Fool's Errand

Page 157

Our room was at the back of the inn, on the ground floor. I dragged our baggage inside, closed the door behind the departing servant, and opened wide the window. I found a nightshirt for Lord Golden and laid it out on his turneddown bed. I put the meat inside my shirt, to take to Nighteyes later. Then I sat down on my bed to await Lord Golden's return.
I awoke to someone shaking my shoulder gently. “Fitz? Are you all right?”
I came up slowly out of my dream. It took a moment or two to recall who I was. In my dream, I had been in another city, a populous, welllit city. There had been music and many torches and lights. A celebration. I had not been a servant, but was “It's gone,” I told the Fool sleepily.
I heard an odd scrabbling noise and then a thump as Nighteyes heaved himself over the windowsill and then dropped into the room. He thrust his nose into my face. I petted him absently. I felt so drowsy. My ears buzzed.
The Fool shook me again. “Fitz. Stay awake and talk to me. What's wrong? Is it the Smoke?”
“Nothing. It's just so peaceful. I want to go back to sleep.” Sleep pulled at me like a retreating tide. I longed to recede with it. Nighteyes poked me again.
Stupid. It's the black stone, like the Elderling road. You're getting lost in it again. Come outside.
I forced my eyes open wider. I looked up into the Fool's concerned face, and then dazedly gazed at the walls that surrounded me. Black stone. Veined with silver. And when I looked at it, I recognized it for what it was, stone scavenged from a much older building. The stones of the inner wall of the room fitted almost seamlessly together, but the outer wall was built more roughly. No, I suddenly knew, that wasn't completely right. The building predated the town, but it had been a ruin, rebuilt from the same ancient stone. And that ancient stone was memory stone, worked by Elderling hands.
I do not know what the Fool thought as I tottered to my feet. “Stones. Memory stone,” I told him thickly as I groped my way toward the fresh air. I heard his astonished cry when I threw myself out of the window into the dusty innyard. The wolf landed more softly beside me. An instant later, Nighteyes faded into the shadows as someone leaned out of a window and demanded, “What goes on there?”
“It's my idiot servingman!” Lord Golden retorted in disgust. “So drunk he has fallen out the window trying to close it for me. Well, let him lie there. Serves the soddenoaf right.”
I lay still in the dust of the innyard and felt the plucking dreams recede. In a moment or two, I would stand and walk farther from the stone walls. I just needed a momentor two.
The terrible tiredness that had been burdening me all evening gradually eased. I floated in relief. I stared up into the night sky and felt as if I could rise right up into it. Somewhere a couple was arguing. He was miserable but she was insistent. It was too much trouble to focus on their words, but then they came closer, and I could not avoid overhearing them.
“I should go home,” he said. He sounded very young. “I should go back to my mother. If I had not left her, none of this would have happened. Arno would still be alive. And those others.”
She inserted her head under his arm, and then rested it on his chest. That's true. And we would be apart, you forever given to another. Is that truly what you want?
They had drifted closer. With him, I breathed the sweet scent of her, musky and wild. He held her close. The wind blew through my dream of them, tattering the edges. He stroked her fur; her long dark hair threaded through his fingers. “It isn't what I want. But perhaps it is my duty.”
Your duty is to your people. And to me. She wrapped her hand around his forearm. Her fingernails pressed against his flesh like claws. She tugged at him with them. Come on. Itis time to get up again. We cannot tarry, we must ride.
He looked down into her green eyes. “My love, I must go back. I would be more useful to all of us there. I could speak out, I could press for change. I could We would be apart. Could you stand that? ”I would find a way for us to be together." No.' She cuffed his cheek, and her palm rasped against his skin. There was a hint of claws in the gesture. No. They would not understand. They would force us apart. They would kill me, and perhaps you, too. Recall the tale of the Piebald Prince. His royal blood was not enough to protect him. Yours would be no shield to you. A pause, then: I am the only one who truly cares about you. Only can save you. But I dare not come to you completely until you have proven you are one of us. Always you hold back. Are you ashamed of your Old Blood? No. Never that.
Then open yourself. Be what you know you are. He was silent for a long time. “I have a duty,” he said softly. Infinite regret was in his voice.