Assassin's Quest

"One girl and a Farseer child," the Fool reminded me gravely. "Fitz, I do not speak to grieve you, but only to warn you. I have contained his anger at you. That night, when they held me …" He swallowed and his eyes went distant. "I have tried so hard to forget it. If I touch those memories at all, they seethe and burn within me like a poison I cannot be rid of. I have felt Regal's very being inside my own. Hatred for you squirms through him like maggots through rotting meat." He shook his head, sickened at recalling it. "The man is mad. He ascribes to you every evil ambition he can imagine. Your Wit he regards with loathing, and terror. He cannot conceive that what you do, you do for Verity. In his mind, you have devoted your life to injuring him since you came to Buckkeep. He believes that both Verity and you have come to these Mountains not to wake the Elderlings to defend Buck, but to find some Skill-treasure or power to use against him. He believes he has no choice but to act first, to find whatever it is you seek and turn it against you. To that, he bends all his resources and determination."

I listened to the Fool in a sort of frozen horror. His eyes had taken on the stare of a man who recalls torture. "Why have you not spoken of this to me before?" I asked him gently when he paused to catch his breath. The skin of his arms was standing up in gooseflesh.

He looked away from me. "It is not a thing I enjoy recalling." He was trembling very lightly. "They were in my mind like evil, idle children, smashing what they could not grasp. I could keep nothing back from them. But they were not interested in me at all. They regarded me as less than a dog. Angry, in that moment of finding I was not you. They nearly destroyed me because I was not you. Then they considered how they might use me against you." He coughed. "If that Skill-wave had not come…"

I felt like Chade himself as I said quietly, "Now I will turn that back upon them. They could not hold you in thrall like that without revealing much of themselves to you. As much as you can, I ask you to reach back to that time, and tell me all you can recall."

"You would not ask that, if you knew what you were asking."

I thought I did know, but I refrained from saying it. Instead, I let silence bid him think it through. Dawn was graying the sky, and I had just returned from walking a circuit of our camp when next he spoke.

"There were Skill books you know nothing about. Books and scrolls that Galen removed from Solicity's rooms as she was dying. The information they held was for a Skillmaster alone, and some were even fastened shut with clever locks. Galen had many years to tinker those locks loose. A lock does no more than keep an honest man honest, you know. Galen found there much he did not understand. But there were also scrolls listing those who had been Skill-trained. Galen sought out all he could find and questioned them. Then he did away with them, lest others should ask them the same questions he had. Galen found much in those scrolls. How a man might live long and enjoy good health. How to give pain with the Skill, without even touching a man. But in the oldest scrolls he found hints of great power awaiting a strongly Skilled man in the Mountains. If Regal could bring the Mountains under his sway, he could come into power no one could withstand: To that end did he seek the hand of Kettricken for Verity, with no intent that she would ever be his bride. He intended that when Verity was dead, he would take her in his brother's stead. And her inheritance. "

"I don't understand," I said gently. "The Mountains have amber and furs and …"

"No. No." The Fool shook his head. "It was nothing like that. Galen would not divulge the whole of his secret to Regal, for he then would have had no hold over his half-brother. But you can be sure that when Galen died, Regal immediately possessed those scrolls and books and set to studying them. He is no master of the older languages, but he feared to seek the help of others, lest they discover the secret first. But he puzzled it out at last, and when he did, he was horrified. For by then he had eagerly dispatched Verity into the Mountains to die on some foolish quest. He finally ciphered out that the power Galen had sought for him was power over the Elderlings. Immediately he decided Verity had conspired with you to seek that very power for himself. How dare he seek to steal the very treasure that Regal had worked so long to gain! How dare he try to make a fool of Regal in such a way!" The Fool smiled weakly. "In his mind, his domination over the Elderlings is his birthright. You seek to steal it from him. He believes he upholds what is right and just by trying to kill you."