“
I must see that you survive. Again. And you must see that the Farseer heir inherits the throne.”
“And the thought of my survival makes you sad?” I demanded in perplexity.
“Oh, no. Never that. The thought of what you must go through to survive fills me with foreboding.”
I pushed my plate away, my appetite fled. “I still don’t understand you,” I replied irritably.
“Yes you do,” he contradicted me implacably. “I suppose you say you don’t because it is easier that way, for both of us. But this time, my friend, I will lay it cold before you. Think back in the last time we were together. Were there not times when death would have been easier and less painful than life?”
His words were shards of ice in my belly, but I am nothing if not stubborn. “Well. And when is that ever not true?” I demanded of him.
There have been very few times in my life when I had been able to shock the Fool into silence. That was one of them. He stared at me, his strange eyes getting wider and wider. Then, a grin broke over his face. He stood so suddenly he nearly overturned his chair, and then lunged at me to seize me in a wild hug. He drew a deep breath as if something that had constricted him had suddenly sprung free. “Of course that is true,” he whispered by my ear. And then, in a shout that near deafened me, “Of course it is!”
Before I could shrug free of his strangling embrace, he sprang apart from me. He cut a caper that made motley of his ordinary clothes, and then sprang lightly to my tabletop. He flung his arms wide as if he once more performed for all of King Shrewd’s court rather than an audience of one.
“Death is always less painful and easier than life! You speak true. And yet we do not, day to day, choose death. Because ultimately, death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice. Death is what you get when there are no choices left to make. Am I right?”
Infectious as his get mood was, I still managed to shake my head. “I have no idea if you are right or wrong.”
“Then take my word for it. I am right. For am I not the White Prophet? And are you not my Catalyst, who comes to change the course of all time? Look at you. Not the hero, no. The Changer. The one who, by his existence, enables others to be heroes. Ah, Fitz, Fitz, we are who we are and who we ever must be. And when I am discouraged, when I lose heart to the point of saying, ‘But why cannot I leave him here, to find what peace he may?’, then lo and behold you speak with the voice of the Catalyst, and change once more what I must be. The White Prophet.”
I sat looking up at him. Despite my efforts, a smile twisted my mouth. “I thought I enabled other people to be heroes. Not prophets.”
“Ah, well.” He leapt lightly to the floor. “Some of us must be both, I fear.
”
”