Assassin's Quest

by Jon Kiln

  “Are you here to see the King?” crackled a voice from behind them.

  They spun to see that a decrepit old man had been hiding in a corner, just inside the door. He was clad in nothing but dirty white pants, and his gray hair and beard were long and tangled. They had not even known there was anyone else in the room.

  “I suppose we are,” replied Rothar.

  The old man’s eyes lit up. “Very well! Very well indeed! I will let him know you have arrived. He will summon you when he is ready!”

  The ancient fellow opened one of the double doors just far enough to slip through and was gone. Rothar and Peregrin looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

  Shortly, a voice from behind the doors shouted, “Enter!”

  Peregrin smiled at Rothar and bowed. “After you.”

  Opening the doors, the pair walked into a considerably larger room, decorated with all manner of fishing apparatus and shipwreck salvage. Sitting on a wooden “throne” embellished with seashells was the same old man who had greeted them in the foyer, only now he was wrapped in a scarlet robe and wore a ridiculous crown fashioned out of starfish and coral.

  Peregrin made the odd, strangling sound of a man struggling mightily to suppress laughter. Rothar elbowed him and maintained a stoic countenance.

  The lunatic king spoke, “Welcome, travelers. Tell me, from where do you come and why have you come before me, King Sleeth?”

  “I come from the King’s City. My companion here from the Banewood. We have come to ask you about your relation.”

  Rothar decided that this man was too mad to require a carefully crafted lie.

  “My relation?” he asked. “All the sea is my relation! And every man at the bottom of it is my son! So tell me, whom have you come to inquire of?”

  “How about the son’s who aren't at the bottom of the sea?” snarked Peregrin.

  The mad king’s face changed suddenly, some of the madness seemed to leave his eyes and he leveled a cold stare at Peregrin and Rothar.

  “What do you want of my boys?”

  Rothar was pleased they had struck a cord. He was certain that this was the father of the lecherous Sleeth’s who had been abducting innocent children. Madness begets madness.

  Peregrin took the lead. “Well, one of your lads has himself in a bit of a bind in the King’s City.”

  “Everly lives in the King’s City,” said the old man worriedly, perhaps forgetting his supposed kingship for a moment.

  Rothar spoke up. “He was caught trying to steal a child. What do you know of that?”

  Sleeth’s reaction was unexpected. A slow, sick smile crawled across his ancient face, and he sat back comfortable on the inane throne.

  “A man’s life’s work is a thing of honor, and nobody can say otherwise,” he said. “Our employer will take care of Everly… and everything else. Now,” Sleeth sat forward and the insanity returned to his eyes, “if you have no more questions for the King, please take your leave.”

  Rothar stepped forward angrily. “I have many more questions, you old bat. Who is your employer? The devil himself?”

  The mad king laughed dryly. “Why must the devil be a man?”

  Incensed, Rothar rushed at Sleeth and grabbed him by the collar of his scarlet robe.

  “What do your sons do with the children?! Where do they take them?! Tell me now!” he screamed, shaking the old man so hard that the crown of coral fell from his head and broke into pieces on the floor.

  Sleeth never stopped laughing. “We are protected, assassin!”

  Rothar dropped the mad king at the foot of the throne.

  “How do you know me?”

  Sleeth looked up at him and slowly stopped cackling, wiping drool from his mouth he said, “I know you by your anger, assassin. Her soldiers told me you might come.”

  Peregrin came forward and took Rothar by the arm. “He seems to know a lot. Why don’t we take him fishing and see what more he feels like sharing?”

  ***

  The boat rocked gently on the black waters of the Amethyst Sea. Rothar marveled at how bereft of beauty this part of the sea was. Anywhere else in the kingdom, where the sea met the land, the water was a beautiful purple hue, thanks to the purple coral and sea plants on the sandy bottom. Inland travelers were often brought to tears by the beauty of the water.

  Here, however, the water was an inky black, the depths being so infernal that the royal colors of the seafloor were lost - if they were there at all.

  Peregrin was busy cutting Sleeth out of the fishing net they had wrapped him in, bound and tied.

  “You fools! You cannot scare a man of the sea this way! I was born in a boat like this one!” he laughed.

  “Have you considered that we do not intend to scare you, only to kill you?” Peregrin asked.

  The lunatic looked shocked. “Kill me? Why would you kill a harmless old man?”

  “Certainly not to steal your throne,” replied Peregrin.

  Rothar tied a long rope around Sleeth’s wrists and stood him up in the boat. He cut away the ropes around the man’s ankles. “We do not want you drowning too quickly,” he explained, and pushed the man overboard.

  Night was falling, and they had rowed far out into the water. No other boats were within sight. When Sleeth resurfaced, sputtering and red faced, he screamed at the men in the boat.

  “What do you think you are doing?!”

  Peregrin was all too pleased to reply. “Fishing.”

  “What is the name of your benefactor?” asked Rothar.

  Treading water, the old man shook his head. “I’ve less fear of the sea than of my employer. Her forces are more deadly than sin itself.”

  “Is that a fact?” Rothar asked, and nodded to the water beyond where Sleeth was bobbing.

  A single fin, as tall as two men, sliced up out of the water and disappeared again, black against the darkening horizon.

  Sleeth saw it and mumbled a curse.

  “It would be better for you not to know, assassin.” he said. “Ignorance would save your life. You return to your King and tell him you have found nothing, learned nothing, and maybe you will live out the rest of your life. But if you know what I know, then your days are numbered, and the number is small, for her forces are beyond your measure.”

  “You know nothing of my measure, old man, and you are not in a bargaining position,” Rothar retorted. “Besides, you have already told me more than you know. I can leave you to the fish right now, if I please. But for the sake of conversation, why don’t you tell me exactly who the Duchess is?”

  At the mention of the word “duchess,” Sleeth looked startled. Rothar was glad, but not surprised. He had begun to suspect that the Duchess who had hired the Southlanders must be the same she-devil who held sway over the Sleeth family.

  Something large must have brushed against the old man’s legs, for his eyes opened as wide as the rising moon, and his body was pulled momentarily sideways in the lapping waves.

  “I… I am afraid to betray her! She has close connections with the highest powers!” he stammered.

  “And you are in close proximity to the largest fish,” called out Peregrin.

  Another towering fin surfaced in the distance and headed directly towards old man Sleeth. Rothar began to tow the rope in, and then stopped.

  “Who is she connected with?” he asked.

  “Everyone!” shouted the old man.

  The fish was closing fast.

  “Why are you afraid? A mighty king like you?” taunted Peregrin.

  Sleeth’s eyes were locked on the fin, looming huge as it approached.

  “Her husband sits at the right hand of Heldar!” he yelled.

  Rothar and Peregrin began pulling the old man in as fast as they could. As the fin neared Sleeth, a gaping cave of a mouth opened out of the water. Yellow teeth the size of a knight’s shield ringed the cavernous maw. The false king was the fish’s prey, but he was so close to the boat now that they would all be swallowed w
hole.

  Peregrin simultaneously drew three arrows from his quiver and notched them, firing all at once into the fish’s throat. A spray of seawater erupted from the mouth and the beast dropped below the water just feet from the boat, causing a swell that nearly upturned them all.

  Rothar pulled Sleeth out of the water and stood him up in the fishing boat once more.

  “Is your benefactor Duchess Miranda, wife of Feril, Duke of Baelzpass?” he asked.

  The old man only said, “She will be the death of you,” and laughed his lunatic laugh once more, spraying seawater and spittle in Rothar’s face.

  “Your… highness,” Rothar said with death in his voice, “which of your lads keeps a shop on Durrow Row, in Thurston?”

  Sleeth looked at him with suspicion. “Farrow keeps a fine shop there, a thriving business in all ways! What do you want of him?”

  Rothar leaned the man backwards over the side of the boat. Peregrin took up the oars and sat down, readying himself.

  “I left his head in the Banewood,” he said, and dropped the madman into the sea.

  Peregrin immediately began paddling urgently back towards the shore as the old man screamed and pleaded. After a few minutes he rested, and the two men watched the dark water rise and fall, and rise again, until it rose in a exploding pillar of black scales and razor teeth, swallowing the decrepit and deceitful old man in a single gulp, his pathetic cries lost forever in the belly of the beast.

  Chapter 21

  Stormbringer and Garnett raced along the southern shore of the Amethyst Sea, sand and seawater spraying up behind their thundering hooves. The riders ducked low on their steeds, urging them on faster, racing against the fading twilight. Once the light was gone, they would have to slow their pace, and it was imperative that they cover as much ground as possible.

  The reason for their pace was two-fold. It turned out that they had been seen loading the elder Sleeth into the boat, and when they returned without him, a small and motley crowd had gathered on the shore. It turned out that the mad king actually had a bit of a following, mostly fishermen and mongrels, all of them nearly as mad as the deceased king himself. The mob was more than a little distressed at seeing Rothar and Peregrin arrive on shore without their monarch, and a scuffle had ensued. The duo managed to only kill a few men before escaping on horseback.

  The other reason for their haste was more disturbing. The right hand of the King was implicated in the disappearance of the children, most specifically, his wife was. Rothar must return to Castle Staghorn immediately to inform King Heldar and apprehend the lecherous couple.

  As night drew nearer they approached the area where the land began to rise above the sea, leaving only a narrow swath of beach between a wall of low cliffs and the water. The tide was coming in, so the riders were forced to take to the high ground or risk being trapped by the rising waters.

  Darkness came earlier in the Banewood above, and Rothar was frustrated as they eased their pace. Quietus blockades turned up at intervals, slowing them further, and telling them that they were in the territory of Brath’s former clan.

  “Brath was a clever one, indeed,” said Peregrin, as the two men carefully led their horses around a giant fallen oak, draped in the deadly vines.

  “A born criminal with a heart of gold,” replied Rothar, distracted by a flock of circling vultures visible through holes in the dense forest canopy.

  They came to the river that ran past the willow grove that Kenner and the men called home. Rothar decided they should follow the creek, rather than forge it. The route would take them into thicker parts of the Banewood, but was more direct. Besides, he could check with Kenner when passing by the grove, to ask if any more Southlanders had been tromping through the wood.

  They passed the massive grave of Brath, the earth still freshly turned from when Rothar had exhumed the giant to remove his head. He nearly told Peregrin of the instant when Brath seemed to come alive at the touch of his sword, but thought better of it.

  As the riders approached the willow grove, there were no evening fires burning, and the entire camp seemed eerily silent, save for the squawking calls of the vultures above. Nobody moved about the tents or stirred in the surrounding forest.

  “Out on a prowl, perhaps?” Peregrin suggested.

  “Perhaps,” Rothar answered, “but I fear that is not the case.” He was focused on the massive willows in the center of the camp, where the thieves had hung and tortured the captured Southlanders. The vultures were thick about the trees, and countless birds hung heavy on the branches.

  Rothar and Peregrin were nearly under the largest tree before they noticed the boots dangling, high above their heads. Staring up, Rothar’s eyes slowly adjusted to the shadows gathering in the canopy. Everywhere in the tree hung bodies, some by their necks, others simply draped over limbs like rag dolls, and still others impaled on broken branches, their blood showing black on the splintered wood.

  “Dear God,” muttered Peregrin, his head tilted back, taking in the macabre scene. “The Southlanders took a horrible revenge.”

  Rothar squinted and believed he could make out the familiar face of Kenner, hung upside down by his ankles and split open from belly to chin.

  The Southlanders were certainly capable of wreaking havoc, and no measure of revenge could be too ghastly for them, but none of that could explain why all of these men were hung so impossibly high. The nearest man to the ground could not have been less than thirty feet up.

  Rothar climbed gingerly off of Stormbringer and went into a nearby tent to find a torch. Returning, he lit the flame and began to scan the ground carefully, walking back and forth under the giant willow, shaking his head.

  “Impossible,” he whispered.

  “What are you looking at, Rothar?” asked Peregrin. “I see no tracks.”

  “That’s because you are looking too closely,” Rothar replied, and lifted the torch high to illuminate as much ground as possible.

  Peregrin gasped. Rothar stood in the middle of a footprint nearly as long as he was tall.

  “Ogre,” Rothar said.

  ***

  Ogres were not unheard of in the kingdom, but it had been over a generation since anyone had seen them. King Bellnor had employed many ogres in the construction of the great southern wall, but had banished them soon after it’s completion. Standing up to forty feet in height, it was clear to see how the beasts would be useful in building a giant wall, but they were unruly and did not take orders well.

  Many skirmishes had broken out during the construction, most of them between fellow ogres, but some between the behemoths and the king’s architects. In one instance, an architect had berated an ogre for dropping a massive stone and crushing a team of horses. The ogre had responded by hurling the architect directly at the unfinished wall. The bloody outline of the victim was visible for many weeks.

  The ogres resented their perceived enslavement in erecting the barricade and, after it’s completion, entered the King’s City and attempted to settle in. Previously, the ogres had kept to the Banewood and the mountainside, however, they argued that if they were fit to toil for the city, they were fit to live in it.

  The giants tromped through the streets and carelessly toppled homes and shops. Several villagers were crushed. Eventually, a number of the beasts tried to enter the grounds of Castle Staghorn, demanding to see King Bellnor. The king’s guard was summoned, along with an entire battalion of soldiers, and the ogres were pushed out of the King’s City in a bloody conflict. They fled to the peaks of the mountains, and the King decreed they could remain there, but any ogre seen approaching the wall, or found in the Banewood, would be dealt with using whatever forces necessary to cause it’s demise.

  ***

  There was at least one ogre in the Banewood, and it had, at the very least, helped destroy all of Kenner’s men. The mortal sword wounds to Kenner and some of the other thieves told Rothar that the ogre had not acted alone. Ogre’s did not use blades, in fact, t
hey seldom used weapons of any sort. An ogre may take hold of a tree trunk or a boulder to dispatch an enemy, but fashioned weapons were not a part of the ogres arsenal. Brute strength and impossible size were all that was necessary for an ogre to be a bastion of deadly force. And anyone who could control or bribe a giant well enough to employ it was certainly at an advantage over most anyone else.

  The ogres traditionally did not mix with the Southlanders. The two despicable groups for the most part left one another alone, but did not cooperate. The ogres stayed to the highlands, and the Southlanders to their desert. The ogres were as dumb as they were strong, but they knew better than to tangle with the warrior culture, and the mercenaries were wise enough not to waste valuable manpower battling with the beasts in the mountains, so the two groups were able to coexist south of the wall.

  An ogre working with the southern devils could only be the result of a great amount of wealth being distributed to both parties. The type of wealth that the Duke and Duchess of Baelzpass possessed.

  Something was bothering Rothar, and as he and Peregrin rode on towards the King’s City, he obsessed over it.

  Why the Duchess?

  Duke Feril was a conniving and impertinent weasel, if not altogether rotten, and Rothar would have a hard time putting any sort of evil past him, but both Bakal and the elder Sleeth had specifically referred to the woman.

  Duchess Miranda was wealthy before she married Feril. In fact, it was said that Feril would not have half of his riches if it weren't for the convenient marriage to Miranda, the daughter of a mysterious king from a far off kingdom. Miranda’s arrival in the kingdom was shrouded in rumor, and her union with Feril was swift and secretive. Since their betrothal, Miranda had lived in the lap of luxury in a sprawling manor in Baelzpass, while Feril had mostly kept to his personal quarters in the King’s City, citing closeness to King Heldar as being paramount.

  Baelzpass was situated atop the Yawning Cliffs, next to and practically engulfing Twistle, the village where the huntsmen drove the wolfs into the void. Miranda’s manor sat at the edge of the cliffs, overlooking the King’s City, the Banewood and the wall. From certain spires at Castle Staghorn, the manor could be viewed on cloudless days, and people said that sometimes Duke Feril spent hours in those spires, gazing up at the home he owned but never slept in, the wife he wed but seldom met.