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.'
He released me. 'Good-bye, boy,' he said gruffly, and stooped to kiss me on the forehead. It was farewell. He didn't expect to see me alive again.
That made two of us.
He left me there, and before even I heard the grate of stone on stone, I felt the working of the carris seed. I had had the seed before, at Springfest when everyone does. A tiny pinch of it sprinkled across the top of a sugar cake brings a merry giddiness to the heart. Burrich had warned me that some dishonest horse traders fed their charges carris oil on their grain, for the purpose of winning a race, or to make a sick horse show well at an auction. He had also warned me that a horse so treated was often never the same beast again. If he survived. I knew Chade had used it, on occasion, and I had seen him drop like a stone when the effects wore off. Yet I did not hesitate. Perhaps, I conceded briefly, perhaps Burrich was right about me. The ecstasy of the Skill, or the frantic flush and heat of the hunt. Did I taunt self-destruction, or did I desire it? I did not worry about it for long. The carris seed took me. My strength was as the strength of ten, and my heart soared like an eagle. I sprang to my feet. I started for the door, then turned back.
I knelt before my dead king. I lifted his knife, held it before my brow as I swore to him, 'This blade shall take your vengeance.' I kissed his hand and left him there before the fire.
If I had thought the candles spitting blue sparks were unnerving, then the blue glow of the torches in the hall were otherworldly. It was like looking down through still deep water. I sprinted down the hall, giggling to myself. Below, I could hear a clamor, with Wallace's voice raised shrill above the rest. Blue flames and the Pocked Man, he was yammering. Not as much time had passed as I had thought, and now time waited for me. Light as the wind I darted down the hall. I found a door that would open and slipped within. I waited. They took forever to come up the stairs, even longer to go past my door. I let them reach the King's chamber, and when I heard the shouts of alarm begin, I sprang from my hiding place and dashed down the stairs.
Someone shouted after me as I fled, but no one gave chase. I was to the bottom of the stairs before I heard someone finally give the order to catch me. I laughed aloud. As if they could! Buckkeep Castle was a warren of back ways and servants' passages for a boy who had grown up there. I knew where I was going, but I didn't go there directly. Like a fox I ran, appearing briefly in the Great Hall, dashing across the cobbles of the washing courts, terrifying Cook with my frantic dash through her kitchens. And always, always, the pale Skill fingers plucked and fingered me, not knowing at all that I was coming, coming, my dears, coming to find you.
Galen, born and raised in Farrow, had always hated the sea. He feared it, I think, and so his chamber had been on the side of the Keep that faced the mountains. After he had died, I had heard it had become a shrine to him. Serene had taken over his bedchamber, but kept his sitting room as a gathering place for the coterie. I had never visited his rooms, but I knew the way. I took the steps up like an arrow in flight, whisked down the hall past a couple in a heated embrace and stopped at a heavy door banded with iron. But a thick door that is not properly barred is no barrier at all, and in moments this one swung open to my touch.
There was a semicircle of chairs set up around a tall table. A fat candle burned in the center of it. For focus, I imagined. Only two of the chairs were occupied. Justin and Serene sat side by side, hands clasped, eyes closed, heads lolled back in the throes of Skilling. No Will. I had hoped to find him here as well.
For the barest instant I looked at their faces. Perspiration gleamed on them, and I was flattered that they put so much effort to breaking down my walls. Their mouths twitched in small smiles, resisting the ecstasy of the Skill user, focusing on the object rather than on the pleasure of the pursuit. I did not hesitate. 'Surprise!' I said softly. I jerked Serene's head back and pulled the King's blade across her exposed throat. She jerked once, and I let her fall to the floor. There was a remarkable amount of blood.
Justin leaped to his feet with a shriek and I braced myself for his onslaught. He fooled me, though. He fled squealing down the hall and I followed, knife in hand. He sounded just like a pig, and he was incredibly fast. No fox tricks for Justin, he favored the most direct route to the Great Hall, shrieking all the way. I laughed as I ran. Even now it seems to me incredible to recall that, but I cannot deny it. Did he suppose Regal would draw sword to defend him? Did he think, having killed my king, that anything in the world could stand between me and him?
In the Great Hall, musicians had been playing and folk dancing, but Justin's entrance put an end to that. I had gained on him, so that there were scarce a score of steps between us when he caromed into one of the laden tables. Folk were still standing shocked at his entrance when I leaped on him and pulled him down. I punched the knife in and out of him half a dozen times before anyone thought they should interfere. As Regal's Farrow-bred
