The Duchess Remembers Krobelus
An elderly duchess tells Goodkind how her father challenged Krobelus to foretell her own fate.
A wealthy client asks Krobelus the question she cannot answer about herself.
An elderly duchess tells how her father challenged to foretell her own fate. He was among the last to receive one of her readings, when Krobelus still sold glimpses beyond the veil to the very rich. She warned him of a darkness that would engulf him in two years.
He was healthy and arrogant, and asked why she had never read her own future. Krobelus could never answer that one; when she turned her gaze inward, death mocked her back. So she crossed the veil herself, and death sent her back again and again, thinned and altered with each return, denied her final rest and her answer.
The duchess says her father’s fate came true in the end, because Krobelus no longer foretells death. She brings it.
The duchess says her father’s fate came true without ever saying how he died.
Krobelus keeps surrendering her life for the final rest that death repeatedly refuses to grant.
The Returns of Krobelus