Assassin 3 - Royal Assassin (98 page)

Take him to a healer, then. I heard Regal
finally give the command. See if he can figure out what's wrong
with him. Did one of you kick him in the head?

I thought that he spoke of me, until I heard the
sounds of Will being carried out. So either I had gotten more into
him than I had thought, or someone had kicked him in the head.
Perhaps his gasp had pulled it into his lungs. I had no idea what
it would do there. As I felt his Skill presence fading it was
relief almost as blessed as surcease from pain. Cautiously I
relaxed my vigilance against him. It was like setting down a
terribly heavy weight. Another thought blessed me. They didn't
know. No one had seen the paper and powder, it had happened too
quickly for them. They might not even think of poison until it was
too late for him.

Is the Bastard dead? Regal demanded angrily. If
he is, I swear, every man of you will hang!

Someone stooped hastily beside me, to lay
fingers at the pulse in my throat. He's alive, a soldier said
gruffly, almost sullenly. Someday Regal would learn not to threaten
his own guard. I hoped he'd be taught it by an arrow through his
back.

A moment later someone dashed a bucket of cold
water over me. The shock of it jarred every pain I had to new
frenzy. I pulled my one eye open. The first thing I saw was the
water and blood on the floor in front of me. If all that blood was
all mine, I was in trouble. Dazedly, I tried to think of whose else
it could be. My mind did not seem to be working very well. Time
seemed to be flowing in jumps. Regal was standing over me, angry
and disheveled, and then suddenly he was sitting in his chair. In
and out. Light and dark and light again.

Someone knelt beside me, ran competent hands
over me. Burrich? No. That was a dream from long ago. This man had
blue eyes and the nasal twang of a Farrow man. He's bleeding a lot,
King Regal. But we can stop that. Someone put pressure on my brow.
A cup of watered wine, held against my cracked lips, splashed into
my mouth. I choked on it. You see, he's alive. I'd leave off, for
today, Your Majesty. I doubt if he'll be able to answer any more
questions before tomorrow. He'll just faint on you. A calm
professional opinion. Whoever it was stretched me out on the floor
again and left.

A spasm rattled through me. Seizure coming soon.
Good thing Will was gone. Didn't think I could keep my walls up
through a seizure.

Oh, take him away. Regal, disgusted and
disappointed. This has been nothing but a waste of my time today.
His chair's legs scraped on the floor as he left it. I heard the
sounds of his boots on the stone floor as he strode from the
room.

Someone grabbed me by the shirtfront, jerked me
to my feet. I could not even scream for the pain. Stupid piece of
dung, he snarled at me. You'd better not die. I'm not going to take
lashes over the likes of you dying.

Great threat, Verde, someone mocked him. What
are you going to do to him after he's dead?

Shut up. It'll be your back flayed to the bone
as much as mine. Let's get him out of here and clean this
up.

The cell. The blank wall of it. They had left me
on the floor, facing away from the door. Somehow that seemed unfair
of them. I'd have to do all the work of rolling over just to see if
they'd left me any water.

No. It was too much trouble.

Are you coming now?

I really want to, Nighteyes. But I just don't
know how.

Changer. Changer! My brother!
Changer.

What is it?

You have been silent for so long. Are you coming
now?

I have been ... silent?

Yes. I thought you had died, without coming to
me first. I could not reach you.

Probably a seizure. I didn't know it had
happened. But now I am right here, Nighteyes. Right
here.

Then come to me. Hurry, before you
die.

A moment. Let us be sure of this.

I tried to think of a reason not to. I knew
there had been some, but I could no longer recall them. Changer, he
had called me. My own wolf, calling me that, just as the Fool or
Chade called me a catalyst. Well. Time to change things for Regal.
The last thing I could do was make sure I died before Regal broke
me. If I had to go down, I would do it alone. No words of mine
would implicate anyone else. I hoped the Dukes would demand to see
my body.

It took a long time to get my arm from the floor
to my chest. My lips were cracked and swollen, my teeth aching in
my gums. But I put my shirt cuff to my mouth and found the tiny
lump of the leaf pellet inside the fabric. I bit down at it as hard
as I could, then sucked on it. After a moment the taste of carryme
flooded my mouth. It was not unpleasant. Pungent. As the herb
deadened the pain in my mouth, I could chew at my sleeve more
strongly. Stupidly, I tried to be careful of the porcupine quill.
Didn't want to get a quill in my lip.

It really hurts when that happens.

I know, Nighteyes.

Come to me.

I'm trying. Give me a moment.

How does one leave one's body behind? I tried to
ignore it, to be aware of myself only as Nighteyes. Keen nose.
Lying on my side, chewing diligently at a lump of snow wadded up in
the space between my toes. I tasted snow and my own paw as I
nibbled and licked it away. I looked up. Evening coming on. It
would soon be a good time to hunt. I stood up, shook myself all
over.

That's right, Nighteyes encouraged me.
.

But there was still that thread, that tiny
awareness of a stiff and aching body on a cold stone floor. Just to
think of it made it more real. A tremor ran through it, rattling
its bones and teeth. Seizure coming. Big one this time.

Suddenly it was all so easy. Such an easy
choice. Leave that body for this one. It didn't work very well
anymore anyway. Stuck in a cage. No point to keeping it. No point
to being a man at all.

I'm here.

I know. Let us hunt.

And we did.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE

Wolf Days

THE EXERCISE FOR centering oneself is a simple
one. Stop thinking of what you intend to do. Stop thinking of what
you have just done. Then, stop thinking that you have stopped
thinking of those things. Then you will find the Now, the time that
stretches eternal, and is really the only time there is. Then, in
that place, you will finally have time to be yourself

There is a cleanness to life that can be had
when you but hunt and eat and sleep. In the end, no more than this
is really needed by anyone. We ran alone, we the Wolf, and we
lacked for nothing. We did not long for venison when a rabbit
presented itself nor begrudge the ravens that came to pick through
our leavings. Sometimes we remembered a different time and a
different way. When we did, we wondered what had been so important
about any of it. We did not kill what we could not eat, and we did
not eat what we could not kill. Dusks and dawns were the best times
for hunting, and other times were good for sleeping. Other than
this, time had no meaning.

For wolves, as for dogs, life is a briefer thing
than for men, if you measure it by counting days and how many turns
of a season one sees. But in two years, a cub wolf does all a man
does in a score. He comes to the full of his strength and size, he
learns all that is needful for him to be a hunter or a mate or a
leader. The candle of his life burns briefer and brighter than a
man's. In a decade of years, he does all that a man does in five or
six times that many. A year passes for a wolf as a decade does for
a man. Time is no miser when one lives always in the
now.

So we knew the nights and the days, the hunger
and the filling. Savage joys and surprises. Snatch up a mouse,
fling it up, eat it down with a snap. So good. To start a rabbit,
to pursue it as it dodges and circles, then suddenly, to stretch
your stride and seize it in a flurry of snow and fur. The shake
that snaps its neck, and then the leisurely eating, the tearing
open of its belly and nosing through the hot entrails, and then the
thick meat of the haunches, the easy crunching of its backbone.
Surfeit and sleep. And waken to hunt again.

Chase a doe over pond ice, knowing we cannot
make such a kill, but rejoicing in the hunt. When through the ice
she goes, and we circle, circle, circle endlessly as she battles
her hooves against the ice and finally clambers out, too weary to
evade the teeth that slash her hamstrings, the fangs that close in
her throat. Eating to satiation, not once, but twice from the
carcass. A storm comes full of sleet to drive us to the den.
Sleeping snug, nose to tail, while the wind flings icy rain and
then snow about outside the den. Awake to pale light glistening in
through a layer of snow. Dig out to snuff the clear cold day that
is just fading. There is meat still on the doe, frozen red and
sweet, ready to be dug from the snow. What can be more satisfying
than to know of meat that is waiting for you?

Come. We pause. No, the meat is waiting. We trot
on.

Come now. Come to me. I've meat for
you.

We've meat already. And closer.

Nighteyes. Changer. Heart of the Pack summons
you.

We pause again. Shake all over. This is not
comfortable. And what is Heart of the Pack to us? He is not pack.
He pushes us. There is meat closer. It is decided. We go to the
pond's edge. Here. Somewhere here. Ah. Dig down to her through the
snow. The crows come to watch us, waiting for us to be
finished.

Nighteyes. Changer. Come. Come now. Soon it will
be too late.

The meat is frozen, crisp and red. Turn our head
to use our back teeth to scissor it from the bones. A crow flies
down, lands on the snow nearby. Hop, hop. He cocks his head. For
sport, we lunge at him, put him to flight again. Our meat, all of
it. Days and nights of meat.

Come. Please. Come. Please. Come soon, come now.
Come back to us. You are needed. Come. Come.

He does not go away. We put back our ears, but
still we hear him, come, come, come. He steals the pleasure from
the meat with his whining. Enough. We have eaten enough for now. We
will go, just to still him.

Good. That's good. Come to me, come to
me.

We go, trotting through the gathering darkness.
A rabbit sits up suddenly, scampers away across the snow. Shall we?
No. Belly is full. Trot on. Cross a man's path, an open empty strip
under the night sky. We fade across it swiftly, trot on through the
woods that border it.

Come to me. Come. Nighteyes, Changer, I summon
you. Come to me.

The forest ends. There is a cleared hillside
below us, and beyond that a flat bare place, shelterless under the
night sky. Too open. The crusted snow is untracked, but at the
bottom of the hill, there are humans. Two. Heart of the Pack digs
while another watches. Heart of the Pack digs fast and hard. His
breath smokes in the night. The other has a light, a too bright
light that shrinks the eye to behold. Heart of the Pack stops his
digging. He looks up at us. .

Come, he says. Come.

He jumps into the hole he has dug. There is
black earth, frozen chunks of it, atop the clean snow. He lands
with a thud like deer antlers on a tree. He crouches and there is a
tearing sound. He uses a tool that thuds and tears. We settle down
to watch him, wrapping tail around to warm front feet. What has
this to do with us? We are full, we could go to sleep now. He looks
up at us suddenly through the night.

Wait. A moment longer. Wait.

He growls to the other, and that one holds the
light to the hole. Heart of the Pack bends his back and the other
reaches to help him. They drag something from the hole. The smell
of it sets our hackles ajar. We turn, we leap to run, we circle, we
cannot leave. There is a fear here, there is a danger, a threat of
pain, of loneliness, of endings.

Come. Come down to us here, come down. We need
you now. It is time.

This is not time. Time is always, is everywhere.
You need us, but perhaps we do not want to be needed. We have meat,
and a warm place to sleep, and even more meat for another time.
With a full belly and a warm den, what else is to be needed? Yet.
We will go closer. We will snuff it, we will see what it is that
threatens and beckons. Belly to snow, tail low, we slink down the
hill.

Heart of the Pack sits in the snow holding it.
He motions the other away, and that one steps back, back, back
taking his painful light with him. Closer. The hill is behind us
now, bare, shelterless. It is a far run back to hiding if we are
threatened. But nothing moves. There is only Heart of the Pack and
that which he holds. It smells of old blood. He shakes it, as if to
worry off apiece of meat. Then he rubs at it, moving his hands like
a bitch's teeth go over a cub to rid it of fleas. We know the smell
of it. Closer we come. Closer. It is but a leap away.

What do you want? We demand of him.

Come back.

We have come.

Come back here. Changer. He is insistent. Come
back to this. He lifts an arm, holds up a hand. He shows us a head
lolling on his shoulder. He turns its head to show us its face. We
do not know it.