"No!" The word burst from me with a strength I had not known I had. The Fool flinched as if I had struck him. Then, "Yes," he said simply, carefully taking my hand again. "I am sorry. I should have known you did not know. The Queen was devastated at the loss. And I. The Farseer heir. My last hope crumbled away. I had held myself together, telling myself, well, if the child lives and ascends the throne, perhaps that will have been enough. But when she was brought to bed with naught but a dead babe for all her travails… I felt my whole life had been a farce, a sham, an evil jest played on me by time. But now…" He closed his eyes a moment. "Now I find you truly alive. So I live. And again, suddenly, I believe. Once more I know who I am. And who my Catalyst is." He laughed aloud, never dreaming how his words chilled my blood. "I had no faith. I, the White Prophet, did not believe my own foreseeing! Yet here we are, Fitz, and all will still come to pass as it was ever meant to do."

Again he tipped the bottle to fill his cup. The liquor, when he poured it, was the color of his eyes. He saw me staring and grinned delightedly. "Ah, you say, but the White Prophet is no longer white? I suspect it is the way of my kind. I may gain more color now, as the years pass." He made a deprecating motion. "But that is of little import. I have already talked too much. Tell me, Fitz. Tell me all. How did you survive? Why are you here?"

"Verity calls me. I must go to him."

The Fool drew in breath at my words, not a gasp, but a slow inhalation as if he took life back into himself. He almost glowed with pleasure at my words. "So he lives! Ah!" Before I could speak more, he lifted his hands. "Slowly. Tell me all, in order. These are words I have hungered to hear. I must know everything."

And so I tried. My strength was small and sometimes I felt myself borne up on my fever so that my words wandered and I could not recall where I had left off my tale of the past year. I got as far as Regal's dungeon, then could only say, "He had me beaten and starved." The Fool's quick glance at my scarred face and the casting aside of his eyes told me he understood. He, too, had known Regal too well. When he waited to hear more, I shook my head slowly.

He nodded, then put a smile on his face. "It's all right, Fitz. You are weary. You have already told me what I most longed to hear. The rest will keep. For now, I shall tell you of my year." I tried to listen, clinging to the important words, storing them in my heart. There was so much I had wondered for so long. Regal had suspected the escape. Kettricken had returned to her rooms to find that her carefully chosen and packed supplies were gone, spirited away by Regal's spies. She had left with little more than the clothes on her back and a hastily grabbed cloak. I heard of the evil weather the Fool and Kettricken had faced the night they slipped away from Buckkeep.

She had ridden my Sooty and the Fool had battled headstrong Ruddy all the way across the Six Duchies in winter. They had reached Blue Lake at the end of the winter storms. The Fool had supported them and earned their passage on a ship by painting his face and dyeing his hair and juggling in the streets. What color had he painted his skin? White, of course, all the better to hide the stark white skin that Regal's spies would be watching for.

They had crossed the lake with little incident, and passed Moonseye and traveled into the Mountains. Immediately Kettricken had sought her father's aid in finding what had become of Verity. He had, indeed, passed through Jhaampe but nothing had been heard of him since. Kettricken had put riders on his trail and even joined in the search herself. But all her hopes had come to grief. Far up in the mountains, she had found the site of a battle. The winter and the scavengers had done their work. No one man could be identified, but Verity's buck standard was there. The scattered arrows and hewn ribs of one body showed it was men and not the beasts or elements that had attacked them. There were not enough skulls to go with the bodies and the scattering of the bones made the number of dead uncertain. Kettricken had clung to hope until a cloak had been found that she remembered packing for Verity. Her hands had embroidered the buck on the breast patch. A tumble of moldering bones and ragged garments were beneath it. Kettricken had mourned her husband as dead.

She had returned to Jhaampe to pendulum between devastated grief and seething rage at Regal's plots. Her fury had solidified into a determination that she would see Verity's child upon the Six Duchies throne, and a fair reign returned to the folk. Those plans had sustained her until the stillbirth of her child. The Fool had scarcely seen her since, save to catch glimpses of her pacing through her frozen gardens, her face as still as the snows that overlaid the beds.

There was more, shuffled in with his account, of both major and minor news for me. Sooty and Ruddy were both alive and well. Sooty was in foal to the young stallion despite her years. I shook my head over that. Regal had been doing his best to provoke a war. The roving gangs of bandits that now plagued the Mountain folk were thought to be in his pay. Shipments of grain that had been paid for in spring had never been delivered, nor had the Mountain traders been permitted to cross the border with their wares. Several small villages close to the Six Duchies border had been found looted and burned with no survivors. King Eyod's wrath, slow to stir, was now at white heat. Although the Mountain folk had no standing army as such, there was not one inhabitant who would not take up arms at the word of their Sacrifice. War was imminent.

And he had tales of Patience, the Lady of Buckkeep, brought erratically by word of mouth passed among merchants and on to smugglers. She did all she could to defend Buck's coast. Money was dwindling, but the folk of the land gave to her what they called the Lady's Levy and she disposed of it as best she could amongst her soldiers and sailors. Buckkeep had not fallen yet, though the Raiders now had encampments up and down the whole coastline of the Six Duchies. Winter had quieted the war, but spring would bathe the coast in blood once more. Some of the smaller keeps spoke of treaties with the Red-Ships. Some openly paid tribute in the hopes of avoiding Forging.

The Coastal Duchies would not survive another summer. So said Chade. My tongue was silent as the Fool spoke of him. He had come to Jhaampe by secret ways in high summer, disguised as an old peddler but made himself known to the Queen when he arrived. The Fool had seen him then. "War agrees with him," the Fool observed. "He strides about like a man of twenty. He carries a sword at his hip and there is fire in his eyes. He was pleased to see how her belly swelled with the Farseer heir, and they spoke bravely of Verity's child on the throne. But that was high summer." He sighed. "Now I hear he has returned. I believe because the Queen has sent word of her stillbirth. I have not been to see him yet. What hope he can offer us now, I do not know." He shook his head. "There must be an heir to the Farseer throne," he insisted. "Verity must get one. Otherwise…" He made a helpless gesture.

"Why not Regal? Would not a child from his loins suffice?"

"No." His eyes went afar. "No. I can tell you that quite clearly, yet I cannot tell you why. Only that in all futures I have seen, he makes no child. Not even a bastard. In all times, he reigns as the last Farseer, and ushers in the dark."

A shiver walked over me. He was too strange when he spoke of such things. And his odd words had brought another worry into my mind. "There were two women. A minstrel Starling, and an old woman pilgrim, Kettle. They were on their way here. Kettle said she sought the White-Prophet. I little thought he might be you. Have you heard aught of them? Have they reached Jhaampe town?"