Royal Assassin - Страница 129

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The Fool and I were both struck dumb for an instant.

“Ah, no!” the Fool cried softly, while I said, “My King, you are but tired.”

“And the only thing I shall get is more tired.” There was a strange lucidity in his eyes. The boy King I had touched briefly when we Skilled together looked out at me from that painracked body. “My body fails me. My son has become a serpent. Regal knows his brother lives. He knows the crown he wears is not rightfully his. I did not think he would . . . I thought at the last, he would think better . . .” Tears welled in his ancient eyes. I had thought to save my King from a disloyal Prince. I should have known there was no saving a father from the betrayal of a son. He reached a hand toward me, a hand gone from a muscled sword holder to a gaunt and yellowed claw. “I would say farewell to Verity. I would have him know, from me, that I did not countenance any of this. Let me at least keep that much faith with the son who kept faith with me.” He pointed to a spot by his feet. “Come, Fitz. Take me to him.”

There was no refusing that command. I did not hesitate. I came and knelt before him. The Fool stood behind him, tears cutting gray paths through the black-and-white paint on his face. “No,” he whispered urgently. “My King, rise, let us go into hiding. There you may think this through. You need not decide this now.”

Shrewd paid him no mind. I felt Shrewd’s hand settle on my shoulder. I opened my strength to him, sorrowfully surprised that I had at last learned how to do that at will. We plunged together into the black Skill river. We turned in that current as I waited for him to give us direction. Instead, he suddenly embraced me. Son of my son, blood of my blood. In my own way, I have loved you.

My King.

My young assassin. What have I made of you? How have I twisted my own flesh? You do not know how young you still are. Chivalry’s son, it is not too late to grow straight again. Lift up your head. See beyond all this.

I had spent my life becoming what he wished me to be. These words now filled me with confusion and questions there was no time to answer. I could feel his strength fading.

Verity, I whispered to remind him.

I felt him reach out, and steadied that reaching for him. I felt the brush of Verity’s presence, and then a sudden dwindling of the King. I groped after him as one would dive after a drowning man in deep water. I seized his consciousness, held it to me, but it was like gripping a shadow. He was a boy in my arms, frightened and struggling against he knew not what.

Then he was gone.

Like a bubble popping.

I had thought I had glimpsed the frailty of life when I held the dead child in my arms. Now I knew it. Here, and then not here. Even a snuffed candle may leave a trailing wisp of smoke. My King was simply gone.

But I was not alone.

I think every child has flipped over the dead bird found in the woods, only to be shocked and terrified by the busy workings of the maggots on the underside. Fleas cluster thickest and ticks grow fattest on a dying dog. Justin and Serene, like sucking leeches forsaking a dying fish, rose and tried to fasten to me. Here, the source of their increased strength and the King’s slow failing. Here the mist that had clouded his mind and filled his days with weariness. Galen, their master, had made Verity his target. But he had missed his kill, and instead met his own death. How long these had been fastened to the King, how long they had sucked Skill strength from him, I would never know. They would have been privy to all he Skilled through me to Verity. Much was suddenly made clear to me, but it was all too late. They closed on me, and I had no concept of how to evade them. I felt them fasten to me, knew they were drawing off my strength now, and that with no reason to refrain from it, they would kill me in moments.

Verity, I cried out, but I was already too weakened. I would never reach him.

Off him, curs! A familiar snarl, and then Nighteyes repelled through me. I did not think it would work, but as before, he forced the Wit weapon upon them through the channel the Skill had opened. The Wit and the Skill were two different things, as unlike as reading and singing, or swimming and riding a horse. Yet when they were linked to me by the Skill, they must have been vulnerable to this other magic. I felt them repulsed from me, but there were two of them to withstand the impact of Nighteyes’ attack. It would not defeat them both.

Up and run! Flee those you cannot fight!

I found it a wise suggestion. Fear drove me back into my own body and I slammed the guards of my mind closed to their Skill touch. When I could, I opened my eyes. I lay on the floor of the King’s study, gasping, while above me the Fool had thrown his body across the King’s and was wildly weeping. I felt the creeping tendrils of the Skill sense groping after me. I withdrew deep into myself, shielded frantically in the way Verity had taught me. And still I felt their presence, like ghostly fingers plucking at my clothes, trailing down my skin. It filled me with revulsion.

“You’ve killed him, you’ve killed him! You’ve killed my King, you rotten traitor!” the Fool shrieked at me.

“No! It was not I!” I could barely gasp out the words.

To my horror Wallace stood in the door, taking in the whole scene with wild eyes. Then he lifted his glance and screamed aloud in horror. He dropped the armful of wood he had brought. Both the Fool and I turned our heads.

Standing in the door of the King’s bedchamber was the Pocked Man. Even knowing it was Chade, I still knew one moment of hair-raising terror. He was dressed in tattered grave clothes, smeared with earth and mildew. His long gray hair hung in filthy locks about his face, and he had smeared his skin with ash that the livid scars might stand out the better. He lifted a slow hand to point at Wallace. The man screamed, and then fled shrieking down the halls. His yammering for the guards echoed through the Keep.

“What goes on here?” Chade demanded as soon as Wallace had fled. He crossed to his brother in a single stride, laid long thin fingers across the King’s throat. I knew what he would find. I clambered painfully to my feet.

“He’s dead. I DID NOT KILL HIM!” My shout cut across the Fool’s rising wail. The Skill fingers plucked at me insistently. “I go to kill those who did. Take the Fool to safety. Have you the Queen?”

Chade’s eyes were very wide. He stared at me as if he had never seen me before. All the candles in the room went suddenly to sputtering blue. It seemed only fitting. “Get her to safety,” I ordered my master. “And see the Fool goes with her. If he stays here, he’s dead. Regal will let no one live who has been in this room tonight.”

“No! I will not leave him!” The Fool’s eyes were wide and empty as a mad thing.

“Take him however you can, Chade! His life depends on it!” I grabbed the Fool by the shoulders and shook him savagely. His head whipped back and forth on his thin neck. “Go with Chade and be silent. Be silent, if you want your king’s death avenged. For that is what I go to do.” A sudden tremor ran over me and the world rocked, black at the edges. “Elfbark!” I gasped. “I need elfbark from you. Then flee!” I thrust the Fool into Chade’s arms, and the old man took him in his ropy grasp. It was like watching him taken into the arms of death. They left the room, Chade propelling the weeping Fool along. After a moment I heard the barest grating of stone on stone. I knew they were gone.

I sank to my knees, then could not keep from toppling. I fetched up against my dead king’s lap. His cooling hand fell from the chair arm to rest atop my head.

“A stupid time for tears,” I said aloud to the empty room. But that did not stop them. Blackness swirled at the edge of my vision. The ghostly Skill fingers plucked at my walls, scraping at the mortar, trying every stone. I pushed at them, but they came right back. The way Chade had looked at me, I suddenly doubted that he would be back. Still. I took a breath.

Nighteyes. Guide them to the fox’s den. I showed him the shed they would emerge from and where they must go. It was all I could manage.

My brother?

Guide them, my heart! I pushed him feebly away, and felt him go. Still the foolish tears tracked down my face. I reached to steady myself. My hand fell at the King’s waist. I opened my eyes, forced my vision to clear. His knife. Not some jeweled dagger, but the simple knife that every man carries at his waist, for the simple day-to-day tasks he does. I took a breath, then pulled it from its sheath. I held it in my lap and looked at it. An honest blade, honed thin from years of use. A handle of antler, probably carved once, but worn smooth with the grip of his hand. I ran my fingers lightly over it, and they found what my eyes could no longer read. Hod’s sign. The weaponsmaster had made this for her King. And he had used it well.

A memory tickled at the back of my mind. “We are tools,” Chade had told me. I was the tool he had forged for the King. The King had looked at me, and wondered, What have I made of you? I did not need to wonder. I was the King’s assassin. In more ways than one. But I would see that I served him as I had been intended, one last time.

Someone crouched beside me. Chade. I turned my head slowly to look at him. “Carris seed,” he told me. “No time to prepare elfbark. Come. Let me take you into hiding as well.”

“No.” I took the small cake of carris seed compressed with honey. I put the whole thing in my mouth and chewed, grinding the seed between my back teeth to release the full strength. I swallowed. “Go,” I bid him. “I have a task, and so have you. Burrich is waiting. The alarm will be raised soon. Get the Queen away quickly, while you have a chance of getting ahead of the hunt. I will keep them busy.”

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