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about them. I was too tired and weak to puzzle it out. “What are you doing here?” I asked him.
    He took a breath and sighed. “I am tending you. Watching over you while you sleep. I know you think it foolish, but then, I am the Fool. You know then that I must be foolish. Yet you ask me this same thing every time you awake. Let me then propose something wiser. I beg you, my lord, let me send for another healer.”
    I leaned back against my pillows. They were sweat damp, and smelled sour to me. I knew I could ask the Fool to change them and he would. But I would just sweat anew if he did. It was useless. I clutched at my covers with gnarled fingers. I asked him bluntly, “Why have you come here?”
    He took my hand in his and patted it. “My lord, I mistrust this sudden weakness. You seem to take no good from this healer’s ministrations. I fear that his knowledge is much smaller than his opinion of it.”
    “Burrich?” I asked incredulously.
    “Burrich? Would that he were here, my lord! He may be the stablemaster, but for all that, I warrant he is more of a healer than this Wallace who doses and sweats you.”
    “Wallace? Burrich is not here?”
    The Fool’s face grew graver. “No, my king. He remained in the Mountains, as well you know.”
    “Your king,” I said, and attempted to laugh. “Such mockery.”
    “Never, my lord,” he said gently. “Never.” His tenderness confused me. This was not the Fool I knew, full of twisting words and riddles, of sly jabs and puns and cunning insults. I felt suddenly stretched thin as old rope, and as frayed. Still, I tried to piece things together. “Then I am in Buckkeep?”
    He nodded slowly. “Of course you are.” Worry pinched his mouth.
    I was silent, plumbing the full depth of my betrayal. Somehow I had been returned to Buckkeep. Against my will. Burrich had not even seen fit to accompany me.
    “Let me get you some food,” the Fool begged me. “You always feel better after you have eaten.” He rose. “I brought it up hours ago. I’ve kept it warm by the hearth.”
    My eyes followed him wearily. At the big hearth he crouched, to coach a covered tureen away from the edge of the fire. He lifted the lid and I smelled rich beef stew. He began to ladle it into a bowl. It had been months since I’d had beef. In the Mountains, it was all venison and mutton and goat’s flesh. My eyes wandered wearily about the room. The heavy tapestries, the massive wooden chairs. The heavy stones of the fireplace, the richly worked bed hangings. I knew this place. This was the King’s bedchamber at Buckkeep. Why was I here, in the King’s own bed? I tried to ask the Fool, but another spoke with my lips. “I know too many things, Fool. I can no longer stop myself from knowing them. Sometimes it is as if anothercontrolled my will, and pushed my mind where I would rather it did not go. My walls are breached. It all pours in like a tide.” I drew a deep breath, but I could not stave it off. First a chill tingling, then as if I were immersed in a swift flowing of cold water. “A rising tide,” I gasped. “Bearing ships. Red-keeled ships …”
    The Fool’s eyes widened in alarm. “In this season, Your Majesty? Surely not! Not in winter!”
    My breath was pressed tight in my chest. I struggled to speak. “The winter has crept in too softly. She has spared us both her storms and her protection. Look. Look out there, across the water. See? They come. They come from the fog.”
    I lifted my arm to point. The Fool came hastily, to stand beside me. He crouched to peer where I pointed, but I knew he could not see. Still, he loyally placed a hesitant hand on my thin shoulder, and stared as if he could will away the walls and the miles that stood between him and my vision. I longed to be as blind as he. I clasped the long-fingered pale hand that rested on my shoulder. For a moment I looked down at my withered hand, at the royal signet ring that clung to a bony finger behind a