‘Even if his mate could never completely accept you?’
‘Could you, for once, just say simply whatever it is you are trying to say?’
He looked at me and rubbed his chin as if he were truly considering it. Then he smiled sadly. ‘No. I can’t. Not without damaging something precious to me.’ As if he were not changing the subject at all, he asked, ‘Will you ever tell Dutiful that your body fathered his?’
I did not like him to speak that aloud even when it was just we two. My strong Skill-bond with Dutiful made him seem ever close. ‘No,’ I said shortly. ‘He would see too many things differently. It would hurt him, to no good end. It would damage his image of his father, his feelings toward his mother, even his feelings toward me. What purpose could it serve?’
‘Exactly. So you will always love him as a son, but treat him as your prince. One step away from where you long to be. Because even if you told him, you could never be his father.’
I was starting to get angry again. ‘You are not my father.’
‘No.’ He stared at the fire. ‘And I’m not your lover, either.’
I felt suddenly weary and sour. ‘Is that what this is about? Bedding with me? You won’t return to Buckkeep because I won’t bed with you?’
‘No!’ He did not shout the word, but something in the way he said it stunned me to silence. His voice was low, almost harsh as he spoke. ‘Always, you bring it back to that, as if that is the only possible culmination of love.’
He sighed and abruptly settled back in his chair. He looked at me speculatively, and then asked, ‘Tell me, did you love Nighteyes?’
‘Of course.’
‘Without reserve.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then by your logic, you wished to couple with him?’
‘I wished … No!’
‘Ah. But that was only because he, too, was male? It had nothing to do with your other differences?’
I gaped at him. A moment longer he managed to keep his face straight in honest inquiry. Then he laughed at me, more freely than I had heard him laugh in a long time. I wanted to be offended, but it was such a relief to hear him laugh, even at my expense, that I could not.
He caught his breath, and said, ‘There it is. Plainly, Fitz. I told you I set no limits on my love for you. I don’t. Yet I never expected you to offer me your body. It was the whole of your heart, all for myself, that I sought. Even though I’ve never had a right to it. For you gave it away ere ever you saw me.’ He shook his head. ‘Long ago, you told me that Molly would never be able to tolerate your bond with the wolf. That she would force you to decide between them. Do you still believe that?’
‘I think it likely,’ I had to reply softly.
‘And how do you think she would react to me?’ He paused for a heartbeat. ‘Who would you choose? And what would you lose, either way, by being forced to make such a choice? Those are the questions I’ve had to ponder. And if I come back with you, and make that choice a part of your future, what else will my Catalyst change in the process of choosing? If you left the Six Duchies with me, what future would we have set in motion, all unknowing?’
I shook my head and looked away from him. But the flow of his words was relentless and my ears heard them.
‘Nighteyes chose. He chose between the pack of wolves that would have accepted him and his bond with you. I do not know if you ever discussed with him what that decision cost him. I doubt it. The little I knew of him makes me think he chose and went forward from there. I do not mean to shame you. But is it not true that Nighteyes paid a higher toll for your bond, for the love that you shared, than you did? What did it cost Nighteyes to be bonded to you? Answer honestly.’
I had to look aside, for I was ashamed. ‘It cost him living with a pack, and being a wolf in full. It cost him having a mate and cubs. Just as Rolf later warned us. Because we set no limits on our bond.’
‘You knew the exhilaration of sharing his wolfness with him. Of being as close to becoming a wolf as a man can. Yet … forgive me … I do not think he ever sought the human within himself as ardently as you pursued being a wolf.’
‘No.’
He took my hand again and held it in both of his. He turned it over and looked down at the shadows of his fingerprints that I had worn on my wrist for so many years. ‘Fitz. I have thought long on this. I will not take your mate and cubs from you. My years will be long; by comparison, you have not that many left. I will not take from you and Molly whatever years may remain to you. For I am sure that you will be together, again. You know what I am. You have been within this body, and I in yours. And I have felt, oh, gods help me against that memory, I have felt what it is to be human, fully human, in the moments that I held your love and pain and loss within me. You have allowed me to be as human as it is possible for me to be. What my teachers took away from me, you restored tenfold. With you, I was a child. With you, I grew to manhood. With you … Just as Nighteyes allowed you to be the wolf.’ His voice ran down and we were left sitting in silence, as if he had run out of words. He did not release my hand. The touch sharpened my awareness of the Skill-bond between us. Dutiful nudged at my Skill, seeking my attention. I ignored him. This was more important. I tried to grasp exactly what the Fool feared.
‘You think that it would hurt me if you came back to Buckkeep. That it would keep me from a life you had seen.’
‘Yes.’
‘You dread that I would grow old and die. And you would not.’
‘Yes.’
‘What if I didn’t care about those things? About the cost.’
‘I still would.’
I asked my last question, my heart squeezed with hurt, dreading however he might answer it. ‘And if I said I would follow you then? Leave my other life behind and go with you.’
I think that question stunned him. He drew breath twice before he answered it in a hoarse whisper. ‘I would not allow it. I could not allow it.’
We sat a long time in silence after that. The fire consumed itself. And then I asked the final, awful question. ‘After I leave you here, will I ever see you again?’
‘Probably not. It would not be wise.’ He lifted my hand and tenderly kissed the sword-calloused palm of it, and then held it in both of his. It was farewell, and I knew it, and knew I could do nothing to stop it. I sat still, feeling as if I grew hollow and cold, as if Nighteyes were dying all over again. I was losing him. He was withdrawing from my life and I felt as though I were bleeding to death, my life trickling out of me. I suddenly realized how close to true that was.
‘Stop!’ I cried, but it was too late. He released my hand before I could snatch it back. My wrist was clean and bare. His fingerprints were gone. Somehow, he had taken them back, and our Skill-thread dangled, broken.