Assassin’s Quest
‘Fantasy as it ought to be written’ George R.R. MartinThe gripping finale to Robin Hobb’s classic Farseer Trilogy.With the king no longer living and the heir, Verity, missing and declared dead, Prince Regal has treacherously seized the throne.Regal’s torture has left Fitz more dead than alive, and more closely than ever bonded with his wolf. All who once loved him believe him dead: even Molly, now pregnant with his child. But he cannot go to her without placing her in terrible danger.With nothing to lose, Fitz sets out for Tradeford, where Regal has withdrawn, having heartlessly abandoned the north of the kingdom to the Red-Ship Raiders. His quest: to assassinate the man who has destroyed his world.
Читать Assassin’s Quest онлайн беплатно
Assassinâs Quest
Book Three of The Farseer Trilogy
Robin Hobb
HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Robin Hobb 1997
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014.
Illustration © Jackie Morris. Calligraphy by Stephen Raw. Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com (background).
Robin Hobb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780006480112
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007370443 Version: 2017-03-10
For the very real Kat Ogden
Who threatened, at an early age, to grow up and be
a tap dancing, fencing, judoka, movie-star, archaeologist, and President of the United States.
And is getting frighteningly close to the end of her list.
Never mistake the movie for the book.
CONTENTS
Twenty-Nine: The Rooster Crown
Thirty-Five: Kettleâs Secrets
Thirty-Six: The Wit and the Sword
Thirty-Seven: Feeding the Dragon
Thirty-Eight: Verityâs Bargain
I awake every morning with ink on my hands. Sometimes I am sprawled, face down, on my work table, amidst a welter of scrolls and papers. My boy, when he comes in with my tray, may dare to chide me for not taking myself off to bed the night before. But sometimes he looks at my face and ventures no word. I do not try to explain to him why I do as I do. It is not a secret one can give to a younger man; it is one he must earn and learn on his own.
A man has to have a purpose in life. I know this now, but it took me the first score years of my life to learn it. In that I scarcely think myself unique. Still, it is a lesson that, once learned, has remained with me. So, with little besides pain to occupy myself these days, I have sought out a purpose for myself. I have turned to a task that both Lady Patience and Scribe Fedwren had long ago advocated. I began these pages as an effort to write down a coherent history of the Six Duchies. But I found it difficult to keep my mind long fixed on a single topic, and so I distract myself with lesser treatises, on my theories of magic, on my observations of political structures, and my reflections on other cultures. When the discomfort is at its worst and I cannot sort my own thoughts well enough to write them down, I work on translations, or attempt to make a legible recording of older documents. I busy my hands in the hope of distracting my mind.
My writing serves me as Verityâs map making once served him. The detail of the work and the concentration required is almost enough to make one forget both the longings of the addiction, and the residual pains of having once indulged it. One can become lost in such work, and forget oneself. Or one can go even deeper, and find many recollections of that self. All too often, I find I have wandered far from a history of the duchies into a history of FitzChivalry. Those recollections leave me face to face with who I once was, and who I have become.
When one is deeply absorbed in such a recounting, it is surprising how much detail one can recall. Not all the memories I summon up are painful. I have had more than a just share of good friends, and found them more loyal than I had any right to expect. I have known beauties and joys that tried my heartâs strength as surely as the tragedies and uglinesses have. Yet I possess, perhaps, a greater share of dark memories than most men; few men have known death in a dungeon, or can recall the inside of a coffin buried beneath the snow. The mind shies away from the details of such things. It is one thing to recall that Regal killed me. It is another to focus on the details of the days and nights endured as he starved me and then had me beaten to death. When I do, there are moments that still can turn my bowels to ice, even after all these years. I can recall the eyes of the man and the sound of his fist breaking my nose. There still exists for me a place I visit in my dreams, where I fight to remain standing, trying not to let myself think of how I will make a final effort to kill Regal. I recall the blow from him that split my swollen skin and left the scar down my face that I still bear
