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Prologue

LOSSES SUSTAINED

The loss of a bond-beast is a difficult event to explain to the non-Witted Those who can speak of the death of an anirasp it Others, more sympathetic, perceive it as the death of a beloved pet Even those who say, “Itonly one facet of the toll To lose the living creature that one has been linked with is more than the loss of a companion or loved one It was the sudden amputation of half my physical body My vision was dimmed, my appetite di was dulled and

The o, ends in a flurry of blots and angry stabbings from my pen I can recall the eneralities intoof pain There are creases on the scroll where I flung it to the floor and stamped on it The wonder is that I only kicked it aside rather than co it to the fla and shelved it onhis tasks in histhere that I would have saved

So it has often been withefforts My various attempts at a history of the Six Duchies have too often meandered into a history of myself From a treatise on herbs my pen would wander to the various treatments for Skill ailments My studies of the White Prophets delve too deeply into their relationships with their Catalysts I do not know if it is conceit that always turnsis my own pathetic effort to explain one in their scores of turnings, and night after night, I still take pen in hand and write Still I strive to understand who I am Still I promise myself, “Next time I will do better” in the all-too-human conceit that I will always be offered a “next time”

Yet I did not do that when I lost Nighteyes I never proain, and do better by ht would have been traitorous The death of Nighteyes gutted h my life in the days that followed, unaware of just how mutilated I was I was like theThe itching distracts froh life So the ie done tothat , whereas one was but a symptom of the other

In a curious way, it was a second coe This one was not an arrival at manhood, but rather a slow realization of ed ues of the court at Buckkeep Castle I had the friendship of the Fool and Chade I stood at the edge of a true relationship with Jinna the Hedge-witch My boy Hap had flung hi into both apprenticeship and roh both Young Prince Dutiful, poised on the lip of his betrothal to the Outislander Narcheska, had turned to me as a mentor; not just as a teacher for both Skill and Wit, but as soh the rapids of adolescence to manhood I did not lack for people who cared about me, nor for folk I deeply cherished But for all that, I stood more alone than ever I had before

The strangest part was my slow realization that I chose that isolation

Nighteyes was irreplaceable; he had worked a change on ether, we arded him as a juvenile and a responsibility The wolf and I were the unit that one, I felt I would never again share that arrangement with any other, animal or human

When I was a lad, spending time in the company of Lady Patience and her companion Lacey, I often overheard their blunt appraisals of the men at court One assumption Patience and Lacey had shared was that a man or woman who had passed their thirtieth year unas likely to reossip that soirl “Spring has turned his head, but she’ll find soon enough there is no room in his life for a partner He’s had it all his oay too long”

And so I began, very slowly, to see myself I was often lonely I knew thatand that questing were like a reflex, the twitching of a severed lihteyes had left in my life

I had said asa rare moment of conversation on our way back to Buckkeep It had been one of the nights e had camped beside our homeward road I had left him with Prince Dutiful and Laurel, the Queen’s Huntswo the best of the cold night and sparse food The Prince had been withdrawn andhis bond-cat Fora previously burned hand near a flame; it woke allone apart from them all