Royal Assassin

It was a wintry fall evening when she first broached the subject to me. I was up on the tower top with her, helping her to tie bundles of straw about the more tender of the plants there, that they might better withstand the winter snows. This was something Patience had decreed must be done, and she and Lacey were performing the same task on a bed of windbower plants behind me. She had become a frequent adviser to Queen Kettricken in matters of growing things, albeit a very timid one. Little Rosemary was at my elbow, handing me twine as we needed it. Two or three of Kettricken's other ladies, well bundled, had stayed, but they were at the other end of the garden, talking quietly together. The others she had dismissed back to their hearths when she had noted them shivering and blowing on their fingers. My bare hands were near numb, as were my ears, but Kettricken seemed perfectly comfortable. As was Verity, tucked away somewhere inside my skull. He had insisted that I start carrying him again after he had discovered that once more I was going out after Forged ones alone. I scarcely noticed his presence in the back of my mind anymore. Yet I believe that I felt him startle when Kettricken asked me, as she knotted a string about a bundled plant I was supporting, what I knew of the Elderlings.

"Little enough, my lady queen," I replied honestly, and once more made a promise to myself to go through the long-neglected manuscripts and scrolls.

"Why not?" she demanded.

"Well, little was actually written about them. I believe at one time a knowledge of them was so common as not to need writing down. And the bits that are written about them are scattered here and there, not gathered in one place. It would take a scholar to track down all the remnants ...."

"A scholar like the Fool?" she asked tartly. "He seems to know more of them than anyone else I have asked."

"Well. He is fond of reading, you know, and-"

"Enough of the Fool. I wish to speak to you of the Elderlings," she said abruptly.

I startled at her tone, but found her staring, gray-eyed, out over the sea once more. She had not intended either a rebuke or a rudeness. She was simply intent upon her objective. I reflected that in my months away she had become more certain of herself. More queenly.

"I know a little bit," I offered hesitantly.

"As do I. Let us see if what each of us knows agrees. I shall begin."

"As you wish, my queen."

She cleared her throat. "Long ago, King Wisdom was bitterly besieged by raiders from the sea. When all else had failed him, and he feared that the next summer of kind weather would bring the end of the Six Duchies and House Farseer, he resolved to spend the winter searching for a legendary folk. The Elderlings. Do we agree so far?"

"Mostly. As I have heard it, the legends called them not a folk, but near gods. And the folk of the Six Duchies had always believed Wisdom something of a religious fanatic, almost a madman where such things were concerned."

"Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad," she calmly informed me. "I shall continue. He left his castle one fall, with no more information than that the Elderlings resided in the Rain Wilds beyond the tallest mountains of the Mountain Kingdom. Somehow, he found them, and he won their alliance. He returned to Buckkeep, and together they drove the raiders and invaders away from the coasts of the Six Duchies. Peace and trade were reestablished. And the Elderlings swore to him that if they were ever needed again, they would return. Do we still agree?"

"As before, mostly. I have heard many minstrels say that the ending is a standard one in tales of heroes and quests. Always, they promise that if ever they are needed again, they will return. Some even pledge to return from beyond the grave if they must."

"Actually," Patience suddenly observed, rocking back on her heels, "Wisdom himself never returned to Buckkeep. The Elderlings came to his daughter, Princess Mindful, and it was to her they offered allegiance."

"Whence do you have that knowledge?" Kettricken demanded.

Patience shrugged. "An old minstrel my father used to have always sang it that way." Unconcerned, she went back to knotting twine about a straw-bundled plant.

Kettricken considered a moment. The wind teased loose a long lock of her hair and blew it across her face like a net. She looked at me through the pale web. "It doesn't matter what the tales say about their returning. If a King once sought them, and they gave aid, do you not think they might do so again, if a King again beseeched them? Or a Queen?"

"Perhaps," I said grudgingly. Privately I wondered if the Queen longed for her homeland and would make any excuse for a visit there. Folk were beginning to talk about her lack of pregnancy. While many ladies attended her now, she really had no favorites that were genuinely her friends. Lonely, I suspected. "I think ..." I began gently, pausing to consider how to frame a discouraging reply.