The Black Knife

by Christopher Nuttall

  He reached out with his hand and felt the warmth on the ring. Carefully, wishing that his father had bothered to give him a proper introduction to the spells he’d used to create the ring, he turned in a circle, feeling out when the ring was warmest. Hind seemed, strangely enough, to be higher up the mountain. Eric studied it in puzzlement, wondering if he’d gotten the order mixed up. How could she have climbed higher? He would have understood her tumbling down the mountainside, but upwards? He hesitated, on the brink of admitting that he had no idea which way to go and then turned. The ring was insisting that she was higher up the mountain, so that was where he would go.

  “I'm coming, Hind,” he promised, under his breath. He dug into one of the coat’s pockets and produced an energy bar that Branet had produced, under Hind’s tuition. Eric had never cared for magical stimulants, but there was no choice. He swallowed it bite by bite, barely noticing the horrific taste, and turned to head up the mountainside. “I’m coming...”

  He paused and looked back down the mountainside. There was no sign of the small army that had chased them into the mountains. There was no sign of a tiny broken child’s body. There was no sign of life at all, apart from the dragon. If it noticed that there were some humans in trouble, it gave no sign. Angrily, Eric lifted his hand and made a rude gesture to the monstrous beast.

  The dragon completely ignored him.

  ***

  If there was one lesson Todtsteltzer had learned after years of honing and expanding the odd magical gift that had been engineered into him, it was when to keep a low profile. His lightweight form had been protected by powerful wards and it had been easy to remain where he was, in contrast to the remainder of the army, which had either been crushed or thrown back down the mountainside. Todtsteltzer would have bet on the former himself – none of the sorcerers had looked like the type who knew when it was time to make a tactical retreat – but it hardly mattered to him. If the Prince and his wife were dead, well and good, yet if they were alive...Herod had ordered him personally to execute the pair of them and Todtsteltzer hated disappointing his master.

  He crawled up through the snow, cloaked by his gift, as Eric turned and started to make his way up the mountainside. Todtsteltzer had no idea where the Prince thought he was going, but he kept following, pausing only to glance into the hollow in the snow and confirm the deaths of the two strangers. He briefly considered trying to get into the hollow and trying to extract memories from their bodies, but if they were both dead it would be nothing more than a waste of time. The assassin turned and followed the Prince up the mountainside, noting how the Prince seemed to be a man obsessed with something that drove him on. Perhaps it was love after all, although Todtsteltzer had little experience with love. The woman who had born him had died giving birth to him and he hadn't met any woman who would lie with him without being paid. Herod had happily supplied an entire series of whores – he would lie with them and then sup on their memories – but it wasn’t the same.

  Idiot, he thought, as Eric continued on his lonely path. He didn't seem to have realised, but he was walking into terrible danger. A single noise could set off another avalanche and this time both of them could die. Todtsteltzer muttered a curse under his breath as the skies opened and unleashed a hail of snow onto them, making it harder to see the Prince as he kept moving. The young man had to be insane, Todtsteltzer decided. The smart thing to do would be to find shelter, or even huddle up, and then carry on the search once the snow stopped.

  And then the Prince slipped.

  Todtsteltzer froze, expecting the Prince’s undignified descent to bring down a wave of snow on their heads, but the gods clearly smiled upon the young fool. The Prince had slipped down past him and was now trying to scramble back up, despite the increasing snowfall. There would never be a better opportunity to act. Todtsteltzer smiled, drew his gift around him and stepped forward to meet the Prince.

  ***

  Eric bit down on the series of curses that wanted to come out of his mouth, cursing his own carelessness and the misstep that had sent him sliding back down the path. The snow was making it harder and harder to see for more than a metre ahead of him, yet he had no intention of giving up. His imagination suggested all kinds of possibilities; Hind could be bleeding out, or she could be a captive of a tribe of mountain yetis, or...there were just too many possibilities. Something moved up ahead of him and he looked up.

  For a moment, his heart leapt with joy. Hind was standing there, smiling down at him, as naked as she had been on the day they finally consummated their marriage. He stumbled towards her, desperate to take her in his arms and feel her lips on his, before a cold gust of wind struck him full in the face. Why was she naked? How could she be naked in such weather? He looked up again, examining the body, and realised that it wasn't right. Hind had had a birthmark in a delicate spot and the newcomer had none...and she wasn't wearing a ring. He brought Morningstar up as the...thing wearing Hind’s face moved towards him, bracing himself for the fight.

  “Beloved,” Hind’s voice said. Like the appearance, it wasn't completely perfect, although it was closer to the real Hind’s voice. Even so, Hind had never called him Beloved. “Why are you holding a sword and...”

  “Shut up,” Eric snarled. He lifted Morningstar, daring the newcomer to impale herself on the Great Sword. “You’re not my wife. Who are you?”

  The newcomer’s eyes went wide and then suddenly hardened, just before the illusion of Hind vanished like a soap bubble. What remained...was a strange man wrapped in a strange spell, one that made it very hard to look directly at him and pin him down. He came right at Eric, one hand holding a silver knife and Eric parried rapidly. The sliver blade sparked angrily as it struck the Great Sword, but it didn't break. It had to be a magical weapon and combined with the curious invisibility gift, it evened the odds.

  He stepped back, parrying another lunge at him. His old tutor had hammered – sometimes literally – tactics into his head, warning him that there was no such thing as a fair fight, or an ultimate weapon. He’d even had something to say on the subject of knives against swords; the swordsman had the far greater reach, but the knifeman could step into the swordsman’s reach and stab him, or even throw the knife from outside and kill the swordsman. A single successful lunge or throw would mean life and death for them.

  “You impersonated my wife,” he snapped, as he swung at the newcomer’s neck. “Do you know what the penalty is for impersonating a member of the Royal Family?”

  The newcomer laughed. It was an unnerving whispery sound, like hearing wind rushing through tall trees. It sounded almost as if many people, rather than just one, were laughing at him.

  “I am an assassin,” the newcomer breathed. “I have killed noblemen and commoners, priests and heretics, the good and the bad...and they all died. I will take of you what you are and leave you dead in the snow. You will die, but something of you will live on.”

  Eric had no idea what he meant, but it didn't sound good. Assassins were rare because they weren't natural or a curse of the gods – like lycanthropy – and had to be bred using magical intervention. A trained and skilled assassin could have walked right into a fortress and killed its Lord, with the guards convinced that they had seen nothing, or allowed the admittance of the Lord’s most trusted friend or ally. Rumour had it that the sorcerers who had created the first assassins had incorporated elements of the vampire curse along with more basic magical enhancements, merrily ignoring Imperial Edicts on creating new forms of life. If Herod had been planning for so long, it meant that his cause was bunk, an excuse to convince others to join him.

  “Give up,” Eric ordered, feeling Morningstar twisting in his hand. A moment later, the assassin leapt back, leaving Eric with a sinking feeling. Without the Great Sword in his hand, he would have been killed by now. The assassin was skilled at making people think he was somewhere else, while he moved in for the kill. “You’re not going to win this. Go back to your master and tell him that
I’m coming for him and his allies.”

  “I once was challenged to breech a fortress that had been warned of my coming,” the assassin informed him. It seemed to take an almost malicious glee in his dismay. “They had their men out on the ramparts, their sorcerers prepared spells and wards against me and their Lady, a wonderful woman, even lay with the Court Jester to confuse my senses. I walked through their protections, killed the Lord and lay with his wife, before I walked out and left them to realise what I had done.”

  Eric leapt back as the assassin lunched again and then went on the offensive, trying to drive the strange creature back. The assassin tried to sneak a blow in with his knife, but Eric was waiting for that. He lashed out with his hand and knocked the knife from the assassin’s hand, before kicking him in the groin and sending him to the ground. Just for a second, the assassin pulled an illusion around him and Eric saw Hind under him, before he lashed down with his sword. There was an unearthly cry of pain, rage and hatred, seconds before the assassin collapsed into dust.

  Eric saluted the remains of his foe with his sword and turned to leave, following the ring’s directions. Hind was out there and he was going to find her, no matter who – or what – stood in his way.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Awaken.”

  Hind heard the voice from a far distance, somehow echoing through her head. She kept her eyes closed as awareness returned to her body, trying to determine where she was…and where her companions were. Her head hurt, yet the pain was fading away to be replaced by a sense of contentment, a sense that healing was underway and she would recover from her injuries soon enough. She concentrated and recalled the wards collapsing and the snow bursting through…and then nothing. Somehow, someone had brought her from the snow into a warm room, yet she had no idea how.

  She opened her eyes. She was lying on a bed of furs, piled up on a bed that looked surprisingly like the one she’d had at home, back when she’d started to mature and become an adult. She looked around and discovered that she was in a cave, illuminated by a single glowing ball of light hanging from the ceiling, without any apparent means of escape. She sat up sharply, fur blankets falling off her, and discovered that she was naked. Someone had stripped her while she slept. Actually, she reminded herself, her clothes would have been soaked and it wasn't as if Eric hadn’t seen her body before, but it still left her feeling vulnerable. She reached out with her third eye and blinked in surprise. Wherever she was, it was crawling with magic, including spells that seemed to have no purpose other than to obscure her third eye. A quick check revealed that she hadn’t entered the healing trance naturally. Someone had pushed her into it and then kept the trance in place, leaving her helpless while they moved her to…where?

  “Eric,” she said, looking down at the ring on her finger. Her unknown assistants – or gaolers – hadn’t tried to remove it, or they had tried and failed. The ring was warm, yet there was no sign of her husband, or Bran and his family. She seemed to be completely alone. Hind concentrated and tried to pull a series of internal wards around herself – her original wards had been drained by the desperate attempt to ward off the attack, leaving her vulnerable to anyone with any magic – but it was hard to concentrate. The spells surrounding the cave seemed to keep her magic dampened down.

  The rocky wall seemed to shift and light shone in, revealing a young woman standing there. Hind blinked at her and then looked away, embarrassed. The young woman was yellow-skinned, with the slanted eyes of a native of Sind, but it wasn't that that caught Hind’s attention. She was as naked as Hind herself, without anything to cover her body. Hind found herself flushing as she pulled herself to her feet, wondering just where she was. She knew of a few settlements where everyone went completely naked all the time, but they rarely lasted very long…and the thought of one existing up in the mountains seemed absurd. She couldn’t have been taken very far from the mountains, could she?

  “Welcome to Harmonious Repose,” the girl said. If she was bothered by her nakedness, she didn’t show it. “I trust that you are feeling well?”

  Hind did a quick internal check. She was healing rapidly and her magic was slowly regenerating. That, at least, was a good sign. If she was a prisoner, they wouldn’t have allowed her magic to regenerate without making at least some attempt to drain it. The remains of the healing trance someone had forced on her – a breach of medical ethics, at least as they had been taught in the Academy – were fading away into non-existence.

  “I think so,” Hind said, finally. She didn’t recognise the girl’s accent at all, even though she spoke the Higher Speech fairly well. It suggested a background that included the nobility or the Academy, perhaps both. “Where exactly am I?”

  “You’re in Harmonious Repose,” the girl said, as if the answer was obvious. “I have been sent to bring you to the Three.”

  She spoke the word as if it should mean something, but it meant nothing to Hind, beyond the obvious. “I see,” Hind said. “What happened to my companions?”

  “The young girl still sleeps the sleep of healing,” the girl replied. Hind stared at her. She hadn’t mentioned anyone else. “Please will you come with me to see the Three?”

  Hind narrowed her eyes. “One question first,” she said. “Am I a prisoner?”

  The girl seemed to consider it for a moment. “The Three will decide what to do with you,” she said, finally. “It really isn’t my decision. Please come with me now.”

  She turned, exposing a rear that Hind knew some of her classmates would have used the strongest of cosmetic spells to develop for themselves, and marched out of the new door. There was nothing sensual in her walk, no awareness that she was showing off, just a desire to get an unpleasant duty out of the way as quickly as possible. Hind frowned, watching the interplay of muscles across the girl’s back, before she followed her out of the door. Her magic flickered within her as she wondered if she should try to fight, but she had a nasty suspicion that the spells surrounding the cave would be quite happy to deal with her if she tried to break out. She had been trained in both magical and mundane styles of fighting, yet she had been warned – several times – that only a fool would seek to confront an enemy force of unknown strength.

  The interior of the mountain – she decided that was where she was, at least until it was proven otherwise – was fascinating. It was an endless series of caves, populated only – it seemed – by naked women. Some looked up at her as she passed, studying her with frank curiosity, others merely scowled at her or ignored her entirely. A handful of women were definitely magicians, using magic to assist their fellows or conducting classes in magical theory and practice for the children, who were also all girls. Hind felt her blood run cold as she took in the scale of the operation. It wasn't unknown for magicians to pick up magical training outside the Academy – the lower-powered ones in particular – but there were supposed to be no organised magical schools. She was looking at something that she had a duty to report to the Grandmaster, which meant that, if they knew what she was, they could never let her go. A hedge witch or sorcerer who took on an apprentice could be safely ignored; an entire school of magic-users could not be left unmolested.

  Everywhere, there were signs of magic, now she knew to look for them. The caves and passageways seemed to have been blasted out with magic, magic so ancient that it had left a curious echo in the air. Many, perhaps all, of the women she saw had at least some magical potential, although it seemed that most of them had never progressed beyond mastering control or something along the same lines. Their nakedness made sense now too; there were some magical spells that, when carried out by women, demanded nakedness and a sense of oneness with the universe. They weren't used very often, if only because male magicians tended to look down their noses at them. Women were simply so much better at those spells than they were.

  “Tell me something,” she said, to her unnamed guide. “Do you have any men here at all?”

  “The Three will answer all y
our questions if they see fit to do so,” the guide replied, firmly. Hind swallowed several cutting remarks and concentrated on trying to memorise their route, even though it rapidly became impossible. There was so much magic in the caves that nothing, not even her sense of direction, could be relied upon. The caves might well be bigger on the inside than on the outside. Enough magic could warp the structure of local space-time permanently. “I suggest that you wait for them.”

  They climbed a flight of stairs and entered a long passageway leading down to a pair of heavy stone doors. The passageway was lined with statues of men; they were naked, but they had no sexual organs at all, even if they did have muscles on their muscles. Hind sensed the magic crawling over them and shuddered, wondering just what they represented. It was the first time she had seen anything remotely masculine in the caves and she couldn’t tell what it meant, if anything. Her lips twitched as her guide raised her hand and knocked on the stone doors. Perhaps the Three were the only men in the complex and all the women worked for them. She’d met sorcerers who had kept their female slaves permanently naked before.

  The doors slid open soundlessly, revealing a massive chamber dominated by a bubbling pool of water, set within the exact centre of the room. Three people sat within the water, smiling up at her; they were - much to her relief - all women. There was no sense of threat as the guide escorted her up to the pool and bowed low, indicating Hind with one hand.