Fool’s Quest recap

At Buckkeep for Winterfest, Fitz hides the tortured, blinded Fool in a secret room and hears his story: the Servants of Clerres, the order that bred and broke him, are hunting an unexpected son of prophecy. Fitz heals him with the Skill and with Silver taken from Chade's hidden store, silvering his own hand in the process. Then word reaches him of the raid on Withywoods. He Skill-travels home to find his steward dead, his tutor cut down, his people's memories eaten away by a fog, and Bee and Shun gone. Bee, meanwhile, is being carried south by Dwalia's Servants, who believe she is the Shaysim of their prophecies, with the fog-maker Vindeliar bending everyone around them and the Chalcedean mercenary Ellik taking his pay out of Shine. Fitz hunts them across the Six Duchies through the Skill-pillars, tearing himself apart to do it, and finally destroys their camp; he recovers Shine and kills Ellik, but Dwalia escapes into a pillar with Bee, and Fitz is left certain that his daughter is dead. He is publicly acknowledged as Prince FitzChivalry Farseer, then sails south to annihilate Clerres. Bee, lost in the pillars for months, emerges alive at Kelsingra among the Elderlings and their dragons.

Previously: FitzChivalry Farseer, royal bastard, assassin, Skill user and Witted, was left for dead by the usurper Regal in the Farseer trilogy and let the world believe it; Molly married the stablemaster Burrich and raised Fitz's daughter Nettle as his. Guided by the Fool, the White Prophet who named Fitz his Catalyst, Fitz helped end the Red Ship war at the cost of King-in-Waiting Verity's life. In the Tawny Man trilogy he returned to court in secret to teach Verity's son Dutiful the Skill; on the ice of Aslevjal the Fool was tortured to death by the Pale Woman and Fitz brought him back through the Skill, the dragon Icefyre was freed, and dragons returned to the world. The Fool then left the Six Duchies entirely. Burrich died, Fitz married Molly at last, and they lived twenty quiet years at Withywoods while Nettle became Skillmistress and Dutiful became king. In Fool's Assassin a pale messenger came to Withywoods hunting Fitz and vanished, leaving blood and no memory of herself. Molly, long past the age for it, insisted she was pregnant, and after two years bore Bee: a tiny, seemingly simple child who was in fact watchful, brilliant, and troubled by prophetic dreams. Molly died. Chade lodged his unacknowledged children, Shun and FitzVigilant, at Withywoods, and Fitz was distracted from his daughter at the worst possible time. Then a beggar beaten at Buckkeep's gate turned out to be the Fool, blinded and maimed by the Servants of Clerres, the order that had bred him, warning of an unexpected son they were hunting. While Fitz tended him, pale strangers and Chalcedean mercenaries raided Withywoods behind a fog that erased memory, killed its steward, cut down FitzVigilant, and carried Bee and Shun away, leaving almost no one who could remember that anything had happened.

Winterfest at Buckkeep, and Fitz is playing a minor country lord called Feldspar while the Fool lies hidden in a disused room, blind, maimed and frightened of everything. What the Fool finally tells him is the whole of it: he was born to the Servants of Clerres, an order that breeds and farms White Prophets for their dreams, escaped them as a child, and was taken back and tortured for years. He believes there is an unexpected son of his somewhere in the world, and that the Servants are hunting the child. He also believes Fitz owes him a reckoning against Clerres. Far to the south of Buckkeep and entirely unknown to either of them, Bee is being carried away from her burning home by pale strangers who took her deliberately.

Fitz sets about repairing the Fool, which is beyond ordinary healing: the man is broken from the inside out and cannot be mended by nursing. Court business claims Fitz meanwhile, including the Witted, a talking crow with white feathers who attaches herself to him, and a king and Skillmistress who both want to know what he is concealing. He works on the Fool day after day and gains ground slowly. Nobody at Buckkeep has any word from Withywoods, because the fog that took the raiders in has left almost no one able to report that anything went wrong, and the messages that should have come never do.

The news finally arrives. Fitz goes through a Skill-pillar to Withywoods and finds his house wrecked, his steward Revel dead at the door, FitzVigilant grievously wounded, servants murdered, and Bee and Shun gone. Worse, the survivors cannot say what happened; the memory has been taken out of them, and only Perseverance, left for dead in the stables, remembers clearly. Fitz's fury is beyond anything the Skill should be asked to carry. He turns to Chade's oldest secret, a store of Silver, the raw stuff of the Skill itself, and uses it to finish the Fool's healing, silvering his own hand in the doing and giving himself a power he does not understand and cannot switch off.

Bee's captors are Servants of Clerres, and they are not ransoming her: their leader Dwalia is convinced that Bee is the Shaysim, the awaited one of their prophecies, and means to deliver her to Clerres. Their fog-maker, Vindeliar, keeps every village they pass from noticing them and keeps Bee from being able to run. Shine, taken with her, is being used by the Chalcedean mercenary Ellik as his share of the payment. Bee survives by watching, lying, and keeping her own counsel, and by understanding sooner than her captors that Vindeliar's power has limits. Fitz, meanwhile, tears across the Six Duchies after them, using the Skill-pillars far past what a body can take and leaving a good deal of himself behind in the stone.

The pursuit narrows. Fitz gathers what help he can, sends warnings, and burns through his own health to keep moving, and the crown, Nettle and Chade struggle to manage a man who has stopped being anyone's subject. Bee's party crosses hard winter country toward the coast, held together by Dwalia's certainty and Vindeliar's fog, both of which are fraying. Bee works on Vindeliar directly, finding the loneliness he can be reached through. Confrontations along the road cost lives on both sides, and it becomes clear that the raiders' plan has already gone badly wrong, that Dwalia is improvising, and that no one in the party is now safe from anyone else in it.

Fitz reaches the raiders' camp and destroys it. What he does to the Chalcedeans in the snow is a massacre rather than a battle, and Ellik does not survive it; Shine is recovered alive. But Dwalia goes into a Skill-pillar with Bee moments before he arrives, and takes her out of the world entirely. Everything Fitz can find afterwards, every account and every body, tells him that his daughter died there. He believes it. The aftermath leaves him with a rescued young woman, a wounded scribe, a stable boy who saw everything, a hand full of Silver, and the certainty that Bee is dead and that the Servants of Clerres killed her.

At Buckkeep the reckoning is public. Dutiful, Kettricken and Nettle present Fitz to the assembled court as FitzChivalry Farseer, prince of the realm, restoring the name that was taken from him twenty years earlier and making his existence a matter of record. Family business is settled with it: Nettle and Riddle marry and are expecting a child; Shine and FitzVigilant learn who their father is and what that makes them to each other; and Chade, aged and damaged, is no longer the man who ran the Six Duchies from behind its walls. None of this consoles Fitz. Being a prince gives him resources, and he intends to spend all of them on Clerres.

Fitz and the Fool prepare to leave. The Fool, healed in body if not in sight, wants Clerres destroyed and everyone in it dead, and for once he and Fitz want exactly the same thing. They travel south as a merchant party with FitzVigilant, Chade's apprentice and Perseverance, heading for Bingtown and the Rain Wilds and the long sea road beyond them, with no plan beyond getting there and no intention of coming back if it costs them. Behind them the Six Duchies is left holding a Skillmistress about to give birth, a diminished spymaster, and a wrecked country holding whose people still cannot remember what happened to them.

Bee is alive. Dwalia dragged her into the Skill-pillars and both of them were lost inside for months, emerging at last at Kelsingra, the Elderling city on the Rain Wild River, starved and barely conscious. The Elderlings and their dragons take the strangers in, and Malta Khuprus begins working out who this small, damaged, oddly knowing child actually is. Bee, thousands of miles from home among dragons and people out of a world she has only read about, is still a prisoner of what remains of Dwalia's party and still the Shaysim in their eyes. Her father, meanwhile, is sailing south to burn down Clerres in revenge for a death that never happened, and no one who loves her knows she is alive.

Fitz destroys the raiders' camp and recovers Shine, but Dwalia takes Bee into a Skill-pillar moments ahead of him, and everything Fitz can find afterwards convinces him that his daughter died in the snow. He comes home to a kingdom that finally names him: Dutiful, Kettricken and Nettle present him to the court as FitzChivalry Farseer, prince of the realm, twenty years after they buried him. Nettle and Riddle are married and expecting a child, Shine and FitzVigilant learn whose children they are, and Chade, aged and damaged, is no longer the man who ran the Six Duchies from behind its walls. None of it touches Fitz. He and the Fool set out south for Clerres to destroy the Servants and everyone in them, taking FitzVigilant, Chade's apprentice and Perseverance with them, travelling as a merchant party. What neither of them knows is that Bee is alive. Carried through the Skill-pillars by Dwalia and lost inside them for months, she emerges at Kelsingra, half-starved and barely conscious, into an Elderling city full of dragons, where Malta Khuprus and the Elderlings take her in and begin working out who she is. She is thousands of miles from home and no one who loves her knows she exists, while her father sails away to avenge a death that never happened.