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.
“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.