As dawn broke, I did my final task. The hardest farewell of Withywoods.
The fire had nearly died in my private study. The scroll racks were emptied, their contents either burned or packed for shipment back to the Buckkeep libraries. The secret compartment in my desk had gone undiscovered; if anyone found it now, they would find only emptiness.
I shut the tall doors, lit a candle, and triggered the hidden door to the spy-passageways. For a long moment I debated. Then I picked up the triptych the Fool had carved of Nighteyes, him, and me. I wondered if the peculiar hinge had been discovered in the course of the repairs, but inside Bee’s tiny den, all was still as she had left it. Nothing had been moved since the last time I’d been here. I smelled a faint scent of cat, but if he was about, he took care not to let me see him. I suspected he laired here now, for Bee’s supply of her mother’s scented candles was not nibbled by mice. I refused to wonder how he came and went. Cats, I knew, had their ways. I took the key to her bedchamber from my pocket and placed it on her shelf with her other keepsakes. Beside it I placed the carving. Here, at least, we would all be together.
I gave a final look around the hiding place my little child had created, and then left it behind me forever. The children of the keep would perhaps remember how they had hidden in a secret corridor, but they would search the walls of the pantry in vain for a way in. And I would take to my grave the trick of opening the study entry. Let her little things be safe there as long as the walls of Withywoods stood, as she had not been. I navigated the narrow corridor and shut the concealed door behind me.
Done. All was tidied and finished. I blew out my candle, picked up my pack, and left the room.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Travelers
For stone remembers. It knows where it was quarried. Always it will work best when installed near its home quarry. Stones that remain near their home quarries will always be the most reliable and they should be used in preference to others whenever possible, even if it means that one must travel by several facets to reach a destination.
For other crossroads, away from all quarries, let the core stones be brought and allowed to stand, in sun and rain, for at least a score of years. Let each become full of the passage of the sunlight across its face and which stars shine above it. Cut from it then the faces that will remember the place it has stood and the stone core it was cut from.
To a core stone that has become centered in that place, apply the shaved faces of the stones from the destinations. Mark the runes carefully as to which ones are for arriving and which ones are for departing, lest one enter a stone face backward and face an opposing current. Renew the runes to keep them sharp and clear, to aid the stone in remembering from whence it came and where it must transport the traveler.
An expert mason must always make the choice. The stone must be strong, and yet rich in the Silver veins through which magic flows. Cut the core stones eight by eight by twenty. See they are well seated in the earth, to absorb the location and to assure that the stones do not lean nor fall.
Be patient in the aging of a stone. This patience will be repaid for scores of years.
Summary of opening passages of memory-stone cube 246, a treatise on stoneworking. I have shelved it with the memory stones related to Elderling construction.
—Skill-apprentice scribe Lofty
I announced my decision to the kitchen staff before breakfast. None of them seemed surprised that I was returning so soon to Buckkeep. In truth, they seemed relieved. Their recovery was slow and the presence of my guard, some of them rough fellows, had been more unnerving than reassuring to them. They would be glad when we were gone.
I did the final tasks that would finish my duties to Withywoods. I gave orders that as soon as the renovations were finished, the furniture in the Rainbow chambers and most of the east wing should be draped. I told Dixon that he would be making his reports directly to Lady Nettle and Kesir Riddle now. I gave the same directive to each of my overseers. I was pleased to see Shepherd Lin’s bent shoulders straighten a bit as I conveyed full authority for the flock to him. I made arrangements for the packed scrolls to be sent by wagon to Buckkeep with Lant’s and Shine’s things.
Before noon, all was settled. When I went out to depart, I found not only my horse and a pack animal waiting for me, but Perseverance. “You are certain you don’t wish to stay here?” I asked him, and his impassive face was my answer. Foxglove formed up my guard. I rode away from Withywoods.
We made good time, despite a wet wind that promised to bring snow by evening. We made our journey back to Buckkeep through unseasonably warmer weather that turned the snow into wet, clinging mush and promised an early spring.
