Robin Hobb - Fool's Fate

The Fool looked touched by Dutiful's comments. He looked down at his hands, neatly gloved in black, rubbed his fingertips together almost idly, and then admitted, "I don't have any true Skill of my own. I only used what was left of the touch I'd taken from Verity. And my own knowledge of… Tom."

At the mention of his father's name, the Prince had perked up like a foxhound catching a scent. He leaned closer to the Fool, as if his knowledge of King Verity were something that could be absorbed from him. "Nonetheless," he assured Lord Golden, "I look forward to journeying with you. I think you may be a valuable member of this coterie, regardless of your level of Skill. Will you not join us for the day's lesson and let us explore the extent of your ability?"

I saw Chade torn. The Fool offered a possibility of greater power for the coterie, which Chade craved; but he feared the Fool's opposition to our basic mission to take the dragon's head. I wondered if there was an element of jealousy in how his eyes darted from the Fool to me. The Fool and I had always been close, and Chade knew he wielded a friend's sway over me. Yet now, more than ever, Chade desired to rule me.

His greed for the Skill won out. He added his voice to Dutiful's. "Please, Lord Golden, take a seat with us. If nothing else, you may find our efforts amusing."

"Well, then, I shall," the Fool declared almost gladly. He pulled out a chair and sat down expectantly. I wondered if any of the others could see the darker tides running behind the placid affability he presented to them. Chade and I took the chairs on either side of him while Dutiful persuaded Thick to come and join us at the table. When he was settled, four of us simultaneously took a deep breath and reached for that state of openness where we could all reach the Skill. As we did so, I had an insight both affirming and alarming. The Fool was an intruder here. In our short time of striving to become a coterie, we had achieved a unity. I had not perceived it until the Fool interrupted it. As I joined my awareness to Dutiful's and Thick's, I could feel Chade fluttering like a frantic butterfly at the edge of our union. Thick reached a reassuring hand to draw him into firmer contact with the rest of us. He belonged with us, but the Fool did not.

He was not so much a presence as an absence. I had noticed years ago that he was invisible to my Wit-sense. Now, as I deliberately reached toward him with the Skill, it was like trying to lift sun dazzle off a still pond. "Lord Golden, do you avoid us?" Chade asked very softly.

"I am here," he replied. His words seemed to ripple softly in the room, as if I felt them as well as heard them. "Give me your hand," Chade suggested. He set his own, palm up, on the table, outstretched toward my friend. It seemed as much a challenge as an invitation.

I felt a minuscule tickle of fear. It quivered along the Skill-bond between the Fool and me, letting me know that link still existed. Then the Fool lifted his gloved hand and set it in Chade's.

I could feel him then, but not in any way that is easy to describe. If our combined Skill was a quiet pool, then the Fool was a leaf floating upon it. "Reach for him," Chade suggested, and we all did. My awareness of the Fool's uneasiness grew stronger via our bond, but I did not think the others could sense that. They could almost touch him, but he parted before them and joined after them, as if they dragged their fingers through water. It disturbed his presence without making it accessible to them. His fear intensified. I reached along our bond surreptitiously, trying to discover what frightened him.

Possession. He did not wish to be touched in a way that might let another possess him. Belatedly I recalled what Regal and his coterie had once done to him. They had found him, through the link I shared with him, and taken a bit of his consciousness and used it against me, to spy upon me and gain knowledge of Molly's whereabouts. That betrayal still shamed and pained him. He still carried that burden of guilt for something that had happened so long ago. It stabbed deeper that soon he would know that I had betrayed him, as well.

It wasn't your fault. I offered him comfort through our link. He refused it. Then, as if from a distance and yet clear, his thoughts reached mine.

I knew it would happen. I'd foretold it myself, when I was a child. That the one closest to you would betray you. Yet I could not believe that it would be me. And so I fulfilled my own prophecy. We all survived. Barely.

"Are you Shilling to one another?" Chade asked testily. I both heard and felt his words.

I took a deeper breath and sank deeper into the Skill. "Yes," I breathed. "I can reach him. But only just. And only because we have been Skill-linked before."

"Would you have more than this?" The Fool's voice was less than a whisper. I discerned a challenge in his words, but could not understand it. "Yes, please. Try," I bade him.

Beside me at the table, I was aware of the Fool making some small movement but my vision was unfocused on the room and I had no warning of his intentions until his hand settled on my wrist. His fingertips unerringly found their own faded gray fingerprints, left on my flesh so many years ago. His touch was gentle, but the sensation was an arrow in my heart. I physically spasmed, a speared fish, and then froze. The Fool ran through my veins, hot as liquor, cold as ice. For a flashing instant, we shared physical awareness. The intensity of it went beyond any joining I'd ever experienced. It was more intimate than a kiss and deeper than a knife thrust, beyond a Skill-link and beyond sexual coupling, even beyond my Wit-bond with Nighteyes. It was not a sharing, it was a becoming. Neither pain nor pleasure could encompass it. Worse, I felt myself turning and opening to it, as if it were my lover's mouth upon mine, yet I did not know if I would devour or be devoured. In another heartbeat, we would be one another, know one another more perfectly than two separate beings ever should.

He'd know my secret.

"No!" I cried before he could discover my plot against him. I wrenched myself free, mind and body. For a long time I fell, until I struck the cold stone floor. I rolled under the table to escape that touch, gasping. My time of blackness seemed to last for hours, yet it was only an instant before Chade dragged my curled body from under the table. He propped me against his chest as he knelt beside me. Dimly I was aware of him demanding, "What happened? Are you hurt? What did you do to him, Fool?"

I heard a sob escape Thick. He alone, perhaps, had sensed what had transpired. A prickling shiver ran over my body. I could not see anything. Then I realized my eyes were tightly clenched shut, my body huddled in a ball. Knowing those things, it still took me a time to persuade myself I could change them. Just as I opened my eyes, the Fool's thought uncurled in my mind like a leaf opening to sunlight. And I set no limits on that love.

"It's too much," I said brokenly. "No one can give that much. No one."

"Here's brandy," Dutiful said close by me. It was Chade who hauled me into a sitting position and put the cup to my lips. I gulped it as if it were water, then wheezed with the shock. When I managed to turn my head, the Fool was the only one still sitting in his chair at the table. His hands were gloved again, and the look he gave me was opaque. Thick crouched in a corner of the room, hugging himself and shivering. His Skill-music was his mother's song, a desperate attempt to comfort himself.

"What happened?" Chade demanded in a fierce voice. I still leaned against his chest, and I could feel the anger emanating from him like heat. I knew he directed his accusatory glare at the Fool, but I answered anyway. "It was too intense. We formed a Skill-link that was so complete, I couldn't find myself. As if we'd become one being." I called it the Skill yet I was not sure that was a proper name for it. As well call a spark the sun. I took a deeper breath. "It scared me. So I broke free of it. I wasn't expecting anything like that." And those words were spoken as much to the Fool as to the others. I saw him hear them, but I think he took a different message from them than what I had intended.