Brother Assassin

by Fred Saberhagen

  It was obvious what the Moderns intended, obvious to machines who themselves knew well the theory and practice of baiting traps. But a viable replacement for Ay was bait they could not afford to ignore. They must strike again, using one of the dragon’s weapons.

  But this time they must be subtle. The replacement must not be killed, at least not in any way that would spin a new thread of causation .toward the dragon for the Moderns to follow. The linked berserker computers pondered electrically and arrived at what they considered an ideal solution: capture the replacement alive and hold him so, until the pillars of Sirgol’s history came crashing down.

  Even while in hiding, the dragon maintained around itself a net of subtle infraelectronic senses. Among the things it now observed in this way was a black-robed man, standing on a pillar of seaside rock about two miles from the berserker’s hiding place and speaking on and on, rhythmically, into the empty air. From data in its memory banks the berserker deduced that this man was attempting to call supernatural forces to his aid.

  And in the man’s speech it caught the name of Ay.

  In the full sunlight of midafternoon, Nomis stood chanting on his pinnacle of rock. The spells of deepest evil were best sung in darkness, but his hate and fear had grown until they seemed to spread a darkness of their own about him. He would not wait for the setting of the sun.

  While the seabirds wheeled around him, crying in the wind, he sang in his thin but penetrating voice:

  Demon of darkness, rise and stalk.

  Put on the bones and make them walk.

  Dead men’s bones, through the weed and slime,

  Walk and climb.

  Walk to me here.

  Speak to me here

  Of the secret to bring my enemy’s death.

  There was more, much more, all cajoling and coercing the dark wet things that waited in the deeps for men to drown—Awaited for fresh-drowned bones to come falling through the fathoms, for limber young corpses that the demons could wear like garments in their endless revels at the bottom of the sea. The dark wet things down there possessed all the knowledge of death, including how the death of Ay might be accomplished—something Yunguf had proven unable to achieve, despite all the supernatural threats Nomis had lavished on the lout.

  Nomis’s thin arms quivered, holding drowned men’s fingers over his head. Then his arms swept low as he bowed, still chanting, eyelids closing out the sun. Today the spells would work, today the hatred was in him like a lodestone, drawing to him things of utter evil.

  When he came to a place in the chant where he could pause, he did so. He let down his arms and opened his eyes, wondering if he had heard another sound between the surges of the surf. Under his black robe his old man’s chest was heaving with exertion and excitement.

  A bird screamed. And from below, from somewhere on the furrowed length of cliff that climbed to this tabletop from the sea, there came once more a scraping sound, almost lost in the noise of wind and surf.

  He had just given up listening for a repetition of the sound and had started to chant again, when, from much nearer the top of the cliff, almost from under Nomis’s feet, there came a small clatter, a tumble of stones dislodged by some climbing foot or groping hand. The sound was in itself so ordinary that it momentarily drove all thoughts of magic from the wizard’s tired mind. He could only think angrily that someone was about to discover his hideaway.

  Before him as he faced the sea was a cleft that climbed to the tabletop between folds of rock. From just out of sight within this cleft he now heard the sound of grit crunched under a heavy foot.

  And then Nomis’s world was shaken around him, but a proof that put an end to a lifetime’s nagging inward doubts. His first glimpse of his climbing visitor showed him a drowned man’s skull, one small tendril of seaweed clinging to its glistening crown.

  With quick smooth movements the whole creature now climbed into his view. It was a man-form, thinner than any living human but fuller than a skeleton. Drowned skeletons must change when a demon possessed them—this one looked more like metal than bone.

  Having emerged completely from the crevice, the demon shape halted. It stood taller than Nomis, so that it bent its skull-head slightly on its cable neck to look at him. He had to struggle not to turn and run, to stand his ground and make himself keep looking into the cloudy jewels that were its eyes. A drop of water sparkled, falling from one bonelike fingertip. Only when the thing took another step toward him did Nomis remember to reinforce his chalked protective ring with a gesture and a muttered incantation.

  And then at last he also remembered to complete his astoundingly successful ritual with a binding spell. “Now you must guide and serve me, until you are released! And serve me first by saying how my enemy can be put to death.”

  The shiny jaw did not move, but a quavery voice came forth from a black square where the mouth should have been. “Your enemy is Ay. He landed today upon this coast.”

  “Yes, yes. And the secret of his death?”

  Even if the berserker were to order another to accomplish the replacement’s death, a track of causation would be left on the Moderns’ screens. “You must bring your enemy Ay here, alive and unhurt, and give him to me. Then you will never see him more. And if you do this I will help you gain whatever else you may desire.”

  Nomis’s mind raced. He had trained himself for nearly a lifetime to seize such an opportunity as this and he was not going to fail now, not going to be tricked or cheated. So … the demon wanted Ay kept alive! That could only mean that some vital magical connection existed between the sea rover and this thing from the deeps. That Ay should have enjoyed such help in his career was far from surprising, considering the number of men he had sent to dwell among the fishes and the charmed life he himself seemed to lead.

  Nomis’s voice came out harsh and bold. “What is Ay to you, demon?”

  “My enemy.”

  Not likely! Nomis almost laughed the words aloud. He realized now that it was his own body and soul that the wet thing craved; but by his spells and within his chalked circle Nomis was protected. The demon had come to protect Ay. But Nomis would not let the demon know how much he had deduced. Not yet. He saw in this situation possibilities of gain so enormous as to be worth any risk.

  “Hearken, mud thing! I will do as you ask. Tonight at midnight I will bring your enemy here, bound and helpless. Now begone—and return at midnight, ready to grant me all I ask!”

  In the evening Matt went walking with Alix along the battlements, watching the stars come out, while the princess’s ladies-in-waiting hovered just out of sight around corners.

  Matt’s preoccupation with his inner thoughts was evidently obvious. The woman beside him soon abandoned a rather one-sided effort to make small talk and asked him plainly, “Do I please you, lord?”

  He stopped his moody pacing and turned to her. “Princess, you please me very well indeed.” And it was so. “If my thoughts go elsewhere, it is only because they are forced to.”

  She smiled sympathetically. The Moderns would not think Alix a beautiful girl. But all his life Matt had seen women’s beauty under sunburn and woodsmoke and toughness, and he could see beauty now in this different woman of his third world.

  “May I know then, lord, what problems force your thoughts away?”

  “For one thing, the problem of the man I wounded. I have not made a good beginning here.”

  “Such concern does you credit. I am pleased to discover you more gentle than I had been led to expect.” Alix smiled again. No doubt she understood that his concern over Yunguf rested mainly on reasons of policy, though of course she could have no idea of how very far that policy ranged. She began to tell Matt of some things that she might do, people she could talk to, to help heal the breach between the new House of Ay and that of Yung.

  Listening, and watching her, he felt he could be king in truth if she were queen beside him. He would not be Ay. He knew now, as the Moderns surely must, that no man c
ould really live another’s life. But, in Ay’s name, he might perhaps be king enough to serve the world.

  He interrupted Alix. “And do you find me pleasing, lady?”

  This time her marvelous eyes did more than flicker; with a warm light of promise they held fast to his. And, as if by instinct, the duennas appeared at that moment to announce that the decent time limit for keeping company had been reached.

  “Until the morning, then,” he said, taking the princess’s hand briefly, in the way permitted by courtly manners.

  “Until the morning, my lord.” And as the women led her away, she turned back to send him another glance of promise before passing out of sight.

  He stood there alone, gazing after the princess, wishing to see her for ten thousand mornings more. Then he took off his helmet for a moment and rubbed his head. His communicator was still silent. No doubt he should call in to Operations and report all that had happened.

  Instead he put the helmet on again (Ay would wear it as a sort of dress uniform) and went down into the keep, to find his way to the chamber where Yunguf had been bedded down by order of the court physician. Through the doorway of the room he saw a pair of the wounded man’s relatives on watch inside and he hesitated to enter. But when they saw Matt they beckoned him in, speaking to him freely and courteously. None of the House of Yung, it seemed, were likely to bear him any ill-will for winning a duel.

  Yunguf was pale and looked somehow shrunken. His difficult breathing gurgled in his throat, and when he twisted on his pallet to spit up blood, the bandage loosened from his wound, and air gurgled there also with his breath. He showed no fear now, but when Matt asked him how he did, Yunguf whispered that he was dying. There was more he wanted to say to Matt, but talking came too hard.

  “Lord Ay,” said one of the relatives reluctantly, “I think my cousin would say that his challenge to you was a lie, and that therefore he knew he could not win.”

  The man on the pallet nodded.

  “Also—“ The cousin paused as the other relative gestured at him worriedly. Then he went on, in a determined rush of words. “I think Yunguf would warn you that things harder to fight against than swords are set against you here.”

  “I saw the white robe left on the ground.”

  “Ah, then you are warned. May your new god defend you if a time comes when your sword will avail nothing.”

  A seabird cried in the night outside. Yunguf’s eyes, with fear in them again, turned to the small window.

  Matt wished the men of Yung well and climbed the stair back to the castle roof. He could be alone there and unobserved, since only a token watch was kept, and full night had now descended. Once secluded in lonely darkness, he took a deep breath and, for the first time, pressed his helmet’s right wing in a certain way, switching on the communicator.

  “Time Ops here.” The crisp Modern voice was barely a whisper of sound, but it made the castle, and even the open night with its rising moon, somehow unreal. Reality was once more a grimly crowded cave-fortress at the center of a fantastic web of machines and energy. In what sounded to his own ears like a lifeless voice, Matt reported the duel and Nomis’s departure, with the implied threat of the discarded white robe.

  “Yes, our screens showed Yunguf’s lifeline being hit by something. He’s going to—“ A paradox loop censored out some words of Time Ops’ speech. “Nothing vital is involved there, though.” By that, of course, Time Ops meant that nothing vital to the Moderns’ historical base was involved. “Have you seen or heard anything of the dragon yet?”

  “No.” The track of the rising moon showed the calm sea out to the distant horizon. “Why do you speak of the dragon so much?”

  ‘Why?” The tiny voice seemed to crackle. “Because it’s important!”

  “Yes, I know. But what about my task here, of being king? If you help me I can do that, though it seems that I cannot be Ay.”.

  There was a pause. “You’re doing as well as can be expected, Matt. We’ll tell you when there’s corrective action you must take to stay closer to Ay’s lifeline. Yes, you’re doing a damn good job, from what our screens show. As I said, what happens to Yunguf isn’t vital. Your watching out for the dragon is.”

  “I will watch out for it, of course.”

  After correctly breaking off the contact, Matt decided it was time he visited Ay’s men, who had been quarted temporarily in a kind of guardroom built into the castle’s massive outer wall. With this in mind he descended from the keep along an outer stair.

  He was deep in thought, and it did not occur to him that the courtyard at the bottom of the stair was darker than it ought to have been. Nor did he wonder that the postern gate nearby stood half-open and unguarded. A sound of rapid movement at his rear alerted him, but too late; before he could draw a sword a wave of men was on him, weighing him down. And before he could shed Ay’s pride enough to utter a cry for help, something smothering had been bound tight around his head.

  “Sir, can you spare a minute? It’s important.” Time Ops looked up impatiently behind his desk, but paused when he saw Derron’s face and noticed what he was carrying. “Come in, then, Major. What is it?”

  Derron walked stiffly into the office, carrying a winged helmet under his arm. “Sir, I’ve been—sort of hanging on to this. It’s the extra one Matt found on his ship before he was dropped. Today some communications people came to see me about it. There was a continuous noise signal being generated in its chronotransmitter.”

  Time Ops just sat there behind his desk, waiting not too patiently for Derron to get to the point.

  “The communications people told me, sir, that the signal from this helmet was interfering with a similar signal put out by the helmet Matt’s wearing. Whichever one he’d taken, he’d be walking around back there broadcasting a built-in noise, very easy for the berserker to identify as a chronotransmitter and home in on. The berserker must have thought it an obvious trap, sir, since, it hasn’t homed in and killed him yet.” Derron’s voice was very well controlled, but he could feel his anger in the tightness of his throat.

  “So, you’re shocked at what we’re doing, Odegard. Is that it?” Time Ops grew angry too, but not guiltily or defensively. He was only annoyed, it seemed, at Derron’s obtuseness. He flicked on his desk screen and spun a selector. “Take a look at this. Our present view of Ay’s lifeline.”

  During his hitch of sentry duty, Derron had gotten pretty good at reading the screens. This was the first look he had today at what was happening to Ay’s lifeline. He studied the picture carefully, but what he saw only confirmed his fears of yesterday. “It looks bad. He’s getting way off the track.”

  “Matt’s buying a little more present-time for us here, and so far that’s all he’s doing. Is it clear now why we’re trying to get the dragon to kill him? Millions, many millions, have died in this war for nothing, Major.”

  “I see.” His anger was growing more choking by the moment, because there was nowhere it could justly be vented. In hands that he could not keep from shaking, Derron held the helmet out in front of him for a moment, looking at it as if it were an archeological find he had just unearthed. “I see. You’ll never win unless you find that dragon’s keyhole. Matt never was anything but a fancy piece of live bait, was he?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that, Major.” Time Ops’ voice was less sharp. “When you first suggested that he be used, we weren’t sure but that he could come out alive. But the first full-scale computer simulation showed us the way things pretty well had to go. No doubt you’re right when you say bugging the helmet made the trap a little too obvious.” Time Ops shrugged, a slight, tired motion. “The way things stand at this moment, Matt may be safer from berserkers than we are.”

  Matt came painfully awake, trying to cough around a gag of dirty cloth that had been stuffed into his mouth. His head ached, throbbing hideously, as if he had been drugged. He was being carried with a sickening jogging motion; when his head had cleared a little more, he underst
ood that he was riding slung across a load-beast’s humped back, his head hanging down on one side of the animal and his feet on the other. His helmet had fallen off somewhere; and there was no bouncing tug at his waist from the weight of sword and scabbard.

  Six or eight men had him prisoner. They were walking near the load-beast in the darkness, guiding and leading it along a narrow winding path by moonlight. The men looked behind them frequently, and now and then they exchanged a few low-voiced words.

  “… I think two of them are following, or they were. …”

  Matt heard that much. He tried the cords holding his wrists and ankles and found them strong and tight. Turning his head, he could see that the trail ahead wound among jagged pillars and out-croppings of rock; from what he knew of the country near Blanium he judged that they were right along the coast.

  When the man who was leading the way turned and paused a moment to let the others close up, Matt saw without surprise that he was tall and thin and robed in black, and had belted around his lean waist a sword and scabbard that looked like Matt’s. Nomis had taken for himself one of the power symbols of a king.

  The way grew steadily rougher. Shortly the little procession came to a thin ridge, with deep clefts in the rock on either side of it; here the load-beast must be left behind. At Nomis’s order, some of the men lifted Matt from its back. He tried to feign unconsciousness, but Nomis came to lift his eyelids and then regard him with a knowing grin.

  “He’s awake. Untie his feet, but see to it that his arms are doubly secure.”

  The men did so. The farther they progressed on this hike, the more often they stopped to look uneasily about them, starting at every sound of the night. They seemed to fear Nomis and whatever lay ahead almost as much as they feared the pursuit that must be coming after them from the castle.