Assassin's Quest (Farseer Trilogy, #3)

by Robin Hobb

‘Kestrel will be a part of me. And her sister Gull. But I shall be the dragon.’

‘Chivalry closed his mind to the Skill years ago, to keep Burrich from being used against him. As the Fool was used against you.’

‘Verity, please. I beg you. Do not do this thing to me. Far better I should be consumed in the dragon as well. I offer you that. Take my life and feed it to the dragon. I will give you anything you ask of me. But promise me that my daughter will not be sacrificed to the Farseer throne.’ ‘I cannot make you that promise,’ he said heavily.

‘Strange,’ he said softly. ‘I wonder if this is what it feels like to be Forged. To be able to recall what one once felt, but unable to feel it anymore. My loves, my fears, my sorrows. All have gone into the dragon. Nothing have I held back. Yet it is not enough. Not enough.’

Bitterness. Bitterness flowed through him with his blood. The Six Duchies would fall. The world would end. We went to fetch blankets.

When Kettricken had fallen asleep, exhausted, I carried her down to the tent she had shared with Verity. I lay her down on her blankets, and covered her well. I stooped and kissed her lined forehead as if I were kissing my sleeping child. It was a farewell, of sorts.

Starling Birdsong, the last minstrel to the last true Farseer King and Queen. She would write no song that anyone would recall.

His hand groped carefully over the bed beside him. ‘What have you done with my baby?’ he asked. ‘Your baby is fine. She’s asleep in a basket. Right there.’ She wiped his back again, then nodded to herself.

He gave one tiny gasp, but when he was sitting up, he grinned at her. He pushed a straggle of hair back from his face. ‘Wit-bees,’ he said admiringly. He shook his head at her. I could tell it was not the first time he had said it. ‘It was all I could think of,’ Molly pointed out. She could not keep from smiling back. ‘It worked, did it not?’ ‘Wondrously,’ he conceded. ‘But how did you know they’d go after the red-bearded one? That was what persuaded them. And damn near persuaded me as well!’

‘I lost my bees,’ she reminded him sadly. ‘We will go burning for more,’ Burrich comforted her.

He looked at the floor abruptly. ‘If we were wed before we got there, folk would never question that she was mine …’ Molly stood as still as if turned to stone. The silence stretched. Burrich lifted his eyes and met hers pleadingly. ‘Do not take this wrong. I expect nothing of you … that way. But … even so, you need not wed me. There are Witness Stones in Kevdor. We could go there, with a minstrel. I could stand before them, and swear she was mine. No one would ever question it.’ ‘You’d lie before a Witness Stone?’ Molly asked incredulously. ‘You’d do that? To keep Nettle safe?’ He nodded slowly. His eyes never left her face.

First my father. He always told me he loved me. But when he struck me and cursed me, it never felt like love to me. Then Fitz. He swore he loved me and touched me gently. But his lies never sounded like love to me. Now you … Burrich, you never speak to me of love. You have never touched me, not in anger nor desire. But both your silence and your look speak more of love to me than ever their words or touches did.’

‘You are young,’ he said softly. ‘And lovely. So full of spirit. You deserve better.’ ‘Burrich. Do you love me?’ A simple question, timidly asked. He folded his work-scarred hands in his lap. ‘Yes.’ He gripped his hands together. To stop their trembling? Molly’s smile broke forth like the sun from a cloud. ‘Then you shall marry me. And afterwards, if you wish, I shall stand before the Witness Stones. And I will admit to all that I was with you before we were wed. And I will show them the child.’ He finally lifted his eyes to hers. His look was incredulous. ‘You’d marry me? As I am? Old? Poor? Scarred?’ ‘You are none of those things to me. To me, you are the man I love.’

‘Now, Verity. I would it were done quickly.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘As you will.’ He took my life from me.

There were still lines in her brow and at the corners of her mouth. But her face had the warm luminescence of the finest pearls. Renewed faith shone in her. She took a deep breath of the morning air and smiled at me radiantly. I hurried past her.

I had already made Starling promise me that there would be no mention of me in song. It had not been an easy promise to wring from a minstrel. But I had insisted. I never wanted either Burrich or Molly to know that I yet lived. ‘In this, dear friend, you have been Sacrifice,’ Kettricken had told me quietly.

He resheathed it and handed it to me. His eyes met mine as I took it. ‘And better care of yourself than I did. I did love you, you know,’ he said brusquely. ‘Despite all I’ve done to you, I loved you.’

I don’t think I shall ever forget that final smile over his shoulder. His eyes went a last time to his queen. He pressed his hands firmly to the dragon’s chiselled head. He watched her as he went. For an instant, I could smell Kettricken’s skin, recall the taste of her mouth on mine, the smooth warmth of her bare shoulders gripped in my hands. Then the faint memory was gone and Verity was gone and Kettle was gone. To my Wit and my Skill they disappeared as completely as if they had been Forged.

Then, like a sudden wind, the great scaled body drew air into its lungs. His eyes, when he opened them, were black and shining, the eyes of a Farseer, and I knew Verity looked out of them. He lifted his great head upon his sinuous neck. He stretched like a cat, bowing and rolling reptilian shoulders and spreading claws.

Verity-as-Dragon strode forward to present himself to his queen. The head he bent to her dwarfed her. I saw her whole reflection in one gleaming black eye. Then he dipped a shoulder to her, bidding her mount. For one instant, grief controlled her face. Then Kettricken drew a breath and became Queen. Fearlessly she strode forward. She placed her hand on Verity’s shining blue shoulder. His scales were slick and she slipped a trifle as she clambered to his back and then crawled forward to where she could straddle his neck.

His eyes were lifted to the sky and the expression on his face was wistful. Contrasted against the dragon’s rich green hide, the Fool was white no longer, but the palest of golds. There was even a tawny edge to his silky fine hair. The eyes he turned to me were pale topaz.

had finally learned something from Starling Birdsong. I let him have a silence for a time.

And as Nighteyes finally flung down Burl’s lifeless body, the dragon’s wings opened. Girl on a Dragon soared up into the sky as she had strained to do for so long.

The Fool was borne away with her. I saw him lean forward, clutching instinctively at the supple waist of the girl before him. His face was turned away from me. I glimpsed the bland eyes and still mouth of the girl’s face. Perhaps her eyes saw, but she was no more separate from the dragon than its tail or wing; merely another appendage, one to which the Fool clung as they rose higher and higher.

I could seize Will and choke the life out of him. Or clasp Nighteyes to me and hold him together against all the forces that tore at his wolf’s mind and being. It was, really, no decision at all.

Wound through Will’s consciousness I found Regal, twisted into him like a drill-worm in a deer’s heart. Will could not have broken free of him even if he had been able to think of doing it. And it seemed to me that there was not enough left of Will to even form a thought for himself. Will was a body, a vessel of meat and blood, holding Skill for Regal to wield.

I opened myself once more to the Skill, filled myself and did what I had never attempted before. I fed Skill-strength as Wit to Nighteyes. For you, my brother. I felt Nighteyes repel at Will, breaking free of him for an instant.

I felt an answering stir of the Wit in Realder’s dragon. In a brief stench, my bloody handprint on his hide smoked away. He stirred. He was awakening. And he was hungry.

The roar the dragon gave near deafened me. My brother? I live, Nighteyes. As do I, brother. AS DO I, BROTHER. AND I HUNGER! The Wit-voice of a very large carnivore. Old Blood indeed. The strength of it shivered through my bones. Nighteyes had the wit to reply. Feed, then, large brother. Make our kill yours, and welcome. That is pack. Realder’s dragon did not have to be invited twice.

Blood and the Wit! That is what it takes. Blood and the Wit. We can wake the dragons.

I found King Wisdom. His was the antlered dragon, and he roused from his sleep shouting Buck! For Buckkeep! Eda and El, but I am hungry!

‘No. This is right. I feel it. I am the Catalyst, and I came to change all things. Prophets become warriors, dragons hunt as wolves.’ I hardly knew my own voice as I spoke. I had no idea where such words came from. I met the Fool’s unbelieving eyes. ‘It is as it must be. Go.’

He embraced me almost convulsively, and shocked me when he kissed my mouth.

Follow the Scentless One! Nighteyes commanded them before I could think. He is a mighty hunter and will lead you to much meat. Hearken to him, for he is pack with us.

‘Your dragons are coming, Verity,’ I told the man I had once known. ‘The Elderlings have risen to Buck’s defence.

The dragons had no interest in dead meat; they fed on the life that fled such tissue.

‘I’ve no stomach to kill anything else right now,’ I told him. That’s the trouble with killing humans. All that work, and nothing to eat for it.

found Will on his belly, dragging himself toward the pillar. Rather, he had been dragging himself. When we found him, he was still. One of his legs was gone, severed away jaggedly. Bone thrust out of the torn flesh. He had bound a sleeve about the stump, but not tightly enough. Blood still leaked from it. Nighteyes bared his teeth as I stooped to touch him. He lived, but barely. No doubt he had hoped to reach the pillar and slip through to find others of Regal’s men to aid him. Regal must have known he still lived, but he had sent no one back for him. He had not even the decency to be loyal to a man who had served him that long.

A knife across his throat would have been so much faster for both of us. Kinder, perhaps. But I had decided I was no longer an assassin. So

It was winter and snows had come to the higher reaches of the Mountains but not to the valley where the hot springs steamed in the chill air when the dragons last passed over my head. I came to the door of my hut to watch them pass, flying in great formations like migrating geese. Nighteyes turned his head to their strange calls, and sent up a howl of his own in answer. As they swept over me, the world blinked around me and I lost all but the vaguest memory of it. I could not tell you if Verity led their flight, or even if Girl on a Dragon was among them. I only knew that peace had been restored to the Six Duchies and that no Red Ships would venture near our shores again. I hoped they would all sleep well in the Stone Garden as they had before.

I had considered having him erect a statue in my memory, but had decided that would be going too far. The fanatical loyalty I had imprinted on him would be my best memorial. While Regal lived, Queen Kettricken and her child would have no more loyal subject.

All have heard of the tragic and bizarre death of Prince Regal. The rabid creature that savaged him in his bed one night left bloody tracks, not just on his bed-clothes, but all about the bedchamber, as if it had exulted in its deed. Gossip had it that it was an extremely large river rat that had somehow journeyed with him all the way from Tradeford.

Some say that that was why, for months afterwards, Lord Chade was seldom seen without his pet ferret.

their wise men combined their knowledge with the insatiable lust for vengeance of one Kebal Rawbread. They resolved to create dragons of their own, and visit upon the Six Duchies the same savage destruction we had once served upon them.

the Outislander scholars to believe that stone sufficiently imbued with life-force could be fashioned into dragons to serve the Outislanders.

Circles and circles, as the Fool once told me. The Outislanders raided our shore, so King Wisdom brought the Elderlings to drive them back. And the Elderlings Forged the Outislanders with Skill when they flew over their huts so frequently. Generations later, they came to raid our shores and Forge our folk. So King Verity went to wake the Elderlings, and the Elderlings drove them back. And Forged them in the process.

I sigh and set my quill aside. I have written too much. Not all things need to be told.

He is a gift from Starling. I have had him for two years now, and I am still not used to him. I do not believe I was ever a boy such as he is. I recall the day she brought him to me, and I have to smile. She had come, as she does, some twice or thrice a year, to visit me and chide me for my hermit ways. But that time she had brought the boy to me. He had sat outside on a skinny pony while she pounded on my door. When I opened to her, she had immediately turned and called to him, ‘Get down and come inside. It’s warm here.’

I’ve cared for him as long as I can, but a minstrel’s life …’ She let her words trail off. ‘Then he is … Did you, did we …’ I floundered my way through the words, denying my hope. ‘He is your son? Mine?’

‘Mine? No. Yours? I suppose it’s possible. Did you pass through Flounder Cove about eight years ago? That’s where I found him six months ago.