He spoke hesitantly, looking at the fire rather than at me. “You pulled him back from the other side of death once. You’ve been stingy with the details on that, and I’ve found nothing in any Skill-scroll that references such a feat. I thought perhaps . . .”
“No.” I pushed another dab of unguent into a wound. Only two more to go. My back ached abominably from bending over my task, and my head pounded as it had not in years. I pushed aside thoughts of carryme powder and elfbark tea. Deadening the body to pain always took a toll on the mind, and I could not afford that just now. “I haven’t been stingy with information, Chade. It was more a thing that happened rather than something I did. The circumstances are not something I can duplicate.” I suppressed a shudder at the thought.
I finished my task. I became aware that Chade had risen and was standing beside me. He offered me a soft gray cloth. I spread it carefully over the Fool’s treated back and then pulled his nightshirt down over it. I leaned forward and spoke by his ear. “Fool?”
“Don’t wake him,” Chade suggested firmly. “There are good reasons why a man falls into unconsciousness. Let him be. When both his body and his mind are ready for him to wake again, he will.”
“I know you’re right.”
Lifting him and carrying him back to the bed was a harder task than it should have been. I deposited him there on his belly and covered him warmly.
“I’ve lost track of time,” I admitted to Chade. “How did you stand it in here, all those years, with scarcely a glimpse of the sky?”
“I went mad,” he said genially. “In a useful sort of way, I might add. None of the ranting and clawing the walls one might expect. I simply became intensely interested in my trade and all aspects of it. Nor was I confined here as much as you might suspect. I had other identities, and sometimes I ventured forth into castle or town.”
“Lady Thyme,” I said, smiling.
“She was one. There were others.”
If he had wanted me to know, he would have told me. “How long until breakfast?”
He made a small sound in his throat. “If you were a guardsman, you’d likely be getting up from it by now. But for you, a minor noble from a holding that no one’s ever heard of, on your first visit to Buckkeep Castle, well, you’ll be forgiven for sleeping in a bit after last night’s festivities. I’ll pass the word to Ash and he’ll bring you food after you’ve had a bit of a nap.”
“Where did you find him?”
“He’s an orphan. His mother was a whore of the particular sort patronized mostly by wealthy young nobles who have . . . aberrant tastes. She worked in an establishment about a day’s ride from here in the countryside. A useful distance from Buckkeep Town for the sorts of activities a young noble might wish to keep secret. She died messily in an assignation gone horribly wrong, for both her and Ash. An informant thought I might find it useful to know which noble’s eldest son had such proclivities. Ash was a witness, not to her death but to the man who killed her. I had him brought to me and when I questioned him about what he had seen, I found he had an excellent eye for detail and a sharp mind for recalling it. He described the noble right down to the design of the lace on his cuffs. He’d grown up making himself useful to his mother and others in her trade, and thus he has a well-honed instinct for discretion. And stealth.”
“And the collecting of secrets.”
“There is that, too. His mother was not a street whore, Fitz. A young noble could take her to the gaming tables or the finer entertainments in Buckkeep Town, and not be shamed by her company. She knew poetry and could sing it to a small lute she played. He’s a lad who has walked in two worlds. He may not have court manners yet, and one can hear he’s not court-born when he speaks, but he’s not an ignorant alley rat. He’ll be useful.”
I nodded slowly. “And you want him to page for me while I’m here so . . .?”
“So you can tell me what you think of him.”
I smiled. “Not so he can watch me for you?”
Chade opened his hands deprecatingly. “And if he does, what would he see that I don’t already know? Consider it part of his training. Set him some challenges for me. Help me hone him.”
And again, what was I to say? He was doing all for the Fool and me that could be done. Could I do less for him? I had recognized the unguent I’d pushed into the Fool’s wounds. The oil for it came from the livers of a fish seldom seen in our northern waters. It was expensive, but he had not flinched from giving it to me. I would not be chary of giving him whatever I could in return. I nodded. “I’m going down to my old room to sleep for a bit.”
Chade returned my nod. “You have overtaxed yourself, Fitz. Later, when you’ve rested, I’d like a written report on that healing. When I reached for you . . . well, I could find you, but it was as if you were not yourself. As if you were so immersed in healing the Fool that you were becoming him. Or that the two of you were merging.”
“I’ll write it down,” I promised him, wondering how I could describe for him something I didn’t understand myself. “But in return, I’ll ask you to select for me new scrolls on Skill-healing and lending strength. I’ve already read the ones you left for me.”
He nodded, well pleased that I’d asked for such things, and left me, slipping out of sight behind the tapestry. I checked on the Fool and found him deeply asleep still. I hovered my hand over his face, loath to touch him lest I rouse him but worried that my efforts might have woken a higher fever in him. Instead, he seemed cooler and his breathing deeper. I straightened, yawned tremendously, and then made the error of stretching.
I muffled my yelp of pain. I stood still for a long moment, then carefully rolled my shoulders. I hadn’t imagined it. I reached behind myself and gingerly tugged my shirt free of where it had adhered to my back. Then I found Chade’s mirror. What I saw confounded me.
The oozing wounds on my back were far smaller than those on the Fool’s; nor were they puffed and reddened with infection. Instead they gaped, seven small injuries as if someone had repeatedly stabbed me with a dagger. They had not bled much; I judged them shallow. And given my propensity to heal quickly, they might very well be gone by the end of tomorrow.
The conclusion I had to reach was obvious. In Skill-healing the Fool’s wounds, I had taken on these small twins. A sudden memory stirred, and I examined my belly. There, just where I had closed the wounds my knife had made on the Fool’s body, was a series of reddened dents. I prodded one and winced. Not painful but tender. My whirling thoughts offered me a dozen explanations. In sharing strength with the Fool, had I actually shared flesh with him? Were his wounds closing because mine were opened? I draped my shirt around me, added wood to the fire, gathered my buttony jacket, and scuffed down the dusty steps to my old bedchamber. I hoped I would find some answers in the scrolls that Chade had promised me. Until I did, I would keep this small mishap to myself. I had no desire to participate in the experiments that Chade would doubtless envision if he knew of this.
I shut the door and it became undetectable. A peek out of my shuttered window told me that a winter dawn was not far away. Well, I would take what sleep I could still get and be grateful. I added a log to the dying fire on my hearth, draped my ruined finery on a chair, found Lord Feldspar’s sensible woolen nightshirt, and sought my boyhood bed. My drowsy eyes wandered the familiar walls. There was the wandering crack in the wall that had always reminded me of a bear’s snout. I had made that gouge in the ceiling, practicing a fancy move with a hand axe that had flown out of my grip. The tapestry of King Wisdom treating with the Elderlings had been replaced with one of two bucks in battle. I preferred it. I drew a deep breath and settled into the bed. Home. Despite all the years, this was home, and I sank into sleep surrounded by the stout walls of Buckkeep Castle.