Assassin's Quest (The Farseer Trilogy, #3)

by Robin Hobb

Other men might dream of high honors or riches or deeds of valor sung by minstrels. I wanted to come to a small cot as light faded, to sit in a chair by a fire, my back aching from work, my hands rough with toil, and hold a little girl in my lap while a woman who loved me told me of her day.

Not some romanticized princeling in exile who would eventually do some heroic task, but a killer. And not even a very competent one.

“Perhaps the truth is, I fear to show her my proof, lest ever afterward she find all other men a disappointment.”

Putting it into the dragon had helped in the same way that cutting off an infected limb helped. Being rid of it was not the same as being healed of it. The empty place inside me itched. Perhaps I wanted to hurt. I watched her from the shade of my arm.

“Your dragons are coming, Verity,” I told the man I had once known. “The Elderlings have risen to Buck’s defense. Just as you said they would.”

I healed. Not completely. A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.

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 wonder if once more the hate will fester until…