Fool’s Assassin

She nodded tightly, and took several of her purchases from my laden arms. Together we walked through the market toward the inn. Our little two-wheeled cart was drawn up outside. I’d stabled our horse, rather hoping that we’d spend the night there. As I put the rest of her purchases under the seat, I said, “You don’t have to rush back home, you know. You can stay and enjoy the rest of the market day.”

She sighed. “No. I’ll call the ostler to have our horse brought out. I didn’t come for the market, Fitz. I came for a day with you. And that’s over. If we go home now, you can be on your way before evening.”

I cleared my throat and broke the news to her. “It’s too urgent for that. I’ll have to use the stone on Gallows Hill.”

She stared at me, her mouth ajar. I met that gaze, trying to hide my own fear. “I wish you wouldn’t,” she said breathlessly.

“I wish I didn’t have to.”

A time longer, her eyes searched my face. For an instant she folded her faded lips and I thought she would argue with me. Then she said stiffly, “Fetch the horse. I’ll drive you there.”

It was an easy walk, but I didn’t argue. She wanted to be there. She wanted to watch me enter the stone and disappear from her sight. She had never seen me do it, and had never wanted to see me do it. But if I must, she would watch me go. I knew her thoughts. It might be the last time she’d ever see me, if my Skill went awry. I offered her the only comfort I could. “I’ll have Nettle send a bird from Buckkeep as soon as I’m safely there. So you needn’t worry.”

“Oh, I’ll worry. For a day and a half, until the bird reaches me. It’s what I’m best at.”

The shadows had just begun to lengthen when I handed her down from the cart at the top of Gallows Hill. She held my hand as we walked the steep trail to the top. Oaksbywater didn’t boast a circle of standing stones as Buckkeep did. There was only the old gallows, the splintery gray wood baking in the summer sunlight with daisies growing incongruously and cheerfully all round the legs of it. And behind it, on the very crest of the hill, the single standing stone, gleaming black and veined with silver: memory stone. It was easily the height of three men. It had five faces, and each had a single glyph chiseled into it. Since we had discovered the true use of the standing stones, King Dutiful had sent out teams of men to clean each stone and record its glyphs and orientation. Each glyph signified a destination. Some we now knew; most we did not. Even after a decade of studying scrolls about the forgotten Skill-magic, most practitioners regarded travel via the portal stones as dangerous and debilitating.

Molly and I circled the stone together, looking up at it. The sun was shining into my eyes when I saw the glyph that would take me to the Witness Stones near Buckkeep. I stared at it, feeling fear form cold in my belly. I did not want to do this. I had to.

The stone stood black and still, beckoning me like a pond of water on a hot summer day. And like a deep pool, it could pull me into its depths and drown me forever.

“Come back to me as soon as you can,” Molly whispered. And then she flung her arms around me and held me in a fierce hug. She spoke into my chest. “I hate the days when we must be parted. I hate the duties that still tug at you, and I hate how always they seem to tear us apart. I hate your dashing off at a moment’s notice to do them.” She spoke the words savagely and each was a small knife plunged into me. Then she added, “But I love that you are the kind of man who still does what he must do. Our daughter calls, and you go to her. As we both know you must.” She took a deep breath and shook her head at her flash of temper. “Fitz, Fitz, I am still so jealous of every minute of your time. And as I age, it seems that I wish to cling to you more, not less. But go. Go do what you must and come back to me as quickly as ever you can. But not by the stones. Come back to me safely, my dear.”

Simple words, and to this day, I do not know why they bolstered my courage as they did. I held her closer to me and stiffened my own spine. “I’ll be fine,” I assured her. “The time I was lost in the stones, it was only because I’d used them so often in the days before. This will be easy. I’ll step in here and stumble out by the Witness Stones above Buckkeep Town. And first thing I’ll have a bird sent to Withywoods to tell you I’m there.”

“And it will take at least a day to get here. But I’ll be watching for it.”