When I was finished, she nodded to herself, grimly confirming her suspicions. “They reached for you and seized him instead. He has not the faintest idea of how to protect himself. For all I know, they have him still.”
“What? How?” I asked numbly.
“Back there at the plaza. You two were Skill-linked, however briefly, by the strength of the stone and the strength of who you are. It leaves a . . . sort of a path. The more often two are linked, the stronger it becomes. With frequency it becomes a bond, like a coterie bond. Others who are Skilled can see such bonds, if they look for them. Often they are like back doors, unguarded ways into a Skilled one’s mind. This time, however, I would say they found the Fool in your stead.”
The look on my face made her let go my arm. I pushed my way into the tent. There was a tiny fire burning in the brazier. Kettricken knelt by the Fool, speaking to him low and earnestly. Starling sat unmoving in her bedding, pale and staring at him, while the wolf restlessly prowled the crowded interior of the tent. His hackles still stood high.
I went quickly to kneel by the Fool. At first glimpse of him, I recoiled. I had expected him to lie limply unconscious. Instead he was rigid, his eyes open and his eyeballs twitching about as if he watched some terrible struggle we could not witness. I touched his arm. The rigidity of his muscles and the coolness of his body reminded me of a corpse. “Fool?” I asked him. He gave no sign at all of hearing me. “Fool!” I cried louder, and leaned over him. I shook him, lightly at first and then more violently. It had no effect.
“Touch him and Skill to him,” Kettle instructed me gruffly. “But be careful. If they still have him, you put yourself at risk as well.”
It shames me to say that I froze for an instant. As much as I loved the Fool, I feared Will still. I reached at last, a second and an eternity later, to put my hand on his brow.
“Don’t be afraid,” Kettle told me uselessly. And then added that which almost paralyzed me, “If they have him and hold him still, it is only a matter of time before they use the link between you to take you as well. Your only choice is to battle them from his mind. Go on, now.”
She set her hand to my shoulder, and for one eerie moment, it was Shrewd’s hand on my shoulder, drawing Skill-strength from me. Then she gave me a reassuring little pat. I closed my eyes, felt the Fool’s brow under my hand. I dropped my Skill walls.
The Skill river flowed, full to floodtime, and I fell into it. A moment to gain orientation. I knew an instant of terror as I sensed Will and Burl at the very edges of my perception. They were in great agitation about something. I recoiled from them as if I had brushed a hot stove, and narrowed my focus. The Fool, the Fool, only the Fool. I sought for him, I almost found him. Oh, he was passing strange, and surpassing strange. He darted and eluded me, like a bright gold carp in a weedy pool, like the motes that dance before one’s eyes after being dazzled by the sun. As well to clutch at the moon’s reflection in a still midnight pond as to seek a grip on that bright mind. I knew his beauty and his power in the briefest flashes of insight. In a moment I understood and marveled at all that he was, and in the next I had forgotten that understanding.
Then, with an insight worthy of the stone game, I knew what to do. Rather than attempt to seize him, I surrounded him. I made no effort to invade or capture, but simply to encompass all that I saw of him and hold it separate from harm. It reminded me of when I had first been learning to Skill. Often Verity had done this for me, helping me contain myself when the current of the Skill threatened to spill me wide to the world. I steadied the Fool as he gathered himself back into himself.
I suddenly felt a cool clasping of my wrist. “Stop it,” he begged gently. “Please,” he added, and it smote me that he thought he needed that word. I withdrew from my seeking and opened my eyes. I blinked a few times, and then was surprised to find myself shivering with the cold sweat that cloaked me. It was impossible for the Fool to look any paler than he always was, but there was a tentative look to his eyes and mouth, as if he were not sure he was awake. My eyes met his, and I felt almost a jolt of awareness of him. A Skill-bond, thin as a thread, but there. Had not my nerves been so raw from reaching after him, I probably would not have felt it at all.
“I did not like that,” he said quietly.
“I am sorry,” I told him gently. “I thought they had hold of you, so I went seeking you.”
He waved a hand feebly. “Oh, not you. I meant the others.” He swallowed as if sickened. “They were within me. In my mind, in my memories. Smashing and befouling like evil, lawless children. They . . .” His eyes went glassy.
“Was it Burl?” I suggested gently.
“Ah. Yes. That is his name, though he scarce remembers it himself these days. Will and Regal have taken him over for their own uses. They came through him into me, thinking they had found you. . . .” His voice dwindled off. “Or so it seems. How could I know such a thing?”
“The Skill brings strange insights. They cannot overcome your mind without showing much of their own,” Kettle informed him grudgingly. She took a small pot of steaming water off the brazier. To me she added, “Give me your elfbark.”
I immediately reached for my pack to dig it out, but I could not resist asking her chidingly, “I thought you said this herb was not beneficial.”
“It isn’t,” she said tersely. “For Skill users. But for him, it may give him the protection he cannot provide for himself. They will try this again, I do not doubt. If they can invade him, even for a moment, they will use him to find you. It is an old trick.”
“One I have never heard of,” I pointed out as I handed her my bag of elfbark. She shook some into a cup, and added boiling water. Then she calmly put my bag of herbs into her pack. It was obviously not an oversight, and I dismissed as useless asking for them back.
“How do you know so much about Skill matters?” the Fool asked her pointedly. He was recovering some of his spirit.
“Perhaps I learned by listening instead of asking personal questions all the time,” she snapped at him. “Now, you are going to drink this,” she added, as if she regarded the topic as settled. If I had not been so anxious, it would have been humorous to see the Fool so deftly quelled.
The Fool took the cup but looked over at me. “What was that, that happened at the last? They held me, and then suddenly, it was all earthquake and flood and fire at once.” He knit his brow. “And then I was gone, scattered. I could not find myself. Then you came . . .”
“Would anyone care to explain to me what has happened this night?” Kettricken asked a bit testily.
I half expected Kettle to answer but she kept silent.
The Fool lowered his mug of tea. “It is a hard thing to explain, my queen. Like two ruffians bursting into your bedchamber, dragging you from your bed and shaking you, all the while calling you by another’s name. And when they discovered I was not the Fitz, they were very angry with me. Then came the earthquake and I was dropped. Down several flights of stairs. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”
“They let you go?” I asked delightedly. I instantly turned to Kettle. “They are not as clever as you feared, then!”
Kettle scowled at me. “Nor you as clever as I had hoped,” she muttered darkly. “Did they let him go? Or did a Skill-blast shake them loose? And if so, whose power was that?”
“Verity,” I said with sudden certainty. Comprehension washed over me. “They attacked Verity tonight as well! And he defeated them!”
“Of what do you speak?” Kettricken demanded in her Queen’s voice. “Who attacked my king? What knowledge of these others who attack the Fool does Kettle have?”