Assassin's Quest (99 page)

Our eyes met in the early light. I saw my eyes narrow as Verity appraised his own body. I stood up and without thinking, began to brush my clothes off. Then I realized what I was doing. This was not a
shirt
I had borrowed. My laugh boomed out, louder than I used it. Verity shook my head at me.

“Leave it, boy. There’s no making it better. And I’m almost finished with it anyway.” He slapped my chest with the palm of my hand. “Once I had a body like this,” he told me, as if I hadn’t known. “I had forgotten so much of how that felt. So much.” The smile faded from his face as he regarded me peering at him from his own eyes. “Take care of it, Fitz. You only get one. To keep, anyway.”

A wave of giddiness. Black closed from the edges of my vision, and I folded up my knees and sank down to keep from falling.

“Sorry,” Verity said quietly, and it was in his own voice.

I looked up to find him looking down on me. I stared up at him mutely. I could smell Kettricken’s scent on my skin. My body was very tired. I knew a moment of total outrage. Then it crested and fell away as if the emotion were too much effort. Verity’s eyes met mine and accepted all I felt.

“I will neither apologize to you nor thank you. Neither would be adequate.” He shook his head to himself. “And in truth, how could I say I am sorry? I am not.” He looked away from me, out over my head. “My dragon will rise. My queen will bear a child. I will drive the Red Ships from our shore.” He took a deep breath. “No. I am not sorry for our bargain.” His eyes came back to me. “FitzChivalry. Are you sorry?”

Slowly I stood up. “I don’t know.” I tried to decide. “The roots of it go too deep,” I said at last. “Where would I start to undo my past? How far back would I have to reach, how much would I have to change in order to change this, or to say I was not sorry now?”

The road is empty below us.
Nighteyes spoke in my mind.

I know. Kettle knows, too. She but looked for something to busy the Fool and sent you along to keep him safe. You can come back now.

Oh. Are you all right?

“FitzChivalry. Are you all right?” There was concern in Verity’s voice. But it could not completely mask the triumph there as well.

“Of course not,” I told them both. “Of course not.” I walked away from the dragon.

Behind me, I heard Kettle ask eagerly, “Are we ready to quicken him?”

Verity’s soft voice carried to my ears. “No. Not just yet. For a little while longer, I would have these memories to myself. For a short time more, I would remain a man.”

As I passed through the camp, Kettricken emerged from her tent. She wore the same travel-wearied tunic and leggings she had the day before. Her hair was caught back from her face in a short, thick braid. 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.

The stream water was very cold. Coarse horsetail grasses grew along one bank. I used handfuls of them to scrub myself. My wet clothes were draped on the bushes on the other side of the stream. The heat of the day promised they would soon be dry. Nighteyes sat on the bank and watched me with a pucker between his eyes.

I do not understand. You do not smell bad.

Nighteyes. Go hunting. Please.

You wish to be alone?

As much as that is possible anymore.

He stood up and stretched, curtseying low to me as he did so.
Someday, it will be only you and I. We shall hunt and eat and sleep. And you will heal.

May we both live to see that,
I agreed wholeheartedly.

The wolf slipped off through the trees. Experimentally, I scrubbed at the Fool’s fingerprints on my wrist. They did not come off, but I learned a great deal about the life cycle of a horsetail fern. I gave it up. I decided I could take my entire skin off and still not feel free of what had happened. I waded out of the stream, dashing the water off myself as I went. My clothing was dry enough to put back on. I sat down on the bank to put my boots on. I nearly thought of Molly and Burrich but I quickly pushed the image away. Instead I wondered how soon Regal’s soldiers would arrive and if Verity would have his dragon finished before then. Perhaps it was even now finished. I should want to see it.

I wanted more to be alone.

I lay back on the grass and looked up into the blue sky overhead. I tried to feel something. Dread, excitement, anger. Hate. Love. Instead I felt only confused. And tired. Weary of flesh and spirit. I closed my eyes against the brightness of the sky.

The harp notes walked alongside the sounds of the stream flowing. They blended with it, then danced apart. I opened my eyes to it and squinted at Starling. She sat on the stream bank beside me and played. Her hair was down, drying in ripples down her back in the sun. She had a stem of green grass in her mouth and her bare feet nestled against the soft grass. She met my eyes but said nothing. I watched her hands play on the strings. Her left hand worked harder, compensating for the stiffness in the last two fingers. I should have felt something about that. I didn’t know what.

“What good are feelings?” I didn’t know I had the question until I spoke it aloud.

Her fingers poised over the strings. She furrowed her brow at me. “I don’t think there’s an answer to that question.”

“I’m not finding answers to much of anything lately. Why aren’t you back in the quarry, watching them complete the dragon? Surely that is the stuff for a song to spring from.”

“Because I am here with you,” she said simply. Then she grinned. “And because everyone else seems busy. Kettle sleeps. Kettricken and Verity . . . she was combing his hair when I left. I do not think I had seen King Verity smile before. When he does, he looks a great deal like you, about the eyes. Anyway. I do not think they will miss me.”

“And the Fool?”

She shook her head. “He chips at the stone around Girl-on-a-Dragon. I know he should not, but I do not think he can stop. Nor do I know any way to force him.”

“I don’t think he can help her. But I don’t think he can resist trying. For all his quick tongue, he has a soft nature.”

“I know that. Now. In some ways I’ve come to know him very well. In others, he will always be unknowable to me.”

I nodded silently to that. The silence lasted a time. Then, subtly, it became a different kind of silence. “Actually,” Starling said uncomfortably, “the Fool suggested I should find you.”

I groaned. I wondered just how much he had told her.

“I’m sorry to hear about Molly . . .” she began.

“But not surprised,” I filled in for her. I lifted my arm and put it across my eyes to block the sunlight.

“No.” She spoke quietly. “Not surprised.” She cast about for something to say. “At least you know she is safe and cared for,” she offered.

I knew that. It shamed me that I could find so little comfort in it. 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.

“Fitz,” she said quietly. “I asked you once, for yourself. In gentleness and friendship. To chase a memory away.” She looked away from me, at the sunlight glinting on the stream. “Now I offer that,” she said humbly.

“But I don’t love you,” I said honestly. And instantly knew that it was the worst thing I could have said just then.

Starling sighed and set her harp aside. “I know that. You know that. But it was not a thing that had to be said just now.”

“And I know that. Now. It is just that I don’t want any lies, spoken or unspoken . . .”

She leaned over me and stopped my mouth with hers. After a time she lifted her face a little. “I am a minstrel. I know more about lying than you will ever discover. And minstrels know that sometimes lies are what a man needs most. In order to make a new truth of them.”

“Starling,” I began.

“You know you will just say the wrong thing,” she told me. “So why don’t you be quiet for a time? Don’t make this complicated. Stop thinking, just for a while.”

Actually, it was quite a while.

When I awoke, she still lay warm against my side. Nighteyes stood over us, looking down at me, panting with the heat of the day. When I opened my eyes, he folded his ears back and gave his tail a slow wag. A drop of warm saliva fell on my arm.

“Go away.”

The others are calling you. And looking for you.
He cocked his head at me and offered,
I could show Kettricken where to find you.

I sat up and squashed three mosquitoes on my chest. They left bloody smears. I reached for my shirt.
Is something wrong?

No. They are ready to wake the dragon. Verity wishes to tell you goodbye.

I shook Starling gently. “Wake up. Or you will miss Verity waking the dragon.”

She stirred lazily. “For that, I shall get up. I can think of nothing else that would stir me. Besides, it may be my last chance at a song. Fate has ruled that I always be elsewhere whenever you do something interesting.”

I had to smile at that. “So. You will make no songs about Chivalry’s Bastard after all?” I teased her.

“One, perhaps. A love song.” She gave me a last secret smile. “That part, at least, was interesting.”

I stood up and drew her to her feet. I kissed her. Nighteyes whined his impatience, and she turned quickly in my arms. Nighteyes stretched and bowed low to her. When she turned back to me, her eyes were wide.

“I warned you,” I told her.

She only laughed and stooped to gather up our clothes.

39

Verity’s Dragon

S
IX DUCHIES TROOPS
poured into Blue Lake and took ship for the farther side and the Mountain Kingdom on the very days that the Red Ships were beating their way up the Vin River to Tradeford. Tradeford had never been a fortified city. Although word of the ships’ coming preceded them by fast messenger, the news was greeted with general disdain. What menace were twelve ships of barbarians to such a great city as Tradeford? The City Guard was alerted, and some of the dockside merchants took steps to remove their goods from warehouses close to the water, but the general attitude was that if they did manage to get as far up the river as Tradeford, archers would easily pick off the Raiders before they could do any real damage. The general consensus was that the ships must be bringing some offer of treaty to the King of the Six Duchies. There was much discussion as to how much of the Coastal Duchies they would ask ceded to them, and the possible value of reopening trade with the OutIslands themselves, not to mention restoring the trade flow down the Buck River.

This is but one more example of the errors that can be made when one thinks one knows what the enemy desires, and acts upon it. The folk of Tradeford ascribed to the Red Ships the same desire for prosperity and plenty that they themselves felt. To base their estimation of the Red Ships on that motive was a grievous mistake.

I don’t think Kettricken had accepted the idea that Verity must die for the dragon to quicken until the actual moment he kissed her goodbye. He kissed her so carefully, his hands and arms held wide of her, his head cocked so that no silver smear would touch her face. For all that, it was a tender kiss, a hungry and lingering one. A moment longer she clung to him. Then he said something softly to her. She immediately put her hands to her lower belly. “How can you be so sure?” she asked him, even as the tears began to course down her cheeks.

“I know,” he said firmly. “And so my first task must be to return you to Jhaampe. You must be kept safe this time.”

“My place is in Buckkeep Castle,” she protested.

I had thought he would argue. But, “You are right. It is. And thither I shall bear you. Farewell, my love.”

Kettricken did not reply. She stood watching him walk away from her, an intense look of incomprehension on her face.

For all the days we had spent striving for this very thing, at the end it seemed rushed and untidy. Kettle paced stiffly by the dragon. She had bid us all farewell with a distracted air. Now she hovered beside the dragon, breathing as if she had just run a race. At every moment, she was touching the dragon, a fingertip caress, a dragging hand. Color rippled in the wake of her touch and lingered, fading slowly.

Verity took more care with his goodbyes. To Starling, he admonished, “Care for my lady. Sing your songs well and true, and let no man ever doubt the child she carries is mine. With that truth I charge you, minstrel.”

“I shall do my best, my king,” Starling replied gravely. She went to stand beside Kettricken. She was to accompany the queen on the dragon’s broad back. She kept wiping her damp palms down the front of her tunic and checking to make sure the pack that carried her harp was secure to her back. She gave me a nervous smile. Neither of us needed more farewell than that.

There had been some furor about my decision to stay. “Regal’s troops draw nearer with every passing moment,” Verity reminded me yet again.

“Then you should hurry, so I will not be in this quarry when they arrive,” I reminded him.

He frowned at that. “If I see any of Regal’s troops upon the road, I shall see they do not get this far,” he offered me.

“Take no risks with my queen,” I reminded him.

Nighteyes was my excuse to stay. He had no wish to ride upon a dragon. I would not leave him. I am sure Verity knew the real reasons. I did not think I should return to Buck. 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. She could offer me no greater compliment. I knew no word of me would ever pass her lips.

The Fool was the one who was being difficult. All of us urged him to go with the Queen and the minstrel. He consistently refused. “The White Prophet will stay with the Catalyst,” was all he would say. I privately believed it was more a case of the Fool staying with Girl-on-a-Dragon. He had become obsessed with her and it frightened me. He would have to leave her before Regal’s troops arrived at the quarry. I had privately told him that, and he had nodded easily, but with a distracted look. I doubted not that he had plans of his own. We had run out of time to argue with him.

There came a time when there was no reason left for Verity to linger. We had said little to one another, but I felt there was little we could say. Everything that had happened now seemed inevitable to me. It was as the Fool said. Looking back, I could see where his prophecies had long ago swept us into this channel. No one could be blamed. No one could be blameless.

He gave me a nod, before he turned and walked toward the dragon. Then he halted suddenly. As he turned back, he was unbuckling his battered sword belt. He came toward me, wrapping the belt loosely about the sheath as he came. “Take my sword,” he said abruptly. “I won’t need it. And you seem to have lost the last one I gave you.” He halted suddenly in midstride, as if reconsidering. He hastily drew the sword from the sheath. One last time he ran a silver hand down the blade, leaving it gleaming behind his touch. His voice was gruff as he said, “It would be a poor courtesy to Hod’s skill to pass this on with a blunted blade. Take better care of it than I did, Fitz.” 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.”

At first I could think of no answer to that. Then, as he reached his dragon and placed his hands on its brow, I told him,
I never doubted it. Never doubt 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 chiseled 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. For an unnerving instant, I saw Verity’s empty body. Then he flowed into the dragon. Kettle had been leaning on the statue’s shoulder. She was gone faster than Verity, spreading out across the scales as turquoise and silver. Color flooded the creature and suffused him. No one breathed, save that Nighteyes keened softly. A great stillness held under the summer sun. I heard Kettricken give a single, choked sob.

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. As he drew his clawed feet back, his talons scored the black stone deeply. Suddenly, like a sail catching the wind, his immense wings unfurled. He rattled them, a hawk settling his plumage, and refolded them sleek to his body. His tail gave a single lash, stirring rock dust and grit into the air. The great head turned, his eyes demanding we be as pleased with this new self as he was.

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. Starling gave me a look, of terror and amazement, and followed the Queen more slowly. I saw her take her place behind Kettricken, and check once more that her harp-pack was secured to her back.

Kettricken lifted an arm in farewell to us. She shouted something, but the words were lost to me in the wind of the dragon’s opening wings. Once, twice, thrice he flapped them, as if getting the feel of them. Rock dust and grit flew stingingly against my face and Nighteyes pressed close against my leg. The dragon crouched as he gathered his great legs under him. The wide turquoise wings beat again and he sprang up suddenly. It was not a graceful launch, and he wobbled a bit as he took flight. I saw Starling clutch desperately at Kettricken, but Kettricken leaned forward against his neck, shouting her encouragement. In four beats, his wings carried him half the length of the quarry. He lifted, circling over the hills and trees that surrounded the quarry. I saw him dip his wings and turn to inspect the Skill road that led to the quarry. Then his wings began to beat steadily, carrying him higher and higher. His belly was a bluish white, like a lizard’s. I squinted to see him against the summer sky. Then, like a blue and silver arrow, he was gone, speeding toward Buck. Long after he was gone from sight, I stared after him.

I let out my breath finally. I was trembling. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and turned toward the Fool. Who was gone.

“Nighteyes! Where is the Fool?”

We both know where he is gone. There is no need to shout.

I knew he was right. Yet I could not deny the urgency I felt. I ran down the ramp of stone, leaving the empty dais behind me. “Fool?” I cried as I reached the tent. I even paused to look inside, hoping that he might be packing up what we’d need to take with us. I don’t know why I indulged such a foolish hope.

Nighteyes had not waited. When I reached Girl-on-a-Dragon, he was already there. He was sitting patiently, tail neatly coiled about his feet, looking up at the Fool. I slowed when I saw him. My premonition of danger faded. He was sitting on the edge of the dais, feet dangling, head leaned back against the dragon’s leg. The surface of the dais was littered with fresh chips from this day’s efforts. I walked toward him. 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. He very slowly shook his head at me, but he did not speak until I leaned against her pedestal.

“I had been hoping. I could not help hoping. But I have seen today what must be put into a dragon so it can fly.” He shook his head more forcefully. “And even if I had the Skill to give it, I do not have it to give. Even were she to consume all of me, it would not be enough.”

I did not say that I knew that. I did not even say that I had suspected it all along. I had finally learned something from Starling Birdsong. I let him have a silence for a time. Then I said, “Nighteyes and I are going to go get two jeppas. When I come back, we had better pack swiftly and be gone. I did not see Verity give chase to anything. Perhaps that means Regal’s troops are still far away. But I don’t want to take any chances.”

He drew a deep breath. “That is wise. It is time for this Fool to be wise. When you come back, I shall help you pack.”

I realized then I was still gripping Verity’s sword in its sheath. I took off the plain shortsword and replaced it with the blade Hod had made for Verity. It weighed strangely against me. I offered the shortsword to the Fool. “Want this?”

He glanced at me, a puzzled look. “What for? I’m a Fool, not a killer. I’ve never even learned to use one.”

I left him there, to say his farewells. As we wended our way out of the quarry and toward the woods where we had been pasturing the jeppas, the wolf lifted his nose and snuffed.

Nothing left of Carrod but a bad smell,
he noted as we passed the vicinity of the body.

“I suppose I should have buried him,” I said as much to myself as him.

No sense in burying meat that is already rotten,
he noted with puzzlement.

I passed the black pillar, but not without a small shudder. I found our straying jeppas on a hillside meadow. They were more reluctant to be caught than I had expected. Nighteyes enjoyed rounding them up considerably more than they or I did. I chose the lead jeppa and one other, but as I led them away, the others decided to trail along after us as well. I should have expected it. I had rather hoped the rest would stay and go wild. I did not relish the idea of six jeppas at my heels all the way back to Jhaampe. A new thought came to me as I led them past the pillar and into the quarry.

I did not have to return to Jhaampe.

The hunting here is as good as any we’ve found.

We’ve the Fool to think of, as well as ourselves.

I would not let him go hungry!

And when winter comes?

When winter comes, then . . . He is attacked!

Nighteyes did not wait for me. He streaked past me, gray and low, claws scratching against the black stone of the quarry floor as he ran. I let go of my jeppas and ran after him. The wolf’s nose told me of human scent in the air. An instant later, he had identified Burl, even as he hurtled toward them.

The Fool had not left Girl-on-a-Dragon. That was where Burl had found him. He must have come quietly, for the Fool was never easy to take unawares. Perhaps his obsession had betrayed him. Whatever the case, Burl had got the first cut in. Blood ran down the Fool’s arm and dripped from his fingertips. He had left smears of it all up the dragon as he climbed her. Now he clung, feet braced against the girl’s shoulders and one hand gripping the dragon’s gaping lower jaw. In his free hand he gripped his knife. He stared down at Burl balefully, waiting. Skill boiled from Burl, angry and frustrated.