Assassin's Apprentice

by S. R. Vaught; J. B. Redmond

  So much the worse for this pinioned son of a dirt-eater.

  Windblown’s essence slowly turned toward her, as if alerted by her displeasure.

  No time to debate or hesitate.

  Dari spread her essence and enveloped Windblown’s.

  His essence struggled, but mounted no real resistance against her abilities.

  Being so close to Windblown, so intimate, made her stomach roil. She kept her inner defenses high so his awareness could not mingle with hers in any real way—but still. Something was off about the man.

  He wasn’t to be trusted, or treated lightly.

  As Dari grimly dragged the Stone Brother’s awareness back through the Veil, she sensed levels of deception so deep that Windblown had to be deluding everyone, most importantly himself.

  As if it sensed her judgment, Windblown’s essence pushed hard against her. His body thrashed as he tried to wake, but Dari held him with increasing force until he exhausted his resources.

  His collapse felt both sweet and startling to her, as all sense of Windblown’s unpleasantness faded back into his sleeping body.

  Steadying herself, she drew back all of her energy but the bit she needed to urge him onward, into ever-deeper slumber.

  His breathing slowed. Then he opened his mouth and let out a loud snore.

  Dari sagged back against her rough pillow and drew the blanket over her arms to calm her shivers. Her chill was a natural consequence of expending so much energy on the other side of the Veil, but knowing that truth didn’t make it easier to tolerate. Her teeth chattered, and she had to force herself to perform rudimentary checks of her own body, from the rate of her heartbeat to the race of blood through her vessels. In time, she settled her breathing and warmed her arms and fingers, and brought the rhythm of her blood back to a slow, relaxed tempo.

  What she had done to the travelers in the shelter should last a few hours, at least. That was plenty of time for her to get away. She had no reason to fear manes and mockers like these pitiful beings. Let them cower here and lose the moonslight.

  Quietly, Dari stood and tested her limbs. She stretched a few times to be certain she was prepared for a climb down from the tree, then let her awareness return to the other side of the Veil, and walked quietly toward the door.

  The moment she touched the handle, she knew something was terribly wrong outside the shelter. She should have gone farther through the Veil for a better understanding, but her patience ran short. She could take any human in a struggle of minds, and most in a struggle with weapons. She could even take a full-blooded Fae, though there were none left, so far as anyone knew. So let them come, then. Whoever waited, let them fear her. She adjusted her essence on the other side of the Veil to create the image of a massive, snarling rock cat that would warn off any fool who might be looking, and she opened the door.

  Dark, starving energy struck her like huge fists, driving the air straight out of her body.

  Dari strangled with her shout of surprise and pain.

  The restless dead.

  Dozens of manes. Tens of dozens. They rattled and moaned and screamed, and the sound seemed to shake the foundations of the world.

  Dari’s mind whirled farther into the Veil, stretching out her sight and senses to touch the hundreds of wandering spirits. Newly killed, most of them. Burned. Cut with blades—no, run through. Some guardsmen. Most goodfolk, and from Dyn Brailing.

  Instantly, Dari lowered the temperature of her body so she would not be noticed by the hungry manes. She eased out the shelter door and closed it tight behind her to protect the living creatures inside and made her climb down the ladder to the ground, still searching through the spirits of the dead for answers.

  Words and images came to her slowly as she moved toward the ground.

  War…

  Betrayal …

  Houses burning. Farms razed to the ground. Dynast Guard turning on their own people.

  By the time she reached the ground, Dari knew the stunning truth.

  Lord Brailing had moved against his own. He was slaughtering his own people.

  Why? By the gods, what kind of ruler commits such an atrocity?

  In the madness of the mixing disasters, Fae lords and Fury kings had done such insane things, but now? Under the Code of Eyrie? She had no love for humans, especially those with Fae blood, no, of course not, but even she wouldn’t have wished this on so many living creatures. It was unthinkable. It was horrible.

  Just then, two active, pulsing bits of essence caught her attention, over by the barn—human. Human with strong traces of Fae heritage and strong legacies.

  Out in this sea of death?

  Dari turned away from the shelter’s tree. Manes brushed past her without distinguishing her from a rock or a plant.

  A boy was standing in front of the barn, ringed by a partial circle of tallow fire—fire that was dying away to nothing. He seemed to be guarding the fire circle’s opening. Inside the circle lay the unconscious body of a gray-robed man. Stormbreaker, the Stone Brother bearing the marks of a High Master, whose faint but steady essence suggested he was in a healing trance. And the boy, she remembered him from when she woke so briefly in the wagon. The boy with the old eyes, sapphire eyes she rarely saw except in her own people.

  What was he doing?

  But even as Dari asked the question, she saw. His blade flashed again and again as he dispatched mane after mane.

  And that amazingly bright essence…

  “Gods. The old strength is in him.”

  The sight of the boy’s powerful potential drove Dari into action. Her hatred and suspicions surrounding the Fae—none of that mattered, not in the face of a legacy of such worth. Whoever this boy was, he couldn’t be lost, at least until she found out where he came from, and how any Fae-human mix came to have such a formidable—and dangerous—set of mind-talents.

  She pushed her way toward him, using her own graal to dispatch each mane she touched with a shove and a blessing.

  Killed by the Brailing Guard.

  Killed by fire.

  Killed by panic.

  Killed by a fall… a blow to the head… Watchline… Watchline.

  Lord Brailing had marched against the families who made their homes on the edge of the civilized world, who worked the hardscrabble and, in older days, protected the rest of the dynast—the entire lower lands of Eyrie—from the rock cats and mockers from the sandy, wasted Outlands and manes slipping up from the mists of the Deadfall.

  Such senseless cruelty made her physically ill. The lord of a dynast, committing outright murder of his own people. To Dari, it was proof that most of what was left of Fae bloodlines should be left to rot in the cesspool of their own civilization.

  Yet there stood a boy more Fae than human, who could have fled to save himself, defending the life of a fallen man. A man he probably hated and wished dead.

  The boy never saw her coming toward the circle of tallow fire.

  His essence radiated brilliant sapphire, and his image on the other side of the Veil was his own normal body. Only people with the greatest of inner strength saw themselves as just what they were. And this boy knew he was small and exhausted and overmatched, yet he kept fighting, cutting one mane after another, sending them to dust, sending them onward to whatever afterlife Cayn, the great horned god, had planned for the sad lot of Fae-human mixes that now ruled most of Eyrie.

  His teeth chattered. His hands shook. He looked half-dead himself—he was half-dead, and yet he stabbed, and stabbed again, taking on all comers, no matter what frightening form the manes chose.

  The boy didn’t even seem to notice Dari when she took up a position beside him and used her hands to do what he needed silver blades to accomplish.

  She eased her mind toward his, to draw out his name. If she had his name, perhaps she could communicate with him, guide him, or at least pull him back from the other side of the Veil before he dropped dead from such an exertion. Just a brief contact, to get what sh
e could from thoughts that would probably be panicked and jumbled.

  Her thoughts made contact with his, and—

  I am Aron, son of Wolf Brailing of Brailing, and I will be Aron Brailing when I die.

  Agony tore through Dari’s mind as the boy shoved away her contact. Her eyes filled with tears as she pressed the sides of her head with both hands. The sound of his words rang through her being, so loud, so forceful that it drove her to her knees. She coughed, gasped for air. Her nose started to bleed, and she had to use all of her own considerable power to keep her bodily functions from shutting down completely.

  Her awareness flickered, and she lost control of her inner temperature. It was rising. She could feel it. And when it reached a level to attract the manes, they would drain her blood and her essence, and leave her a dead black husk on the ground.

  How foolish was she, to have risked herself for a part-Fae, to have ended her own life to save one obviously untrained boy who didn’t even know she was alive? Her thoughts rushed desperately toward her lost sister, toward Kate, wherever she might be, and Dari let her sorrow and anguish flow to her twin.

  I’m so sorry I failed you. Find your way home to the mists, please, please Kate. I love you. I love—

  Fabric brushed her arms. The shock of physical contact. Hands, shoving her backward.

  The boy.

  Aron.

  That was his name. She felt it in his rough, detached touch.

  He moved away from her, straight back to the opening of the circle of tallow fire, preventing any mane from entering.

  Aron had struck her down, but now he was defending her, just as he had defended the collapsed Stone Brother.

  The angry moans of the dead rose in frustration, and the fizzling, sizzling sounds of the tallow fire seemed pitifully small in comparison.

  Dari ground her teeth and forced her body to respond to her commands. She would pay for such brazen disregard of natural patterns later, but with a bit of will and luck, she might survive this horrid mistake.

  First, she calmed her internal systems, made sure blood and fluids moved as they should. She sank her awareness into the tissues of her nose, burning closed the small vessels the boy’s attack had opened. Then she lowered her internal temperature once more, below the threshold noticed by manes and wild animals.

  She tried to stand, but she was too dizzy from using her energy in such a blind rush. Cursing, she did the only thing that made sense, the only thing that might increase their odds of survival.

  She crawled through the opening in the tallow circle, toward the Stone Brother called Stormbreaker and found the frequency and rhythm of his healing trance, raised her hands—and hesitated.

  That bright silvery wisp of graal was undeniable. He had some of the Vagrat talent, but something else as well. A mixed legacy she could almost taste, but didn’t recognize. No doubt some leftover of an illegal cross-mixing. And no doubt lethal, given his trade. Unlike Aron, this part-Fae knew how to control his talents.

  When she joined with him in such a fashion, cooperative, lending her energy to his, the Stone Brother would know who and what she was. If he had a strong legacy, as she suspected he did, he would be able to remember this joining, and use the sense of it to locate her, if he had a mind to do so. If she made it out of this nightmare alive, if she made it home, he could find her. He could expose her people. All of Eyrie might learn that Furies stronger than the Sabor had survived the mixing disasters—and those wars might start again, so intense was Fae fear of anything with more powerful graal than they possessed.

  Perhaps she should just kill the Stone Brother.

  Either way, the boy Aron would be free to take shelter, if she could make him understand what had happened. Yes. Killing the Stone Brother would be the safest course for her people, and his death might help the boy as well.

  After all, Dari thought, falling back on childhood teachings, only a fool thinks it takes two to keep a secret.

  Aron gave a loud bellow, shifted his stance, and sliced through a mane who had nearly reached Dari. Its screech nearly made her ears bleed.

  Little time to spare. She needed to act. At nearly seventeen years of age, Dari had seen and done her share of killing. Such was survival in these treacherous times.

  She lowered her hands, braced herself, and touched the Stone Brother’s heart to still its beating.

  Stormbreaker’s lids fluttered open.

  Dari had seen them from a distance, those searching, almost glowing green orbs, but nothing prepared her for the jolt of meeting his gaze at close range.

  She saw lightning in those depths, and the raw force of thunder and rain and wind. She saw honesty and fear and anger, and worst of all, a touching openness, not unlike her missing twin’s guileless eyes.

  A boy with an ancient graal.

  A High Master of assassins with the unstained essence of a child.

  A dynast lord turning his Guard against his most loyal and simple charges.

  Into what madness have I fallen?

  Stormbreaker’s voice rang through the other side of the Veil as Dari slowed the normal rushing of his blood. Kill me if you must, but save the boy.

  Aron shouted again, as if in answer, and stabbed another mane. Dari glanced at the boy. His essence burned brightly, but his skin had taken on a frightful pallor.

  Aloud, Stormbreaker said, “Cha.”

  A term of respect, for the Fae ladies of a dynast.

  Dari cursed his gentle, pleading address. He probably took her for a Ross pigeon, some bastard child of the Fae line. Well, let him. Another few seconds, and he would be dead. This kidnapper. This enemy. This part-Fae killer, with his strange, dangerous graal and his robes full of knives and who knew what other weapons.

  “Save the boy,” he urged her once more, then closed his eyes with no attempt to fight her.

  Swearing with more force, Dari jerked her hands away before he died. His eyes. She saw them when she closed her own. His eyes and her sister’s eyes, and she could hear the kind way he called her Cha.

  A ploy. A manipulation.

  He was Fae, for the sake of all the heavens.

  But with her awareness on the other side of the Veil, she sensed no deception from Stormbreaker, who seemed to be the opposite of his traveling companion in the shelter.

  Beside Dari, Aron staggered, almost caught by a vicious mane in the shape of a rock cat. She shot out a hand, grabbed the mane, and dispatched it with her touch. Then she grabbed the Stone Brother’s head and poured her energy into his healing.

  His essence twined around hers, grateful, desperate, almost as hungry as the onrushing spirits of the dead. For a moment, she feared he had tricked her, that he would drain her until her heart stopped beating. Dari tried to pull away, but a storm surrounded her, held her—then suddenly let go of her.

  She came back to her senses staring into his eyes once more, only now he seemed suffused with energy. Lightning skittered across his skin and blazed in his eyes. From somewhere all too close, Dari heard the ominous rumble of thunder. She moved deeper into the other side of the Veil, and had to bite back a shout of surprise at the Stone Brother’s appearance.

  Cayn’s teeth. Is he made of weather?

  Dari had seen bastard graal before, but this—this was something entirely other. Her mind tried to add and subtract combinations of Fae and Fury genetics that might have created Stormbreaker’s mind-talents, but she couldn’t work the equation. Not now. She knew her deep shock reflected on her face—and she could tell from Stormbreaker’s stunned expression that he had sensed the truth about her as well.

  “Cha,” he murmured. Then, “Shape-shifter. Fury!” And, “By the gods. A Stregan—but with Ross legacy, too. How?”

  Dari could tell he wanted to ask more questions, hundreds of questions, but their situation became apparent to him. Instead of wasting time, he struggled to his feet, then helped her up as well. They turned to face the murderous sea of manes.

  Don’t touch
the boy, Dari warned. He’s dangerous.

  Spare him, Cha. He doesn’t understand his power. Stormbreaker spoke to her reverently, as she knew all Fae once did before Stregans were stripped of nobility and murdered in droves along with most of the other shape-shifters. He reached into his robes and withdrew two silver blades. The boy intends no evil.

  I know. Dari stepped past Aron without making contact. She and Stormbreaker advanced into the manes, scattering them, driving them back and dispatching them two at a time. Dari murmured blessings to each spirit. She heard Stormbreaker doing the same. A few would get past them, but the boy was still standing, still fighting. He could handle a few until he fell, and Dari felt certain she would sense the loss of such a powerful energy.

  Stormbreaker appeared to share her sentiments. Occasionally, he glanced back toward Aron, but kept moving forward, taking the battle to the manes.

  Minutes later, minutes that seemed as long as summer days, they had thinned the ranks. Stormbreaker whirled and sliced and cut. His body temperature hovered just below their awareness threshold, and Dari kept her temperature the same. She was so tired she could feel the fatigue in her eyes, her teeth, her fingers, but she sent each mane she touched onward, onward to Cayn’s cold welcome.

  At last, when no more manes rushed from the woods, when no more manes crowded around her or crossed her field of vision, she looked toward Stormbreaker, who was lowering his daggers.

  He gave her a respectful bow, which somehow did not seem sarcastic or condescending, coming from him.

  Together, they turned to Aron—who was standing beside the barn, surrounded by no less than five manes. He held out his dagger to cut into the smallest and closest, the image of a small girl who was holding up her arms as if she wanted him to lift her from the ground. His hand shook. Sobs tore out of his throat.