"But could not your teachers, with all those records you said they kept, tell you anything of what to expect?"

He smiled, but bitterness was in his voice. "My teachers were too certain that they knew what to expect. They planned to pace my learning, to reveal what they thought I should know when they thought I should know it. When my prophecies were different from what they had planned, they were not pleased with me. They tried to interpret my own words for me! There have been other White Prophets, you see. But when I tried to make them see that I was the White Prophet, they could not accept it. Writing after writing they showed to me, to try to convince me of my effrontery in insisting on such a thing. But the more I read, the more my certainty grew. I tried to tell them my time was nearly upon me.

All they could counsel was that I should wait and study more to be certain. We were not on the best terms when I left. I imagine they were quite startled to find I was gone so young from them, even though I had prophesied it for years." He gave me a strangely apologetic smile. "Perhaps if I had stayed to complete my schooling, we would know better how to save the world."

I felt a sudden sinking in the pit of my stomach. So much had I come to rely on a belief that the Fool, at least, knew what we were about. "How much do you truly know of what is to come?"

He took a deep breath, then sighed it out. "Only that we do it together, Fitzy-fitz. Only that we do it together."

"I thought you had studied all those writings and prophecies…"

"I did. And when I was younger, I dreamed many dreams, and even had visions. But it is as I have told you before; nothing is a precise fit. Look you, Fitz. If I showed you wool and a loom and a set of shears, would you look at it and say, Oh, that is the coat I will someday wear? But once you have the coat on, it is easy to look back and say, Oh, those things foretold this coat."

"What is the good of it, then?" I demanded in disgust.

"The good of it?" he echoed. "Ah. I have never quite thought of it in those terms before. The good of it."

We walked for a time in silence. I could see what an effort it was for him to keep to the pace, and wished vainly there had been a way to keep one of the horses and get it past the slide area.

"Can you read weather sign, Fitz? Or animal tracks?"

"Some, for weather. I am better at animal tracks."

"But in either one, are you always sure you are right?"

"Never. You don't really know until the next day dawns, or you bring the beast to bay."

"So it is with my reading of the future. I never know… Please, let us stop, even if for only a bit. I need to get my breath, and take a sip of water."

I obliged him reluctantly. There was a mossy boulder just off the road, and he seated himself there. Not too far from the road were evergreens of a type I did not know. It rested my eyes to look on trees again. I left the road to sit beside him, and was instantly aware of a difference. As subtle as bees' humming was the working of the road, but when it suddenly ceased, I felt it. I yawned to pop my ears, and suddenly felt more clearheaded.

"Years ago I had a vision," the Fool observed. He drank a bit more water, then passed the skin to me. "I saw a black buck rising from a bed of shining black stone. When first I saw the black walls of Buckkeep rising over the waters, I said to myself, Ah, that is what that meant! Now I see a young bastard whose sigil is a buck walking on a road wrought from black stone. Maybe that is what the dream signified. I don't know. But my dream was duly recorded, and someday, in years to come, wise men will agree as to what it signified. Probably after both you and I are long dead."

I asked a question that had long prickled me. "Kettle says there is a prophecy about my child… the child of the Catalyst…"

"That there is," the Fool confirmed calmly.

"Then you think Molly and I are doomed to lose Nettle to the throne of the Six Duchies?"

"Nettle. You know, I like her name. Very much, I do."

"You did not answer my question, Fool."

"Ask me again in twenty years. These things are so much easier when one looks back." The sideways glance he gave me told me he would say no more on that topic. I tried a new tack.

"So you came, all that way, so that the Six Duchies would not fall to the Red-Ships."

He gave me an odd look, then grinned as if astonished. "Is that how you see it? That we do all this to save your Six Duchies?" When I nodded, he shook his head. "Fitz, Fitz. I came to save the world. The Six Duchies falling to the Red-Ships is but the first pebble in the avalanche." He took another deep breath. "I know the Red-Ships seem disaster enough to you, but the misery they make to your folk is no more than a pimple on the world's buttocks. Were that all, were it simply one set of barbarians seizing land from another, it would be no more than the ordinary working of the world. No. They are the first stain of poison spreading in a stream. Fitz, do I dare tell you this? If we fail, the spread is fast. Forging takes root as a custom, nay, as an amusement for the high ones. Look at Regal and his 'King's Justice.' He has succumbed to it already. He pleasures his body with drugs and deadens his soul with his savage amusements. Aye, and spreads the disease to those around him, until they take no satisfaction in a contest of skill that draws no blood, until games are only amusing if lives are wagered on the outcome. The very coinage of life becomes debased. Slavery spreads, for if it is accepted to take a man's life for amusement, then how much wiser to take it for profit?"

His voice had grown in strength and passion as he spoke. Now he caught his breath suddenly and leaned forward over his knees. I set a hand on his shoulder, but he only shook his head.

After a moment, he straightened. "I declare, talking to you is more wearying than hiking. Take me at my word, Fitz. As bad as the Red-Ships are, they are amateurs and experimenters. I have seen visions of what the world becomes in the cycle when they prosper. I vow it shall not be this cycle."

He heaved himself to his feet with a sigh and crooked out his arm. I took it and we resumed our walking. He had given me much to think about, and I spoke little. I took advantage of the gentling countryside to walk alongside the road rather than upon it. The Fool did not complain of the uneven ground.

As the road plunged ever deeper into the valley, the day warmed and the foliage increased. By evening, the terrain had mellowed so much that we were able to pitch the tent, not only off the road, but quite a distance from the road. Before bedtime, I showed Kettle my solution to her game, and she nodded as if well pleased. She immediately began to set out a new puzzle. I stopped her.

"I do not think I will need that tonight. I am looking forward to truly sleeping."

"Are you? Then you shouldn't look forward to waking up again."

I looked shocked.

She resumed setting out her pieces. "You are one against three, and those three a coterie," she observed more gently. "And possibly those three are four. If Regal's brothers could Skill, he most likely has some ability. With the aid of the others, he could learn to lend his strength to them." She leaned closer to me and lowered her voice, although the others were all busy with camp chores. "You know it is possible to kill with the Skill. Would he wish to do less than that to you?"

"But if I sleep off the road," I began.

"The force of the road is like the wind that blows alike on all. The ill wishes of a coterie are like an arrow that targets only you. Besides, there is no way you can sleep and not worry about the woman and the child. And every time you think of them, it is possible the coterie sees them through your eyes. You must crowd them out of your mind."