I nodded but did not answer. Did she know what a heavy harness she had just put upon me?

The passage I entered, like all things that touched Kettricken, was clean and bare. There were no mouse droppings, no cobwebs there, and I traversed the distance by touch to Chade’s old den. I entered it as softly as I could, hoping not to wake the Fool.

But he was in a chair before the fire. His hands were held up in front of him, and he moved his fingers against the dancing light of the flames. “There you are,” he greeted me. “I was worried about you when you didn’t come by.”

I stopped. “You thought I’d run away.” It was a bit daunting to realize how many of my friends believed I’d do that.

He wagged his head in a dismissive way. “There’s a pattern.”

“I did that once!”

He folded his lips and said nothing. His fingers continued their dance.

“Can you see your fingers?”

“I see darkness against a lighter background. And it limbers them. Even though it hurts.” He waggled them again. “Fitz. Words can’t express—”

“No. They can’t. So let us not try.”

“Very well.” Subdued.

Bee. Bee. Bee. Bee. Think of something else. “I was glad to see you up and out of this room yesterday.”

“It was frightening for me. I wanted to come to you. To speak to Elliania. But … well. Not yet. I know that I must push myself. I cannot be a rat in the walls. I need to become lithe and strong again. So we can go back to Clerres, and end that place. Avenge our child.” Like a suddenly billowing flame, his fury, hatred, and pain erupted in his voice.

I could not take him with me. I told him the truth in a way that seemed a lie. “I have no stomach for plotting just now, Fool. All I can feel right now is sorrow.” And shame. I knew this stillness. I recalled it from Regal’s torture chamber. One becomes motionless, assessing how badly one is hurt. One asks, Can I move without dying?

“I understand, Fitz. Mourn you must. Your mourning is the seed that will grow into fury. I will wait for you to be ready. Though it grieves me to think of those who suffer there, waiting for us.”

The eyes he turned toward me were blind but I still felt the rebuke in his gaze. I spoke flatly. “It’s no good, Fool. You are putting the spurs to a dead horse.”

“You have no hope, then?”

“None.” I did not want to talk about it.

“I thought that surely you would go after her.” He sounded as hurt as he was puzzled by my lack of fire.

“I would have if I could. I took the elfbark tea to be proof against their fogging magic. It has blanketed my Skill. I can no more go through a Skill-stone now than you can.”

His fingers paused in their dancing. He rubbed the scarred tips of those fingers together and said, “Ah, but once I could.”

“And now neither of us can.”

“But your limitation will pass. Your Skill will return.”

“I believe it will, though even that is not certain. Some of the older scrolls speak of quenching forever the Skill in those who used it for ill purposes. And they used elfbark to do it.”

“How much did you take?”

“Two doses. One of weak elfbark here. And one of delvenbark as I got closer. I believe it will pass. What I cannot predict is how long it will take.”

He was silent for a time. “I had intended that the first part of our journey to Clerres would be made through the stones, as when Prilkop and I traveled there.” He was subdued.

“It seems you have it all planned out.”

The firelight glinted oddly on his skin as he shook his head. “No. I have planned only the possible. The impossible I have yet to map out.”

“Truly?”

“Yes. We will leave from the dungeons of Buckkeep. I have learned from Ash that several times he was ordered to await the return of Lord Chade in a certain corridor. Once he crept forward, peered around a corner, and saw his master emerge from a stone wall. A wall with a rune on it.”

“It goes to Aslevjal.”

The Fool made a sound of exasperation. “You might at least pretend to be surprised.”

It came to me like a curtain parting. He was trying to distract me from my mourning. Trying to lift me from a pain we shared. I tried to find something new to tell him. “It was part of Chade’s downfall. His curiosity. He traveled by the stones too often, creeping off to Aslevjal to prowl the corridors there in search of more Skill-knowledge. Nor did he follow the precaution of waiting at least three days between journeys. He would go and return in a single night, and sometimes do so for several nights in succession.”