came here. We were the last ones and we knew it. The other cities had gone empty and still. But I had seen there was still a chance, a slight chance, that all might go back to what had been. When the dragon came, at first he gave me hope. But he was full of despair, sick with it like a disease. Into the ice he crawled. I tried. I visited him, I pleaded, I . . . encouraged. But he turned from me to seek death. And that left nothing for me. No hopes. There was only the waiting. For so long, I had nothing. I saw nothing. The future darkened, the chances narrowed." He put his hands together and looked through their cupped palms as if peering through a crack, to show me how limited his visions had become. He lifted his gaze back to me. I think my confusion disappointed him. He shook his head, and then with an obvious effort, pushed on. "One vision is left to me. A tiny peer . . . no! A tiny glimpse of what could be. It was not certain, ever, but it was a chance. Another might come. With another Catalyst." He held a hand out to me, formed a tiny aperture with his fist. "The smallest chance, maybe there is. So small, so unlikely. But there is that chance." He looked at me intently.

I forced myself to nod, though I was still not certain I understood all he told me. He had been a White Prophet who failed? Yet he had foreseen that eventually the Fool and I would come here?

He took encouragement from my nod. "She came. At first, 'She is the one!' I think. Her Catalyst she brings. Hope comes to me. She says she seeks the dragon. And I am a fool. I show her the way. Then, the betrayal. She seeks to kill Icefyre. I am angry, but she is stronger. She drove me out, and I had to flee, by a way she cannot follow. She thinks me dead and makes all here her own. But I return, and here I make a place for myself. To this side of the island, her people do not come. But I live and I know she is false. I want to throw her down. But to be the change-maker is not my role. And my Catalyst . . ." His voice suddenly went hoa.r.s.er. He spoke with difficulty. "She is dead. Dead so many years. Who could imagine that death lasts so much longer than life? So, only I remained. And I could not make the change that was needed. All I could do was wait. Again, I waited. I hoped. Then I saw him, not white, but gold. I wondered. Then you came after him. Him I knew, at first glance. I recognized you when you left the gift for me. My heart . . ." He touched his chest and then lifted his hands high. He smiled beatifically. "I longed to help. But I cannot be the Changer. So limited what I may do, or down it all falls. You understand this?"

I replied slowly. "I think I do. You are not allowed to be the one who makes the changes. You were the White Prophet of your time, not the Changer."

"Yes. Yes, that it is!" He smiled at me. "And this time is not mine. But it is yours, to be the Changer, and his to see the way and guide you. You did. And the new path found is. He pays the cost." His voice sank, not in sorrow, but in acknowledgment. I bowed my head to his words.

He patted my shoulder and I looked up at him. He smiled the smile of age. "And on we go," he a.s.sured me. "Into new times! New paths, beyond all visions. This is a time I never saw, nor she, she who me deceived. This, she never seen has. Only your Prophet has seen this way! The new path, beyond the dragons rising." He gave a sudden deep sigh. "High the price was for you, but it has been paid. Go. Find what is left of him. To leave him there . . ." The ancient man shook his head. "That is not to be." He gestured again. "Changer, go. Even now, I dare not the change-maker be. While you live, it is only for you. Now, go." He gestured at my pack and at his door. He smiled.

Then, without any further talk, he eased himself down onto the Fool's bedding and stretched out before the fire.

I felt oddly torn. I was weary and the Black Man created just such an isle of rest as the Fool would have. And yet, in that comparison, I once more felt the urgency to put it all to a final end. I wished I had known I was leaving him; I would have warned Thick what to expect. Yet somehow, I did not think he would be alarmed to awaken here and find me gone.

Leaving him felt inevitable. I put on my still chilly outer garments, and shouldered my pack again. I looked once more around the Black Man's tiny home and could not help but contrast it to the splendor of the Pale Woman's glacial domain. Then, my heart smote me that my friend's body was still discarded in that icy place. I went out quietly into the deep gray of the night, shutting the door firmly behind me.

chapter 28.

CATALYST.

In a backwater of the river there, not far from the Rain Wilders' city, lie huge logs of what is known as Wizard Wood. The sailor told me that it is a sort of husk that the serpents make in the process of becoming dragons. Much magical power is ascribed to this so-called wood. Artifacts made from it may eventually acquire a life of their own; it is said that the Lives.h.i.+ps of the Bingtown Traders were originally made from such wood. Ground to a dust and exchanged by lovers, it is said to allow them to share dreams. Ingested in a larger quant.i.ty, it is said to be poisonous. When I asked why such valuable stuff would be left lying in a riverbed, the sailor told me that the dragon Tintaglia and her litter guard it as if it were gold. It would be worth a man's life, he told me, to steal so much as a sliver of the stuff. My effort to bribe him to get me some met with resounding failure.- SPY SPY'S REPORT TO CHADE FALLSTAR, UNSIGNED The Black Man was right. No night could hide my path from me.

Nevertheless, it was a challenge to tread his narrow cliffside trail in the darkness. While I had lingered inside, slow rills of water had crept across it to become serpents of ice under my feet. Twice I nearly fell, and when I was at the bottom, I looked back up, marveling that I had descended without a mishap.

And I saw my way. Or, at least, the start of it. Higher in the cliff face and past the Black Man's door, a very pale blush of light emanated from the ice-draped stone. I shuddered at its dreadful familiarity. Then with a sigh, I turned back to the steep footpath.

Even by day, it would have been a nasty climb. My brief rest in the Black Man's cavern seemed to have more sapped my energy than restored it. I thought, more than once, of going back into the warmth and comfort of his home, to sleep until morning. I did not think of it as something I could do but rather as something that I wished I could do. Now that I was so close to my goal, I was oddly reluctant to confront it. I had put a little wall of time between my grief and me. I knew that tonight, I would look my loss in the face and embrace the full impact of it. In strange antic.i.p.ation, I wanted it to be over.

When I finally reached the softly glimmering crack in the wall, I found that the opening was barely large enough for me to enter. The slow slide of water down the rock face was icing it gradually closed. I suspected that it must be a near daily task for the Black Man to keep this entrance clear enough to use.

I drew my belt knife and clashed away enough of the icy curtain that I could just squeeze through. My pack sc.r.a.ped. Once I was inside, I still had to turn my body sideways and edge forward toward the pale light, dragging my pack behind me. The crack widened very gradually, and when I looked back the way I had come, it did not look like a promising exit. If I had not known otherwise, I would have said that the crack came to an end with no outlet. The crack narrowed and then bent slightly before it intersected with a corridor of worked stone. One of the Pale Woman's globes gleamed there; it was the straying light from that orb which had beckoned me into this place.

I surveyed the corridor carefully before I stepped out of the crack. All was still in both directions, so still that I could hear the slow distant drip of water, and then the soft groaning of the glacier s.h.i.+fting somewhere. My Wit told me all was deserted, but in this place, that was small comfort. What a.s.surance did I have that all the Forged had been freed? I lifted my nose, scenting like a wolf, but smelled only ice-melt and faint smoke. I stood debating which way to go, and then impulsively chose to go left. Before I went, I scratched a mark at eye level on the stone wall by my crack, that small act affirming that I expected to return.

Once more, I traveled the chill corridors of the Pale Woman's realm. The halls were horribly familiar and yet unfamiliar in their stark similarity. They reminded me of somewhere I had been, and yet I could not summon the memory. In that realm, I had no way to measure the pa.s.sage of time. The light of the bulbous globes was uniform and unwavering. I found myself walking lightly and silently, and approaching each corner with caution. I felt I explored a tomb, and not just because I sought the Fool's body. Perhaps it was the movement of air in the cold tunnels, but there seemed always to be a whispering at the edge of my hearing.

This portion of the Pale Woman's stronghold showed signs of long disuse. Most of the chambers that opened onto the corridor were bare. One held a scattering of useless debris: a worn sock, a broken arrow, a tattered blanket end, and a cracked bowl were left behind on the dusty stone floor. In another, small cubes of memory stone were scattered all over the floor, obviously tumbled from the long narrow shelves that lined the walls. I wondered who had populated these chambers and when? Had this been a fortress for the Red s.h.i.+ps crews when they were not raiding? Or was it as the Black Man had told, had other people created these rooms and inhabited them? I decided that the habitation was far older than the Red s.h.i.+p War. High on the wall, above the reach of casual destruction, the remains of bas-relief carvings showed me glimpses of a woman's narrow face, of a dragon on the wing, of a tall and slender king. Only disconnected fragments of them remained, and I wondered if the Pale Woman had ordered them destroyed or if it was merely the idle pastime of Forged Ones to eradicate beauty. Knowledge seeped into me slowly, but eventually I wondered, Had she wished to erase all evidence that these pa.s.sages had once belonged to the Elderlings? Were they the "old ones" that the Black Man had seen perish here?

The corridor I followed merged seamlessly with one of ice. I stepped from black stone onto blue ice. Another dozen steps, and a carved portal admitted me into an immense vaulted chamber of ice. Flowering vines of ice were carved on the ma.s.sive ice pillars that had been left in place to support the blue ceiling. Time had softened their line as the slow melt had eased them back into obscurity, but their grace remained. It was a place of dusk, a moonlit garden of ice, with a large glowing crescent moon embedded in the ceiling and the constellations spelled out in smaller light orbs overhead. The Women's Gardens of Buckkeep Castle would have fitted twice into this chamber. It was obviously intended as a place of beauty and peace. Yet the lower reaches of the garden, the fantastically sculpted ice fountains, and the decorative benches all showed signs of malicious vandalism. It was the sort of desecration that bespoke anger and resentment more than idleness. Only the body of a dragon poised on a pillar of ice remained. His wings had been broken away, his head shattered in a dozen pieces. The smell of old urine was strong and the foundation pillar that supported him was corroded with yellow, as if merely destroying the dragon's image had not been enough for them.

I crossed the ice gardens and found a winding stairwell that led down. At one time, there had likely been carved ice steps going down and a bal.u.s.trade, perhaps, but time and slow melt had changed the steps to an uneven and treacherous slope. I fell several times, clawing at the walls to slow my sliding and biting my cheek to endure the pain silently. The destruction in the chamber above had reminded me of the Pale Woman's capacity for hate. I still feared that she might lurk somewhere in this ice labyrinth. I reached the bottom bruised and discouraged. I did not want to consider how I would ascend it again.

A wide corridor headed straight into a blue distance. Light globes at intervals illuminated the empty niches in its walls. As I pa.s.sed them, I noted stumps of legs in one. In another, the stub of a vase remained. At one time, then, they had held sculptures and this had been a sort of gallery, I supposed. A plain and functional side pa.s.sage opened off from it, and I took it, almost relieved to leave the broken beauty behind me. I followed it for what seemed like a long time. It sloped gently down. At the next turning, I went right, for I thought I knew where I was.

I was wrong. The place was a warren of intersecting ice pa.s.sages. Doors lined some pa.s.sages, but they were frozen shut and windowless. I made my marks at junctions, but soon wondered if I would ever find my way out again. I tried always to choose the path that was more used or wider, showing the recent dirt of human usage. Evidence of that became more obvious as I worked my way ever lower into the city of ice. Such I was now certain it had been. Looking back, I wonder if the Elderlings had simply accepted and shaped the ice when it overtook the city or if they had deliberately built in the stone of this island and then extended their dwelling into the glacier. I felt that as I found the pa.s.sages and chambers that the Pale Woman and her Forged minions had used, I left behind the beauty and grace of the Elderlings and descended into the grubbiness and destruction of humanity and I felt ashamed of my kind.

The chambers began to show signs of recent habitation. Unemptied slop buckets stood in corners of what might have been barracks rooms. Sleeping-hides were scattered on the floor among the casual litter of a guardroom. Yet I saw none of the touches that soldiers usually kept in their sleeping places: no dice or gaming pieces, no luck charms given by their sweethearts, no carefully folded s.h.i.+rt set aside for an evening in the tavern. The rooms bespoke a hard and bare life, stripped of humanity. Forged. It stirred in me a fresh surge of pity for the men who had lost years of their lives in her service.

More luck than memory led me at last to her throne room. When I saw the double door, a wave of sick antic.i.p.ation swept through me. That was where I had had my final glimpse of the Fool. Would his chained body still sprawl on the floor there? At that thought, I felt a surge of dizziness and, for a moment, blackness closed in at the edges of my vision. I halted where I stood and breathed slowly, waiting for my weakness to pa.s.s. Then I forced my legs to carry me on.

One of the tall doors of the chamber stood ajar. A shallow spill of snow and ice had been vomited out into the hall. At the sight of it, my heart stood still. Perhaps my quest would be thwarted here, the entire immense chamber collapsed and full of ice. The spilled snow was a ramp into the room; the days and nights that had pa.s.sed since its collapse had seized the snow and ice in an icy grip and stilled it. Only the top third of the entry remained clear. I climbed up the fall of ice and peered into the chamber. For a moment I stood in awe in the muted bluish light.

The center of the chamber ceiling had given way. Snow and ice had collapsed into it from above, filling the middle of the room but cascading to shallowness at the edges. Light came from a few remaining globes and peered out uncertainly from beneath the fall of ice. I wondered how long those unnatural lanterns would continue to burn. Was their magic that of the Pale Woman, or were those, too, remnants of an Elderling occupation of this place?

I went cautious as a rat exploring a new room, creeping around the perimeter of the walls where the fall of ice was shallowest. I clambered up and down over chunks and drifts of ice, fearing that I would eventually find my way blocked. But I finally reached the throne end of the room and could see what remained of the Pale Woman's great hall.

The crush of falling ice had spared that end of the chamber, its rush depleted. The wave of avalanching ice had stopped short of her throne. It was overturned and broken, but I suspected that had happened when the stone dragon had stirred to life. He seemed to have made his exit through the middle of the chamber's ceiling rather than from this end. The remains of two men protruded from the avalanche. Perhaps those were the fighters Dutiful had battled, or perhaps they had merely been in the dragon's way as he charged off to do battle. Of the Pale Woman, there was no sign. I hoped that she had shared their fate.

The fallen and muted light globes lit this area uncertainly. All was ice and blue shadow. I circled the toppled throne and tried to remember exactly where the Fool had been chained to the dragon. In retrospect, it seemed impossible that the dragon had been as immense as I recalled him. I looked in vain for fallen shackles or my friend's body. At last, I climbed up on icy rubble and from that vantage studied the room.

Almost immediately, I glimpsed a swirl of familiar colors and shapes. My belly churned as I slowly clambered down and walked over to it. I stood staring down at it, unable to feel any grief, only burning horror and disbelief. The overlay of frost could not disguise it. At length, I went to my knees, but I do not recall if I knelt to see it better or if my shaking legs simply gave out under me.

Dragons and serpents tangled and tumbled in the discarded folds of it. Scarlet frost outlined it. I did not need to touch it; I could not have brought myself to touch it, but it needed no touch to know that it was frozen solidly into the floor of the chamber. As body warmth had departed it, it had sunk into the ice and become one with it.

They had flayed the tattooed skin from his back.

I knelt beside it like a man in prayer. Doubtless it had been a slow and careful skinning to take it off intact. Despite the way it had wrinkled as it fell, I knew it was one continuous flap of skin, his entire back. To take it off like that would not have been easy. I did not want to imagine how they had restrained him, or who had lovingly wielded the blade. A second thought displaced that horrid image. This would not have been how she vindictively ended his life when she realized that I had defied her and wakened the dragon. Rather, she had done this to amuse herself, at her leisure, probably beginning the slow lifting of skin from flesh almost as soon as I had been taken from the room. Flung to one side, the wrinkled layer of skin was frozen to the floor like a dirty s.h.i.+rt cast aside. I could not stop staring at it. I could not keep myself from imagining every slow moment of his death. This was what he had foreseen; this was the end he had dreaded to face. How many times had I a.s.sured him that I would give up my life before I saw his torn from him? Yet here I knelt, alive.

Sometime later, I came back to myself. I had not fainted and I do not know where my thoughts had gone, only that I seemed to awaken from a time of utter blackness. I rose stiffly. I would not try to free her grisly trophy and bear it off with me. That was no part of my Fool. It was the cruel mark she had put upon him, his daily reminder that eventually he must come to her and yield back to her what she had etched upon his skin. So let it lie there, frozen forever. With ever-darkening hatred of her and ever-deepening grief, I knew with sudden certainty where I would find my friend's body.

As I stood, I caught sight of a curved sheen of gray. It was not far from where his skin lay upon the floor. I knelt beside it and brushed a layer of frost away to reveal a blood-smeared shard of the carved Rooster Crown. A single gem winked up from a carved bird's eye. That I did take with me. That had belonged to him and me, and I would not leave it behind.

I left the demolished room and threaded my way through corridors as frozen as my heart. In all directions, the halls looked the same, and I could not focus my mind to recall how I had been dragged to her, let alone the location of the dungeon where they had confined me. I knew now, with certainty, where I had to go. I needed to find my way back to the first corridor the Fool and I had entered.

I know it took me more than the rest of the night. I wandered until I was past weariness. The cold nudged at me and my ears strained after imagined sounds. I saw no sign of any living creature. Eventually, when my eyes ached from remaining open, I decided to rest. I set my pack down in the corner of a small room where firewood had been stored. I put my back to the corner and sat on my pack. I clutched my sword in my hand as I drooped my head over my knees. I dozed fitfully until nightmares awoke me and drove me on again.

Eventually, I found her bedchamber, her frozen braziers draped with icicles. The lights burned brightly there and I could see the whole chamber, the carved wardrobes of rich wood, and the elegant table that held her mirror and brushes, her sparkling jewelry gleaming on a silvery tree. Someone, perhaps, had plundered as he fled, for one of the wardrobes stood open, and garments trailed from it across the floor. I wondered how they had missed taking the jewels. The sleek furs of her bed were h.o.a.red with frost. I did not linger there. I did not want to gaze at the empty shackles affixed to the wall across from her bed, or on the b.l.o.o.d.y stains they framed on the icy wall.

Beyond her bedchamber, another door gaped. I glanced in as I pa.s.sed, then halted and went back to it. There was a table in the middle of the room, and scroll racks lined the walls. They were neatly filled, the scrolls rolled and tied in the Six Duchies fas.h.i.+on. I walked over to them, knowing what I had found, but feeling oddly emotionless about it. I pulled out a scroll at random and opened it. Yes. It was by Master Treeknee. This one had to do with rules of conduct for candidates-in-training. It strictly forbade the playing of pranks that involved the use of Skill. I let it fall to the icy floor and chose another at random. This was newer, and I recognized Solicity's rounded hand and sloping letters. The words squirmed before my tearing eyes, and I let it fall to join its fellow. I lifted my gaze to look around the room. Here was the missing Skill library of Buckkeep Castle, surrept.i.tiously sold away by Regal to finance his lush lifestyle at Tradeford. Traders who were agents for the Pale Woman and Kebal Rawbread had bought from the youngest Prince the knowledge of the Fa.r.s.eer magic. Our inheritance had come north, to the Outislanders and eventually to this room. Here the Pale Woman had learned how to turn our own magic against us, and here she had studied how to make a stone dragon. Chade would have given his eyeteeth for a single afternoon in this room. It was a treasure trove of lost knowledge. It would not buy what I most desired, a chance to do things differently. I shook my head and turned and left it there.

Eventually, I found the dungeons that had held the Narcheska's mother and sister. Peottre had left those doors ajar when he had s.n.a.t.c.hed his women free of them. The next dungeon showed me a more grisly sight. Three dead men sprawled within it. I wondered if they had died as Forged Ones, fighting amongst themselves, or if the death of the dragon had restored them to themselves, so that they perished of cold and hunger while in full possession of their sensibilities.

The door of the cell that had held Riddle and Hest stood open. Hest's plundered body lay face up on the floor. I forced myself to look down into his face. Cold and death had blackened his countenance, but I saw there still the young man I had known. After a moment's hesitation, I stooped and seized his shoulders. It was hard work, but I pried his body from the floor. It was not a pleasant task, for he was well frozen to it. I dragged him back to the room that had held the Narcheska's mother and placed him on the wooden bed. I gathered from that room and her daughter's cell anything that I thought might burn, old bedding and straw from the floor. I heaped it around his body, and then sacrificed half of the flask of oil that I had brought with me for burning the Fool's body. It took some little time to get a bit of the straw to light, but once it did, the flames licked eagerly at the oil and clambered over the wood and straw. I waited until a curtain of flames had risen around his body. Then I cut a lock of my hair and added it to his funeral pyre, the traditional Six Duchies sacrifice to say farewell to a comrade. "Not in vain, Hest. Not in vain," I told him, but as I left him burning, I wondered what we had truly accomplished. Only the years to come would tell us, and I was not yet ready to say that the freeing of the dragon was a trumph for humanity.

And that left the last chamber. Of course. It would have been her final degradation of him, her final mockery and triumphant discarding of him. In a chamber spattered with human waste and garbage, by a heap of offal and filth, I found my friend.