Death Comes To All (Book 1)

by Travis Kerr

  "How?" Drom stuttered, amazed at the transformation in his companion. "Did you use magic? Is this an illusion?"

  "Of course not," Garan, or Malik as he called himself now, answered. "Any decent mage, even a weak one, can see through an illusion. Most cities have human guards at their gates with enough magic to dispel most glamours. Thankfully, for those that are willing to take the time to learn, there are plenty of ways to disguise yourself that don't require magic. A wig to cover your real hair can make a great difference. False facial hair can go a long way to change your appearance. With enough practice a person can even learn to move his face in certain ways to change how it looks entirely, and I know all of those tricks.

  “I can teach you a few, but there are better ways to change your looks. Shifting your face, for instance, takes years of practice. If we just shaved off the fur on your face, trimmed up a little on your arms and such, and put something on your head to cover those ears of yours, we could get you to pass as a human pretty easily. Not a very attractive one, granted, but we would only want to disguise your true nature, not find you a wife or anything."

  Of course not, Drom thought bitterly.

  He silently started to pull oranges off of the tree, dropping them into his pack as instructed, brooding in his thoughts.

  Why would any woman ever find me interesting or attractive? Not likely. He had resigned himself to that truth long before, but the pain of its realization was still sharp in his mind.

  He carefully moved around the rust colored ground that covered one area of the campsite, where the boar had been dropped.

  They must have removed the carcass during the night, he realized, or early enough in the morning that it was already gone when he woke up. They couldn't have cleaned all of the meat off of the animal, he thought. They wouldn't have had enough room in their packs for it all.

  The scavengers will be eating well off of whatever remains.

  In fact, their packs didn't seem to have anything in them at all from the outside, though surely they must have packed some of the meat away. Perhaps they really did have magical packs. They were very expensive, but not unobtainable to those who could afford them. The two of them had made two thousand gold killing that trog guard, just on that one job alone. Certainly such things wouldn't be out of their price range.

  Once his pack was so full that he was certain he would not be able to fit even one more orange into it he strapped it to his back, then carefully strapped the sword to his waist the way he had seen others wear them. The unfamiliar weight threatened to throw him off balance, but he knew that in time he would get used to it. He would have to, he knew. Regardless of what profession he chose, it was too dangerous to live in one of the cities without protection.

  "Are you ready to go?" Raine asked him.

  "Yes Raine, I have enough food now to last me for a few days," he answered.

  "It's Tara now," she reminded him sternly. "He is now called Malik. It's unlikely that we will meet anyone on this road, but if we do they might know us by those names. Make certain you don't call us by the wrong one."

  "Tara," he repeated. "And Malik. Tara, is Raine your real name, or is it Tara?"

  "Neither," she answered simply. "I don't use the name I was born with. The same thing is true for Malik. I don't know his real name, and he’s the only person I’ve ever trusted with mine. A name has a past attached to it. Parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters maybe. People from your past, those that you care about, can be used against you if your enemies find them. To live the lives we've chosen, we had to leave those connections behind us. I know Malik said you don't need to change your name if you don't want to, but it might be a good idea if you did. You don't change your name and your appearance to protect yourself as much as to protect those people in your past that you care about. At least in my case. Malik is hiding from his past, and the name attached with it. I don't know what that name or that past is, but I know that much about it."

  "Was he right about being able to make me look human?" Drom asked. "It would be easier to blend in as a human than as a hornless sorvinian."

  "You're right about that. As you look right now, you would likely stick out in a crowd," Tara answered, thinking. "We should take care of that now, before we get back to the road. Sit down here on the ground, and whatever you do, don't flinch."

  Walking up to him, she pulled out a long, thin blade. He sat down as instructed, trying his best not to move a muscle. Raine, or Tara, Drom reminded himself sternly, silently got to work. Drom had never felt so nervous in his life. Knowing what this woman did for a living only made it that much worse for him, though in reality he was probably safer with someone so skilled with a blade than he would have been with any barber.

  She spent nearly ten minutes carefully removing the hair from his face. Malik took notice shortly after he started, and watched her with a look of amusement etched across his face.

  It’s the one thing that stays the same, Drom thought as she worked. He could change his clothing, or even his face, but he always looked like he was amused.

  It had struck Drom as strange since the moment they had first met. His companion had his moments, mere seconds of extreme intensity, and then that smile would once more push its way to the surface, as if he couldn't hold it back. He wouldn't have expected an assassin to enjoy life the way that this man seemed to.

  I wonder which is truly the facade, the man's apparent merriment or the intense, serious person he can become.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity to Drom, Tara pulled away from him and stepped back to admire her work. He had felt the sharp edge of her blade while she had been working, but she had not nicked him, not even once. He didn't have any sort of a mirror, so he couldn't see for himself, but he could feel with his fingers the smooth skin of his now hairless face.

  Everything was gone, every hair that had covered his face. Even the hair on the back of his eyelids had been removed. She had left him eyebrows, carefully trimmed, and a small flicker of sideburns that went down almost to the edge of his jawline, but no more.

  I doubt that anyone would recognize me now, he thought, not even my own parents.

  He tried to imagine how he must look now, but found he couldn't. He had always wanted to look more like a human, had even imagined what it would be like, but his imagination just couldn't put the pieces together. He knew that many of his features, the shape of his face and his lack of horns, had always been human-like, but those who had always told him that had been sorvinians.

  Without the fur on my face, will I look that way to a human?

  "So, how do I look?" he asked his two companions, who continued to stare at him. "How bad is it, really?"

  "Well, you’re not going to win any beauty contests. You almost look human," Malik said at last. "A bit too pale though. Your skin has been covered with hair all your life. Honestly, it's not as pale as I had expected. The skin color will darken in time, but as it is right now the skin color doesn't match the hair. There are people in the north that have pale skin like that, but their hair is generally a dark red color, closer to the color I have now. Were I doing this for myself I would just dye it the color I wanted, like I did for my hair. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t do anything to hide those ears of yours. I can't do anything to make those look human, at least not anything that I can prepare quickly. Instead you’ll have to use a wig that we can hide your ears under. I have a shaggy red one that would be long enough.

  "Once we're finished with this, I'll let you borrow what I was wearing earlier to complete the look. When we're done, no one will ever recognize you."

  "I thought that those clothes were from a uniform?" Drom asked, confused. "Like an assassins guild or something. You were both wearing them in the bar."

  Malik laughed. "Assassins don't wear uniforms, or at least not one made for assassins. However, you’re not completely wrong. What we were wearing was a uniform of sorts, that of the Thane. They are a group of mercenaries. They usu
ally work as guards for merchants, but unlike the city guards they aren't under the control of the mages. You'll find dozens of them in any port city. Seeing one of them escorting a merchant is nothing out of the ordinary." He pulled the familiar black cloth out of the bag and handed it over to Drom.

  Drom looked down at the uniform and realized a problem. "These clothes are made to fit you," he said. "There's no way they're going to fit me."

  "It's nothing to worry about. That uniform was always a little loose on me. The man I took it from was closer to your size, though not quite as tall I think. It should fit your frame just fine. It might be a little short in the legs, but I doubt that it will be all that noticeable. Just tuck the bottoms into your boots and you shouldn’t have a problem with it."

  He found that Malik was exactly right. They were perhaps an inch or so too short at the ankles, and higher on the wrist than he would have liked, but they fit him all right otherwise. He stretched this way and that, getting used to the unfamiliar clothing.

  "That should work for you until we reach our destination," Malik said to him. "Once there we can have a few sets of clothing made for you, should you decide to stay with us a little bit longer. Right now you're helping me. Just by being here you're adding to my disguise, and that's worth something to me. So in addition to teaching you how to handle yourself, both with a weapon and without one, I'll pay you fifty gold pieces for your time. That's from here to our destination, which should take us about a month to reach. It's a little less than a well-trained guard would make working for a merchant like the one I'm posing as, but it will be enough to get you clothing and a good blade, with a bit left over to hold you if you decide to go your own way from there. If you decide to stay with us longer, we'll talk about payment again. Is it a deal?"

  It was far more than Drom had ever thought he would earn in a month of work, and he hadn't expected to get paid for traveling with these two at all. He thought they were doing him a favor, not the other way around. Malik was going to train him to fight, something that he was already certain he would need to learn if he hoped to live in one of the cities. That alone was worth more than any benefit he could be bringing them. Now Malik was offering to pay him on top of everything else he was doing. It was all too much, and once he had recovered from the shock of the offer he said as much.

  "Well I can't have you wearing my clothes forever," Malik responded in his usual, jovial manner. "Besides, like I already told you, a regular guard would be making more than that. Were you one of the Thane, which is what you're dressed as, you would be making four or five times that. So really you're being underpaid. I'm taking horrible advantage of you."

  "We both know that I'm not a real guard," Drom said. "This sword at my hip isn't even mine, it's yours. If we got into a fight I wouldn't even know how to use it. I don't seem to be of much use, so I don't know why you're paying me. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the thought, really I do. It’s just that it seems to me that you’re helping me, not the other way around. Really I should probably be paying you."

  "Look Drom, we'll reach the client in about a month, like I said. Until then, you’ll be adding to my disguise, which, as I said, is of use to me. Teaching you how to fight might also be of use to me, in the unlikely event that we get into one and I can’t fight to my full ability for some reason. So I’m paying you for your time, and that’s all there is to it.

  “Between now and the moment we reach our destination, you'll be learning everything you need to know about combat. I don't mean to sound overconfident, but I think I will make a rather good teacher. I haven't lost a fight since I was younger than you, and I don't have anything close your strength. With the right training, who knows how good you could become. Just accept what I'm offering and we'll take it from there."

  There’s nothing else for me to say, he realized. Tara was impatient to go. She had been standing at the edge of the campsite for nearly ten minutes, her pack already set on her back.

  Drom suspected it was probable that she knew every campsite on that road, and knew exactly how far it was to the next one.

  I’m probably holding them up, trying to argue with Garan about paying me for my time. I’m being terribly foolish.

  "You're right," Drom said after a moment "Sorry about everything. I didn't mean to keep everyone waiting." He strapped his pack to his back. "I'm ready to go when you are Garan."

  "That's Malik," the assassin reminded him sternly. "You need to get used to it. After all, it would be very bad if you said the wrong name in front of others. Should you travel with us for longer you'll find that I change my name, face, and occupation fairly regularly. You will have to learn to keep up with things. Just think of me like a different person. I don't look the same as I did before after all, and from here on I'll be using a different voice than the one you are used to. I've only been talking in this voice, the one you know, because I know no one else is around. Trick would have told us otherwise. He'll be keeping to the trees from now on, by the way. Garan had a dragonling companion, but Malik does not. He'll follow close by, and will discreetly let us know if anyone approaches."

  "Sorry, I'll try to remember Malik."

  "No harm done Drom," Malik answered. "As I said, there's no one else around. See." He pointed to the tree where Trick still slumbered as if no one paid him any mind. Malik had said that the dragonling would warn them if anyone came near. Right at that moment it appeared to Drom as if the tree the animal was in could have caught fire and the small creature wouldn't have noticed, so soundly did he sleep.

  "I think I should take a different name as well," Drom said suddenly. "Raine, I mean Tara, had said that you change your name not only to protect yourselves, but also to protect those people in your past, those that can be used against you by your enemies if they should somehow learn who they are. There are people in my past I would want to protect as well. As long as I'm staying with the two of you, I think I should pose as someone else."

  "It's probably a good idea," Malik admitted. "Did you have anything in mind?"

  "I haven't really had time to think about it."

  "We have plenty of time before you have to worry about it," Malik told him. "In the meantime we won't call you by any name should we run into anyone. When you decide on a name let us know. There are two things you should keep in mind when choosing an alias. First, try not to use something that's obviously a cover. If you call yourself Dread Blackhearted or something like that you might think it's frightening, but really anyone who hears it will think it's ridiculous. Only powerful mages use names like that, or really stupid trogs, and even then it's rare and rather silly if you ask me. Second, and possibly more importantly, don't use anything from your past. If you take your grandfather's name, or even just the name of someone from your village, it could potentially be traced back to its source, which defeats the whole purpose of creating a new identity.

  "When you create a new persona it's more than just a name. You're creating a whole person, with a different background and everything. Keep it simple and easy. You can keep most of the details the same, only change small things like names and locations. Everything you make different you have to remember that you've changed, otherwise people will be able to see through it. For now, you're a Thane guard from the north, don't specify where because a real Thane guard wouldn't, and you're working for me. You don't have to tell anyone anything else. If we run into anyone I'll do all the talking anyway, so you shouldn't have any need to concern yourself with a background story right away."

  The group headed back to the road and began following it west once more. On foot the traveling was fairly easy, though Drom could see that it would be quite difficult for anyone attempting to take a wagon down the track. As they walked he considered the background Malik had fabricated, both for himself and for Drom. Raine, now Tara, didn't seem to have a new background, however she had changed her looks enough that anyone who hadn't seen her change wouldn't be able to recognize her. She acted no differently
than she had since he first joined them; that is to say she rarely talked and when she did what she had to say was generally short and to the point. Her overall attitude at least seemed better now that she had eaten the night before. As long as she had regular meals she was almost pleasant to be around, if a little blunt.

  From time to time Drom spotted Trick as he flitted from tree to tree above them. The little dragonling would be almost impossible to see if he hadn't known where to look for it. Drom would have thought the colorful animal would have stood out against the green foliage, like it had during the hunt the evening before, but it seemed to be quite capable of blending in when it didn't want to be noticed.

  "You shouldn't watch him like that," Tara observed. "Should anyone pass by and see you looking up like that it will naturally draw their eye in that direction, to see what you are looking at. It would defeat the purpose if others noticed him."

  "Sorry," he replied sheepishly. From that point on he made certain to keep his eyes firmly at ground level, alternating between scanning the road in front of him and the trees to either side of him. A guard would be watching the surroundings, keeping alert for any surprises. If anyone saw him, he wanted to act his part as best he could. Drom thought for sure that anyone paying attention would surely see through his disguise. The sword constantly banged uncomfortably against his thigh as he walked, and he had to adjust it constantly.

  Nothing and no one appeared that day, though Drom watched diligently. The group didn't stop until nearly sundown, by which time he had started hoping someone would appear, just to break up the monotony of the day. His two companions barely said a single word.

  The pace they set was rugged. Not as bad as one they had set the day before, but certainly more than Drom was used to. Drom suspected that this was the normal pace for them. The day before they had moved faster to stay ahead of the guard. Now that they no longer looked like the people the guards would be looking for, they didn't feel the need to rush. Still, the pace was difficult for Drom to keep up with. He could match it, but he knew it would take him a while to get used to the constant, hard travel.