The Assassin King

by Elizabeth Haydon

  “Indeed,” said Constantin, “I have one more thing to relate about the actions of the Emperor Presumptive. Some time ago, two of the priests of Sorbold who lived in the manse proximate to Jierna Tal and to the Earth basilica of Terreanfor escaped the fire that destroyed their manse and all of the abbots, acolytes, and priests that dwelt there. For all that this fire was seen as a tragic accident, these three men witnessed otherwise. Those clergy had first feasted in great opulence within the palace of Jierna Tal, where their food was laced with some sort of drug to lull them into sleep. Those who were in its grip never awoke, a mercy of the sort given the death that awaited them. Others were driven back into the manse with arrow fire by Talquist’s guards when they tried to escape the flames.”

  “Why on earth would he do such a thing?” Gwydion Navarne asked in amazed horror.

  “Because of what he had asked them to do earlier in that day,” replied Constantin darkly. “These men, before they were renamed and hidden elsewhere, made it to Sepulvarta without Talquist’s notice, having escaped the fire in the manse, and came to me, relating what they had witnessed. They reported that Talquist had been harvesting the Living Stone of the basilica of Terreanfor, as I told you earlier. They related the specifics of it, however, a horrifying tale in which a massive stone statue of a soldier had been sliced from its pedestal in a lower vault of the cathedral, brought under cover of darkness to the square of Jierna Tal, and placed in one of the weighing plates of the great Scales of Sorbold, the very same instrumentality that conferred upon both myself and Talquist our offices.”

  “In the other plate some sort of creature was also placed, a freakish miscreant, a poor pathetic soul of twisted body. Then the Weighing was begun. The priests reported that Talquist placed something in the other weighing plate of the Scales against which it was balanced, along with drops of his own blood.”

  “And, in an abomination against nature and the All-God, the statue was animated, brought to life of the sort, and made to move under its own power.”

  “Dear One-God,” murmured Rial. “What happened then?”

  “Blessedly, the titanic statue ran off into the desert beyond the foothills between Sorbold and Sepulvarta, where it crumbled back into sand,” said Constantin. “The sword of Living Stone that it tore from its hand before it ran into the night dissolved into sand as well in the streets of Jierna’sid. This act was an abomination, a despoliation of a holy shrine that alone would justify Talquist’s removal from office, and in my view his execution. It was a rape of the cathedral of Terreanfor, a desecration that was unforgivable. But more than that, I have to wonder what the purpose was of this experiment. Fortunately, it was an experiment that failed ultimately, and while we may never know what he was attempting, at least we will not have to suffer the consequences.”

  “Allow me to assume my traditional role of skunk at the lawn fete,” said Anborn. “You are incorrect in your assumption, Your Grace. The statue you mention did not in fact crumble to sand in the godforsaken desert of Sorbold. I witnessed this titan myself a few short weeks ago when I was doing reconnaissance in the streets of Jierna’sid. It was a monstrous thing to behold; it came up the main thoroughfare of the city, lurching as if drunk, though certainly it was more likely a factor of its own unnatural state of being. Everything in its path was destroyed; oxcarts, hay wagons, street booths, and most especially the soldiers of Sorbold, who charged it to no avail. It was a terrible sight to witness; while it was awkward and clumsy, there is no question that it was also invulnerable to standard weapon fire and bent on destruction. When last I saw it, it had crushed over eighty soldiers, had damaged untold numbers of shops and wagons, and was making its way in direct course for the palace itself. Mind you, I had little regret, as it appeared to be heading for the emperor himself, but if he is alive and threatening Sepulvarta, perhaps the statue’s intentions were other than what I assumed.”

  “Perhaps indeed,” Achmed noted. “I am not certain what is significant in all of this, except that it shows that Talquist is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his ends. In that way he is no different from me.”

  “Well said,” retorted Anborn. “Very well, then, m’lady, what say you? Have you analyzed what we have reported and determined anything from the lore of it?”

  Ashe rose quickly from his chair. “Forgive me, Uncle,” he said, “and the rest of you. Before we go further, I wish to speak to my wife alone for a moment outside this chamber. Please indulge me.”

  Rhapsody held up her hand.

  “Before we do,” she said, “I need to ask Achmed something. At the risk of being rude, I’ll ask him in Bolgish; I’m sorry for my lack of manners, but time is of the essence.” The rest of the men in the circle nodded, and so she turned to the Bolg king as the baby in Ashe’s arms began to stir, making soft sounds of hunger.

  “If you are willing to tell them what you are undertaking within the mountain,” she approximated in the harsh, limited language of the Firbolg, “and why, I will help you achieve your ends that I have refused up until now.”

  Achmed’s eyes, mismatched and closely set so that they appeared to always be sighting down a weapon, gleamed.

  “To what degree?” he posited in return. “On your terms, or mine?”

  “Up until now I have only shared with you the very basics of what I learned in the translation of the ancient scroll you asked me to undertake,” Rhapsody answered. “If you will share with this council your intentions and the knowledge of what you are doing, I will tell you whatever I know and will help you in whatever way I can. I need to be able to tell my husband why I am spending so much of my time on this when war is coming, and I have other responsibilities.”

  The two Bolg exchanged a glance.

  “Done,” said the Bolg king.

  The Lady Cymrian rose and extended her hands to her husband for the child.

  “We will return momentarily,” she said to the assembled group. “Meridion needs to nurse; thank you for your forbearance.”

  “I will have Gerald Owen bring in a small repast so that you can refresh yourselves and eat,” said Ashe. I will not need to do so, he thought. What I’m about to do will leave me with no stomach for it anyway.

  9

  Anborn could feel war coming on, but that was not unusual.

  Anyone who had attended the meeting in the tiny room behind the tapestry could feel the same thing; in fact, not to be able to do so denoted a thickness of skull that would be embarrassing. What Anborn was feeling was not as much the advent of war, but gut sensation of his role in it, or at least what he suspected his role was to be.

  And, for the first time in many centuries, he was secretly looking forward to it.

  He sat back as far as he could, taking his useless legs and extending them by hand as Gerald Owen and Melisande Navarne made their way into the hidden room with trays of food for those remaining within.

  His eyes narrowed as they sighted on the young girl with golden ringlets who was placing a tray down on the table in front of him.

  “Who is this?” he demanded gruffly. “I thought this meeting was to be held in secret, and yet here you have brought in an unknown serving wench, quite probably a spy.”

  The girl’s black eyes rolled in fond annoyance. “You are in severe need of a new joke, Lord Marshal,” she said, lifting the lid of the tray and handing him a linen napkin. “You know very well that I am Melisande Navarne, seeing as you are my godfather, and have been tossing me around like a ball since I was a baby.”

  “Ah, and that is why I know you to be an imposter,” Anborn said smugly as he laid the napkin across his useless legs. “Melisande Navarne is still a baby; she fits in the length of my forearm between my wrist and elbow.” He clapped his hand against his arm for emphasis. “You, however, are a big impudent lummox, and could not possibly be that sweet, tiny little girl.”

  Melisande assumed the position of a servant, her arms behind her back.

  “Much as it pains m
e to remind you that you are aging, Lord Marshal—”

  “Ow,” Grunthor muttered as Rial and Achmed lowered their heads, smiling.

  “—I am in fact your goddaughter and the Lady Navarne, second in line to this duchy, I might add. I am nine years old, soon to be ten on the first day of spring, and am more than four times the length of your forearm. Additionally, I can run, ride, shoot an arrow, and wield a dagger; I am expert in horsemanship and routinely curry and tack the entire livery. I get far better reports from the tutors than my brother ever did, and am very tired of being left in the nursery when important matters are being discussed. I could be quite valuable to the council, certainly at least as a messenger or maybe a spy.” The girl’s dark eyes sparkled with a mix of excitement and resentment. “I would like to register my displeasure at being left out of everything, plainly but politely, and say that if Rhapsody had had so stifled an upbringing she would never have grown into the lady, queen, and warrior that she is. I consider this a terrible waste of valuable Cymrian assets.”

  “I’ll waste your valuable Cymrian asset, young lady,” the Lord Marshal shouted, swinging playfully at her hindquarters. Melisande dodged, as she always did at this point in the game, then hurriedly followed Gerald Owen out of the hidden room.

  “Well, that one ’as a mouth on her,” said Grunthor approvingly. “If you can’t find somethin’ for ’er ta do, give ’er ta me—Oi’ll make right fine use of ’er.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” muttered Gwydion Navarne. “I can have all her possessions packed and on the keep steps in less than fifteen minutes.”

  “Spoken more like a frustrated older brother than an invested duke,” said Anborn curtly. “Mark my words, young Navarne—that girl will make you proud that you are related to her one day.”

  “Probably,” said Gwydion Navarne ruefully. “And it’s more likely to take fifteen days to get her packed.”

  “I confess, Rhapsody, it is very disturbing to discover that you are keeping a secret from me with Achmed,” Ashe said as they came from behind the tapestry into the Great Hall. “I thought there was nothing that we kept one from another. I have certainly trusted you with all of my secrets, hideous as many of them have been.”

  Rhapsody squeezed his hand. “I would have told you all that I know about this, Sam, but it is not my secret to tell. Some time back, when you and I were both in the desert of Yarim, when the Bolg were tunneling for water below the fountain of Entudenin, Achmed showed me a thin parchment document from the oldest of times, long before the Cymrian era, perhaps even from the Lost Island itself. It was a schematic of a machine the likes of which I had never seen before that employs the rainbow spectrum of light together with the sound spectrum of the musical scale to generate different sorts of powers—the power of healing, the power of scrying and hiding, and many others I have not yet figured out. He did not leave this information with me, even though I recognized it as being some of the most elemental and basic lore of the world, ancient in its origin, and I warned him to be careful with it, that even the master Namers are only privy to some of that lore.”

  “When he came to Gwydion’s investiture, he brought the document with him yet again. He asked me to translate it, and I took it with me when you brought me to Elynsynos’s Lair to visit with her. In that time, I came to understand what it meant, what the lore was, and what the risks of using it were. It almost ended our friendship, as a matter of fact. After Meridion’s birth, I told Achmed I never wished to see him again, because he was so insistent on having the translation in spite of my warnings. But upon reflection, and after we had a heart-to-heart talk when we were trapped within the protection of Llauron’s body, I came to understand what it is that he really wishes to do. He has had some experience with this instrumentality before, in the old land, and he feels that if we are in fact going to be battling forces that precede history, we must have weapons whose origin and power preceded it as well.”

  “There is wisdom in that,” Ashe acknowledged.

  “In addition, while the instrumentality as Gwylliam and Anwyn utilized it threatened to wake the Sleeping Child, the wyrm that sleeps at the center of the earth, Achmed seems to have discovered a way to power it, not from fire or from the Earth’s lore, as they did, but rather to utilize the light of the sun and the stars to do so, which should make it much safer to use, even though it still must be done judiciously. It should also be more powerful—each of the elements has greater power in the order it was created, so ether supersedes all, followed by fire, water, wind, and earth sequentially. Using ether to power our Lightcatcher should make it both immense in its effect and as safe as it can possibly be as well. If we can use it to guard the Earthchild and secure the mountains, scry to find the enemy and defeat them, it will have been worth the risk and the damage our friendship has sustained because of it.”

  “I do not doubt your wisdom, Aria,” Ashe said, taking her hand in both of his. “It is perhaps petty, especially given all that we are to each other, but there is something that galls me about Achmed requiring secrecy of you that keeps us apart, even the smallest of ways. I guess it’s an immature resentment; chalk it up to the possessiveness of dragon blood.”

  Rhapsody kissed his hand. “There are no more secrets between us,” she said, “though there are some that only we know. There is a secret that you and I keep, alone, one to the other, and always have.”

  Ashe smiled ruefully. “Really?” he asked. “It seems to me that there are none between you and both of the Firbolg. You’ve known them far longer and in far different circumstances than we have known each other, even if we did meet first in time.”

  “Yes, but only you know that, and only you know my real name,” she said. “I have only spoken it once in this world, and it was in the wedding ceremony we held in secret. Only in the grotto of Elysian can the reverberations of that name be found, and even the greatest of Namers would have trouble doing so. And they still do not know that we met first on the other side of Time; only we share the memory of that sweet night, something that has comforted me, and no doubt you, often over the intervening time. So, you are in fact the guardian of my lost lore, and of my heart. You are my past, and my future. And that will ever be.”

  Ashe sighed. “If only I could be your Present,” he said.

  The baby in his arms let out a squeal of hunger, and they both laughed.

  “I think someone is in line ahead of you,” Rhapsody said. “And while you can roar with the best of your kind, he still wins for sheer volume and pitch.” She put the fussing baby to the breast, gently caressing his golden curls.

  Ashe exhaled solemnly.

  “Aria, I am going to ask you to do something that I would rather die than see you do.”

  Rhapsody looked up in surprise. “Then don’t,” she said simply. “If you feel that way about it—”

  “We have no choice,” Ashe interrupted. “You must leave here, with Meridion, tonight. If we hadn’t accepted the mantle of leadership, it would be one thing; I could spirit you and the baby away, take you across the sea or hide you in the holy forest of Gwynwood near the Great White Tree, and you would both be as safe as it would be possible for me to make you. But we have committed our trust and our fealty to a nation, to an Alliance, and now that war is looming, we cannot go back on our vows, even for the purpose of remaining together. At the same time, the rest of the world can be damned if it means that either you or our son is in danger; that is the one thing I cannot bear. I will not be able to remain sane should anything happen to either of you. The Rampage of the Wyrm may have been a fictitious manuscript according to Elynsynos, but I feel deep within me an undeniable belief that it would come to pass should I lose you. I have already set the forest alight more than once when I believed you were lost to me. Just the knowledge that there are entities out there, scrying for Meridion, makes the wyrm within my blood ascendant, longing for vengeance and destruction.

  “While I believe that Highmeadow has the strongest of forti
fications possible, to keep you here when there are eyes watching, looking for our son, would be folly and selfish, not to mention unwise. There really is only one place that both of you will be safe as the world begins to cave in.”

  “What are you saying, Sam?” Rhapsody asked, her voice shaking.

  Ashe lowered his head. “With your permission, I want to petition Achmed to take you into his care. You and the baby should leave with him and Grunthor tonight, before the light breaks, and travel off the road, probably through Canderre and Yarim rather than Bethany, and possibly through the northeastern corner of Bethe Corbair, where there is nothing but desert, no landmarks or fortifications where you could be found by one who has the power to scry from a distance.” He exhaled deeply. “I cannot tell you how much I wish to vomit at this very moment. Nonetheless, I believe we need to move in all due haste. If the Bolg can agree, and I have no reason to believe that they will not, and if you are willing, and feel that you are able to make the journey, as soon as this council ends I will set about making provisions so that you can leave before First-light.”

  Rhapsody leaned back against the wall as the child nursed.

  “What a beautiful love song,” she mused.

  “Pardon?”

  “What you just said to me were perhaps the most beautiful words of love I have ever heard,” she said, smiling sadly. “I well know how much you hate this idea, how much it galls you to the very soul, how difficult it was for you to propose it. It will be similarly difficult for me to grant your request. But, as I don’t have a better idea, I fear you are right, and to do anything else were to insufficiently safeguard our greatest treasure.” She looked down at the baby, now drowsing at the breast.

  “You will do it then?” Ashe asked, his expression a mixture of relief and dread.