Assassin's Quest (90 page)

I listened to the Fool in a sort of frozen horror. His eyes had taken on the stare of a man who recalls torture. “Why have you not spoken of this to me before?” I asked him gently when he paused to catch his breath. The skin of his arms was standing up in gooseflesh.

He looked away from me. “It is not a thing I enjoy recalling.” He was trembling very lightly. “They were in my mind like evil, idle children, smashing what they could not grasp. I could keep nothing back from them. But they were not interested in me at all. They regarded me as less than a dog. Angry, in that moment of finding I was not you. They nearly destroyed me because I was not you. Then they considered how they might use me against you.” He coughed. “If that Skill-wave had not come . . .”

I felt like Chade himself as I said quietly, “Now I will turn that back upon them. They could not hold you in thrall like that without revealing much of themselves to you. As much as you can, I ask you to reach back to that time, and tell me all you can recall.”

“You would not ask that, if you knew what you were asking.”

I thought I did know, but I refrained from saying it. Instead, I let silence bid him think it through. Dawn was graying the sky, and I had just returned from walking a circuit of our camp when next he spoke.

“There were Skill books you know nothing about. Books and scrolls that Galen removed from Solicity’s rooms as she was dying. The information they held was for a Skillmaster alone, and some were even fastened shut with clever locks. Galen had many years to tinker those locks loose. A lock does no more than keep an honest man honest, you know. Galen found there much he did not understand. But there were also scrolls listing those who had been Skill-trained. Galen sought out all he could find and questioned them. Then he did away with them, lest others should ask them the same questions he had. Galen found much in those scrolls. How a man might live long and enjoy good health. How to give pain with the Skill, without even touching a man. But in the oldest scrolls he found hints of great power awaiting a strongly Skilled man in the Mountains. If Regal could bring the Mountains under his sway, he could come into power no one could withstand. To that end did he seek the hand of Kettricken for Verity, with no intent that she would ever be his bride. He intended that when Verity was dead, he would take her in his brother’s stead. And her inheritance.”

“I don’t understand,” I said gently. “The Mountains have amber and furs and . . .”

“No. No.” The Fool shook his head. “It was nothing like that. Galen would not divulge the whole of his secret to Regal, for he then would have had no hold over his half-brother. But you can be sure that when Galen died, Regal immediately possessed those scrolls and books and set to studying them. He is no master of the older languages, but he feared to seek the help of others, lest they discover the secret first. But he puzzled it out at last, and when he did, he was horrified. For by then he had eagerly dispatched Verity into the Mountains to die on some foolish quest. He finally ciphered out that the power Galen had sought for him was power over the Elderlings. Immediately he decided Verity had conspired with you to seek that very power for himself. How dare he seek to steal the very treasure that Regal had worked so long to gain! How dare he try to make a fool of Regal in such a way!” The Fool smiled weakly. “In his mind, his domination over the Elderlings is his birthright. You seek to steal it from him. He believes he upholds what is right and just by trying to kill you.”

I sat nodding to myself. The pieces all fit, every one of them. Holes in my understanding of Regal’s motives were being closed up, to present me with a frightening picture. I had known the man was ambitious. I also knew he feared and suspected anyone or anything he could not control. I had been a double danger to him, a rival for his father’s affection and with a strange Wit-talent he could neither understand nor destroy. To Regal, every other person in the world was a tool or a threat. All threats must be destroyed.

He had probably never considered that all I wanted from him was to be left alone.

35

Kettle’s Secrets

N
OWHERE IS THERE
mention of who raised the Witness Stones that stand on the hill near Buckkeep. They may very well predate the actual building of Buckkeep Castle itself. Their supposed power seems to have little to do with the worship of Eda or El, but folk believe in it with the same fierce religious fervor. Even those who profess to doubt the existence of any gods at all would still hesitate to give false oath before the Witness Stones. Black and weathered those tall stones stand. If ever they bore inscriptions of any kind, wind and water have erased them.

Verity was the first of the others to rise that morning. He came staggering from his tent as the first true light of day brought color back to the world. “My dragon!” he cried as he stood blinking in the light. “My dragon!” For all the world as if he expected it to be gone.

Even when I assured him his dragon was fine, he was like a spoiled child. He wished to resume his work on it instantly. With the greatest difficulty, I persuaded him to drink a mug of nettle and mint tea, and eat some of the slow-cooked meat from the skewers. He would not wait for the porridge to boil, but left the fire with meat and sword in hand. He did not mention Kettricken at all. In time the scrape, scrape, scrape of the sword’s point against the black stone resumed. The shadow I had seen of Verity last night had fled with the morning’s coming.

It seemed strange to greet a new day and not immediately pack up all our belongings. No one was in a good humor. Kettricken was puffy-eyed and silent, Kettle sour and reserved. The wolf was still digesting all the meat he had consumed the day before and only wanted to sleep. Starling seemed annoyed with everyone, as if it were our fault that our quest had ended in such confusing disappointment. After we had eaten, Starling declared that she was going to check on the jeppas and do some washing in the stream the Fool had found. Kettle grumpily agreed to go with her for safety, though her eyes strayed often to Verity’s dragon. Kettricken was up there also, gloomily watching her husband and king as he gouged away at the black stone. I busied myself in removing the fire-dried meat, wrapping it and refueling the slow fire and putting the rest of the meat to dry over it.

“Let’s go,” the Fool invited me as soon as I was finished.

“Where?” I asked, thinking longingly of a nap.

“The girl on a dragon,” he reminded me. He set off eagerly, not even looking back to see if I followed. He knew I must.

“I think this is a foolish idea,” I called after him.

“Exactly,” he replied with a grin, and would say no more until we approached the great statue.

The girl on a dragon seemed more quiescent this morning, but perhaps I was merely becoming more accustomed to the trapped Wit-unrest I sensed there. The Fool did not hesitate, but immediately clambered up on the dais beside the statue. I followed more slowly. “She looks different to me today,” I said quietly.

“How?”

“I can’t say.” I studied her bent head, the stone tears frozen on her cheeks. “Does she look different to you?”

“I didn’t really look at her that closely yesterday.”

Now that we were actually here, the Fool’s banter seemed dampened. Very gingerly, I set a hand to the dragon’s back. The individual scales were so cunningly worked, the curve of the beast’s body so natural that I almost expected it to heave with breath. It was cold, hard stone. I held my breath, daring myself, then quested toward the stone. It felt unlike any questing I had ever done before. There was no beating heart, no rush of breath, nor any other physical sign of life to guide me. There was only my Wit-sense of life, trapped and desperate. For a moment it eluded me; then I brushed against it, and it quested back to me. It sought the feel of wind on skin, the warm pumping of blood, oh, the scents of the summer day, the sensation of my clothing against my skin, any and all that was part of the experience of living it hungered for. I snatched my hand back, frightened by the intensity of its reaching. Almost I thought it might draw me in to join it there.

“Strange,” whispered the Fool, for linked to me as he was, he felt the ripples of my experience. His eyes met mine and held for some time. Then he reached a single bare silver fingertip toward the girl.

“We should not do this,” I said, but there was no force in my words. The slender figure astride the dragon was dressed in a sleeveless jerkin, leggings and sandals. The Fool touched his finger to her upper arm.

A Skill-scream of pain and outrage filled the quarry. The Fool was flung backward off the pedestal, to land hard on his back on the rock below. He sprawled there senseless. My knees buckled under me and I fell beside the dragon. From the torrent of Wit-anger I felt, I expected the creature to trample me underfoot like a maddened horse. Instinctively I curled up, my arms sheltering my head.

It was done in an instant, yet the echoes of that cry seemed to rebound endlessly from the slick black stone walls and blocks all around us. I was shakily clambering down to check on the Fool when Nighteyes came rushing up to us.
What was that? Who threatens us?
I knelt by the Fool. He had struck his head and blood was leaking onto the black stone, but I didn’t think that was why he was unconscious. “I knew we shouldn’t have done it. Why did I let you do it?” I asked myself as I gathered him up to take him back to camp.

“Because you’re a bigger fool than he is. And I am the biggest of all, to have left you alone and trusted you to act with sense. What did he do?” Kettle was still puffing from her hurry.

“He touched the girl on the dragon. With the Skill on his finger.”

I glanced up at the statue as I spoke. To my horror, there was a bright silver fingerprint on the girl’s upper arm, outlined in scarlet against her bronze-toned flesh. Kettle followed my gaze and I heard her gasp. She spun on me and lifted her gnarled hand as if to strike me. Then she clenched her hand into a contorted fist that trembled and forced it down by her side. “Is it not enough that she is trapped there in misery forever, alone and cut off from all she once loved? You two must come to give her pain on top of all that! How could you be so vicious?”

“We meant no harm. We did not know . . .”

“Ignorance is always the excuse used by the cruelly curious!” Kettle snarled.

My own temper suddenly rose to match hers. “Don’t rebuke me with my ignorance, woman, when all you have done is refuse to lift it for me. You hint and warn and give us ominous words, but you refuse to speak anything that might help us. And when we make mistakes, you rail at us, saying we should have known better. How? How can we know better when the one who does refuses to share her knowledge with us?”

In my arms, the Fool stirred faintly. The wolf had been prowling about my feet. Now he came back with a whine to sniff at the Fool’s dangling hand.

Careful! Don’t let his fingers touch you!

What bit him?

I don’t know.
“I don’t know anything,” I said aloud, bitterly. “I’m blundering in the dark, hurting everyone I care about in the process.”

“I dare not interfere,” Kettle shouted at me. “What if some word of mine set you on the wrong course? What of all the prophecies then? You must find your own way, Catalyst.”

The Fool opened his eyes to look at me blankly. Then he closed them again and leaned his head on my shoulder. He was starting to get heavy and I needed to find out what was wrong with him. I shrugged him up more firmly in my arms. I saw Starling coming up behind Kettle, her arms laden with wet laundry. I turned and walked away from them both. As I headed back to camp with the Fool, I said over my shoulder, “Maybe that is why you are here. Maybe you were called here, with a part to play. Maybe it is lifting our ignorance so we can fulfill this bedamned prophecy of yours. And maybe keeping your silence is how you will thwart it. But,” and I halted to fling the words savagely over my shoulder, “I think you keep silent for reasons of your own. Because you are ashamed!”

I turned away from the stricken look on her face. I covered my shame to have spoken to her so with my anger. It gave me new strength of purpose. I was suddenly determined that I was going to start making everyone behave as they should. It was the sort of childish resolution that often got me into trouble, but once my heart had seized hold of it, my anger gripped it tight.

I carried the Fool into the big tent and laid him out on his bedding. I took a ragged sleeve off what remained of a shirt, damped it in cool water, and applied it firmly to the back of his head. When the bleeding slowed, I checked it. It was not a large cut, but it was on top of a respectable lump. I still felt that was not why he had fainted. “Fool?” I said to him quietly, then more insistently, “Fool?” I patted his face with water. He came awake with a simple opening of his eyes. “Fool?”

“I’ll be all right, Fitz,” he said wanly. “You were right. I should not have touched her. But I did. And I shall never be able to forget it.”

“What happened?” I demanded.

He shook his head. “I can’t talk about it just yet,” he said quietly.

I shot to my feet, head slapping against the tent roof and nearly bringing the whole structure down around me. “No one in this whole company can talk about anything!” I declared furiously. “Except me. And I intend to talk about everything.”

I left the Fool leaning up on one elbow and staring after me. I don’t know if his expression was amused or aghast. I didn’t care. I strode from the tent, scrabbled up the pile of tailings to the pedestal where Verity carved his dragon. The steady scrape, scrape, scrape of his sword point against the stone was like a rasp against my soul. Kettricken sat by him, hollow-eyed and silent. Neither paid me the slightest bit of attention.

I halted a moment and got my breathing under control. I swept my hair back from my face and tied my warrior’s tail afresh, brushed off my leggings and tugged the stained remnants of my shirt straight. I took three steps forward. My formal bow included Kettricken.

“My lord, King Verity. My lady, Queen Kettricken. I have come to conclude my reporting to the King. If you would allow it.”

I had honestly expected both of them to ignore me. But King Verity’s sword scraped twice more then ceased. He looked at me over his shoulder. “Continue, FitzChivalry. I shall not cease my work, but I shall listen.”

There was grave courtesy in his voice. It heartened me. Kettricken suddenly sat up straighter. She brushed the straggling hair back from her eyes, then nodded her permission at me. I drew a deep breath and began, reporting as I had been taught, everything that I had seen or done since my visit to the ruined city. Sometime during that long telling, the scraping of the sword slowed, then ceased. Verity moved ponderously to take a seat beside Kettricken. Almost he started to take her hand in his, then stopped himself and folded his own hands before him. But Kettricken saw that small gesture, and moved a trifle closer to him. They sat side by side, my threadbare monarchs, throned on cold rock, a stone dragon at their backs, and listened to me.

By one and by two, the others came to join us. First the wolf, then the Fool and Starling, and finally old Kettle ranged themselves in a half circle behind me. When my throat began to grow dry and my voice to rasp, Kettricken lifted a hand and sent Starling for water. She returned with tea and meat for all of us. I took but a mouthful of the tea and went on while they picnicked around me.

I held to my resolution and spoke plainly of all, even that which shamed me. I did not leave out my fears nor foolishness. I told him how I had killed Regal’s guard without warning, even giving him the name of the man I had recognized. Nor did I skirt about my Wit-experiences as I once would have. I spoke as bluntly as if it were only Verity and me, telling him of my fears for Molly and my child, including my fear that if Regal did not find and kill them, Chade would take the child for the throne. As I spoke, I reached for Verity in every way I could, not just my voice, but Wit and Skill, I tried to touch him and reawaken him to who he was. I know he felt that reaching, but try as I might, I could stir no response from him.

I finished by recounting what the Fool and I had done with the girl on a dragon. I watched Verity’s face for any change of expression, but there was none I could see. When I had told him all, I stood silent before him, hoping he would question me. The old Verity would have taken me over my whole tale again, asking questions about every event, asking what I had thought, or suspected, of anything I had observed. But this gray-headed old man only nodded several times. He made as if to rise.

“My king!” I begged him desperately.

“What is it, boy?”

“Have you nothing to ask me, nothing to tell me?”

He looked at me, but I was not sure he was really seeing me. He cleared his throat. “I killed Carrod with the Skill. That is true. I have not felt the others since then, but I do not believe they are dead, but only that I have lost the Skill to sense them. You must be careful.”

I gaped at him. “And that is all? I must be careful?” His words had chilled me to the bone.

“No. There is worse.” He glanced at the Fool. “I fear that when you speak to the Fool, he listens with Regal’s ears. I fear it was Regal who came to you that day, speaking with the Fool’s tongue, to ask you where Molly was.”

My mouth went dry. I turned to look at the Fool. He looked stricken. “I do not recall . . . I never said . . .” He took a half-breath, then suddenly toppled to one side in a faint.

Kettle scrabbled over to him. “He breathes,” she told us.

Verity nodded. “I suspect they have abandoned him then. Perhaps. Do not trust that is true.” His eyes came back to me. I was trying to remain standing. I had felt it as they fled the Fool. Felt it like a silk thread abruptly parting. They had not had a strong hold on him, but it had been enough. Enough to make me reveal all they needed to kill my wife and child. Enough to ransack his dreams each night since then, stealing whatever was of use to them.

I went to the Fool. I took his un-Skilled hand and reached for him. Slowly his eyes opened and he sat up. For a time he stared at us all without comprehension. His eyes came back to mine, shame washing through their smoky depths. “ “And the one who loves him best shall betray him most foully.’ My own prophecy. I have known that since my eleventh year. Chade, I had told myself, when he was willing to take your child. Chade was your betrayer.” He shook his head sadly. “But it was me. It was me.” He got slowly to his feet. “I am sorry. So sorry.”