accept it. Never before have I spoken so plainly to you. Perhaps that is what confuses you.'
He was serious. I shook my head again. 'You make no sense! You went somewhere to discover your place in history? How can that be? History is what is done and behind us.'
He shook his head, slowly this time. 'History is what we do in our lives. We create it as we go along.' He smiled enigmatically. 'The future is another kind of history.'
'No man can know the future,' I agreed.
His smile widened. 'Cannot they?' he asked in a whisper. 'Perhaps, Fitz, somewhere, there is written down all that is the future. Not written down by one person, know, but if the hints and visions and premonitions and foreseeings of an entire race were written down, and cross-referenced and related to one another, might not such a people create a loom to hold the weaving of the future?'
'Preposterous,' I objected. 'How would anyone know if any of it were true?'
'If such a loom were made, and such a tapestry of predictions woven, not for a few years, but for tens of hundreds of years, after a time it could be shown that it presented a surprisingly accurate foretelling. Bear in mind that those who keep these records are another race, an exceedingly long-lived one. A pale lovely race, that occasionally mingled its bloodlines with that of men. And then!' He spun in a circle, suddenly fey, pleased insufferably with himself. 'And then, when certain ones were born, ones marked so clearly that history must recall them, they are called to step forward, to find their places in that future history. And they might further be exhorted to examine that place, that juncture of a hundred threads, and say, these threads, here, these are the ones I shall tweak, and in the tweaking, I shall change the tapestry, I shall warp the weft, alter the color of what is to come. I shall change the destiny of the world.'
He was mocking me. I was certain of it now. 'Once, in perhaps a thousand years, there may come a man capable of making such a great change in the world. A powerful King, perhaps, or a philosopher, shaping the thoughts of thousands. But you and I, Fool? We are pawns. Ciphers.'
He shook his head pityingly. 'This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draft.'
'Not all men are destined for greatness,' I reminded him.
'Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?'
'This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.'
'No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart's beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?'
'Fool, this is beyond me,' I declared uneasily. I had never seen him so impassioned, never heard him speak so plainly. It was as if I had stirred gray-coated embers and suddenly found the cherry-red coal that glowed in their depths. He burned too brightly.
'No, Fitz. I have come to believe it is through you.' He reached out and tapped me lightly with Ratsy. 'Keystone. Gate. Crossroads. Catalyst. All these you have been, and continue to be. Whenever I come to a crossroads, whenever the scent is uncertain, when I put my nose to the ground, and cast about and bay and snuffle, I find one scent. Yours. You create possibilities. While you exist, the future can be steered. I came here for you, Fitz. You are the thread I tweak. One of them, anyway. '
I felt a sudden chill of foreboding. Whatever more he had to say, I did not wish to hear it. Somewhere, far away, a thin howl arose. A wolf baying in midday. A shiver ran up me, setting up every hair on my body. 'You've had your joke,' I said, laughing nervously. 'I should have known better than to expect a real secret from you.'
'You. Or not you. Linchpin, anchor, knot in the line. I have seen the end of the world, Fitz. Seen it woven as plainly as I've seen my birth. Oh, not in your lifetime, nor even mine. But shall we be happy, to say that we live in the dusk rather than in the full night? Shall we rejoice that we shall only suffer, while your offspring will be the ones to know the torments of the damned? Shall this be why we do not act?'
'Fool. I wish not to hear this.'
'You had a chance to deny me. But thrice you demanded it, and hear it you shall.' He lifted his staff as if leading a charge, and spoke as if he addressed the full Council of the Six Duchies. 'The fall of the Kingdom of the Six Duchies was the pebble that started the landslide. The soulless ones moved on from there, spreading like a bloodstain down the world's best shirt. Darkness devours, and is never satiated until it feeds upon itself. And all because the line of House Farseer failed. That is the future as it is woven. But wait! Farseer?' He cocked his head and peered at me, considering as a gore-crow. 'Why do they call you that, Fitz? What have your ancestors ever foreseen afar to gain such a name? Shall I tell you how it comes about? The very name of your house is the future reaching back in time to you, and naming you by the name that someday your house will deserve. The Farseers. That was the clue I took to my heart. That the future reached back to you, to your house, to where your bloodlines intersected with my lifetime, and named you so. I came here, and what did I discover? One Farseer, with no name at all. Unnamed in any history, past or future. But I have seen you take a name, FitzChivalry Farseer. And I shall see that you deserve it.' He advanced on me, seized me by the shoulders. 'We are here, Fitz, you and I, to change the fixture of the world. To reach out and hold in place the tiny pebble that could trigger the boulder's tumbling.'
'No.' A terrible cold was welling up inside me. I shook with it. My teeth began to chatter, and the bright motes of light to sparkle at the edges of my vision. A fit. I was going to have another fit. Right here, in front of the Fool. 'Leave!' I cried out, unable to abide the thought. 'Go away. Now! Quickly. Quickly! '
I had never seen the Fool astonished before. His jaw actually dropped open, revealing his tiny white teeth and pale tongue. A moment longer he gripped me, and then he let go. I did not stop to think of what he might feel at my abrupt dismissal. I snatched the door open and pointed out it, and he was gone. I shut it behind him, latched it, and then staggered to my bed as wave after wave of darkness surged through me. I fell facedown on the coverlets. 'Molly!' I cried out. 'Molly, save me!' But I knew she could not hear me, and I sank alone into my blackness.
The brightness of a hundred candles, festoons of evergreen and swags of holly and bare black winter branches hung with sparkling sugar candies to delight the eye and tongue. The clacking of the puppets' wooden swords and the delighted exclamations of the children when the Piebald Prince's head actually came flying off and arced out over the crowd. Mellow's mouth wide in a bawdy song as his unattended fingers danced independently over his harp strings. A blast of cold as the great doors of the hall were thrown open and yet another group of merrymakers came into the Great Hall to join us. The slow knowledge stole over me that this was no longer a dream, this was Winterfest, and I was wandering benignly through the celebration, smiling blandly at everyone and seeing no one. I blinked my eyes slowly. I could do nothing quickly. I was wrapped in soft wool, I was drifting like an unmanned sailboat on a still day. A wonderful sleepiness filled me. Someone touched my arm. I turned. Burrich frowning and asking me something. His voice, always so deep, almost a color washing against me when he spoke. 'It's all good,' I told him calmly. 'Don't worry, it's all good.' I floated away from him, wafting through the room with the milling of the crowd.
King Shrewd sat on his throne, but I knew now that he was made of paper. The Fool sat on the step by his feet and clutched his rat scepter like an infant clutches a rattle. His tongue was a sword, and as the King's enemies drew closer to the throne, the Fool slew them, slashed them to bits, and turned them back from the paper man on the throne.
And here were Verity and Kettricken on another dais, pretty as the Fool's doll, each of them. I looked and saw they were both made of hungers, like containers made of emptiness. I felt so sad, I'd never be able to fill either of them, for they were both so terribly empty. Regal came to speak to them, and he was a big black bird, not a crow, no, not so merry as a crow, and not a raven, he hadn't the cheery cleverness of a raven, no, a miserable eye-pecker of a bird, circling, circling, dreaming of them as carrion for himself to feast on. He smelled of carrion, and I covered my mouth and nose with a hand and walked away from them.
I sat down on a hearth, next to a giggling girl, happy in her blue skirts. She chattered like a squirrel and I
