Assassin's Quest

"I think so." I shut my eyes. Images and thoughts flickered through my mind. I could not decide which of them were mine. I tried to remember if it was important to know that.

"Fitz!" This was Kettricken, shaking me.

"Make him sit up," Starling suggested. Kettricken promptly gripped me by my shirtfront and hauled me into a sitting position. The sudden change dizzied me. I could not understand why they wanted me to be awake in the middle of the night. I said so.

"It's midday," Kettricken said tersely. "The storm hasn't let up since last night." She peered at me closely. "Are you hungry? Would you like a cup of tea?"

While I was trying to decide, I forgot what she had asked me. There were so many people talking softly, I could not sort my thoughts from theirs. "I beg your pardon," I told the woman politely. "What did you ask me?"

"Fitz!" the pale man hissed in exasperation. He reached behind me and dragged a pack over to him. "He has elfbark in here, for tea. Chade left it with him. It should bring him back to himself."

"He doesn't need that," an old woman said sharply. She crawled closer to me, reached up, and gripped my ear. She pinched it tightly.

"Ouch! Kettle!" I rebuked her, and tried to pull away. She kept her painful hold. "Wake up!" she told me sternly. "Right now!"

"I'm awake!" I promised her, and after a scowl at me, she let go of my ear. While I looked about me in some confusion, she muttered angrily, "We're too close to that damnable road."

"It's still stormy outside?" I asked bewilderedly.

"You've only been told that six times," Starling retorted, but I could hear the worry that underlay her words.

"I had … nightmares last night. I didn't sleep well." I looked around at the circle of folk clustered around the small brazier. Someone had braved the wind for a fresh supply of wood. A kettle hung on a tripod over the brazier, heaped full of melting snow. "Where's Nighteyes?" I asked as soon as I missed him.

"Hunting," Kettricken said and, With very little luck, came the echo from the hillside above us. I could feel the wind past his eyes. He had folded his ears back from it. Nothing is moving in this storm. I don't know why I bother.

Come back and stay warm, I suggested. At that moment, Kettle leaned over and pinched my arm savagely. I jerked back from it with a cry.

"Pay attention to us!" she snapped at me.

"What are we doing?" I demanded as I sat rubbing my arm. No one's behavior made any sense to me today.

"Waiting for the storm to pass," Starling told me. She leaned closer to me, peering into my face. "Fitz, what is the matter with you? I feel as if you're not really here."

"I don't know," I admitted. "I feel caught in a dream. And if I don't concentrate on staying awake, I start to fall right back to sleep."

"Then concentrate," Kettle advised me roughly. I could not understand why she seemed so angry with me.

"Maybe he should just sleep," the Fool suggested. "He seems tired, and from all the leaping and yelping he did in his sleep last night, his dreams were scarcely restful."

"So he will get more rest staying awake now than from going back to dreams like that," Kettle insisted mercilessly. She poked me suddenly in the ribs. "Talk to us, Fitz."

"About what?" I hedged.

Kettricken moved quickly to the attack. "Did you dream of Verity last night?" she demanded. "Is Skilling last night what has left you so dazed today?"

I sighed. One does not answer a direct question from one's queen with a lie. "Yes," I told her, but as her eyes lit I had to add, "But it was a dream that will bring you small comfort. He is alive, in a cold; windy place. He would let me see no more than that, and when I asked where he was, he simply told me to find him."

"Why would he behave so?" Kettricken asked. The hurt on her face was as if Verity himself had shoved her away.

"He warned me severely against all Skilling. I had been … watching Molly and Burrich." It was so hard to admit this, for I wanted to speak nothing of what I had seen there. "Verity came and took me away from there, and warned me that our enemies might find them through me and hurt them. I believe that is why he concealed his surroundings from me. Because he feared that if I knew them, somehow Regal or his coterie might come to know them."

"Does he fear that they seek for him also?" Kettricken asked wonderingly.

"So it seems to me. Though I have felt no tremor of their presence, he seems to believe they will seek him out, either by the Skill or in the flesh."

"Why should Regal bother to do so, when all believe Verity dead?" Kettricken asked me.

I shrugged. "Perhaps to make certain that he never returns to prove them all wrong. I do not truly know, my queen. I sense that my king conceals much from me. He warned me that the powers of the coterie are many and strong."

"But surely Verity is as strong?" Kettricken asked with a child's faith.

"He masters a storm of power such as I have never witnessed, my lady. But it takes all his will to control it."