I shook my head and looked away from him. But the flow of his words was relentless and my ears heard them.
“Nighteyes chose. He chose between the pack of wolves that would have accepted him and his bond with you. I do not know if you ever discussed with him what that decision cost him. I doubt it. The little I knew of him makes me think he chose and went forward from there. I do not mean to shame you. But is it not true that Nighteyes paid a higher toll for your bond, for the love that you shared, than you did? What did it cost Nighteyes to be bonded to you? Answer honestly.”
I had to look aside, for I was ashamed. “It cost him living with a pack, and being a wolf in full. It cost him having a mate and cubs. Just as Rolf later warned us. Because we set no limits on our bond.”
“You knew the exhilaration of sharing his wolfness with him. Of being as close to becoming a wolf as a man can. Yet . . . forgive me . . . I do not think he ever sought the human within himself as ardently as you pursued being a wolf.”
“No.”
He took my hand again and held it in both of his. He turned it over and looked down at the shadows of his fingerprints that I had worn on my wrist for so many years. “Fitz. I have thought long on this. I will not take your mate and cubs from you. My years will be long; by comparison, you have not that many left. I will not take from you and Molly whatever years may remain to you. For I am sure that you will be together, again. You know what I am. You have been within this body, and I in yours. And I have felt, oh, gods help me against that memory, I have felt what it is to be human, fully human, in the moments that I held your love and pain and loss within me. You have allowed me to be as human as it is possible for me to be. What my teachers took away from me, you restored tenfold. With you, I was a child. With you, I grew to manhood. With you . . . Just as Nighteyes allowed you to be the wolf.” His voice ran down and we were left sitting in silence, as if he had run out of words. He did not release my hand. The touch sharpened my awareness of the Skill-bond between us. Dutiful nudged at my Skill, seeking my attention. I ignored him. This was more important. I tried to grasp exactly what the Fool feared.
“You think that it would hurt me if you came back to Buckkeep. That it would keep me from a life you had seen.”
“Yes.”
“You dread that I would grow old and die. And you would not.”
“Yes.”
“What if I didn't care about those things? About the cost.”
“I still would.”
I asked my last question, my heart squeezed with hurt, dreading however he might answer it. “And if I said I would follow you, then? Leave my other life behind and go with you.”
I think that question stunned him. He drew breath twice before he answered it in a hoarse whisper. “I would not allow it. I could not allow it.”
We sat a long time in silence after that. The fire consumed itself. And then I asked the final, awful question. “After I leave you here, will I ever see you again?”
“Probably not. It would not be wise.” He lifted my hand and tenderly kissed the sword-callused palm of it, and then held it in both of his. It was farewell, and I knew it, and knew I could do nothing to stop it. I sat still, feeling as if I grew hollow and cold, as if Nighteyes were dying all over again. I was losing him. He was withdrawing from my life and I felt as though I were bleeding to death, my life trickling out of me. I suddenly realized how close to true that was.
“Stop!” I cried, but it was too late. He released my hand before I could snatch it back. My wrist was clean and bare. His fingerprints were gone. Somehow, he had taken them back, and our Skill-thread dangled, broken.
“I have to let you go,” he said in a cracked whisper. “While I can. Leave me that, Fitz. That I broke the bond. That I did not take what was not mine.”
I groped for him. I could see him, but I could not feel him. No Wit, no Skill, no scent. No Fool. The companion of my childhood, the friend of my youth, was gone. He had turned that facet of himself away from me. A brown-skinned man with hazel eyes looked at me sympathetically.
“You cannot do this to me,” I said.
“It is done,” he pointed out. “Done.” His strength seemed to go out of him with the word. He turned his head away from me, as if by doing that, he could keep me from knowing that he wept. I sat, feeling numbed in the way that one does after a terrible injury.
“I am just tired,” he said in a small, quavering voice. “Just tired, still. That is all. I think I will lie down again.”
Fitz. The Queen wants you. Thick pushed effortlessly into my mind.