Assassin's Quest

I looked up the steep hillside to where the road was scored across the mountain's face like a gouge in a piece of wood. It was the only safe way across that sheer mountain face. Above us was the steep boulder strewn mountainside. It was not quite sheer enough to call it a cliff: There was a scattering of wind-warped trees and bushes, some with roots straggling over the rocky soil as much as in it. Snow frosted it unevenly. Climbing up to the road would be a challenge. The slope we traversed had been getting steeper all morning. I should not have been surprised, but I had been so intent on picking the best path that it had been some time since I had looked up to the road.

"We'll have to return to the road," I told Starling and she nodded mutely.

It was easier said than done. In several places I felt rock and scree slew under my feet, and more than once I went on all fours. I could hear Starling panting behind me. "Only a little farther!" I called back to her as Nighteyes came toiling up the slope beside us. He passed us effortlessly, moving by leaps up the slope until he reached the edge of the road. He disappeared over the edge of it, and then returned to stand on the lip looking down at us. In a moment the Fool appeared beside him, to gaze down at us anxiously. "Need any help?" he called down.

"No. We'll make it!" I called back up to him. I paused, crouching and clinging to the trunk of a stunted tree, to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my eyes. Starling halted behind me. And suddenly I felt the road above me. It had a current like a river, and as the current of a river stirs the air to wind over it, so did the road. It was a wind not of winter cold, but of lives, both distant and near. The Fool's strange essence floated on it, and Kettle's closemouthed fear and Kettricken's sad determination. They were as separate and recognizable as the bouquets of different wines.

"FitzChivalry!" Starling emphasized my name by hitting me between the shoulder blades.

"What?" I asked her absently.

"Keep moving! I can't cling here much longer, my calves are cramping! "

"Oh." I found my body and climbed the remaining distance to the lip of the road. The flowing Skill made me effortlessly aware of Starling behind me. I could feel her placing her feet and gripping the scraggly mountain willow at the edge of the cliff. I stood for an instant on the lip of the road's edge. Then I stepped down, onto the smooth surface of the road, slipping into its pull like a child slipping into a river.

The Fool had waited for us. Kettricken was at the head of the line of jeppas, looking back anxiously to watch us join them. I took a deep breath and felt as if I were gathering myself together. Beside me, Nighteyes suddenly flipped my hand with his nose.

Stay with me, he suggested. I felt him groping for a firmer grip on our bond. That I could not help him alarmed me. I looked down into his deep eyes and suddenly found a question.

```You're on the road. I didn't think animals could come on the road.

He gave a sneeze of disgust. There's a difference between thinking an action is wise and doing it. And you might have noticed that the jeppas have been traveling on the road for some days.

It was too obvious. Why do the wild animals avoid it then?

Because we still depend on ourselves for survival. The jeppas depend on humans, and will follow them into any danger, no matter how foolish it seems to them. Thus they have not the sense to run from a wolf, either. Instead they flee back to you humans when I scare them. It's a lot like horses or cattle and rivers. Left to themselves, they swim them only if death is right behind them, from predators or starvation. But humans convince them to swim rivers any time the human wishes to be on the other side. I think they are rather stupid.

So why are you on this road? I asked him with a smile.

Do not question friendship, he told me seriously.

"Fitz!"

I startled, and turned to Kettle. "I'm fine," I told her, even as I knew I was not. My Wit sense usually made me very aware of others around me. But Kettle had walked up right behind me and I'd not noticed until she spoke to me. Something about the Skill road was dulling my Wit. When I did not think specifically of Nighteyes, he faded into a vague shadow in my mind.

I'd be less than that, were I not striving to stay with you, he pointed out worriedly.

"It will be all right. I just have to pay attention," I told him.

Kettle assumed I was speaking to her. "Yes, you do." Pointedly she took my arm and started me walking. The others had gone ahead. Starling was walking with the Fool, and singing some love ditty as she walked, but he was looking over his shoulder worriedly at me. I gave him a nod and he nodded back uneasily. Beside me, Kettle pinched my arm. "Pay attention to me. Talk to me. Tell me. Have you solved the game problem I gave you?"