The Assassin King

by Elizabeth Haydon

  The regent emperor strode confidently into the water, wading slowly but purposefully out until the slime covered his boots halfway up the leg. Then he turned and gestured to Fhremus to follow him. The soldier complied, coming alongside Talquist when he finally stopped, gazing into the gloom ahead of him. The titan remained at the water’s edge, motionless.

  Talquist’s eyes were burning bright in the radiance of the cold lantern. He pointed into the darkness ahead.

  “There, Fhremus, see the answer the All-God has provided to our need for protection against those who would threaten our land.”

  He held the lantern aloft.

  Fhremus squinted to see past the light. Ahead of them in the muck lay the massive body of what appeared to be a serpent, a dragon or homed snake, perhaps; it was impossible to tell, as it had been largely devoured, consumed in thousands of tiny bites. As he stared harder, he could see that the carcass was comprised of what appeared to be striated stone, like the titan waiting on the bank behind them, its glassy eyes smooth except for the gouges that had been dug in them. A tail, missing large sections, coiled behind it, while broken remains of wings could be seen, stripped to the stone cartilage. The statue of the beast appeared to be sprouting grass or grain of some sort, like an earthen sculpture left in a field to go fallow.

  And all above and around it hovered screaming locusts, most the size of his hand or bigger, feeding avariciously on the grain, and on the carcass itself.

  But, unlike the nymphs and hoppers in the cistern swarm, they seemed to be actually flying.

  Talquist turned to the giant. “Faron, if you please, bring us one.”

  The titan looked down at the green ooze for a moment, then waded into the water. Fhremus involuntarily held his breath as the giant walked by him, causing a wake to rise up the sides of his boots in its passing. It continued, undeterred by the onslaught of swarming creatures until it came to the feeding ground, where it reached out with an almost sickening speed and grasped one of the insects. A sickening crack echoed through the cavern; Fhremus winced in spite of himself. Then the titan waded back to where the merchant emperor stood.

  “Put out your hand, Fhremus,” said Talquist softly.

  The commander inhaled, then complied.

  The giant stared down at him, its milky blue eyes gleaming in the light of the lantern. It dropped the locust into his hand, then returned to shore.

  “Look at it,” whispered Talquist, awe in his voice.

  Swallowing his disgust, Fhremus moved the locust’s body closer to the light. His eyes widened in surprise. Like the smaller insect that had impacted him on the rim of the cistern, this creature was sharp and angular, with razor-like mandibles and legs. But its appearance was very different from the smaller one; this creature had a serpentine tail, its wings were large and webbed, its eyes scored with vertical pupils, and its jaws more serpentine than insectoid.

  Almost draconic.

  “Have you ever been in Terreanfor?” Talquist asked, running a gloved finger almost tenderly over the broken body.

  “One time only, for the funeral of the empress and her son,” said Fhremus.

  “Then perhaps you have seen the marvelous statuary there. In the eternal darkness that shelters the Living Stone of the cathedral stands an entire menagerie of life-sized statues, trees as high as the towering ceiling beneath which graze antelope and tirabouri, gazelle, elephants and lions, all rendered in utter perfection—have you seen these?”

  “Yes, m’lord.”

  “They are a sight to behold, are they not, Fhremus? Perfect down to the last detail, with no feature overlooked. The sculptors that rendered them must have been artisans of incomparable skill, would you not say?”

  “Undoubtedly, m’lord,” Fhremus said, struggling to keep his voice patient and respectful.

  The Emperor Presumptive. “Undoubtedly, yes, Fhremus, because what you don’t understand is that the Earth itself carved those statues. Our forebears, the indigenous people of this land that were living here long before the accursed Cymrians came, with their inventions, their disease, and their wars, understood the role the Living Stone plays in immortality. They buried specimens of each beast, each flower, each tree, within the sacred ground of Terreanfor, and from that sacred ground earthen statues grew—with the exact properties and the beasts and plants entombed within it.” He caressed the insect’s wings. And soldiers, many of whom were giants, like the one I harvested to make Faron, he thought.

  Fhremus inhaled silently.

  “Those properties survived the creatures’ deaths in more than one way, Fhremus,” Talquist continued. “More than just becoming statues, those beasts retained what was unique about them; there is strength of gargantuan proportions in the elephants still, a swiftness and quickness of eye in the prey animals, even as they stand, frozen, forever. Even the flowers have retained a modicum of their scent—when they had bloomed and died millennia uncounted before. A form of true immortality, to be certain.”

  Fhremus maintained his silence, struggling to quell the questions in his mind. Chief among them was the extent of the emperor’s knowledge; Terreanfor, before it was recently sealed by an earthquake, had been closed to any but the priests of the manse in Jiema’sid, and only the highest ranking among them had gone inside to maintain the cathedral. How Talquist had become so aware of the place’s history and contents was unclear to him, but he quelled any suspicious thought by reminding himself, as he always did, that the All-God had chosen the emperor, and as a soldier it was his duty to support that emperor’s vision and carry out that emperor’s commands, lest his reluctance be seen as doubting the wisdom of the All-God.

  “This wyrm, at one time, was such a being, now a statue formed by Living Stone. In its lifetime, the beast had the same sensibilities, the same powers, as the rest of its species—including the ability of flight. These locusts have been feeding on grain that sprouted from the back of the wyrm—and thereby have absorbed some of its life, its properties, including that ability. They are little half-breeds, little mutant-spawn now—I call them iacxsis, as that is what I believe this lizard-wyrm was called—with their own voracious appetites and the power to travel long distances in the air. Touch it, Fhremus—take off your glove and feel its hide.” He chuckled at the shock on the soldier’s face as he complied. “Because they have been feeding on Living Stone, they are hard, even more armored than the sturdy carapace of their insect side or the scales of a wyrm would make them. And their shriek is a hundred times the sound of the fledgling swarm; music to my ears.”

  “Forgive me, but why is all this a benefit, m’lord?” Fhremus asked, the words all but exploding from him. “The presence of these creatures, in our land, portends disaster, does it not? The ones that are found in nature bring with them famine, pestilence, starvation, and death—why are you happy to see them in an even more formidable form?”

  Talquist chuckled. “You will be happy to see them such as well, Fhremus—when you see the adults. Come.”

  He waded back out of the slimy water, shook off his boots, and led the commander up another tunnel where the dankness of the air and the horrific hum began to dissipate. The stone titan followed, still making no sound.

  They finally came into light and air that smelled as if it might be near the mountain’s surface. At the end of this tunnel was a wide stone doorway, and Talquist stopped before it, almost unable to contain himself.

  “Do you remember some months back I asked you to lend me some of your slighter soldiers, recruits that had shown strength of lung and a tolerance of the high reaches of our mountains?”

  “Yes, m’lord. I hope they have been serving you well.”

  The regent emperor smiled broadly and stepped to the side of the doorway. “Have a look.”

  Steeling himself, Fhremus stepped into the doorway.

  At first the sight that greeted the imperial commander left him puzzled, unable to grasp what he was seeing. At the far end of the room was an opening, like the
mouth of a cave. The opening overlooked the vast chasm that scored the earth beside Jierna Tal, its far fissures and crags shadowy in the approach of night. Closer in was a series of animal pens, like those that might stable horses, numbering in the scores. Soldiers walked the aisles between the pens, conferring with each other, going in and out of the paddocks at will.

  He looked back to the opening above the chasm. His mouth dropped open as a shadow passed horizontally before it, then disappeared again into the dusk.

  “Dear All-God,” he murmured.

  “Dear Creator,” Talquist corrected patiently. “I understand it will take a while for you to adjust; do not worry. They train here, away from the eyes of the city, as the sun is going down. It’s best, at first, to keep this a secret, so that we maintain the element of surprise. Don’t you agree?”

  Fhremus watched a moment more, rapt, then turned to the Emperor Presumptive.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Talquist smiled broadly and led the commander farther up the tunnel back into his chambers.

  “So you understand what a boon this is for Sorbold in her fight against invasion?”

  “Yes, m’lord.”

  “I take it you approve, then, Fhremus, of the defensive steps I have taken to ensure our beloved nation’s survival against the aggression that is being mounted by the Alliance?”

  Fhremus thought for a moment. “It is not my place to approve or disapprove of your commands, m’lord,” he said seriously. “The Scales adjudged you to be the next emperor of our mother country; I am grateful that you saw the wisdom in keeping Sorbold a single empire, rather than dissolving it, as the counts wished to. I am a soldier, I do as my emperor commands.”

  “Whether or not you approve?” The question hovered in the air, thick as the mist.

  Fhremus inhaled deeply through the sodden linen scarf, pulled it from his face, then exhaled slowly.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Talquist’s eyes sparkled black in the thin light.

  “Excellent,” he said. “But on a serious note, Fhremus, it’s imperative that your men, and the families they left behind, understand the threat we all face. What is that saying you military men have about the initiative for going to war?”

  “The defender fights with the strength of ten conquerors.”

  “Yes,” Talquist said smoothly. “That’s it.”

  “They will understand, m’lord,” Fhremus said. “And they will fight to their last breath to ensure your dominion.”

  Talquist smiled broadly.

  “Another form of music to my ears. You may go, Fhremus, but return on the morrow; we have plans to make.”

  The soldier bowed unsteadily. “Yes, m’lord.” He bent over the regent emperor’s hand in salute, then left the room, his boot steps echoing down the corner stairway.

  When the sound died away, Talquist turned to the stone titan that had emerged from within his deeper chambers.

  “I believe he will do well, at least in the first wave, Faron,” he said idly. “Past that, we may have to make some changes. Do you agree?”

  The stone titan watched the Emperor Presumptive for a moment, then returned to the inner chamber and came back a moment later with an object in his giant hand.

  It was an oval scale, tattered finely at the edges and irregularly oblong, scored with many fine lines. In his hand it appeared gray with a slightly blue tinge, but when the light caught it a prism of color danced across its razor-thin surface. Carved into its convex side was the image of an eye, clear and unobstructed by clouds, as the image on the concave side was.

  The titan held the scale in his hand, gazing out of the balcony window. A moment later he turned to the Emperor Presumptive and nodded mutely.

  Talquist broke into a wide smile.

  “Good,” he said. “Very good.”

  He stood and watched as dusk faded to night, the stars twinkling bright in the vast sky overarching Jierna’sid.

  24

  Haguefort, Navarne

  Ashe had hoped that in the course of the preparations for war, in all of the noise and hubbub of getting ready for the arrival of the Council of Dukes, and the chaos that was ensuing as the household of Haguefort made ready to move a good piece of itself to the fortification at Highmeadow, he would be able to retain his sanity as long as possible. Distraction was good, he reasoned, and with any luck the aching absence he felt for his wife and child the moment they had left his sphere of influence, had stepped outside the comforting boundaries of his dragon sense, would be filled up by the clamor and infighting, the thousands of details and decisions to be made, and a host of other diversions that would keep the dragon in his blood busy.

  It had only taken a few moments, long enough for the sound of the horses’ hooves to die away into the night. Then within his consciousness he felt rather than heard a deep caterwaul, the keening of a beast that had had something stolen from its hoard. Even deeper within, he could feel the tearing of his soul, in the fairly recently mended place where it had been sewn back together again when he was reunited with Rhapsody.

  When the first night without her fell, Ashe took comfort in sitting before the fire that reminded him of his wife and looking back over the haze of time to a different world, a place where he had been happy. It was a time before the War, before the Cataclysm, even before the two Bolg who saw Rhapsody as belonging originally to them, and viewed him as an interloper by virtue of his marriage to her.

  When he closed his eyes, he could still see her as she had been then, on the night before her fourteenth birthday, dressed in a simple velvet gown, her breast adorned by a corsage of simple flowers her father had given her. She had been thin then and slight, with long straight hair that hung down her back like a silken wave. Ashe smiled, remembering his first sight of her, crouched behind a row of barrels in the dark outside the foreharvest dance, an event where the people of her human father’s farming community had held a marriage lottery, the traditional selection of marriage for the young people of their village.

  How he had come to be in that place he still did not know, even millennia later. He had been but fourteen himself, an awkward adolescent boy walking to town on a fine morning on the other side of Time, almost fifteen hundred years after Rhapsody’s birth. What had transpired was still unclear, the wind had been fresh, the morning birds had been in full song, the day had been beautiful. A day like any other day.

  And then, the world had shifted.

  Ashe could almost still recall the exact sensation of nausea and weakness that swept over him as he was plucked from the place he had been and deposited in the afternoon sun in a farmer’s pasture in the village of Merryfield, a simple farming town in the center of the Wide Meadows, in the eastern lands of the Island of Serendair. Raised in the presence of magic and beings with ancient powers, he had recovered his composure fairly quickly, and managed to discover approximately where he was in time, if not how he had come to be there.

  All of this had led him to the foreharvest dance, and to the side of the girl hiding in an alleyway, wistfully listening to the music as it played within the lighted grange hall, resisting every attempt to marry her off in the traditional ceremonies. He had fallen in love with her from the moment he’d seen her, not just because she was fair and because all the chemicals of his young body had begun to hum with life upon beholding her, but because there was something so ethical, so independent and intelligent in her resistance to being used as chattel that he could not help but respect her, even without having been introduced.

  Eventually he’d worked up his courage enough to tap her on the shoulder, to ask her to dance in the light reflecting from the hall, to walk with her to her family’s fields where the willow tree she had loved stood guard over a valley stream. Ashe closed his eyes more tightly, listening to the music of the water in his head. The extravagant capability of detail bequeathed to him by his dragon nature allowed him a heightened sense of memory; in many ways it was like reliving that night again
, feeling the coolness of the breeze, sensing the brightness of the stars, physically recalling the way her hair smelled like morning, the glow in her eyes that sparkled brighter as she talked about things that excited her, unrealistic dreams of escaping the marriage lottery and traveling the world, seeing the ocean that her grandfather had plied as a sailor, something that she longed for but never had done. And above all, he remembered the way she talked about her dreams, of stars falling from the sky into her hands, holding them fast until one day she could hold no longer, and instead they dropped through her open palms into the meadow stream, glimmering up at her, beyond her reach in the depths.

  He had resolved in that moment to fulfill those dreams for her, to marry her, with her excited consent, and to take her from the farmlands off to see the world. His reason for that was twofold. Whether or not he could ever get back his own time was of little interest to him; rather, he had determined that whatever force had brought him over the waves of time to be by her side had placed him in the time before the Cataclysm, just as the war that would tear the Island of Serendair asunder was beginning to erupt. If for no other reason, they had to go away in haste, lest his newly-found soulmate become nothing more than one more victim in two of history’s greatest tragedies.

  She had called him Sam, the common appellation by which unknown young men were addressed in her town. He had never been given the chance to tell her his real one; it was an endearment she still used. Her voice resounded clear in his memory.

  Sam?

  Yes?

  Do you think we might see the ocean? Someday, I mean.

  He had promised her they would, had promised to take her wherever she wished to go, but before they could put their plans in place he was torn back to his own time by whatever unseen hands had placed him there to begin with.