Eldritch Assassin

by Adam Witcher

  “I’m sorry, you want to hire me? A filthy, degenerate human thief?”

  “A proper job would do you good. Maybe you can see what the world is like for the rest of us with scruples.”

  She pulled a book from underneath her robe. It was old, tattered, and leather-bound. The title was just visible beneath her wrinkled fingers: Occultus Arcaneum.

  Admittedly, his interest was piqued. She put the book in a small, beige satchel and handed it to him.

  “I want you to deliver this for me, across town to the Cormea district. Should it arrive safely at its destination, you’ll be rewarded with three gold pieces.”

  Isaac stroked his chin. His mind raced. Three gold pieces? For a delivery that wouldn’t take more than an hour? Why hire a human to do it, especially one she’d just identified as a thief? An elf would gladly make the delivery, probably for even less payment.

  His train of thought was distracted by the book. While the old woman watched, he slid it out of the satchel and held it for a moment. He felt something strange emanating from its withered pages. Some kind of power. And that title… He had to admit he was intrigued. He’d heard about dark magic, but he’d never encountered it. And it was forbidden in most civilized areas. Avalour was no exception.

  Then it hit him. It was a book.

  She didn’t think he could read.

  To be fair, it wasn’t a totally unjustified assumption. Most of the humans born in Avalour couldn’t read. They never got opportunities to learn. And since he was a thief too, the woman assumed he was illiterate. He forced himself not to grin as he slid it back into the satchel.

  She didn’t know he wasn’t originally from Avalour, that his parents were great bards who’d taught him to read when he was barely older than a toddler, that him moving to Avalour and becoming a thief was an act of revenge against elves who had stolen them away.

  The woman wanted him to commit a crime. The book was illegal, and if he was caught with it, he’d be blamed. One more degenerate off the street. And as far as she knew, he had no way to know the book was about dark magic at all. The irony of the woman’s own illegal activity probably went right over her head.

  “All right, ma’am,” he said, now letting himself smile. “I’ll do it. Where am I going?”

  2

  When Isaac was far enough from Dorn square to avoid the old elf woman’s gaze, he ducked into an alleyway and hid behind a stack of storage crates. He pulled the book from the satchel and examined it more closely, running his fingers over the embossed title.

  He opened it and thumbed through the pages. The book was only about half text. The rest of the pages were covered in charts and symbols he didn’t recognize, ones that looked like relics from times and places many years past—drawings of plants and herbs, equations with indecipherable variables, drawings of beings engaging in strange rituals. He’d never seen anything like it.

  On one page, two elves were depicted standing on either side of some giant, oval hole. They looked into it expectantly while some amorphous form emerged. He shuddered at it for reasons he couldn’t describe.

  A bright chime rang out from a nearby street. It was noon. The woman had described to him where he should go, that he should arrive there within two hours if he was to get paid. The Cormea district was far, but he knew a shortcut the lady didn’t speak of. If he passed through Homoken, he could shave half an hour off the time. Of course the old elf didn’t know about it. He doubted she’d ever set foot in the humans’ district.

  Half an hour would buy him time to copy down some of the pages. He didn’t want to give up something so fascinating so easily. For a moment, he considered simply stealing it. He was a thief, after all, but he sensed unpleasant consequences. Whoever wanted this book would not let it disappear easily, and if there was no record of his arrest, the guards would know who to look for. There was no way he’d be able to copy the entire book, but even just a little bit might satisfy some curiosities.

  If he passed through Homoken, there was the added benefit of stopping at home, where he kept a secret supply of ink and paper.

  Damn, he thought. He was fresh out of ink. Used the last of it the day before. Edwin usually bought him more, but he hadn’t seen his friend in a few days. A human buying writing supplies was cause for suspicion.

  Luckily, though, Edwin didn’t live far from Homoken. A five-minute detour would bring him there.

  He set off.

  The further he got from Dorn square, the further he got from the old-world elven beauty that characterized the city’s northern districts. One by one the streets became less clean, the etchings and adornments less elegant, the citizens less wealthy and carefree.

  A double-wide bridge led him over a canal—the last bit of cobblestone in sight—and Isaac entered Homoken.

  With no more elves around, Isaac immersed himself in the throngs of humans that crowded Homoken’s concrete streets.

  Faint smells from the open sewage system stung his nostrils. Now that he spent so much time in Whogaarden, the abrasiveness of his home district stuck out more than it used to. Street vendors called out to him, offering cuts of meat no elf would ever touch. White-haired vagrants begged him for excess coins. He obliged a few. He passed below an open window where a woman leaned out from her third-floor residence and beat a blanket against the stone wall, sending bits of filth drifting down on pedestrians below. Between the two streets, the canal flowed a sickly green. They were downstream of all the elven districts, the last stop before the water flowed onward toward the white sea.

  He passed a pub called The Hog’s Mead, where a group of muscular men could be seen chugging enormous cups of ale and screamed a drinking song so loudly the sound dominated the street outside. He couldn’t help but laugh at the display. None of the other humans passing by took notice of the debauchery.

  Despite Homoken’s abrasive sensuality, Isaac still felt more at home here than anywhere else in Avalour. It wasn’t just because humans lived here. There was a sense of ongoing normal life that wasn’t present on the pristinely manicured streets of Cormea or Whogaarden.

  People lived here—ate bartered food, drank dark ales in dark taverns, danced in the streets—and the evidence was constant and all encompassing. It embraced the imperfections of humanity. The elven districts felt artificial in comparison, no matter how beautiful they were.

  A little later, he turned right and crossed the bridge into Edwin’s district, Dabow. The streets immediately became cleaner, but the elves here were still second-class to the ones in other districts. These were the in-betweeners, better than filthy humans but still nowhere near the social strata of Aerin and her father. When he first moved to Avalour, he expected them to be friendlier than their wealthier counterparts, but he was mistaken. If anything, they were colder, more dismissive, sometimes even downright hostile. Eventually, he concluded that their need to look down on humans was much more immediate than the wealthier elves.

  Luckily, Edwin was an exception. His friend was unbothered by social standings, a trait so refreshing that the two had become fast friends. They’d met at a tavern in Homoken of all places, and Isaac had been immediately fascinated by the lanky elf who was in the midst of a drinking contest with several humans. Edwin won, and Isaac bought him a beer. In a drunken confession, Isaac told him about his constant swindling, and Edwin found it hysterical.

  Isaac pushed through the crowds of Dabow and ignored the judgmental go back to Homoken stares of the elves until he reached Edwin’s modest house and knocked on the door.

  Edwin swung it open thirty seconds later, his eyes bleary from sleep, old ale on his breath. His skin was ashen grey, his pointed ears drooping. He was clearly very hungover.

  “Ugh, Isaac, what time is it?”

  “Just after noon, you degenerate.” He grinned. “Let me in, I promise not to talk too loud.”

  “Fine.”

  Edwin’s house was a mess. Empty ale glasses sat on every surface, the remains of food dishes
beside them. Stale greenweed smoke clung to the air.

  “Have a party last night?”

  “Something like that. What do you want, man? I need to sleep this hangover off.”

  “I won’t stay long. Check this out.”

  Isaac pulled the book from his satchel and showed it to him. Edwin’s attention was immediately piqued, his pounding head apparently forgotten. He took the book.

  “Arcaneum Occultus. Isaac, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”

  Isaac quickly recounted the story of his morning at Dorn square and the old elf woman.

  “That is ten kinds of suspicious, man. Too much coin, weird book. And, based on those directions, she wants you to take it to Cormea Temple?”

  “Does she? She didn’t tell me what the building was.” Isaac asked. “I never go over there, what’s the story with the temple?”

  “You’ve lived here for how long? That’s the city’s most important temple. The mayor makes his religious appearances there. But they don’t deal with this kind of magic. No way, this is dark stuff, man. Illegal here.”

  Isaac’s heart skipped at the word mayor. He knew the city government was centralized in Cormea. It was precisely the reason he avoided it. But he was so distracted he hadn’t considered that he was taking an illegal, potentially dangerous book into the heart of the city’s governing sector.

  “I don’t have much time,” Isaac said. “Do you think you could copy some of it down for me? I don’t have ink and paper.”

  “Ah, the real reason you came here.” Edwin sighed and sat down at his table, clearing a few glasses out of the way. “Why do you want me to copy it down?”

  “I don’t know, I’m curious!” Isaac threw his hands up. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “Let me guess, this sort of thing gets Aerin’s gears turning. But I don’t know if it’s…” Edwin flipped through the pages. “... a good idea…”

  The longer he looked through the book, the more his demeanor changed. He became distracted, distant. Isaac could tell he was feeling its strange power too.

  Without saying anything else, Edwin retreated to another room, then returned with pen and paper. He started to copy something down.

  “I…” he said, concentrating on the book. “Just a few pages, okay?”

  Edwin cleared a spot at his kitchen table beside him and gestured to Isaac to join him. When he did, Edwin passed him some pen and paper.

  He didn’t know what to copy at first. He didn’t know what most of it was, and he didn’t have time to read it thoroughly enough to find out. So, with Edwin holding up a section in the middle they simply copied what was in front of them, each of them from separate parts of the book. Within just a few minutes, Isaac felt like his hand was moving automatically. Every time he copied something down, more power seemed to rush from the page and through him like a magical conduit. He copied and copied, lost in the ethereal feeling, not truly comprehending what he was even writing, until twenty minutes had passed, and he heard a distant clock tower telling him it was 1:00.

  “Damn,” he said. “I’ve got to go. That old lady said—”

  “Not yet.” Edwin interrupted, his hand still copying frantically.

  “Edwin, I…”

  “Not yet!”

  Once Edwin finished a chart—a figure turning a bird into a bat—Isaac grabbed the book away and made for the door.

  “I’m not done, Isaac!”

  “You got plenty,” Isaac said. “We’ll be here all day if I don’t take it.”

  “And what if you don’t take it? What’s three gold pieces compared to all this knowledge?”

  Isaac stepped back from his manic friend.

  “Didn’t you just say you didn’t think this was a good idea?”

  “I…” Edwin. “Please, man. Just leave it here. Please.”

  Admittedly, Isaac was tempted. There was so much to learn from the book, even if so far they had no idea what they were learning. So much power…

  But an equally compelling curiosity pulled at him. Who was this woman? And where did she want it delivered to? And what would be the consequences if he failed? Someone with a book like this likely had access to power he couldn’t fathom. He wanted to keep it, but no, no, he would at least take it to its destination and find out what the city’s most important temple wanted with it. The pages of notes they’d taken would have to suffice for now.

  He grabbed the book, shoved it in his satchel, and without giving his friend a chance to protest further, left his home and rushed back out into the streets. He heard Edwin calling behind him, but he ignored his cries.

  Soon, the main streets of Dabow culminated into another canal bridge, and Isaac crossed into Cormea. The change was immediately apparent. Cormea was nearly as beautiful as Whogaarden, but with a much more professional aesthetic. It was regal rather than decadent, but it still contained immaculately clean streets and golden handrails alongside clear canals. The elves here looked much like the ones from Whogaarden, and this was partially because they were the same elves. Many of the city officials worked here and lived in the same area that Aerin and her family did.

  The temple was so prominent that he wondered why the old woman hadn’t simply told him to look for it rather than give him a street corner. Four enormous spires towered above everything so thoroughly that he could see them from three blocks away. As he approached it, he found himself clasping the satchel at his side more tightly.

  The temple’s facade was magnificent, bright whites and gold twisted into a spiral at enormous doors at the front. Two winged angels bookended it, their arms outstretched into a greeting. The temple was rounded into a giant bulbous shape. Technicolor flower gardens lined every section of it. More depictions of angels, the disciples of Saldana, wrapped around the entirety of the building.

  “The large building at the corner of Humfeldt and Krosni,” the old woman had said. Isaac looked at the street signs and confirmed it.

  He hesitated. Why would this woman want the temple of Saldana to house this tome? He wasn’t deeply familiar with the elven gods, but he did know that Saldana was the goddess of vanquishing light, who had driven away darkness from elf-kind for hundreds of years. Maybe the old elf woman didn’t want him to be more suspicious. But if she thought he was illiterate, then surely she would assume he was unfamiliar with elven deities. If she thought he couldn’t read, then why tell him the names of streets to find?

  He was unbearably confused and curious, and though a part of him still wanted to take the book and run far away from this city, to learn its secrets in private, he couldn’t shake the compulsion to see this strange errand through to the end. If there was some kind of great corruption happening to Avalour, he wanted to know about it.

  He also felt another pull from the book, but this time, not a pull to himself. It was a pull to the temple, as if the book wanted to be taken there.

  So he approached the magnificent temple, staring upward at the glorious spires as he ascended the steps.

  According to the sign on the door, there were no services scheduled for the day, so they were locked. He grabbed an enormous, golden ring on the front of the door and knocked three times. The knocks rumbled through the temple’s interior.

  Despite the din from the busy streets, he heard footsteps approach. The door opened, and an old elven man peered out. He saw the satchel in Isaac’s hand and, unsmiling, nodded at him.

  “You are Esmelda’s messenger?”

  “Creepy old lady at Dorn square? Yeah.”

  “Come in.”

  The door swung open, and Isaac stepped inside. Marble floors led to the main worship area, where pews lined up and faced a pulpit. A painting of Saldana took up the entire wall behind it. She glided downward toward a crowd of terrified demons, her mouth open between golden curls, blinding light spilling out and incinerating them where they stood. On either side of the cathedral, colored daylight streamed in and lit up the pews.

  Well
that’s a little dramatic.

  In the entryway, a great number of expensive looking artifacts lined shelves—pottery, utensils, small statues. Isaac felt his fingertips twitch as he looked at them, an instinct that didn’t last long.

  He suddenly felt uncomfortable, the book heavy in his satchel. He wasn’t supposed to be in here. Or perhaps not him, but the book. It vibrated lightly against his leg.

  The old man gestured, his loose grey robes lifting with his bony hands, toward a hallway to his right.

  “The man who requires this book can be found this way,” the priest said. “I cannot follow you, but you shall not be lost.”

  “You don’t want to take it to him yourself?” Isaac pulled the book out, but the priest shuddered when he saw it. His brows furrowed into a glance of pure revulsion.

  “I will not touch such an artifact,” he said, turning away.

  Isaac felt his curiosity become tainted by fear. The book felt more and more abnormal and unnatural in his hand. He suddenly wanted to be rid of it. A part of him no longer even cared about the gold pieces. He’d come too far to turn back, though. He trudged down the hallway to see it through. Then he would wash his hands of this whole situation and return to good, honest thieving.

  The hallway was lined with paintings of priests, and he tried to let them distract him. No doors were present except one at the end, which he took to be his destination. The closer he got, the more uneasy he felt. He considered dropping the satchel in front of the door and leaving. He would be abandoning his payment, but he would also not have to face whomever wanted this book.

  As he stood in front of the door and contemplated this, it swung open. Hands grabbed him, and he screamed as he was pulled inside.

  All he saw was a sea of black robes before a bag was placed over his head. Voices chanted around him in some language he’d never heard before. He cried out over and over as his limbs were pinned by countless hands. They picked him up and set him on a surface, then tied each limb down while he twisted and squirmed.

  “Let me go!” he cried, knowing it was pointless.