King of Assassins

by Rj Barker

  “Into them! Into them now!”

  The wall of shields moved forward to take advantage of the Landsmen’s disarray. I watched, hands twitching for want of a blade as Rufra’s troops went to work, and then there was a tug on my arm, Tinia Speaks-Not, pulling me toward the water. I turned from the battle going on to hold the doorway and took several very deep breaths.

  Breathe out.

  Breathe in.

  I plunged into the pool.

  And entered another world.

  Water so much colder than it was before.

  I knew they fought above. I heard they fought above. The dimming water reduced the clash of weapons to numb, round sounds. The water insulated me from cries of pain.

  Down.

  Pushing.

  Kicking.

  Lungs already aching. Panic at the hilt of my mind. Somewhere inside a child, struggling and terrified as they drown, held down by weeds.

  Your master is not here to save you now.

  That voice, so distant, as removed from me by the souring as the violence above is by the water. Alone, but I am not alone. A brief touch on my shoulder as Tinia Speaks-Not swims past me, her slim body undulating as she pushes into the depths and I follow. Down and down. It seems the pool is impossibly deep. There are tiny green spots of barely alive life suspended in it. The water is so cold it feels like nails scraping my skin. Above is a ring of dull, rippling light. Below is only a darkness as if I swim toward an end. Definitive and forever, the portcullis to Xus’s dark palace drawing me down. I follow Tinia’s feet as she kicks, the pressure of the water growing, pushing against my ears, crushing thought and sound into pain—until there is nothing but me and a silence so perfect I can hear my body working: the beat of my heart, the bellows of my lungs, the creak of my muscles.

  The world ceases to have meaning.

  The darkness becomes absolute.

  I swim. I am nothing but movement. Thought and purpose are forgotten in the icy water.

  Down.

  All sense of direction is gone. Am I going down or up? Left or right?

  Shocked from my reverie when my head makes contact with the floor, bouncing me off it and spinning me round.

  I spin in the dark water.

  The souring blinds me, no sense of where I am until Tinia’s hand steadies me: that strange shock; that feeling of knowing. She pulls my hand down, placing it on rough stone and moving it across. I find an edge in the darkness, something metal, part of a circle. Exploring with both hands. Aware of down now I find myself fighting my own buoyancy. What I feel must be the drain, I can feel the gentle pull of the pumps, a slight suction around the edges of the mat that covers it. The suction causes the thick material to outline the ribs of the metal beneath. It is like the corpse of some submerged beast. The mat covering the ribs like a layer of rotten flesh.

  So hard to think.

  Not flesh. Weed grows on the mat.

  Thick and slimy. Hard to grasp.

  I work my way round, finding the chains that run back through the wall. Pull. It moves. Pull again. The suction increases, like a growing breeze, grabbing at my hair, making my clothing swirl around me. The illusion is so complete I almost take the breath my lungs ache for.

  No!

  Keep pulling.

  Some tipping point is reached. Some place where the power of the pumps can no longer hold the mat in place and I pull but meet almost no resistance. Unprepared, my hands slip from the thick chain and I spin in the dark water, losing all sense of direction. Something grabs me, something strong and cold and powerful. Blue Watta? I am pulled down, my face smashed into the grate. Small bubbles of air knocked out of me and then Tinia careens into me. Did the current grab her too? Or is she trying to save me? She cannot. No one can. Now the breeze no longer blows. Now it is as if a great gale holds me down, pinning me against the grate.

  Blue Watta will finally have his due.

  No!

  Fighting anoxia’s lethargy. Tinia struggling against me as the water in the pool thunders by us, and through the grate. I weigh three, four, five times what is normal. Muscles fight against current. I hear the call of Blue Watta: it is a siren song. Such tiredness; so much easier to lie down and

  breathe out.

  A silver cascade of bubbles.

  Don’t.

  Breathe.

  In.

  Tinia’s hands on my shoulders. A subtle golden light. A little extra strength and, using each other as levers, we manage to stand. Feet braced on the grate against the howling water, the angry, grasping current. Trying to push up, trying to kick off. No chance. Cannot. Together. An unspoken agreement, an idea passed through the touch of skin. the last of our strength. Our knees bending, our muscles, bunching, tensing, releasing. For a moment we fly.

  Lift! Lift!

  But, like an arrow reaching for the sky, we are dragged back down. Smashed into the cold iron of the grate. Caught by the weight of water. Her hands are on my face. Then her mouth is on mine. A kiss. Her tongue quicksilver quick. A shot of warmth through my body. A shot of air into my lungs and the terrible suction from the grate ceases.

  “Go!”

  Her voice in my mind, the voice never used in life, and it is beautiful and clear and true.

  “Go!”

  I kick off, animal panic overriding all sense. Kick again. The current is still there but not as strong and I rise. I rise and rise. Kick by kick. Chest aching. Body lethargic and unresponsive. The circle of dull light seems a mountride away.

  And then.

  Breaking the surface.

  Breathe!

  Shouting, screaming, the scrape of blade on shield. Water covers me. Gasping, coughing. Surface. The cries of the dying. Dark water over my head.

  The numbing cold of water.

  The dulling of sound.

  A hand on my collar. Pulling me up and out. Into the violence, the shrieking.

  The air.

  “Breathe, dead gods damn you!” The voice of Arketh. I let my head flop to the side. The world is out of focus. Pastel-hued torches illuminate a surging mass of metal and flesh. Coughing, filthy water leaving my lungs. Vomiting up more water.

  “Tinia?” A gasp. A knowing before Arketh speaks.

  “Only you came up.” Crawling for the water but Arketh holds me back. “If she’s still down there she’s dead. She was dying anyway. I can always tell. But you are needed. Gather your strength, Girton Club-Foot, while your troops buy you time to recover.”

  As I lay there, the life flowing back into me, watching the water ebb, listening to the fight, the shouts. Aydor bullying his men and women, directing them, I realised what had happened and waited for what I knew I must see.

  She appeared in no more than a foot of water. Her body looked smaller in death than it had in life. Though it had been big enough to do what she intended. Tinia Speaks-Not had spread her body across the grate, lessening the suction enough for me to escape the pull of the water by sacrificing herself. As the last of the water drained away, her body moved: a firework hope within me, but it was only the movement of death: the slack and meaningless rocking of limbs in water, moving without the volition of a mind.

  “I never saw her fight,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else.

  “She bought your life with her own,” said Arketh. “I do not think we can doubt her bravery.”

  I rolled on to my side, away from the body in the draining pool. She had been dying and she knew it. But that was little comfort.

  “It is not about bravery, Arketh.” I pushed myself to my feet. Water that had been held against my skin, warmed by my body, poured away, leaving me cold. “It is about beauty. She was taught by a master, as was I. To watch her dance would have been beautiful.”

  Arketh grabbed my face, turning me toward her and something awful flared in her eyes.

  “Sentiment makes me sick and it makes you weak. We have a job to do and the way is now open.” She let go of me and stood back. “The pool is drain
ed!” she shouted. Aydor glanced over his shoulder.

  “Split!” he bellowed, and the rear rank of troops fell back to me, leaving Gonan with seven men and women to hold the door.

  “How many wait for us through there?” Aydor asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He half-laughed.

  “Then guess.” He smiled at me and shrugged. “I have noticed your guesses are usually good.”

  I let my mind go, felt the men and women around me, strong and golden. Felt the Landsmen that were trying to break in—but there were not many of them left, twelve maybe, and if Gonan was canny he should beat them. The other way, through the pools, I felt that horrible throbbing.

  The lair of something wrong, something that offended a spirit deep with me. And around it, like planets orbiting a sun, were some of those strange red and gold presences: eight in all.

  “Eight,” I said quietly. I had unconsciously turned back to the pool and found myself staring at Tinia’s corpse.

  “And we are nine,” said Aydor. “Should be more than enough.” He put a gentle hand on my arm and said quietly, “Let us not waste her sacrifice.”

  “No,” I said, “let us not.”

  Chapter 30

  Pulse.

  Down steep and slippery stairs into the empty pool. None looked at the body of Tinia Speaks-Not. It was ever the way with warriors—to ignore what could easily be you during a battle. Death was not to be mentioned or acknowledged lest you attract the attention of Xus the unseen, but I could not help staring at her. Aydor kept hold of my arm.

  “There will be a time to remember her, Girton,” he said, pulling me on, “but it is not now.” I tore my eyes away from her body and we moved carefully forward into the dark maw of the tunnel. Was this how death had looked for Tinia? A darkness slow approaching? Was this what awaited me when the knives finally passed my guard?

  Pulse.

  “How long is the tunnel, Girton?” said Aydor.

  “I swam through it and it nearly drowned me. I can hold my breath for seven minutes.”

  “Longer than we’d like then,” said Aydor, and wiped blood from his face with his forearm before setting off.

  The tunnel was thick with the hard, cold smell of damp and the floor slippery with the slime that had been suspended in the water. It was not hard to think we ran through the veins of one of the dead gods, from one chamber of a great heart to another. The screams of those fighting and dying echoed down from the chamber behind us, twisting and turning against the wet stone, becoming something inhuman, something unreal and dreamlike. Before me swam the red and gold life of those the Landsmen had saved from death. I counted eight, floating in the null of the souring around the throbbing wrongness that was Darsese, once high king.

  Pulse.

  And behind me, lying across the drain that had exposed the slippery floor of the pool, was the body of Tinia Speaks-Not, but she did not cry out or glow in my mind. She had taken the hand of Xus and waited in his dark palace with her master and Feorwic.

  “Coil’s piss!” A warrior slipped, falling in a crash of armour. Aydor nearly slipped himself, having to swerve to avoid her body and then flailing comically to keep his balance.

  “Dallad’s arse,” he said, “it’s like walking on ice.” I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to find Giffett, an old warrior, her face pulled into a permanent grimace by a scar.

  “Blessed,” she said quietly. Meagre light gleamed from the sweat on her skin. “If they lock their shields at the top of the stair on the other side we are done if we simply charge ahead in this slime.”

  Pulse.

  I nodded. I had not thought. Tinia’s death had filled my mind: the panic of the water and the shock of her sacrifice. It was good, in a way, that after so long serving Xus, death could still surprise. Still hurt. Still overwhelm.

  Breathe.

  Out.

  In.

  “Bows to the front,” I said. Red and gold, glowing in my mind around the throne of Darsese the sorcerer. “I do not think they will be waiting for us on the stair. I think they will have drawn back to protect Darsese.” I knew this, but could not tell anyone why. “But you are right, Giffett.” I raised my voice a little. “Four bows to the front. The rest be ready to protect them. We go forward slow but sure,” I said. A scream echoed down the tunnel from behind us and I felt the unspoken question in the air. “Gonan will hold the door for us. Concentrate forward, I want you all whole for the throne room,” I said. “No slipping and breaking bones. I am small in stature and if I have to carry you into battle it will sorely hamper me.” I heard laughter among the troops and the tension dropped a little. Then we moved again, through darkness, into another world to be reborn as many had been before us. As the light of the sepulchre grew. I stopped the troops again. The sounds of battle still echoed around us and now they were eager to be on. A soldier fears little more than the enemy coming up on his rear.

  “Listen,” I said. “I have kept silent on what I saw in the sepulchre, but I must warn you now the Landsmen are not what they were. They have let the Children of Arnst defile the place.” Gasps around me. “Do not be distracted by what you see. Xus walks with us and if Aydor is right—”

  “Always am,” said Aydor. Nervous chuckles.

  “If Aydor is right and I am the Chosen of Xus then he has chosen me to stamp out what has been done here. Are you with me?” Nods around me. “Do you walk with Xus?” I said it urgently, but quietly, and the replies came back.

  “Yes.”

  “Aye.”

  “Unseen pass over me.”

  “Aye.”

  Pulse.

  “I walk with Xus.”

  “Yes.”

  “Always.”

  “And I,” said Arketh, last of my nine. From there we went on in silence, the arc of light from the sepulchre growing with every step, and I could feel the attention of the troops being cast forward. We heard nothing from before us, no chinking of armour, no voices whispering, nothing.

  “Maybe the room is empty,” said Aydor.

  Pulse.

  “No,” I said, “it is not.”

  The silence of those waiting for us was as oppressive to me as the stink of damp in the empty pool.

  “Careful. Make the spear.”

  I led us forward, at the head of a spearpoint of troops. Taking us up the stairs step by slimy step and into the sepulchre.

  Pulse.

  Up a step.

  The statue of Xus appears first, torches everywhere. There must be some secret way up the walls as they go far higher than anyone could reach. The ragged hood of Xus bobs on the false horizon of the pool edge as I ascend. It is like he rides a great ship through the night. The illusion of the sea is increased by the depth of the souring below me and the nausea it causes. Great waves wash over me.

  Pulse.

  Up a step.

  The covered face of Xus, the clothing of ripped and painted canvasses, an army’s worth of tents raised in mockery of a god I have known all my life. Tree-branch arms ride into view, chains falling from them. With each step up I feel like I fall. The souring below me is like no other. It is past the death of the land, deeper, impossibly deep. How could anything be past death? How could something be lower than zero? I do not know and it staggers me. I slip and only Aydor’s hand stops me flailing back down the steep stairs.

  Pulse.

  Up a step.

  Adallada and Dallad come into view, but the queen of the gods has changed. The Children have been at work on her in the hours since I have last been here. Tears of blood painted on her face and, where she had been exquisitely beautiful before, she was now scarred. Someone, or more likely many someones, have made attempts to break her statue, but she resisted. I see myself in her: once-perfect flesh covered in ridges and pits; scars run along her shoulders, round her neck and elbows, at all the weak points of a statue. But still she stood, defiant. Opposite her, Dallad remained untouched.

  G
asps from behind me.

  “Men made these?” from Aydor. “It seems impossible.”

  “Then it was probably women.” Arketh let out a quiet chuckle. “Though it seems men are happy to destroy it.”

  Pulse.

  Up a step.

  More of the goddess. More of the god. More of the mockery of Xus.

  “That is not our god, Girton Club-Foot.” A voice from behind me.

  “No,” I said. “It is not.”

  Pulse.

  Up a step.

  The cage comes into view, empty now. Is this responsible for the depth of the souring below? The terrible void that makes me doubt the solidity of the ground below me? That has me feeling like I float when I walk? Is it magic made upon magic? A scar in the land that can never heal, no matter how much blood is poured into it.

  Pulse.

  Up a step.

  An image: the land a great wide mouth, of thin white lips, of rotted teeth. Blood. Pouring into the mouth. More blood than I imagined possible. Huge hands breaking men and women apart, tipping out their blood and throwing aside the husks. The mouth can never be sated, I know it, feel it. It drinks the blood: it screams in pain.

  “Girton?” Aydor’s steadying hand on my elbow. I had stopped quite still.

  “I am well,” I said.

  Pulse.

  Up a step.

  The points of the throne, the anchorages of the chains that hold the slumped body of the high king. A sudden thirst upon me. A weakness in my legs. A fullness to my bladder.

  Pulse.

  Up a step.

  Eight wait for us. Dressed in the green and tree. Utterly silent. Visors polished to a mirror. Huge shields held by their sides and longswords in their hands. They do not move and it is not the stillness of those who wait, it is the stillness of the dead. As the last of the water drained away, her body moved: a firework hope within me, but it was only the movement of death: the slack and meaningless rocking of limbs in water, moving without the volition of a mind. No, not the stillness of the dead, that is a peaceful thing. This was the stillness of something past death. Something I did not understand, or want to understand. Something that knew no peace.