Assassin's Quest

The dragon tugged at me insistently. I suddenly knew what had really drawn me here. Take my memories of my mother, and the feelings that went with them. I do not want to know them at all. Take the ache in my throat when I think of Molly, take all the sharp-edged, bright-colored days I recall with her. Take their brilliance and leave me but the shadows of what I saw and felt. Let me recall them without cutting myself on their sharpness. Take my days and nights in Regal's dungeons. It is enough to know what was done to me. Take it to keep, and let me stop feeling my face against that stone floor, hearing the sound of my nose breaking, smelling and tasting my own blood. Take my hurt that I never knew my father, take my hours of staring up at his portrait when the great hall was empty and I could do so alone. Take my-

Fitz. Stop. You give her too much, there will be nothing left of you. The Fool's voice inside me was horror-stricken at what he had encouraged.

-memories of that tower-top, of the bare windswept Queen's Garden and Galen standing over me. Take that image of Molly going so willingly to Burrich's arms. Take it and quench it and seal it away where it can never sear me again. Take

My brother. Enough.

Nighteyes was suddenly between me and the dragon. I knew I still gripped that scaly foreleg, but he snarled at it, defying it to take more of me.

I do not care if it all is taken, I told Nighteyes.

But I do. I would sooner not be bonded with a Forged one. Get back, Cold One. He snarled in spirit as well as beside me.

To my surprise the dragon yielded. My companion nipped at my shoulder. Let go. Get away from that!

I let go of the dragon's foreleg. I opened my eyes, surprised to find it was still night all around me.

The Fool had his arm around Nighteyes. "Fitz," he said quietly. He spoke into the wolf's ruff, but I heard him clearly. "Fitz, I am sorry. But you cannot throw away all your pain. If you stop feeling pain …"

I did not listen to the rest of what he said. I stared at the dragon's foreleg. Where my two hands had rested against the lumpy stone there were two handprints now. Within those shapes, each scale stood fine and perfect. All of that, I thought. All of that, and this is how much dragon it brought me. Then I thought of Verity's dragon. It was immense. How had he done it? What had he held inside him, all those years, to have enough for the shaping of such a dragon?

"He feels much, your uncle. Great loves. Vast loyalty. Sometimes I think that my two hundred-odd years pale beside what he has felt in his forty-some."

All three of us turned to Kettle. I felt no surprise. I had known she was coming and I had not cared. She leaned heavily on a stick and her face seemed to hang from the bones of her skull. She met my eyes and I knew that she knew everything. Skill linked as she was to Verity, she knew it all. "Get down from there. All of you, before you hurt yourselves."

We obeyed slowly and I slowest of all. Verity's joints ached and his body was weary. Kettle looked at me balefully when I finally stood beside her. "If you were going to do that, you might have put it in Verity's dragon instead," she pointed out.

"He wouldn't let me. You wouldn't let me."

"No. We wouldn't have. Let me tell you something, Fitz. You are going to miss what you gave away. You will recover some of the feelings in time, of course. All memories are connected, and like a man's skin, they can heal. In time, left to themselves, those memories would have stopped hurting you. You may someday wish you could call up that pain."

"I do not think so," I said calmly, to cover my own doubt. "I still have plenty of pain left."

Kettle lifted her old face to the night. She drew a long breath in through her nose. "Dawn comes," she said, as if she had scented it. "You must return to the dragon. To Verity's dragon. And you two," her head swiveled to regard the Fool and Nighteyes. "You two should go up to that lookout point and see if Regal's troops are in sight yet. Nighteyes, you let Fitz know what you see. Go on, both of you. And Fool. You leave Girl-on-a-Dragon alone after this. You would have to give her your entire life. And even then, it might not be enough. That being so, stop torturing yourself. And her. Go on, now!"

They went, but not without some backward looks. "Come on," Kettle ordered me tersely. She began to hobble back the way she had come. I followed, walking as stiffly as she, through the black and silver shadows of the blocks that littered the quarry. She looked every bit of her two hundred-odd years. I felt even older. Aching body, joints that caught and creaked. I lifted my hand and scratched my ear. Then I snatched it down, chagrined. Verity would have a silver ear now. Already the skin of it burned, and it seemed the distant night insects chirred more loudly now.

"I am sorry, by the way. About your Molly girl and all. I did try to tell you."