Assassin's Apprentice by Hobb Robin Page A

window. I stirred unwillingly and opened my eyes.
    He stood at the foot of my bed, holding aloft a lamp. This in itself was a rarity at Buckkeep, but more than the buttery light from the lamp held my eyes. The man himself was strange. His robe was the color of undyed sheep’s wool that had been washed, but only intermittently and not recently. His hair and beard were about the same color and their untidiness gave the same impression. Despite the color of his hair, I could not decide how old he was. There are some poxes that will scar a man’s face with their passage. But I had never seen a man marked as he was, with scores of tiny pox scars, angry pinks and reds like small burns, and livid even in the lamp’s yellow light. His hands were all bones and tendons wrapped in papery white skin. He was peering at me, and even in the lamplight, his eyes were

the most piercing green I had ever seen. They reminded me of a cat’s eyes when it is hunting something; the same combination of joy and fierceness. I pulled my quilt up higher under my chin.
    “You’re awake,” he said. “Good. Get up and follow me.”
    He turned abruptly from my bedside and walked away from the door, to a shadowed corner of my room between the hearth and the wall. I didn’t move. He glanced back at me, held the lamp higher. “Hurry up, boy,” he said irritably, and rapped the stick he leaned on against my bedpost.
    I got out of bed, wincing as my bare feet hit the cold floor. I reached for my clothes and shoes, but he wasn’t waiting for me. He glanced back once to see what was delaying me, and the piercing look was enough to make me drop my clothes and quake.
    And I followed, wordlessly, in my nightshirt, for no reason I could explain to myself. Except that he had suggested it. I followed him to a door that had never been there, and up a narrow flight of winding steps that were lit only by the lamp he held above his head. His shadow fell behind him and over me, so that I walked in a shifting darkness, feeling each step with my feet. The stairs were cold stone, worn and smooth and remarkably even. And they went up, and up, and up, until it seemed to me that we had climbed past the height of any tower the keep possessed. A chill breeze flowed up those steps, and up my nightshirt, shriveling me with more than mere cold. And we went up, and then finally he was pushing open a substantial door that nonetheless moved silently and easily. We entered a chamber.
    It was lit warmly by several lamps, suspended from an unseen ceiling on fine chains. The chamber was large, easily three times the size of my own. One end of it beckoned me. It was dominated by a massive wooden bed frame fat with feather beds and cushions. There were carpets on the floor, overlapping one another with their scarlets and verdant greens and blues both deep and pale. There was a table made of wood the color of wild honey, and on it sat a bowl of fruit so perfectly ripe that I could smell their fragrances. Parchment books and scrolls were scattered about carelessly, as if their rarity were of no concern. All three walls were draped with tapestries that depicted open rolling country with wooded foothills in the distance. I started toward it.
    “This way,” said my guide, and relentlessly led me to the other end of the chamber.
    Here was a different spectacle. A stone slab of a table dominated it, its surface much stained and scorched. Upon it were various tools, containers and implements, a scale, a mortar and pestle, and many things I couldn’t name. A fine layer of dust overlaid much of it, as if projects had been abandoned in midcourse, months or even years ago. Beyond the table was a rack that held an untidy collection of scrolls, some edged in blue or gilt. The scent of the room was at once pungent and aromatic; bundles of herbs were drying on another rack. I heard a rustling and caught a glimpse of movement in a far corner, but the man gave me no time to investigate. The