Golden Fool recap

Living at Buckkeep as Lord Golden's servant Tom Badgerlock, Fitz mourns Nighteyes and takes up his new duties: teaching the Skill to Prince Dutiful and to Chade, who has finally reassembled the fragments of the old training. He discovers that the castle's despised drudge Thick is the most powerful natural Skill user in it, and slowly wins him over. Queen Kettricken invites Old Blood representatives to court to end the killing of the Witted, bringing the calm Wit-master Web and, with him, Burrich's runaway son Swift, while the militant Piebalds go on threatening to expose the prince's Wit. Fitz meets his daughter Nettle in Skill-dreams without telling her who he is, and fights Chade's determination to recruit her. When a Bingtown delegation arrives, a woman named Jek greets Lord Golden as a friend she knew as Amber, and speaks to Fitz of the Fool's love for him; Fitz's recoil breaks the friendship badly. At the betrothal ceremony the narcheska Elliania demands, as her bride price, the head of the dragon Icefyre buried in the ice of Aslevjal. Dutiful accepts, committing the Six Duchies to a voyage north, and the Fool has already foreseen that he will die on that island.

Previously: FitzChivalry Farseer, bastard son of the abdicated Prince Chivalry, was raised at Buckkeep, trained in secret as a royal assassin by Chade, and taught the Farseer Skill. He also carried the Wit, the outlawed bond-magic, and was joined to a wolf, Nighteyes. Regal's usurpation left him beaten and believed dead; Molly, the woman he loved, married the stablemaster Burrich and raised Fitz's daughter Nettle as Burrich's own. Guided by the Fool, who named himself the White Prophet and Fitz his Catalyst, Fitz found Verity, whose stone dragon ended the Red Ship war and left Queen Kettricken carrying his heir. Fitz let the world go on thinking him dead and lived fifteen years in obscurity with his wolf and a foster son, Hap. In Fool's Errand, Chade drew him back: Prince Dutiful, Verity's son, had vanished days before a betrothal meant to end hostilities with the Out Islands. The Fool reappeared transformed, playing the wealthy foreigner Lord Golden, and Fitz took service with him as cover. The prince had been deliberately bonded to a hunting cat carrying the lodged spirit of a dead Old Blood woman, part of a Piebald scheme to seize the throne through a Witted Farseer. Fitz killed the cat and freed Dutiful, but the Piebald leader Laudwine escaped, still able to denounce Witted nobles to a kingdom that hangs them. In the fighting Fitz and Dutiful were joined mind to mind, and Fitz agreed to stay at Buckkeep as the prince's secret Skill master, disguised as Lord Golden's manservant Tom Badgerlock. Nighteyes died soon after, leaving him half of himself.

Fitz settles into Buckkeep as Tom Badgerlock, a servant nobody looks at twice, and finds the role harder than the work: he must take Lord Golden's orders in public, sleep in a servant's room, and hold his tongue among people who once knew him. Grief for Nighteyes sits on him constantly and he can share it with no one. He begins teaching the Skill to Prince Dutiful, and to Chade, who has spent years collecting scattered scrolls about the magic and who proves an obsessive, impatient and largely untalented student. Fitz's own Skill remains strong, painful and hard to govern, and he uses elfbark to dull it despite knowing the herb damages the ability. Hap, apprenticed to a woodworker in Buckkeep Town, is already finding town life more interesting than his craft.

Fitz traces the odd sensations plaguing him to Thick, a castle drudge everyone dismisses as a simpleton, who turns out to hold more raw Skill than anyone at Buckkeep and who has been broadcasting a constant private music through the whole keep unnoticed. Thick dislikes Fitz and can make him sick at a distance, and winning him takes patience, sweets and honesty rather than authority. Meanwhile the Piebalds keep pressing: anonymous messages appear naming Witted folk and hinting that the Farseer heir shares the taint. Civil Bresinga is brought to court as the prince's companion, watched by everyone, and the question of who at Buckkeep is Old Blood, and who is passing information, becomes urgent.

Queen Kettricken pushes ahead with an unpopular policy: rather than let the Witted be hunted, she invites Old Blood representatives to Buckkeep openly. Web, a Wit-master bonded to a seabird, arrives and treats the magic as an honourable discipline, and he quickly recognizes what Tom Badgerlock is hiding. With him comes Swift, a boy who has run away from a father who tried to beat the Wit out of him; the father is Burrich, and the boy's presence brings Fitz painfully close to the family he gave up. Fitz also meets his daughter Nettle in her dreams, appearing to her as a wolf and refusing to give her a name. Chade, who misses nothing, wants Nettle brought to Buckkeep and trained; Fitz refuses absolutely, and the argument poisons everything between them. In town, Hap neglects his apprenticeship for a girl whose family wants none of him.

Fitz, Chade, Dutiful and Thick begin working together as a coterie, and the joined Skill proves both powerful and dangerous when its members trust each other imperfectly. Two embassies converge on Buckkeep. A delegation of Bingtown Traders comes north seeking allies against Chalced, bringing news of a changed world in the south and of dragons returned to it. And the Out Islands send the narcheska Elliania, a girl of eleven or twelve, with her uncle Peottre Blackwater, to conclude her betrothal to Dutiful. Elliania is icily contemptuous of the Six Duchies court, Peottre guards her like a man expecting an attack, and the negotiations proceed under a tension neither Outislander will explain.

Among the Bingtown party is Jek, who greets Lord Golden warmly as an old friend she knew in the south as a woman: a bead-carver named Amber. She assumes Fitz knows this, and speaks frankly to him about how much the Fool loves him. Fitz, ambushed and repelled, answers badly, and the conversation that follows between him and the Fool does permanent damage. The Fool withdraws behind Lord Golden's manners, keeping Fitz at the distance of a servant, and the easy friendship that has survived everything else is suspended. It also becomes plain that the Fool has been concealing what his visions show him about the future, and that the concealment is deliberate.

The Piebald threat comes to a head as violence reaches inside Buckkeep itself, with attacks, denunciations and the constant possibility that the prince's Wit will be published to the whole kingdom. Fitz kills to protect his charges and to keep his own name buried, and Kettricken's policy of tolerance survives only because she is willing to spend her own standing on it. Court politics, the Bingtown alliance and the Outislander marriage all pull at once, while Elliania's behaviour swings between arrogance and something closer to fear, and Peottre's protectiveness begins to look less like custom than like a man managing a hostage situation.

At the formal betrothal before the assembled court, Elliania accepts Dutiful and then names her own price: he must bring her the head of Icefyre, a black dragon said to lie frozen in the glacier of Aslevjal Island. Dutiful, given no way to refuse in public, agrees, and the Six Duchies are committed to sailing north to kill a dragon whose existence is a legend and whose death the Outislander clans themselves oppose. Fitz will go with him, as will Chade and Thick and the newly formed coterie. The Piebalds still hold their weapon, Nettle still knows only a wolf in her dreams, and Chade still intends to have her. Between Fitz and the Fool nothing is mended: the Fool holds to the master and servant fiction, and he has admitted that his visions of this journey end with his own death.

The betrothal between Prince Dutiful and the narcheska Elliania is concluded before the whole court, and Elliania sets her own price on it: she will marry him only when he brings her the head of Icefyre, the black dragon said to lie buried in the glacier of Aslevjal Island in the Out Islands. Dutiful, cornered in public, accepts. The Six Duchies are therefore committed to a voyage to the Out Islands to kill a dragon that may not exist, against the wishes of the Outislander clan council, and Peottre's grim protectiveness makes it plain that Elliania is acting under a compulsion she cannot name. Fitz ends the book as a member of the reassembled Skill coterie with Chade, Dutiful and Thick, publicly still a servant, privately committed to sailing north with the prince. The Piebalds remain able to expose the prince's Wit at any moment, though Kettricken's Old Blood overtures have at least begun. Nettle knows a wolf in her dreams and not her father's name, and Chade has not given up on bringing her to Buckkeep. Between Fitz and the Fool nothing is repaired: the Fool keeps the distance of a master to a servant, Fitz cannot take back what he said, and the Fool has let slip that his own visions of the coming journey end in his death.