Assassin's Quest (UK)

by Robin Hobb

  If you must, my brother. If you must, I will not turn you away.

  I wished he had not said it. It did not make it easier to res­ist the tempta­tion. I had prom­ised my­self I would not do that to him, that if die I must, I would die and leave him free and clean of me to carve his own life. Yet as the mo­ment for dy­ing grew nearer there seemed so many good reas­ons to for­sake that prom­ise. The healthy wild body, that simple life in the now called to me.

  Slowly the fig­ure drew nearer. A great shiv­er­ing of cold and pain racked me. I could go to the wolf. I summoned the last of my strength to defy my­self. ‘Here!’ I croaked to Death. ‘Here I am. Come and take me and let it be done at last.’

  He heard me. I saw him halt and stand stiffly as if afraid. Then he came with sud­den haste, his white cloak swirl­ing in the night wind. He stood by me, tall and slender and si­lent. ‘I’ve come to you,’ I whispered. Ab­ruptly he knelt by me, and I glimpsed the chis­elled ivory of his bony face. He put his arms around me and lif­ted me to bear me away. The pres­sure of his arm on my back was ag­on­iz­ing. I fain­ted.

  Warmth was seep­ing back into me, bring­ing pain with it. I sprawled on my side, within walls, for the wind surged like the ocean out­side. I smelled tea and in­cense, paint and wood-shav­ings and the wool rug I lay on. My face burned. I could not stop the shud­der­ing that ran through me, though every wave of it awakened the sear­ing pain in my back. My hands and feet throbbed.

  ‘The knots of your cloak-strings are frozen. I’m go­ing to cut them. Lie still now.’ The voice was curi­ously gentle, as if un­used to such a tone.

  I man­aged to get an eye open. I was ly­ing on the floor. My face was turned to­ward a stone hearth where a fire burned. Someone leaned over me. I saw the glit­ter of a blade near­ing my throat, but I could not move. I felt it saw­ing and hon­es­tly could not tell if it tasted my flesh. Then my cloak was be­ing lif­ted back. ‘It’s frozen to your shirt,’ someone muttered. I al­most thought I knew the voice. A gasp. ‘It’s blood. All this is frozen blood.’ My cloak made an odd tear­ing sound as it was peeled loose. Then someone sat down on the floor be­side me.

  I turned my eyes up slowly but could not lift my head to see a face. In­stead I saw a slender body clothed in a soft robe of white wool. Hands the col­our of old ivory pushed the cuffs of his sleeves up. The fin­gers were long and thin, the wrists bony. Then he rose ab­ruptly to get some­thing. For a time I was alone. I closed my eyes. When I opened them a wide ves­sel of blue pot­tery was by my head. Steam rose from it and I smelled wil­low and rowan. ‘Steady,’ said the voice, and for a mo­ment one of those hands res­ted on my shoulder re­as­sur­ingly. Then I felt spread­ing warmth on my back.

  ‘I’m bleed­ing again,’ I whispered to my­self.

  ‘No. I’m soak­ing the shirt loose.’ Once again, the voice was al­most fa­mil­iar. I closed my eyes. A door opened and shut and a gust of cold air waf­ted across me. The man be­side me paused. I felt him glance up. ‘You might have knocked,’ he said with mock sever­ity. I felt again the spread­ing warmth of wa­ter on my back. ‘Even one such as I oc­ca­sion­ally has other guests.’

  Feet crossed hast­ily to me. Someone lowered her­self flu­idly to the floor be­side me. I saw the fold­ing of her skirts as she sank down. A hand pushed the hair back from my face. ‘Who is he, holy one?’

  ‘Holy one?’ There was bit­ter hu­mour in his voice. ‘If you would speak of holes, you should speak of him, not me. Here, look at his back.’ He spoke softer then. ‘As to who he is, I have no idea.’

  I heard her give a gasp. ‘All of that is blood? How does he yet live? Let us get some warmth to him, and clean away the blood.’ Then she tugged at my mit­tens and dragged them free of my hands. ‘Oh, his poor hands, his fin­gers all gone black at the ends!’ she ex­claimed in hor­ror.

  That I did not want to see or know. I let go of everything.

  For a time, it seemed as if I were a wolf again. I stalked an un­fa­mil­iar vil­lage, alert for dogs or any­one stir­ring about, but all was white si­lence and snow fall­ing in the night. I found the hut I sought and prowled about it, but dared not enter it. After a time, it seemed I had done all I could about some­thing. So I went hunt­ing. I killed, I ate, I slept.

  When I opened my eyes again, the room was washed with the pale light of day. The walls curved. I thought at first my eyes would not fo­cus, and then I re­cog­nized the shape of a Moun­tain dwell­ing. Slowly I took in de­tail. Thick rugs of wool on the floor, simple wooden fur­niture, a win­dow of greased hide. On a shelf, two dolls leaned their heads to­gether be­side a wooden horse and tiny cart. A hunts­man pup­pet dangled in a corner. On a table were bits of brightly-painted wood. I smelled the clean shav­ings and the fresh paint. Pup­pets, I thought. Someone was mak­ing pup­pets. I was belly down on a bed with a blanket over me. I was warm. The skin of my face and my hands and feet burned un­pleas­antly but that could be ig­nored, for the great pain that bored into my back took pre­ced­ence. My mouth was not so dry. Had I drunk some­thing? I seemed to re­call the spill of warm tea in my mouth but it was not a def­in­ite memory. Feet in fel­ted wool slip­pers ap­proached my bed. Someone bent down and lif­ted the blanket off me. Cool air flowed across my skin. Deft hands moved over me, prod­ding the area around my wound. ‘So thin. Were he bet­ter fleshed, I’d say he had more chance,’ said an old wo­man’s voice sadly.

  ‘Will he keep his toes and fin­gers?’ A wo­man’s voice, close by. A young wo­man. I could not see her but she was near. The other wo­man bent over me. She handled my hands, bend­ing the fin­gers and pinch­ing at the ends of them. I winced and tried feebly to pull away. ‘If he lives, he’ll keep his fin­gers,’ she said, not un­kindly but fac­tu­ally. ‘They will be tender, for he must shed all the skin and flesh that was frozen. By them­selves, they are not too bad. The in­fec­tion in his back is what may kill him. There’s some­thing in­side that wound. An ar­row­head and part of the shaft by the look of it.’

  ‘Can­not you take it out?’ Ivory-hands spoke from some­where in the room.

  ‘Eas­ily,’ the wo­man replied. I real­ized she was speak­ing the tongue of Buck, with a Moun­tain ac­cent. ‘But he will cer­tainly bleed and he has not much blood left he can part with. And the foul­ness of his wound may spread in fresh-flow­ing blood to poison all his body.’ She sighed. ‘Would that Jon­qui were alive still. She was very wise in this type of thing. It was she who pulled from Prince Rurisk the ar­row that had pierced his chest. The wound bubbled with his very life’s breath and still she did not let him die. I am not such a healer as she, but I will try. I will send my ap­pren­tice with a salve for his hands and feet and face. Rub his skin well with it each day, and do not be dis­mayed at the shed­ding of skin. As for his back, that we must keep a draw­ing poult­ice on, to suck the pois­ons from it as best we may. Food and drink you must get into him, as much as he will take. Let him rest. And a week hence, we will pull that ar­row and hope he has built the strength to live through it. Jofron. Know you a good draw­ing poult­ice?’

  ‘One or two. Bran and goose­grass is a good one,’ she offered.

  ‘It will do well. Would that I could stay and tend him, but I have many an­other to see to. Ce­dar Knoll was at­tacked last night. A bird has come with tid­ings that many were in­jured be­fore the sol­diers were driven off. I can­not tend one and leave many. I must leave him in your hands.’

  ‘And in my bed,’ Ivory-hands said dole­fully. I heard the door close be­hind the healer.

  I drew in a deeper breath but found no strength to speak.

  Be­hind me, I heard the man mov­ing about the hut, the small sounds of wa­ter poured and crock­ery moved. Foot­steps came closer. ‘I think he’s awake,’ Jofron said softly.

  I gave a small nod against my pil­low.

  ‘Try to get this down him, then,’ sug­ges­ted Ivory-hands. ‘Then let him rest. I shall re­turn with bran
and goose­grass for your poult­ice. And some bed­ding for my­self, for I sup­pose he must stay here.’ A tray was passed over my body and came into my view. There were a bowl and a cup on it. A wo­man sat be­side me. I could not turn my head to see her face, but the fab­rics of her skirt were Moun­tain-woven. Her hand spooned up a bit from the bowl and offered it to me. I sipped at it cau­tiously. Some sort of broth. From the cup waf­ted the scents of chamo­mile and va­lerian. I heard a door slide open, and then shut. I felt a waft of cold air move through the room. An­other spoon­ful of broth. A third.

  ‘Where?’ I man­aged to say.

  ‘What?’ she asked, lean­ing closer. She turned her head and leaned down to see my face. Blue eyes. Too close to my own. ‘Did you say some­thing?’

  I re­fused the spoon. It was sud­denly too much ef­fort to eat, even though what I had taken had heartened me. The room seemed darker. When next I awoke night was deep around me. All was si­lent save for the muted crack­ling of a fire in the hearth. The light it cast was fit­ful, but enough to show me the room. I felt fe­ver­ish and very weak and hor­ribly thirsty. There was a cup of wa­ter on a low table near my bed. I tried to reach for it, but the pain in my back stopped my arm’s move­ment. My back felt taut with the swollen wound. Any move­ment awakened it. ‘Wa­ter,’ I mouthed, but the dry­ness of my mouth made it a whis­per. No one came.

  Near the hearth, my host had made up a pal­let for him­self. He slept like a cat, lax, but with that aura of con­stant war­i­ness. His head was pil­lowed on his out­stretched arm and the fire glazed him with light. I looked at him and my heart turned over in my chest.

  His hair was smoothed back sleek on his skull, con­fined to a single plait, bar­ing the clean lines of his face. Ex­pres­sion­less and still, it seemed a chis­elled mask. The last trace of boy­ish­ness had been burned away, leav­ing only the clean planes of his lean cheeks and high fore­head and long straight nose. His lips were nar­rower, his chin firmer than I re­called. The dance of the fire­light lent col­our to his face, stain­ing his white skin with its am­ber. The Fool had grown up in the time we had been apart. It seemed too much change for twelve months, and yet this year had been longer than any in my life. For a time I simply lay and looked at him.

  His eyes opened slowly, as if I had spoken to him. For a time he stared back at me without a word. Then a frown creased his brow. He sat up slowly, and I saw that truly he was ivory, his hair the col­our of fresh-ground flour. It was his eyes that stopped my heart and tongue. They caught the fire­light, yel­low as a cat’s. I fi­nally found my breath. ‘Fool,’ I sighed sadly. ‘What have they done to you?’ My parched mouth could barely shape the words. I reached out my hand to him, but the move­ment pulled the muscles of my back and I felt my in­jury open again. The world tilted and slid away.

  Safety. That was my first clear sen­sa­tion. It came from the soft warmth of the clean bed­ding, the herb fra­grance of the pil­low be­neath my head. Some­thing warm and slightly damp pressed gently on my wound and muffled its stab. Safety clasped me as gently as the cool hands that held my frost­bit­ten hand between them. I opened my eyes and the fire­lit room slowly swam into fo­cus.

  He was sit­ting by my bed. There was a still­ness about him that was not re­pose as he stared past me and into the darkened room. He wore a plain robe of white wool with a round col­lar. The simple clothes were a shock after the years of see­ing him in mot­ley. It was like see­ing a gar­ish pup­pet stripped of its paint. Then a single sil­ver tear tracked down one cheek be­side the nar­row nose. I was as­ton­ished.

  ‘Fool?’ My voice came out as a croak this time.

  His eyes came in­stantly to mine and he dropped to his knees be­side me. His breath came and went rag­gedly in his throat. He snatched up the cup of wa­ter and held it to my mouth while I drank. Then he set it aside, to take up my dangling hand and clasp it gently. He spoke softly as he did this, more to him­self than to me. ‘What have they done to me, Fitz? Gods, what have they done to you, to mark you so? What has be­come of me, that I did not even know you though I car­ried you in my arms?’ His cool fin­gers moved tent­at­ively down my face, tra­cing the scar and the broken nose. He leaned down sud­denly to rest his brow against mine. ‘When I re­call how beau­ti­ful you were,’ he whispered brokenly, and then fell si­lent. The warm drip of his tear against my face felt scald­ing.

  He sat up ab­ruptly, clear­ing his throat. He wiped his sleeve across his eyes, a child’s ges­ture that un­manned me even more. I drew a deeper breath and gathered my­self. ‘You’ve changed,’ I man­aged to say.

  ‘Have I? I ima­gine I have. How could I not have changed? I thought you dead, and all my life for naught. Then now, this mo­ment, to be given back both you and my life’s pur­pose … I opened my eyes to you and thought my heart would stop, that mad­ness had fi­nally claimed me. Then you spoke my name. Changed, you say? More than you can ima­gine, as much as you have plainly changed your­self. This night, I hardly know my­self.’ It was as close as I had ever heard the Fool come to bab­bling. He took a breath, and his voice cracked on his next words. ‘For a year, I have be­lieved you dead, Fitz. For a whole year.’

  He had not re­leased my hand. I felt the trem­bling that went through him. He stood sud­denly, say­ing, ‘We both need some­thing to drink.’ He walked away from me across the darkened room. He had grown, but it was in shape rather than size. I doubted he was much taller, but his body was no longer a child’s. He was lean and slight as ever, muscled as tum­blers are. He brought a bottle from a cab­inet, two simple cups. He un­corked the bottle and I smelled the warmth of the brandy be­fore he poured. He came back to sit by my bed and of­fer me a cup. I man­aged to wrap my hand around it des­pite my blackened fin­ger­tips. He seemed to have re­covered some of his aplomb. He looked at me over the rim as he drank. I lif­ted my head and tipped a spill of mine into my mouth. Half went down my beard and I choked as if I had never had brandy be­fore. Then I felt the hot race of it in my belly. The Fool shook his head as he gently wiped my face.

  ‘I should have listened to my dreams. Over and over, I dreamed you were com­ing. It was all you ever said, in the dream. I am com­ing. In­stead I be­lieved so firmly that I had failed some­how, that the Cata­lyst was dead. I could not even see who you were when I picked you up from the ground.’

  ‘Fool,’ I said quietly. I wished he would stop speak­ing. I simply wanted to be safe for a time, and think of noth­ing. He did not un­der­stand.

  He looked at me and grinned his old sly Fool’s smile. ‘You still don’t un­der­stand, do you? When word reached us that you were dead, that Regal had killed you … my life ended. It was worse, some­how, when the pil­grims began to trickle in, to hail me as the White Prophet. I knew I was the White Prophet. I’ve known it since I was a child, as did those who raised me. I grew up, know­ing that some day I would come north to find you and that between the two of us we would put time in its proper course. All of my life, I knew I would do that.

  ‘I was not much more than a child when I set out. Alone, I made my way to Buck­keep, to seek the Cata­lyst that only I would re­cog­nize. And I found you, and I knew you, though you did not know your­self. I watched the pon­der­ous turn­ing of events and marked how each time you were the pebble that shif­ted that great wheel from its an­cient path. I tried to speak to you of it, but you would have none of it. The Cata­lyst? Not you, oh, no!’ He laughed, al­most fondly. He drained off the rest of his brandy at a gulp, then held my cup to my lips. I sipped.

  He rose, then, to pace a turn about the room and then hal­ted to re­fill his cup. He came back to me again. ‘I saw it all come to the tot­ter­ing brink of ruin. But al­ways you were there, the card never dealt be­fore, the side of the die that had never be­fore fallen up­per­most. When my king died, as I knew he must, there was an heir to the Farseer line, and FitzChiv­alry yet lived, the Cata­lyst that would change all things so that an heir
would as­cend to the throne.’ He gulped his brandy again and when he spoke the scent of it rode his breath. ‘I fled. I fled with Kettricken and the un­born child, griev­ing, yet con­fid­ent that all would come to pass as it must. For you were the Cata­lyst. But when word came to us that you were dead …’ He hal­ted ab­ruptly. When he tried to speak again, his voice had gone thick and lost its mu­sic. ‘It made of me a lie. How could I be the White Prophet if the Cata­lyst were dead? What could I pre­dict? The changes that could have been, had you lived? What would I be but a wit­ness as the world spun deeper and deeper into ruin? I had no pur­pose any more. Your life was more than half of mine, you see. It was in the in­ter­weav­ing of our do­ings that I ex­is­ted. Worse, I came to won­der if any part of the world were truly what I be­lieved it. Was I a White Prophet at all, or was it but some pe­cu­liar mad­ness, a self-de­cep­tion to con­sole a freak? For a year, Fitz. A year. I grieved for the friend I had lost, and I grieved for the world that some­how I had doomed. My fail­ure, all of it. And when Kettricken’s child, my last hope, came into the world still and blue, what could it be but my do­ing some­how?’

  ‘No!’ The word burst from me with a strength I had not known I had. The Fool flinched as if I had struck him. Then, ‘Yes,’ he said simply, care­fully tak­ing my hand again. ‘I am sorry. I should have known you did not know. The Queen was dev­ast­ated at the loss. And I. The Farseer heir. My last hope crumbled away. I had held my­self to­gether, telling my­self, well, if the child lives and as­cends the throne, per­haps that will have been enough. But when she was brought to bed with naught but a dead babe for all her trav­ails … I felt my whole life had been a farce, a sham, an evil jest played on me by time. But now …’ He closed his eyes a mo­ment. ‘Now I find you truly alive. So I live. And again, sud­denly, I be­lieve. Once more I know who I am. And who my Cata­lyst is.’ He laughed aloud, never dream­ing how his words chilled my blood. ‘I had no faith. I, the White Prophet, did not be­lieve my own fore­see­ing! Yet here we are, Fitz, and all will still come to pass as it was ever meant to do.’