The Fool sighed heavily. “It is not a thing I can command, my king. You know that. Like your visions, mine rule me, not the reverse. I cannot pluck a thread from the tapestry, but must look where my eyes are pointed. The future, my king, is like a current in a channel. I cannot tell you where one drop of water goes, but I can tell you where the flow is strongest.”
“A woman at Siltbay,” I insisted. Part of me pitied my poor fool, but another part insisted. “I would not have seen her so clearly if she were not important. Try. Who was she?”
“She is significant?”
“Yes. I am sure of it. Oh, yes.”
The Fool sat cross-legged on the floor. He put his long thin fingers to his temples and pressed as if trying to open a door. “I know not. I don’t understand … All is a muddle, all is a crossroads. The tracks are trampled, the scents gone awry ….” He looked up at me. Somehow I had stood, but he sat on the floor at my feet, looking up at me. His pale eyes goggled in his eggshell face. He swayed from the strain, smiled foolishly. He considered his rat scepter, went nose to nose with it. “Did you know any such Molly, Ratsy? No? I didn’t think you would. Perhaps he should ask someone more in a position to know. The worms, perhaps.” A silly giggling seized him. Useless creature. Silly riddling soothsayer. Well, he could not help what he was. I left him and walked slowly back to my bed.
I sat on the edge of it.
I found I was shaking as if with an ague. A seizure, I told myself. I must calm myself or risk a seizure. Did I want the Fool to see me twitching and gasping? I didn’t care. Nothing mattered, except finding out if that was my Molly, and if so, had she perished? I had to know. I had to know if she had died, and if she had died, how she had died. Never had the knowing of something been so essential to me.