The Farseer: Assassin's Apprentice

Nothing. Only a blank gulf no exercise of my mind has ever been able to pierce. Prior to that day at Moon's Eye, there is nothing. But on that day they suddenly begin, with a brightness and detail that overwhelms me. Sometimes it seems too complete, and I wonder if it is truly mine. Am I recalling it from my own mind, or from dozens of retellings by legions of kitchen maids and ranks of scallions and herds of stable boys, as they explained my presence to each other? Perhaps I have heard the story so many times from so many sources, that I now recall it as an actual memory of my own. Is the detail the result of a six-year-old's open absorption of all that goes on around him? Or, could the completeness of the memory be the bright overlay of the skill, and the later drugs a man takes to control his addiction to it, the drugs that bring on pains and cravings of their own? The last is most possible. Perhaps it is even probable. One hopes it is not the case. The remembrance is almost physical, the chill grayness of the fading day, the remorseless rain that soaked me, the icy cobbles of the strange town's streets, even the calloused roughness of the huge hand that gripped my small one. Sometimes I wonder about that grip. The hand was hard and rough, trapping mine within it. And yet it was warm, and not unkind as it held mine, only firm. It did not let me slip on the icy streets, but it did not let me escape my fate either. It was as implacable as the icy gray rain that glazed the trampled snow and ice of the graveled pathway outside the huge wooden doors of the fortified building that stood like a fortress within the town itself. The doors were tall, not just to a six-year-old boy, but tall enough to admit giants, to dwarf even the rangy old men who towered over me. And they looked strange to me, although I cannot summon up what type of door or dwelling would have looked familiar. Only that these, carved and bound with black iron hinges, decorated with a buck's head and knocker of gleaming brass, were outside of my experience. I recall that slush had soaked through my clothes, so my feet and legs were wet and cold, and yet, again, I cannot recall that I had walked far through winter's last curses, nor that I had been carried. No. It all starts there, right outside the doors of the stronghouse, with my small hand trapped inside the tall man's. Almost it is like a puppet show beginning. Yes, I can see it thus. The curtains parted, and there we stood before that great door. The old man lifted the brass knocker and banged it down, once, twice, thrice, on the plate that resounded to his pounding. And then, from offstage, a voice sounded. Not from within the doors, but from behind us, back the way we had come. Father, please! The woman's voice begged. I turned to look at her, but it had begun to snow again, a lacy veil that clung to eyelashes and coat-sleeves. I can't recall that I saw any more. Certainly I did not struggle to break free of the old man's grip on my hand, nor did I call out, Mother, Mother. Instead, I stood, a spectator, and heard the sound of boots within the keep, and the unfastening of the door-hasp within. One last time, she called. I can still hear the words perfectly, the desperation in a voice that now would sound young to my ears. Father, please, I beg you! A tremor shook the hand that gripped mine, but whether of anger or some other emotion I shall never know. As swift as a black crow seizes a bit of dropped bread, the old man stooped and snatched up a frozen chunk of dirty ice. Wordlessly he flung it, with great force and fury, and I cowered where I stood. I do not recall a cry, nor the sound of struck flesh. What I do remember is how the doors swung outward, so that the old man had to step hastily back, dragging me with him. And there is this.