Assassin's Quest

One step after another down a moonlit road. With each footfall, with each beat of my heart, I heard words in my mind. Come to me. Come to me. I can't, I pleaded. I won't, I defied them. I kept walking. I tried to think only of Molly, only of my tiny daughter. She would need a name. Would Molly have named her before I got there?

Come to me.

We'd need to get married right away. Find some local Witnesser in some small village. Burrich would vouch that I was a foundling, with no parentage for the Witnesser to memorize. I'd say my name was Newboy. An odd name, but I'd heard odder, and I could live with it the rest of my life. Names, once so important to me, no longer mattered. They could call me Horsedung, as long as I could live with Molly and my daughter.

Come to me.

I'd need to get work of some kind, any kind. I abruptly decided that the silvers in my pouch were far too important to spend, that I'd have to work for my entire passage home. And once I was there, what could I do to earn a living? What was I fit for? I pushed the thought aside angrily. I'd find something, I'd find a way. I'd be a good husband, a good father. They would want for nothing.

Come to me.

My steps had gradually slowed. Now I stood upon a small rise, looking down the road before me. Lights still burned in the river town below. I had to go down there and find a barge heading downriver, willing to take on an unproven hand. That was all. Just keep moving.

I did not then understand why I could not. I took a step, I stumbled, the world swung around me dizzily, and I went to my knees. I could not go back. I had to go on, to Verity. I still do not understand it, so I cannot explain it. I knelt on the rise, looking down at the town, knowing clearly what I wished with all my heart to do. And I could not do it. Nothing held me back, no man lifted a hand or sword to me and bid me turn aside. Only the small insistent voice in my mind, battering at me. Come to me, come to me, come to me.

And I could not do otherwise.

I could not tell my heart to stop beating, I could not cease breathing and die. And I could not ignore that summoning. I stood alone in the night, trapped and suffocating in another man's will for me. A coolheaded portion of myself said, There, well, you see, that is how it is for them. For Will and the rest of the coterie, Skill imprinted by Galen to be loyal to Regal. It did not make them forget they had had another king, it did not make them believe what they did was right. They simply had no choice about it anymore. And to take it back a generation, that was how it had been for Galen, forced to be so fanatically loyal to my father. Verity had told me that his loyalty was a Skill-imprinting, done by Chivalry when they were all little more than boys. Done in anger against some cruelty Galen had wrought against Verity. The act of an older brother taking revenge on someone who had been mean to his little brother. It had been done to Galen in anger and ignorance, not even knowing fully that such a thing was possible. Verity said Chivalry had regretted it, would have undone it if he had known how. Had Galen ever awakened to what had been done to him? Did that account for his fanatical hatred of me, had it been a passing down to the son of the anger he could not allow himself to feel toward Chivalry, my father?

I tried to get to my feet and failed. I sank slowly to the dirt in the center of the moonlit road, then sat there hopelessly. It didn't matter. None of it mattered, save that there were my lady and my child, and I could not go to them. Could no more go to them than I could climb the night sky and take down the moon. I gazed afar to the river, shining blackly in the moonlight, rippled like black slate. A river that could carry me home, but would not. Because the fierceness of my will was still not enough to break past that command in my mind. I looked up to the moon. "Burrich," I pleaded aloud, as if he could hear me. "Oh, take care of them, see they come to no harm, guard them as if they were your own. Until I can come to them."

I do not recall going back to the holding pens, or lying down to sleep. But morning came and when I opened my eyes, that was where I was. I lay, looking up at the blue arch of the sky, hating my life. Creece came to stand between me and the heavens and look down on me.

"You'd better get up," he told me, and then, peering closer, he observed. "Your eyes are red. You got a bottle you didn't share?"

"I've got nothing to share with anybody," I told him succinctly. I rolled to my feet. My head was pounding.

I wondered what Molly would name her. A flower name, probably. Lilac, or something like that. Rose. Marigold. What would I have named her? It didn't matter.