Assassin's Quest (51 page)

I was blindly bashing my iron bar against the lock and the braces that supported it when the outer door opened. A guard in gold and brown strode into the room, calling, “I’ve come for the Bastard.” Then her glance took in the empty room.

In a moment, she pushed back her hood and became Starling. I stared at her in disbelief.

“Easier than I’d hoped,” she told me with a stark grin. It looked ghastly on her bruised face, more like a snarl.

“Maybe not,” I said faintly. “The cell’s locked.”

Her grin became a look of dismay. “The back of this building is smoldering.”

She snatched my bar with her unbandaged hand. Just as she lifted it to smash at the lock, Nighteyes appeared in the door. He padded into the room and dropped the old man’s pouch on the floor. Blood had darkened the leather.

I looked at him, suddenly aghast. “You killed him?”

I took from him what you needed. Hurry. The back of this cage burns.

For a moment I could not move. I looked at Nighteyes and wondered what I was making of him. He had lost some of his clean wildness. Starling’s eyes went from him, to me, to the pouch on the floor. She did not move.

And some of what makes you a man is gone from you. We have no time for this, my brother. Would not you kill a wolf if it would save my life?

I didn’t need to answer that. “The key is in that pouch,” I told Starling.

For a moment she just stared down at it. Then she stooped and fumbled the heavy iron key out of the leather pouch. I watched her fit it into the keyhole, now praying that I had not dented the mechanism too badly. She turned the key, jerked loose the hasp, and then lifted the bar from the door. As I came out she ordered me, “Bring the blankets. You’ll need them. The cold outside is fierce.”

As I snatched them up, I could feel the heat radiating from the back wall of my cell. I grabbed up my cloak and mittens. Smoke was beginning to slink in between the planks. We fled with the wolf at our heels.

No one took any notice of us outside. The fire was beyond battling. It held the town and raced wherever it willed. The people I saw were engaged in the selfish business of salvage and survival. A man trundled a barrow of possessions past us with no more than a warning look. I wondered if they were his. Down the street I could see a stable afire. Frantic grooms were dragging horses out but the screams of the panicked animals still within were shriller than the wind. With a tremendous crash a building across the street collapsed, wheezing hot air and ash toward us in a terrible sigh. The wind had spread the fire throughout all Moonseye. The fire sped from building to building, and the wind carried burning sparks and hot ash beyond the walls to the forest above. I wondered if even the deep snows would be enough to stop it. “Come on!” Starling yelled angrily, and I realized I had been standing and gawking. Clutching the blankets, I followed her wordlessly. We ran through the winding streets of the burning town. She seemed to know the way.

We came to a crossroads. Some sort of struggle had taken place there. Four bodies sprawled in the street, all in Farrow colors. I paused, to stoop over a soldier and take the fallen woman’s knife and the pouch at her belt.

We neared the gates of the town. Suddenly a wagon rattled up beside us. The two horses drawing it were mismatched and lathered. “Get in!” someone shouted at us. Starling leaped into the wagon without hesitation.

“Kettle?” I asked, and “Hurry up!” was her reply. I climbed in and the wolf leaped easily up beside me. She did not wait to see us settled but slapped the reins on the horses. The wagon plunged forward with a lurch.

Ahead of us were the gates. They were open and unmanned, swinging on their hinges in the wind from the fire. To one side I caught a glimpse of a sprawled body. Kettle did not even slow the team. We were through the gates without a backward glance, and rattling down the dark road, to join others fleeing the destruction with carts and barrows. Most seemed bound toward the few outlying homesteads to seek shelter for the night, but Kettle kept our horses moving. As the night about us grew darker and folk fewer, Kettle stirred the horses to a faster clip. I peered ahead into the darkness.

I realized Starling was looking back behind us. “It was only supposed to be a diversion,” she said in an awestruck voice. I turned to look back.

An immense orange glow silhouetted the palisade of Moonseye in black. Sparks rose thick as swarming bees into the night sky above it. The roar of the flames was like storm winds. As we watched, a building caved in and another wave of sparks rose into the air.

“A diversion?” I peered at her through the darkness. “You did all that? To free me?”

Starling shot me an amused glance. “Sorry to disappoint you. No. Kettle and I came along for you, but that was not what this was about. Most of that is the work of Nik’s family. Revenge against those who broke faith with them. They went in to find them and kill them. Then they left.” She shook her head. “It’s too complicated to explain it all right now, even if I understood it. Evidently the King’s Guard at Moonseye has been corrupt for years. They’ve been well paid to see nothing of the Holdfast smugglers. And the smugglers have seen to it that the men posted here enjoyed some of the better things in life. I gather that Captain Mark enjoyed the best of the profits. He was not alone, but neither was he generous about sharing.

“Then Burl was sent here. He knew nothing of the arrangement. He brought a huge influx of soldiers with him, and tried to impose military discipline here. Nik sold you to Mark. But when Nik was selling you to Mark, someone saw a chance to sell Mark and his arrangement to Burl. Burl saw a chance to take you, and clean up a ring of smugglers. But Nik Holdfast and his clan had paid well for safe passage for the pilgrims. Then the soldiers broke faith with them, and the Holdfast promise to the pilgrims was broken.” She shook her head. Her voice went tight. “Some of the women were raped. One child died of the cold. One man will never walk again because he tried to protect his wife.” For a time, the only sounds were the noises of the wagon and the distant roaring of the fires. Her eyes were very black as she looked back at the burning town. “You’ve heard of honor among thieves? Well, Nik and his men have avenged theirs.”

I was still staring back at the destruction of Moonseye. I cared not a whit for Burl and his Farrowmen. But there had been merchants there, and traders, families and homes. The flames were devouring them all. And Six Duchies soldiers had raped their captives as if they were lawless raiders instead of King’s guards. Six Duchies soldiers, serving a Six Duchies king. I shook my head. “Shrewd would have hanged them all.”

Starling cleared her throat. “Don’t blame yourself,” she told me. “I learned long ago not to blame myself for evil done to me. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t even your fault. You were just the catalyst that started the chain of events.”

“Don’t call me that,” I begged her. The wagon rumbled on, carrying us deeper into the night.

19

Pursuit

T
HE PEACE BETWEEN
the Six Duchies and the Mountain Kingdom was relatively new at the time of King Regal’s reign. For decades, the Mountain Kingdom had controlled all trade through the passes with as tight a grip as the Six Duchies had on all trade on the Cold and Buck rivers. Trade and passage between the two regions had been capriciously managed by both powers, to the detriment of both. But during the reign of King Shrewd, mutually beneficial trade agreements were worked out between King-in-Waiting Chivalry of the Six Duchies and Prince Rurisk of the Mountains. The peace and prosperity of this arrangement was secured further when, over a decade later, the Mountain princess Kettricken became the bride of King-in-Waiting Verity. Upon the untimely death of her older brother, Rurisk, on the very eve of her wedding, Kettricken became the sole heir to the Mountain crown. Thus it appeared for a time that the Six Duchies and the Mountain Kingdom might share a monarch and eventually become one land.

Circumstances put all such hope to ruin, however. The Six Duchies were threatened from without by the Raiders, and torn within by the bickering of princes. King Shrewd was murdered, King-in-Waiting Verity disappeared while on a quest, and when Prince Regal claimed the throne for his own, his hatred for Kettricken was such that she felt obliged to flee to her native Mountains for the sake of her unborn child. Self-proclaimed “King” Regal saw this somehow as a reneging on a promised surrender of territory. His initial endeavors to move troops into the Mountain Kingdom, ostensibly as “guards” for trading caravans, were repulsed by the Mountain folk. His protestations and threats prompted the closing of the Mountain borders to Six Duchies trade. Thwarted, he embarked on a vigorous campaign of discrediting Queen Kettricken and building patriotic hostility toward the Mountain Kingdom. His eventual goal seemed obvious: to take, by force if necessary, the lands of the Mountain Kingdom as a Six Duchies province. It seemed a poor time for such a war and such a strategy. The lands he justly possessed were already under siege by an outside enemy, one he seemed unable or disinclined to defeat. No military force had ever conquered the Mountain Kingdom, and yet this was what he seemed intent upon doing. Why he so desperately desired to possess this territory was a question that initially baffled everyone.

The night was clear and cold. The bright moonlight was enough to show us where the road ran, but not more than that. For a time I simply sat in the wagon, listening to the crunching of the horses’ hooves on the road and trying to absorb all that had happened. Starling took the blankets we had brought from my cell and shook them out. She gave me one and draped one across her own shoulders. She sat huddled and apart from me, looking out the back of the wagon. I sensed she wanted to be left alone. I watched the orange glow that had been Moonseye dwindle in the distance. After a time, my mind started working again.

“Kettle?” I called over my shoulder. “Where are we going?”

“Away from Moonseye,” she said. I could hear the weariness in her voice.

Starling stirred and glanced at me. “We thought you would know.”

“Where did the smugglers go?” I asked.

I felt more than saw Starling shrug. “They wouldn’t tell us. They said if we went after you, we had to part company with them. They seemed to believe Burl would send soldiers after you, no matter how badly Moonseye had been hit.”

I nodded, more to myself than to her. “He will. He’s going to blame the whole raid on me. And it will be said that the raiders were actually from the Mountain Kingdom, soldiers sent to free me.” I sat up, easing away from Starling. “And when they catch us, they’ll kill you both.”

“We didn’t intend that they should catch us,” Kettle observed.

“And they won’t,” I promised. “Not if we act sensibly. Pull up the horses.”

Kettle scarcely needed to stop them. They had slowed to a weary walk long ago. I tossed my blanket at Starling and went around the team. Nighteyes launched himself from the wagon and followed me curiously. “What are you doing?” Kettle demanded as I unbuckled harness and let it fall to the snowy ground.

“Changing this over so they can be ridden. Can you ride bareback?” I was using the guard’s knife to hack through the reins as I spoke. She’d have to ride bareback, whether she could or not. We had no saddles.

“I suppose I’ll have to,” she observed grumpily as she clambered down from the wagon. “But we aren’t going to get very far very fast, doubled on these horses.”

“You and Starling will do fine,” I promised her. “Just keep going.”

Starling was standing in the bed of the wagon looking down on me. I didn’t need the moonlight to know there was disbelief on her face. “You’re leaving us here? After we came back for you?”

That wasn’t how I’d seen it. “You are leaving me here,” I told her firmly. “Jhaampe is the only large settlement, once you’ve turned your back on Moonseye and headed toward the Mountain Kingdom. Ride steadily. Don’t go directly to Jhaampe. That’s what they’ll expect us to do. Find one of the smaller villages and hide there for a time. Most of the Mountain folk are hospitable. If you hear no rumors of pursuit, go on to Jhaampe. But get as far as you can as fast as you can before you stop to ask for shelter or food.”

“What are you going to do?” Starling asked in a low voice.

“Nighteyes and I are going our own way. As we should have a long time ago. We travel fastest alone.”

“I came back for you,” Starling said. Her voice was close to breaking at my betrayal. “Despite all that had happened to me. Despite . . . my hand . . . and everything else . . .”

“He’s drawing them off our trail,” Kettle suddenly said.

“Do you need help to mount?” I asked Kettle quietly.

“We don’t need any help from you!” Starling declared angrily. She shook her head. “When I think of all I’ve been through, following you. And all we did to free you . . . You’d have burned alive in that cell back there but for me!”

“I know.” There was no time to explain all of it to her. “Goodbye,” I said quietly. And I left them there, walking away from them into the forest. Nighteyes walked at my side. The trees closed in around us and they were soon lost to sight.

Kettle had seen quickly to the heart of my plan. As soon as Burl had the fires under control, or perhaps before, he would think of me. They’d find the old man killed by a wolf, and never believe I had perished in my cell. There would be pursuit. They’d send out riders on all the roads into the mountains, and they’d soon catch up with Kettle and Starling. Unless the hunters had another, more difficult trail to follow. One that cut cross-country, headed directly to Jhaampe. Due west.

It would not be easy. I had no specific knowledge of what lay between me and the capital city of the Mountain Kingdom. No towns, most likely, for the Mountain Kingdom was sparsely populated. The folk were mostly trappers, hunters, and nomadic herders of sheep and goats who tended to live in isolated cabins or tiny villages surrounded by ample hunting and trapping range. There would be little chance for me to beg or steal food or supplies. What worried me more was that I might find myself on the edge of an unscalable ridge or having to ford one of the many swift cold rivers that swept fiercely down the ravines and narrow valleys.

Useless to worry until we find ourselves blocked,
Nighteyes pointed out.
If it happens, then we must simply find a way around it. It may slow us down. But we will never get there at all if we stand still and worry.

So we hiked the night away, Nighteyes and I. When we came to clearings, I studied the stars, and tried to travel as close to due west as I could. The terrain proved every bit as challenging as I had expected it to be. Deliberately I chose routes kinder to a man and wolf afoot than to men on horseback. We left our trail up brushy hillsides and through tangled thickets in narrow gorges. I comforted myself as I forged through such places by imagining Starling and Kettle making good time on the roads. I tried not to think that Burl would send out enough trackers to follow more than one trail. No. I had to get a good lead on them and then lure Burl to send them after me in full force.

The only way I could think of to do that was to represent myself as a threat to Regal. One that must be dealt with immediately.

I lifted my eyes to the top of a ridge. Three immense cedars stood together in a clump. I would stop there, build a tiny fire, and try to Skill. I had no elfbark, I reminded myself, so I would have to make provisions to rest well afterward.

I will watch over you,
Nighteyes assured me.

The cedars were huge, their reaching branches interweaving overhead so thickly that the ground beneath was bare of snow. The soil was thickly carpeted with fragrant bits of cedar frond that had fallen over time. I scraped myself up a couch of them to keep my body off the cold earth and then gathered a good supply of firewood. For the first time, I looked inside the pouch I had stolen. There was a fire flint. Also five or six coins, some dice, a broken bracelet, and folded up in a scrap of fabric, a lock of fine hair. It summarized too neatly a soldier’s life. I scraped away a bit of earth and buried the hair, the dice, and the bracelet together. I tried not to wonder if it was a child or a lover that she had left behind. Her death was none of my doing, I reminded myself. Still, a chill voice whispered the word “catalyst” in the back of my mind. But for me, she would be alive still. For a moment, I felt old and weary and sick. Then I forced myself to set both the soldier and my own life aside. I kindled the fire and fed it up well. I stacked the rest of my firewood close to hand. I wrapped myself in my cloak and lay back on my cedar-frond bed. I took a breath, closed my eyes and Skilled.

I was as if I had tumbled into a swift river. I had not been prepared to succeed so easily, and was nearly swept away. Somehow the Skill river seemed deeper and wilder and stronger here. I did not know if it was a waxing of my own abilities or something else. I found and centered myself and resolutely firmed my will against the temptations of the Skill. I refused to consider that from here I might fling my thoughts to Molly and our child, might see as with my own eyes how she was growing and how they both fared. Nor would I reach for Verity, much as I longed to. The strength of this Skilling was such I had no doubt I could find him. But that was not what I was here for. I was here to taunt an enemy and must be on my guard. I set every ward I could that would not seal me off from the Skill, and turned my will toward Burl.

I extended myself, feeling for him cautiously. I was ready to fling up my walls in an instant if attacked. I found him easily and was almost startled at how unaware of my touch he was.

Then his pain jolted through me.

I drew back, faster than a startled sea anemone in a tide pool. I shocked myself by opening my eyes and staring up into cedar boughs burdened with snow. Sweat slicked my face and back.

What was that?
Nighteyes demanded.

You know as much as I do,
I told him.

It had been purest pain. Pain independent of an injury to the body, pain that was not sorrow or fear. Total pain, as if every part of the body, inside and out, were immersed in fire.

Regal and Will were causing it.

I lay shaking in the aftermath, not of the Skilling, but Burl’s pain. It was a monstrosity larger than my mind could grasp. I tried to sort out all I had sensed in that brief moment. Will, and perhaps some shadow of Carrod’s Skill, immobilizing Burl for this punishment. From Carrod there had been poorly masked horror and distaste for this task. Perhaps he feared it would someday be turned upon him again. Will’s strongest emotion had been wrath that Burl had had me in his power and somehow let me slip away. But beneath the wrath was a sort of fascination with what Regal was doing to Burl. Will did not take any pleasure in it. Not yet.

But Regal did.

There had been a time when I had known Regal. Never well, it was true. Once he had been simply the younger of my uncles, the one who did not like me at all. He had vented it boyishly, in shoves and clandestine pinches, in teasing and tattling. I had not liked it, I had not liked him, but it had been almost understandable. It had been a boy’s jealousy that the favored eldest son had created yet another rival for King Shrewd’s time and attention. At one time he had been simply a pampered young prince, envious that his elder brothers were in line for the throne ahead of him. He had been spoiled and rude and selfish.

But he had been human.

What I had felt from him just now was so far beyond what I could understand in terms of cruelty that it was almost incomprehensible. Forged ones had lost their humanity, but in their emptiness was the shadow of what they had been. Had Regal opened his breast and showed me a nest of vipers, I could not have been more shocked. Regal had thrown humanity aside, to embrace something darker. And this was the man the Six Duchies now called King.

This was the man who would send troops after Starling and Kettle.

“I’m going back,” I warned Nighteyes, and did not give him time to object. I closed my eyes and flung myself into the Skill river. I opened myself wide to it, drawing its cold strength into me without thought that too much of it would devour me. At the instant Will became aware of me, I spoke to them. “You will die at my hand, Regal. As certainly as Verity will reign again as King.” Then I smashed that gathered power against them.

It was almost as instinctive as a clenched fist. I did not plan it, but suddenly I understood this was what Verity had done to them back in Tradeford. There was no message, nothing but a furious unleashing of strength upon them. I opened wide to them and showed myself, then when they turned to me, I willed myself to blast them with every bit of Skill I had gathered. Like Verity, I held back nothing of my strength. I believe if there had been only one, I would have succeeded in burning the Skill right out of him. Instead, they shared the jolt. I will never know what effect it had on Burl. Perhaps he was grateful for my savagery, for it shattered Will’s concentration and released him from Regal’s sophisticated torture. I felt Carrod’s shriek of terror as he broke off his Skilling. I think Will might have stood and challenged me, had not Regal feebly commanded him
Break it off, you fool, do not risk me for your vengeance!
In the blinking of an eye, they were gone.