“It’s pointless. I can’t succeed. I simply haven’t the aptitude and I’m tired of beating my head against the wall.”
The Fool’s eyes widened further. “I thought you had been doing well, before …”
It was my turn to be surprised. “Well? Why do you think he mocks me and strikes me? As a reward for my success? No. I haven’t been able to even understand what it’s about. All the others have already surpassed me. Why should I go back? So Galen can prove even more thoroughly how right he was?”
“Something,” the Fool said carefully, “is not right here.” He considered a moment. “Before, I asked you to quit the lessons. You would not. Do you recall that?”
I cast my mind back. “I’m stubborn, sometimes,” I admitted.
“And if I asked you now, -to continue? To go up to the tower top, and continue to try?”
“Why have you changed your mind?”
“Because that which I sought to prevent came to pass. But you survived it. So I seek now to …” His words trailed off. “It is as you said. Why should I speak at all, when I cannot speak plainly?”
“If I said that, I regret it. It is not a thing one should say to a friend. I do not remember it.”
He smiled faintly. “If you do not remember it, then neither shall I” He reached and took both of my hands in his. His grip was oddly cool. A shiver passed over me at his touch. “Would you continue, if I asked it of you? As a friend?”
The word sounded so odd from his lips. He spoke it without mockery, carefully, as if the saying of it aloud could shatter the meaning. His colorless eyes held mine. I found I could not say no. So I nodded.
Even so, I rose reluctantly. He watched me with an impassive interest as I straightened the clothes I’d slept in, splashed my face, and then tore into the bread he’d brought. “I don’t want to go,” I told him as I finished the first roll and took up the second. “I don’t see what it can accomplish.”
“I don’t know why he bothers with you,” the Fool agreed. The familiar cynicism was back.
“Galen? He has to, the King …”
“Burrich.”
“He just likes bossing me about,” I complained, and it sounded childish, even to me.
The Fool shook his head. “You haven’t even a clue, have you?”
“About what?”
“About how the stablemaster dragged Galen from his bed, and from thence to the Witness Stones. I wasn’t there, of course, or I would be able to tell you how Galen cursed and struck at him at first, but the stablemaster paid no attention. He just hunched his shoulders to the man’s blows, and kept silent. He gripped the Skillmaster by the collar, so the man was fair choked, and dragged him along. And the soldiers and guards and stable boys followed in a stream that became a torrent of men. If I had been there, I could tell you how no man dared to interfere, for it was as if the stablemaster had become as Burrich once was, an iron muscled man with a black temper that was like a madness when it came on him. No one, then, dared to brook that temper, and that day, it was as if Burrich was that man again. If he limped still, no one noticed it at all.
“As for the Skillmaster, he flailed and cursed, and then he grew still, and all suspected that he turned what he knew upon his captor. But if he did, it had no effect, save that the stablemaster tightened his grip on the man’s neck. And if Galen strove to sway others to his cause, they did not react. Perhaps being choked and dragged was sufficient to break his concentration. Or perhaps his Skill is not so strong as it was rumored. Or perhaps too many remember his mistreatment of them too well to be vulnerable to his wiles. Or perhaps-”
“Fool! Get on with it! What happened?” A light sweat cloaked my body and I shivered, not knowing what I hoped for.