The Assassin King

by Elizabeth Haydon

  The stone giant was slamming his fist into the holy gate of Sepulvarta, punching deep holes into the wood, then ripping apart the ancient timbers of trees that had been made of Living Stone with his hands. The gate screamed as if alive as he tore it asunder.

  In the distance a clarion call sounded from within the Sorbold columns.

  The archers raised their bows, training them on the front line.

  With a hissing streak, one of the flying beasts soared over the wall and snatched an archer in its jaws, toppling a few more into the streets below.

  The gate crashed open with a sound like thunder in the mountain passes.

  With a roar, the attacking force surged like a tidal wave into the city of Sepulvarta as the sun began its descent below the horizon.

  North of Sepulvarta on the Pilgrim’s Road

  “Fornication!”

  Anborn dragged his horse to a shocked halt. The Alliance forces quickly followed suit behind him.

  As they came to a stop in the center of the Pilgrim’s Road, the force that had assembled with the greatest of speed and had ridden with alacrity to the rescue of the holy city could only stare from atop horses dancing in place at the sight that unfolded before them.

  Black smoke billowed from the towers and rooftops of the city, clogging the sky with ash and oily grit. Flames could be seen ascending from the rooftops, dancing off the tower of the Spire and lighting the night sky for miles around.

  In the shining reflection of those fires, black winged beasts circled in the hazy air above the city proper, diving occasionally with the snap of an adder striking.

  And even from where they were, five miles or more off, the sound of screaming could be heard, rending the night.

  “Lord Marshal—”

  “Silence!” Anborn thundered, shifting atop his horse.

  The Patriarch rode to his side and stopped next to him. His great craggy face, hidden within a peasant’s hood, was white as the ceremonial robes he often wore. “What are those figures flying above the city?” he asked, his thunderous voice strained.

  “I’ve no idea,” said Anborn, “but their presence changes everything. We are going to need a new plan of attack. I was prepared to break a simple siege, which we could do, even outnumbered. But with the enemy attacking from the air—”

  “Contemplate it no further,” the Patriarch said, his voice stronger. “The city is lost—to intervene now would be to condemn every one of these men, and us, to death.”

  Anborn’s eyes flared in fury. “That is your assessment as a battlefield commander?” he asked icily.

  The Patriarch shook his head, his eyes burning with angry fire. “That is the assessment of the Ring of Wisdom,” he said. He held up his hand; the clear stone in the ring was glowing as intensely as the sky above Sepulvarta. “I am now consigned to exile; if by turning myself over to the attacking force I could spare the city, I would do so. But that is not their intent. They have just moved the border of Sorbold north by the distance of my lands.”

  “Indeed,” murmured Anborn. “And they no doubt expect to use the city as a base to annex as much of the southern Krevensfield Plain as they can.” He yanked back on the reins, ignoring the terrified whinny of his mount “That area is too vast, too spread out to defend. All the people of those farming settlements and villages are border fodder if we don’t evacuate them to Roland immediately. Take one last look at the citadel, Your Grace; I expect the next time you come through here the place will be in ashes. And if they take the Spire, who knows what they will use it for.”

  “I know,” replied the Patriarch. “And the horror of it defies description.”

  Anborn was not listening; he had already turned and ridden the line, shouting orders to the troops for the mass evacuation that was to follow.

  When daylight came, after a night of pillage and sacking, Fhremus called a halt to the hostilities.

  “Empty the basilica and seal it,” he ordered; Minus saluted and passed along the command. “Truly it is one of the wonders of the Known World; I’m sure the emperor does not wish to see it damaged any more than was necessary to subdue the city.”

  He looked around at the remains of Sepulvarta. The historic white buildings were smeared and marred with soot; whole sections of the city, especially the pilgrim sites, were still in flames, and in the cobbled streets, blood ran in rivers between the stones.

  “Where is Faron?” he asked Trevnor.

  The aide-de-camp shook his head. “I saw him last within the garden district, sir. He broke open the doors of the Patriarch’s manse, as directed, but then he went off on his own; we could not follow him in the smoke.”

  “The Patriarch has still not been found?”

  “No, sir. And the priests and acolytes in the manse swear they do not know where he is, even under pain of torture.”

  “Hmm. Well, keep looking for them both. There is only one gate in the city wall—and Faron did not come back to it, so he must be in here somewhere. He’s rather large to overlook; I’m certain we will find him sooner rather than later.”

  Fhremus’s certainty changed a short time later, when a massive hole was found in the wall at the northern edge of the city, torn through by what appeared to be a hand.

  When finally the earth beneath his feet had cooled sufficiently, Faron stopped.

  The battle had meant little to him. Destruction sometimes was a primal pleasure, but there was little of that in the sacking of Sepulvarta, though Faron had no idea why. Perhaps it had been the parsimoniousness of the commanders and the soldiers, the troops who were following him like a great pagan or animist god, not realizing that the great animist god was once a quivering pile of pale dying flesh, gelatinous and pathetic, until Talquist had sealed him within this body of Living Stone on the Scales of Jierna Tal. Faron had found the transformation ironic at best, child of the demon spirit that he was, he had come to be sealed within a Vault of Living Stone just as his father had once been.

  Titan or no, soldier of incomprehensible strength or carnival atrocity, Faron missed his father deeply. In spite of the abuse he had suffered at his hands, he had been for the most part lovingly cared for by the man whose body the demon clung to, a man that had been called the Seneschal later in life, but in earlier times had been known as Michael, the Wind of Death. He had regaled a fascinated Faron with the exploits of his days as a soldier, had made him long for a body that would allow him to follow his father on such exploits, such joyful outings of murder and pillage, but nature had not been kind to him.

  And ironically, now that he had the perfect housing for a soldier, he was alone, being directed by men he cared nothing for, who he could crush with a mere thought.

  Somewhere on the wind there was a hint of dark fire. Faron had no idea how he was aware of this, but in the depths of his solid being something had stirred, had called to him off to the north, something he recognized from the time before everything had gone sour.

  Faron reached into the huge leather belt at his waist, once the harness for a team of horses, and clumsily pulled out the blue scale.

  It was his favorite, he thought, the card that allowed him to see hidden things, or objects at great distance. He loved the picture that had been drawn on it as well; one side bore the image of a clear eye, the other one an eye shrouded in clouds, much like his own milky blue ones.

  He could not see anything yet, but there was enough invisible ash on the wind that the scale hummed with life when he held it in a northerly direction. Whatever was there was too far away to be seen yet, but he could follow its path.

  And maybe find one of his own kind.

  Faron turned his primitive head in that direction and followed the faint whisper of evil creosote, leaving the noise and chaos of the burning city behind him.

  PART THREE

  Ashes on the Wind

  31

  Kurimab Milani, northwestern Yarim, in the shadow of the Teeth

  The dragon extended her claws in her torpor, rev
eling in her ease and the dimming of the pain that had been chewing on her since the turn of the moon.

  With the partial healing of her body came a similarly partial revival of her memory. Deep in slumber, she was dreaming now, and in those dreams she did not inhabit the draconic form that was her current reality, but rather she was a woman, the Lady of legendary beauty and power that she had been only a short time ago.

  The wyrm stretched lazily, allowing herself to enjoy the motion of her torn muscles as they mended. She was recalling her halcyon days, flashes of memories she didn’t understand—the echoes of childhood laughter with two other shapes that seemed to be those of young girls, like herself, chasing after each other in a virgin forest, no adult, or in fact any other person, in sight. She did not remember her sisters, nor the dragon mother who left the three of them at the foot of the Great White Tree, save for a sour taste in her mouth that was pittance beside the hate she felt for the woman named Rhapsody. But she did recall the laughter, the sense of freedom, and of loneliness, from those times, and little else.

  Her breathing grew deeper as it grew easier. The image in her mind faded from childhood revels to the day when, as a young woman alone on a bluff overlooking the same beach where her mother had first spied her father coming off of the ocean, she saw the arrival of ships, storm-tossed and broken, landing one after another on the heels of a terrible storm. The people who debarked from those ships were like none she had ever seen—some tall and fair, some broad and sturdy, some the size of children with slender hands and enormous eyes that spoke in flowers rather than words, a panoply of mankind, their skin arrayed in all different colors; one by one, the ships unloaded their living treasure, leaving her breathless, her golden face scored with tiny lines was wet with tears for the first time in her life. My horde, she thought, then and now, the closest she had ever come to love at first sight.

  The other memories that loomed, threatening to displace those happy ones, she pushed away, shrinking from the pain they caused in much the same way as she had from the broken shards of metal still wedged within her. No, no, she thought hazily, banishing all other thought from her mind and returning to happier times, images of celebrations at the seaside, feasts and joyous dancing and a ceremony at the foot of the Great White Tree in which she was elevated above all and called Lady by the living treasure whose name she still could not recall. The Cymrians, the refugees of the First Fleet from the dead Island of Serendair.

  I want to stay asleep, she mused, stretching again, luxuriating in the memory of a time when she was honored, not despised, celebrated and sought after, not cast out and ostracized.

  She opened her mouth and, as before, the liquid gold of sunshine, sweet and healing, dripped within it. The fire in her, brewed by the firegems that all members of her race had in their bellies, cooled, leaving her dreamless and at rest.

  For the moment.

  In the desert, far east of Yarim

  The windy silence was shattered simultaneously by the sudden squeal of the infant and the ringing slap of leather glove against flesh a split second afterward.

  Achmed reined his horse to a stop, the delicate nerve endings in his skin burning from the sound.

  “What now, Rhapsody?” he demanded, glaring over his shoulder as she opened the folds of the mist cloak, a look of consternation on her wind-stung face. “You just fed him; this demanding brat is becoming far too much of an irritation. One more sudden shriek without cause and I’m going to skewer him on a horse spike and leave him for carrion.”

  “How do you know it was without cause?” Rhapsody asked, examining the baby.

  Achmed glanced over at Grunthor, who was rubbing his neck. “What’s the matter?”

  “Somethin’ stung me,” the giant muttered.

  “Probably a sand fly of some sort,” said Achmed. “They can be brutal, though one would think you’d be fairly invulnerable to them, given your Bengard skin.”

  “One would think,” the giant agreed, still examining his neck, “but this was no lit’le sting. Oi got right bit. Ow. Bloody ow.”

  “So did Meridion,” Rhapsody said. She plucked the stinger from a large red welt on the screeching infant’s leg and ran her finger over it, warming it gently with her fire lore to soothe the pain.

  At that moment Achmed became aware of the hum. He signaled to Grunthor and reined his horse to a stop, following the irritation in his skin. He draped the reins over Rhapsody’s arm and dismounted, letting the buzzing guide him over the sand, until he found the source.

  Several small wells pocked the otherwise unbroken layer of sand, over which a few itinerant bees were hovering while others appeared to be burrowing into the ground near the wells.

  “I’ve found your assailant, Grunthor,” he said, crouching down and examining the wells, which resembled large anthills. “Do you wish me to wreak vengeance on your behalf? I could piss on them if you want. Or are we ready to move out?”

  “What are bees doin’ out ’ere in the desert?” the giant Bolg wondered aloud. “Nothin’ for them ta eat, no flowers, vegetation. No real water. Strange.”

  Achmed mounted again and took the reins back. He clicked to the horse and they returned to a smooth canter, riding the rising and falling dunes and drumlins with alacrity, heading east as the distant mountains seemed to grow closer, their red and purple hues gleaming at the horizon like a promise of shelter that would not be reached before the coming of night. The light had already begun to fade as the red sun made its way down the welkin of the sky; the wind picked up, sweeping the sand across the cracked earth in great spinning devils of dust.

  They had not gone very far when Achmed yanked his horse to a stop again, this time making a grab for Rhapsody to keep her from falling forward. Grunthor stopped a few seconds later, a few strides ahead of him, staring, as he did, into the east.

  “Criton,” the Bolg commander murmured. “Whaddaya make o’ that?”

  “Gods,” Rhapsody whispered, drawing the mist cloak closer to her to calm the baby.

  Achmed said nothing but stared with mismatched eyes at the sight before them.

  Jutting from the seemingly endless desert was a broken tower, a minaret, tilted on its side. It seemed to appear from nowhere, emerging from the red sand in which little to no vegetation or in fact any sign of life had been seen for days.

  Around it were similar ruins, remnants of domes and walls, uprooted from the sand as if they had been pulled and tossed aside like weeds. The scale of the ruins was enormous, as if the original occupants of whatever city they had once been part of had been giants, or perhaps it was just that the city itself had been mammoth. The sun overhead beat down on the detritus, which shone eerily in the light with an almost translucent radiance.

  “Did we not come through this place before, years ago, when we were returning to Ylorc with the slave children of the Raven’s Guild in Yarim?” Rhapsody asked. “I don’t remember seeing ruins then.”

  “They were not here,” Achmed agreed. He continued to stare at the husks of what had once been walls, now little more than building blocks scattered in the hot sand. Somewhere nearby the hum he had heard from the ground-nesting bees had grown stronger. “These ruins appear to have been evicted from the sand. I suppose that happens from time to time, especially if there has been an earthquake or other disturbance of the strata of the earth. The ground here is riven—there are rifts and cracks in the clay.” He pointed to a great fissure where the sun-baked ground had been rent apart north of them, which the wind was beginning to fill in with sand.

  “I don’t remember feelin’ any tremors lately,” Grunthor said seriously. He dragged back on his reins again and dismounted; the sand atop the red clay sprayed in all directions as he thudded to the ground. “That looks pretty recent.” He knelt down and rested his hand on the ground. “Somethin’s wrong ’ere; everything’s all jumbled up, distressed-like. As if this place had been asleep, or dead, even before we left the ol’ world, and then was suddenly shocked
awake.”

  Rhapsody and Achmed exchanged a glance; the earth lore that Grunthor had absorbed, like the two of them, when passing through the fire at the Earth’s core, was never wrong. Rhapsody rocked the baby, gentling him back into sleep again, as Achmed scanned the horizon. The wind picked up; Rhapsody pulled the hood of the mist cloak lower and Achmed raised the veil on his face over his eyes against the sting of the sand.

  “Even our patrols at the northernmost edge of our borders are days from here,” he said finally. “I’ve no idea what this is, or was, but another sandstorm appears to be brewing. Either we ride full out and see if we can find shelter over those hills, or we may be forced to take it here. Whatever this is, I am not certain I want to be trapped in this place in another dust devil.”

  Grunthor shrugged. “Might be as good a place as any, sir,” he said, surveying the towering fragments of walls sprouting from the sand before them. “Looks pretty solid—that wreckage ain’t goin’ nowhere. Should provide decent cover if you think another storm’s comin’. There’s nowhere else we could make it to before nightfall.” He looked over to where Rhapsody had been standing, then tapped Achmed’s shoulder and pointed. The Bolg king turned back to look as well.

  The Lady Cymrian had wandered slightly to the south, as if following a call only she could hear. She crouched down as they watched, still listening. From within the billowing folds of the mist cloak they could see her reach out her hand and pass it over the ground. Then her arm withdrew into the cloak; she looked down at the baby, then turned to meet their gaze.

  “How’s your neck, Grunthor?” she asked.

  The giant shrugged again, then reached up and patted it. A look of surprise came over his massive features.

  “Good as new,” he murmured aloud.