“No, Fitz. I have come to believe it is through you.” He reached out and tapped me lightly with Ratsy. “Keystone. Gate. Crossroads. Catalyst. All these you have been, and continue to be. Whenever I come to a crossroads, whenever the scent is uncertain, when I put my nose to the ground, and cast about and bay and snuffle, I find one scent. Yours. You create possibilities. While you exist, the future can be steered. I came here for you, Fitz. You are the thread I tweak. One of them, anyway.”

I felt a sudden chill of foreboding. Whatever more he had to say, I did not wish to hear it. Somewhere, far away, a thin howl arose. A wolf baying in midday. A shiver ran up me, setting up every hair on my body. “You’ve had your joke,” I said, laughing nervously. “I should have known better than to expect a real secret from you.”

“You. Or not you. Linchpin, anchor, knot in the line. I have seen the end of the world, Fitz. Seen it woven as plainly as I’ve seen my birth. Oh, not in your lifetime, nor even mine. But shall we be happy, to say that we live in the dusk rather than in the full night? Shall we rejoice that we shall only suffer, while your offspring will be the ones to know the torments of the damned? Shall this be why we do not act?”

“Fool. I wish not to hear this.”

“You had a chance to deny me. But thrice you demanded it, and hear it you shall.” He lifted his staff as if leading a charge, and spoke as if he addressed the full Council of the Six Duchies. “The fall of the Kingdom of the Six Duchies was the pebble that started the landslide. The soulless ones moved on from there, spreading like a bloodstain down the world’s best shirt. Darkness devours, and is never satiated until it feeds upon itself. And all because the line of House Farseer failed. That is the future as it is woven. But wait! Farseer?” He cocked his head and peered at me, considering as a gore-crow. “Why do they call you that, Fitz? What have your ancestors ever foreseen afar to gain such a name? Shall I tell you how it comes about? The very name of your house is the future reaching back in time to you, and naming you by the name that someday your house will deserve. The Farseers. That was the clue I took to my heart. That the future reached back to you, to your house, to where your bloodlines intersected with my lifetime, and named you so. I came here, and what did I discover? One Farseer, with no name at all. Unnamed in any history, past or future. But I have seen you take a name, FitzChivalry Farseer. And I shall see that you deserve it.” He advanced on me, seized me by the shoulders. “We are here, Fitz, you and I, to change the future of the world. To reach out and hold in place the tiny pebble that could trigger the boulder’s tumbling.”

“No.” A terrible cold was welling up inside me. I shook with it. My teeth began to chatter, and the bright motes of light to sparkle at the edges of my vision. A fit. I was going to have another fit. Right here, in front of the Fool. “Leave!” I cried out, unable to abide the thought. “Go away. Now! Quickly. Quickly!”

I had never seen the Fool astonished before. His jaw actually dropped open, revealing his tiny white teeth and pale tongue. A moment longer he gripped me, and then he let go. I did not stop to think of what he might feel at my abrupt dismissal. I snatched the door open and pointed out it, and he was gone. I shut it behind him, latched it, and then staggered to my bed as wave after wave of darkness surged through me. I fell facedown on the coverlets. “Molly!” I cried out. “Molly, save me!” But I knew she could not hear me, and I sank alone into my blackness.

The brightness of a hundred candles, festoons of evergreen and swags of holly and bare black winter branches hung with sparkling sugar candies to delight the eye and tongue. The clacking of the puppets’ wooden swords and the delighted exclamations of the children when the Piebald Prince’s head actually came flying off and arced out over the crowd. Mellow’s mouth wide in a bawdy song as his unattended fingers danced independently over his harp strings. A blast of cold as the great doors of the hall were thrown open and yet another group of merrymakers came into the Great Hall to join us. The slow knowledge stole over me that this was no longer a dream, this was Winterfest, and I was wandering benignly through the celebration, smiling blandly at everyone and seeing no one. I blinked my eyes slowly. I could do nothing quickly. I was wrapped in soft wool, I was drifting like an unmanned sailboat on a still day. A wonderful sleepiness filled me. Someone touched my arm. I turned. Burrich frowning and asking me something. His voice, always so deep, almost a color washing against me when he spoke. “It’s all good,” I told him calmly. “Don’t worry, it’s all good.” I floated away from him, wafting through the room with the milling of the crowd.