'Stop that!' Kettle reprimanded me sharply, with a light rap of her walking stick. I jolted back to full awareness. The Fool glanced over at us curiously.
'Stop what?' I demanded.
'Thinking those thoughts. You know what I mean. Were you thinking of anything else, I would not have been able to walk up behind you. Find your discipline.'
I did, and reluctantly dredged up the game problem from the night before to concentrate on.
'That's better,' Kettle told me in quiet approval.
'What are you doing back here?' I asked suddenly. 'I thought you and Starling were leading the jeppas.'
'We've come to a fork in the road. And another pillar. Before we proceed, we want the Queen to see it.'
The Fool and I hastened ahead, leaving Kettle to go back and tell Kettricken of the juncture. We found Starling sitting on some ornamental stonework at the side of the road while the jeppas browsed greedily. The juncture of the road was marked by a great paved circle, surrounded by open grassy meadow, with another monolith at its center. I would have expected it to be crowned with moss and scarred by lichen. Instead the black stone was smooth and clean save for dust deposited by wind and rain. I stood staring up at the stone, studying the glyphs while the Fool wandered about. I was wondering if any of the markings on this one matched the markings I had copied to the map when the Fool exclaimed, 'There was a village here, once!' He gestured wide with his hands.
I glanced up, and saw what he meant. There were indentations in the meadows where stunted grass cloaked old, paved walkways. A wide, straight way that might have been a street once ran through the meadow and off beneath the trees. Moss– and vine-shrouded upthrusts were all that remained of cottage and shop walls that had lined it. Trees grew where once hearths had burned and folk had dined. The Fool found a large block of stone and climbed upon it to spy in all directions. 'It might have been a sizable town, at one time.'
It made sense. If this road had been the highway for commerce that I had seen in my Skill-seeing, then it was only natural that a town or market would spring up at every crossroads. I could imagine it on a bright spring day, when farmers brought fresh eggs and new spring greens to town and weavers hung out their new goods to tempt the buyers and …
For half an instant, the circle about the pillar thronged with folk. The vision began and ended at the pavement stones. Only within the virtue of the black stone did the people laugh and gesture and barter with one another. A girl crowned with a twist of green vine came through the crowd, glancing back over her shoulder at someone. I swear she-caught my eye and winked at me. I thought I heard my name called and turned my head. Upon a dais stood a figure dressed in a flowing garment that shimmered with the glint of gold thread. She wore a gilded wooden crown decorated with cunningly carved and painted rooster heads and tail feathers. Her scepter was no more than a feather duster but she gestured with it royally as she issued some decree. In the circle about me, folk roared with laughter. I could only stare at her ice white skin and colorless eyes. She looked right at me.
Starling slapped me, hard. My head snapped on my neck with the force of her blow. I looked at her in astonishment, blood pooling in my mouth where my teeth had cut my cheek. She lifted her clenched fist again, and I realized she had not slapped me. I stepped back hastily, catching her wrist as her fist went by. 'Stop it!' I cried angrily.
'You … stop it!' she panted. 'And make her stop it, too!' She gestured angrily to where the Fool perched still upon his stone, frozen in artful mime of a statue. He did not breathe nor blink. But as I watched he slowly toppled over, falling like a stone.
I expected him to change it to a handspring in midfall, to come flashing to his feet as he so often had when he amused King Shrewd's court. Instead he measured his length in the meadow grass and lay still.
For a moment I stood stunned. Then I raced to his side. I seized the Fool under the arms and dragged him away from both the black circle and the black stone he had climbed upon. Some instinct made me take him into shade and lean him back against the trunk of alive oak. 'Get water!' I snapped at Starling, and her scolding and fluttering ceased. She ran back to the loaded jeppas and got a waterskin.
I put my fingers alongside his throat and found his life pulsing steadily there. His eyes were only half-closed and he lay like a man stunned. I called his name and patted at his cheek until Starling returned with the water. I unstoppered the skin and let a cold stream of it spatter down over his face. For a time there was no response. Then he gasped, snorted out water, and sat up abruptly. His eyes were blank. Then his gaze met mine and he grinned wildly. 'Such a folk and such a day! It was the announcing of Realder's dragon, and he had promised he would fly me …' He frowned suddenly and looked about in confusion. 'It fades, like a dream it fades, leaving less than its shadow behind …'
Kettle and Kettricken were suddenly with us as well. Starling tattled out all that had happened while I helped the Fool to drink some water. When she was finished, Kettricken looked grave, but it was Kettle who lashed out at us. 'The White Prophet and the Catalyst!' she cried in disgust. 'Rather name them as they are, the Fool and the Idiot. Of all the careless, foolish things to do! He has no training at all, how is he to protect himself from the coterie?'
'Do you know what happened?' I demanded, cutting into her tirade.
'I … well, of course not. But I can surmise. The stone he clambered on must be a Skill-stone, the same stuff as the road and the pillars. And somehow this time the road seized you both with its power instead of just you.'
'Did you know it could happen?' I didn't wait for her reply. 'Why didn't you warn us?'
'I didn't know!' she retorted, and then added guiltily, 'I only suspected, and I never thought either of you would be so foolish as to …'
'Never mind!' the Fool cut in. Abruptly he laughed and stood up, pushing away my arm. 'Oh, this! This is such as I have not felt in years, not since I was a child. The certainty, the power of it. Kettle! Would you hear a White Prophet speak? Then hearken to this, and be glad as I am glad. We are not only where we must be, we are when we must be. All junctures coincide, we draw closer and closer to the center of the web. You and I.' He clasped my head suddenly between his two hands and placed his brow against mine. 'We are even who we must be!' He freed me suddenly and spun away. He launched the handspring I had expected earlier, came to his feet, curtsied deeply and laughed aloud again, exultantly. We all gawked at him.
'You are in great danger!' Kettle told him severely.
'I know,' he replied, almost sincerely, and then added, 'As I said. Exactly where we need to be.' He paused, then asked me suddenly, 'Did you see my crown? Wasn't it magnificent? I wonder if I shall be able to carve it from memory?'
'I saw the rooster crown,' I said slowly. 'But what to make of any of this, I do not know.'
'You don't?' He cocked his head at me, then smiled pityingly. 'Oh, Fitzy-fitz, I would explain it if I could. It is not that I wish to keep secrets, but these secrets defy telling in mere words. They are more than half a feeling, a grasping of rightness. Can you trust me in this?'
'You are alive again,' I said wonderingly. I had not seen such light in his eyes since the days when he had made King Shrewd bellow with laughter.
'Yes,' he said gently. 'And when we have finished, I promise that you will be, also.'
The three women stood glaring and excluded. When I looked at the outrage on Starling's face, the rebuke in Kettle's and the exasperation in Kettricken's, I suddenly had to grin. Behind me the Fool chuckled. And try as we might, we could not explain to their satisfaction exactly what had happened. Nevertheless, we wasted quite some time in attempting it.
Kettricken took out both maps and consulted them. Kettle insisted on accompanying me when I took my map back to the central pillar to compare the glyphs on it to the ones on the map. They shared a number of marks in common, but the only one that Kettricken recognized was the one she had named before. Stone. When I reluctantly offered to see if this pillar might not transport me as the other one had, Kettricken adamantly refused. I am ashamed to admit I was greatly relieved. 'We began together, and I intend that we shall finish together,' she said darkly. I knew she suspected that the Fool and I were keeping something from her.
'What do you propose then?' I asked her humbly.
'What I first suggested. We will follow that old road that goes off through the trees. It appears to match what is marked here. It cannot take us more than two marches to reach the end of it. Especially if we start now.'
And with no more announcement than that, she got up and clicked to the jeppas. The leader came immediately and the rest obediently fell into line behind her. I watched her long even strides as she led them off
