Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series soon.

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An excerpt from Bee’s journals precedes “Time.” The chapter begins with Fitz reflecting on lessons Burrich had taught him after his resurrection. Fitz’s continued deterioration is noted, and the parasites with which he is infested present themselves openly. Fitz briefly entertains possibilities of healing and return to Buckkeep, but the memory of the messenger from the Fool he had burned asserts itself as specific physical symptoms manifest, to Fitz’s shock.

Fitz’s routine in the stone-quarry receives some explication, along with his ongoing deterioration. His isolation from Nighteyes tells upon him, and he works on carving his effigy without hope. Amid his efforts, he sleeps fitfully, waking uneasily at the sound of approaching voices. Nighteyes returns to him, then, and the Fool finds him, followed by Bee, Perseverance, Lant, Spark, Kettricken, and Motley. The new arrivals work to tend to Fitz, thinking initially to take him to Buckkeep, but Fitz sets that notion aside in favor of his work on the stone. Almost without realizing it, he resumes the work.

Fitz recognizes in himself what is happening and explains to those who had not seen it before what will take place. He fades in and out of lucidity among his work and the attentions paid him by the rest, and Bee speaks to him of her desire to write down the tale of his days. Fitz agrees, relating his memories to her as he lets them pass into the stone, beginning with his delivery to Verity at Moonseye. Days pass as he does so, tended by others as he empties himself more and more into the stone and his body deteriorates further and further under the influence of the parasites that besiege him. Some days later, Nettle and her Skill-coterie arrive, and after the Skillmistress rebukes the members of Dutiful’s court that she can, she has her physician examine Fitz. The examination concludes that Fitz’s condition is terminal, and Fitz makes a series of pronouncements for how he wants his affairs settled. Kettricken offers to take on much of the work involved in effecting that settlement. Later, the Fool confers with him more privately along the same lines, offering to put his own memories into the stone, but Fitz refuses him.

Fitz continues his work. Kettricken makes a point to tend to him, and she laughs sadly at their conversation, recalling her attempt to kill him and noting the changes the pair of them had wrought across nations before kissing Fitz. She notes her desire to visit Verity nearby and asks Fitz to await her return, to which he agrees.

Later, Fitz complains to the Fool of his situation, the recent arrival of Dutiful, his sons, and his coterie at the quarry, and he notes the impatience of the king. The increasing interior emptiness of his filling the stone with himself and the degradation of his body by the parasites tell on Fitz, and the Fool notes his difficulties with Bee. What Fitz has put of the Fool into the stone receives remark, and what the pair are to each other receives attention. At the Fool’s touch, Fitz is taken by knowledge of the other, but the importance of it does not reach him.

Fitz wakes later in blood and pain, seeing through bleary eyes those gathered around him to watch. He and the wolf confer about what must happen, and Fitz tries to release himself into the carved stone, but he cannot do so.

That the present chapter should parallel the experience of Verity years before is a sensible thing; Fitz is doing very much the same thing his uncle did, and struggling more with it despite many more years of life and its concomitant depth of experience. Some of that difficulty may be ascribed to the parasites ravaging Fitz’s body; Verity did not have that particular problem as he carved his dragon. Some of it, too, may be ascribed to the relative lack of aid Fitz has in accomplishing his task; while Kettricken and the Fool, who had also tended Verity in his efforts, and the others with them tend to his body, and Kettricken offers memories worth preserving in the present chapter as she had in the past, Verity benefited from the Skilled assistance of Kestrel, while Fitz actively pushes against the Skilled near him giving much if any of themselves for his work. It is not without reason that he does so, of course; he has not been so close to them as would suggest spending an eternity with them as a fused being, for one, and they have their own lives to live and others depending upon them. Nor does he have the broader exigency under which Verity operated; his passage into the stone will not save the Six Duchies, but only preserve himself and Nighteyes. But even with such differences noted and others identifiable, Fitz is following his uncle; it might well be wondered how many of the other Farseers will do so in some dimly glimpsed future of the milieu.

Kettricken’s comments in the present chapter also attract attention. That Fitz “never did” see her, at which she smiles sadly (819), that she tends to him with such care as she does, that she is struck as she is by his retention of the fox pin she had given him long ago, that she reminisces with him as she does, all suggest that there might have been some kind of romance between them, had matters been different. As it is, there is love between them, something clear throughout most of the Realm of the Elderlings corpus, one borne of shared suffering and mutual love of Verity, and there is some suggestion that the pair of them are reasonably of an age. It is one of the might-have-beens that pervade any long-term narrative–and, indeed, many lives in the readerly world. Had Fitz been legitimated, had he been legitimate, had but a few things fallen otherwise than they did…but the Realm of the Elderlings novels rely in large part on small bits of history happening instead of others, and had such things taken place as would have needed to, even so late as the Tawny Man trilogy, what else would not have been possible in the later works? And, yes, “it’s just a story,” but it’s also the case that such concerns obtain in the readerly world; the “might-have-been” is sometimes entertaining but not necessarily the best use of mental effort.

As a final note (for now, at least), the present chapter answers the question posed earlier (notably here, here, and here) about who the in-milieu author is. For the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies, it remains Fitz (with some interpolations of other sources); for the Fitz and the Fool novels, it is Bee throughout, with the Fitz-centered narration being presumably Bee’s records made as her father carves the Skill-stone and pours his memories into it. I’m not sure at this point, having not been as good at keeping notes as would have allowed me to be so, how that affects the reading; maybe I will look back on more than five hundred chapters of writing again and find out.

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