Am I a servant, that my time is never my own?

Worse. You are a king. And 'Sacrifice' to all.

He broke his mind free of mine before I could reply to that at alL I blinked and realized that I had just heard the door close. Prilkop had left. The Fool was looking at me, somehow aware I had been Skilling and waiting for my attention to come back to him. 'I am sorry. Chade, in a rush as always, demanding that he needed contact with the Queen. He claims that if she has recognized me once, even for a moment as "Sacrifice" that I now have all the duties and responsibilities of a crowned king. It's ridiculous.'

'Is it?'

'You know it is!'

My defence seemed to release a torrent of words from him, as if while he waited the words had mounted up inside him like water behind a dam.

'Fitz. Go back to the life you were meant to have, and love it, without reserve. That was what I saw you doing.' He gave a laugh that had hysteria at the edge of it. 'It even sustained me while I was dying. To know that you would go on to that life, after I was dead. When the pain was worst, I fixed my thoughts on what I had seen for you, and I let it move through me.'

'But . . . she said you called out for me. When she tormented you.' I said the words, and then wished I could call them back. He suddenly looked sick and old.

'Probably, I did,' he admitted. 'I have never claimed to be brave. But the fact that she could wring that from me changes nothing, my friend. Nothing.' He looked into the fire as if he had lost something there, and I was ashamed that I had taken him back to his torture. No man should be reminded that he has screamed in front of people who delighted in it. 'It should probably serve to teach me that, in many ways, I am not as strong as I wish I were. And I should not put myself in a position in which my weakness could damage both of us.'

He suddenly took my hand. It startled me, and when I looked at him, our eyes locked. Titz. Please. Do not tempt me to follow you and interfere in the future I saw for you. Do not tempt me to step out of my time and try to take something that was never meant for me.' He shivered suddenly, as if a chill had taken him. He let go of my hand and leaned closer to the fire, holding his hands out to them. The nails had just started to regrow. His rubbed his hands together, loosening a layer of skin like white ash. The new skin exposed beneath reminded me of polished wood. Very softly, he asked me, 'Could you have been content to live with Nighteyes among the wolves?'

'I would have been willing to try,' I said stubbornly.

'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. 1 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.1

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. 1 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. 1 tried to grasp exactly what the Fool feared.