Go away! He was still angry with me. I could not care. His lungs worked, his heart beat steadily now. Exhausted as he was, disoriented as I was, still it was all worth it if his life had been saved.
A time later, I located the Fool. He knelt beside me, his arm around my shoulders. I had not been aware of him steadying me. I wobbled my head to look at him. His face sagged with weariness and his brow was creased with pain, but he managed a lop-sided smile. ‘I did not know if I could do it. But it was the only thing I could think of to try.’
After a few moments, his words made sense to me. I looked down at my wrist. His fingerprints were renewed there; not silver as they were the first time he Skill-touched me, but a darker shade of grey than they had been for some time. The thread of awareness that linked us had become one strand stronger. I was appalled at what he had done.
‘Thank you. I suppose.’ I offered the words ungraciously. I felt invaded. I resented that he had touched me in such a way, without my consent. It was childish, but I had not the strength to reach past it just then.
He laughed aloud at me, but I could hear the edge of hysteria in it. ‘I did not think you would like it. Yet, my friend, I could not help myself. I had to do it.’ He drew ragged breath. His voice was softer as he added, ‘And so it begins again, already. Scarcely two days am I at your side, and fate reaches for you. Will this always be the cost for us? Must I always dangle you over death’s jaws in an effort to lure this world into a better course?’ His grip on my shoulders tightened. ‘Ah, Fitz. How can you continually forgive what I do to you?’
I could not forgive it. I did not say so. I looked away from him. ‘I need a moment to myself. Please.’
A bubble of silence met my words. Then, ‘Of course.’ He let his arm fall away from my shoulders and abruptly stood clear of me. It was a relief. His touch on me had been heightening the Skill-bond between us. It made me feel vulnerable. He did not know how to reach across it and plunder my mind, but that did not lessen my fear. A knife to my throat was a threat, even if the hand that held it had only the best of intentions.
I tried to ignore the other side of that coin. The Fool had no concept of how open he was to me just then. The sense of it taunted me, tempting me to attempt a fuller joining. All I would have to do is bid him lay his fingers once more on my wrist. I knew what I could have done with that touch. I could have swept across and into him, known all his secrets, taken all his strength. I could have made his body an extension of my own, used his life and his days for my own purpose.
It was a shameful hunger to feel. I had seen what became of those who yielded to it. How could I forgive him for making me feel it?
My skull throbbed with the familiar pain of a Skill-headache, while my body ached as if I had fought a battle. I felt raw to the world, and even his friend’s touch chafed me. I lurched to my feet and staggered towards the water. I tried to kneel by the stream’s edge, but it was easier to lie on my belly and suck water up into my parched mouth. Once my thirst was assuaged, I splashed my face. I rubbed the water over my face and hair, and then knuckled my eyes until tears ran. The moisture felt good and my vision cleared.
I looked at the slack body of my wolf, and then glanced at the Fool. He stood small, his shoulders rounded, his mouth pinched tight. I had hurt him. I felt regret at that. He had intended only good, yet a stubborn part of me still resented what he had done. I sought for some justification to cling to that stupidity. There was none. Nevertheless, sometimes knowing one has no right to be angry does not disperse all the anger. ‘That’s better,’ I said, and shook the water from my hair, as if I could convince us both that only my thirst had troubled me. The Fool made no reply.
I took a double handful of water to the wolf, and sat by him, to let it trickle over his still-lolling tongue. After a bit, he stirred feebly, enough to pull his tongue back into his mouth.
I made another effort for the Fool. ‘I know that you did what you did to save my life. Thank you.’
He saved both our lives. He spared us continuing in a way that would have destroyed us both. The wolf did not open his eyes, but his thought was strong with passion.
However, what he did –
Was it worse than what you did to me?
I had no answer for that. I could not be sorry that I had kept him alive. Yet –
It was easier to speak to the Fool than follow that thought. ‘You saved both our lives. I had gone … somehow, I had gone inside Nighteyes. With the Skill, I think.’ A flash of insight broke my words. Was this what Chade had spoken of to me, that the Skill could be used to heal? I shuddered. I had imagined it as a sharing of strength, but what I had done – I pushed the knowledge away. ‘I had to try and save him. And … I did help him. But then I could not find my way out of him. If you hadn’t drawn me back …’ I let the words trail off. There was no quick way to explain what he had rescued us from. I knew now, with certainty, that I would tell him the tale of our year among the Old Blood. ‘Let’s go back to the cabin. There is elfbark there, for tea. And I need rest as much as Nighteyes does.’
‘And I, also,’ the Fool acceded faintly.
I glanced over him, noting the grey pallor of fatigue that drooped his face and the deep lines clenched in his brow. Guilt washed through me. Untrained and unaided, he had used the Skill to pull me back into my own body. The magic was not in his blood as it was in mine; he had no hereditary predilection for it. All he had possessed was the ancient Skill-marks on his fingers, the memento of his accidental brush against Verity’s Skill-encrusted hands. That, and the feeble bond we had once shared through that touch were his only tools as he had risked himself to draw me back. Neither fear nor ignorance had stopped him. He had not known the full danger of what he did. I could not decide if that made his act less brave or more so. And all I had done was rebuke him for it.
I recalled the first time that Verity had used my strength to further his own Skill. I had collapsed from the drain of it. Yet the Fool still stood, swaying slightly, but he stood. And he made no complaint of the pain that must be playing hammer and tongs on his brain. Not for the first time, I marvelled at the toughness that resided in his slender body. He must have sensed my eyes on him, for he turned his gaze to mine. I attempted a smile. He answered it with a wry grimace.
Nighteyes rolled onto his belly, then lurched to his feet. Wobbly as a new foal, he tottered to the water and drank. Satisfying his thirst made both of us feel better, yet my legs still trembled with weariness.
‘It’s going to be a long walk back to the cabin,’ I observed.
The Fool’s voice was neutral, yet almost normal as he asked, ‘Can you make it?’
‘With some help.’ I held my hand up to him and he came to take it and draw me to my feet. He held my arm and walked beside me, but I think he leaned on me more than I did on him. I set my teeth and my resolve, and did not reach out to him through that Skill-link that hung between us like a silver chain. I could resist that temptation, I told myself. Verity had. So could I.
The Fool broke the sun-dappled silence of the forest. ‘I thought you were having a seizure at first, as used to fell you. But then you lay so still … I feared you were dying. Your eyes were open and staring. I could not find your pulse. But every now and then, your body would twitch and gasp in some air.’ He paused. ‘I could get no response from you. It was the only thing I could think of to do, to plunge in after you.’
His words horrified me. I was not sure that I wanted to know what my body did when I was out of it. ‘It was probably the only way to save my life.’
‘And mine,’