'You think that it would hurt me if you came back to Buckkeep. That it would keep me from a life you had seen.'

'Yes.'

'You dread that I would grow old and die. And you would not.'

'Yes.'

'What if I didn't care about those things? About the cost.'

(i still would;

1 asked my last question, my heart squeezed with hurt, dreading however he might answer it. 'And if I said I would follow you then? Leave my other life behind and go with you.'

I think that question stunned him. He drew breath twice before he answered it in a hoarse whisper. 'I would not allow it. I could not allow it.'

We sat a long time in silence after that. The fire consumed itself. And then I asked the final, awful question. 'After 1 leave you here, will 1 ever see you again?'

'Probably not. It would not be wise.' He lifted my hand and tenderly kissed the sword-calloused palm of it, and then held it in both of his. It was farewell, and I knew it, and knew I could do nothing to stop it. I sat still, feeling as if 1 grew hollow and cold, as if Nighteyes were dying all over again. 1 was losing him. He was withdrawing from my life and I felt as though I were bleeding to death, my life trickling out of me. I suddenly realized how close to true that was.

'Stop!' I cried, but it was too late. He released my hand before I could snatch it back. My wrist was clean and bare. His fingerprints were gone. Somehow, he had taken them back, and our Skill-thread dangled, broken.

'I have to let you go,' he said in a cracked whisper. 'While I can. Leave me that, Fitz. That I broke the bond. That I did not take what was not mine.'

I groped for him. I could see him, but I could not feel him. No Wit, no Skill, no scent. No Fool. The companion of my childhood, the friend of my youth was gone. He had turned that facet of himself away from me. A brown-skinned man with hazel eyes looked at me sympathetically.

'You cannot do this to me,' I said.

'It is done,' he pointed out. 'Done.' His strength seemed to go out of him with the word. He turned his head away from me, as if by doing that, he could keep me from knowing that he wept. I sat, feeling numbed in the way that one does after a terrible injury.

'I am just tired,' he said in a small, quavering voice. 'Just tired, still. That is all. I think I will lie down again.'

Fitz- The Queen wants you. Thick pushed effortlessly into my mind.

Shortly. I am with the Fool right now.

It's about Old Blood. Soon, please, she says.

Soon, I replied dully.

And no sooner was Thick cleared from my mind than Chade was tapping at my shoulder. I gave him my heed and As long as you are there, think to bring back at least some of the Skill-scrolls you found there. We'll be in need of them, I think.

Chade. 1 will. Please. A time to myself. Please.

Very well. His reply was surly. Then he softened, asking more gently, What is the problem? Is he that ill?

Actually, he seems improved. But I need a time for my own thoughts.

Very well.

I turned back to the Fool, but he had either sunk into a true sleep or was pretending one so convincingly that I could not find it in me to try to wake him. 1 needed a time to think. I thought there must be some way to get him to change his mind, if only I could think of it.

Til be back,' I told him, and then slung my cloak over my shoulders and went out. I thought I might as well make a trip through the Elderling maze to retrieve some of the Skill-scrolls. It would keep me busy while I thought. I have never done my best pondering while sitting still. I climbed the steep path and found I did not have to squeeze quite as much to get into the crack. My comings and goings were wearing it open, I thought to myself. Yet I had not gone far under the false light of the Elderling globes before I saw someone coming toward me. It startled me for the instant before I recognized the Black Man. He had a haunch of smoked meat on one shoulder, and as we drew near to one another, he nodded to me and then slung it carefully to the ground.

'Her supplies, I stole. Many times. Not like this. A little bit here, a little bit there. Now, what I want, I take.' He cocked his head at me. 'And you?'

'Somewhat the same. Years ago, scrolls, special writings, were taken from my king. She has them, here, in a room near her bedchamber. I am to bring them home again.'

'Ah, those. I saw them long ago.'

'Yes.'

'1 will help.'

I was not sure I wanted help, but there seemed no courteous way to refuse him. 1 nodded my thanks, and we walked companionably through the halls. He shook his head at the desecration of the carvings and the missing art from the empty niches. He spoke to me of the folk who had lived here in the times he had known-Thick had been right. Once, the stone hallways had been warmed. Elderlings had come and gone from this place, enjoying the wonders of the ice and snow that never reached their warmer lands. I tried to imagine taking pleasure in coming to a cold place, but the idea was foreign to me.

He had somehow unharnessed the magic that gave warmth to the stone. He had sought, too, to deprive the Pale Woman of the Elderling light, but had failed at that. Yet even without warmth, she had stayed. She had driven Prilkop into hiding, and shown her disdain for him and the dragon-partnered Elderlings by her encouragement of the destruction of their art.

'Yet she left the map room alone,' I pointed out to him.

'She did not know of it, perhaps. Or, not knowing the use, did not care. Of the travel portals, she knew nothing. Once, only once, to flee her I used one.' He shook his head at the memory. 'So weak, so sick, so -' He put his fists to his temples and made pounding motions. 'I could not come hack, for many days. When I did,' he shrugged, 'she had made my city hers. But now I take it back.'

He knew his city well. He took me by a different path, through narrower ways that had, perhaps, been for servants or tradesmen. In less time than I had thought possible, we turned down a hallway that led us past her bedchamber. I glanced in. Someone had been there since I last glimpsed it. I halted and stared. Every item in the room that could have been pushed over or dragged about had been.

A cask of jewellery had spilled a stream of pearls and silver chains and glittering white stones across the floor. Some had settled in slow melt into the floor of the chamber. Prilkop saw me staring and calmly entered into the room. 'This will work,' he told me, and pulled a silk coverlet from her bed. As I watched, he knotted the corners to form a very large carry sack. Catching the sense of what he did, I found another and copied him. Then, our makeshift sacks slung across our backs, we went on to the scroll room.

I was not prepared for the sight that met me there. The racks had been deliberately pushed toward the centre of the room, so that as they fell, their shelved contents spilled in a messy pile. A broken pitcher lay near them and oil drenched a number of the scrolls. The Pale Woman lay on the floor near them. She was very dead. Her blackened stick arms reminded me of insect legs. Freezing and death had darkened her countenance. She had thrown back her head and died, mouth open like a snarling cat. An Elderling light globe, pried loose from its setting, lay near the oil-soaked manuscripts. It looked battered, as if it had been kicked and beaten. For a time, Prilkop and I stared in silence.

'She tried to make a fire to warm herself,' I hazarded my guess. 'She thought something in the light globe might catch the scrolls on fire.'

He shook his head in disgust. 'No. To destroy. Her whole desire that was. Dragons to destroy. Other prophets to destroy. Beauty. Knowledge.' He nudged one of the oily scrolls that was close to her body. 'What she could not control or possess, she destroys.' He met my eyes and added, 'She could not control your Fool.'