I had a moment of absolute clarity and inspiration. I felt his hands touch my face, one gloved, one with bare fingertips. Perfect. I reached up and caught his gloved wrist and held it tight. ‘You can,’ I said, as I peeled the glove from his hand. ‘And you will. Take what’s left of me, Fool, and save Bee.’
‘What?’ he demanded. And then, as he realized my intent, he struggled, but with his shoulder torn he had no real strength. I pressed his silvered fingers to the side of my throat. I felt it then, an ecstasy that burned but filled me with joy. Then the connection came, just as it had that time in Verity’s tower room. ‘Too much’, I had said then, and fled from it. Now I wrapped it with my awareness. I felt the Fool and saw his sparkling tumble of life and secrets like the stars in a night sky. No, not taking from him. His secrets were always his to keep. How to do this? He was trying to pull his hand clear of my grip, but I was doing the last thing I expected to do with my life, so I had to do it thoroughly. There could be no mercy for either of us. I threw my other arm around him, pulled him into a hard embrace and held him tight despite his struggles. The boundaries between us gave way. We were merging in a way that felt like a healing. I sensed the torn meat of his shoulder, knew a striating crack in the bone there and the stabbing pain of the little broken bones in his foot. I spoke into his panting mouth. ‘Be still. Don’t fight me. This must happen.’
I drew a breath and held it. Gripping his wrist hard, I embraced him with more than my arms. As I breathed out hard, I pushed my strength, my healing, my all through the connection I had forced. I recalled how I had taken strength from Riddle. Let it flow the other way, I thought, and poured it into him. I needed nothing of what was left. I touched the damage inside him. He shuddered at the pain, and went still.
You leave little for us, my brother.
All the more to save Bee.
The Fool lay stunned in my arms, sprawled on my chest. His resistance was gone. I let my fingers walk over his shoulder. Shirt and skin were torn. The hanging flap of flesh dizzied me. I lifted it into place, held it firmly there, sealed it. Bone be whole and flesh be knit. I healed him fiercely, as swiftly as I could force it, sparing neither of us.
You should go with him, Nighteyes. You should go with Bee.
If we end here, then I meet the end with you. As you ended with me.
How is the hunting where you are?
It will be better with you.
I’m coming to you, my brother.
I willed my Skill into the Fool’s body. All of it. I forced his ankle to straighten, pushed the tendon to where Chade’s old books had showed me it was supposed to be. Be made right, I commanded it, and with my Skill went my strength. I felt myself dwindle. The Fool stirred, then shuddered at the pain; he fainted again. Good. He could not fight me.
But I had a last struggle—with myself. I felt myself soaking into him. If I let go, we would be what I had glimpsed when I had called him back from death. I’d be home, with him. A whole thing. But no.
That was not a decision for you to make. I would not go with you.
I know. I know.
The Fool had to live on as himself. He had to save Bee, not me. We had promised one another.
My arm fell away from him. I peeled my awareness away from him. With the last of my strength, I found Bee’s curly little head and set my hand on it. Eda protect you, I prayed to a god I’d never known. I found the Skill-thread to her, snapped it. Then, with certainty, I whispered, ‘The Fool will save you.’
He was already stirring. Time to leave. Time to make this choice mine, not his. I sighed out a final breath and found Nighteyes waiting for me.
Are you ready, my brother?
Yes. I sank into the nothing.
THIRTY-EIGHT
* * *
Ship of Dragons
The white prophet Gerda was barely twenty when she set out into the world to find her Catalyst. She had dreamed of her often since she was an infant. She travelled far from the peaceful green lands of her birth, going both by sea and by land, to a village far in the mountains where a peak smoked in the distance and glowed red at night.
She came to Cullena’s home. Cullena was a grandmother who lived with her son and his wife. During the day while her children hunted and fished, she had the care of their seven youngsters. This Cullena did without complaint, though her bones ached and her eyes were dimming. Gerda came to her home and sat down on the doorstep and would not go. Cullena did not know why she had come, or why she would not leave. ‘Here is food for you, and now you must depart,’ she told Gerda.
But at nightfall, the White Prophet was still there.
‘You may sleep by the fire, for the nights are cold, but in the morning you must go,’ she said to Gerda.
But in the morning, Gerda sat once more on the doorstep.
Finally Cullena said to her, ‘If you must be here, be of some use. Sit and churn the milk to make the butter, or rock the cradle for the squalling baby or stitch the furs into winter cloaks, for we are not far from a time of snow.’
And all of these things Gerda did, without complaint or recompense other than food to eat and a place by the fire. She served a folk not her own just as Cullena had. And so Cullena’s family came to love her. Gerda taught the children, too, to read and to write and to understand numbers and amounts and distances. She kept Cullena alive for many a year, and in turn Cullena let her stay, and as years passed Gerda taught the children of the children as well, to the number of forty children.
And then, their children.
Thus did she change the world, for from among those she taught a woman arose who brought her people together, and they raised sturdy homes and clever children. They lived with the forest instead of upon it, caring for their territory and their people. They served one another well. A descendant of that woman became a man who was a servant to all of the folk who lived in those mountains, and in that way he led them.
As did those who came after him, each one taking up the mantle of one who leads by serving.
And thus did the White Prophet Gerda change the world.
Accounts of the Prophets of Old
I remembered when I was cold and Revel was carrying me into the house. We were going down steps. But I was wet-cold, not snow-cold. My feet were dragging in water. Or was it snow? I lifted my head from his shoulder. ‘Revel?’ I whispered into the scintillating light.
‘Bee? You’re awake?’ The light was talking to me. It was a nexus, shimmering with possible futures. It was not Revel. This light was a jabbing, glittering thing, stabbing and prickling me. I tightened my muscles to fling myself away but it spoke again, ‘Don’t do that. It’s dark here and water is coming into the tunnel. You took a bad fall. You’ve been unconscious.’
‘Put me down! It’s too much!’
‘Too much?’ he whispered. He sounded confused.
I put up my walls but it did not dim. The light did not illuminate, it blinded. So many possibilities striating out from this moment. ‘Let me go!’ I begged him.
Still he hesitated. ‘Are you sure? The water will be deep for you. Perhaps chest-deep. And it’s cold.’