I heard a sob escape Thick. He alone, perhaps, had sensed what had transpired. A prickling shiver ran over my body. I could not see anything. Then I realized my eyes were tightly clenched shut, my body huddled in a ball. Knowing those things, it still took me a time to persuade myself I could change them. Just as I opened my eyes, the Fool's thought uncurled in my mind like a leaf opening to sunlight.
And I set no limits on that love.
“It's too much,” I said brokenly. “No one can give that much. No one.”
“Here's brandy,” Dutiful said close by me. It was Chade who hauled me into a sitting position and put the cup to my lips. I gulped it as if it were water, then wheezed with the shock. When I managed to turn my head, the Fool was the only one still sitting in his chair at the table. His hands were gloved again, and the look he gave me was opaque. Thick crouched in a corner of the room, hugging himself and shivering. His Skill-music was his mother's song, a desperate attempt to comfort himself.
“What happened?” Chade demanded in a fierce voice. I still leaned against his chest, and I could feel the anger emanating from him like heat. I knew he directed his accusatory glare at the Fool, but I answered anyway.
“It was too intense. We formed a Skill-link that was so complete, I couldn't find myself. As if we'd become one being.” I called it the Skill yet I was not sure that was a proper name for it. As well call a spark the sun. I took a deeper breath. “It scared me. So I broke free of it. I wasn't expecting anything like that.” And those words were spoken as much to the Fool as to the others. I saw him hear them, but I think he took a different message from them than what I had intended.
“And it affected you not at all?” Chade demanded of him.
Dutiful helped me to my feet. I needed his aid. I sank down into a chair almost immediately. Yet it was not weariness I felt, but a loose energy. I could have scaled Buckkeep's highest tower, if I could have recalled how to make my knees bend.
“It affected me,” the Fool said quietly. “But in a different way.” He met my eyes and said, “It didn't frighten me.”
“Shall we try it again?” Dutiful proposed innocently, and “No!” Chade, the Fool, and I all replied with varying degrees of emphasis.
“No,” the Fool repeated more quietly in the tiny silence that followed. “For myself, I've learned enough today.”