The Assassin King

by Elizabeth Haydon

  Please.

  He had seen his father battle the demon that long ago he had taken on; that demon was as much his sire as his father had been, though one had created his body and the other his spirit.

  It was an ugly arrangement.

  And yet it had kept the man he loved, alone among all the people in the world, alive throughout time.

  And given him power beyond imagination.

  Together, we would be invincible, the voice whispered, light as air now in its last moments. I know so many corners of the world, so many secrets. Please, please—trust me. Shelter me.

  Had Faron been a man of flesh, and not of stone, he might have recognized the seduction in the voice. It was husky, even as the demon was slipping away into the ether, enticing in a way that spoke to the most primal urges in him, the longing for connection, for power.

  For identity beyond that of being Michael’s child and tool, and Talquist’s seer and toy.

  Slowly the titan nodded acceptance, answering the request with an inner surrender, knowing fully that the creature he was about to accept into the shell of his body would control him without a second thought.

  Yes, he assented. Come unto me.

  The glade suddenly became warmer, the air gaining heat and power at the same moment.

  For only the second time in known history, the act of voluntary surrender to one of the Unspoken was accomplished.

  The air in the glade sharpened to cracking as the lore of primordial earth blended with the demon’s dark fire and the ether that was extant in the blood of Faron’s Seren mother, all now fused within the statue of Living Stone.

  The demon shrieked joyfully within Faron’s ears as it recognized its own, the seed of tainted fire that had been bequeathed from his father. With your lore and mine together, we are truly godlike, it whispered, reveling in the solidity of stone flesh and the spark of ethereal magic. We alone have the power to find and take the Sleeping Child—and then the Vault will be opened.

  The voice dropped to an almost maternal croon.

  And all the world will burn beneath your feet—my child.

  The demon’s mutability, its innate power to change form and aspect, coursed through the titanic body, refining its features. The milky eyes that had at one time been out of place in the rough-hewn stone sharpened, became more lifelike and clear, growing lids that allowed him to blink and close them against the grit of dust. The hands stretched and extended, the rough edges resolving, the place in the palm from which the stone sword had been torn smoothed into the image of calloused skin. Each finger appeared to grow knuckles, each knuckle defined by a series of tiny grooves in the smooth earthen skin. The swirls of clay that had at one time suggested hair lengthened and became heavier, with each individual strand visible. The muscles of the shoulders, torso, genitals, and legs lengthened and striated until they appeared as human tissue, pulsing as if they were alive.

  Faron raised his head to the moon, basking in the light, reveling in the sensation of wind passing over the tiny earthen hairs in the smooth skin of his stone arms.

  A rasping gasp on the other side of the glen caught his attention.

  The titan turned to where the man he had struck had been flung. He was lying on his side, clutching his chest, his sinewy hand held shakily aloft in the breeze that rustled the newborn leaves on the trees and scrub bushes all around him.

  Behind him he could hear someone approaching.

  Someone comes, the demon’s voice cautioned. Kill the Dhracian, and let us be gone from here.

  Faron lunged across the glen.

  Rath lay still, struggling to breathe, feeling the hiss of air in the back of his throat from his punctured lung. He willed himself to keep from losing consciousness, softly canting into the wind a report to the Gaol of what he was witnessing, knowing that no more dire news had been sent in all the time of their upworld history.

  A favorable breeze caught the words and carried them aloft, into the sky, where they would circle the wide world, bearing their dread tidings to those who could hear them.

  The titan’s volcanic blue eyes came to rest on him. A light of malice entered them, causing them to gleam in the reflected light of the moon, the edges tinged with the red rim of blood that occasionally betrayed demonic possession.

  And then it was coming for him.

  Rath reached up with a shaking hand.

  For all that the currents of air had been confounding him since his arrival in the Wyrmlands, a beneficent wind was blowing through the glade, a strong, warm updraft with a heavier gust behind it. Thank you, he thought as the titan bore down upon him.

  Just as it arrived, Rath disappeared into the wind.

  The sound of cracking branches and pulsing waves of blue light flooded the small glen in the woods beneath the moon.

  Ashe froze. The dryness of the air was unmistakable, the thin charge that hung, like static energy, from every current of air. Great power had been expended here, power that was primordial, elemental. The wyrm within his blood could feel it, and shrank away at the intensity of it.

  And yet there was nothing to be seen, no scorched ground or trees, no violent upheaval or signs of destruction. The breeze blew gently through the glade, rustling the infant leaves that had just grown large enough to flutter on their stems in these early days of spring.

  Ashe slowed his steps. It seemed to him that this innocent setting had a taint to it, an odor of malice, of deadly intent, but then the whole world was beginning to taste that way to him.

  A prickling ran down his neck and over his skin; his dragon sense urged him forward, warning him of what he would find.

  Deeper in the glade the woman’s body was lying, curled as if she were sleeping.

  The Lord Cymrian exhaled dismally, then came to her side.

  “Portia,” he said brokenly. He crouched down and put his hand against her neck, but it was merely an attempt to deny what he already knew. There was no breath, no warmth, no heartbeat, no sign of life—in fact, all sense that life had ever resided within her was missing. Her skin was as cold as marble, her body frozen in the rictus of death.

  On her cheek a bloody tear had frozen.

  “M’lord—”

  “Stop, Owen. Spare me your consolation; I don’t deserve it. My family’s bane has always been its temper, its lack of control, and I am just the most recent one to stain our collective soul with the destruction of innocent life.” Ashe took off his cloak and gently laid it over her as if it were a blanket. “My father would find this ironic, I have no doubt. All the years I walked the world unseen, hidden from the eyes of men, with no power or authority of my own, I condemned him for the decisions he made, for the suffering he willingly visited upon others in the accomplishment of his goals, all of which were intended to serve the greater good. And now that I am the one who holds the responsibility for the Alliance in my hands, I have inaugurated the prosecution of what will no doubt be a grim and devastating war with the blood of an innocent peasant.”

  “Innocent peasants die in war all the time, m’lord,” said Gerald Owen flatly. “If you’ll forgive my impertinence, you’ve been in enough conflicts to know this, have fought in enough battles to be inured to it. You were the one who told us that what is to come will change us all. Did you think that you were above it happening to you?”

  Ashe just continued to watch the dead woman’s face as clouds passed before the moon, sending shadows across it.

  Gerald Owen bent to the ground. “Come, we must return to Highmeadow. I’ll carry the girl.”

  “No,” said Ashe. “I’ll do it.” He gathered the body in his arms and carried it back to the horses, keeping it before him in the saddle as they made their way home.

  Deep in his mind, mixed with the grief and guilt that was threatening to consume him, was the unmistakable and undeniable sensation of relief.

  46

  Palace of Jierna Tal

  The wild ringing of bells from the distant garrison, caught and
picked up by the carillon towers of Jierna Tal, dragged Talquist from his repose.

  The bells of the garrisons along the border had been ringing regularly day and night each changing of duty shift since the invasion, or to signal comings and goings of troops and divisions. Until now he had barely noticed them. But this pealing was different; there was an urgency, an insistency that rang with portent and caused dread in the Emperor Presumptive’s heart.

  Talquist rose from his thickly besilked bed and robed himself. Then he went to the balcony and looked out over the dark streets of Jierna’sid glowing in the lanternlight and the radiance of a hundred duty fires burning at the patrol centers. The smoke of the foundries belched into the night sky, on the other side of the city, hovering in the air like a thousand ghosts before the wind carried it into the desert.

  “Why are the bells ringing?” he demanded of one of the guards stationed there. “Go and discover this.” The soldier bowed and hurried away down the inner steps.

  He was back several agonizing minutes later.

  “The titan returns, m’lord,” he said.

  The emperor’s brows arched, then knit in consternation. He looked down over the balcony railing to the main street far below, where noise was beginning to issue forth the way it had not long ago, when Faron had first returned to the site of his animation, his birth upon the great weighing plate of the Scales. Then, it had been the noise of panic and terror, as the titanic statue had lumbered down the street, smashing oxcarts and destroying anything in its way, most especially any troops that tried to interdict it before it reached Jierna Tal.

  This time, however, the sounds were muted, confused, but orderly.

  The commanders had apparently ordered more light, for the signal fire braziers atop each street post roared suddenly aflame at the far end of the street, casting illuminated pools on the cobblestones below.

  The titan was, indeed, approaching, casting an enormous shadow that twisted against the buildings in the dark as it neared.

  The gait was somehow different. Unlike the lumbering statue that had violently lurched down the street, this time Faron’s stride was measured, even; he walked slowly, standing erect, with a control that Talquist had not seen before. Walking down the center of the thoroughfare, ignoring troops and carts, he approached Jierna Tal with a manner that in a being with less innate power and musculature would not even be seen as threatening.

  Talquist’s eyes narrowed. The merchant in his blood was suspicious; he had many times seen men with daggers behind their backs ambling as if they had not a care in the world, and so was always suspicious when situations that should be worrisome appeared innocuous. But the shadow of the titan continued to approach in the dark, leaping in the light of the fires, while the soldiers of the city garrisons stood in the gutters and muttered under their breath.

  When it finally reached the main gate in the wall surrounding the palace, the living statue stopped and raised its eyes to the balcony on which Talquist stood.

  The Emperor Presumptive held his breath.

  Then, with all the humility of a kitchen wench, its arms at its sides, the statue bowed.

  Talquist exhaled again. He signaled to the guard on the balcony of the library below his chambers.

  “Tell them to let him in directly,” he said.

  He turned away from the window, listening to the sounds of murmuring reduce to silence as the portcullis was lifted, the wood screaming, the chains clanking, then lowered again.

  Talquist willed himself to be calm as the minutes ticked by. He sat in his great walnut chair, one of the first things he had imported from Manosse when he first took over the Mercantile, and watched himself in the mirror at the end of the room.

  I look regal, he decided. And nervous.

  The heavy footsteps thudded against the stone of the inner staircase. Talquist swallowed.

  He clutched the arms of the chair as the resounding steps grew closer, forcing himself to breathe.

  Finally Faron appeared in the entranceway at the top of the stairs. He cast a glance at the guards on the balcony, then pointed down the stairs.

  The Emperor Presumptive considered their usefulness for a moment and, deciding that it was minimal, nodded.

  “Leave us,” he said.

  The guards complied rapidly.

  “I am glad to see you have returned,” he said smoothly, years of negotiating in tenuous situations aiding him in his attempt to sound calm. “I was worried that you had become lost, or misdirected, even captured.”

  The muscles of the stone titan’s face curled into what, in a living man, would have been a wry smile.

  Please, it said. The word dripped with irony.

  The emperor’s black brows shot up into his hairline. He stood quickly and looked more closely at the titan, noting the appearance of details that had not been present in the rough-hewn statue of the ancient soldier he had harvested to make it. Eyebrows, lids and lashes, articulated joints and opposable digits; the formerly primitive effigy of an anonymous indigenous warrior had evolved into a giant man, a soldier of titanic proportions, an animist god of a sort.

  And though its mouth did not move, it could speak.

  The voice it spoke with belied its appearance. Not the deep bass or thundering roar that might have served as a complement to its appearance, Faron’s voice was instead harsh and high-pitched, with a crackling edge to it. In that voice the echo of other voices could be heard, some low and soft, others shrieking, all brimming with a nascent and ominous power that made the skin on Talquist’s neck prickle in fear.

  “What—what is your intention now, then, Faron?” he asked. “When I heard that you had left the battle at Sepulvarta, I thought perhaps you had tired of leading the army.”

  I had.

  “Then why are you back?” Talquist set his teeth, knowing that there was nowhere to run.

  I wish to continue our association for now, the statue said in its harsh voice. But on my terms.

  Suddenly Talquist relaxed. He had been in the Mercantile long enough to recognize when a deal was about to be laid on the table that would be beneficial to both sides.

  “All right,” he said. “What are your terms?”.

  The statue’s eyes met his directly, sizing him up.

  I will lead your army. We will take the Middle Continent, even unto the northern reaches of the Teeth. The land will be yours—but I want a particular prize.

  “Certainly,” Talquist said quickly. “What sort of prize?”

  Like you, I seek a Child as well—a child that sleeps in the mountains. I want that child—and the scales. All of them.

  The emperor’s throat tightened.

  “I’ve—I’ve never denied you access to your scales, Faron,” he said quickly. “Or to mine.”

  The titan’s blue eyes gleamed more brightly.

  They will all be mine, Emperor. One way or the other.

  Talquist inhaled. The threat in the sharp voice was unmistakable.

  The thought of relinquishing the violet scale that had given him his throne, and his power, was a loss almost too painful to contemplate. Even the knowledge that the titan was offering to fulfill one of the crucial elements in his greatest plan was scarce comfort; the ancient piece of a dragon’s carapace had taken root in his soul, had appeared in his dreams almost every night from the moment he had found it in the sand and fog of the Skeleton Coast buried beneath the bones of ships of the Cymrian Third Fleet. He had spent a good deal of his life trying to discover what it was, and what it could do, apprenticing himself to ships’ captains and miners, merchants and priests. All that servitude was finally beginning to reap a benefit.

  But, he reminded himself, should he try to withhold it now, Faron would grind him into pulp where he stood.

  It seemed little enough to pay for getting everything he desired.

  The merchant met the titan’s eyes, then went to the secret chamber, returning a moment later with the scale swathed in its velvet wrapping. H
e walked directly to Faron and extended his hand.

  “Done,” he said.

  The titan smiled.

  In that moment Talquist thought he could hear the rumblings of the gears of the world turning.

  47

  Gurgus Peak

  “Consider this,” Rhapsody said as she unrolled a sheet of parchment on the worktable in front of Achmed, Grunthor, and Omet. “The lower-mid spectrum, the blue and green sections, Kurh-fa and Brige-sol, are more innocuous in their powers; they alter less of the reality of the world as it is. Part of this is because of the length of the waves of light, the song that they emit is the longest in duration. This is because so much of the blue spectrum is present in the reflection of the sky, which is why the Liringlas are so attuned to this lore, revering the sky as they do. Knowing the blue is key to the rest of the spectrum. So since their primary powers in the Lightcatcher are scrying and obscuration, perhaps these would be the safest to test first. The risks are not as great as some of the others, at least of the primary powers.”

  “Indeed,” said Achmed. “Though the secondary powers may be even more risky.”

  “I’m not in any way prepared to begin experimenting with the secondary or tertiary scales,” Rhapsody said seriously. “The consequences of misuse are far too great. But if you want to try and see if the blue spectrum will add further cover to the realm, and keep prying eyes even farther at bay than they are at the moment, I suppose I am ready to attempt it. It’s not without risk—nothing with this instrumentality is. But it’s the safest of the ones we have, a little like only leaving your hand unarmored upon entering the lion’s den instead of your head.”

  Bolg king.

  Achmed went rigid. The voice in his ear was light and strained.

  I am in the causeway. The wind went silent for a moment, then rustled in his ear again, this time the voice weaker. Come.