{"product_id":"fools-errand-isbn-9780593725399","title":"Fool's Errand","description":"\u003cb\u003e“Hobb’s fans won’t be disappointed with this latest installment. \u003ci\u003eFool’s Errand\u003c\/i\u003e lives up to the legacy of the Farseer trilogy.”—\u003ci\u003eMonroe News-Star\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFitz and the Fool are reunited in the first book in the Tawny Man Trilogy—“a stay-up-until-2:00 a.m.-to-finish type of book” (\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly,\u003c\/i\u003e starred review).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor fifteen years, FitzChivalry Farseer has lived in self-imposed exile, assumed to be dead by almost all who once cared about him. But now, into his isolated life, visitors begin to arrive: Fitz’s mentor from his assassin days; a hedge-witch who foresees the return of a long-lost love; and the Fool, the former White Prophet, who beckons Fitz to fulfill his destiny.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Then comes the summons he cannot ignore. Prince Dutiful, the young heir to the Farseer throne, has vanished. Fitz, possessed of magical skills both royal and profane, is the only one who can retrieve him in time for his betrothal ceremony, thus sparing the Six Duchies profound political embarrassment . . . or worse. But even Fitz does not suspect the web of treachery that awaits him—or how his loyalties will be tested to the breaking point.\u003cb\u003ePraise for Robin Hobb and \u003ci\u003eFool’s Errand\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Fantasy as it ought to be written . . . Robin Hobb’s books are diamonds in a sea of zircons.”\u003cb\u003e—George R. R. Martin \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“A stay-up-until-2:00-a.m.-to finish type of book.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “[Robin] Hobb has created a world brimming with detail and complexity [and] once again proves herself a full master of the epic fantasy.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eTulsa World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Splendid . . . Despite some truly wrenching twists, there is a welcome sense of new beginnings.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLocus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eRobin Hobb \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of the Farseer Trilogy, the Liveship Traders Trilogy, the Tawny Man Trilogy, the Soldier Son Trilogy, and the Rain Wilds Chronicles. She has also written as Megan Lindholm. She is a native of Washington State.\u003cb\u003eChapter I\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chade Fallstar\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eIs time the wheel that turns, or the track it leaves behind? \u003c\/i\u003e—Kelstar’s Riddle\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He came one late, wet spring, and brought the wide world back   to my doorstep. I was thirty-five that year. When I was twenty, I would have considered   a man of my current age to be teetering on the verge of dotage. These days, it seemed   neither young nor old to me, but a suspension between the two. I no longer had the   excuse of callow youth, and I could not yet claim the eccentricities of age. In many   ways, I was no longer sure what I thought of myself. Sometimes it seemed that my   life was slowly disappearing behind me, fading like footprints in the rain, until   perhaps I had always been the quiet man living an unremarkable life in a cottage   between the forest and the sea.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I lay abed that morning, listening to the small   sounds that sometimes brought me peace. The wolf breathed steadily before the softly   crackling hearth fire. I quested toward him with our shared Wit magic, and gently   brushed his sleeping thoughts. He dreamed of running over snow-smooth rolling hills   with a pack. For Nighteyes, it was a dream of silence, cold, and swiftness. Softly   I withdrew my touch and left him to his private peace.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Outside my small window,   the returning birds sang their challenges to one another. There was a light wind,   and whenever it stirred the trees, they released a fresh shower of last night’s rain   to patter on the wet sward. The trees were silver birches, four of them. They had   been little more than sticks when I had planted them. Now their airy foliage cast   a pleasant light shade outside my bedroom window. I closed my eyes and could almost   feel the flicker of the light on my eyelids. I would not get up, not just yet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I   had had a bad evening the night before, and had had to face it alone. My boy, Hap,   had gone off gallivanting with Starling almost three weeks ago, and still had not   returned. I could not blame him. My quiet reclusive life was beginning to chafe his   young shoulders. Starling’s stories of life at Buckkeep, painted with all the skill   of her minstrel ways, created pictures too vivid for him to ignore. So I had reluctantly   let her take him to Buckkeep for a holiday, that he might see for himself a Springfest   there, eat a carris-seed-topped cake, watch a puppet show, mayhap kiss a girl. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hap had grown past the point where regular meals and a warm bed were enough to content   him. I had told myself it was time I thought of letting him go, of finding him an   apprenticeship with a good carpenter or joiner. He showed a knack for such things,   and the sooner a lad took to a trade, the better he learned it. But I was not ready   to let him go just yet. For now I would enjoy a month of peace and solitude, and   recall how to do things for myself. Nighteyes and I had each other for company. What   more could we need?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Yet no sooner were they gone than the little house seemed too   quiet. The boy’s excitement at leaving had been too reminiscent of how I myself had   once felt about Springfests and the like. Puppet shows and carris-seed cakes and   girls to kiss all brought back vivid memories I thought I had long ago drowned. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Perhaps it was those memories that birthed dreams too vivid to ignore. Twice I had   awakened sweating and shaking with my muscles clenched. I had enjoyed years of respite   from such unquiet, but in the past four years, my old fixation had returned. Of late,   it came and went, with no pattern I could discern. It was almost as if the old Skill   magic had suddenly recalled me and was reaching to drag me out of my peace and solitude.   Days that had been as smooth and alike as beads on a string were now disrupted by   its call. Sometimes the Skill-hunger ate at me as a canker eats sound flesh. Other   times, it was no more than a few nights of yearning, vivid dreams. If the boy had   been home, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I probably could have shaken off the Skill’s persistent plucking at   me. But he was gone, and so yesterday evening I had given in to the unvanquished   addiction such dreams stirred. I had walked down to the sea cliffs, sat on the bench   my boy had made for me, and stretched out my magic over the waves. The wolf had sat   beside me for a time, his look one of ancient rebuke. I tried to ignore him. “No   worse than your penchant for bothering porcupines,” I pointed out to him.\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Save that   their quills can be pulled out. What stabs you only goes deeper and festers. \u003c\/i\u003eHis   deep eyes glanced past mine as he shared his pointed thoughts.\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Why don’t you go   hunt a rabbit?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e You’ve sent the boy and his bow away.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You could run it down yourself,   you know. Time was when you did that.”\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Time was when you went with me to hunt. Why   don’t we go and do that, instead of this fruitless seeking? When will you accept   that there is no one out there who can hear you?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I just have to ... try.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Why? Is   my companionship not enough for you?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It is enough for me. You are always enough   for me. \u003c\/i\u003eI opened myself wider to the Wit-bond we shared and tried to let him feel   how the Skill tugged at me. \u003ci\u003eIt is the magic that wants this, not me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Take it away.   I do not want to see that. \u003c\/i\u003eAnd when I had closed that part of myself to him, he asked   piteously,\u003ci\u003e Will it never leave us alone?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I had no answer to that. After a time,   the wolf lay down, put his great head on his paws, and closed his eyes. I knew he   would stay by me because he feared for me. Twice the winter before last, I had overindulged   in Skilling, burning physical energy in that mental reaching until I had been unable   even to totter back to the house on my own. Nighteyes had had to fetch Hap both times.   This time we were alone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I knew it was foolish and useless. I also knew I could   not stop myself. Like a starving man who eats grass to appease the terrible emptiness   in his belly, so I reached out with the Skill, touching the lives that passed within   my reach. I could brush their thoughts and temporarily appease the great craving   that filled me with emptiness. I could know a little of the family out for a windy   day’s fishing. I could know the worries of a captain whose cargo was just a bit heavier   than his ship would carry well. The mate on the same ship was worried about the man   her daughter wished to marry; he was a lazy fellow for all of his pretty ways. The   ship’s boy was cursing his luck; they’d get to Buckkeep Town too late for Springfest.   There’d be nothing left but withered garlands browning in the gutters by the time   he got there. It was always his luck.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There was a certain sparse distraction to   these knowings. It restored to me the sense that the world was larger than the four   walls of my house, larger even than the confines of my own garden. But it was not   the same as true Skilling. It could not compare to that moment of completion when   minds joined and one sensed the wholeness of the world as a great entity in which   one’s own body was no more than a mote of dust.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The wolf’s firm teeth on my wrist   had stirred me from my reaching. \u003ci\u003eCome on. That’s enough. If you collapse down here,   you’ll spend a cold wet night. I am not the boy, to drag you to your feet. Come on,   now.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I had risen, seeing blackness at the edges of my vision when I first stood.   It had passed, but not the blackness of spirit that came in its wake. I had followed   the wolf back through the gathering dark beneath the dripping trees, back to where   my fire had burned low in the hearth and the candles guttered on the table. I made   myself elfbark tea, black and bitter, knowing it would only make my spirit more desolate,   but knowing also that it would appease my aching head. I had burned away the nervous   energy of the elfbark by working on a scroll describing the stone game and how it   was played. I had tried several times before to complete such a treatise and each   time given it up as hopeless. One could only learn to play it by playing it, I told   myself. This time I was adding to the text a set of illustrations, to show how a   typical game might progress. When I set it aside just before dawn was breaking, it   seemed only the stupidest of my latest attempts. I went to bed more early than late.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I awoke to half the morning gone. In the far corner of the yard, the chickens were   scratching and gossiping among themselves. The rooster crowed once. I groaned. I   should get up. I should check for eggs and scatter a handful of grain to keep the   poultry tamed. The garden was just sprouting. It needed weeding already, and I should   reseed the row of fesk that the slugs had eaten. I needed to gather some more of   the purple flag while it was still in bloom; my last attempt at an ink from it had   gone awry, but I wanted to try again. There was wood to split and stack. Porridge   to cook, a hearth to sweep. And I should climb the ash tree over the chicken house   and cut off that one cracked limb before a storm brought it down on the chicken house   itself.Author of Fool's Assassin","brand":"Del Rey","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305117110501,"sku":"NP9780593725399","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593725399.jpg?v=1767727532","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/fools-errand-isbn-9780593725399","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}