House of Assassins

by Larry Correia

  As Sikasso spoke every one of the lanterns went out, plunging them into darkness.

  “What’s happening?”

  “I have taken us outside the waking world so you can see things as they truly are.”

  Thera didn’t move. It was black as coal. She could no longer feel the clammy fog clinging to her skin or hear the frogs or smell the decay. There was nothing at all. All she could hear was the pounding of her heart. Sikasso had killed more than the lights. It was as if he’d closed off the entire world. She was afraid to move. If she took a step would she become lost?

  Except the wizard’s voice still reached her. “We are now outside the patterns. A useful space for when I wish to travel somewhere without being seen, or walk through a wall, or bypass a lock, but that’s not why I brought you here. This is a test to find out if you can see magic at all.”

  She couldn’t see a damned thing, and frankly it was terrifying.

  “Most can’t. Open your mind to the world around you. If you were born with the gift, then you will be able to sense the patterns. In order to change the structures you must understand them first.”

  She tried, she really did, but it was like being buried alive. “I’ve got nothing.”

  “You have no inclination toward wizardry. Unfortunate.” Sikasso then demonstrated that he was no regular teacher. “If you can’t, then I suppose I’ll just have to sell you to the Inquisition.”

  That was almost as scary as being stuck on this…outside. She thought about lying, and declaring that she could see, but then he’d probably ask her to describe it, and her lies would fall apart.

  Then Thera could vaguely sense something. She couldn’t see it exactly, but it felt like it was there. Only it wasn’t here, it was back in the waking world. She couldn’t tell what it was, except that it felt old…and dangerous. It felt like she’d walked into a cloud of molten sparks. “There’s something coming, Sikasso. Take us back. Take us back now!”

  “Ah, you’re not completely blind then after all. One of the Dasa has sensed us and come to investigate. Back in the waking world all it will see of you is a shadow. When the superstitious cry about seeing ghosts from the corner of their eye, they probably caught a glimpse of a wizard skulking through this realm.”

  The cloud of sparks was hovering over her. Past that was a heat, like an open flame, no, more like a blacksmith’s forge, hot enough to soften steel. It seemed more curious than malevolent, but she feared that was about to change. “Let me go!”

  “Alas, I have twisted the world into this state, but I have no more magic left to get us out.”

  As the heat closed in, Thera closed her eyes, but that made it no darker. “Surely you’ve got some demon on you.”

  “I was curious if you became desperate enough, if you could call upon your magic to set you free.”

  She suspected the Voice was worthless for that, as it had never helped, only caused her trouble and then left her stranded in dangerous situations. “You’re a liar. Even if I could, I might free myself and leave you trapped. You’d have brought magic at least enough for yourself.”

  “See? I knew you weren’t a simpleton.” As Sikasso said that, her senses quickly returned. The lights flickered back into existence. Insects chirped. The smell of a swamp assaulted her nose.

  And a monster was standing right in front of her. Thera gasped in surprise, reached for a dagger that wasn’t there, and nearly tripped over her own feet as she tried to get away. She crashed against the nearest pole, causing the brazier to tip.

  The creature was the size of a man, but built like someone had draped a blue sack over a skeleton and then pulled it tight. It had a head, but no face. No mouth, no nose, just an indent where eye sockets would have been in a skull. The creature was dressed in unfamiliar armor made of round plates connected by mail, and it carried a battle axe in its thin blue hands. The steel was speckled with rust.

  “Demon!”

  “Hardly. It’s merely one of our Dasa, a guardian servant…Continue your patrol.” Sikasso made a dismissive gesture, and the thing began shuffling away.

  “What sort of witchcraft is that?” As she asked that, she realized she must have sounded like Ashok.

  “They are a relic from the old days, before the Age of Kings even. The template to create them has long been lost to us. They are resilient, but there are very few left in the world. Sometimes one is found inert in an ancient ruin, and fools smash them open to get the chunk of black steel inside, but we pay a good price for them to be brought here instead. Once agitated, they are far more dangerous than they appear…I suppose they’re like a wizard in that way.”

  She watched in stunned disbelief as the thing plodded off down the path back toward the house. “Is it alive?”

  “No more than a worker’s machine made of gears and levers is alive. It is powered, and thus moves. They neither eat nor breathe. They have no desires or intellect beyond that required to obey basic commands.”

  She’d been raised to mistrust magic. They had no use for a wizard’s tricks in Vane. The darkness and the monster had unnerved her more than she wanted to let on. It was a lot to take in so quickly. She wanted to get out of this nightmare place. “Is that what you wanted me to see?”

  Sikasso smiled. “Neither of those were the purpose of our little walk, just distractions along the way. No, come. It is a bit further.”

  Now chilled to her core, Thera followed him in silence. So wizards could see all those little bits that made up the patterns of everything, but for her to see anything at all it had taken a walking relic with black-steel guts to be breathing distance away. Earlier she’d been worried about escaping through the fog, but the Dasa didn’t even seem to need eyes to see, and had found her when she wasn’t even really there. When Sikasso said it obeyed commands, she was certain he wasn’t talking about hers. The presence of the guardian servant complicated matters, but that didn’t mean that escape was impossible.

  Sikasso seemed to be enjoying their stroll and one-sided conversation. “You asked earlier about how I change form? Those are simply other templates we’ve mastered. The bird, the snake, the swarm, the tiger, and more, all of those were handed down by the ancients. The elements that make up my body are redistributed accordingly. Yet each time, there is a cost. When we use magic, some fraction of it is consumed in the process. The tiny particles do their work, then expire. The greater the feat, the further you shift the pattern, the more magic dies.”

  That she knew. There was a good criminal trade in demon parts. “Which is why the things that hold it are so costly.”

  “It’s simple economics. Great demand, limited supply. Real magic comes from only two known sources, black steel and demons. The uneducated call the fire and thunder the fanatics of Fortress make magic, but they’re simply utilizing natural processes. Black steel is finite and irreplaceable. What the ancients left behind is all there is, but it is dense with extremely powerful magical elements. The magic harvested from sea demons is weaker, but replaceable, albeit with extreme difficulty.”

  “I’d guess it’s a bit harder than shearing a sheep.” Thera laughed.

  Sikasso did not. “And now there is a possible third kind…We have arrived.”

  The cobblestone path abruptly ended at a chasm. It dropped a long way, and the bottom was obscured by the mist. The ground seemed torn, as if there had been a violent upheaval which had split it apart long ago, but now every edge had been softened by moisture and moss. Due to the fog, Thera couldn’t see what was on the other side.

  Then she heard a distant, rhythmic noise that made her stomach clench with dread. She had not heard that sound for a long time.

  The crashing of waves. The smell of salt.

  “Are we by the ocean?”

  Sikasso gave her a grim smile as he sat on a nearby rock. “Now you will see why you shouldn’t be so quick to refuse my protection.”

  The sun was just beginning to appear, the top of an orange ball over the too-flat
horizon. The fog glowed with reflected light. It took a while, but Sikasso seemed to be enjoying her growing discomfort. She watched in horror as the sun gradually burned away the mist. They were on a cliff top, overlooking hell itself.

  To the east was the sea, vast, unending, and filled with evil. She began to catch glimpses of other buildings, but they were ruins, fallen towers and broken walls that had collapsed during whatever cataclysm had torn this ground apart. Then with a gasp she realized that some of the rocks that were splitting the waves below were actually the roofs of now submerged buildings. The land to the north of them was visible now, and it was water and marshes as far as her eye could see.

  The palace that had become the House of Assassins had been built on a bluff overlooking a city. They were standing on the only part that hadn’t been flooded.

  “The other sides are the same.” Sikasso could tell exactly what she was thinking. “And it is as infested with submerged demons as you imagine. There are a few safe paths through the flooded forest to get back to the Law-abiding world, but you would never find them on your own.”

  Demons were a nearly unstoppable force of hunger and destruction. Pass too close to a lurking one, and you’d be torn to pieces and crammed into its jaws before you even knew it was there.

  “No whole man would willingly live this close to hell. What is this place?”

  “Before the demons rained from the sky, man crossed the sea in mighty ships. This city was what they called a port. The ocean was not always this close. The ancients had built dams big enough to control the flow of the River Nansakar, and levees, canals, and huge walls that held back the sea. Even after the demons turned the ocean into hell, long after every real ship in the world had been rent apart by their claws and sent to the bottom, man still lived here. It was said it was too beautiful to abandon.

  “We survived here for centuries, but when the combined wrath of the Capitol was brought to bear against us, even the earth trembled at their will. They shattered those ancient dams, the waters came rushing in, our people were devoured by demons, and House Charsadda was consumed by hell.”

  Thera shuddered at the thought. Over the last few years she had spent a great deal of time on the rivers of Lok, far more than any whole man would consider sane, and was even brave enough that she had learned to swim, but that was in fresh water, and only a long way from the sea. It was rare for a demon to travel very far up a river, but entering salt water meant almost certain death. She’d only been in the ocean once, briefly, and that trespass had nearly cost her life.

  “What crime was so terrible for your people to enrage the Capitol so?”

  “The Law cannot tolerate equals, only subjects…But the past isn’t why I brought you here, Thera Vane. You need to understand there is no reason for you to continue damaging my furniture, snapping off pieces to fashion into knives. Attacking my people is futile. There is no escape, because there is nowhere to escape to. Fulfill your bargain, and after that I will guide you through the flooded forest. Until then we will show you how to use magic. You saw the Dasa, so you’ve got some minor ability. Perhaps learning to control traditional magic will enable you to unlock this third source.”

  “Me? You would teach me to be a wizard.”

  “I have more important duties. I will obligate someone else to be your teacher. Be warned, many of my brothers disagree with my decision. They think we should have already sold you to the Inquisition, or that we should simply avoid any risk, kill you, and be done with it. It is only by my whim you still live.”

  Thera stepped to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the ruins far below. “And if I can’t learn?”

  Sikasso was completely sincere yet threatening at the same time. “Then it would be better to leap over the side now and spare yourself the suffering.”

  Chapter 11

  Three days had passed since Jagdish and Gutch had entered the city of Neeramphorn. Three days without word…Ashok had grown restless.

  They had taken over an abandoned mining camp, and there they had hidden like criminals, avoiding all contact. They had gathered wood and taken several deer for meat. By day Keta would tell his made-up stories, and how soon they would recover the prophet, their magnificent army would journey south, join with the rest of the rebellion, and go forth righting past wrongs, so that the gods would once again smile upon the land which had forsaken them. So on and so forth. Ashok suspected that if he had not been present to frighten them, the Somsak raiders were restless and bored enough they’d have turned to banditry. Even fanatics could only take so much preaching.

  The first day he had been annoyed by the delay. So he had found an old wood cutter’s ax and split enough logs to last a small village the whole winter, thinking the entire time about how if he was still a Protector he could have just walked into Neeramphorn and started executing criminals until someone drew him a map to the Lost House.

  It was exceedingly difficult. He had only one reason to live, one goal to focus upon, and no good way to achieve it. He hated depending on others. Protectors usually worked alone. Ashok had enjoyed that.

  The second day, he decided that he needed to do something useful to keep from dwelling on his oath. He had passed the time in prison by training with Jagdish, so Ashok decided to do the same thing here. The Somsak were fearless as normal men could be and didn’t need much encouragement. They considered it an honor to spar against the man who had defeated their army by himself. Even though this time he was armed with a stick rather than Angruvadal, they still hadn’t done much better than they had in Jharlang.

  By lunch time all the Somsak were exhausted, nursing bruises, and putting snow on their swelling joints. So Keta had approached Ashok with a bizarre request.

  “It’s nice you’re sharing your knowledge with the warriors.”

  Ashok didn’t know if it was sharing, so much as pummeling them gave him something to do. Except he knew from his own time as a student of Master Ratul that there was a lesson to be learned from every beating.

  “They are fierce, but clumsy. Their house has not trained them sufficiently. They expect aggression to carry the day. It can, until it does not. Determination rarely beats skill, and determination alone never beats skill and determination…” Ashok stopped, not sure why he was explaining the martial philosophies of the Protector Order to Keta, whose knowledge of combat was limited to swinging about a meat cleaver with wild abandon. “What do you want, Keeper?”

  “A small request, nothing more.” The middle of the old mining camp was open. The snow had been trampled flat by shuffling feet and falling bodies. Keta gestured toward where the rest of his new followers were repairing an old shack so they’d have a warmer place to sleep. “What of them?”

  “What of them? They’re worker caste. They’re doing what they’re supposed to. As are the warriors.”

  Keta was a thin, balding man. He had a love of rhetoric, more passion than sense, and was too clever for his own good, a terrible combination of traits for one born casteless. If he’d been born of first-caste parents he probably would have wound up an arbiter by now. “Come now, Ashok, you are still trapped in your old way of thinking. The castes are a lie, created to keep everyone inside a fence that does not really exist. We are not cattle to be herded.”

  “Every man has his place. To break that fundamental truth is to endanger all of the Law.”

  “Where is your place then, Ashok?”

  “Here.” He frowned. “Apparently.”

  “That’s right. Outside the stifling confines of your Law, where free men are able to choose their own way. Their fate decided by the sweat of their brow rather than the station of their birth. Those men aren’t just workers any more than I’m just a casteless butcher.”

  “How joyous. We can all be criminals together.”

  “I think some of Thera’s sarcastic nature rubbed off on you during our journey. Though it’s an improvement over when we first met and you were continually threatening to kill me, a
nd that one time you nearly strangled me. But think of it, the gods want you to lead the rebellion’s army, but that army will not be made up of just warriors, it will be made up of everyone who desires freedom.”

  Ashok had his reasons. Anyone else who chose this path willingly was a fool. He had no desire to be a curator of fools. “Once I have found her, I will do as the prophet orders. Nothing more, nothing less. If I’m told to train workers or non-people to fight—disgusting violation of the Law that may be—I’ll do what is commanded.”

  “You shouldn’t do it because it’s ordered, but because it’s right! You’re a free man now. You need to learn to understand that.”

  He had spent his entire life being told what was wrong and right, first by the Law, and now he was condemned to be told the same things by the supposed voice of the gods. “Tell me your request so that I can be spared your philosophy lesson.”

  “Teach those workers to be soldiers. I know we are few here, but there are a multitude waiting at our hidden fortress in Akershan. It is still small, but the rebellion is growing. The seeds you plant now will someday bloom into mighty—”

  “All this talk makes me want to return to the days of threats and choking. Fine. You are the representative of the prophet I must serve. Send over those workers, I will teach them.”

  Keta grinned. He seemed to savor these small victories.

  “But I warn you now, Keeper, everyone has a place for a reason. We are only what we are.”

  The odd little man seemed to thoroughly enjoy these talks. “Yet before me stands arguably the greatest combatant in the world, who was once a little starving casteless blood scrubber. So much accomplished from so very little. Your very existence disproves the basic premise of the Law. From nothing you rose to the top of an elite order of the highest caste.”

  Ashok ground his teeth. “Now I’m back to nothing. Like everything which strays from the Law, the aberration was corrected. And when the time comes for your rabble to face a real army, made up of warriors who’ve trained hard their whole lives, then your people will fail and they will die. That will be on your head, not mine.”