Farseer 1 - Assassin's Apprentice

by Robin Hobb

  I opened my eyes to night. I knew not which one.

  Burrich sat next to me still, undozing, not even slumped in his chair. I felt the strictures of bandaging on my ribs. I lifted a hand to touch it, but was baffled by two splinted fingers. Burrich's eyes followed my motion. "They were swollen with more than cold. Too swollen for me to tell if they were breaks, or just sprains. I splinted them in case. I suspect they're just sprained. I think if they were broken, the pain of my working on them would have wakened even you.

  He spoke calmly, as if telling me that he had purged a new dog for worms as a preventive against contagion. And just as his steady voice and calm touch had worked on a frantic animal, so it worked on me. I relaxed, thinking that if he were calm, not much could be wrong. He slipped a finger under the bandages supporting my ribs, checking the tightness. "What happened?" he asked, and turned aside from me to pick up a cup of tea as he spoke, as if the question and my answer were of no great import.

  I pushed my mind back over the last few weeks, tried to find a way to explain. Events danced in my mind, slipped away from me. I remembered only defeat. "Galen tested me," I said slowly. "I failed. And he punished me for it." And with my words, a wave of dejection, shame, and guilt swept over me, washing away the brief comfort I had taken in the familiar surroundings. On the hearth, a sleeping Smithy abruptly waked and sat up. Reflexively, I quieted him before he could whine. Lay down. Rest. It's all right. To my relief, he did so. And to my greater relief, Burrich seemed unaware of what had passed between us. He offered me the cup.

  "Drink this. You need water in you, and the herbs will deaden the pain and let you sleep. Drink it all, now."

  "It stinks," I told him, and he nodded, and held the cup my hands were too bruised to curl around. I drank it all and then lay back.

  "That was all?" he asked carefully, and I knew to what he referred. "He tested you on a thing he had taught you, and you did not know it. So he did this to you?"

  "I could not do it. I didn't have the ... self-discipline. So he punished me." Details eluded me. Shame washed over me, drowning me in misery.

  "No one is taught self-discipline by beating him half to death." Burrich spoke carefully, stating the truth for an idiot. His movements were very precise as he set the cup back on the table.

  "It was not to teach me ... I don't think he believes I can be taught. It was to show the others what would happen if they failed."

  "Very little worth knowing is taught by fear," Burrich said stubbornly. And, more warmly: "It's a poor teacher who tries to instruct by blows and threats. Imagine taming a horse that way. Or a dog. Even the most knot-headed dog learns better from an open hand than a stick."

  "You've struck me before, when trying to teach me something."

  "Yes. Yes, I have. But to jolt, or warn, or awaken. Not to damage. Never to break a bone or blind an eye or cripple a hand. Never. Never say to anyone that I've struck you, or any creature in my care, that way, for it's not true." He was indignant that I could even have suggested it.

  "No. You're right about that." I tried to think how I could make Burrich understand why I had been punished. "But this was different, Burrich. A different kind of learning, a different kind of teaching." I felt compelled to defend Galen's justice. I tried to explain. "I deserved this, Burrich. The fault was not with his teaching. I failed to learn. I tried. I did try. But like Galen, I believe there is a reason the Skill is not taught to bastards. There is a taint in me, a fatal weakness."

  "Horseshit."

  "No. Think on it, Burrich. If you breed a scrub mare to a fine stud, the colt you get is as likely to get the weakness of the mother as the fineness of the father."

  The silence was long. Then: "I doubt much that your father would have laid down beside a woman that was a `scrub.' Without some fineness, some sign of spirit or intelligence, he would not. He could not."

  "I've heard it said he was tranced by a mountain witch woman." For the first time I repeated a tale I'd heard whispered often.

  "Chivalry was not a man to fall for such magicry. And his son is not some sniveling, weak-spirited fool that lies about and whines that he deserved a beating." He leaned closer, gently prodded just below my temple. A blast of pain rocked my consciousness. "That's how near you were to losing an eye to this `teaching.' " His temper was rising, and I kept my mouth closed. He took a quick turn around the room, then spun to face me.

  "That puppy. He's from Patience's bitch, isn't he?"

  "Yes."

  "But you haven't ... oh, Fitz, please tell me that it wasn't your using the Wit that brought this on you. If he did this to you for that, there's not a word I can say to anyone, or an eye I can meet anywhere in the keep or the whole kingdom."

  "No, Burrich. I promise you, this had nothing to do with the pup. It was my failure to learn what I had been taught. My weakness."

  "Quiet," he ordered me impatiently. "Your word is enough. I know you well enough to know your promise will always be true. But for the rest, you're making no sense at all. Go back to sleep. I'm going out, but I'll be back soon enough. Get some rest. It's the real healer."

  A purpose had settled on Burrich. My words seemed to have finally satisfied him, settled something for him. He dressed quickly, pulling on boots, changing his shirt for a loose one, and putting only a leather jerkin over it. Smithy stood and whined anxiously as Burrich went out, but could not convey his worry to me. Instead, he came to the bedside and scrabbled up, to burrow into the covers beside me and comfort me with his trust. In the bleak despair that settled over me, he was my only light. I closed my eyes and Burrich's herbs sank me into a dreamless sleep.

  I awoke later that afternoon. A gust of cold air preceded Burrich's entry into the room. He checked me over, casually prying open my eyes and then running competent hands down my ribs and over my other bruises. He grunted his satisfaction, then changed his torn and muddied shirt for a fresh one. He hummed as he did so, seeming in a fine mood much at odds with my bruises and depression. It was almost a relief when he left again. Below, I heard him whistling and calling orders to the stable boys. It all sounded so normal and workaday and I longed for it with' an intensity that surprised me. I wanted that back, the warm smell of the horses and dogs and straw, the simple tasks, done well and completely, and the good sleep of exhaustion at the end of a day. I longed for it, but the worthlessness that filled me now predicted that even at that, I would fail. Galen had often sneered at those who worked such simple jobs about the keep. He had only contempt for the kitchen maids and cooks, derision for the stable boys, and the men-at-arms who guarded us with sword and bow, were, in his words, "ruffians and dolts, doomed to flail away at the world, and control with a sword what they can't master with their minds." So now I was strangely torn. I longed to return to being what Galen had convinced me was contemptible, yet doubt and despair filled me that I could even do so much as that.

  I was abed for two days. A jovial Burrich tended me with banter and good nature that I could not fathom. There was a briskness to his step and a sureness to him that made him seem a much younger man. It added to my dispiritedness that my injuries put him in such fine fettle. But after two days of bed rest, Burrich informed me that only so much stillness was good for a man, and it was time I was up and moving if I wished to heal well. And he proceeded to find me many minor chores to perform, none heavy enough to tax my strength, but more than enough to keep me busy, for I had to rest often. I believe that the busyness was what he was after rather than any exercise for me, for all I had done was to lie in bed and look at the wall and despise myself. Faced with my unrelenting depression, even Smithy had begun to turn aside from his food. Yet Smithy remained my only real source of comfort. Following me about the stable was the purest enjoyment he'd ever had. Every scent and sight he relayed to me with an intensity that, despite my bleakness, renewed in me the wonder I had first felt when I'd plunged into Burrich's world. Smithy was savagely possessive of me as well, challenging even Sooty's right to sniff
me, and earning himself a snap from Vixen that sent him yipping and cowering to my heels.

  I begged the next day free for myself and went into Buckkeep Town. The walk took me longer than it had ever taken me before, but Smithy rejoiced in my slow pace, for it gave him time to snuff his way around every clump of grass and tree on the way. I had thought that seeing Molly would lift my spirits, and give me some sense of my own life again. But when I got to the chandlery, she was busy at first, filling three large orders for outbound ships. I sat by the hearth in the shop. Her father sat opposite me, drinking and glaring at me. Although his illness had weakened him, it had not changed his temperament, and on days when he was well enough to sit up, he was well enough to drink. After a while I gave up all pretense at conversation, and simply watched him drink and disparage his daughter as Molly bustled frantically about, trying to be both efficient and hospitable to her customers. The dreary pettiness of it all depressed me.

  At noon she told her father she was closing the shop while she went to deliver an order. She gave me a rack of candles to carry, loaded her own arms, and we left, latching the door behind us. Her father's drunken imprecations followed us, but she ignored them. Once outside in the brisk winter wind, I followed Molly as she walked quickly to the back of the shop. Motioning for my silence, she opened the back door and set all that she carried inside. My rack of candles, too, was unloaded there, and then we left.

  For a bit we just wandered through the town, talking little. She commented on my bruised face; I said only that I had fallen. The wind was cold and relentless, so the market stalls were near empty, of both customers and vendors. She paid much attention to Smithy, and he reveled in it. On our walk back, we stopped at a tea shop, and she treated me to mulled wine and made so much of Smithy that he fell over on his back and all his thoughts turned into wallowing in her affection. I was struck suddenly by how clearly Smithy was aware of her feelings, and yet she did not sense his at all, except on the shallowest level. I quested gently toward her, but found her elusive and drifting today, like a perfume that comes strong and then faint on the same breath of wind. I knew that I could have pushed more insistently against her, but somehow it seemed pointless. An aloneness settled on me, a deadly melancholy that she never had been and never would be any more aware of me than she was of Smithy. So I took her brief words to me as a bird pecks at dry bread crumbs and let alone the silences she curtained between us. Soon she said that she could not tarry long, or it would be the worse for her, for if her father no longer had the strength to strike her, he was still capable of smashing his beer mug on the floor or knocking over racks of things to show his displeasure at being neglected. She smiled an odd little smile as she told me this, as if it would be less appalling if somehow we thought of his behavior as amusing. I couldn't smile and she looked away from my face.

  I helped her with her cloak and we left, walking uphill and into the wind. And that suddenly seemed a metaphor for my whole life. At her door, she shocked me with a hug and a kiss on the corner of my jaw, the embrace so brief that it was almost like being bumped in the market. "Newboy ..." she said, and then, "Thank you. For understanding."

  And then she whisked into her shop and shut the door behind her, leaving me chilled and bewildered. She thanked me for understanding her at a time when I had never felt more isolated from her, and everyone else. All the way up to the keep Smithy kept prattling to himself about all the perfumes he'd smelt on her and how she had scratched him just where he could never reach in front of his ears and of the sweet biscuit she'd fed him in the tea shop.

  It was midafternoon when we got back to the stables. I did a few chores and then went back up to Burrich's room, where Smithy and I fell asleep. I awoke to Burrich standing over me, a slight frown on his face.

  "Up, and let's have a look at you," he commanded, and I arose wearily and stood quiet while he went over my injuries with deft hands. He was pleased with the condition of my hand and told me that it might go unbandaged now, but to keep the wrapping about my ribs and to come back to have it adjusted each evening. "As for the rest of it, keep it clean and dry, and don't pick at the scabs. If any of it starts to fester, come and see me." He filled a little pot with an unguent that eased sore muscles and gave it to me, by which I deduced that he expected me to leave.

  I stood holding the little pot of medicine. A terrible sadness welled up in me, and yet I could find no words to say. Burrich looked at me, scowled, and turned away. "Now stop that," he commanded me angrily.

  "What?" I asked.

  "You look at me sometimes with my lord's eyes," he said quietly, and then as sharply as before, "Well, what did you think to do? Hide in the stables the rest of your life? No. You have to go back. You have to go back and hold up your head and eat your meals among the keep folk, and sleep in your own room, and live your own life. Yes, and go finish those damn lessons in the Skill."

  His first commands had sounded difficult, but the last, I knew, was impossible.

  "I can't," I said, not believing how stupid he was. "Galen wouldn't let me come back to the group. And even if he did, I'd never catch up on all I've missed. I've already failed at it, Burrich. I failed and that's done, and I need to find something else to do with myself. I'd like to learn the hawks, please." The last I heard myself say with some amazement, for in truth it had never crossed my mind before. Burrich's reply was at least as strange.

  "You can't, for the hawks don't like you. You're too warm and you don't mind your own business enough. Now listen to me. You didn't fail, you fool. Galen tried to drive you away. If you don't go back, you'll have let him win. You have to go back and you have to learn it. But"-and here he turned on me, and the anger in his eyes was for me-"you don't have to stand there like a carter's mule while he beats you. You've a birthright to his time and his knowledge. Make him give you what is yours. Don't run away. No one ever gained anything by running away." He paused, started to say more, and then stopped.

  "I've missed too many lessons. I'll never-"

  "You haven't missed anything," Burrich said stubbornly. He turned away from me, and I couldn't read his tone as he added, "There have been no lessons since you left. You should be able to pick up just where you left off."

  "I don't want to go back."

  "Don't waste my time by arguing with me," he said tightly. "Don't dare to try my patience that way. I've told you what you are to do. Do it."

  Suddenly I was six years old again, and a man in a kitchen backed up a crowd with a look. I shivered, cowed. Abruptly, it was easier to face Galen than to defy Burrich. Even when he added, "And you'll leave that pup with me until your lessons are done. Being shut up inside your room all day is no life for a dog. His coat will go bad and his muscles won't grow properly. But you'd better be down here each evening, to see to both him and Sooty, or you'll answer to me. And I don't give a damn what Galen says about that, either."

  And so I was dismissed. I conveyed to Smithy that he was to stay with Burrich, and he accepted it with an equanimity that surprised me as much as it hurt my feelings. Dispirited, I took my pot of unguent and plodded back up to the keep. I took food from the kitchen, for I had no heart to face anyone at table and went up to my room. It was cold and dark, no fire in the hearth, no candles in the sticks, and the fouled reeds underfoot stank. I fetched candles and wood, set a fire, and while I was waiting for it to take some of the chill off the stone walls and floors, I busied myself with taking up the floor rushes. Then, as Lacey had advised me, I scrubbed the room well with hot water and vinegar. Somehow I got the vinegar that had been flavored with tarragon, and so when I was finished, the room smelled of that herb. Exhausted, I flung myself down on my bed and fell asleep wondering why I'd never discovered how to open whatever hidden door it was that led to Chade's quarters. But I had no doubt that he would have simply dismissed me, for he was a man of his word and would not interfere until Galen had finished with me. Or until he discovered that I was finished with Galen.

  The Foo
l's candles awoke me. I was completely disoriented as to time and place until he said, "You've just time to wash and eat and still be first on the tower top."

  He'd brought warm water in a ewer, and warm rolls from the kitchen ovens.

  "I'm not going."

  It was the first time I'd ever seen the Fool look surprised. "Why not?"

  "It's pointless. I can't succeed. I simply haven't the aptitude and I'm tired of beating my head against the wall."

  The Fool's eyes widened further. "I thought you had been doing well, before ..."

  It was my turn to be surprised. "Well? Why do you think he mocks me and strikes me? As a reward for my success? No. I haven't been able to even understand what it's about. All the others have already surpassed me. Why should I go back? So Galen can prove even more thoroughly how right he was?"

  "Something," the Fool said carefully, "is not right here." He considered a moment. "Before, I asked you to quit the lessons. You would not. Do you recall that?"

  I cast my mind back. "I'm stubborn, sometimes," I admitted.

  "And if I asked you now, -to continue? To go up to the tower top, and continue to try?"

  "Why have you changed your mind?"

  "Because that which I sought to prevent came to pass. But you survived it. So I seek now to ..." His words trailed off. "It is as you said. Why should I speak at all, when I cannot speak plainly?"

  "If I said that, I regret it. It is not a thing one should say to a friend. I do not remember it."

  He smiled faintly. "If you do not remember it, then neither shall I" He reached and took both of my hands in his. His grip was oddly cool. A shiver passed over me at his touch. "Would you continue, if I asked it of you? As a friend?"

  The word sounded so odd from his lips. He spoke it without mockery, carefully, as if the saying of it aloud could shatter the meaning. His colorless eyes held mine. I found I could not say no. So I nodded.