Assassin 3 - Royal Assassin (4 page)

I could do nothing except watch. I coughed
heavily, then found a breath to speak. If only I could understand
them, I said to the Fool. If only I knew what they wanted. There is
no sense to these Red-Ships. How can we fight those who war for a
reason they will not divulge? But if I could understand them
...

The Fool pursed his pale lips and considered.
They partake of the madness of he who drives them. They can only be
understood if you share that madness. I myself have no wish to
understand them. Understanding them will not stop them.

No. I did not want to watch the village. I had
seen this nightmare too often. But only a heartless man could have
turned away as if it were a poorly staged puppet show. The least I
could do for my people was watch them die. It also was the most I
could do for them. I was sick and a cripple, an old man far away.
No more could be expected from me. So I watched.

I watched the little town awaken from soft sleep
to the rough grip of a strange hand on the throat or breast, to a
knife over a cradle, or the sudden cry of a child dragged from
sleep. Lights began to flicker and glow throughout the village;
some were candles kindled on hearing a neighbor's outcry; others
were torches or burning houses. Although the Red-Ships had
terrorized the Six Duchies for over a year, for this folk it became
completely real tonight. They had thought they were prepared. They
had heard the horror stories, and resolved never to let it happen
to them. But still the houses burned and the screams rose to the
night sky as if borne on the smoke.

Speak, Fool, I commanded hoarsely. Remember
forward for me. What do they say about Siltbay? A raid on Siltbay,
in winter.

He took a shuddering breath. It is not easy, nor
clear, he hesitated. All wavers, all is change still. Too much is
in flux, Your Majesty. The future spills out in all directions
there.

Speak any you can see, I commanded.

They made a song about this town, the Fool
observed hollowly. He gripped my shoulder still; through my
nightshirt, the clutch of his long, strong fingers was cold. A
trembling passed between us and I felt how he labored to continue
standing beside me. When it is sung in a tavern, with the refrain
hammered out to the beat of ale mugs upon a table, none of this
seems so bad. One can imagine the brave stand these folk made,
going down fighting rather than surrendering. Not one, not one
single person, was taken alive and Forged. Not one. The Fool
paused. A hysterical note mingled with the levity he forced into
his voice. Of course, when you're drinking and singing, you don't
see the blood. Or smell the burning flesh. Or hear the screams. But
that's understandable. Have you ever tried to find a rhyme for
`dismembered child'? Someone once tried `remembered wild' but the
verse still didn't quite scan. There is no merriment in his banter.
His bitter jests can shield neither him nor me. He falls silent
once more, my prisoner doomed to share his painful knowledge with
ine.

I witness in silence. No verse would tell of a
parent pushing a poison pellet into a child's mouth to keep him
from the Raiders. No one could sing of children crying out with the
cramps of the swift, harsh poison, or the women who were raped as
they lay dying. No rhyme nor melody could bear the weight of
telling of archers whose truest arrows slew captured kinfolk before
they could be dragged away. I peered into the interior of a burning
house. Through the flames, I watched a ten-year-old boy bare his
throat for the slash of his mother's knife. He held the body of his
baby sister, strangled already, for the Red-Ships had come, and no
loving brother would give her to either the Raiders or the
voracious flames. I saw the mother's eyes as she lifted her
children's bodies and carried them into the flames with her. Such
things are better not remembered. But I was not spared the
knowledge. It was my duty to know these things, and to recall
them.

Not all died. Some fled into the surrounding
fields and forests. I saw one young man take four children under
the docks with him, to cling in the chill water to the barnacled
pilings until the Raiders left. Others tried to flee and were slain
'as they ran. I saw a woman in a nightgown slip from a house.
Flames were already running up the side of the building. She
carried one child in her arms and another clung to her skirts and
followed her. Even in the darkness, the light from the burning huts
woke burnished highlights in her hair. She glanced about fearfully,
but the long knife she carried in her free hand was up and at the
ready. I caught a glimpse of a small mouth set grimly, eyes
narrowed fiercely. Then, for an instant, I saw that proud profile
limned against firelight. Molly! I gasped. I reached a clawed hand
to her. She lifted a door and shooed the children down into a root
cellar behind the blazing home. She lowered the door silently over
them all. Safe?

No. They came around the corner, two of them.
One carried an ax. They were walking slowly, swaggering and
laughing aloud. The soot that smeared their faces made their teeth
and the whites of their eyes stand out. One was a woman. She was
very beautiful, laughing as she strode. Fearless. Her hair was
braided back with silver wire. The flames winked red in it. The
Raiders advanced to the door of the root cellar, and the one swung
his ax in a great arcing blow. The ax bit deep into the wood. I
heard the terrified cry of a child. Molly! I shrieked.

I scrabbled from my bed, but had no strength to
stand. I crawled toward her.

The door gave way, and the Raiders laughed. One
died laughing as Molly came leaping through the shattered remnants
of the door to put her long knife into his throat. But the
beautiful woman with the shining silver in her hair had a sword.
And as Molly struggled to pull her knife clear of the dying man,
that sword was falling, falling, falling.

At that instant something gave way in the
burning house with a sharp crack. The structure swayed and then
fell in a shower of sparks and an upburst of roaring flames. A
curtain of fire soared up between me and the root cellar. I could
see nothing through that inferno. Had it fallen across the door of
the root cellar and the Raiders attacking it? I could not see. I
lunged forth, reaching out for Molly.

But in an instant, all was gone. There was no
burning house, no pillaged town, no violated harbor, no Red-Ships.
Only myself, crouching by the hearth. I had thrust my hand into the
fire and my fingers clutched a coal. The Fool cried out and seized
my wrist to pull my hand from the fire. I shook him off, then
looked at my blistered fingers dully.

My king, the Fool said woefully. He knelt beside
me, carefully moved the tureen of soup by my knee. He moistened a
napkin in the wine he had poured for my meal, and folded it over my
fingers. I let him. I could not feel the burned skin for the great
wound inside me. His worried eyes stared into mine. I could
scarcely see him. He seemed an insubstantial thing, with the
faltering flames of the fireplace showing in his colorless eyes. A
shadow like all the other shadows that came to torment
me.

My burned fingers throbbed suddenly. I clutched
them in my other hand. What had I been doing, what had I been
thinking? The Skill had come on me like a fit, and then departed,
leaving me as drained as an empty glass. Weariness flowed in to
fill me, and pain rode it like a horse. I struggled to retain what
I had seen. What woman was that? Is she important?

Ah. The Fool seemed even wearier, but struggled
to gather himself. A woman at Siltbay? He paused as if racking his
brains. No. I have nothing. It is all a muddle, my king. So hard to
know.

Molly has no children, I told him. It could not
have been her.

Molly?

Her name is Molly? I demanded. My head throbbed.
Anger suddenly possessed me. Why do you torment me like
this?

My lord, I know of no Molly. Come. Come back to
your bed, and I will bring you some food.

He helped me to my feet and I tolerated his
touch. I found my voice. I floated, the focus of my eyes coming and
going. One moment I could feel his hand on my arm, the next it
seemed as if I dreamed the room and the men who spoke there. I
managed to speak. I have to know if that was Molly. I have to know
if she is dying. Fool, I have to know.

The Fool sighed heavily. It is not a thing I can
command, my king. You know that. Like your visions, mine rule me,
not the reverse. I cannot pluck a thread from the tapestry, but
must look where my eyes are pointed. The future, my king, is like a
current in a channel. I cannot tell you where one drop of water
goes, but I can tell you where the flow is strongest.

A woman at Siltbay, I insisted. Part of me
pitied my poor fool, but another part insisted. I would not have
seen her so clearly if she were not important. Try. Who was
she?

She is significant?

Yes. I am sure of it. Oh, yes.

The Fool sat cross-legged on the floor. He put
his long thin fingers to his temples and pressed as if trying to
open a door. I know not. I don't understand ... All is a muddle,
all is a crossroads. The tracks are trampled, the scents gone awry
.... He looked up at me. Somehow I had stood, but he sat on the
floor at my feet, looking up at me. His pale eyes goggled in his
eggshell face. He swayed from the strain, smiled foolishly. He
considered his rat scepter, went nose to nose with it. Did you know
any such Molly, Ratsy? No? I didn't think you would. Perhaps he
should ask someone more in a position to know. The worms, perhaps.
A silly giggling seized him. Useless creature. Silly riddling
soothsayer. Well, he could not help what he was. I left him and
walked slowly back to my bed.

I sat on the edge of it.

I found I was shaking as if with an ague. A
seizure, I told myself. I must calm myself or risk a seizure. Did I
want the Fool to see me twitching and gasping? I didn't care.
Nothing mattered, except finding out if that was my Molly, and if
so, had she perished? I had to know. I had to know if she had died,
and if she had died, how she had died. Never had the knowing of
something been so essential to me.

The Fool crouched on the rug like a pale toad.
He wet his lips and smiled at me. Pain sometimes can wring such a
smile from a man. It's a very glad song, the one they sing about
Siltbay, he observed. A triumphant song. The villagers won, you
see. Didn't win life for themselves, no, but clean death. Well,
death anyway. Death, not Forging. At least that's something.
Something to make a song about and hold on to these days. That's
how it is in Six Duchies now. We kill our own so the Raiders can't,
and then we make victory songs about it. Amazing what folk will
take comfort in when there's nothing else to hold on to.

My vision softened. I knew suddenly that I
dreamed. I'm not even here, I said faintly. This is a dream. I
dream that I am King Shrewd.

He held his pale hand up to the firelight,
considered the bones limned so plainly in the thin flesh. If you
say so, my liege, it must be so. I, too, then, dream you are King
Shrewd. If I pinch you, perhaps, shall I awaken myself?

I looked down at my hands. They were old and
scarred. I closed them, watched veins and tendons bulge beneath the
papery surface, felt the sandy resistance of my own swollen
knuckles. I'm an old man now, I thought to myself. This is what it
really feels like to be old. Not sick, where one might get better.
Old. When each day can only be more difficult, each month is
another burden to the body. Everything was slipping sideways. I had
thought, briefly, that I was fifteen. From somewhere came the scent
of scorching flesh and burning hair. No, rich beef stew. No,
Jonqui's healing incense. The mingling scents made me nauseous. I
had lost track of who I was, of what was important. I scrabbled at
the slippery logic, trying to surmount it. It was hopeless. I don't
know, I whispered. I don't understand any of this.

Ah, said the Fool. As I told you. You can only
understand a thing when you become it.

Is this what it means to be King Shrewd, then? I
demanded. It shook me to my core. I had never seen him like this,
racked by the pains of age but still relentlessly confronted by the
pains of his subjects. Is this what he must endure, day after
day?

I fear it is, my liege, the Fool replied gently.
Come. Let me help you back into your bed. Surely, tomorrow you will
feel better.

No. We both know I will not. I did not speak
those terrible words. They came from King Shrewd's lips, and I
heard them, and knew that this was the debilitating truth King
Shrewd bore every day. I was so terribly tired. Every part of me
ached. I had not known that flesh could be so heavy, that the mere
bending of a finger could demand a painful effort. I wanted to
rest. To sleep again. Was it I, or Shrewd? I should let the Fool
put me to bed, let my king have his rest. But the Fool kept holding
that one key morsel of information just above my snapping jaws. He
juggled away the one mote of knowledge I must possess to be
whole.

Did she die there? I demanded.

He looked at me sadly. He stooped abruptly,
picked up his rat scepter again. A tiny pearl of a tear trickled
down Ratsy's cheek. He focused on it and his eyes went afar again,
wandering across a tundra of pain. He spoke in a whisper. A woman
in Siltbay. A drop of water in the current of all the women of
Siltbay. What might have befallen her? Did she die? Yes. No. Badly
burned, but alive. Her arm severed at the shoulder. Cornered and
raped while they killed her children, but left alive. Sort of. The
Fool's eyes became even emptier. It was as if he read aloud from a
roster. His voice had no inflection. Roasted alive with the
children when the burning structure fell on them. Took poison as
soon as her husband awoke her. Choked to death on smoke. And died
of an infection in a sword wound only a few days later. Died of a
sword thrust. Strangled on her own blood as she was raped. Cut her
own throat after she had killed the children while Raiders were
hacking her door down. Survived, and gave birth to a Raider's child
the next summer. Was found wandering days later, badly burned, but
recalling nothing. Had her face burned and her hands hacked oft,
but lived a short-