Robin Hobb - Fool's Errand

"Agreed," the Fool replied softly.

I felt oddly guilty because I felt relief. Not just that he had agreed with me, not just that the Piebald had been put out of my reach, but relief that with Laurel and the prisoner gone, we could drop pretenses and just be ourselves. "I've missed you," I said quietly, knowing that he would know what I meant.

"So have I." His voice came from a new direction. In the dark, he was up and moving silently and gracefully as a cat. That thought brought my dream back to me abruptly. I grasped at the tattered fragments of it. "I think the Prince might be in danger," I admitted.

"You're only now concluding that?"

"A different type of danger from what I expected. I suspected the Witted ones of luring him away from Kettricken and the Court, of bribing him with a cat to be his Wit-partner so that they could take him off and make him one of their own. But last night, I dreamed, and… it was an evil dream, Fool. Of the Prince displaced from himself, of the cat exerting so much influence over their bonding that he could scarcely recall who or what he was."

"That could happen?"

"I wish I knew for certain. The whole thing was so peculiar. It was his cat, and yet it was not. There was a woman, but I never saw her. When I was the Prince, I loved her. And the cat, I loved the cat, too. I think the cat loved me, but it was hard to tell. The woman was almost… between us,"

"When you were the Prince." I could tell that he could not even decide how to phrase the question.

The mouth of the cave was a lighter bit of darkness now. The wolf slumbered on. I fumbled through an explanation. "Sometimes, at night… it's not exactly Skilling. Nor is it completely the Wit. I think that even in my magic, I am a bastard cross of two lines, Fool. Perhaps that is why Skilling sometimes hurts so much. Perhaps I never learned to do it properly at all. Maybe Galen was right about me, all the time—"

"When you were the Prince," he reminded me firmly.

"In the dreams, I become him. Sometimes I recall who I truly am. Sometimes I simply become him and know where he is and what he is doing. I share his thoughts, but he is not aware of me, nor can I speak to him. Or perhaps I can. I've never tried. In the dreams, it never occurs to me to try. I simply become him, and ride along."

He made a small sound, like breathing out thoughtfully. Dawn came in the way it does at the change of the seasons, going from dark to pearly gray all in an instant. And in the moment, I smelled that summer was over, that the thunderstorm last night had drowned it and washed it away, and the days of autumn were undeniably upon us. There was a smell in the air of leaves soon to fall, and plants abandoning their greenery to sink back into their roots, and even of seeds on the wing seeking desperately for a place to settle and sink before the frosts of winter found them.

I turned away from the mouth of our cave and found the Fool, already dressed in clean clothes, putting the final touch on our packing. "There's just a bit of bread and an apple left," he told me. "And I don't think Nighteyes would fancy the apple."

He tossed me the bread for the wolf. As the light of day reached his face, Nighteyes stirred. He carefully thought nothing at all as he rose, cautiously stretched, and then went to lap water from the pool at the back of the cave. When he came back, he dropped down beside me and accepted the bread as I broke it into pieces.

So. How long have they been gone? I asked him.

You know I let them go. Why do you even ask me that?

I was silent for a time. I had changed my mind. Couldn't you feel that? I had decided I wouldn't even hurt him, let alone kill him.

Changer. Last night you bore us both too close to a very dangerous place. Neither one of us truly knew what you would do. I chose to let them go rather than find out. Did I choose wrong?

I didn't know. That was the frightening part, that I didn't know. I wouldn't ask him to help me track Laurel and the archer. Instead I asked, Think we can pick up the Prince's trail?

I promised you I would, didn't? Let us simply do what we must do and then go home.

I bowed my head. It sounded good to me.

The Fool had been juggling the apple in one hand. Once Nighteyes had finished eating, he stopped, gripped the apple in both hands, and then gave it a sudden twist. It broke smoothly into two halves, and he tossed one to me. I caught it, and shook my head at him, grinning. "Every time I think I know all your tricks—"

"You find out how wrong you are," he finished. He ate his half rapidly, saving the core for Malta, and I did the same for Myblack. The hungry horses were not enthusiastic about the day ahead. I smoothed their ragged coats a bit before I saddled them and fastened our saddle packs to Myblack. Then we led them out and down the gravelly slope, now slippery with mud. The wolf limped along behind us.

As so often happens after a good thunderstorm, the sky was blue and clear. The scents of the day were strong as the rising sun warmed the wet earth. Birds sang. Overhead, a flock of ducks headed south in the morning light. At the bottom of the hill, we mounted. Can you keep up? I asked Nighteyes worriedly.

You'd better hope so. Because without me, you haven't a chance of trailing the Prince.

A single set of horse tracks led back the way we had come. Heavy imprints. They were riding double, as fast as Whitecap could carry them. Where were they going, and why? Then I put Laurel and the Piebald out of my head. It was the Prince we sought.

Whitecap's hoofprints returned to where we had been ambushed the day before. I noted, in passing, that the Piebald had retrieved his bow. Then they had ridden back toward the road. Whitecap's tracks were still pushed deep in the damp soil. They had gone on together, then.

Theirs were not the only fresh tracks under the tree. Two other horses had come and gone there since the night's rain. Their tracks overcut those of the heavily burdened Whitecap. I frowned over that. These were not the tracks of the pursuers from the village. They had not come this far; at least not yet. I decided to hope that the deaths of their friends and the horrid weather had turned them back. These fresh tracks came from the northwest, then turned, and went back that way. I pondered for a time, then the obvious hammered me: "Of course. The archer had no horse. The Piebalds sent someone back for their sentry." I grinned ruefully. "At least they've left us a clear trail to follow."

I glanced over but the Fool's face was still. He did not share my elation. "What's wrong?"

He gave a sickly smile. "I was imagining how we would feel now if you had killed that boy last night, beating their destination out of him."

I did not want to follow that thought. I said nothing and concentrated on the tracks in the earth. Nighteyes and I led, and the Fool followed. The horses were hungry, and Myblack in particular fractious because of it. She snatched at yellow-veined willow leaves and clumps of dry grass whenever she could, and I felt too much sympathy to correct her. Had I been able to satisfy my belly that way, I would have snatched a handful of leaves myself.

As we pushed on, I saw signs of the rider's haste as he raced back to warn his party that their sentry had been taken. The tracks followed the obvious routes now, the easiest way up a hill, the clearest path through a tongue of woods. The day was still young when we found the remnants of a camp under the spread of an oak grove.

"They must have had a wet, wild night of it," the Fool guessed, and I nodded. The fire spot showed the remains of charred logs extinguished by the downpour and never rekindled. A woven blanket had left its imprint on the sodden ground; whoever had slept there had slept wet. The ground was churned with tracks. Had other Piebalds awaited them here? The departing tracks overcut one another. There was no point in wasting time trying to puzzle it out.