Assassin's Quest

She took her hand from my face and stood clear of me. She stared down at the dark shape of the wolf. "Then all I just told you …"

"He understands it in his own way. Not as another human would, but …"

"How did Molly feel about that?" she abruptly demanded.

I took a sharp breath. I had not expected our conversation to take this turn. "She never knew," I told her. Nighteyes started back to the camp. I followed him more slowly. Behind me came Starling.

"And when she does know?" Starling pressed. "She will just accept this … sharing?"

"Probably not," I muttered unwillingly. Why did Starling always make me think of things I had avoided considering?

"What if she forces you to choose between her and the wolf?"

I halted in my tracks for an instant. Then I started walking again, a bit faster. The question hung around me, but I refused to think about it. It could not be, it could never come to that. Yet a voice whispered inside me, "If you tell Molly the truth, it will come to that. It must."

"You are going to tell her, aren't you?" Starling relentlessly asked me the one question I was hiding from.

"I don't know," I said grimly.

"Oh," she said. Then after a time, she added, "When a man says that, it usually means, `No, I won't, but from time to time, I'll toy with the idea, so I can pretend I eventually intend to do it.' "

"Would you please shut up?" There was no strength in my words.

Starling followed me silently. After a time, she observed, "I don't know who to pity. You, or her."

"Both of us, perhaps," I suggested stonily. I wanted no more words about it.

The Fool was on watch when we got back to camp. Kettle and Kettricken were asleep. "Good hunting?" he asked in a comradely way as we approached.

I shrugged. Nighteyes was already gnawing his way through the rabbit he had carried. He sprawled contentedly by the Fool's feet. "Good enough." I held up the other rabbit. The Fool took it from me and casually hung it from the tent pole.

"Breakfast," he told me calmly. His eyes darted to Starling's face, but if he could tell she had been weeping, he made no jest of it. I don't know what he read in my face, for he made no comment on it. She followed me into the tent. I pulled off my boots and sank gratefully into my bedding. When I felt her settle herself against my back a few moments later, I was not very surprised. I decided it meant she had forgiven me. It did not make it easy to fall asleep.

But eventually I did. I had set up my walls, but somehow I managed a dream of my very own. I dreamed that I sat by Molly's bed and watched over her as she and Nettle slept. The wolf was at my feet, while in the chimney corner the Fool sat on a stool and nodded to himself well pleased. Kettle's gamecloth was spread on the table, but instead of stones, it had tiny statues of different dragons in white and black. The red stones were ships, and it was my move. I had the piece in my hand that could win the game, but I only wished to watch Molly sleep. It was almost a peaceful dream.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE. Elfbark

THERE ARE A number of old "White Prophecies" that to the betrayal of the Catalyst. White Column says of this event, "By his love is he betrayed, and his love betrayed also. " A lesser known scribe and prophet, Gant the White, goes into more detail. "The heart of the Catalyst is bared to a trusted one. All confidence is given, and all confidence betrayed. The child of the Catalyst is given into his enemies' hands by one whose love and loyalty are above question. " The other prophecies are more oblique, but in each case the inference is that the Catalyst is betrayed by one who has his implicit trust.

Early the next morning, as we ate toasted bits of rabbit meat, Kettricken and I consulted her map again. We scarcely needed it anymore, we both knew it so well. But it was a thing to set between us and point at as we discussed things. Kettricken traced a fading line on the battered scroll. "We shall have to return to the column in the stone circle, and then follow the Skill road for some little way beyond it. Right up to our final destination, I believe."

"I have no great wish to walk upon that road again," I told her honestly. "Even walking beside it strains me. But I suppose there is no help for it."

"None that I can see."

She was too preoccupied to offer much sympathy. I looked at the woman. The once gleaming blond hair was a short scruffy braid. Cold and wind had weathered her face, chapping her lips and etching fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, to say nothing of the deeper worry lines in her brow and between her eyes. Her clothing was travel-stained and worn. The Queen of the Six Duchies could not even have passed muster as a chambermaid in Tradeford. I suddenly wanted to reach out to her. I could think of no way to do so. So I simply said, "We will get there, and we will find Verity."