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

by Robin Hobb

“What is ‘Skill-wrought’?” the Fool asked me. “Shaped by the Skill,” I replied, then added, “I suppose. I’ve never heard of the Skill used to make or shape something.” I looked wondering back at the road. It flowed so smoothly through the forest, a pure white ribbon, vanishing off under the trees. It drew the eye, and almost I could see what lay beyond the next fold of the forested hillside.

“Would that we were only a man and a woman, living far from both sea and mountains. Would that things were simple for us.”

“You think I’m a bad mother. But what do you know about children, to say I’m wrong?” Burrich got up, staggered a half step on his bad leg, and regained his balance. He took up the measure of grain. He sprinkled it over the boiling water, then stirred it to wet it evenly. Then he put a tight lid on the pot and pulled it slightly back from the fire’s reach. All this while balancing the babe in the crook of one arm. I could tell he had been thinking when he answered, “Not babies, perhaps. But I know about young things. Foals, puppies, calves, piglets. Even hunting cats. I know if you want them to trust you, you touch them often when they are small. Gently, but firmly, so they believe in your strength, too.” He warmed to his subject. I’d heard this lecture a hundred times before, usually delivered to impatient stableboys. “You don’t shout at them, or make sudden moves that look threatening. You give them good feed and clean water, and keep them clean and give them shelter from the weather.” His voice dropped accusingly as he added, “You don’t take out your temper on them, or confuse punishment with discipline.”

“Discipline comes from punishment. A child learns discipline when she is punished for doing something wrong.” Burrich shook his head. “I’d like to ‘punish’ the man that beat that into you,” he said, and an edge of his old temper crept into his voice. “What did you really learn from your father taking his temper out on you?” he demanded. “That to show tenderness to your baby is a weakness? That to give in and hold your child when she cries because she wants you is somehow not an adult thing to do?”

Six Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town Climbed a hill, and never came down Found their flesh and lost their skins Flew away on stony wings. Five Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town Walked a road not up nor down Were torn to many and turned to one In the end, left a task half-done. Four Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town They spoke in words without a sound They begged their Queen to let them go And what became of them, no one can know. Three Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town They’d helped a king to keep his crown. But when they tried to climb the hill Down they came in a terrible spill. Two Wisemen came to Jhaampe-town Gentle women there they found. Forgot their quest and lived in love Perhaps were wiser than ones above. One Wiseman came to Jhaampe-town. He set aside both Queen and Crown Did his task and fell asleep Gave his bones to the stones to keep. No wise men go to Jhaampe-town To climb the hill and never come down. ’Tis wiser far and much more brave To stay at home and face the grave.

sated

ribald folk song about courting a milkmaid.

“Where he is, my queen, is but a bit of information, a spot on that map. But what he feels, and what he feels for you…that is what he breathes, and when we are together in the Skill, joined mind to mind, then I know such things, almost whether I would or no.” I recalled the other times I had been privy unwillingly to Verity’s feelings for his queen, and was glad the night hid my face from her. “Would this Skill were a thing I could learn….Do you know how often and how angry I have felt with you, solely because you could reach forth to the one I longed for, and know his mind and heart so easily? Jealousy is an ugly thing, and always I have tried to set it aside from me. But sometimes it seems so monstrously unfair that you are joined to him in such a way, and I am not.” It had never occurred to me that she might feel such a thing. Awkwardly, I pointed out, “The Skill is as much curse as it is gift. Or so it has been to me. Even if it were a thing I could gift you with, my lady, I do not know that is a thing one would do to a friend.” “To feel his presence and his love for even a moment, Fitz…for that I would accept any curse that rode with it. To know his touch again, in any form…can you imagine how I miss him?” “I think I can, my lady,” I said quietly. Molly. Like a hand gripping my heart. Chopping hard winter turnips on the tabletop. The knife was dull, she would ask Burrich to put an edge on it if he ever came in from the rain. He was cutting wood to take down to the vil...

I soon found myself caught up in the play of the stones. It was strangely soothing: the stones themselves were red, black, and white, smoothly polished and pleasant to hold. The game involved each player randomly drawing stones from the pouch and then placing them on the intersections of lines on a patterned cloth. It was a game at once simple and complex. Each time I won a game, Kettle immediately introduced me to more complicated strategies. It engrossed me and freed my mind from memories or ponderings. When finally all the others were already drowsing in their sleeping skins, she set up a game on the board and bade me study it. “It can be won decisively in one move of a black stone,” she told me. “But the solution is not easy to see.” I stared at the game layout and shook my head. “How long did it take you to learn to play?” She smiled to herself. “As a child, I was a fast learner. But I will admit you are faster.” “I thought this game came from some far land.” “No, it is an old Buck game.” “I’ve never seen it played before.” “It was not uncommon when I was a girl, but it was not taught to everyone. But that is of no matter now. Study the layout of the pieces. In the morning, tell me the solution.” She left the pieces set up on the cloth by the brazier. Chade’s long training of my memory served me well. When I lay down, I visualized the board and gave myself one black stone with which to win. There were quite a variety of possible moves, as a black stone could also clai...

I’m tired of dreaming of rocks. Lift up your eyes and see the whole thing, little brother. It is a hunting pack, not isolated hunters. See. That one. Put the black there, and do not use the red to displace a white, but set it there to close the trap. That is all.

There was still a trace of superstitious fear in Kettle’s eyes as she glanced from me to the sleeping wolf. Nighteyes chose that moment to let his tail rise and fall in a sleepy wag to indicate he was fully cognizant that we spoke of him. Kettle gave a shiver. “What you do with him…is it like Skilling from human to human, only to a wolf?” I started to shake my head, but then had to shrug. “The Wit begins more as a sharing of feelings. Especially when I was a child. Following smells, chasing a chicken because it would run, enjoying food together. But when you have been together as long as Nighteyes and I have, it starts to be something else. It goes beyond feelings, and it’s never really words. I am more aware of the animal that my mind lives inside. He is more aware of…” Thinking. Of what comes before and after choosing to do an action. One becomes aware that one is always making choices, and considers what the best ones are. Exactly. I repeated his words aloud for Kettle. By now Nighteyes was sitting up. He made an elaborate show of stretching and then sat looking at her, his head cocked to one side. “I see,” she said faintly. “I see.” Then she got up and left the tent. Starling sat up and stretched. “It gives one an entirely different outlook on scratching his ears,” she observed. The Fool answered her with a snort of laughter, sat up in his bedding, and immediately reached to scratch Nighteyes behind the ears. The wolf fell over on him in appreciation. I growled at both...

berm

chary

One thing I have learned well in my travels. The riches of one region are taken for granted in another. Fish we would not feed to a cat in Buckkeep is prized as a delicacy in the inland cities. In some places water is wealth, in others the constant flooding of the river is both an annoyance and a peril. Fine leather, graceful pottery, glass as transparent as air, exotic flowers…all of these I have seen in such plentiful supply that the folk who possess them no longer see them as wealth. So perhaps, in sufficient quantity, magic becomes ordinary. Instead of a thing of wonder and awe, it becomes the stuff of roadbeds and signposts, used with a profligacy that astounds those who have it not.

scree

And suddenly I felt the road above me. It had a current like a river, and as the current of a river stirs the air to wind over it, so did the road. It was a wind not of winter cold, but of lives, both distant and near. The Fool’s strange essence floated on it, and Kettle’s closemouthed fear and Kettricken’s sad determination. They were as separate and recognizable as the bouquets of different wines.

You’re on the road. I didn’t think animals could come on the road. He gave a sneeze of disgust. There’s a difference between thinking an action is wise and doing it. And you might have noticed that the jeppas have been traveling on the road for some days. It was too obvious. Why do the wild animals avoid it then? Because we still depend on ourselves for survival. The jeppas depend on humans, and will follow them into any danger, no matter how foolish it seems to them. Thus they have not the sense to run from a wolf, either. Instead they flee back to you humans when I scare them. It’s a lot like horses or cattle and rivers. Left to themselves, they swim them only if death is right behind them, from predators or starvation. But humans convince them to swim rivers any time the human wishes to be on the other side. I think they are rather stupid. So why are you on this road? I asked him with a smile. Do not question friendship, he told me seriously.

She didn’t answer that. After a time she asked me, “Do you know your nursery rhymes?” I don’t know why it made me so angry. “I don’t know!” I retorted. “I don’t recall my earliest childhood, when most children learn them. I suppose you could say I learned stable rhymes instead. Shall I recite for you the fifteen points of a good horse?” “Recite for me instead ‘Six Wisemen Went to Jhaampe-Town’!” she snarled. “In my days, children were not only taught their learning rhymes, they knew what they meant. This is the hill in the poem, you ignorant pup! The one no wise man goes up and expects to come down again!” A shiver walked down my spine. There have been a few times in my life when I have recognized some symbolic truth in a way that stripped it down to its most frightening bones. This was one. Kettle had brought to the forefront of my mind a thing I had known for days. “The Wisemen were Skilled ones, weren’t they?” I asked softly. “Six, and five, and four…coteries, and the remains of coteries…” My mind skipped up the stair of logic, substituting intuition for most of the steps. “So that’s what became of the Skilled ones, the old ones we could not find. When Galen’s coterie did not work well, and Verity needed more help to defend Buck, Verity and I sought for older Skilled ones, folk who had been trained by Solicity before Galen became Skillmaster,” I explained to Kettle. “We could find few records of names. And they had all either died, or disappeared. We suspected treachery...

“What is the matter with you?” I demanded of him. He looked up at me, but did not reply. My first reaction was a stupid one. I lifted my hands to my ears. But that had never been how I had heard Nighteyes. He whined as I did so, and I heard that clearly. It was just a dog’s whine. “Nighteyes!” I cried. He reared up to stand on his hind legs, his front paws on my chest. He was so big he could almost look me in the eye. I caught an echo of his worry and desperation, but no more than that. I quested out toward him with my Wit-sense. I could not find him. I could not sense any of them. It was as if they had all been Forged. I looked around at their frightened faces and realized they were talking, no, almost shouting, something about the edge of the road and the black column and what was the matter, what was the matter? For the first time it struck me how ungainly speech was. All of those separate words, strung together, every voice mouthing them differently, and this was how we communicated with each other. “Fitz, fitz, fitz,” they shouted, my name, meaning me, I suppose, but each voice sounding the word differently, and each with a different image of whom they spoke to and why they needed to speak to me. The words were such awkward things, I could not concentrate on what they were trying to convey by them. It was like dealing with foreign traders, pointing and holding up fingers, smiling or frowning, and guessing, always guessing at what the other truly meant. “Please,” I sai...

What does your White Colum say? ‘They come like raindrops against the stone towers of time. But in time it is always the rain that prevails, not the tower.’

“But it takes so long, so very long, and I have been alone with my questions too long.”

Once, in describing my father, Chivalry, Verity had said that when he Skilled it was like being trampled by a horse, that Chivalry would rush into his mind, dump out his messages, and flee. I now had a better understanding of what my uncle had meant. I felt rather like a fish suddenly deserted by a wave. There was that gaping sense of something missing in the instant after Verity’s departure.

asperity.

“I’m going to be all right,” she said. To hear the strength of her belief in those words made my heart ache. “It’s just…It’s hard just now. Waiting to tell him all these terrible things. Knowing how they will hurt him. They taught me so many things about being Sacrifice, Fitz. From the beginning, I knew I might have terrible sorrows to bear. I am strong enough…to bear these things. But no one warned me that I might come to love the man they’d choose for me. To bear my sorrow is one thing. To bring sorrow to him is another.”

cant

quays

By daylight, the city was far more ruined than I had suspected. Whole domes of roofs had fallen in, and some buildings had great cracks green with moss running up their walls. In others, outer walls had fallen away entirely, exposing the inner chambers and filling the street below with rubble I must clamber over. Few of the taller buildings were totally intact and some leaned drunkenly against one another. I finally saw a likely building with a tall spire peeping up above its neighbors, and made my way toward it.

Tall narrow windows of clear glass alternated with stretches of wall ornately decorated with friezes of battles and agrarian scenes.

Had this been the home of the Elderlings? Were they the dragons I had seen on the buildings and in the stained-glass window?

cormorants

gyrfalcon

My hunger was a hollow thing that rattled against my ribs now, but I resolutely ignored it as I threaded my way through the streets. My strength of will carried me through a knot of brawling shadows but my resolution failed me when the City Guard came charging down the streets on their massive horses.

Part of the great mystery that surrounds the Elderlings is that the few images we have of them bear small resemblance to each other. This is true not only of tapestries and scrolls that are copies of older works and hence might contain errors, but also of the few images of Elderlings that have survived from King Wisdom’s time. Some of the images bear superficial resemblances to the legends of dragons, featuring wings, claws, scaly skin, and great size. But others do not. In at least one tapestry, the Elderling is depicted as similar to a human, but gold of skin and great of size. The images do not even agree in the number of limbs that benevolent race possessed. They may have as many as four legs and two wings also, or have no wings at all and walk upon two legs as a man. It has been theorized that so little was written about them because knowledge of the Elderlings at that time was regarded as common knowledge. Just as no one sees fit to create a scroll that deals with the most basic attributes of what a horse is, for it would serve no useful purpose, so no one thought that one day Elderlings would be the stuff of legends. To a certain degree, this makes sense. But one has only to look about at all the scrolls and tapestries in which horses are featured as the stuff of common life to find a flaw. Were Elderlings so accepted a part of life, surely they would have been more often depicted.

“Comes the Catalyst, to make stone of flesh and flesh of stone. At his touch shall be wakened the dragons of the earth. The sleeping city shall tremble and waken to him. Comes the Catalyst.” The Fool’s voice was dreamy. “The writings of White Damir,”

inanely.

rucking

scarp

“I killed her, in a temper. I didn’t think I could, she had always been stronger. But I lived and she died. So they burned me out, and turned me out. Sent me into exile forever.” Her hand found mine and gripped it tightly. We kept on walking. Ahead of us, I spied a tiny glow. It was most likely the brazier burning inside the tent. “It was so unthinkable, to do what I had done,” Kettle said wearily. “It had never happened before. Oh, between coteries, certainly, once in a great while, for rivalry for the King’s favor. But I Skill-dueled a member of my own coterie, and killed her. And that was unforgivable.”

There is a game played among the Mountain folk. It is a complex game to learn, and a difficult one to master. It features a combination of cards and rune chips. There are seventeen cards, usually about the size of a man’s hand and made from any light-colored wood. Each of these cards features an emblem from Mountain lore, such as the Old Weaver-Man or She Who Tracks. The renderings of these highly stylized images are usually done in paint over a burnt outline. The thirty-one rune chips are made from a gray stone peculiar to the Mountains, and are incised with glyphs for Stone, Water, Pasture, and the like. The cards and stones are dealt out to the players, usually three, until no more remain. Both cards and runes have traditional weights that are varied when they are played in combination. It is reputed to be a very old game.

Fool, there is no sense in trying to play that game with the past. Here is where we are today, and we can only make our moves from here.”

Forging takes root as a custom, nay, as an amusement for the high ones. Look at Regal and his ‘King’s Justice.’ He has succumbed to it already. He pleasures his body with drugs and deadens his soul with his savage amusements. Aye, and spreads the disease to those around him, until they take no satisfaction in a contest of skill that draws no blood, until games are only amusing if lives are wagered on the outcome. The very coinage of life becomes debased. Slavery spreads, for if it is accepted to take a man’s life for amusement, then how much wiser to take it for profit?”

“The White Prophet and the Catalyst!” she cried in disgust. “Rather name them as they are, the Fool and the Idiot.

“Oh, Fitzy-fitz, I would explain it if I could. It is not that I wish to keep secrets, but these secrets defy telling in mere words. They are more than half a feeling, a grasping of rightness. Can you trust me in this?” “You are alive again,” I said wonderingly. I had not seen such light in his eyes since the days when he had made King Shrewd bellow with laughter.

pique

cress

I could not recall the last time I had simply laughed aloud about so simple a thing.

verdant

“She needed someone to confide in and, for a time, chose me. Perhaps it was easier for her to do that if she believed I was a woman, also.” He sighed again. “That is one thing that in all my years among your folk I have never become accustomed to. The great importance that you attach to what gender one is.” “Well, it is important…” I began. “Rubbish!” he exclaimed. “Mere plumbing, when all is said and done. Why is it important?” I stared at him, at a loss for words. It all seemed so obvious to me as to not need saying. After a time, I said, “Could you not simply tell her you are a man and let the issue be laid to rest?” “That would scarcely lay it to rest, Fitz,” he replied judiciously. He clambered over a fallen tree and waited for me to follow. “For then she would need to know why, if I am a man, I do not desire her. It would have to be either a fault in me, or something I perceived as a fault in her. No. I do not think anything needs to be said on that topic. Starling, however, has the minstrel’s failing. She thinks that everything in the world, no matter how private, should be a topic for discussion. Or better yet, made into a song. Ah, yes!”

“Did you ever stop to think you might hurt her feelings?” I asked him angrily. “I gave it as much thought as she gave to whether such an allegation might hurt mine.” He rounded on me suddenly, wagging a long finger. “Admit it. You asked that question with never a thought as to whether it would hurt my vanity. How would you feel if I demanded proof that you were a man?

I should have left it alone. I did not. “It is only that she thinks that you love me,” I tried to explain. He gave me an odd look. “I do.” “I mean, as a man and a woman love.” He took a breath. “And how is that?” “I mean…” It half-angered me that he pretended not to understand me. “For bedding. For…” “And is that how a man loves a woman?” he interrupted me suddenly. “For bedding?” “It’s a part of it!” I felt suddenly defensive but could not say why. He arched an eyebrow at me and said calmly, “You are confusing plumbing and love again.” “It’s more than plumbing!” I shouted at him. A bird abruptly flew off, cawing. I glanced back at Kettle and Starling, who exchanged puzzled glances. “I see,” he said. He thought a bit as I strode ahead of him on the path. Then, from behind me he called out, “Tell me, Fitz, did you love Molly or that which was under her skirts?” Now it was my turn to be affronted. But I was not going to let him baffle me into silence. “I love Molly and all that is a part of her,” I declared. I hated the heat that rose in my cheeks. “There, now you have said it,” the Fool replied as if I had proven his point for him. “And I love you, and all that is a part of you.” He cocked his head and the next words held a challenge. “And do you not return that to me?” He waited. I desperately wished I had never started this discussion. “You know I love you,” I said at last, grudgingly. “After all that has been between us, how can you even ask? But I love you as a man love...