The Last Pantheon: of spiders and falcons

by Jason Jones

  His eyes widened and the horse pulled to the right into the trees, just as a cold blade plunged into his ribs and lung. He couldn’t breathe as the pain and spasming and puncture had done its work. He felt himself half falling, half pulled from his tired mount, hitting the white ground as the blade freed itself from his chest. He tried to draw his broadsword as he lay on his back and got it almost loose when cold steel cut across his throat. His eyes blackened, body feeling a chill to end all chills, one that could not be warmed. He looked to the gray snow sky, flakes falling to his face. Beautiful, smiling, with glossy eyes, Lady Kaya was there at his end. He could not see, as his last moments drifted away from the world of consciousness, that her blade ran red with his blood.

  “For failure, I cannot forgive,” she whispered.

  The lady of the keep searched his packs and belt, finding the letter from the church in Southwind Keep written by Father Brevond, but not the scroll Johnas was looking for. Kaya tucked the letter into her robes, cleaned her blade off on his tabard, and kicked the body over till it rolled downhill, well out of sight off the trail into the woods. Soon it would be buried in the snow. It was many months before the thaw, so he was safe from notice for quite some time. The horse wobbled some more, Kaya leading it back to where she knew the road to be, and started toward the stables still well before daybreak.

  No scroll, and Evril has not produced the other letter. One more meeting this day, just one more, Kaya.

  Kaya snuck the horse around the western wall, hidden by early morning shadows and snowfall. A flood grate rose, allowing her and the steed to get past any eyes at the gates. Her eyes caught motion, men moving and talking at dawn, near the southern offices. Three knights, two men in Aldane cloth, and they had serious looks and gestures.

  “Damn it.” Kaya whispered to herself. She knew they were either looking for the missing scribe, or had found his body. Kaya thought of the other bodies they would find under the hardwood floor of the scribe’s basement, other bodies she had put there. Knowing she had to stop and silence letters to king and court of any accusations involving she and Johnas, Kaya resigned that she had done what she had to do.

  “Stables, Kaya, finish it.” She whispered to herself.

  In early morning, Evril Alvander snuck into the partially opened door to the stables, the smell not as bad as his mind recalled due to the cold. Rows of horses, over two hundred fine steeds and a few brahmas, were kept well on the end of the long narrow stone building. One lantern was lit on the far corner where his mistress had told him she would be. The young traitor ran his fingers through his long dark curls and felt the stubble on his face and swollen cheek. A bruise he recalled from an attacking tree branch, and the pommel of his own broadsword. He had lain with the lady of the keep once before, but a servant had interrupted announcing an ogre raid, and they held still for an brief eternity in her bedchamber. Fearing being caught, she promised to offer herself again, after another favor, this one more dangerous. He could not wait to tell her and relay the story of the ogre that, in fact, did come after him in the foothills after he killed the escorts and the priest. He saw her silhouette in the lamplight, saw her sitting on a chair in her robes, waiting for him.

  “I have been waiting for days Kaya, and here you are. Like the bruise?” His voice was nervous, in anticipation, his craving for her body and pleasures barely held back by words.

  “I did, very nice. So what happened?” Her smile was warm and inviting, she opened her robes a small inch or two, enough for him to gather that she had little underneath. Her feet kicked at the fresh hay brought from the stock barn and her toes played with the blanket she had laid on top of it.

  “I led them off the trail to the foothills…” he knelt on the blanket, at her feet, running his hand up her calf and thigh, trying to open her robes more with his teeth, playfully.

  “I…killed the escorts in their sleep and shot the priest…” his hand touched her breast, feeling the soft skin through the robe. He ran his other hand between her legs and moved his lips up into her dark brown waves of hair, fishing for her ear.

  “…with the poisoned bolt. He had some problems with dying…” Evril kissed her ear. Hearing a faint moan of pleasure, he continued. Her hands were pulling his tabard off and beginning on removing his shirt. Evril found himself putting more effort into words now. “…but I managed to show him that the broadsword had other plans.”

  “And the horses? Where are the rest?” Her hands were now running up and down his bare and nearly hairless chest, nails scratching playfully.

  “The story about the ogre attack was true, my love…” The young man now had positioned himself between her legs, still on his knees while she sat in the wooden chair. His hands tried removing the robes and loose clothing from her shoulders, yet she resisted playfully.

  “…six of them charged from above the foothills, chased me, and took the horses I had tethered before I could get them free.” Barely able to breathe, a slight sweat glowing between their bodies, the kissing became more prevalent than words.

  “But I escaped, mission completed, the deed is done…” his pants loosened by the lady of the keep, he ran his fingers across her perfectly shaped breasts inside her garments, then down between her thighs, feeling for the treasure he had waited months for, having only had a small taste for but a moment or three before. Now, Evril would have it all, and he removed her clothes and let them fall to the floor.

  “…and I am alive and was not followed by ogre or anyone, just as you wished my lady.” Evril pushed himself onto the woman he had dreamt of for years, fantasized about for months, craved for weeks, and felt the brutal sensations of lust, even stronger than before.

  “And the letter…” Kaya moaned as they began, her legs lifting off the ground and wrapping around his back, crossing at the ankles behind her lover. “…where did you put the letter from the church, Evril?”

  His motions were soft yet rapid, not wanting to hold back for another interruption. “Problem with that is that the priest, as he died….” Kaya stood up abruptly, grabbed him by the hair and pulled him up as well, placed her hands on his hips and turned him around. She grabbed the rope hanging from the crossbeam of the wooden rafter to the left in the shadow, letting it fall down from its anchor above the chair.

  “..what’s the rope for, my lady?”

  Kaya sat him in the chair, mounted him and moaned, her breasts pushed against his face, and held onto the rope. She began again, this time in charge of the moves and motions of the intimate morning pleasures.

  “It’s for me, I need something to hold onto. The priest died, and..?”

  Evril was barely able to concentrate on words or thoughts, his mind overcome with this beautiful woman on top of him, round cleavage nudging his lips as she moaned softly with every kiss, her hands above his head holding the rope tightly as they embraced.

  “He threw the letter down the foothills, and the ogre…” he began to reach a point of uncontrolled feeling with urges of lust, and his words were lost in the unfolding ecstasy.

  “You lost it to the ogre, you had to flee, right?” Kaya moaned as well, her body shivering from cold, from sweat starting, and from the warmth of anticipated climax.

  “There was a…dwarf…that….came…” Evril stopped, he could not speak.

  Kaya stayed still a moment, allowing quiet to take over. “A dwarf? Yet you fled the ogre, correct?”

  “Yes, I had no choice. What is that for, Kaya?” She had stopped right as he was numb from it all and held up the tie for her robes and garments. She tied it around her lover’s eyes, producing a surprising smile of more to come. Sweat ran down his chest, he felt his pants being brought back up, belt fastened, and shirt being placed on his warm, wet body.

  “What are you doing?”

  “A surprise, my love, for a job well done. You are young enough to do this again and again, I can tell. So we have all morning. This time you will have to guess what I am doing, without looking. The more
you guess correctly, the more I remove. The more you guess correctly, the more I will do for you, in many different ways.”

  Kaya stood behind him, knelt down while caressing his hair, pulling playfully a bit. She reached under the blanket and grabbed the suicide letter, the one that explained how Evril could not live with himself after leaving his friends to die at ogre hands. It mentioned how he failed to protect them, how he was not worthy of his knighthood, or his life. All written by Kaya, late last night in a perfect forgery.

  “You are pulling my hair, and tickling my chest with, with…parchment?”

  “Very good, a kiss for the easy one, my lover.” Kaya placed the paper on his lap and knelt down again, pulling her hidden shortsword out of the hay. She kissed him, backing up a step, and tied the rope. Playfully around his neck and into a knot it went, kissing his ears and stroking her hand back and forth across his thighs. Her breasts, knowing men loved breasts, flirted with the side of his face as she tied the knot, never letting the rope much more than lightly touch his skin.

  “You are, well, you are doing a lot. Touching me, rubbing your bosom on my face, and kissing my ear.” Evril was at her command, full attention on the lover he could not see, getting so much more than his young mind had ever expected.

  “Excellent, how did you guess all that at your age? Have you had this done to you before?” Kaya teased, walked round the chair and felt for the lever to the door, the door to the lower barn, the door that the chair was placed upon, a hay chute. She felt it, under the hay and pushed it, the door swung open. The chair, the hay, the letter and blanket, and finally Evril, dropped as the ground vanished.

  “No, this is my first…clehhhh, clehhh….” his body frozen, dangling, blindfolded, his neck snapped. The air pushed to get out, and his mouth screamed to get air in with his throat strangled. Evril kicked and tried to grab something, but there was nothing. He tried to get the noose off, tried to reach for something nearby, yet his struggling arms began to weaken and fall to his side. He saw nothing, no one, his eyes covered and his darkness quick.

  Kaya inched forward over the pit, removing the tie she used as a blindfold from his eyes. His eyes were bulging out of his face, his neck veins tight and his whole body red except his strangled face that was turning purple very quickly. She had heard the neck snap, knowing it should have been quick for him. The shortsword cut twice, effortlessly, across each wrist as they began to fall limp at his side. The blood streamed off his fingers to the floor far below. Kaya grabbed the dagger from his belt, smearing a little blood from his open wrists on the blade, and dropped it down the hay chute. The Lady of Southwind sheathed her blade, gathered her clothes, tied her robes, and left the stable as the sun was starting to rise and the body of her lover slowly stopped the twitches of death. To the world that would know, it appeared obvious that Evril Alvander had cut his wrists and hung himself in the stables, full of guilt and remorse at failure.

  Quietly she snuck into the keep through back stairs by the kitchen and up the servant stairs, then down to her chambers. Kaya closed the door, locked it, and fell to the floor in a fetal curl. The tears ran for hours and she cried herself to sleep, the sun shining rays of white-gold light through her windows on a snowy Chazzrynn winter morning. Pieces of black marble lay about her room on the floor from the warlock mirror she had destroyed earlier. All that was left for Kaya to do was leave her home in Southwind and her title with it. Everyone she needed dead was now dead. Alexei, her twin and lord of the keep, would be up soon. It was time to leave, yet she could not move. Having to abandon her entire life, Kaya T’Vellon now felt just as dead as those she had killed.

  “This is what happens, that is what Johnas will say, these things happen.” Kaya sobbed to herself.

  “That brand is above king or country, above anything, and will require everything.” Kaya wiped her eyes, trying not to think of the four others who were being searched for, four other eyes of hers that she had killed.

  “The church knows of me, my brother will know, and there is but one safe place. Stand up, get up, it is not over yet. Johnas will take me in. Johnas will want me again. He said to return to the web, he told you that. You are valuable, deadly, you are one of the eight. You are Jade of the West, an assassin of the Emerald Eight. Get up, Kaya. You have work to do, and many to kill.”

  Slowly, tears interrupting her vision, Kaya talked herself into packing what she could. Her eyes looked to Southwind one last time, through her window on the sixth floor of the keep. The snow was coming harder, just like her tears, but neither made noise at the moment, for all was still. She put on her black mask, just over the nose, and tied back her hair.

  Exodus I:VII

  Lazlette Chambers

  Vallakazz

  Saberrak awoke to the sound of blades against stone, sharpening stones, scraping up and down the long edges of a sword. His mind shook off the dream, another one, of Chalas Kalaza and an ogre horde of slavers taking him in the night. Every dream, every night, he was outnumbered and alone in this strange world. Then they would come, he would fight, but he would be taken back to Unlinn. There, his father and brother, their heads greeted him as the ogre waved them atop black iron poles. Blue lights came, he tried to look, but then he awoke.

  The gray minotaur looked from his vantage point on the floor of the wizard’s chamber to see Azenairk cleaning and putting an edge to the elf’s curved longblade and matching smaller blade. His eyes wandered to the shelves of rosewood and darker stained tables, all filled with books and designs he had never seen. Windows of glass, Southwind had those as well, but not grand and colored with design and color so high like this. Everything was warm, clean, yet it was not his cage that he had grown up sleeping in, it was not home. He looked over the table, the scroll was there, he felt it before his eyes noticed it.

  “She got you taking care of her weapons already, dwarf?” the gray gladiator let out a yawn, stretching as he rose to his feet, and noticing his leg had been healed somewhere in the night.

  “My father raised us to keep our tools clean and ready at all times, horned one. I did yours an hour ago.” The priest pointed his finger to the polished and sharpened greataxe and bone straight blade on the rug next to him. “That bone blade has a small crack in the handle. I would replace it, Saberrak the gray.”

  “When it breaks, it breaks.”

  “I have never seen craftsmanship the likes of these swords, Saberrak, have you? They must be folded over hundreds of times and the balance and edge are perfect.”

  “A little small if you ask me, but I’ll trust your word on her highness’s weapons being worth a lot.” The horned warrior examined them for a moment and then lost interest.

  “But take a look, horned one. Look here then, folded over and curved like a---“

  “Short and small. All of your weapons are small, if you ask me.” Saberrak reached over and lifted James’ broadsword from the bearskin rug. “Broadsword, fine steel, but serves little purpose but a large knife to me.”

  “That is the weapon of the kingdom of Chazzrynn, minotaur. The broadsword forged the frontier in the south, long ago. It is tradition. That blade is sacred, as it belonged to a great lord of my people. I will have it back.” James spoke, though his eyes were still closed as if asleep on the leather sofa. His head throbbed, a cut and swelling he felt, yet he cared not for how it happened. This was not the first unanswerable injury he had awoke with.

  “I have seen other blades, on Chazzrynn men, what o’ that James?” Zen continued cleaning the ornate set belonging to Shinayne. He took the conversation away from another argument as he saw the opportunity. His eyes glanced to Saberrak with a slow shaking head, then back to the task in his hands.

  “The east, seaboard cities and the capital, they have slowly been donning longblades and saber. The ports, influenced by both seafarers and the north, have always used curved blades, curved more than those of hers there. The longer swords, well, Willborne claims those as theirs, and their country has
been passing into hands of others since their fall many centuries past. The broadsword, built thicker and wider, is what a man in Chazzrynn uses. We have things here that a stronger edge has to cut through.” James never opened his eyes, never moved, just spoke from his spot on the furniture he now seemed an unmoving part of.

  “You know a lot then.” Zen commented as Saberrak stretched and snorted. “As far as swords are concerned.”

  “I do. Men of Harlaheim carry rapiers now, hairs shorter, yet nearly thick as a longblade, with a wrapped steel guard, and weighted heavy on the pommel for a balanced and fast wrist attack. Looks flashing, pierces steel fine, but against an ogre, not much use.”

  “Humans need to use larger blades. This almost makes me laugh when I see it.” Saberrak set the broadsword down before the hearth.

  “They do. Shanador carries the greatblade still, about a foot shorter than myself. Kivanis, the hand and a half sword is tradition. Caberra, Rugeness, Armondeen….well…I think they all carry curved blades now. Someday, that is all you will see.” James stretched also, letting out a yawn.

  “Why?” Zen asked.

  “Faster, lighter, few of us left fighting beasts instead of other men.”

  “Nothing better than a large axe, nothing.” Saberrak snorted as he paced the room.

  “Do tell, killer of killers, why is that?” James chuckled sarcastically.

  “Imagine me, horns lowered, and this axe gripped in my hand, maybe one in each hand. Then, before thousands, I charge you from one hundred feet away. When we meet, the fear has already taken you, and it is over.”