Assassin's Quest

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.

It 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.