Assassin's Apprentice

by S. R. Vaught; J. B. Redmond

  Too broken to fix, too close to death for healing.

  Stone had taken this boy because he was near death, Aron realized. He must have suffered a wicked beating or some terrible fall.

  The wounded boy’s spirit sat up suddenly and its deep blue eyes blazed straight at Aron, even as its body remained slack below. Aron’s heart thumped and skittered. He had to bite his lip hard to keep from yelling.

  Where am I? The spirit asked through split lips, jaw slack with broken bones. Aron could tell the boy still clung to his essence, still struggled to hold to his last bit of life. Are you a rector?

  No! Lie down! Mastering his revulsion, Aron tried to tell the spirit to give itself back to its body before the Stone Brothers took pity on the half-dead boy and used their poisons to end his pain, but all he could do was shout, Heal. Heal yourself!

  Other syllables eluded him, clashing and dropping through his mind.

  Desperate to convey his meaning, Aron let his own essence flow forward and join with that of the waiting spirit. He had heard of this being possible on the other side of the Veil, but he had never done it, had no real idea how he was doing it now.

  Yet he was.

  Unformed thoughts and words flowed between them until the boy’s spirit seemed to hear Aron’s simple commands to return to its body, and to find a way to make itself whole again. The spirit nodded. Then it eased down, down into its injured shell, surrendering itself back to the boy’s body, giving the boy a definite spark of life, and leaving Aron whole and alone once more.

  Aron made himself close his eyes, slow his breathing, and concentrate until his heartbeat stilled to a perfect, rhythmic whisper. The image of the wounded boy and the wagon inside the circle of flames faded away from his mind.

  He opened his eyes once again, and piece by piece, the actual slice of the world Aron occupied shifted into view, blazing with detail that could only be seen on the other side of the Veil. Fire roared from nearby pyres and sizzled along tallow lines on the far side of the barn. Aron focused on the pillars holding up the shelter. He could see them sharper than he could in daylight, and closer than if he stood right over them. He could see into them, to the channeled grooves and the insects making pulp out of the aged wood.

  It’ll fall in a few years, he mused, forgetting that all focused thoughts were audible on the other side of the Veil.

  By the gods, boomed an unnatural voice from beside Aron. You are not Quiet!

  Aron yanked his awareness from the shelter’s pillars, spun toward the sound—and screamed.

  A monster towered beside him, three times the height of a normal man, made of swirling lightning, rain, and wind.

  It reached for him.

  Aron shouted again and staggered back. The monster paced him.

  It raised both arms.

  It would catch him. Embrace him. Draw him into that terrible storm.

  Get away from me! With the full force of his will, Aron struck the lightning-coated hands with his fists and kicked at the monster’s knees.

  A shock jolted through Aron’s fingers and foot, traveled up his arm and leg, and burst behind his eyes like a spray of stars.

  The horrible being stumbled backward.

  Before Aron’s vision cleared, the creature vanished, sucked back through the Veil by forces Aron didn’t even care to understand.

  At the same moment, Aron felt a weight sag against his body, then fall away. He looked down to find Stormbreaker sprawled on the ground beside him.

  With his senses so heightened on the other side of the Veil, Aron saw little sparks dancing like mad candles along the man’s snow-white skin. Stormbreaker’s robes smoked, and his gray cheville flashed as if battling to hold tight to the Stone Brother’s spirit. Blood—gods, so dark, dark red under the moonslight—trickled from his nose and mouth.

  I killed him. I hit him with my mind and murdered him!

  Before Aron could fully grasp what he saw, or think of what he should do next, a loud wailing jerked his attention back to the road.

  Again, he saw the scene as if it were bathed in daylight, yet the images were off-color from the actual darkness and the white-blue glow of the moons.

  From a burned patch of grass near the road’s edge, a shadow drifted upward, stretched, and assumed the form and substance of a hairless Fae child.

  Aron saw the child’s blue eyes sparkle as it gazed down at its limbs. Clothes took shape and color, a simple spun shift, like so many goodfolk women made for their girl-children. As if to confirm her gender, brown hair sprouted from the bald head and grew past the child’s shoulders.

  The little girl looked toward the shelter and took a few halting, stumbling steps toward the structure.

  “Mama?”

  The sound had struck Aron’s mind like a fist, almost clubbing him senseless. He pressed one hand against his head and gripped the silver dagger tight in the other. He knew on some level that he was, as Stormbreaker had asked him so many long minutes ago, seeing a mane as it truly existed. Things always showed their true nature on the other side of the Veil.

  He braced himself for the child’s next shout.

  “Mama!”

  A wall of pressure slammed against Aron’s dagger hand, but the silver seemed to split it, cut through it, and keep the pressure from crushing him.

  Silver. Silver. Thank the Brother for silver!

  The child staggered toward the shelter, toward Aron and Stormbreaker, but she was fast changing shape.

  Her features shifted and flowed, a girl but not a girl. She looked to be made of mud, then clouds, then mud again. Several times, she got her full features back, but just as fast she lost them.

  Aron gaped.

  Yes. His father had said something about this. How the newly dead and undispatched didn’t understand their situation. How their essence sought what it knew or wanted the most, how that first night was the most dangerous for everyone near it if the spirit wasn’t contained.

  The girl—now more mud-thing than child—stopped shy of the shelter and sniffed the air.

  Slowly, she turned to face Aron, and for a moment, she pulled together her Fae shape. A sweet-looking, pretty girl, not unlike his own sisters, with a saggy, dirty shift and braided hair, strands escaping in every direction. Aron felt a pang deep in his chest, and more than anything, he wanted to hug the poor creature, comfort her, and try to explain the terrible tragedy of the rock cat attack.

  The girl gazed at him.

  Then her gaze became a glare.

  She sniffed the air again.

  The blue of her eyes faded, replaced by a dull yellow glow. Only a skull now, with candles where the eyes ought to be. A collection of bones, rattling toward him. Aron watched, transfixed, as the skeleton became a slobbering, wheezing beast with no definite shape.

  It gained speed, and it grew a hideous set of fangs.

  Moonslight gleamed off the shadowy curve of those fangs.

  Aron’s mind absorbed the reality of his situation. He was standing alone in the night, facing a new, hungry mane. In seconds, the thing would attack him and bleed him dry unless he could pierce it with the silver dagger in his hand.

  He turned and leaped over Stormbreaker, back toward the tallow line burning at the side of the barn. If he could get to it, get to the flames, the mane wouldn’t approach him.

  It would feed on Stormbreaker instead, if Stormbreaker still had breath in his body. It would feed on the man Aron struck down and left helpless for the kill. And the barn. Without a ring of fire, the mane could enter. All the horses and mules would die, and the talons, too.

  Aron swore and jumped back to his previous position. Holding his dagger in front of him with both hands, he stepped between the charging mane and Stormbreaker’s motionless body.

  Like a wild boar, he told himself as his teeth clattered together. A wolf or a rock cat. Wait until it leaps. Cut it midjump, when it’s helpless.

  But it was a girl. A child. He would be killing a child!

&
nbsp; No! It’s a mane. Already dead. Pierce it with silver. Send the spirit on its journey.

  He heard his thoughts aloud, and the sound distracted him.

  By the time Aron found his focus again, the mane had taken flight. Fangs gnashed. Shadowy claws of fog stretched toward him like a rock cat’s deadly paws.

  He swung his dagger out and upward, slashing with no more conscious thought. The silver blade disappeared into the mane. A jarring coldness struck Aron’s shoulders, his outstretched arm, and his dagger hand all at once. It spilled like oil, covering his head, his face, his shoulders, chest, and legs in an icy blanket of death. He tasted blood, felt his essence move out of his body, as if sucked into the coldness. His vision swam and dimmed. His stomach flipped so fast and hard it made him heave.

  A shriek ripped the night and almost sundered Aron’s mind. His bladder and guts emptied as the cold oil tore away from his skin. He fell to his knees, arm still outstretched.

  A shadow rose before him in the moonslight.

  It took the form of the dead girl, faint but definite. A winged girl, made of something like dark, gleaming sand.

  Aron thought of the winged mockers. He opened his bile-filled mouth to yell, but no sound came forth. He had no energy. No breath. All he could do was spit on the ground and heave.

  The winged apparition flapped once, twice, then shot upward and became one with the black sky.

  Gone. Dispatched.

  The essence of a life on its journey.

  He had killed it.

  No. I killed nothing. That thing was already dead.

  Aron’s silver dagger slipped from his numb fingers.

  What have we done to ourselves? His mother’s voice echoed through his mind, from somewhere in his distant past, as they stood beside a neighbor’s funeral pyre. We destroyed the Furies and lost our own wings. Our spirits are trapped and turned to monsters unless we’re pierced with silver or dispatched by a servant of the horned god. Half our animals have been bred into mockers, and our legacies have been strangled to nothing but intuition. Brother of Many Faces, how could sane and rational beings bring themselves to such a pitiful existence?

  If Aron could have answered the mother in his memory, he would have said much about Fae sanity, about Stone Brothers and mockers and manes—and none of it kind—but he never got the chance.

  More shrieks ripped into his mind, more bellows and howls from manes.

  Shaking, hugging himself on his knees, Aron lifted his head.

  The manes were coming.

  Two, then three snuffled and moaned and slid and staggered over the hill, flowing down the road, sweeping toward him.

  Three more. And four. And five. More. More than should be in these forests. More manes than should be anywhere, even south of Dyn Ross, down in the mists of the Deadfall.

  How could there be so many?

  What could send so many manes flowing across the northern reaches of Dyn Brailing?

  Ten more manes crested the hill, then twenty, then too many to count. They tracked Aron’s heat, smelled his blood, the one food that would sustain them for weeks if they could drink it from him.

  Aron could feel how cold and empty they were … and how very, very hungry.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DARI

  Darielle Ross woke to the cold intuition that all the dead in Eyrie were descending on the shelter where she huddled beneath a rough travelers’ blanket.

  Dari had been north enough times to know about travelers’ blankets and travelers’ shelters, but she had never been north as a captive before. A prisoner. Her cousin Platt would kill her for this foolishness, for even being so far north, so far away from home, and putting everyone at risk. But no. Her grandfather would kill her before Platt ever had the chance.

  Dari opened her eyes without fighting her bonds or swearing or calling attention to herself in any fashion. It was difficult remaining so still, so silent, but she had come north to rescue the most important person in her life. When she found who she was looking for, she would go home where she belonged, no matter what these Stone Brothers planned—and no matter what sanctions she might face at the hands of her family.

  At least her hands and feet were no longer bound. She still had on the brown peasant-shirt she had fashioned for herself, long modest sleeves and hem to the midcalf, as most lower dynasts preferred. It was ripped and shredded in places from her ordeal, but it still gave her cover. The Stone Brothers must have brought her in sleeping, and they must not have wanted to alert the other travelers to the fact that she was a prisoner and, as far as the Stone Brothers knew, a Harvest prize. Many children resisted Harvest, but no doubt it was better not to pour salt in that wound on the day itself, when some of these people might have lost their own kin to the foul Fae tradition.

  Her eyes rapidly adapted to the low firelight, and she took in the rough-hewn walls and beams of the shelter. By turning her head slowly to the left, she could see the ashy stone hearth and the embers of the night’s fire.

  Fools!

  How could they let the light burn so low? Distance from the ground did not always mean protection. Dari’s anger grew by the moment at the absurdity of her situation, and her captors, too. The Fae had fallen so far from their time of glory, they were almost pitiful. Mixed almost completely with the human followers who had migrated to Eyrie with them centuries ago, the Fae had let their bloodlines and great talents die away—the ones that hadn’t been destroyed in the mixing disasters. And now, it seemed, they were turning loose their common sense as well.

  Dari let pride in her own race surge through her bones and muscles, powering her, driving her own abilities to a higher level. Her people were survivors. Her people knew what had importance in life—and her people always, always took precautions against Eyrie’s dangers, both natural and unnatural. She sent a blast of focused energy to the unburned wood, and it blazed bright enough to chase back some of the shadows in the wooden tree-building. She knew the shelter was in the forest, because she could smell the trees and dirt. She also caught the tang of recent kills, blood—probably rock cat and small game. That wasn’t ideal. Blood-scent always drew the manes.

  Dari’s stomach rumbled. Her head throbbed, and her thoughts still felt fuzzy from the sleeping powders the Stone Brothers had given her after they trapped her in the woods along the Watchline, just south of Can Rune. Cayn’s teeth, she couldn’t believe she had let herself get snagged in adder vines. She had been poisoned, unconscious and bleeding, and though she didn’t want to admit it, Stone had rescued her. Then, with her unbanded ankle and crazed appearance, no doubt they took her for mad or feral or orphaned, and fair game for Harvest.

  No matter.

  She had her senses back now, and she had rested. No human, Stone Guild or not, Fae blood or not, could hope to contain her.

  Dari listened to each sleeping traveler until she had the rhythm of their breathing. Then she eased into a sitting position and let her thoughts slide through the Veil, to that mystical world written over the tangible world—not a change in place at all. Just a shift in level of awareness, and in the freedom to expand or contract her senses until she saw and heard the distinct essence of every person in the shelter. Most of the travelers gave off dull browns and grays, though the family in the corner nearest the door had a tinge of silver in their essence. A trace of the Vagrat legacy, mind-talents that her people called graal in the older Language of Kings.

  One by one, Dari touched the minds of the travelers, suggesting deeper, longer-lasting sleep. The people in the shelter breathed more easily and more slowly, in and out, in and out, as their minds sank into the nether reaches of consciousness, where even dreams did not tread. They would feel more tired when they woke, but otherwise be no worse for their prolonged rest.

  Dari rested for a few moments, then turned her attention to the two captors present in the shelter. The boy had a touch of copper color to his essence, a remnant of the old tracking graal from the Altar bloodline, but Dari
used no more energy on him than she had used with the family by the door.

  The large Stone Brother, however, the one who called himself Windblown, had a strong, pulsing red essence. Mab graal, and a fair dose at that. No one could have guessed that by looking at the man, but then, Fae bloodlines had become so blended and jumbled that appearances were no longer reliable markers of family ties.

  Dari kept her thoughts inaudible, but wondered if he had sensed or seen danger coming toward him this night. Most with Mab blood had instincts about their future, though few could see the true shape of it. Fewer still could see aspects of the futures of others.

  Was Windblown so strong?

  The image of his essence crouched, fully formed, above his prone figure like a trap-lizard guarding its lair.

  This man had training.

  He would cost her.

  Dari centered herself and closed her eyes, moving her senses farther into the other side of the Veil even as she regulated what her own essence would project—what Windblown would “see” if he perceived her presence at all.

  Just a dark girl, with dark eyes and dark hair. Nothing unusual. She made certain she gave off a shade of peridot green, mimicking a weak Ross graal. Given the color of her skin, Windblown would expect that—if he had enough talent to see the essence of legacies.

  With great caution, Dari eased her essence forward, toward Windblown’s essence. It noticed her with a flick of its gaze, but paid her little heed. Instead, Windblown’s awareness seemed drawn to the door, toward the world outside the travelers’ shelter.

  Dari resisted the temptation to explore what had distracted the Stone Brother. She moved her thoughts forward until her essence almost mingled with that of her adversary.

  Still, Windblown’s essence kept its attention on the shelter’s wooden door.

  For a moment, Dari hesitated.

  What she was about to do was distasteful, even to her. Attacking another living being from the other side of the Veil felt cowardly, given the level of her talents, but in this case, she knew the action was justified. She also knew she had to be gentle—more gentle than she wanted to be. There was something about Windblown that she didn’t like, something other than the fact he had Fae blood, though she couldn’t name the sensation beyond an unpleasant stirring in her gut. She also had to acknowledge that she hated the fact he had captured her and drugged her. Twice.