Fool’s Errand. Робин Хобб

was smaller, finer-boned, and narrower between my thighs. I felt clumsy and heavy-handed as I urged her forwards, then spun her about with a touch of the rein. I shifted my weight and took in the rein and she backed without hesitation. A foolish grin came over my face. ‘She could equal Buckkeep’s best when Burrich had the stables prime,’ I admitted to him. I set my hand to her withers, and felt the dancing flame of her eager little mind. There was no apprehension in her, only curiosity. The wolf sat on the porch watching me gravely.

      ‘Take her down the lane,’ the Fool urged me, his grin mirroring mine. ‘And give her a free head. Let her show you what she can do.’

      ‘What’s her name?’

      ‘Malta. I named her myself. I bought her in Shoaks, on my way here.’

      I nodded to myself. In Shoaks, they bred their horses small and light for travelling their broad and windswept plains. She’d be an easy keeper, requiring little feed to keep her moving day after day. I leaned forwards slightly. ‘Malta,’ I said, and she heard permission in her name. She sprang forwards and we were off.

      If her day’s journey to reach my cabin had wearied her, she did not show it. Rather it was as if she had grown restive with her steady pace and now relished the chance to stretch her muscles. We flowed beneath the overarching trees, and her hooves making music on the hard-packed earth woke a like song in my heart.

      Where my lane met the road, I pulled her in. She was not even blowing; instead she arched her neck and gave the tiniest tug at her bit to let me know she would be glad to continue. I held her still, and looked both up and down the road. Odd, how that small change in perspective altered my whole sense of the world around me. Astride this fine animal, the road was like a ribbon unfurled before me. The day was fading, but even so I blinked in the gentling light, seeing possibilities in the blueing hills and the mountains edging into the evening horizon. The horse between my thighs brought the whole world closer to my door. I sat her quietly, and let my eyes travel a road that could eventually take me back to Buckkeep, or indeed to anywhere in the entire world. My quiet life in the cabin with Hap seemed as tight and confining as an outworn skin. I longed to writhe like a snake and cast it off, to emerge gleaming and new into a wider world.

      Malta shook her head, mane and tassels flying, awakening me to how long I had sat and stared. The sun was kissing the horizon. The horse ventured a step or two against my firm rein. She had a will of her own, and was as willing to gallop down the road as to walk sedately back to my cabin. So we compromised; I turned her back up my lane, but let her set her own pace. This proved to be a rhythmic canter. When I pulled her in before my cabin, the Fool peered out the door at me. ‘I’ve put the kettle on,’ he called. ‘Bring in my saddle pack, would you? There’s Bingtown coffee in it.’

      I stabled Malta beside the pony and gave her fresh water and such hay as I had. It was not much; the pony was an adept forager, and did not mind the scrubby pasturage on the hillside behind the cabin. The Fool’s sumptuous tack gleamed oddly against the rough walls. I slung his saddle pack over my shoulder. The summer dusk was thickening as I made my way back to my cabin. There were lights in the windows and the pleasant clatter of cooking pots. As I entered to set the packs on my table, the wolf was sprawled before the fire drying his damp fur and the Fool was stepping around him to set a kettle on the hook. I blinked my eyes, and for an instant I was back in the Fool’s hut in the Mountains, healing from my old injury while he stood between the world and me that I might rest. Then as now he created reality around himself, bringing order and peace to a small island of warm firelight and the simple smell of hearth-bread cooking.

      He swung his pale eyes to meet mine, the gold of them mirroring the firelight. Light ran up his cheekbones and dwindled as it merged with his hair. I gave my head a small shake. ‘In the space of a sundown, you show me the wide world from a horse’s back, and the soul of the world within my own walls.’

      ‘Oh, my friend,’ he said quietly. No more than that needed to be said.

       We are whole.

      The Fool cocked his head to that thought. He looked like a man trying to recall something important. I shared a glance with the wolf. He was right. Like sundered pieces of crockery that snick back together so precisely that the crack becomes invisible, the Fool joined us and completed us. Whereas Chade’s visit had filled me with questions and needs, the Fool’s presence was in itself an answer and a satisfaction.

      He had made free with my garden and my pantry. There were new potatoes and carrots and little purple-and-white turnips simmering in one pot. Fresh fish layered with basil steamed and rattled a tight-fitting lid. When I raised my brows to that, the Fool merely observed, ‘The wolf seems to recall my fondness for fresh fish.’ Nighteyes set his ears back and lolled his tongue out at me. Hearthcakes and blackberry preserves rounded out our simple meal. He had ferreted out my Sandsedge brandy. It waited on the table.

      He dug through his pack and produced a cloth bag of dark beans shining with oil. ‘Smell this,’ he demanded, and then put me to crushing the beans while he filled my last available pot with water and set it to boil. There was little conversation. He hummed to himself and the fire crackled while pot lids tapped and occasional escaping drips steamed away on the fire. The pestle against the mortar made a homely sound as I ground the aromatic beans. We moved for a space in wolf time, in the contentment of the present, not worrying about what had passed or what was to come. That evening remains for me always a moment to cherish, as golden and fragrant as brandy in crystal glasses.

      With a knack I’ve never attained, the Fool made all the food ready at once, so that the deep brown coffee steamed alongside the fish and the vegetables, while a stack of hearthcakes held their warmth under a clean cloth. We sat down to the table together, and the Fool set out a slab of the tender fish for the wolf, who dutifully ate it though he would have preferred it raw and cold. The cabin door stood open on a starry night; the fellowship of shared food on a pleasantly mild evening filled the house and overflowed.

      We heaped the dirty dishes aside to deal with later, and took more coffee out onto the porch. It was my first experience of the foreign stuff. The hot brown liquid smelled better than it tasted, but sharpened the mind pleasantly. Somehow we ended up walking down to the stream together, our cups warm in our hands. The wolf drank long there of the cool water, and then we strolled back, to pause by the garden. The Fool spun the beads on Jinna’s charm as I told him the tale of it. He flicked the bell with a long fingertip, and a single silver chime spun spreading into the night. We visited his horse, and I shut the door on the chickenhouse to keep the poultry safe for the night. We wandered back to the cabin and I sat down on the edge of the porch. Without a word, the Fool took my empty cup back into the house.

      When he returned, Sandsedge brandy brimmed the cup. He sat down beside me on one side; the wolf claimed a place on the other side, and set his head on my knee. I took a sip of the brandy, silked the wolf’s ears through my fingers and waited. The Fool gave a small sigh. ‘I stayed away from you as long as I could.’ He offered the words like an apology.

      I lifted an eyebrow to that. ‘Any time that you returned to visit me would not have been too soon. I often wondered what had become of you.’

      He nodded gravely. ‘I stayed away, hoping that you would finally find a measure of peace and contentment.’

      ‘I did,’ I assured him. ‘I have.’

      ‘And now I have returned to take it away from you.’ He did not look at me as he said those words. He stared off into the night, at the darkness beneath the crowding trees. He swung his legs like a child, and then took a sip of his brandy.

      My heart gave a little lurch. I had thought he had come to see me for my own sake. Carefully I asked, ‘Chade sent you then? To ask me to come back to Buckkeep? I already gave him my answer.’

      ‘Did you? Ah.’ He paused a moment, swirling the brandy in his cup as he pondered. ‘I should have known that he would have been here already. No, my friend, I have not seen Chade in all these years. But that he has already sought you out but proves what I already dreaded. A time is upon us when the White Prophet must once more employ his Catalyst. Believe me, if there were any other way, if I