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He lifted his head and turned his face toward me. “We blinded them, Fitz. I came seeking you, a lost Farseer. In almost every future I could foresee, either you never existed or you died. I knew, I knew that if I could see you through and keep you alive, you would be the Catalyst to set the world into a new and better path. And you did. The Six Duchies remained intact. Stone dragons rose into the air, the evil magic of Forging was ended, and true dragons were restored to the world. Because of you. Every time I snatched you back from the brink of death, we changed the world. Yet all those things the Servants had also glimpsed, even if they believed they were unlikely to come to pass. And when they sent out their Pale Woman to be the false White Prophet, and kept me confined to Clerres, they thought they had guaranteed the outcomes they wished. You would not exist.

“But we thwarted them. And then you did the unthinkable. Fitz, I died. I knew I would die. In all the prophecies I’d ever read in the Clerres library, in all the dream-visions I’d ever had, I died there. And so I did. But in no future foreseen by anyone, ever, in all their trove of prophecies, was I pulled back alive from the other side.Advertisement

“That changed everything. You flung us into a future unseen. They grope now, wondering what will become of all their plans. For the Servants do not plan for decades, but for generations. Knowing the times and means of their own deaths, they have extended their lives. But we have taken much of that power from them. The White children born since my ‘death’ are the only ones who can look into the future from that time. They grope through the futures where once they galloped. And so they must seek that which they most fear now: the true White Prophet for this generation. They know he is out there, somewhere, beyond their knowledge and control. They know they must seize him soon, or all they have built may come tumbling down.”

His words rang with his conviction. And yet I could not keep a smile from my face. “So you changed their world. You are the Catalyst now. Not me.”

All expression fled his face. He stared past me, his filmed eyes fixed and distant. “Could such a thing be?” he asked in wonder. “Is that what I glimpsed, once, in the dreams where I was not a White Prophet?”

“I have no answer for that. I may no longer be your Catalyst, but I am certain I am not a prophet, either. Come, Fool. The dressings on your back have to be changed.”

For a time he was very silent and still. Then, “Very well,” he acceded.

I led him across the room to Chade’s table. He sat down on the bench there and his hands fluttered, settled, and then explored the tabletop, finding the supplies Chade had set out for me. “I remember this,” he said quietly.

“Little has changed here over the years.” I moved to the back of his seat and studied his nightshirt. “The wounds have oozed. I put a cloth on your back, but they’ve soaked through that as well. Your nightshirt is stuck to your back. I’m going to fetch warm water, soak it loose, and clean them again. I’ll fetch you a fresh nightshirt now and set the water to warm.”

By the time I returned with the basin of water and the clean shirt, the Fool had arranged my supplies for me. “Lavender oil, by the scent of it,” he said, touching the first pot. “Beargrease with garlic in here.”

“Good choices,” I said. “Here comes the water.”

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He hissed as I sponged it onto his back. I gave the half-formed scabs time to soften and then gave him the choice. “Fast or slow?”

“Slow,” he said, and so I began with the lowest one on his back, a puncture far too close to his spine. By the time I had painstakingly freed the fabric from the oozing wound, sweat had plastered his hair to his skull. “Fitz,” he said through clenched teeth. “Just do it.”

His knotty hands found the table’s edge and gripped it. I did not rip the shirt free, but I peeled it away from him, ignoring the sounds he made. At one point he hammered on the stone table with his fist, then yelped at that pain and dropped his fist to his lap and his brow to the table. “It’s done,” I told him as I rolled the lifted shirt across his shoulders and let it drape there.

“How bad are they?”

I pulled a branch of candles closer and studied his back. So thin. The bones of his spine were a row of hummocks down his back. The wounds gaped bloodlessly at me. “They’re clean, but open. We want to keep them open so that they heal from the inside out. Brace yourself again.” He kept silent as I wiped each injury with the lavender oil. When I added the beargrease with garlic, the scents did not blend well. I held my breath. When each had been tended, I put a new cloth over his back, trusting the grease to hold it in place. “There’s a clean shirt here,” I said. “Try not to displace the dressing as you put it on.” pqdm.com