Assassin’s Fate

The morning after my wolf left me, I awoke and rubbed my sandy eyes. As I sat up, a terrible coughing spell took me. When I could gasp in a breath, I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. It left a smear of blood. I looked at it and a sad, sick certainty rose in me. Then, a terrible feeling in my mouth. Not pain. I would have preferred pain. I leaned forward and spat on the ground in front of me. Blood and saliva. And several pale squirming things, no thicker than a bowstring, no longer than a finger joint.

Oh.

I went to the pond, sucked in water, sloshed it through my mouth and spat on the ground. Another one.

Small bits of information tumbled and joined in my mind. An idea threatened me. The pale messenger that Bee and I had burned. I mulled over that memory and then denied it. Nighteyes had insisted that I had worms. I did. That was all. I crouched down to study the creature that had lived inside me. It was a kind I had not seen before, in man or beast. But that was all it was. Just a worm. I wondered if I could be lucky enough to find wild garlic or orangeroot growing nearby. Both were good for clearing parasites from the body. But a more practical plan would be to begin my journey to the ancient market and go from there to Buck. There would be healers there.

I scooped up more water in my hands and rubbed my face. When I dropped my hands, they were tinged pink. I touched my nostrils and looked at my fingers. No.

I touched my fingertips to my eyes. They came away red. And with the blood on my fingertips came a sickening certainty. The messenger had wept blood. She had said the worms the Servants had infected her with were eating her eyes. That she could scarcely see any more. I lifted my eyes and looked about me. I could still see.

But for how long?

I had two tasks every day that I performed faithfully. I gathered more firewood, and I went to the water to drink. I longed to go to the creek to fish, but my strength was failing me. Nosebleeds were a daily occurrence now, and my back and thighs were covered with small, itching sores. The only parts of my legs that were free of the sores were where the Silver had splashed me.

Too late I had come to agree with the wolf. I wished he would return to me so that I could tell him so. By the third day of his absence, the reduction in my stamina was something I could no longer argue with. My wolf was gone, and I knew I was never going home again. I’d made several attempts to Skill and failed at all of them. Perhaps it was the Silver on my body, or my general weakness, or the presence of so much Skill-stone around me. The reason didn’t matter. I was alone. And I had one last task to do. I had to prepare a stone for us. And hope that the wolf would return to share it with me.

Once Nighteyes had begun the carving with my handprint it did not occur to me that it would be anything other than a wolf. Daily I toiled on our ‘dragon’, my silver hand stroking the stone, as I gave it the memories Nighteyes and I shared. I was surprised to see that the wolf emerging from the stone stood with teeth bared and hackles raised. Were the two of us, together, truly so fierce of visage? Yet even as I poured in memories of hunts and shared kills, of wild romps in the snow and mice caught in an old hut, of porcupine quills pulled and his teeth pressing hard against my back as he sheared off an arrow-shaft, I knew that I did not have enough to fill this stone flesh. I knew that when it came time to draw my last breath, I would lean on this cold creature and pass into him. And remain here, mired in stone, just as Girl-on-a-Dragon had stood for so many decades of years.

I should have listened to him. I should have. If Nighteyes had been with me still, there might have been more of us to put into the wolf-dragon.

He had only the colours of the stone, and that bothered me. Before I died, I wanted to once more look into those wise eyes. I wanted, a last time, to see his glance catch the firelight and gleam green and startling. I began to sleep with my back against him, as we used to do. Not that the stone gave me any warmth, but in the hopes that my dreams might permeate it and help the wolf emerge more swiftly.

I woke in the night. There are two kinds of sleep when one is weak and cold. One is the kind where one pretends to sleep as one shivers and shifts and tries to clutch body warmth. I had wrapped my stolen cloak around me, covering my head to keep the gnats from my ears and eyes. Insects do love a dying animal. Then I had fallen into the second kind of sleep, the heavy sleep of exhaustion that cold and pain cannot break. That sleep, I think, is the precursor to death.

Thus I came out of it slowly and reluctantly, unsure of where dream gave way to reality. Voices. Scuffing footsteps. I struggled to untangle my head from its wrapping. I didn’t stand up. But I opened my eyes and blinked dully at the startling yellow glare of a swinging lantern coming toward me.

‘This way, I think,’ someone said.