Fool's Fate (Tawny Man #3)

Fool's Fate (Tawny Man #3) Page 156

He looked battered by my onslaught of questions. “Can you be quiet, Fitz?” he asked me earnestly, and after a moment's thought, I shook my head.

“I don't think so.” I shifted restively as I spoke. I was suddenly miserable. I could not find a comfortable position in which to be still. I was aware that I was sleepy but could not recall how to let go of wakefulness. I suddenly wanted all of it to go away and leave me in peace. I dropped my head into my hands and covered my eyes. “All my life, I've done everything wrong.”

“It's going to be a long night,” the Fool observed woefully.

Chapter 17

ICEFYRE

Now, this is the tale of Yysal Sealshoes and the dragon Icefyre, and what befell her in the years when Wisal was the Great Mother of her mothershouse. Wisal took a dislike to a young man that Yysal had brought home to her bedding, and she gave her reasons three: he was bandy-legged and hollow-chested, and all know those are traits that may be passed on to children, and Wisal did not wish her mothershouse to be full of his bandy-legged weaklings. His hair was red, which Wisal also did not desire in her descendants; and whenever spring came to the islands and the willow trees drooped with tiny furry tails, the man sneezed and wept and coughed and was no use at all for the spring chores. And so, when Yysal went forth one summer day to gather crowberries from the upper slopes of their mountain, Wisal told the other women to gather clods of earth and rocks small enough to sting but not cause major injury and drive Yysal's bedmate away. This her sisters and mother and aunts did with a good will, for none of them liked the way he simpered at them whenever Yysal was absent.

When Yysal returned and found her bedmate fled, she wept and she ranted and finally she vowed she would go to the dragon and ask for vengeance on her own kin. All know that is a great sin against a mothershouse, and yet she was so wroth, she would not listen to reason, nor accept the hearty, black-haired young warrior they offered her in place of her pale, scrawny stripling. And so she went to Aslevjal, and waited for the tide of the year, and then slipped under the icy shelves of the glacier to go deep within its heart and beg of the dragon her evil wish.

Deep beneath the icy cap that domes the island, she beached her tiny boat on a silty shore. She lifted her torch but did not pause to wonder at the beauties of Icefyre's blue ice tomb. Instead, she climbed out immediately and made her way through the twisting blue tunnels to where she might look up at the dragon encased in the ice. And there she melted a hollow in the ice with the blood of the lamb she had brought with her, and begged him to make barren all the women who had driven her bedmate away from her side.

— BADGERLOCK'S TRANSLATION OF AN OUT ISLAND BARD'S SONG

I recall the rest of that night and the following day and night as one recalls fever dreams. My mind shies away from remembering the misery I endured. “It was all in your mind,” Chade told me sometime later, and it stung that he dismissed so lightly all that I had endured. All of life, I wanted to tell him, is in our minds. Where else does it take place, where else do we add up what it means to us and subtract what we have lost? An event is just an event until some person attaches meaning to it.

I survived it. Anyone who makes a difference between such an herb and a poison has never been plunged into such depths as I sounded. At some point that night, Chade sent Riddle looking for me. He draped a blanket around me and hurried me, barefoot and clad in the ridiculous Elderling robe, back to the Prince's tent. There, if I recall correctly, I spent several hours telling Chade just how much I despised myself. Dutiful later told me that he had never lived through such a tiresome recounting of any man's imagined sins. I recall that several times he tried to reason with me. I spoke openly of killing myself, a fleeting notion that I had often considered but never before uttered. Dutiful was disgusted at such a maudlin fancy and Chade pointed out to me that it would be a selfish act that would not correct any of my stupidity. I think he was more than a bit weary of me by then.

And yet, it was not my fault. It was the despondency of the drug, not any rational consideration by me, that kept me talking through the night and on into dawn. By morning, Dutiful knew far more of my youthful excesses than I had ever planned on divulging to him. If he had ever been tempted to experiment with elfbark or carris seed, I am sure that long evening cured him of his curiosity.

When Thick could stand no more of my overemotional account, Riddle was summoned to escort him to the Witted coterie's tent, where Web took him in hand and settled him for the night. Chade and Dutiful had planned to attempt to contact Nettle with the Skill that night, but my indisposition made it impossible for them to focus. Before Thick fled, they made an attempt as a coterie to reach me with the Skill. They had no more luck than the Fool had. When I told Chade about that encounter, his face darkened and I knew he disapproved that I had even attempted that experiment with the tawny man.