Fool's Fate recap

Committed to bringing the narcheska the head of the dragon Icefyre, Prince Dutiful sails for the Out Islands with Chade, Thick, Web, Swift and Fitz. Convinced that the Fool will die on Aslevjal, Fitz conspires to leave him behind, a betrayal the Fool does not forgive. In the islands Fitz learns why Elliania set the price: her mother and sister are hostages of the Pale Woman, the White Prophet's ancient rival, who wants the last dragon of the north dead. On Aslevjal the party finds Prilkop, a White Prophet from an earlier age, and discovers that Icefyre is alive in the ice. The Fool comes anyway, is captured, and is tortured to death in the Pale Woman's tunnels beneath the glacier. Tintaglia arrives and demands the dragon be freed rather than killed; Icefyre is cut loose and the Pale Woman destroyed. Fitz brings the Fool back from death through the Skill, and Icefyre satisfies the vow by laying his head on the narcheska's hearth. The Fool departs for the south with Prilkop. Fitz returns home in time to see Burrich die, then reveals himself to Molly at last and marries her, settling at Withywoods, while Dutiful admits his Wit publicly and Nettle learns who her father is.

Previously: FitzChivalry Farseer, royal bastard, trained assassin, Skill user and Witted, was left for dead in Regal's dungeons during the Red Ship war and let the world go on believing it. Molly, the woman he loved, married the stablemaster Burrich and raised Fitz's daughter Nettle as Burrich's own. Guided by the Fool, the White Prophet who named Fitz his Catalyst, Fitz found Verity, whose stone dragon ended the war; Verity died in the making of it, leaving Queen Kettricken carrying his heir. Fifteen quiet years later, in Fool's Errand, Chade brought Fitz back to court to teach the Skill to Prince Dutiful. The Fool returned transformed, playing the wealthy foreigner Lord Golden, and Fitz became his manservant Tom Badgerlock. Dutiful had been lured away and bonded to a hunting cat carrying a dead Old Blood woman's spirit, part of a Piebald plot to control the throne; Fitz freed him at the cost of his wolf Nighteyes, and stayed on as the prince's secret Skill master. In Golden Fool, Chade rebuilt a Skill coterie around himself, Dutiful, Fitz and Thick, a despised castle drudge with immense untaught talent. Kettricken began ending the persecution of the Witted, bringing the Wit-master Web to court along with Burrich's runaway son Swift. Fitz met his daughter Nettle only in dreams, refusing to be named, and fought Chade's plan to recruit her. A Bingtown woman named Jek greeted Lord Golden as an old friend she had known as a woman called Amber and spoke of the Fool's love for Fitz; Fitz's reaction broke the friendship. At the betrothal ceremony the Outislander narcheska Elliania demanded, as her bride price, the head of the dragon Icefyre, frozen in the glacier of Aslevjal. Dutiful accepted, and the Fool admitted his visions of that island end in his death.

Buckkeep prepares the expedition to Aslevjal. Chade assembles the party around the prince: himself, Thick as the Skill anchor, Web and his pupil Swift, guardsmen, the Witted Civil, and Tom Badgerlock. Burrich comes seeking his runaway son, and Fitz keeps out of his sight rather than face the man who raised him. Chade insists that the coterie will need Nettle to hold the Skill link back to Buckkeep once the fleet is at sea, and Fitz is forced to give ground on the daughter he has protected from all of this. Meanwhile Fitz makes a decision alone: because the Fool foresees his own death on Aslevjal, the Fool will not be permitted to sail. Fitz arranges it quietly, and the ships leave the Fool behind in the Six Duchies, betrayed by the one person he trusted absolutely.

The voyage north is wretched. Thick is violently seasick and, being unable to contain anything, broadcasts his misery through the Skill to everyone sensitive to it, until Fitz spends most of the crossing nursing him. In the Out Islands the expedition meets the Hetgurd, the council of clans, which formally opposes killing Icefyre: the dragon is a god-beast of the islands, and its death would be an offence against every clan. They allow the attempt but send an observer to witness and to condemn. The party is taken to the narcheska's mothershouse, and the customs of the matrilineal Outislander clans make it plain how much of Elliania's standing rests on the women of her line.

At the mothershouse the truth behind the bride price finally surfaces. Elliania never wanted the dragon's head: her mother and her small sister are held hostage by the Pale Woman, the colourless enemy who worked through the raider Kebal Rawbread during the Red Ship war and who was believed dead with him. She survived, she has made Aslevjal hers, and she wants the last dragon of the north destroyed. Elliania has been made her instrument, and Peottre has been shielding a child forced to play politics with knives at her family's throats. The expedition sails on to Aslevjal knowing it is walking into a trap laid for it years in advance.

Aslevjal is a glacier over a buried Elderling city. The party finds a solitary dark-skinned inhabitant, Prilkop, who turns out to be a White Prophet of an earlier age, left behind when his own work was finished. Digging into the ice, they discover that Icefyre is no legend and no carcass: he is alive, ancient, enraged and aware, and freeing him or killing him are equally dangerous propositions. The camp fractures over what to do, the Hetgurd's observer records everything, and Fitz learns that the Fool did not stay behind after all. He followed the expedition north on his own, and somewhere on the island he has fallen into the Pale Woman's hands.

Beneath the glacier lies the Pale Woman's realm: tunnels and Elderling corridors, her forged and broken servants, and a mind that has spent decades preparing for this. Thick sickens badly and the coterie's Skill work becomes both essential and dangerous, with Nettle holding the far end of the link from Buckkeep. Fitz goes down under the ice after the Fool, and the search costs the party dearly in people and in nerve. The Pale Woman is not interested in ransom or bargaining: she means to end the Fool's line of prophecy for good, and she has had him long enough to do it.

Fitz reaches the Fool too late. The Pale Woman has tortured him to death, and Fitz carries the body out of her tunnels. At the same time the argument over Icefyre is settled from outside: Tintaglia, the great blue queen dragon out of the southern Rain Wilds, comes to Aslevjal. She has searched the world for another of her kind and she will not permit the last male dragon to be killed by humans. Her command reverses the whole purpose of the expedition. The Six Duchies party, the Outislanders and the Hetgurd's witness must now free the dragon they came to behead, and dig him out of ice that has held him for generations.

Icefyre is cut free and lives. The Pale Woman's hold on the island is broken and she does not survive it, and the hostages she used to force Elliania's hand are accounted for. Refusing to accept the Fool's death, Fitz uses the Skill, Prilkop's guidance and the memory-stone of the buried city to draw his friend back from death, restoring him to his own body whole. The White Prophet's prophecy is complete: dragons are in the world again, which is what the Fool's entire life was bent toward. The expedition begins the long business of getting home, and Elliania, freed of the compulsion that shaped her demand, is a different person to the girl who made it.

The vow is satisfied on its own terms when Icefyre agrees to lay his head on the narcheska's hearth, giving Dutiful his bride price without a killing, and the Farseer and Outislander alliance holds. Fitz travels home through the Skill-pillars and arrives to find Burrich dying of injuries. He goes to him, is recognized, and the two of them settle twenty years of silence before Burrich dies. Molly is widowed, Burrich's sons are fatherless, and Fitz, who has spent his adult life being officially dead, is finally free to be someone. The Fool, alive and restored, has finished what he came into the world to do, and begins saying his goodbyes.

Fitz goes to Molly, tells her who he is and always was, and they marry; the crown grants him Withywoods, where he settles as Holder Tom Badgerlock, declining the offer to take the Farseer name publicly. Nettle is told the truth about her father and comes to Buckkeep to serve the Skill. Dutiful acknowledges his own Wit, and with Kettricken and Web behind him the hangings and quarterings of the Witted begin to end; Swift and the Old Blood have a place at court. Chade goes on being Chade. The Fool leaves for the south with Prilkop, his prophecy fulfilled and his part in the world's story finished, and Fitz is left with the ordinary life he never expected to have and no way of knowing where his friend has gone.

Icefyre is cut free of the glacier and lives, the Pale Woman's power on Aslevjal is broken and she does not leave the island, and Elliania is released from the coercion that made her demand a dragon's head. The bride price is paid to the letter when Icefyre consents to lay his head on the narcheska's hearth, and the Farseer and Outislander marriage stands. The Fool, killed under torture, is brought back to life by Fitz through the Skill at a cost neither of them fully accounts for, and then leaves: his prophecy is fulfilled, his work in the world is done, and he goes south with Prilkop, telling Fitz goodbye. Fitz returns to the Six Duchies through the Skill-pillars and reaches Burrich as he is dying, in time to be recognized and forgiven. Freed at last from the dead man he was pretending to be, Fitz goes to Molly, tells her the truth, and they marry; the crown grants him the holding of Withywoods, where he lives on as Holder Tom Badgerlock rather than take back the Farseer name he is offered. Nettle learns who her father is and comes to Buckkeep to serve the Skill. Dutiful acknowledges his own Wit, and with Kettricken and Web behind him the persecution of the Witted begins to end. Fitz has the ordinary life he was never supposed to get, and no idea where in the world the Fool has gone.