Assassin's Quest (103 page)

It is a long way from the Mountain Kingdom to the coast of Buck. Even as the dragon flies, tirelessly and swift, it is a long, long way. For a few days, Nighteyes and I knew peace. We traveled far from the empty Stone Garden, far from the black Skill road. We were both too stiff to hunt well, but we had found a good trout stream and we followed it. The days were almost too warm, the nights clear and kind. We fished, we ate, we slept. I thought only of things that did not hurt. Not of Molly in Burrich’s embrace, but of Nettle sheltered by his good right arm. He would be a good father to her. He had had practice. I even found it in me to hope that she might have younger brothers and sisters in years to come. I thought of peace returning to the Mountain Kingdom, of Red Ships driven from the coast of the Six Duchies. I healed. Not completely. A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.

I was there on the summer afternoon when Verity-as-Dragon appeared in the skies over Buckkeep. With him, I saw the shining black towers and turrets of Buckkeep Castle far below us. Beyond the castle, where Buckkeep Town had been, were the blackened shells of buildings and warehouses. Forged ones ambled through the streets, pushed aside by swaggering Raiders. Masts with tatters of canvas dangling from them thrust up through the calm waters. A dozen Red Ships rocked peacefully in the harbor. I felt the heart of Verity-as-Dragon swell with anger. I swear I heard Kettricken’s cry of anguish at the sight.

Then the great turquoise-and-silver dragon was alighting in the center grounds of Buckkeep Castle. He ignored the flight of arrows that rose to meet him; ignored, too, the cries of the soldiers who cowered before him, senseless as his shadow spread over them and his great wings beat to lower his bulk to the ground. It was a wonder he did not crush them. Even as he was alighting, Kettricken was trying to stand up upon his shoulders, crying to the guard to lower their pikes and stand away.

On the ground, he dipped his shoulder to let a disheveled Queen Kettricken dismount. Starling Birdsong slid down behind her and distinguished herself by bowing to the line of pikes that were pointed at them. I saw not a few faces I recognized, and shared Verity’s pain at how privation had transformed them. Then Patience came forth, pike gripped tightly, helm askew upon her bundled hair. She pushed through the awestricken guards, her hazel eyes flinty in a pinched face. At the sight of the dragon, she halted. Her gaze went from the Queen to the dragon’s dark eyes. She took a breath, caught it, then breathed the word. “Elderling.” Then she threw both helm and pike into the air with a whoop, and rushed forward to embrace Kettricken, crying, “An Elderling! I knew it, I knew it, I knew they would come back!” She spun on her heel, issuing a flurry of orders that included everything from a hot bath for the Queen to readying a charge from the gates of Buckkeep Castle. But what I will always hold in my heart is the moment when she turned back, to stamp her foot at Verity-as-Dragon and tell him to hurry up and get those damned ships out of her harbor.

The Lady Patience of Buckkeep had become used to being obeyed swiftly.

Verity rose and went to the battle as he always had. Alone. Finally, he had his wish, to confront his enemies, not with the Skill, but in the flesh. On his very first pass, a slash of his tail shattered two of their ships. He intended that none should escape him. It was but hours later that the Fool and Girl-on-a-Dragon and their followers arrived to join him, but by then not a Red Ship remained in Buck Harbor. They joined him in his hunting through the steep streets of what had been Buckkeep Town. It was not yet evening when the streets were empty of Raiders. Those who had sheltered in the castle poured back into the town, to weep at the wreckage, it is true, but also to come near and wonder at the Elderlings who had returned to save them. Despite the number of dragons who came, Verity was the dragon that the folk of Buck would remember clearest. Not that folk remember anything too clearly when dragons are flying overhead, casting their shadows below. Still, he is the dragon one sees on all the tapestries of the Cleansing of Buck.

It was a summer of dragons for the Coastal Duchies. I saw it all, or as much as would fit into my sleeping hours. Even awake, I was aware of it, like thunder more felt than heard from the distance. I knew when Verity led the dragons northward, to purge all Buck and Bearns and even the Near Islands of Red Ships and Raiders. I saw the scouring of Ripple Keep, and the return of Faith, Duchess of Bearns, to her proper keep. Girl-on-a-Dragon and the Fool flew south along the coast of Rippon and Shoaks, rooting Raiders out from their strongholds on the islands as well. How Verity conveyed to them that they must feed only on the Raiders, I do not know, but that line was held. The folk of the Six Duchies feared them not. Children ran out from huts and cottages, to point overhead at the jeweled passing of the creatures. When the dragons slept, temporarily satiated, on the beaches and in the pastures, the people came out to walk among them fearlessly, to touch with their own hands these jewel-glittering creatures. And everywhere the Raiders had established strongholds, the dragons fed well.

The summer died slowly, and autumn came to shorten the days and promise storms to come. As the wolf and I gave thought to shelter for the winter, I had dreams of dragons flying over shores I had never seen before. Water churned cold against those harsh shores, and ice encroached on the edges of their narrow bays. The OutIslands, I surmised. Verity had always longed to bring the war to their shores, and did so with a vengeance. And that, too, was as it had been in King Wisdom’s time.

It was winter and snows had come to the higher reaches of the Mountains but not to the valley where the hot springs steamed in the chill air when the dragons last passed over my head. I came to the door of my hut to watch them pass, flying in great formations like migrating geese. Nighteyes turned his head to their strange calls, and sent up a howl of his own in answer. As they swept over me, the world blinked around me and I lost all but the vaguest memory of it. I could not tell you if Verity led their flight, or even if Girl-on-a-Dragon was among them. I only knew that peace had been restored to the Six Duchies and that no Red Ships would venture near our shores again. I hoped they would all sleep well in the Stone Garden as they had before. I went back into the hut to turn the rabbit on the cooking spit. I looked forward to a long quiet winter.

So the promised aid of the Elderlings was brought to the Six Duchies. They came, just as they had in King Wisdom’s time, and drove the Red Ships from the shores of the Six Duchies. Two great-sailed White Ships were sunk as well in that great cleansing. And just as in King Wisdom’s time, their outstretched shadows on the folk below stole moments of life and memory as they passed. All the myriad shapes and colors of the dragons made their way into the scrolls and tapestries of that time, just as they had before. And folk filled in what they could not remember of the battles when dragons filled the sky overhead, with guesses and fancies. Minstrels made songs of it. All the songs say that Verity came home himself upon the turquoise dragon, and rode the beast into the battle against the Red Ships. And the best songs say that when the fighting was over, Verity was carried off by the Elderlings, to feast with them in great honor and then sleep beside them in their magic castle until such time as Buck shall need to call on him again. So the truth became, as Starling had told me, something bigger than the facts. It was, after all, a time for heroes and all sorts of marvelous things to occur.

As when Regal himself came riding, at the head of a column of six thousand Farrowmen, to bring aid and supplies, not just to Buck, but to all the Coastal Duchies. The news of his return had preceded him, as had the barges of livestock, grain, and treasures from Tradeford Hall itself that came in a steady stream down the Buck River. All spoke in wonder, of how the prince had started up from a dream, and run half-dressed through the halls of Tradeford, miraculously foretelling the return of King Verity to Buckkeep and the summoning of the Elderlings to save the Six Duchies. Birds were sent, withdrawing all troops from the Mountains and offering his most humble apologies and generous monetary reparation to King Eyod. He summoned his nobles, to foretell to them that Queen Kettricken would bear Verity’s child, and that, he, Regal, wished to be first to pledge fealty to the next Farseer monarch. In honor of the day, he had ordered all gallows pulled down and burned, all prisoners pardoned and freed, and the King’s Circle was to be renamed the Queen’s Garden, and planted with trees and flowers from all six of the duchies as a symbol of new unity. When later that day the Red Ships attacked the outskirts of Tradeford, Regal himself called for his horse and armor, and rode to lead the defense of his folk. Side by side he fought, next to merchants and longshoremen, nobles and beggars. He gained in that battle the love of the common folk of Tradeford. When he announced his allegiance must always be to the child Queen Kettricken carried, they joined their vows to his.

When he reached Buckkeep, it is said he remained on his knees and robed only in sackcloth at the gate of Buckkeep Castle for some days until the Queen herself deigned to come forth and accept his most abject apologies for ever doubting her honor. Into her hands he returned both the crown of the Six Duchies, and the simpler band of the King-in-Waiting. He no longer wished, he told her, to hold any higher title than uncle to his monarch. The Queen’s paleness and silence at his words were put down to the uneasy stomach her pregnancy gave her. To Lord Chade, the Queen’s adviser, he returned all the scrolls and books of Skillmaster Solicity, with the plea that he guard them well, for there was much in them that could be turned to evil in the wrong hands. He had lands and a title he wished to confer on the Fool, as soon as he returned from his warrioring to Buckkeep. And to his dear, dear sister-in-law Lady Patience, he returned the rubies that Chivalry had given her, for they could never grace any neck as finely as they did her own.

I had considered having him erect a statue in my memory, but had decided that would be going too far. The fanatical loyalty I had imprinted on him would be my best memorial. While Regal lived, Queen Kettricken and her child would have no more loyal subject.

Ultimately, of course, that was not long. All have heard of the tragic and bizarre death of Prince Regal. The rabid creature that savaged him in his bed one night left bloody tracks, not just on his bedclothes, but all about the bedchamber, as if it had exulted in its deed. Gossip had it that it was an extremely large river rat that had somehow journeyed with him all the way from Tradeford. It was most disturbing to all the folk in the Keep. The Queen had the rat dogs brought in, to scour every chamber, but to no avail. The beast was never captured or killed, though rumors of sightings of the immense rat were rampant among the keep servants. Some say that that was why, for months afterward, Lord Chade was seldom seen without his pet ferret.

41

The Scribe

I
F THE TRUTH
be known, Forging was not an invention of the Red Ships. We had taught it well to them, back in the days of King Wisdom. The Elderlings that took our revenge on the OutIslands soared many times over that country of islands. Many OutIslanders were devoured outright, but many others were overflown by dragons so often that they were stripped of their memories and feelings. They became callous strangers to their own kin. That was the grievance that had rankled so amongst that long-memoried folk. When the Red Ships sailed, it was not to claim Six Duchies territory or wealth. It was for revenge. To do to us as so long ago we had done to them, in the days of their great-great-grandmothers.

What one folk know, another may discover. They had scholars and wise folk of their own, despite Six Duchies disdain of them as barbarians. So it was that mention of dragons were studied by them, in every ancient scroll they could find. While it would be difficult to find absolute proof, it seems to me that some copies of scrolls collected by the Skillmasters of Buck might actually have been sold, in the days before the Red Ships menaced our coasts, to OutIslander traders who paid well for such things. And when the slow movement of glaciers bared, on their own shores, a dragon carved of black stone and outcroppings of more of that black stone, their wise men combined their knowledge with the insatiable lust for vengeance of one Kebal Rawbread. They resolved to create dragons of their own, and visit upon the Six Duchies the same savage destruction we had once served upon them.

Only one White Ship was driven ashore by the Elderlings when they cleansed Buck. The dragons devoured all her crew, down to the last man. In her hold were found only great blocks of shining black stone. Locked within them, I believe, were the stolen lives and feelings of the folk of the Six Duchies who had been Forged. Their studies had led the OutIslander scholars to believe that stone sufficiently imbued with life-force could be fashioned into dragons to serve the OutIslanders. It is chilling to think how close they came to discovering the complete truth of creating a dragon.

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 . . .

I sigh and set my quill aside. I have written too much. Not all things need to be told. Not all things should be told. I take up the scroll and make my slow way to the hearth. My legs are cramped from sitting on them. It is a cold damp day, and the fog off the ocean has found every old injury on my body and awakened it. The arrow wound is still worst. When cold tightens that scar, I feel its pull on every part of my body. I throw the vellum onto the coals. I have to step over Nighteyes to do it. His muzzle is graying now and his bones do not like this weather any more than mine do.

You are getting fat. All you do anymore is lie by the hearth and bake your brains. Why don’t you go hunting?

He stretches and sighs.
Go bother the boy instead of me. The fire needs more wood.

But before I can call him, my boy comes into the room. He wrinkles his nose at the smell of burning vellum and gives me a scathing look. “You should have just asked me to bring more wood. Do you know how much good vellum costs?”

I make no reply, and he just sighs and shakes his head over me. He goes out to replenish the wood supply.

He is a gift from Starling. I have had him for two years now, and I am still not used to him. I do not believe I was ever a boy such as he is. I recall the day she brought him to me, and I have to smile. She had come, as she does, some twice or thrice a year, to visit me and chide me for my hermit ways. But that time she had brought the boy to me. He had sat outside on a skinny pony while she pounded on my door. When I opened to her, she had immediately turned and called to him, “Get down and come inside. It’s warm here.”

He had slid from the pony’s bare back and then stood by him, shivering, as he stared at me. His black hair blew across his face. He clutched an old cloak of Starling’s about his narrow shoulders.

“I’ve brought you a boy,” Starling announced, and grinned at me.

I met her gaze incredulously. “Do you mean . . . he is mine?”

She shrugged at me. “If you’ll have him. I thought he might do you good.” She paused. “Actually, I thought you might do him good. With clothing and regular meals and such. I’ve cared for him as long as I can, but a minstrel’s life . . .” She let her words trail off.

“Then he is . . . Did you, did we . . .” I floundered my way through the words, denying my hope. “He is your son? Mine?”

Her grin had widened at that, even as her eyes had softened in sympathy. She shook her head. “Mine? No. Yours? I suppose it’s possible. Did you pass through Flounder Cove about eight years ago? That’s where I found him six months ago. He was eating rotten vegetables from a village midden heap. His mother is dead, and his eyes don’t match, so her sister wouldn’t have him. She says he’s a demon-gotten bastard.” She cocked her head at me and smiled as she added, “So I suppose he might be yours.” She turned back to him again and raised her voice. “Come inside, I tell you. It’s warm. And a real wolf lives with him. You’ll like Nighteyes.”

Hap is a strange boy, one brown eye and one blue. His mother had not been merciful, and his early memories are not gentle ones. She had named him Mishap. Perhaps, to her, he was. I find I call him “boy” as often as not. He does not seem to mind. I have taught him his letters and his numbers and the growing and harvesting of herbs. He was seven when she brought him to me. Now he is nearly ten. He is good with a bow. Nighteyes approves of him. He hunts well for the old wolf.

When Starling comes, she brings me news. I do not know that I always welcome it. Too many things have changed, too much is strange. Lady Patience rules at Tradeford. Their hemp fields yield fully as much paper now as they do fine rope. The size of the gardens there have doubled. The structure that would have been the King’s Circle is now a botanical garden of plants gathered from every corner of the Six Duchies and beyond.

Burrich and Molly and their children are well. They have Nettle and little Chivalry and another on the way. Molly tends her hives and candle shop, while Burrich has used stud fees from Ruddy and Ruddy’s colt to begin to breed horses again. Starling knows these things, for it was she who tracked them down and saw to it that Ruddy and Sooty’s colt were given over to him. Poor old Sooty was too old to survive the journey home from the Mountains. Molly and Burrich both believe I am many years dead. Sometimes I believe that, too. I have never asked her where they live. I have never seen any of the children. In that, I am truly my father’s son.

Kettricken bore a son, Prince Dutiful. Starling told me he has his father’s coloring, but looks as if he will be a tall slender man, like Kettricken’s brother Rurisk, perhaps. She thinks he is more serious than a boy should be, but all of his tutors are fond of him. His grandfather journeyed all the way from the Mountain Kingdom to see the lad who will someday rule both lands. He was well pleased with the child. I wondered what his other grandfather would have thought of all that had come to pass from his treaty-making.

Chade no longer lives in the shadows, but is the honored adviser to the Queen. According to Starling, he is a foppish old man who is entirely too fond of the company of young women. But she smiles as she says it, and “Chade Fallstar’s Reckoning” will be the song she is remembered for when she is gone. I am sure he knows where I am, but he has never sought me out. It is as well. Sometimes, when Starling comes, she brings me curious old scrolls, and seeds and roots for strange herbs. At other times she brings me fine paper and clear vellum. I do not need to ask the source. Occasionally, I give her in return scrolls of my own writing: drawings of herbs, with their virtues and dangers; an account of my time in that ancient city; records of my journeys through Chalced and the lands beyond. She bears them dutifully away.

Once it was a map of the Six Duchies that she brought to me from him. It was carefully begun in Verity’s hand and inks, but never completed. Sometimes I look at it and think of the places I could fill in upon it. But I have hung it as it is upon my wall. I do not think I will ever change it.

As for the Fool, he returned to Buckkeep Castle. Briefly. Girl-on-a-Dragon left him there, and he wept as she rose without him. He was immediately acclaimed as a hero and a great warrior. I am sure that is why he fled. He accepted neither title nor land from Regal. No one is quite sure where the Fool went or what became of him after that. Starling believes he returned to his homeland. Perhaps. Perhaps, somewhere there is a toymaker who makes puppets that are a delight and a marvel. I hope he wears an earring of silver and blue. The fingerprints he left on my wrist have faded to a dusky gray.

I think I will always miss him.

I was six years in finding my way back to Buck. One we spent in the Mountains. One was spent with Black Rolf. Nighteyes and I learned much of our own kind in our seasons there, but discovered we like our own company best. Despite Holly’s best effort, Ollie’s girl looked at me and decided I would most definitely not do. My feelings were not injured in the least and it provided an excuse to move on again.

We have been north to the Near Islands, where the wolves are as white as the bears. We have been south to Chalced, and even beyond Bingtown. We have walked up the banks of the Rain River and ridden a raft back down. We have discovered that Nighteyes does not like traveling by ship, and I do not like lands that have no winters. We have walked beyond the edges of Verity’s maps.

I had thought I would never return to Buck again. But we did. The autumn winds brought us here one year, and we have not left since. The cottage we claimed as ours once belonged to a charcoal burner. It is not far from Forge, or rather where Forge used to be. The sea and the winters have devoured that town and drowned the evil memories of it. Someday, perhaps, men will come again to seek the rich iron ore. But not soon.

When Starling comes, she chides me, and tells me I am a young man yet. What, she demands of me, became of all my insistence that one day I would have a life of my own? I tell her I have found it. Here, in my cottage, with my writing and my wolf and my boy. Sometimes, when she beds with me and I lie awake afterward listening to her slow breathing, I think I will rise on the morrow and find some new meaning to my life. But most mornings, when I awake aching and stiff, I think I am not a young man at all. I am an old man, trapped in a young man’s scarred body.

The Skill does not sleep easily in me. In summers especially, when I walk along the sea cliffs and look out over the water, I am tempted to reach forth as Verity once did. And sometimes I do, and I know for a time, of the fisherwoman’s catch, or the domestic worries of the mate of the passing merchant ship. The torment of it, as Verity once told me, is that no one ever reaches back. Once, when the Skill-hunger was on me to the point of madness, I even reached for Verity-as-Dragon, imploring him to hear me and answer.

He did not.

Regal’s coteries long ago disbanded for lack of a Skillmaster to teach them. Even on the nights when I Skill out in despair as lonely as a wolf’s howling, begging anyone, anyone to respond, I feel nothing. Not even an echo. Then I sit by my window and look out through the mists past the tip of Antler Island. I grip my hands to keep them from trembling and I refuse to plunge myself whole into the Skill river that is waiting, always waiting to sweep me away. It would be so easy. Sometimes all that holds me back is the touch of a wolf’s mind against mine.

My boy has learned what that look means, and he measures the elfbark carefully to deaden me. Carryme he adds that I may sleep, and ginger to mask the elfbark’s bitterness. Then he brings me paper and quill and ink and leaves me to my writing. He knows that when morning comes, he will find me, head on my desk, sleeping amidst my scattered papers, Nighteyes sprawled at my feet.

We dream of carving our dragon.