Wallace immediately came hurrying to Regal’s side. “He seems to be steadying, Prince Regal. I do not know what overcame him. There was no sign of a struggle, but he is as wearied as if he had run a race. His health will not stand this sort of excitement, my prince.”
Regal turned an appraising glance on me. “What did you do to my father?” he growled.
“I? Nothing.” That at least was truthful. Whatever had happened, it had been the King’s doing and Verity’s. “We were talking quietly. Suddenly I felt overwhelmed. Dizzy. Weak. As if I were losing consciousness.” I turned my gaze to Wallace. “Could it have been the Smoke?”
“Perhaps,” he conceded unhappily. He looked nervously at Regal’s darkening stare. “Well, it seems every day I must make it stronger, for it to have any effect at all. And still he complains that—”
“SILENCE!” Regal cut him off with a roar. He gestured at me as if I were offal. “Get him out of here. Then get back here to tend the King.”
At that moment Shrewd moaned in his sleep, and I felt again the feathersoft brushing of the Skill against my senses. My hair hackled.
“No. Go to the King now, Wallace. Fool. You get the Bastard out of here. And see that this is not spoken of amongst the servants. I shall know if I am disobeyed. Hurry up, now. My father is not well.”
I had thought I could rise on my own and depart, but found that I did need the Fool’s assistance, at least to stand. Once I was up on my feet, I teetered along precariously, feeling as if I tottered on stilts. Walls loomed near and then far, the floor heaved gently beneath me like the deck of a ship when she rides a slow swell.
“I can manage from here,” I told the Fool once we were outside the door. He shook his head.
“You are too vulnerable to be left alone just now,” he told me quietly, and then linked arms with me, and began some nonsensical discourse. He put a fine front of camaraderie on helping me up the stairs and to my door. He waited, chattering on, while I unlatched it and then followed me in.
“I told you, I am all right,” I said with some annoyance. All I wanted to do was lie down.
“Are you? And how is my King? What did you do to him, back there?”
“I did nothing!” I gritted out as I sat down on the foot of my bed. My head was beginning to pound. Elfbark tea. That was what I needed just now. I had none.
“You did! You asked his permission, and then you took his hand. And in the next instant you were both gasping like fish.”
“Just an instant?” It had felt like hours to me. I had thought the whole evening spent.
“No more than three heartbeats.”
“Ooh.” I put my hands to my temples, tried to push my skull back into one piece. Why did Burrich have to be gone just now? I knew he would have elfbark. The pain demanded I take a chance. “Do you have any elfbark? For tea?”
“With me? No. But I could go beg some of Lacey. She keeps a horde of all sorts of herbs.”
“Would you?”
“What did you do to the King?” The trade he offered was plain.
The pressure in my head built, pushing out on my eyes. “Nothing,” I gasped. “And what he did to me is for him to tell. If he chooses. Is that plain enough for you?”
A silence. “Perhaps. Are you really in that much pain?”
I lay back very slowly on my bed. Even putting my head down hurt.
“I’ll be back shortly,” he offered. I heard the door of my room open and shut. I lay still, eyes closed. Gradually the sense of what I had eavesdropped on formed itself in my mind. Despite my pain, I sorted information. Regal had spies. Or claimed to. Brawndy was a traitor. Or so Regal claimed his supposed spies had informed him. I suspected Brawndy was as much a traitor as Kettricken was. Oh, the spreading poison. And the pain. Suddenly I remembered the pain. Had not Chade bid me simply to observe as I had been taught to find an answer to my question? It had been plain before me all the time, if only I had not been so blinded with fears of traitors and plots and poisons.
A disease was eating King Shrewd, gnawing him away from the inside. He drugged himself against the pain. In an effort to have some corner of his mind to himself, a place where the pain could not come and rob him. If someone had just told me of that a few hours ago, I would have scoffed. Now, lying on my bed, trying to breathe softly because the slightest movement triggered another wave of agony, I could understand. Pain. I’d only been enduring this for a few minutes, and I’d already sent the Fool running for elfbark. Another consideration pushed itself into my mind. I expected this pain to pass, that by tomorrow I would rise up free from it. What if I had to face it every moment for the rest of my life, with the certainty that it was devouring what hours were left to me? No wonder Shrewd kept himself drugged.
