Assassin's Apprentice

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

  “Good.” Stormbreaker spoke more quietly, likely to command even more of the boy’s attention. “You believe this because you have seen it and felt it.”

  Again, the boy nodded.

  Stormbreaker glanced at Dari. “We have seen and felt, Dari and I, that you have a graal, too, Aron Weylyn. It is nothing like mine, but it is no less dangerous.”

  As Dari had feared, the boy’s expression went from rapt to incredulous. He waved a hand as if to dismiss Stormbreaker’s words, but Stormbreaker wouldn’t be put off. “Your father and mother must have possessed a touch of it, and perhaps some of your brothers and sisters. You, however, have much more than a touch.”

  The boy’s relaxed posture and bemused countenance suggested that he gave this assertion no weight at all.

  Stormbreaker pressed onward, obviously planning to convince as he educated. “Aron, I believe you have the Brailing legacy, and not the weak sort left to the bloodline after the mixing disasters. I believe you have the old, true graal—a full measure of it.”

  Now the boy laughed outright, the first sound he had made since the dav’ha ceremony—only the resonance wasn’t happy, or even sarcastic. More pained and harsh, as if the noises were torn from his throat.

  Stormbreaker held up his hand for silence. “Throwbacks occur, random returns to these true mind-talents. We don’t know why. We can’t predict or control these phenomena, but I think perhaps these throwbacks have been happening along the Watchline, in families far from the diluted and mingled legacies found in the cities.”

  Aron straightened somewhat, and Dari figured that as a child raised on a farm, he had some grasp of breeding principles. Aron probably knew how to keep stock of pure and strong blood, how to weed out culls and join sires and dams for strong traits instead of weak ones. Now Aron was listening more closely.

  And perhaps beginning to worry.

  “I know you were tested at birth like all children who bear the name of their dynast bloodline,” Stormbreaker said. “The rectors wouldn’t have seen your mind-talents because your parents didn’t want them to discover your legacy and take you from your family. I doubt your parents even knew they were influencing the testing-cup results. I don’t believe they could employ their mind-talents deliberately, or else they would have influenced my testing-cup results as well.”

  Aron’s expression went distant, as if he might have been remembering something.

  “Your parents weren’t influencing the results,” Dari said, correcting Stormbreaker as she assumed he wished her to do. After all, he did bring up her greater understanding of the Veil, and by dint, the workings of legacies. “Your parents influenced the perception of the results.”

  Stormbreaker nodded and looked relieved by her assistance. “Yes. Thank you. And that’s the core of it, Aron. I believe that with training, you’ll be able to sense when people speak the truth and when they lie, and also influence the perceptions of others about what is true and what is not—either individually, or on a larger scale. And those skills are both a great gift and a terrible, terrible curse.”

  Dari knew that without the education offered by guilds, Aron had no way of hearing the old stories, of learning the atrocities of mind and body that the Fae and Fury races had once committed, both against themselves and against one another. In a way, that was a mercy, or he might have drawn his daggers and cut his own throat when Stormbreaker told him the nature of his graal.

  Stormbreaker retrieved a twig from his left and used his right hand to remove some grass until a patch of dirt lay between him and Aron. In the dirt, he drew a line with a dot beside it. “Imagine a man standing on the edge of a precipice.”

  Aron’s uncomprehending stare became more focused and a bit uncomfortable.

  Stormbreaker tapped the dot. “Now imagine that this man ‘sees’ or become convinced of the truth of a pack of mocker rock cats here, advancing upon him.”

  For a moment, Aron did not move. Then his thin faced pinched. Horror spreading slowly across his features as he looked at the line of the precipice and the dot representing the man. He reached down, hand trembling, and erased the dot.

  “Yes,” Stormbreaker agreed, shifting beside his diagram until he was leaning toward the boy. “Most men would jump to their deaths rather than be torn to shreds and eaten, or worse yet, burned alive by mocker poison.”

  Aron’s stare remained fixed on the line in the dirt.

  Now he was clearly waiting for the next blow, and Dari hated to know it was coming.

  “Let us take that a step farther.” Stormbreaker restored the line and the dot. “Let us say that instead of seeing the image of mocker rock cats, the man had a thought that he should jump, that he must jump, reason or no reason. And let us say that he believed this thought absolutely and without question to be true.”

  Air hissed from between Aron’s teeth.

  Once more, he rubbed out the dot.

  Stormbreaker erased the line with his palm and blew the dust off his hand. Then he used the end of the twig to place many dots in the dirt. “With the true Brailing graal, and with some training, it will be nothing to you to convince a mind that it should stop its own heart.” He blotted out a dot with his fingertip. “You could invade a man’s thoughts and cause him to believe he should plunge his dagger into his own chest.” He erased another dot. “And if your legacy is full, without any limits or fettering, you could do this to large groups of people at the same time.”

  Stormbreaker smeared away all the dots with a fast, harsh swipe of his hand.

  “And if you follow the path of the assassins who once roamed your dynast, for hire to those with the fullest purse,” Dari added, “you could become so efficient that you could kill in moments. Slaughter crowds with only a few thoughts—perhaps even one thought. There are rumors and old tales that the first Brailings could even bend inanimate material to their will.”

  Aron raised his hands, covered his ears, and stared at the ground.

  Please, Dari said to the horned god Cayn, hoping the great stag would hear her plea and show Aron some mercy. Do not let this boy’s mind break like my sister’s did. Do not let me have to gaze into the mad, vacant eyes of someone I care about a second time. Leave him his sanity.

  Stormbreaker gave Aron a moment, then tapped his wrist.

  The boy lowered his hands to listen.

  To Dari’s great relief, the light in his eyes hadn’t become the gleam of one no longer residing in the tangible world. At least not yet.

  Stormbreaker’s face also reflected some relief, even some hope, and the motion in the rank spirals tattooed on his cheeks and forehead increased. “I don’t have to tell you that this legacy is amazing, Aron, but to use the Brailing mind-talents against another living creature even if you think you’re acting for the greater good, that would be a monstrous thing.”

  Aron looked away, first at the grass, then the trees, then the sky. He shrugged, seemed to think better of such a casual gesture, and nodded instead.

  Dari took a deep breath and assumed responsibility for delivering the next bit of bad news. “You have already done harm with your graal at least twice.”

  Aron’s mouth came open. His eyes blasted denial and anger, but Dari carefully and patiently reminded him of the battle the night before. She recounted how Aron felled Stormbreaker with a single thought on the other side of the Veil, and how Aron injured her in similar fashion.

  “If Dari had not been Stregan and very powerful in her own right, she and I would be nothing but ashes smoldering atop our funeral blaze.” Stormbreaker’s tone remained gentle, but Aron twitched with each word, as if the man were striking him. “Your body would be burning, too, Aron. None of us would have survived the attack of the manes.”

  This realization seemed to drain the fight and denial right out of the boy, and he slumped over, hugging his own knees.

  Dari wanted to stroke the boy’s arm, but thought it best not to quell his emotions. She needed him to be raw and ready, una
ble to battle against her next statement. “So now you understand why we must begin to teach you how to use your skills on purpose, so that you do not use them by accident.”

  Stormbreaker nodded. “If you do employ your legacy, you must do so without emotion, with deliberate thought and decision, and much, much discussion of the potential consequences. The only exception would be to save your own life, directly and in the moment, if you’re threatened. Truly threatened.” He grimaced and rubbed the side of his head, as if remembering great pain. “Not just when the danger from others is imagined.”

  Aron still didn’t speak, though Dari saw the boy’s throat working. She was fairly certain it was his mind and emotions blocking his words and not some physical malady, but she resolved to check the moment they were on the other side of the Veil.

  “I will train you until no one will be able to discern your graal, except those to whom you reveal it.” Dari nodded to Stormbreaker. “He can’t help you with that. No Fae that I know of has that level of skill on the other side of the Veil, so this won’t be easy.”

  “You must learn to manage and conceal your legacy,” Stormbreaker said before making any move to walk away. “If you do not, I fear you will do great harm. And there are those like Lord Brailing who would kill you for your mind-talent, no matter how you choose to employ it. Others would be tempted to take you, even enslave you and force you to breed to propagate it, or worse yet, mix it with other mind-talents to make it even more efficient and deadly.”

  Dari reined in her own emotion and managed to assume a relaxed seated pose across from Aron. As he hurriedly brought his posture in line with her own, Dari said, “Once I’ve helped you handle the visible essence of your graal—the color around you that others with legacies might be able to see—and contain your talents on the other side of the Veil, you will learn more. The simpler things like healing and long-range communications, and of course, spying on enemies and friends alike.”

  She glanced at Stormbreaker to see if he would contradict her, but he merely gave her a bow and moved back toward the cook fire, clearing the area for their work.

  “I know you’re distressed, but we have no more time to lose, Aron.” Dari held out her hands to him. “Come with me. I’ll take you through the Veil, and we’ll begin our training here, now, today. I think we must, to avoid any repeat of what happened to Stormbreaker and to me last night.”

  The guilt written on the boy’s face punched at her insides, but there was too much at stake here to be gentle and kind at every turn. One day, Aron would grasp such intricacies of emotion, and perhaps much more than any living Fae about the power available to him on the other side of the Veil.

  For now, though, Dari would feel fortunate just to succeed in teaching this boy how to keep his abilities concealed.

  And maybe, just maybe, how to keep himself from murdering her the next time they faced adversity on the other side of the Veil.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DARI

  Dari kept the first training session simple. She sat Aron down, helped him calm himself, and took him through the Veil. Once there, she gave him an initial lesson on focusing his attention, on “seeing” the visible evidence of his own legacy. Everything had gone as well as Dari could have hoped. The boy did seem comfortable on the other side of the Veil—and she had found no physical reason for the silence that had gripped him since he saw the manes of his dead family. Time would heal his lack of speech. Time, and force of will, and necessity.

  Better yet, the boy had done a fair job willing the color of his graal from that mind-numbing sapphire to a dull, dusty bluish gray, even to her well-trained eye. To anyone who checked on this side of the Veil or the other, Aron would appear to have just the faintest kiss of Brailing ability.

  If he knows someone’s looking.

  She sighed to herself.

  Next, she needed to teach him how to maintain that illusion all the time, just in case. Or at least how to sense if someone was trying to see his legacy.

  So much work to be done.

  When she brought Aron back to this side of the Veil, Stormbreaker was ready to leave the clearing and return to Windblown, Zed, and the wagons. Dari led Aron behind the Stone Brother, surprised that her arm still smarted from the dav’ha ceremony. As they traveled through the dim, thick forest toward the travelers’ shelter and their waiting companions, the daggers Stormbreaker had returned to her before they left the clearing tapped against her waist and hips, secured by loops in her makeshift rope belt. The scent of rotten leaves and fertile forest dirt made her nostrils flare and reminded her of home, as did the occasional shriek of birds and the distant cry of rock cats seeking shelter against the day’s light.

  They walked directly behind Stormbreaker on the path he had cut with his swords when they first separated from Windblown and Zed to have their private meeting. Stormbreaker didn’t look back, and he had made no attempt to tether Aron to keep him from fleeing. Dari also didn’t think the boy needed watching any further, but he seemed to cling to her for comfort. If she had to admit the truth, his touch comforted her as well.

  As they walked, she used her own mind-talents to ease the pain from her tattoo, and to heal the flesh around it before sunlight could make a pink-and-white horror of the scars. They would be a faint but definite gray now, and stand out against her darker skin—but not overly so.

  Stormbreaker’s stride was long and deliberate, but before they broke free from the tree cover, he turned to her. “Be cautious, making full use of your graal as you did just now. There are many amongst Stone who can sense such immense mind-talents, and some who could move far enough through the Veil to see the truth of who—of what—you are.”

  In the shade of so many large-leafed dantha trees, his expression remained unreadable, but his voice was kind. Dari let go of Aron’s hand and dismissed the urge to trace the whorls on Stormbreaker’s face to see if they possessed an energy of their own. They seemed to move again, bright and flickering in the semidarkness, those three complete spirals that marked him as First High Master in the Stone Guild, but perhaps it was only to her eye.

  Despite his indeterminate appearance, Dari’s encounter with Stormbreaker on the other side of the Veil last night had shown her how young he was. He had not yet seen his twenty-fourth birthday, yet he had already earned rank befitting a man twice his age. To do so, he had to be very talented and trustworthy. And very strong.

  Or was he cunning?

  Ruthless?

  Dari gazed into the endless light green of Stormbreaker’s eyes and knew better. After all, she had shared her thought-essence with his, and in battle, no less, when defenses and deceptions tended to fall away. If he were secretly some monster without morals, she would have sensed it last night.

  Unless, said a tiny warning voice in the back of her consciousness—a voice that sounded damnably like the grandfather she knew she might never see again—unless he is very, very good at the lies he tells.

  Color flecked Stormbreaker’s pale, marked cheeks, as if he heard her thoughts directly. “So long as you practice your mind-talents only in small measure, Cha, you should remain undetected.”

  Aron coughed with surprise at the proper term of address. When Dari glanced at the boy, she saw that he had moved up beside Stormbreaker. The two of them stood like a last bastion between Dari and the tree-break and the uncertain world beyond. Aron seemed to shake off the shock of hearing Dari addressed as a dynast lady and began to remember who and what she truly was, for he would have seen it on the other side of the Veil just like Stormbreaker, during the battle and then again just now, in their training session.

  “Stregan,” Aron whispered, speaking for the second time since his family died, as the totality of his memory seemed to return to him.

  His eyes widened, and for a moment he looked like a young child, untainted by the horror of Harvest, his lord’s treachery, or the deaths of all those closest to him. It was clear the boy was awed by meeting and finally acc
epting what was to him nothing but myth or legend come to life.

  Stormbreaker stared at Aron, but left it to Dari to speak.

  She reached for the boy and once more took his slender hand in her own, gratified when he did not pull away from her

  “Li’ha,” she said, careful to keep her voice neutral. “Will you keep the secret of my true essence?”

  “H-how,” Aron began, gripping her fingers. Then he switched to, “Why did you come here, back to Eyrie? If some of your people escaped slaughter during the mixing disasters, why would you ever come back?”

  The boldness of the question impressed her, and Dari considered that Aron had a right to the answer before he pledged himself to protect her identity, promise-sister or not.

  “My twin sister, Kate, has been soft in the mind since an illness in our childhood, unable to truly care for herself,” she explained as Aron let go of her. She was careful to keep from looking at Stormbreaker because she was worried about how he would receive this news. “Many of my people have such an affliction. Kate escaped our protection—my protection.” The words seemed to knot in Dari’s throat, but she knew she had to untie them and tell the truth, if she could. “I—I lost her. I wasn’t cautious enough, and now she’s somewhere in Eyrie. I intend to find her, and when travel into Dyn Ross is once more possible without attracting attention, I’m going to take her home.”

  “Cayn and the Brother,” Stormbreaker murmured. “Your sister is lost in these lands with a war beginning? A Stregan who does not understand her own power or how to manage herself? She’ll be little more than—”

  “A dangerous weapon,” Dari finished for him as a cool morning breeze struck the perspiration on the back of her neck. She shivered at the sensation, and at her own words. “My sister is a dreadful prize to be seized and used instead of rescued, should anyone outside the three of us and those we carefully choose learn of her existence. Many of my people will be wanting to hunt her—maybe even people in my own family—but I don’t know how she’ll react if anyone other than me tries to control her. If they come after her and find her first… That can’t happen. I have to do it. I need your silence, and I need your help.”