Claudius was a secretive man. He preferred the cold walls of his cellar to the warm sunshine and the sounds of a city full of life. He lived with books and their dust; pages warmed him in a way that nothing else would. It was said that he died a virgin at the ripe old age of one hundred and eighty years.
But, he was entirely focused on his studies, and his studies led him to the darker arts. It was he who discovered the properties of blood magik. Quite by accident, one of his assistants slipped during one of Claudius’ many experiments and cut his head open. Blood rained over the room and entered a cauldron that was being used for the concoction of a serum. The blood reacted with the serum in such a way that Claudius wrote:
Tis flame an’ fire ‘hat burn ‘ere. A caustic mix of ‘ulfur an’ fury. The walls ‘em selves burst int’ flame an’ it burn so hot it killed two other assistants’a mine.
From then on, Claudius’ obsession was with blood alone.
AYSTA
I crouched on the roof of the enormous villa and waited for the guard beneath me to pass before I turned myself upside down, my legs wrapped around the cloth I had tied to a pillar, and slit his throat. He fell to the ground, his eyes glaring up at me in the night, full of surprise and fear. Surprise, for a woman had just killed him, and fear, because he knew I wasn’t quite finished.
Slitting the throat commonly prevented screaming but took too long for death to descend with its graceful hand. I flipped silently onto my toes and went to the man and thrust my blade into his beating heart. The blade was Jumeaux Steel, the thinnest, sharpest steel known to the world of men and orc alike. Mined on the Isle of Jumeaux, it was only available to a handful of men … and one woman … in the entire world. In the night, it shimmered though it was pure black.
I could feel the beating through the blade and felt when it had ceased. I slid it out of his chest and reached for the cloth that was hanging down from the roof and tied it around the man’s neck before flipping off a wall and back onto the roof. I pulled the corpse up with the cloth and lay his body flat before continuing on.
The moonlight was auroral and the stars speckled the sky like gems in a dark sea. Three guards were dead; that left two more. I came to the center of the villa and glanced down. A single guard was sleeping in a chair next to a door: the entrance. I silently slid from the roof and landed like a spider, my hands outstretched on the warm cobblestone. I didn’t cut his throat first but simply thrust the blade into his heart and put my arm over his mouth. He let out one muffled scream before his eyes lost their sparkle and he passed. I lowered the helmet he was wearing to cover his eyes and he didn’t appear any different than when he’d been sleeping.
The door slid open and I stepped inside the villa. It was elegantly decorated with busts of long dead generals, mosaics of battle scenes, and statues of the predatory beasts that surrounded the villa in the forest of Ur. I walked past them without so much as a whisper. One more guard was here, possibly sleeping. I heard laughter from across the villa. A man and two women. I slid over the walls, my black clothing melding with the darkness as I crouched low, keeping my blade tucked away in its sheath to prevent the glimmer it gave off.
I found the room the laughter was coming from. A man, scarred from head to toe, muscular, and large as a Throxian bear, lay nude in bed with two women. They were pouring candlewax over his genitals and he would roar with laughter and pleasure. I looked about. One more guard … somewhere. But this opportunity was too good not to take.
I slid in the door, crouched low, and approached the bed. I unsheathed my blade. It was subtle, and someone with lesser skill would not have noticed, but the man’s eye turned to me. Nothing else, not head nor face. Just the eye. And I knew he had heard the unsheathing of the blade.
I sliced down as he leapt away, the bed cut in half and collapsing to the floor. The women screamed. The man was on his feet and I rushed at him with a kick to his groin and a palm to his chin, a knee and a palm and an elbow to his throat. He flew back against the wall as I thrust with the blade and he spun and grabbed a broadsword off the wall and spun it several times, showing me his skill.
He was massive, easily three times my size, and foaming at the mouth like a beast.
“So, a little girl comes to kill the great monster of war.”
He spun and swung with the sword, which hit the wall. Sparks showered the room. I ducked and rolled out of the way and came up to the side and saw the blade barreling down toward my head. I leapt toward the ceiling, the blade barely missing my face, and pushed off and flew down with a kick to his jaw that sent him sprawling back. He roared and rushed me. Anger clouded the mind. His temper would be his downfall.
He lifted the broadsword over his head as if he were about to chop a log in two and ran at me. Leaping, he came down with his full strength. I gently stepped to the side and we stood frozen.
He looked to me as the broad sword cut through the stone of the wall, the metal heating to a dim red. The general glanced down. My blade had entered his liver, passed through his stomach and one kidney. I withdrew the blade and flicked it, a spatter of blood flying over walls and rugs, before replacing it in its sheath.
He collapsed against the wall, his eyes looking up as they grew dim. I walked to him and saw the rage in his eyes as he saw me approach. Me, a slender woman that he should have been able to flick away into nothingness. I inhaled deeply and pulled back my arm before thrusting out with two fingers into the middle of the forehead: the Eye of Lorim, the spiritual center of our bodies, our link to the afterlife. His eyes turned a pure white, and he was no more.
The two women on the floor were trembling. I saw their clothes in a pile and I swept them up and threw it to them. “There are better ways to earn your bread,” I said.
I walked out of the villa and before I left I turned to see a guard near an exterior wall. He was smoking ferris root and giggling to himself. I pulled out my blade and leapt to the wall above him. Looking down at the top of his head, I let myself fall and the momentum pushed the blade through his skull and into his throat, where it embedded in his chest. I withdrew the blade violently out his back, exposing his spine to the warm night air, and he fell forward.
I withdrew into the Forest of Ur, glancing back only once to the torches lighting the villa that had slowly begun to die.
2
Mountain of Elsor. A great beast of a mountain unlike any other in the entire Empire, or known world for that matter. I stood at its base and stared up at the fabled peak which couldn’t be seen from this low. It flew past clouds and sky, and no one had been to its apex. There was simply not enough air for life to survive at so high a place.
But lower on the mountain it was warm and cavernous and, to anyone passing by, nothing but stone and sand. It was a six day journey from Ur to Elsor; however I had completed it in three. I accomplished this by foregoing sleep and changing horses often and riding them to exhaustion. When I arrived, I felt exhilarated; sleep was the last thing I felt like doing.
I jumped into the River Ven, that prodigious gushing torrent of water, known to carry away beast and man alike. Swimming to the bottom, a black stone came into view as I flowed with the commanding water. The trick was that you could not fight the water just as you could not fight nature or the gods. You had to learn to achieve your goals in harmony with them.
I lifted the stone only slightly; the power of the water did the rest of the work for me. I swam in and it closed shut behind me, opening up to a long tunnel. I lifted my head out of the water and leapt onto a stone path on the side. Taking it up directly into the mountain, I came to the plateau and waited.
Soon, an entrance slid open behind me on the mountain. The very rock itself moved. I walked in and began to ascend the stairs leading to the Guild of Shades.
The Guild was built right into the mountain but was at such an angle that one could not see it while standing on the ground below. In the ten centuries of existence of the Guild, not a single person had ever breached its
gates.
It took most of the day to climb the stairs and I approached the Guild by nightfall. The Guild was lit by torchlight and carved out of the mountain in such a way that if the torches weren’t there, you might very well walk past it and not notice the ancient grandeur in front of you. I turned within. Though I could see no one, I knew that at least half a dozen sentinels were watching me now. I stopped on the circle of flame and waited until I heard a voice in the darkness say, “Pass.”
I walked within the Guild.
The building itself was laid out in a large circle with the Tree of Hem in the center, its great branches casting shadows on the black stone floors. I went to the armory and replaced my blade and the various other potions and small weapons I had carried with me, and then found my quarters which were up on a small incline overlooking the Guild. I could hear the grunt of the fresh recruits further away on the mountain, forced to climb nude in ice and snow.
The Guild held exactly fifty-seven Shades, including myself. That number held mystic qualities to some, but I believed it was tradition. Perhaps the first class, thousands of years ago, had only fifty-seven and that number was found to be adequate. But the Empire had grown so much larger than it had been all those centuries ago that I wondered if it was best to continue following tradition.
I entered my quarters. In the far corner a spring cascaded off the mountain, passing through a small bit of rock in my quarters. I undressed and retrieved a cloth and bathed myself before dressing in a silkworm robe and sitting out on the balcony, drinking tea made from the Tree of Hem, a beverage believed to lead to enlightenment.
Someone entered my quarters. I could tell from the slight displacement of air behind me. But there was nothing to fear here. I waited until Master Nemesh sat next to me. He stretched his long legs in front of himself and we both watched the torchlight beneath us and the starlight above as he waited until I had refreshed myself with the tea.
Morning would bring my Gal Ladar, my twenty-second year, the day I could decide whether to stay and devote my life to the Guild, or leave to the world.
“I remember when I found you,” he said. “I was with Master Jul and we were passing through your village. All the villagers were gathered around a pit and I was curious as to what they were watching, so I convinced Jul to come see with me. You were there, at seven years of age, fighting off three hungry dogs. I asked one of the villagers what the damn hell they were doing, and they said you had been orphaned and this is what they did with orphans rather than spending the resources to take care of them. Do you remember that?”
I nodded.
He chuckled. “But you gave those dogs a fight the likes of which I think those bastard villagers had never seen. You bit one of them in the throat and ripped out sinew and flesh as the other two tore into your legs, but you wouldn’t let go of that first. Even when they began to eat you alive, you wouldn’t let go until you were certain the one between your teeth was dead. That’s what impressed Master Jul. That’s why you were chosen for the Guild. Our number was fifty-six then due to a death, and as the fates would have it, he had his eyes open, so to speak.”
“You were both kind to me when I needed it most. I will never forget that.”
“So you still plan on leaving?”
I nodded.
“Child, empires and kingdoms and civilizations rise and fall, but the Guild has outlasted every that has been fortunate enough to blight this graceful world. You are seeking something and I don’t know what. But whatever it is, the Guild can provide it. We slay kings and generals to maintain balance, so no one empire or kingdom is more dominant than any other.” He looked off into the distance. “I’ve read about the dark days, thousands upon thousands of years ago, when one mad king could make our entire race nearly extinct. That’s all it would take: just one mad king. That is why the Guild was founded. To bring that balance.”
“It’s not balance I seek.”
“Then what?”
“Justice.”
“We are justice.”
“Not for everyone. Not for the man I seek.”
“And who would that be?”
Images flooded my mind. Images of the ragged and broken bodies of my mother and thirteen-year-old sister lying nude and bloodied on the cold dirt floor of our hut. My sister was dead when I arrived, but my mother had still been alive … if only for a few moments. Long enough to smile for me despite the pain and the horror of what she had just been through … smiled for me, and held my hand as she passed.
An image of the two white stallions on blue flags with a shield between them: the royal seal. Or what had been called the royal seal before converting to an empire.
An image of my father, mad with grief, rushing the royal guards … and his head rolling to my feet. The guard had been an enormous man with a milky eye. He laughed at me as I stared down at my father’s head before the caravan began to move and I stared into the carriage and caught just a glimpse of the countenance that would haunt my dreams the rest of my life: the Great Prince Kandarian—the Wise, the Opulent, the Charming and Benevolent … all titles he had forced upon the populace. And they were such sheep that they believed it. And he said something to me that I will never forget …
“I seek someone important,” I said, “that the Guild has decided is better left alive.”
He nodded. “Revenge, is it? The way you have trained, even as a child, the study, the brutality you have pushed on your body … only revenge could motivate someone like that.” He glanced to me and then away. “I was hoping that you would one day become a master and take my place as Chancellor of the Guild.”
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Master. But while this man lives, while he breathes the same air and walks the same earth as me, I could never have peace. I could never focus and be as devoted to the Guild and the Shades as you.”
He nodded and I could see the slight glimmer of tears in his eyes. He put his hand on my thigh. He was the closest thing I’d had to a father for the past fifteen seasons and I felt a gray sadness in my belly that I would be leaving him tomorrow.
But I also felt the pure rush and exhilaration of what I had dreamed and thought and wished for these past fifteen years: the eyes of the prince as he looked to me, my blade slowly severing his head from his body before toppling it at the feet of his children.
3
In the morning I rose as the sunlight came through the open balcony and I dressed in the simple garb of a peasant girl. I drank another cup of tea and ate some sweet bread, savoring its taste, before I walked out to the armory and retrieved my weapons. I then went down to the promenade. Several of the other shades were there. They didn’t speak to me, as was the custom, they simply stood in salute. All except Semi. His blond hair in his eyes, he couldn’t restrain himself.
He threw his arms around me. We had arrived at the Guild at roughly the same time and I knew he was in love with me. I could have loved him back I think, but I’d always known that I would be leaving one day and did not need that distraction, so I’d forbidden myself from giving in to his tenderness and the calm sea of his eyes.
I’d watched him grow to become the greatest warrior in the world. Even more so than Master Nemesh. When he moved, it was impossible to tell where he was targeting. It was a blur of movement and pain to fight with him. He was almost otherworldly … but I knew he was nothing more than a man. Though a very special man with a destiny I could not see.
“Must you go?” he whispered.
“You know the answer as well as I.”
“Yes, I do. They have told me that you may return and ask for permission to re-enter the Guild. They do not always grant it, but you could ask.”
“Goodbye, Semi.”
I pulled away, and walked out of the Guild.
When I had descended the stairs and made my way through river and forest, it was actually quite pleasant. The sun warmed me, and the villagers that passed, at least most of them, said their greetings and gave me smi
les. I picked an apple from a passing orchard and ate as I walked.
In two days time I had to be at the city of Balor Gesh. The emperor’s Head of Household would be there under the guise of recruiting maidens for the royal household: a position that provided room and board as well as payments to the family of the chosen. Enough to live on. But that was only part of the purpose. The other was that they were recruiting for the prince’s harem. He kept ten girls at his call, and when one of them aged past twenty-five or so they were cast out: or so the information went. I knew they were not cast out, for none of them had ever been found to reveal his secrets.
Though I didn’t see my beauty as anything other than a weapon, I knew I was quite beautiful by the standards of the empire. It mattered not a whit to me. It was a weapon as true as any blade, nothing more. And I knew it wouldn’t be too difficult to enter his harem, and there I would be near him with no one else around us.
By nightfall I stopped at an inn at the side of the road. It was a minor place, no more than a handful of rooms and an alehouse for the patrons. As part of the Guild, we were rewarded monetarily for each target and I had grown quite wealthy. I carried an entire satchel filled with gold with me, enough to live like a fat imperial hog the rest of my life if I wished. But I cared nothing for it. Gold held no luster for me.
I paid for a room and a meal. I was offered ale and declined. I sat in the corner at a table and the wench brought my food: roast duck with wild yams and a honey-sugar glaze. I ate slowly and watched the patrons in the room. They kept to themselves and spoke only amongst themselves.
Empire of War - An Epic Fantasy (The Empire of War Trilogy Book 1) Page 3
