Assassin’s Fate

In the long, heaving nights, I thought of Verity and how he had used his Skill to defend the Six Duchies. Even at a distance, he had been able to find the OutIslander ships and influence their captains and navigators. How many had he sent into the teeth of a storm, or onto the rocks? How had he felt to use the power of his magic to kill so many? Had it bothered him? Was that why he had seized on the wisp of an old legend and gone off into the Mountains in search of Elderling allies?

The night we reached Furnich, I conveyed to the captain and crew that they had done a great kindness, something to be proud of. I left them looking puzzled but rather pleased with themselves. Motley settled on my shoulder. ‘Home,’ she reminded me, and I took strength from that word.

Furnich was a dreary town of bad smells and sour folk. Turning cattle into meat and leather is a messy business but it did not need to be as squalid as Furnich made it. The town was dirty and the air tasted of hopelessness. It crouched in low, ill-kept buildings all around the bay. On the hill above it, I could see the tumbled ruins of what had been an Elderling city. It had obviously been deliberately destroyed. I hoped that no more destruction had been done to the Skill-pillar than the last time Prilkop and the Fool had used it. The Fool had described it as nearly toppled. But if there was any room to wriggle under it, I would take my opportunity and hope that it would take me back to Kelsingra.

There is a danger in using the stones.

Wolf, there is a danger in delaying my return, and I fear that is greater.

I felt his doubt and tried not to be prey to it. As I plodded through the town, I was hungry but saw no tavern where I wanted to eat. They seemed deceitful and untrustworthy places. I would go straight to the Elderling city, find the Skill-stone, and leave this disgusting place. The aura of ugliness was like a stench in the air. In Kelsingra, they would know me. There would be food and kindness there. This place had never known kindness.

I stopped to breathe and leaned against the wall of a stable. My feeling of despair was like a wind that swept through me. The intensity of it was oddly familiar, as was the buzzing in my ears.

Here they betrayed us. For years, they deceived us and pretended to be our friends, and then, when need was upon us and we fled here, they slaughtered us. They ended us as they ended the dragons and even the serpents in the sea.

For a moment, I saw them. The Elderlings ran through the streets, seeking a safety that did not exist. They had fled the collapse of their cities and come here, to an outlying settlement where the air was not poisonous and laden with ash. But as they emerged from the portal stones, hired soldiers were waiting to kill them. For the Servants had known that their cities would shake and fall, had known that both dragons and Elderlings would flee here. To end the dragons, they must end the Elderlings as well.

And they had.

The memories of that bloody betrayal had sunk into the memory-stone of their city. When later generations had salvaged the stone of the Elderling city to build Furnich they had salvaged the horror and betrayal as well. Small wonder that the folk of Furnich regarded the black stone ruins with hatred. The closer I came to the ruined villas on the hillside, the deeper and darker the memories flowed. Skill and Silver writhed in me and I staggered through a flow of ghosts. Men and women shouted and screamed, children lay dead or bleeding in the streets. I threw up my walls to deaden the horror.

Kelsingra was a fountain of Elderling memories of festivals and markets and joyous times. Here the stones had drunk up the blood and the deaths of the Elderlings who had raised them. That terrible legacy of fear and despair had been passed down for generations. Any merry or peaceful memories had been quenched in blood.

I did not know the name of this Elderling town. Grass was trying to grow between the broken paving stones, but too much memory-stone had been used. The streets recalled that they had been streets and did not allow the grass to flourish. Everywhere I saw the signs of hammers and chisels, toppled statues deliberately broken to pieces, fountains destroyed, building walls pulled down.

Where would the standing pillars have been? In the centre of the town, as they were in Kelsingra? Atop a tower? Within a market square?