The crisp chill of the midnight sea smacked him in the face as he opened the door leading to the deck, but his senses were now thoroughly dulled, barely registering the bite of the wind. Inky blackness greeted him, and it was only the oil lamps, burning and flicking violently against the elements, that allowed him to safely navigate the deck. Not that it would have mattered, safe or not, for he was now as a fish on the end of a hook.
His mind raged at his body, protesting every step and then his heart quailed as he realized the direction his feet were taking him. The edge of the railing, to the foamy ocean below! Something was not right here! Marcius struggled, insisted, pulled with everything he had against his body. Finally his mind grasped at the thinnest of threads, the slightest glimmer of hope as the edge grew closer and larger.
Faerril! His thoughts lanced out and he heard the sleepy questioning reply, I need help! Please!
A drop of stone, the thoughts of the wyvrr coalesced, becoming sharp like a dagger edge.
He was against the railing now and there was perhaps only a scattering of seconds before he took a plunge to the cold depths.
Hurry!
A small whirling ball of fury slammed into his side, and a sharp pain sank into his leg. It shattered the spell and he felt the fragments of his paralysis scatter, falling like a puppet that had its strings cut. The weight attached to his leg was slammed violently into the side of the deck as Marcius stumbled, and the loss of his passenger only caused him to spiral more out of control as gravity took over.
Marcius grasped at the railing, but the wood was crusted with dried ocean salt and gave way as he slipped hard, painfully on his side. Time slowed down for the apprentice as his momentum carried him up and over. Brief images of stars and darkness spun furiously before he smacked first face into the cold water, the icy chill stealing his breath away, filling his mouth. He reflexively clawed for the surface. Something ran into him from the churning murky depths, banging impossibly hard against his head and causing an explosion of lights before his eyes. Marcius was briefly aware of having broken the surface before going unconscious.
❧ ❧ ❧
Darian ran his hands lovingly over the simple wooden box. But the innocent exterior was a ruse to those that didn’t know of the treasure housed within. Inside, worth more than double its weight in gold, was the substance known as sweet weed. Capable of only being grown in the soil and climate of the far southern islands, the innocuous looking substance induced an extreme feeling of euphoria that quickly made its users hopelessly addicted, leading eventually into dementia, insanity, and a slow painful death.
This obviously made it illegal in most countries. But one thing Darian always appreciated was the price hike that was always linked with making anything that was already hard to find even harder to get, especially when those customers were hooked like fish. It was what made smuggling worth it. All the risks, all the possible dangers, endless nights toiling over routes, days spent wringing one’s hands over being discovered, all of it, for the promise of gold.
And he would reap the rewards for this particular treasure. One only had to look into the crazed desperate eyes of one addicted to know that. Sure, he had taken a risk defying the Blackguard and helping out Simon, but it had given him the opportunity to reestablish contact with an old associate from Yaeren who just so happened to have had a fresh shipment of sweet weed. Overall, he had come out on top, managing to pay off a debt and turn a profit. Nothing risked, nothing gained as his father used to say.
The smuggler continued to gaze at the box with undisguised greed, reaching over to gently sip on a glass of red wine. He grimaced a bit; the liquid had lost its slight chill. Ice was hard to get in the town, and he prided himself in being one of the few that was affluent enough to afford it in the trade district. With a sigh, he opened his mouth to call in his servant, when something in the corner of his eye caught his attention.
The window was wide open, the curtain fluttering gently with the breeze. To most people, it wouldn’t have been much, but Darian’s eyes widened, he never did such things. There was no way that he would make such an obvious oversight and he was meticulous in everything he did. You had to be observant to stay alive long in this business. That could only mean. . .
He bolted to his feet only for a strong pair of hands to grab his shoulders from behind, slamming him back down to the chair with surprising force. His scream for help was cut short by the razor sharp point of a dagger underneath his chin, promising a grisly end if even so much as a whisper left his lips.
When had the intruder snuck in? Darian had heard nothing. The attacker didn’t give him time to dwell on the question, “You know why I am here, Mr. Coisin. Where is he?” The voice, disturbingly close, was calm and collected. It belonged to a dangerous man, one that didn’t have to speak loudly to be heard and was used to getting exactly what he wanted.
“Call it the failings of an old man, but I don’t know what you are talking about.” There was a slight quiver in his voice, and Darian hated himself for it.
“Come now, Mr. Coisin. You are barely over two score and we both know you are lying.” The tension on the knife against his throat lessened a bit. “I’ll tell you what, since we are both civilized men, I will take this nasty thing away, and we will talk. But if you so much as breathe in a way I don’t like, this dagger will be in your chest and I will be out the window before your servant can rouse himself awake to see what you called for. Understand?”
“Not as if I have much of a choice.”
Darian could feel the smug smile as the man removed the blade. The merchant smuggler rubbed his neck subconsciously. There was the sound of wood dragging on wood as the man grabbed one of the chairs in the study and brought it around in front of Darian.
As the man sat down, Darian got his first good look at the attacker. He wore simple leathers, well oiled and made as to leave no sound of his passage. They were colored weirdly, to the inexperienced eye. Most people foolishly expected an assassin to be robed in black, but such a color scheme did little to hide someone except in the darkest of areas, in which they weren’t needed anyway. No, this outfit was varying patterns of dark gray and green, as to break up the outline. It was a deadly setup of practicality.
His face was shrouded in a similarly patterned cloth mask, though it did not hide the alert green eyes behind it. It was the symbol on the blackened gauntlet over his right hand that caught Darian’s attention. An eye with a line jagged diagonally through, giving the impression of a scar, emblazoned on the front of an otherwise standard looking metal gauntlet.
Everyone who was anyone knew that. It was the symbol of the assassin’s guild, but what really sent shivers through Darian was the fact that it was on his right hand. The man noticed the attention to the gauntlet and gave a low chuckle. “See something you like, Mr. Coisin?”
“It’s on your right hand.”
“Indeed. Do you know what that means?”
Darian did, and the realization made his hopes plummet. This man was a rogue assassin and, as such, was no longer bound by the codes of conduct they generally followed. He was wanted, by both the guild and the law, and had nothing to lose. Darian’s odds of making it out of this alive were getting slimmer.
“Darian Coisin,” the assassin began, leaning forward in his chair, “If there was ever a rags to riches story it would be you. A homeless waif, which through ingenuity, hard work, and a never quit attitude, managed to pull himself into the very best of social standards. A trade prince with impeccable reputation and character, you are the standard in which all Harcourt citizens aim to be.”
“Well,” and Darian was glad he found his voice, “It seems as if you have the advantage, since I know next to nothing about you.”
“But,” the assassin continued, “if only they knew the man behind the show. An obsessed individual selling his services to the very underbelly that infests Harcourt. He will acquire anything they desire. . . for a price, of course. And it is pric
e that drives him, the lust for gold to add to his ever amassing wealth. At what point is enough actually enough? Gold has become his God, and he is all the more ugly for it.”
The blood boiled in Darian’s ears and he felt the flush wash across his face, but the assassin held the advantage here and they both knew it. He kept quiet.
“So, you know what I am, who you are, and we both realize why I am here. The bard, Simon, where did you help him run off to?”
“I don’t know what you are-“
“Don’t feed me that hog-swallow, Mr.Coisin. You are the only one capable of arranging safe passage out of this city, even beneath the Blackguard’s eyes. And do you not think they realize that? How long until they come knocking? I can help you, Mr.Coisin, but only if you help me first.”
Darian sighed. The assassin spoke the truth. He was starting to regret ever agreeing to the bard’s ideas. “Go to Yaeren, you’ll find the path you seek there.” The merchant was suddenly so very weary of it all. “They took a ship going Avalene knows where.”
The smile was evident beneath the mask and the eyes took a dangerous twinkle as the man stood and bowed. “Thank you.”
The man started toward the window, but Darian stopped him. “Wait, you said you could help me?”
The man stood for a moment, his back to Darian, before responding. “Ah yes, I did, didn’t I?” In a blur of motion the assassin whipped around and Darian felt a thud. He looked blankly down at what he recognized as a hilt protruding stubbornly from his chest.
It didn’t really hurt as he always assumed it would, though a chill began to creep its way up his extremities. As he turned to look at the man, everything seemed to be moving slower. It seemed that an eternity had passed before the two of them locked stares. “Wh-wh. . . ” It frustrated him that his mouth wasn’t obeying. At some point he must have stood as well, but he didn’t remember doing so.
“Why? Is that the question your mouth fails to ask? A simple answer: there is no safer place than death for you, Mr. Coisin. I am doing this city a service by lancing a festering wound.” Either the assassin moved impossibly quick, or Darian just fell impossibly slow, but the man caught Darian as his knees crumbled beneath him and eased the merchant to the chair.
They stared at each other, eyes inches apart, and the last thing Darian could remember as life seeped from his body was that he overlooked how cold the assassin’s eyes were, how the only promise they held was death for those who got in his way. What a fool he had been to even begin to hope that it would end any other way.
The assassin watched the man’s eyes grow dimmer, taking the same satisfaction that he always did with a job well done. The throw had been clean, precise. Not that he ever did anything but clean and precise. He had gotten what he had come for, and managed to sever the link that the Blackguards would need to track him. Most importantly, he had a trail.
Now all that was left was to find those wizards and make them pay. He fingered the still tender burn along the left side of his face, hidden by the mask. No doubt it would leave a vivid scar, a physical reminder of what these people had taken from him. He had turned his back on his organization, meaning the rest of his life was merely a formality.
His hand tightened around the hilt and pulled, the sickening, yet familiar, plop of a blade being yanked from a corpse filling the quiet room. He wiped it clean on the man’s shirt and sheathed it on the belt along his waist. After a moment of thought, he grabbed the box of sweet weed and threw it on the man’s lap. It was delicious in its irony and it appealed to him.
Who said you couldn’t take it with you?
Chapter 21
His mouth was dry. A fact that was unnerving, considering the rest of him had adapted the uncomfortable feeling that can only be acquired when soaked while wearing clothing not designed to be wet. Things bunched where they shouldn’t, the stiffened fabric threatened to chaff, and generally it was all just rather unpleasant.
The waves were lapping gently at his body, prodding Marcius to open his eyes, insisting that he take into account his situation. He just didn’t want to move because that would force him back to reality, and he clung to his line of reasoning with tenacity that surprised him. He did his best to ignore it, but his traitorous mind was now fully awake and refused to remain idle.
His thoughts wandered. The important question was where was he exactly? Well, he was certainly not on the boat that was for sure. He remembered falling off, but the rest of it was a haze, a dream of impossibility that danced out of recollection. With a groan and considerable effort, he pried his eyes open. The light was a stark bright intrusion, but eventually, after several agonizing moments, things came into focus.
Lots of sand and the sting of crusted salt greeted him. He tried to move his head but immediately regretted the decision as a thousand and one minor hurts announced their presence. His head throbbed dully and nausea forced him to abandon that train of thought, at least temporarily. He wasn’t sure how long he spent trying to keep his mind focused and the bile from his throat, but eventually the sickness passed and he managed to push himself to an upright position. A quick inspection of the back of his head left his hand with traces of blood, but it felt mostly crusted over. He must have hit something when he fell.
A narrow strip of beach had become his landing area, bordered closely by a thick forest. The sun was beginning to set, and in doing so, it bathed the entire area with a soft orange glow that was simply breathtaking. Every movement in the ocean was accentuated with the broken colors of the spectrum. The gentle breeze carried with it a scent that Marcius just couldn’t identify, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. He passed a bit of time just appreciating the sight, before the chill forced him to once again pay attention to his situation.
The area was beautiful, that much he could attest to. But as he looked around, a feeling of hopelessness set in. He was all alone with no clue as to where to start getting everything sorted. At the thought, he started to realize just how true that was. The feeling of two beings sharing one body had disappeared from him, and the discovery set him to panic. Where was his familiar?
Faerill! He projected his thoughts with as much strength as his mind could muster, but despite trying over and over again, nothing answered him from the cold black void. There was no reassuring touch of another consciousness. No wisecrack about panicking. Nothing but the telltale beating of his own heart and the emptiness of losing something you never expected to do without.
It was all too much for him. This was the culmination of his choices .He wished he had never taken the journey. Everything was gone. His father was no longer the man he once was, Antaigne was dead, his ability to do magic, the one passion and goal that kept him going despite it all, had been stolen from him. Faerill was also gone, and to top it off, he was in the middle of nowhere, without even the faintest clue of what to do or where to go.
The first tear had fallen before he realized he was crying. They weren’t the soft tears of losing a loved one. It wasn’t the false tears of imagined loss. It was an expression of pure frustration. He sobbed against the injustice of it all. Marcius poured all the events of the past weeks out and cried and cried. Eventually they worked themselves down to just dry heaves, every one tightening his stomach up painfully. He curled up tighter.
Darkness had fallen but Marcius didn’t care. He didn’t want to live. Let the coldness of the night steal the last thing he had left to give. It didn’t matter. So he just sat there in a stupor, taking a detached sense of pleasure as the icy chill began to slowly creep its way up his extremities.
As if to prove him wrong, a light winked on in the distance, further down the beach. It bobbed this way and that, like a lost firefly, and Marcius’s addled mind entertained several notions of what could it be. Perhaps it was some magical creature, a faerie or wisp. He had heard of such creatures showing themselves to people about to die. Or maybe it was some ancient fel creature that stalked the woods, reaping the living and it had come for him?
The fancies disappeared as he recognized the gentle sway of the light and Marcius laughed bitterly to himself at the irony of everything. It was a lantern, projecting light out of a windowed hooded end, but he could also see the vague humanoid shapes that held it forth. What were the chances of such a thing in the middle of nowhere? He thought about crying out for help, but he just didn’t have the heart to do so. Everything was gone, and he didn’t know if these people, if they were people, were even the type to help him.
He didn’t even want help.
Still, fate mocked him and the light drifted ever closer. Marcius could hear voices, disjointed by distance and the sound of lapping waves.
“—never going to find a spot!” the voice was rough, but weary.
“—orry about it. I just don’t want to be near the woods,” another voice, placating and with bit more warmth, responded.
Marcius battled internally about whether to reveal himself. They were closer now, enough that he could make out that three of them traveled together, and he wondered what business they could have in the middle of nowhere. His hands were frozen, and his eyelids were getting so heavy. It would be so easy just to close them and let darkness take over. . .
But something internally rallied against just quitting, giving up everything. But he had already lost what mattered, his heart battled. Yes, but how did he really know unless he lived on and found out? He didn’t know for sure that he lost his familiar, his rational mind countered, and he would never know if he perished tonight. The light had given him a bit of hope, and sometimes a tiny amount is better than none at all.
His lips parted, cracking painfully from the cold, and he heard a moan come from them, a moan that was supposed to be a cry for help. There was nothing he could do. The light stopped. They had heard him! Hushed whispering drifted down to his position and his relief was replaced by the fear that perhaps he had spooked them.
A Dead God's Tear (The Netherwalker Trilogy) Page 31
