Assassin's Quest recap

Fitz comes back from the grave half a wolf and spends a winter being coaxed into a man again by Burrich and Chade, then leaves them both to go inland and kill Regal. The attempt fails, and in the middle of it Verity reaches him through the Skill with a single overriding command, to come to him. Compelled, Fitz travels to the Mountain Kingdom with the minstrel Starling and an old pilgrim woman, Kettle, who knows far more about the Skill than she admits, and finds Kettricken and the Fool. The party takes the ancient Skill road beyond the mountains and finds Verity in a stone quarry, carving a dragon and pouring his life into it: the Elderlings of legend are stone dragons, quickened by the people who make them. Through the Skill Fitz sees that Molly is living with Burrich and has borne his daughter, and gives them up. Verity fathers an heir on Kettricken using Fitz's body, then completes his dragon and flies. Fitz kills Will, Skill-commands Regal into loyalty, and wakes the sleeping dragons of the Six Duchies, who end the Red Ship war. Kettricken rules; Fitz stays dead and disappears with his wolf.

Previously in the Farseer trilogy: FitzChivalry, bastard son of the abdicated Prince Chivalry, was raised in the Buckkeep stables by the stableman Burrich and secretly trained as King Shrewd's assassin by Chade. He carried two magics, the forbidden animal-bond of the Wit and the royal Skill, which the Skillmaster Galen deliberately crippled in him. Outislander Red Ships raided the coast and returned their hostages Forged, emptied of all human feeling. Prince Verity, the King-in-Waiting, burned himself out using the Skill against the raiders and finally rode away beyond the Mountain Kingdom to seek the Elderlings, legendary allies from an older war, leaving his Mountain-born queen Kettricken behind. His younger brother Regal used the absence: he had himself named heir, drained and then murdered the failing King Shrewd through his tame Skill coterie, and stripped Buckkeep to move the court inland, abandoning the coast. Fitz killed two of the coterie in front of the court, was tortured and condemned, and escaped death only by retreating into his bonded wolf Nighteyes while his body died; Burrich and Chade dug him up and brought him back. Kettricken, who had lost Verity's child, fled to the Mountains with the Fool. Molly, Fitz's lover, had already left him without a word. Regal was crowned, the Wit became a hanging matter, and Fitz, officially a corpse, was free of every oath he had ever taken.

Fitz spends the winter in a hut with Burrich, more wolf than man, having to be taught again how to speak, cook and behave as a person. The crossing into Nighteyes has left him with gaps in his memory and a preference for the simpler shape; Burrich, lamed and driven out of Buckkeep, drinks and bullies him back into humanity anyway. Chade comes with news: Regal is crowned and sitting inland at Tradeford, the coastal duchies have been left to face the Red Ships alone, Buckkeep is stripped and Patience is holding its town together on nothing, and Kettricken is in the Mountain Kingdom. Both men want Fitz to go to the queen and serve the Farseer line. Fitz wants Regal dead. The argument ends the household: he takes almost nothing, leaves Burrich behind, and starts inland with only Nighteyes for company.

Fitz works his way inland by hiring out as a labourer and a horse-hand, keeping his name and his wolf hidden. The further from the coast he goes, the stranger the country becomes to him: the inland duchies have never seen a Red Ship, are prospering under Regal, and believe the coast's suffering is exaggerated. He learns that Regal has made the Wit a capital crime and that people suspected of it are being hunted and killed. He falls in with the minstrel Starling Birdsong, who is travelling the same roads looking for an event worth a song, works out far too much about him, and attaches herself to him rather than turning him in. Fitz's Skill remains unreliable, opening at the wrong moments and letting Regal's coterie feel for him, and he dulls it with a herb that costs him more each time.

Fitz reaches Tradeford, the inland seat where Regal has installed his court with everything he took from Buckkeep. He gets himself hired into the grounds and spends days learning the household, the guard rota and the king's habits, and confirming that the coterie is the real power around Regal. He also sees at close hand how comfortable the inland duchies are while the coast burns. Working alone, half-broken and dependent on a wolf who does not understand vengeance, he sets up his attempt on the king, knowing he is unlikely to survive it and no longer greatly caring.

The attempt on Regal fails. Fitz kills men trying to reach him, is badly hurt, and is saved only because Verity chooses that moment to reach him through the Skill with an overwhelming command: come to me. The compulsion is not an invitation but an order, and Fitz can neither disobey it nor stop feeling it. He escapes Tradeford barely alive and turns towards the Mountain Kingdom, driven by a summons from a man everyone believes dead. Travelling as a servant with a party of pilgrims bound for the mountains, he falls in with an old woman named Kettle, who plays a difficult stone game, asks questions that are far too well aimed, and plainly knows things about the Skill that no devout old traveller should know.

The road to the Mountain Kingdom is dangerous in its own right: Regal has soldiers on it, the border is effectively at war because he blames the Mountains for Verity's disappearance, and Will hunts Fitz through the Skill whenever his guard drops. Fitz, Starling, Kettle and Nighteyes get through, and at Jhaampe Fitz finds Kettricken and the Fool, both of whom have mourned him. Kettricken is preparing to go in search of Verity herself, with a map, a handful of people and the Mountain conviction that a ruler is spent for the good of the people. The Fool, out of Buckkeep and out of motley, speaks plainly for the first time about what he believes himself to be, a White Prophet sent to shift the world onto a better course, and about Fitz as the Catalyst through whom the shifting happens.

The party sets out beyond the mountains along an ancient road built by a vanished people, following the map Verity used. The road itself is made of a stuff that drags at the mind and pulls a Skill user out of himself, and travellers on it lose their way in their own heads. Kettle, who has been quietly protecting Fitz from the coterie's attacks, admits what she is: she belonged to a coterie of her own an age ago, has lived far longer than a woman should, and carries a debt she came here to pay. She teaches Fitz to guard his mind with the stone game. The road brings them to a quarry of black stone littered with half-finished dragons, and there they find Verity: alive, filthy, hollowed out, and carving.

The Elderlings of Six Duchies legend are dragons of black stone, and they are made: a carver fills the stone with his own memories and life until it wakes and flies. Verity has been at his for a year, has poured most of himself into it and has little left over for his wife or his kingdom. Kettricken, who crossed the mountains for him, is met by a man who can barely remember how to want her. While the party works and guards the quarry, Fitz forces his damaged Skill open and reaches for the people he left behind, and finds Molly in a cottage with a baby daughter and with Burrich, who has taken the place Fitz vacated by dying. He cannot argue, cannot appear and cannot even be angry with justice, and it very nearly finishes him.

The Farseer line needs an heir and Verity has nothing human left to give. With Kettricken's consent, he takes Fitz's body for a night through the Skill and lies with his wife in it, and Kettricken conceives. Fitz is left to live with having been used as an instrument one more time, this time to the marrow. Regal's coterie closes on the quarry, and Will comes in person as well as through the Skill; the party's defences are the stone game, Kettle's old knowledge and Verity's failing attention. Kettle finishes settling her ancient debt with a dragon of her own. Verity carves on towards an end that will not leave a man behind, and the quarry becomes the last battlefield of the civil war.

Verity spends the last of himself, and his dragon rises and flies with him in it. In the fighting at the quarry Fitz kills Will and strips the coterie's Skill knowledge out of him as he dies; the rest of Regal's coterie is broken. Fitz then reaches Regal's mind directly and rewrites it, binding him to serve Queen Kettricken faithfully and removing his hatred of Fitz altogether, which ends the civil war without another battle. Fitz goes on to wake the old stone dragons sleeping across the Six Duchies, feeding them memories of his own life to quicken them, and the dragons sweep the Red Ships from the coast and end the raiding war. Kettricken returns to Buckkeep as reigning queen with Verity's heir on the way, to rebuild a stripped kingdom with Chade and Patience beside her. Fitz makes the last choice himself: Molly has a daughter and a life with Burrich, and he will not walk back into it. He parts from the Fool, keeps Nighteyes, and vanishes to live quietly and write down the history of a war he fought as a dead man.

Verity finishes his dragon by pouring the last of himself into it, and the black stone rises as a living creature carrying him. Kettle gives herself to the unfinished dragon she has spent her life owing a debt to, and other members of the party pay their own prices. Fitz kills Will, taking the coterie's Skill knowledge as he does it, and then reaches into Regal's mind and rewrites him, binding him to serve Queen Kettricken and stripping out his hatred of Fitz entirely, which ends the civil war without another battle. Fitz then wakes the old stone dragons sleeping in the Six Duchies by feeding them memories of his own, and the dragons drive the Red Ships from the coast and end the raiding war. Kettricken returns to Buckkeep as reigning queen, carrying Verity's heir, with Chade and Patience to help her rebuild a stripped and half-ruined kingdom. Verity does not come back as a man. Fitz, still officially dead, makes the choice the whole book has been pushing him towards and stays dead: Molly has a life with Burrich and a daughter who calls Burrich father, and Fitz will not walk into it and break it. He parts from the Fool, keeps Nighteyes, and disappears to a quiet place to write the histories of the war nobody knows he fought. The Farseer line is secure, the coast is free, and the man who bought all of it has given up every claim on his own name.