Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar

by Frances Mason

  The door was not locked. The guard opened it and looked inside, waving at the inmate. It had not been difficult for the order of Death to get the merchant in there, away from the careful eyes and skilful swords of his well-paid bodyguards. A false claim of debt had been made against him by a lay follower of Death, and given the inefficiency of the courts, the case would not be heard for several weeks. In The Pit, the main prison in North Bank, fed on scanty portions of weevil rich bread provided so generously by the priests of Thulathra, an impoverished prisoner could starve long before his case was heard. A wealthy man, however, could live in luxury, provided he paid the warden well, and the guards. The guard closed the door and continued on his round.

  Raoul passed by the door of the merchant’s cell, noting the sound of munching and heavy breathing and approached the next, which was open. The two cells were not separate, but joined, and in this one a servant of the merchant seated on the edge of a straw pallet ate the leftovers of his master’s meal. Raoul would have to pass in front of the servant, even to get behind him. Passing in front of someone at this distance required great skill. Raoul reverently folded the shadows about him and waited where he could see the servant clearly. The servant periodically stabbed his knife into a piece of the meat which filled a trencher, a thick crust with the bread dug out of its centre to form a plate, or in this case a deep bowl. Raoul counted the seconds till the next guard would turn the corner behind him, listened carefully for footsteps from any direction, listened to the heavy breathing of the merchant in the next cell and the enthusiastic munching of the servant in this, and watched the whites of the servant’s eyes. When they swivelled toward his master in the adjoining cell Raoul quickly slipped through the door and behind the servant. Not a sound was made, not a straw was stirred, and the shadows hid the light as Death Himself willed.

  The servant lifted another slice of meat on his knife to his mouth, oblivious to the assassin now behind him. Raoul slid one of the needles from a leather wrist band. He waited a moment till he saw his target clearly, then his hand shot out, capturing a flea as it crawled along the straw. With swift hands and perfect coordination he pricked the nape of the servant’s neck and placed the flea in the place he had pricked. The servant dropped the knife in the trencher, slapped the nape of his neck and looked at the bloody remains of the flea, wiping them onto his tunic, mumbling about what he suffered for his master. Before he could return his hand to his knife the substance on the needle had taken effect, and he slumped sideways onto the straw pallet, spilling his meal on the floor. Raoul waited a few moments for the sleep to deepen, then scooped the meat back into the trencher and carefully laid the servant out on the pallet, still counting the seconds as he had before entering. As he completed arranging the servant’s appearance and slipped back into the shadows between the open door and the foot of the pallet the next guard’s footsteps reached the door of the next cell over. The door was opened, a greeting muttered, then the door was closed. The guard passed the servant’s cell and stopped. His footsteps came into the cell. Raoul drew the shadows of his dark corner of the cell about him more closely, pulling out another needle and waiting. The guard looked at the servant and came further into the cell. He leaned over the sleeping form.

  “Albert,” he whispered. He squatted, reached out and poked the sleeping servant. Satisfied that Albert was deeply asleep he picked up the trencher and picked out a piece of meat with his fingers, shoving it in his mouth. After a few chews he spat it out. “What, do you season with dirt, Albert?” He threw the trencher back down in disgust, stood up and walked back out into the passageway, unaware that death had been only the flick of a wrist away.

  Raoul continued counting in readiness for the next guard, while listening to the receding footsteps of the departing guard in case he should change his mind, and to the loud breathing of the merchant. He crossed to the open door between the two cells and waited.

  Though it was dark in the servant’s cell, several candles burned in the merchant’s cell. The merchant was luxuriating in a tub made from the sawed off base of a large wine barrel. Steam rose around his pasty, fat flesh, folds of which hung over the wooden edge. His back was to the door between the connected cells, his balding head lolling in tired pleasure. A faint scent of perfume, of lilacs in the field, filled the air with the steam, mixing with the dusty smell of the dirty straw strewn across the floor.

  The poison Raoul carried for this mission could be applied in many ways. He could have dripped it onto the victim’s flesh. He could have poured it into the water in which his victim bathed. But when the water was emptied others might be poisoned. And if it were dripped on his head he might wipe it off and, once again, poison the water. Though the merchant would still die, others might also. If that were Death’s Will, so be it but, if there were some other way, it would be pious to use it. If he used the poison on a needle it would act too quickly, and he would not be out of The Pit before the merchant died. If one of the guards discovered the death, because the prisoner was wealthy the prison would be closed until the body was examined by the warden’s physician. Though Raoul could still get past the guards in that case it was another risk, and he preferred to calculate the path of least risk. Only incompetent assassins strike without intelligence. He could see the merchant’s tunic draped over his breeches and hose on a chest. If he coated the inside of the tunic only the merchant would be poisoned. As the merchant was a scion of an aristocratic family, his body would not be de-fleshed by the lepers, but buried whole and fully clothed.

  Having decided on his method, Raoul worked quickly. He repeated the trick with needle and flea, putting the merchant to sleep. Then he crossed to his clothes. He turned the tunic inside out and lay it across the other clothes on the chest. He took out a small phial. When he removed the stopper he held his breath. Though it would not kill even when inhaled directly, it could disable. He dripped the liquid all over the tunic. Then he re-stoppered the phial and secreted it in the folds of his cassock. Finally, careful not to touch the parts which had been infused with the poison, and still holding his breath, he turned the tunic right side out again. When the merchant dressed the poison would slowly affect him. He would grow weaker over several hours. A strong man might survive a whole day, if he did not exert himself, losing that strength which he had long taken for granted, impiously ignoring the necessity of He whose strength cannot be challenged. But no matter the victim’s strength, he would eventually succumb. All would pass to Death’s dark kingdom. Raoul returned to the servant’s cell before breathing again, and slipped into the shadows before the next guard passed. His timing had been perfect. This guard did not look into the servant’s cell.

  The merchant’s death would be seen as a terrible tragedy, and the debt case against him compassionately withdrawn. But his place in the city’s network of power would be empty, ready to be taken by the one who had procured the assassination, by praying at the temple of Death and providing a sufficient offering. The procurer of death might himself one day become a target of the Dark Brotherhood, if the gold and devotions of another were sufficient, or the politics of the cult required it. Even if he did not, however proud of his new power, he would, of necessity, one day be humbled before Death.

  Chapter 33: Alex: Thedra

  As each of the great gates of the city was a heavily garrisoned fortification, infested with hundreds of guards, it was not feasible for Alex to climb through the interior of South Gate. While you could trust most city guards to be corrupt, there was always going to be one honest fool to spoil the fun. There might have been secret passages in the walls, like the one in East Gate that the blacksmiths used, but it would have taken hours to find them, with no guarantee that any of the passages beyond went anywhere near where he wanted to reach. So he had climbed, an impossible feat from the look of it, but that had never stopped him before. It had taken hours to climb the wall of the gate’s southern tower, but finally he hauled himself over the edge. Sitting in the crenel, between tw
o merlons in the battlements, he massaged his shoulders and flexed his hands, then packed away his various climbing tools. He remembered the night he had last climbed above the carvers’ guild, on the roofs of Thedra Bridge. Just a whiff from that phial he had stolen from the necromancer’s tower had healed his aching muscles and sprained wrist. He wished he had that phial of magical tears with him now.

  Nearby, two men stood talking to one another at the foot of a strange spiral stairway. He had seen the stairway many times from a distance, but up close he could clearly see what he had always taken for some sort of optical illusion. The steps were suspended on the very air. Observing the two men closely, Alex had the strange sensation that it was merely one man speaking to a mirror image of himself. Around the man and his reflection was a nimbus of light, so that their features could be seen as clearly as in daylight. No doubt some kind of magic. He looked from one to the other and back again, trying to discern any difference between them. Both were lined with age, bent backed as if from too much pouring over books, of middling height, with luminous blue eyes and beak like nose. If there was any way to distinguish them it might lie in the disparate ways in which individual hairs in their bushy white eyebrows projected. Each had snow white hair above too, which grew in a ring about a bald crown, due to tonsuring not age. Their long white beards flowed down over large ruffs, floppy from not being properly starched before creasing, and in general their clothes were threadbare, but not patched, as if they had forgotten that such things were necessary. Clearly these were the twins Rob Smart had told him about, when they had talked in the gallery of the bear baiting pit. Having come up thief like Alex was not sure how best to approach them. He decided the best way would be simply to walk straight up to them. That would not startle them too much.

  “I suppose you’re Jared and you’re Javid,” he said nonchalantly as he sauntered over.

  They turned simultaneously, each away from the other, continuing the impression of mirror images, if a mirror image could be three dimensional.

  “Or is that Javid and Jared? Don’t bother to tell me. I won’t remember.”

  “I’m Javid,” said the one on Alex’s right, “and this…”

  “Is Jared,” said the one on Alex’s left, “and who…”

  “…are you? And how…”

  “…did you get up here?”

  “Um…who am I talking to?”

  “Jared.”

  “If you talk where you look, and if you don’t…”

  “Javid. But…”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Whose question was it?”

  “Ours…”

  “…I suppose.”

  “Ah, that makes it easier. I’m Alex.”

  “That’s not what we asked.”

  “We asked…”

  Alex raised his hand. “Yes, yes. What am I doing up here?”

  “That’s not what we asked.”

  “But it is what you want to know.”

  “We want to know everything.”

  His twin looked at him and nodded. “Yes. Everything.”

  “Ah, that I can’t help you with. But I can help you with details. I’m Alex. I’m…”

  “A thief.”

  Alex put on his most deeply injured expression, the one that had made rich ladies cry when he was a little boy and their husbands were accusing him of being a little fraud. The twins were unmoved though. Simultaneously they crossed their arms.

  “What do you take me for?” he asked with a tremulous voice.

  “I think it’s pretty clear we take you for a thief.”

  “How could you think such a thing? You don’t even know me.”

  “You didn’t come up the stairs,” said one, “or we would have seen you.”

  No, you would not, Alex thought, not unless I wanted you to. But it was no time for pride, it was time for soothing lies.

  “You didn’t come from across the walkway or the guards would have challenged you.”

  And as for guards, Alex thought, if there was ever a guard I couldn’t sneak past in Thedra he could be bribed. If they were in a tight stairwell the sneaking past an honest fool who did not have the sense to get ahead in life by accepting bribes might pose a problem, but problems are only an invitation to sneaky solutions, which was why he had climbed the tower wall. He was a problem solver.

  “So that means the walls, and that means if you’re not a labourer fixing the walls…”

  “…and you’re a bit small for a labourer…”

  “…then you must be a thief.”

  “Well, you’ve got me with logic.”

  The twins smiled smugly. Alex thought, but…but….

  “But,” he said, “if I’m a thief, why did I just walk up to you, instead of sneaking around and robbing you blind?”

  “He has a point.”

  “He does, but still…you did climb the walls.”

  “I won’t say I didn’t. It’s a lovely night for climbing and the mountains are too far away.”

  “So you’re a mountaineer?”

  “Look, we’re getting nowhere. I’m Alex, and I’ve come here because I was told that you two are as wise as the gods.” And as old as the hills and probably mad, or foolish, or whatever it was that Rob had said.

  The flattery worked quickly. “I wouldn’t say wise as the gods,” said one, smiling proudly, Alex thought it might be Jared, by observing the length of one protruding white hair of his left eyebrow, but could not be sure, “but we are the servants of learning.”

  “And in learning is knowledge, Jared, the treasure of the wise.”

  “Yes, Javid, and what could be more divine?”

  The mirror image nodded sagely at itself.

  Alex could think of several things – the glimmer of stolen gold, Rose’s caresses, a talking donkey – but he kept his thoughts to himself. At least he thought he could tell one from the other now, as long as they did not change places. “Could you tell me about this?” he said. He unstrapped the sheath and partly drew the sword.

  Jared examined the blade while Javid looked on. Jared took a large, flat, transparent gem out of his purse, shaped like a lens but with facets which seemed to shift when Alex looked at them, folding into and out of each other. Jared held the gem an inch above the blade and looked through it. He moved the gem along the blade, his face a study in concentration. Then he nodded.

  “Certainly a magical blade,” Jared said, looking up at Alex, “that much is clear. Look at this.”

  Alex looked through the gem. The facets shifted and he felt disoriented but could not drag his eyes away. As the facets shifted images started to appear in them, and as the images appeared they shifted with the facets, folding in and out of each other, forming and reforming, dissolving and coalescing. He saw a river flowing and two bull headed beings, their giant humanoid bodies towering above the currents, their horns locked, the water churned to foam about their massive thighs.

  “Do you see them?” Jared asked.

  Alex nodded dumbly, still staring at the image in the lens. “Yes.”

  “The runes are…”

  “Runes?”

  “You said you saw them.”

  “Them, huh?” As Alex looked the figures in the stream dissolved, the colour of their forms flowing beyond their outlines, which twisted together, and knotted then unravelled then knotted again. He understood that the outlines were runes, and they flowed along the blade, just as he had seen them do in the shrine of Fulkthra. But the runes pulsed to a rhythm, and he could feel the rhythm in his hands before he heard it in his head without the aid of his ears. It grew in intensity, like the thrumming of some mad minstrel on the sounding board of his lute. But this thrumming had meaning, not the emotional meaning of music, but the meaning of a language that was taking form in new ways in every moment. It coalesced into words, and he knew the voice. And the voice had power. What it spoke was. And its silence was the end of things.

  Alex tried to f
orm the words with his mouth, but they were not made for any human tongue. Only by contorting his vocal organs into unnatural shapes would he begin to express what he knew, but between the knowledge and the word the meaning dissolved, leaving nothing but ordinary human sounds, “It talks.” He was not sure whether he screamed or whispered or merely calmly spoke.

  “Talks?”

  “In my head.” He tried to shake off the impression, to drag his mind away from meanings beyond human comprehension, meanings that threatened to tear the very fabric of the world apart.

  “Or you talk to yourself and mistake madness for magic.”

  Alex felt a cold sweat roll down his brow, and panic overtook him. Can’t you see, he wanted to scream, don’t you hear? But all he said was, “You said yourself it’s magic.”

  “Yes, but…a talking sword. It’s unheard of…except. How did you come by this?”

  Then the vision and the voice faded, and he found the strength to drag his eyes away. He looked up into Jared’s eyes. The old man did not seem to have noticed his panic, and his brow was dry. He shook his head vigorously, blinking and flexing his jaw to chase away any residue of the hallucination. Jared observed him with a scholar monk’s curiosity. He waited patiently for Alex to answer. Alex explained as well as he could everything that had happened at the top of the necromancer’s tower, but left out all reference to thieving.

  “A woman like water, who vanished. Strange…very strange. Clearly an enchanted being. Or maybe an hallucination.”

  “I know what I saw,” Alex retorted angrily. But did I? he thought. He was no longer certain of his own senses. But he concealed his doubts behind affected nonchalance.