Assassin’s Fate

‘I don’t know. Most called you a son, or didn’t say what you were. In my dream, you were my brother.’ I heard him scratch some part of himself. ‘So Dwalia is right. My dream was small and not very correct.’ He sounded like a disappointed child hoping someone would disagree with him.

‘But you saw me and you did call me “brother”. Did anyone else dream that part?’

I had never known that silence could be slow, but his was. Satisfaction and vindication vied in his voice as he said, ‘No. No one else dreamed it.’

‘So perhaps you were the only one who could have found me, brother. No one else could have fulfilled that dream?’

‘Yes-s-s.’ He savoured the word.

This silence seemed a necessary pause in the world. A time for Vindeliar to possess something he had not realized belonged to him. I held it for as long as I could. Then I asked, ‘So, for the dream to be true and confirm the Path, it had to be you. But why did it have to be me?’

‘Because you are the one. The Unexpected Son. The one in so many dreams.’

‘Are you sure? Alaria and Reppin doubted it.’

‘You have to be! You must be.’ He sounded more desperate than certain.

He had called me the Unexpected Son when he first found me. I pried a bit more at that. ‘So, in your dream, you were the one to find the Unexpected Son. And it was me.’

‘I dreamed …’ His words trailed away. ‘I dreamed I found you. Dwalia needed to find the Unexpected Son.’ He sounded both frightened and angry as he said, ‘I wouldn’t have found you if she hadn’t been looking for him. She told me to look for him, and I found you and I knew you from my dream! So, you are the Unexpected Son.’ He gave a sharp huff of annoyance that I had doubted him.

He knew that his logic was flawed. I could not see him in the darkness to read his face. I spoke gently to avoid angering him. ‘But how? How do you know that when I do not know it?’

‘I know I dreamed you. I know I found you. There is not much White in me. Some mock me and say none at all. But if I were meant to do one thing, as a White, I was meant to find you. And I did.’ Satisfaction warmed those words. He yawned suddenly and his voice went soft at the edges. ‘When I am on the Path, I can feel it. It’s a nice feeling. Safe. You are not a true dreamer, so you would not know these things.’ He sighed. ‘It makes no sense to me. In all the dreams they quote at me, the Unexpected Son is the balancing point. Beyond him, all is orderly or all is chaos. At some point, you set us all on a false course. But the divergence created by the Unexpected Son may be full of terrible destruction. Or wondrous good. The course you create might lead toward a thousand possible futures that no one else could open …’ His voice dwindled away. He sighed. ‘I need to sleep now, brother. I cannot rest during the day. When Kerf is asleep is my only chance.’

‘Rest then, brother.’

I lay still and for the rest of the night I slept little and plotted much. I stacked up my precious bits of knowledge. Vindeliar had begun to deploy his powers against Dwalia. Controlling Kerf was wearying to him. He believed I was very important, and so perhaps, did Dwalia. But did she still think that I was the Unexpected Son? With a few kind words I had cheered Vindeliar. Might more conversation recruit him to my side? I built a fragile hope. If Vindeliar would aid me we could flee Dwalia in the next port. Surely he could use his magic to smooth my journey home. I smiled, imagining riding up the carriageway to Withywoods. Perseverance would come to meet me. Perhaps my father, too, and Revel would open the door and come down the …

But Revel was dead. The stables were burned. Scribe Lant was dead, and maybe Per too. I wondered again if Shun had survived and reached home? She had proven herself far tougher than I had imagined her to be. If she had, would she have told them how they took me through a stone? And if she did, would they try to follow and find me? My heart knew a lurch of hope. My father knew how to travel through the stones. Surely he would come after me!

I curled into a smaller huddle on the floor. A worry tugged at me. Could he guess that we had entered the stone again? The scent of my mother’s candle tucked in the front of my shirt reached me. For a moment, it was comfort. Then it was alarm followed by certainty. I’d found the candle because my father had brought it there. Shun had reached home, she’d told him where they had taken me, and he had followed. Followed and somehow passed me in the stone. He had dropped this candle. Dropped it, and never picked it up again? I thought of the scatter of possessions I’d found, the tattered remnants of a tent. The bear scat! Had he been attacked there? Had he died? Were his scattered bones sunken in the deep moss under the trees?

I reached for Wolf Father. If my father was dead, would you know?