LITMIR.BIZ

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the sole heir to the Mountain throne. But what I found when I arrived there was a web of deceit and lies engineered by my youngest uncle, Prince Regal, who hoped to topple Verity from the line of succession and claim the princess as his own bride. I was the pawn he would sacrifice for this goal; and I was the pawn who instead toppled the game pieces around him, bringing his wrath and vengeance down on myself, but saving the crown and the princess for Prince Verity. I do not think this was heroism. Nor do I think it was petty spite wreaked on one who had always bullied and belittled me. It was the act of a boy becoming a man, and doing what I had sworn to do years before I knew the cost of such an oath. The price was my healthy young body, so long taken for granted.

      Long after I had defeated Regal’s plot, I lingered in a sickbed in the Mountain Kingdom. But finally a morning came when I awoke and believed that my long illness was finally over. Burrich had decided I was recovered enough to begin the long journey back home to the Six Duchies. Princess Kettricken and her entourage had left for Buckkeep weeks before, when the weather was still fine. Now winter snows already smothered the higher parts of the Mountain Kingdom. If we did not leave Jhaampe soon, we would be forced to winter there. I was up early that morning, doing my final packing, when the first small tremors began. Resolutely, I ignored them. I was just shaky, I told myself, with not yet having eaten breakfast, and the excitement of the journey home. I donned the garments that Jonqui had furnished for our winter journey through the Mountains and across the plains. For me there was a long red shirt, padded with wool. The quilted trousers were green, but embroidered with red at the waist and cuffs. The boots were sacks of soft leather, almost shapeless until my feet were laced inside them, padded with sheared wool and trimmed with fur. They fastened to the feet with long wrappings of leather strips. My trembling fingers made tying them a difficult task. Jonqui had told us they were wonderful for the dry snow of the mountains, but to beware of getting them wet. There was a looking glass in the room. At first, I smiled at my reflection. Not even King Shrewd’s Fool dressed as gaily as this. But above the bright garments, my face was thin and pale, making my dark eyes too large, while my fever-shorn hair, black and bristly, stood up like a dog’s hackles. My illness had ravaged me. But I told myself I was finally on my way home. I turned aside from the mirror. As I packed the few small gifts I had selected to take home to my friends, the unsteadiness grew in my hands.

      For the last time, Burrich, Hands and I sat down to break fast with Jonqui. I thanked her once again for all she had done towards healing me. I picked up a spoon for the porridge, and my hand gave a twitch. I dropped it. I watched the silvery shape fall and fell after it.

      The next thing I remember is the shadowy corners of the bedroom. I lay for a long time, not moving or speaking. I went from a state of emptiness to knowing I had had another seizure. It had passed; both body and mind were mine to command once more. But I no longer wanted them. At fifteen years old, an age when most were coming into their full strength, I could no longer trust my body to perform the simplest task. It was damaged, and I rejected it fiercely. I felt savagely vindictive toward the flesh and bone that enclosed me, and wished for some way to express my raging disappointment. Why couldn’t I heal? Why hadn’t I recovered?

      ‘It’s going to take time, that’s all. Wait until half a year has passed since the day you were damaged. Then assess yourself.’ It was Jonqui the healer. She was sitting near the fireplace, but her chair was drawn back into the shadows. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She rose slowly, as if the winter made her bones ache, and came to stand beside my bed.

      ‘I don’t want to live like an old man.’

      She pursed her lips. ‘Sooner or later, you will have to. At least, I so wish that you will survive that many years. I am old, and so is my brother King Eyod. We do not find it so great a burden.’

      ‘I should not mind an old man’s body if the years had earned it for me. But I can’t go on like this.’

      She shook her head, puzzled. ‘Of course you can. Healing is tedious sometimes, but to say that you cannot go on … I do not understand. It is, perhaps, a difference in our languages?’

      I took a breath to speak, but at that moment Burrich came in. ‘Awake? Feeling better?’

      ‘Awake. Not feeling better,’ I grumbled. Even to myself, I sounded like a fretful child.

      Burrich and Jonqui exchanged glances over me. She came to the bedside, patted my shoulder, and then left the room silently. Their obvious tolerance was galling, and my impotent anger rose like a tide. ‘Why can’t you heal me?’ I demanded of Burrich.

      He was taken aback by the accusation in my question. ‘It’s not that simple,’ he began.

      ‘Why not?’ I hauled myself up straight in the bed. ‘I’ve seen you cure all manner of ailments in beasts. Sickness, broken bones, worms, mange … you’re Stablemaster, and I’ve seen you treat them all. Why can’t you cure me?’

      ‘You’re not a dog, Fitz,’ Burrich said quietly. ‘It’s simpler with a beast, when it’s seriously ill. I’ve taken drastic measures, sometimes, telling myself, well, if the animal dies, at least it’s not suffering any more, and this may heal it. I can’t do that with you. You’re not a beast.’

      ‘That’s no answer! Half the time the guards come to you instead of the healer. You took the head of an arrow out of Den. You laid his whole arm open to do it! When the healer said that Greydin’s foot was too infected and she’d have to lose it, she came to you, and you saved it. And all the time the healer was saying the infection would spread and she’d die and it would be your fault.’

      Burrich folded his lips, quelling his temper. If I’d been healthy, I’d have been wary of his wrath. But his restraint with me during my convalescence had made me bold. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and controlled. ‘Those were risky healings, yes. But the folk who wanted them done knew the risks. And,’ he said, raising his voice to cover the objection I’d been about to voice, ‘they were simple things. I knew the cause. Take out the arrow head and haft from his arm and clean it up. Poultice and draw the infection from Greydin’s foot. But your sickness isn’t that simple. Neither Jonqui nor I really know what’s wrong with you. Is it the aftermath of the poison Kettricken fed you when she thought you had come to kill her brother? Is this the effect of the poisoned wine that Regal arranged for you? Or is it from the beating you took afterward? From being near drowned? Or did all those things combine to do this to you? We don’t know, and so we don’t know how to cure you. We just don’t know.’

      His voice clenched on his last words, and I suddenly saw how his sympathy for me overlay his frustration. He paced a few steps, then halted to stare into the fire. ‘We’ve talked long about it. Jonqui has much in her mountain lore that I have never heard of before. And I’ve told her of cures I know. But we both agreed the best thing to do was give you time to heal. You’re in no danger of dying that we can see. Possibly, in time, your own body can cast out the last vestiges of the poison, or heal whatever damage was done inside you.’

      ‘Or,’ I added quietly, ‘it’s possible that I’ll be this way the rest of my life. That the poison or the beating damaged something permanently. Damn Regal, to kick me like that when I was trussed already.’

      Burrich stood as if turned to ice. Then he sagged into the chair in the shadows. Defeat was in his voice. ‘Yes. That is just as possible as the other. But don’t you see we have no choice? I could physick you to try to force the poison out of your body. But if it’s damage, not poison, all I would do was weaken you so that your body’s own healing would take that much longer.’ He stared into the flames, and lifted a hand to touch a streak of white at his temple. I was not the only one who’d fallen to Regal’s treachery. Burrich himself was but newly recovered from a skull blow that would have killed anyone less thick-headed than he. I knew he had endured long days of dizziness and blurred vision. I did not recall he had complained at all. I had the decency to feel a bit of shame.

      ‘So what do I do?’

      Burrich started as if roused from dozing. ‘What we’ve been doing. Wait. Eat. Rest. Be easy on yourself. And see what happens. Is that so terrible?’

      I ignored

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