Young Fitz has just survived his first perilous mission as an assassin. But the cost has been high, and a brush with death has left him little more than a cripple. Battered and bitter, he has vowed to remain in the distant Mountain Kingdom, despite the fact that his oath as a King's Man requires him to return to Buckkeep. But love and events of terrible urgency soon draw him back to the court of the Six Duchies, and into the deadly intrigues of the...

Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow of the royal court by his father's gruff stableman. He is treated like an outcast by all the royalty except the devious King Shrewd, who has him secretly tutored in the arts of the assassin. For in Fitz's blood runs the magic Skill--and the darker knowledge of a child raised with the stable hounds and rejected by his family. As barbarous raiders ravage the coasts, Fitz...