Assassin's Quest

The third and final installment of the Farseer Trilogy is set in the Six Duchies, a coastal kingdom besieged by Red Ship Raiders from the OutIslands who "Forge" captives, stripping them of all empathy. The narrator, FitzChivalry Farseer, is the illegitimate grandson of the late King Shrewd and was raised at Buckkeep Castle as a royal assassin. He possesses two forms of magic: the Skill, a telepathic power wielded by the Farseer royal line, and the Wit, a despised ability to bond mentally with animals. His Wit-partner is a wolf named Nighteyes. In the previous book, Prince Regal, Fitz's uncle, had Fitz beaten to death in a dungeon. Burrich, the stablemaster who raised Fitz, and Chade Fallstar, Fitz's assassin mentor and King Shrewd's secret half-brother, exhumed Fitz's body. Using Burrich's suppressed Wit, they drew Fitz's soul from Nighteyes and sealed it back into his corpse.

The novel opens with Fitz in a remote hut, being coaxed back to humanity by Burrich. He has been more wolf than man for months, eating with his hands and unable to speak. Chade visits with news: Queen Kettricken, wife of Fitz's uncle King Verity, has fled to her native Mountain Kingdom while pregnant. Verity left to find the Elderlings, legendary defenders of the Six Duchies, and has not returned. Regal has seized the throne, moved the court to the inland city of Tradeford, and abandoned the Coastal Duchies to the Raiders. During one visit, Verity's Skill-command breaks through Fitz's walls, and Fitz declares Verity alive.

As memories return, so do nightmares of Fitz's torture, along with thoughts of Molly, the candlemaker he loved, who left him before his death claiming she cared for someone else more. Fitz clashes bitterly with Burrich and Chade; Chade severs their working relationship, calling Fitz too reckless. Alone, Fitz resolves to kill Regal as personal vengeance.

Fitz and Nighteyes travel the Buck River road through Coastal Duchies devastated by war and roaming Forged ones. Traveling as "Cob," Fitz briefly guards a group of minstrels until Forged ones attack. That night, Will, the leader of Regal's coterie (a group of Skill users serving Regal), assaults Fitz through the Skill. Nighteyes saves him by counterattacking through the Wit-bond, but the encounter reveals to Will that Fitz is alive. A Witted man named Black Rolf warns that Fitz's untrained Wit broadcasts his presence, but Fitz declines his offer of training. Nighteyes separates to seek a wild wolf pack.

Reaching Tradeford, Fitz infiltrates Regal's residence during a ball, kills two guards who participated in his torture, and poisons Regal's belongings. But Will has been warping Fitz's perceptions with Skill-illusions, making him see rooms that do not exist. Will springs a trap. Surrounded, Fitz slashes his arm with a poisoned knife, preferring death to recapture. Verity intervenes from afar with a Skill-blast that stuns the coterie, and Fitz escapes through a window on Regal's horse. The poison proves too depleted to kill him.

Penniless, Fitz joins a caravan as a shepherd named "Tom." He meets Starling Birdsong, a displaced minstrel who suspects his identity, and Kettle, a mysterious old woman whose stone game helps him resist the Skill. Nighteyes returns, having chosen Fitz over the wolf pack. Regal's guards capture Fitz, recognizing him by a scar. The guards sicken and die; when their captain tries to cut Fitz's throat, Fitz forces a Wit-repel that kills the man. Fitz frees himself and presses on. At Blue Lake, Starling leads Fitz to a smuggler for passage to the Mountains, but the smuggler betrays them during the crossing. Nighteyes is swept into the icy river, and Fitz is captured by Burl, a coterie member posted at Moonseye, a garrison on the Mountain border. Starling and Kettle free Fitz during a raid on the garrison, and they flee into the Mountains.

An archer's arrow strikes Fitz as he draws pursuit from his companions. He staggers for days, feverish, and collapses at Jhaampe, the Mountain capital. The Fool, Fitz's closest friend, has been living there as a toymaker since fleeing Buckkeep. His appearance has changed: his skin golden-ivory, his eyes amber. He reveals that believing Fitz dead destroyed his faith in his role as the White Prophet, a seer who works alongside a Catalyst, the person whose actions enable the Prophet to alter history's course. Fitz is the Fool's Catalyst, and his survival restores the Fool's purpose.

During recovery, Fitz witnesses through a Skill-dream the birth of his daughter. He realizes Molly left him to protect their unborn child, whom Burrich names Nettle. Chade, who sent Burrich to guard Molly, proposes presenting Nettle as the Farseer heir since Kettricken's child was stillborn. Fitz denies the child is his, but Starling, who overheard him admit his paternity, testifies to Kettricken. The Queen declares Nettle the heir. Fitz offers his life to the quest for Verity but begs that Nettle not be taken from Molly. Kettricken cannot promise this.

Regal's threats force the party to flee. Kettricken, Fitz, the Fool, Starling, Kettle, and Nighteyes follow the ancient Skill road, a highway of black stone that threatens to absorb Fitz's mind. They discover sleeping stone dragon statues, the Elderlings Verity sought, dormant too deeply to wake. The road ends at a quarry where they find Verity, aged and gaunt, his hands coated in silver Skill-power. He has spent months carving a dragon from the stone, pouring his memories and emotions into it. A dragon must be filled with a complete life, willingly given, to awaken, and Verity has sacrificed everything except his bond with Fitz.

Kettle reveals she is Kestrel of Buck, a member of a Skill coterie from over two centuries ago whose ability was burned out for killing her coterie-sister. She has survived the intervening years through Skill once turned on her own body. Fitz reopens her sealed ability, and she joins Verity in the carving. She also reveals that elfbark, which Fitz and Verity have long used as a restorative, deadens Skill ability.

Verity asks to inhabit Fitz's body for one night so he can be with Kettricken and conceive an heir. Fitz agrees. Trapped in Verity's body, he Skill-dreams of Molly accepting Burrich's marriage proposal. In the morning, Verity returns Fitz's body. Renewed, Verity and Kettle pour their entire selves into the stone. The dragon quickens and rises. Kettricken and Starling mount its back, and Verity-as-Dragon launches toward Buckkeep.

Regal's soldiers converge on the quarry. Nighteyes kills Burl, whose blood spills onto Girl-on-a-Dragon, an unfinished statue the Fool has been struggling to free. The blood feeds the trapped dragon; she breaks loose with the Fool on her back. Fitz and Nighteyes race through the stone garden, shaking wolf-blood onto each sleeping dragon. One by one they rise, and the Fool leads the flock toward Buck.

Through the dying Will's Skill-link, Fitz reaches Regal's mind and finds a petulant man whose power came entirely from his coterie. Killing Regal through the Skill would burn out Fitz's own ability, so he instead imprints Regal with fanatical loyalty to Kettricken and the Farseer heir. Regal withdraws his troops, rides to Buckkeep, and kneels before the Queen. Verity-as-Dragon cleanses the coasts of Red Ships, and the dragons eventually return to their stone garden to sleep.

Years later, Fitz lives in an isolated cottage with Nighteyes, now gray-muzzled, and an orphan boy named Hap. He has never revealed himself to Molly and Burrich, who married and are raising Nettle. Kettricken bore a son, Prince Dutiful. The Fool vanished. Regal died in his bed, killed by a creature implied to be a ferret in Chade's care, fulfilling its dead bond-partner's wish for vengeance. Fitz writes through the nights, using elfbark to dull his Skill-hunger, and dreams of carving his own dragon.