‘Not telling the dreams makes you sick?’
‘It’s like an obsession. The true dreams must be spoken and shared. At the very least, written down.’ He laughed low. ‘The Servants count on that. They harvest the dreams of those poor half-Whites like farmers harvesting grapes. Everything goes into their library of dreams and predictions. All is processed, like blowing the chaff from grain. All is preserved. Referenced and cross-referenced. Ready for them to employ, to see what they can predict and how they can profit from it.’ He leaned in hard to me like a child fleeing nightmares and I put my arm around him to brace him. He shook his head. ‘Fitz. They will know we are coming. They have Bee and they will know we are coming. This can’t end well for any of us.’
‘So tell me. Don’t let me go into this blind.’
He choked out a laugh. ‘Oh, no. I’m the one who goes into it blind, Fitz. You die. You drown. In darkness, in cold seawater and in blood you drown. There. Now you know. I don’t know what good it does us, but you know.’ I felt his shoulders slump in the dimness. ‘And I have the small relief of having told my dreams.’
Cold crept through me. My mouth might claim not to believe him, but my guts did. ‘Couldn’t I freeze to death?’ I asked in a falsely light voice. ‘I’ve heard that you just fall asleep and it’s done.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, and I heard the same effort in his voice. ‘I don’t get to decide how it happens. I’m simply told it does.’
‘And you?’
‘That’s the worst part. I think I live through it.’
I had a moment of relief. Then it died. He was not certain of his survival. ‘And Bee?’ My voice shook. ‘I know you’ve dreamed her alive. Do we save her? Does she go home?’
He spoke hesitantly. ‘I think she is like you. She is a crossroads of many possible futures. I’ve seen her wearing a crown with alternating spires of flame and darkness. But she also appears as broken manacles. One who frees things. And as the shattered vessel.’
‘What is the shattered vessel?’
‘Something broken beyond repair,’ he said quietly.
My child. Molly’s daughter. Broken beyond repair. Some part of me had known that her experience must do that to her. She would be as broken as the Fool and I were. Something inside my chest hurt at the thought. My voice creaked. ‘Well. Who wouldn’t break? I broke. You broke.’
‘And we both emerged stronger.’
‘We both emerged,’ I modified his words. I was never sure I understood what Regal’s torture had done to me. Part of me had died in that cell, both literally and figuratively. I was alive today. I’d never know if I’d lost more than what I had found. Useless to wonder. ‘What else?’ I demanded.
His head lolled forward slightly and then twitched up. I changed my question. ‘How long have you been awake?’
‘I don’t know. I doze off and then awaken and I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. Blindness is peculiar, Fitz. No day, no night. And not darkness, if you want to know.’
‘Any other dreams or thoughts you want to share with me?’
‘I dream of a nut that is dangerous to crack. Sometimes I hear a nonsense ditty: “The trap is the trapper and the trapper is trapped.” But it isn’t always dreams. Sometimes I see … like a crossroads, but one with an infinite number of paths starring away from a centre. When I was a youngster, I saw those often and clearly. After you brought me back to life, I didn’t see any for a long time. Not until Bee touched me in the market that day. That was incredible. I touched her and I knew she was the centre of a multitude of paths. She saw them, too. I had to draw her back from making too swift a choice.’
His voice faltered to a stop.
‘Then what happened?’ I demanded in consternation.
He gave a snort of laughter. ‘Then I believe you knifed me in the belly. A number of times, but I lost count after two.’
‘Oh.’ Cold roiled through me. ‘I wasn’t sure you recalled any of that.’ I felt the weight of his body against my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘It’s too late for that.’ He patted me with his gloved hand and straightened up with a sigh. ‘I’ve already forgiven you.’
What can one say to that?
He continued, ‘Paragon. When I looked up and saw Paragon as we came into dock at Trehaug … he was shining with pathways. There were others there, at that junction, leading back to Kelsingra or into Trehaug itself, but most were the ones that led to Clerres, the straightest, shortest ones, began with Paragon.’
‘So that was why you insisted we must stay with him?’
‘Now you believe in me?’
‘I don’t want to. But I do.’
‘I feel the same.’
Silence claimed us both. I waited. After a time, I realized he was deeply asleep. I moved him gently from my shoulder onto the bunk. I lifted his legs up onto the bed. It reminded me of how I used to put Hap back to bed after his nightmares, all those years ago. The Fool pulled his knees in closer to his chest and slept curled defensively. I sat down again on the edge of the bunk. He would sleep and he would dream, whether he would or no.
And I would Skill.
I exhaled slowly, letting my breath blow away my boundaries and immediately became more aware of the ship. ‘Excuse me,’ I muttered as if I had bumped against a stranger in a crowd. Then I ignored his presence and reached out, feeling for the Skill-current. It was there, but it was calmer than I’d felt it in months. It was as constant as the wind that gently filled the sails and pushed us through the waves. I moved with the Skill-current, letting it carry my thoughts and will toward Buckkeep and to my daughter Nettle.
She was sleeping. I eased into her dream thoughts, woke her gently. How are you, and your child?
Chade’s dead.
The news flew from her mind to mine, drenching me with her urgency that I know. Her grief swept in and woke my as-yet-unformed sorrow. For a time, that was all there was. I did not ask her how. He was old, it had been coming for a very long time. Deprived of the herbs and kept from the Skill that he had been using for so long to rejuvenate himself, his years had caught up to him.