King of Assassins

by Rj Barker

  “No! No, Aydor!” I wrapped my arms around his massive arm, dragging him to a stop before the throne, in the shadow of the dead gods. “It is not Darsese, but she still may help us!”

  “How? How can some half-dead woman help us?” The fire had left his eyes, replaced by desperation, fear. “All is lost.”

  “No, it is not.” I let go of him, stood between him and Arketh. The torturer seemed insensible to us. All that interested her was the woman. I took a step closer, speaking softly to her. “This is not the high king, is it, Arketh?” I said it gently and she shook her head, though she was not really listening and she did not look at me. Her attention was fixed on the woman and only one thing made sense. “This is Cassadea, is it not, Arketh? This is the high king’s sister.”

  “She makes miracles,” said Arketh quietly. “She always has done. She is my miracle.” The torturer turned to look at me.

  “She is useless to us. Look at her,” said Aydor. He hooked the hammer onto his belt, staring around the throne room at the corpses. Cassadea’s head lolled, as if there were no bones in her neck. Her eyes were open but she saw nothing and I searched her slack face for some sign of the terrible hunger I had felt when I had been on the edge of death. But I felt nothing. Even the pulsing that had filled the air was gone. “All this for nothing,” said Aydor.

  “No,” I said, “Cassadea is kin to Darsese, and her survival still shows the Landsmen have lied. They said his family was dead, his line ended.” I took a step forward, knelt by the throne, hissing at the pain in my thigh. “Is Darsese dead, Arketh?”

  She nodded, the teeth in her hair a death rattle.

  “Aye, we burned him on a pyre.”

  “The magic Rufra saw Darsese do, the creatures of the menageries,” I said. “All her work?” I pointed at Cassadea.

  Arketh nodded. Her eyes brightened, she became animated.

  “Yes, and mine. Our creatures are miracles, Girton. She holds the life in them while I shape them.” Arketh stood. “She heals, Girton, it is what she does.”

  “Those people, Arketh, those creatures. They live in agony, pain beyond understanding.”

  Arketh tipped her head to one side, like a dog hearing a command it did not understand in a voice it knew well.

  “Life is pain, Girton.” She tried a smile, tentative, unsure. “I thought you of all people would know that.”

  “I do not welcome it, or inflict it unnecessarily.”

  She shrugged, turning back to Cassadea.

  “We must free her,” she said.

  “Yes.” I knelt by the throne, Cassadea’s chains were held with heavy locks but they were simple ones and of little obstacle to me. As I worked on them I talked with Arketh. “We must take Cassadea to Rufra.”

  “No,” she said softly, “he will kill her.”

  “I think she lives in body only, Arketh,” I said softly as I felt the tumblers within the locks move in my hands. “I think she is in pain beyond bearing, beyond sanity.”

  “No.” It was a screech, barely a word. Arketh took Cassadea’s head in her hands, a madness in the torturer’s eyes. “I will take her away from here and I will heal her. Then we will continue our work.”

  Aydor stepped over the body of Danfoth, halting at the bottom of the steps which led up to the dais. I held up a hand stopping his outburst before it started.

  “How did she get like this, Arketh?”

  Something returned to the torturer’s eyes.

  “Love, Girton Club-Foot. She did it for love.”

  “For you?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, her brother.”

  “But he sent her away.”

  She nodded vigorously, and shuffled round so she knelt with her knees pointing at me, her face animated, eager to explain. “You will listen and you will understand because you share the power. She has earned her freedom. Even if you think the menageries wrong, she has earned it.”

  “She would have to pay a huge price to make up for the creatures she has made,” said Aydor. He stared at Arketh. For a moment I thought he would spit, but he held his dislike in.

  Arketh’s face became blank, something dark in her eye, a mote of hatred.

  “She has paid a huge price,” she said, taking Cassadea by the chin and lifting up her head to show Aydor the slack features. “Or are you blind, as well as ugly, king-that-never-was?”

  “Kill her, Girton,” he said. “Just kill them both.”

  I shook my head.

  “No, I want to know what happened. Cassadea may still be able to help us, and you, Arketh.” I made my voice light, happy sounding, though knowing I sat next to the hungry vortex I had felt earlier made me feel even more nauseous than the depth of the souring beneath us. “What happened, Arketh?”

  “The plague,” she said. “It came and Darsese sent Cassadea away. He loved her, and she him, in the pure way of brother and sister.”

  “And you loved her?”

  “Yes.” Arketh nodded: the clatter of pulled teeth. “She did not love me. She enjoyed me though,” she shrugged, hugged herself, “but she was a queen. If I make her well, she will love me, I am sure,” she said. “And we will create our miracles and she will be happy.”

  “Darsese sent her away?” I said, pulling her back on track.

  “Yes. To the mountains. The plague was not in the mountains. But she came back.”

  “Why?”

  “Darsese contracted the forgetting plague. And she could heal, do you see? She could heal so she came back to heal him. I begged her not to, begged her to go away again, but she would not listen.” She stroked Cassadea’s cheek. “She was too full of love, you see. She was too good.”

  “Her brother was already dead?”

  “No, not then, but he was gone by the time she returned. Gone so very far away.”

  “The plague had taken his mind?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “But Cassadea, dear, caring Cassadea, would not believe it. She thought she could bring him back. She thought she could heal him. Gamelon knew, and Fureth. They knew what she planned. They helped.”

  “Helped?”

  “Have you not noticed, the town? The castle? How empty they are? It took three days for Cassadea to gather enough life. She brought them out the town in caravans. To flee the plague, she said, and it was true, in a way. The people of the town fought like animals to get on the caravans, which was good, as it meant we took the strongest. They were brought into the castle, to a feast. We were not cruel and they were starving so we fed them. There was a table laid with all the best food and drink. While they feasted we locked ourselves away in the farthest part of the castle.”

  “And the Landsmen were party to this.”

  “Only some, most were not here then. Fureth brought them back later.”

  “But she could not heal Darsese?” Arketh shook her head.

  “No, I told her she could not. She could not hold off death, who can? And she used them all up trying to heal him. Xus will not be denied.” She glanced up at the monstrous statue. “But Darsese was not dead, of course. The forgetting plague was Dark Ungar’s beast. Not Xus’s, and the Lord of Hunger can never be sated. She must have dived so deep and tried so hard to save her brother.” Arketh looked up at me, her eyes gleaming with tears. “She gave her all.”

  “The curing of the forgetting plague,” I said. “It was her.”

  “Aye,” said Arketh off-handedly, “a by-product of what she did here. She saved so many but lost herself.” Arketh reached out for me, putting her hand on mine. “Those lives she saved should buy her forgiveness many times over, Girton Club-Foot. When we returned from the farthest parts of the castle we found Cassadea and Darsese among five hundred corpses. She was like this.” She lifted Cassadea’s hand and I noticed how very careful she was, how she did not touch her skin. “And Darsese was no better, still only a shell.”

  “How did they find out she could heal?”

  “Luck,” said Arketh. “I
told them to give her over to my care but Fureth would not. He ordered Cassadea taken to the healer priests of Anwith. The man who took Cassadea’s left hand died, the man who took her right hand found himself stronger, some minor wounds healed.” Arketh placed Cassadea’s hand down, very carefully. “I believe she is stuck, see. In her mind I am sure she tries to heal her brother still, but I will make her see he is gone. I will get through to her and—”

  “How?” said Aydor. “How will you do that?”

  Arketh smiled.

  “She hungers, Aydor,” said Arketh, “and I will feed her until she is sated.”

  He shook his head.

  “Enough of this,” he said. “Nothing good can come of this. I have had—” He stopped mid-sentence.

  Coughed.

  Blood from his mouth. A gout of it that stained his beard. He groaned and I heard a noise like ripping cloth. A sword tip appeared, poking through the armour over his belly. He stared down at it, as if confused. “Who?” he said, and he unhooked the warhammer from his belt. A moment later it fell from his hand and he looked confused. “Who?” he said again. Then the sword was withdrawn and he fell, to his knees, to the floor.

  Behind him stood Danfoth, wild and mad. His armour hung in tatters and blood dripped from the smashed bones of his ribcage, sticking out like knives from his skin.

  “I. Walk. With. Xus,” he said, each word a struggle. “I. Cannot. Die.” He raised the sword, pointed it at me. “Now.” A breath as he gathered strength. “I finish you, abhorred of Xus.” I stood, staggered, reached for my blades and realised I had nothing. No strength, no fight left. The gift of the marisk seed, though strong, was short-lived, and it was gone. I could barely stand. So quick was the ebb of my strength that just the short journey from sitting to standing sapped everything I had. Danfoth seemed massive, as if death suited him, had made him grow. His eyes were so red they appeared like flames. I had no strength, no magic, only the abyss of the souring below me.

  I raised a hand, pointed it at Danfoth as he stepped over the dying Aydor. I did not even have the strength to threaten him.

  “I will take the word of the dead god into the land,” he said. “You are spent, Girton Club-Foot. I can feel it. You have nothing.”

  I hated Danfoth. I hated him for protecting a rapist and murdering for him fifteen years ago. I hated him for twisting the ways of Xus the unseen, who was a gentle god: my god. And at this moment, in this place, I hated him the most for what he had done to my friend.

  “I have my life,” I said.

  “Not for long.” He took a step forward.

  “No, not for long.” I reached within. The pain was excruciating, like I had swallowed a ball of knives. It pulsed in my stomach, shredding my guts, my heart, my liver and all that gave me life. Cassadea moaned as I reached inside myself. Fire across my skin, driving out the moisture and leaving only agony. Unseen fingernails clawed at my eyes and hot pincers clasped the base of my tongue and still, what magic I had gathered was meagre, small, nothing.

  But it was all I had.

  I threw the black antler.

  It was not a great magic. It was not done carelessly the way I had thrown so many others. It was not done with joy and I did not revel in the sense of power.

  I threw the black antler with a scream, with my friend dying at my feet, with my king fighting a battle he could not win and with what was left of my own life powering the magic. But I did it. A short, jagged length of darkness crossed the space between Danfoth and myself. It punctured his forehead and smashed out of the back of his skull. Within his brain it sprouted a thousand tiny branches that turned the matter within to mush. I had a moment in which to be glad, I saw Danfoth fall, dead before he hit the floor. Then I followed him down. My legs gave way, my muscles lost their elasticity. I landed against Aydor, one arm wrapping around my neck so my fingers rested on the thready pulse of the vein there, the other stretched out uncomfortably against the steps. Aydor’s eyes opened, flicked backward and forward, and though he could not move he could still speak, just.

  “He dead?” The words leaked bloodily from his mouth.

  “Yes,” Mine, barely audible.

  “Good.” He coughed again. “We have failed. Rufra will die.” It was more a sigh than words. The life was leaving him and I hoped he did not burn inside the way I did. I felt a furious anger, aimed at myself for not being enough.

  “We tried,” I said. But I had failed, not him. I had failed Aydor. I had failed those we brought with us. I had failed Rufra. Aydor reached out a hand, placing it on my arm. His eyes no longer saw me, but I think he took comfort from knowing I was near.

  “I’ll see you in Xus’s dark palace, Girton. I …”

  But his words were lost. A hand on my shoulder, pulling me over. Looking up into Arketh’s face. Dirty hair, rattling chains of teeth.

  “You saved us,” she said. “Danfoth would have used her.” She crawled over me, fishing about behind my back like a dog burrowing for a bone. “She would never have been free.” Then she lifted Aydor’s hand and took my outstretched one, clasped them together and grinned at me. She pulled at her hair, produced a length of ribbon sewn with teeth, and wrapped it round our hands, binding us together. “She is not as strong as she was. You have to be touching now, see,” she said, crawling back over to Cassadea. She pulled the woman from the throne, lowered her down ever so gently and started to drag her limp body over. “You still have a bit of life in you, both of you.” Behind her, the red vortex of Cassadea’s hunger opened once more, like the bloodshot eyes of those she had brought back from the brink. “I don’t want to waste what you have left.” Her eyes were as wide and mad as Danfoth’s had ever been. She dropped Cassadea’s wrist and scuttled over to me. “I am sorry, Girton, I genuinely am.” She caressed my face with her icy hand. “I had so hoped to spend real time with you, to explore your strength, but Cassadea needs it more.” She left her hand on my cheek, staring into my eyes as if she were a lover. “You understand? I am only trying to save a life? This is all.” It was almost as if she needed my permission before feeding me to the hungry void behind her.

  From somewhere deep within I found voice and volition. So many years I had believed it was the magic’s voice that drove me to madness, but here, at the last I knew it was not. In this place the magic was imprisoned, walled off from me by a souring the depths of which I was sure had never existed before. But the voice still spoke.

  I want to live.

  Arketh’s words echoed within me. “I am only trying to save a life.”

  I want to live.

  And I found the will, the strength, and I found it in the voice I had feared all my life.

  That voice, the anger that had driven it, that had made me do things that frightened me, shamed me. It had never been outside. It had never been separate. It had always been part of me—no, even that was a lie. It was me. And if I could not touch the land, if I could not draw on the physicality of my life, if I had no magic at all. Then the voice had one thing left.

  I want to live.

  Anger.

  It was the most difficult thing I had ever done. Bringing my hand up, moving it from my neck the few handsbreaths to my cheek, covering Arketh’s hand with mine. The torturer smiled at me, taking what I did for assent. Presuming, in her madness, that I would give in to the horror she proposed.

  “You have to be touching,” I whispered. And she realised what I did then, of course she did, but it was too late. She tried to draw her hand away but the strongest man in the Tired Lands could not have broken the bond between us. The gold of her life, that spinning bright thread within her? I held it now. I pulled on it. I took from her. I drained Arketh of every year of life she had left in her, and though it only took a moment she screamed for an eternity. Not in pain, though it may have been great. Not even for herself. She screamed for Cassadea. The life flowed from Arketh into me, it filled me, and from me it flowed into Aydor. Our bones knitting, cut flesh closing, energy taken
returned. When I finally let go of Arketh she was nothing more than a husk, a desiccated corpse of the kind you often find in blood gibbets: something that had been recognisably human, once—but was no longer.

  Aydor stood first. He ran a hand over his stomach, pushed a finger into the hole in his armour and then helped me up. He walked over to Cassadea.

  “If I touch her,” he said, “will I undo what you have just done?”

  “Do not touch her skin. From what has been said the power works through her hands so we should bind them and cover them. We must take her to Rufra, and hope we are in time to save him.” He nodded, and while he gathered what he needed to make Cassadea safe for him to carry I found a torch and set light to the statue of Xus which towered above us.

  It was not my god and it offended me.

  Chapter 32

  We came from fire. Some trick of the building pulled the smoke from the giant burning statue of Xus into the empty hollows of the pool and along the tunnel. We coughed and staggered, half-blinded by tears and half-drowned in choking air. Aydor carried Cassadea across his arms, like a babe, and if she noticed the soot she breathed in she gave no sign of it. She simply hung limp as we entered the second pool, thick air swirling round our feet like we were marauders, coming from our latest atrocity.

  I suppose, in a way, we were.

  I walked ahead, blades in my hand, the left one spinning in readiness or nervousness, I was never sure. I did not know what I expected to find: Landsmen waiting for us with blades drawn? Or Gonan waiting, with his hangdog expression and his sword bloodied? But as we crested the steep and slippery steps we simply crossed from one place of death to another.

  That battle was easy to follow, a staccato pattern of footprints in the coating of slime on the floor. The Landsmen had been held at the entrance long enough for there to be a tideline of bodies between the doors, more of theirs than ours. Then they had broken the flimsy wall with what looked like a spear charge, broken spears lay on the floor and the pattern of bodies fanned out. The fighting had been fierce but these were Rufra’s soldiers and they were the best, for every one of them two Landsmen lay dead. And at the end of the fan, near to the steps of the pool, I found Gonan. He looked peaceful, though he had a sword in his hand and a spear through his chest. The spear was still held in the hands of the man who had wielded it, Gonan’s knife was in his throat and three other Landsmen lay dead around him.