the Pale Woman.’ He fell silent.
‘You have told me enough for tonight.’
He shook his head, his mouth pursed tight shut. He lifted his hands and rubbed his face hard, and for a moment the faded scars stood out against his skin. ‘So I didn’t speak of my destiny again,’ he said harshly. ‘I wrote down my dreams but I no longer tried to interpret them. She took them from me and set them aside. Unread, I believed.’ He shook his head. ‘I have no idea how much knowledge I handed over to her. By day, I studied and I tried to be content. I had a lovely life, Fitz. All that I could ask for. Good food, attentive servants, music and amusements in the evening. I was useful, I thought, for Capra put me to sorting old scrolls. It was a clerk’s work but I was good at it.’ He kneaded his scarred hands together. ‘In the way of my kind, I was still a child. I wanted to please. I missed being loved. So I tried.
‘But of course, I failed. In my clerk’s work, I encountered writings about the Unexpected Son. I had a dream, of a jester singing a silly song about “fat suffices”. He sang it to a wolf cub, Fitz. The cub had sprouting antlers.’ He gave a muffled laugh, but the hair stood up on my arms. Had he truly seen me in a dream, so many years before we had even met? But it had not been me. It had only been a puzzle, to which I was, perhaps, the answer.
‘Oh, I do not like this tale I vomit out to you. I wish I had not begun telling it. So many things we have never spoken about. So many things that shame me less if I am the only one who knows them. But I will finish.’ He looked toward me, his sightless eyes swimming with tears. I slid across the floor and took his gloved hand in mine. His smile was a wavering thing. ‘I could not forever deny what I was. My anger and resentment grew. I wrote my dreams down, and I began to reference other dreams, some ancient, some recent. I built a fortress of evidence that Capra could not deny. I did not insist I was the White Prophet, but I began to ask her questions, and they were not innocent ones.’ He smiled slightly. ‘I know you could never guess it, Fitz, but I can be stubborn. I was determined to force her to admit who and what I was.’
Again, he paused. I did not speak. This was like digging splinters out of an infected wound. He pulled his hand from mine and wrapped his arms around himself as if freezing.
‘I’d never been so much as slapped by my parents, Fitz. Not that I was a tractable and easy child. No. I am sure I was not. Yet they had corrected me patiently and I had come to expect that from adults. Never had they denied me information as to why a thing was so. Always they had listened to me, and when I taught them something new, they were always so proud of me! I thought I was so clever to ask Capra questions about my dreams and other dreams I had read. My questions would lead her to the inevitable answer that I was indeed, the White Prophet.
‘And so I began. A few questions on one day, a few more the next. But the day I asked Capra six questions in a row, all leading up to what she must admit about me, she held up her hand and said, “Not another question! I will tell you what your life is to be.” Not even thinking, being young as one is only once, I said, “But why?” And that was it. Without a word, she rose and pulled a bell-pull. A servant came, and she sent him for someone else, a name I did not know then. Kestor. A very large and muscular man. And he came and held me down with a foot on the back of my neck and let his leather strap fall wherever it would on my body. I screamed and begged but neither of them spoke a word. As abruptly as it began, my punishment was over. She dismissed Kestor, seated herself at her table and poured some tea. When I could, I crawled from her room. I remember my long trip down the stone stairs of her tower. The lash had fallen on the big muscles behind my knees, and curled around one of my ankles. The tip of it had etched into my belly more than once. It was agony to try to stand. I edged down on my hands and knees, trying not to pull on the welts, crept to my cottage and stayed there for two days. No one came. No one asked after me, or brought me water or food. I waited, thinking someone would come. No.’ He shook his head, old bafflement on his face. ‘Capra never summoned me again. She never spoke directly to me again.’ He sighed out a small breath.
In the silence that followed, I asked, ‘What were you expected to learn from that?’
His tears scattered as he shook his head. ‘I never knew. No one ever spoke of what she had done to me. When two days had passed I limped to the healer’s room and waited for the full day. Others came and went but he never summoned me. No one, not even the other students, asked what had happened to me. It was as if it had never occurred in their world, only mine. Eventually, I began to limp to my lessons and to meals. But my instructors had a new disdain for me, rebuked me for my missed lessons and punished me by withholding food. I was made to sit at a table and work on lessons while the others ate. It was on one of those days that I saw the Pale Woman again. She walked through the hall where we gathered for meals. All the other students looked at her with admiring eyes. She was garbed all in green and brown, like a hunter, and her white hair was braided back with golden thread. So beautiful. Her servant followed her. I think … looking back, I think her servant was Dwalia, the one who took Bee. One of the people who prepared our food hurried out and gave a hamper to Dwalia. Then the Pale Woman walked out of the hall, with her servant carrying the basket. As she passed me, she halted. She smiled at me, Fitz. Smiled as if we were friends. Then she said, “I am. And you are not.” Then she walked on. And everyone laughed. The twist to my mind and thoughts were worse than the welts all over my body.’
He needed his silence for a time and I let him keep it. ‘So clever they are,’ he said at last. ‘The pain they gave my body was only a gateway to what they could do to my mind. Capra must die, Fitz. The Four must die to end the corruption of the Whites.’
I felt ill. ‘Her servant was Dwalia? The same Dwalia that stole Bee?’
‘So I think. I could be wrong.’
A question I didn’t want to ask, an unwise question, found its way to my voice. ‘But after all that … all that, and all else you have told me … you went back with Prilkop?’
He laughed bitterly. ‘Fitz, I was not myself. You had brought me back from the dead. Prilkop was strong and calm. He was so certain that he could restore Clerres to its proper service. He came from a time when the word of a White Prophet was a command to the Servants. He was so certain of what we should do. And I had no idea what to do with this unexpected life.’
‘I recall a similar time in my life. Burrich made all our decisions.’
‘Then you understand. I couldn’t think about anything. I just followed what he said we were going to do.’ He clenched his teeth and then said, ‘And now I go back for a third time. And more than anything, I fear that I will fall into their power again.’ He took a sudden gulping breath. But even so, he could not seem to catch his breath. He began gasping like a spent runner. He could barely get his words out. ‘Nothing could be worse than that. Nothing.’ Hugging himself, he rocked back and forth on the bunk. ‘But … I … must … go back … I must …’ He snapped his head back and forth wildly. ‘Need to see!’ he cried out suddenly. ‘Fitz! Where are you!’ His gasping was ever faster. ‘Can’t … feel. My hands!’
I knelt beside the bed and put an arm around him. He yelped and struggled wildly, striking out at me
‘It’s me, you’re safe. You’re here. Breathe, Fool. Breathe.’ I refused to let go. I was not rough but I held him firmly. ‘Breathe.’
‘I … can’t!’
‘Breathe. Or you’ll faint. But you can do that. I’m here. You are safe.’
Suddenly he went limp and stopped fighting me and, very gradually, his breathing slowed. When he pushed me away, I let him. He folded himself tight and hugged his knees. When he finally spoke, he was ashamed. ‘I never wanted you to know
