Assassin's Quest

The strength of Will's Skill hit me in a buffeting wave just as the tip of Verity's blade came free of the scabbard. I staggered back a step and threw up my walls against him. He knew me well. That first wave had been compounded not just of fear, but of specific pains. They had been prepared especially for me. I knew again the shock of my broken nose, I felt the burn of my split face even if it did not stream hot blood down my chest as it once had. For a frozen heartbeat, all I could do was hold my walls against that crippling pain. The sword I gripped seemed suddenly made of lead. It sagged in my hand, its tip drooping toward the earth.

Burl's death saved me. In the moment that Nighteyes flung his lifeless body down, I saw that death lap against Will. His eyes sagged almost shut with the impact of it. The last member of his coterie was gone. I felt Will diminish abruptly, not just as Burl's Skill no longer supplemented his own, but as grief washed over him. I found in my mind an image of Carrod's rotting body and flung that at him for good measure. He staggered back.

"You've failed, Will!" I spat the words. "Verity's dragon has already risen. Even now it wings toward Buck. His queen rides with him, and she bears within her his heir. The rightful king will reclaim his throne and crown, he will scourge his coasts of Red-Ships and scour Regal's troops from the Mountains. No matter what you do here now, you are defeated." A strange smile twisted my mouth. "I win." Snarling, Nighteyes advanced to stand at my side.

Then Will's face changed. Regal looked at me out of his eyes. He was as unmoved by Burl's death as he would be by Will's. I sensed no grief, only anger at a lessening of his power. "Perhaps," he said with Will's voice, "perhaps then, all I should care for is killing you, Bastard. At whatever the cost." He smiled at me, the smile of a man who knows how the tumbling dice will fall before they land. I knew a moment of uncertainty and fear. I flung my walls up tighter against Will's insidious tactics.

"Do you really think a one-eyed swordsman has a fighting chance against my blade and my wolf, Regal? Or do you plan to throw his life away as casually as you have the rest of the coterie?" I flung the question in a faint hope of stirring discord between them.

"Why not?" Regal asked me calmly with Will's voice. "Or did you think I was truly as stupid as my brother, to be content with only one coterie?"

A wave of Skill struck me with the force of a wall of water. I staggered back before it, then regained myself and charged at Will. I'd have to kill him quickly. Regal had control of Will's Skill. He little cared what it would do to Will, how it might scorch him if he killed me with a Skillblast. I could feel him drawing up Skill power into himself. Yet even as I put all my heart into killing Will, Regal's words ate at me. Another coterie?

One-eyed or not, Will was fast. His blade was a part of him as he met my first thrust and turned it. I wished for an instant for the familiarity of my battered shortsword. Then I threw such thoughts aside as useless and thought only of breaking past his guard. The wolf moved swiftly past me, belly low, as he sought to close on Regal from Will's blind side.

"Three new coteries!" Will's voice gasped with effort as he parried my blade again. I slipped away from his thrust and tried to wrap his blade. He was too fast for that.

"Young, strong Skill users. To carve dragons of my own." A swiping slash whose breeze I felt. "Dragons at my beck, loyal to me. Dragons to bring down Verity, in blood and scales." He spun and darted a thrust at Nighteyes. The wolf leapt wildly away. I sprang in, but his blade was already back to meet mine. He fought with incredible speed. Another use of the Skill? Or a Skill-illusion he forced on me?

"Then they shall clear the Red-Ships. For me. And open the Mountain passes. The Mountains will be mine as well. I shall be a hero. No one will oppose me then." His blade struck mine hard, a jolt I felt in my shoulder. His words jolted me as well. They rang with truth and determination. Skill-imbued, they pounded against me with the solid force of hopelessness. "I shall master the Skill road. The ancient city will be my new capital. All my Skill users shall be drenched in the river's magic."

Another swipe at Nighteyes. It shaved a wisp of hair from his shoulder. And again that opening passed too swiftly for my own clumsy blade. I felt I stood shoulder-deep in water and fought a man whose blade was light as a straw. "Stupid Bastard! Did you truly think I cared about one pregnant whore, one dragon a-wing? The quarry itself is the true prize, the one you have left unguarded for me. The stuff from which a score, no, a hundred dragons shall rise! "