King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three

by Jenna Rhodes

  “I’m thinking of a story Lily told us once of a man who brought her a cloth, a weave unlike any other. Nightweave, she called it. He left her a number of coins to tailor a hooded cloak for him—”

  “I remember. She kept the remnants.”

  “Aye.” Rivergrace moved from her position behind his shoulder to sit next to him. “She thinks it was Daravan who commissioned the cloak. She never knew for certain. And if it was, and if he had such a garment with such powers, then a river of darkness could indeed flow against the pattern of falling light.”

  “Well, then.” Carefully, Sevryn put the shiv away in his wrist sheath. “We have two votes for Daravan.”

  “The Raymy cannot be far behind.”

  “If he can control it, he will use their return to destroy us. He endeavored to do it in the past, and I doubt he’s given up his goals.”

  “For Trevilara.”

  The corner of Sevryn’s mouth twitched. “She must,” he said, in slow deliberation, “be a hell of a woman, like you.”

  Rivergrace slapped the back of his hand lightly. “I don’t know if I’ve been complimented or reviled!”

  “Come close, and I’ll tell you.” He turned his head to blow the candle out, reaching for her as he fell back onto the bed. His hands traced messages of love and longing over her skin.

  ON THE COAST OF THE COUNTRY, Tranta Istlanthir paused, hanging halfway between the sky and the ocean, the wind tugging at his gear as it strained to pull him free. Rough waves far below him futilely sent fingers of spray after him, thinning to a salty damp mist before they fell back into the sea in a foam of white and green. He set his hands to his ropes again, balanced on his feet to check the setting of his spikes, and looked up to the cliff’s edge which loomed perhaps three body lengths above him. Nearly there.

  The ild Fallyn had sent one of their best levitators to assist in building a footbridge across the chasm on the land side of the cliff, from the rough hills which held the now deserted Istlanthir and Drebukar guard barracks. Work on the bridge progressed rapidly, but he did not wish to wait. He climbed, as he had always climbed, and his father before him had, to the cradle which held the Jewel of Tomarq. It was a kind of sacrifice to the gem which had caught the fire of sun and magic to aim her wrath upon trespassers of the bay and coast. Did she know of the sacrifice? Had she sensed his brother’s death leap to protect her before she herself was shattered? She was only a stone, but he had always thought of her as more, for she had been made a Way and that, in itself, made her unique. The wind twisted him upon his gear and he took a deep, stabbing breath. He had fallen from her heights once. He had caught himself upon the same capricious wind and broken the fall, saving his life but laming himself and losing the memory of it for days. If he had but remembered in time, he would have known that a spy had been observing her weaknesses up close, and he had met with her potential attacker who had driven him off the cliff. He would have deduced that that enemy would return until he had accomplished his goal in destroying her entirely. Instead, it was his brother who had met the return and failed. But it was not his brother’s fault. No. Tranta owned that himself, even if it would not bring his brother back.

  Tranta wiped his face dry with the back of his hand and set to finishing the climb. It proved farther than three lengths, but it mattered little, for when he topped the edge and pulled himself onto the summit, it was done.

  No one else had ever stood in the shattered remains of the Jewel. He’d set a barrier for the bridge workers which no one could cross. He did not wish the ruins to be disturbed or picked over by those who thought her relics might make a pretty ring or bauble. True to her majesty, the Jewel of Tomarq had not broken into dust, but into shards as big as his fist and bigger, into splinters that would rival a throwing dagger, into rocks the size of a man’s head. He dropped his gear on the ground and sat to remove the harness of spikes from his boots. The sun had risen while he climbed, and it was still bitter cold on the cliff as he squatted in the ruins and looked at the failure of his House.

  It was said that when the Drebukar miners unearthed the gem, she came free willingly from the dark under the mountain’s vein, already near polished and whole although she would be faceted later and when the mine’s patron, the head of the House of Istlanthir laid his hands on her, she asked to be set forever in the sun. It was also said that the heads of both Houses dreamed of her destiny and that they worked together to forge the Way that would make her the Jewel, the Shield, of Tomarq. It was the first and only time two Houses made a Way between them.

  Tranta did not doubt it. The gem had always held a majesty and an affinity for the sun’s fire, her judgment and justice an apocalyptic spear which burned to ashes whatever it struck. Lariel had told him to give up. To gather the remnants together and bring them to Larandaril until they could decide how best to dispose of them, while House Drebukar reopened the mines of Tomarq to search for her likeness. He did not think the mines would hold a twin to her might, and even if it did, the Way that was made into her depths could never be unmade and laid upon another. Ways did not survive their unmaking and, often, an insufficiently skilled Vaelinar did not survive the attempt to create a Way. It was, for a bloodline, a once-in-a-lifetime happening.

  He touched the gem nearest him. He could see from its shape that it belonged melded to the crooked splinter lying next to it. He mated them to one another upon the ground, moving through the bits and pieces, putting the puzzle back together as he had attempted once, twice, a dozen times before. She bit at his fingers and palms, some of her edges sharper than the finest made sword. His hands went raw and bloody before the sun had even begun to climb on the eastern horizon and workers began to arrive on the other side of the barrier. This here, which must go . . . no, not there, but there . . . And yet, it would not be enough. It had never been enough. He paused at the edge of the fire pit, its charcoal interior now cold and dead. He could not create enough heat to meld her edges back together. If he could bring the mouth of a volcano to her, perhaps . . . even then, it would only be a perhaps. Who knew what fires and pressures had created her in the first place? He was not a God.

  He ground his teeth in frustration, kneeling among the hundreds of other pieces he had not yet fit together, and looked at the travesty of his attempts. Blood from his torn hands dripped slowly and thinly upon the glittering bits. Sweat from his brow trickled down his face and jaw to fall upon the splinters. If it were enough to give his soul to make the Jewel whole, he would have given it. But it was not. Yet, even as he squatted and his blood dripped down, a heat reflected from his shattered puzzle and light dazzled over his hands with a faint sizzling sound, and the thousand tiny, jagged cuts healed. He sat down in shock.

  Tranta rubbed his hands. Usually she did not cut him. The fragments would turn in his fingers and hands so as not to harm him, but today he had been frustrated and she had responded in kind, twisted at his maddened touch upon her. Yet—and yet—she knew his touch on her and rose to protect him. Tranta examined his hands minutely. Not a scar. No pinkness or so much as tenderness. He twisted his hands back and forth in examination. The Jewel of Tomarq had healed him, but she was never a healer. Always a guardian. Had he discovered a new power within her depths? He needed to test it. Perhaps he was not meant to return her to her former glory because a new destiny awaited them both. Fatigue swept over him, and he put the heels of his hands to his eyes. With his brother gone, he was the only guardian the Jewel had left, and he feared he was failing her. Seeing things he did not really see. Hoping for a restoration that he could not possibly affect. He sighed.

  Spring clouds filled the sky, dimming the day. Someone shouted at him over the barrier, and Tranta went to answer the call, parting the ward with his body to see what the problem might be. The Kernan foreman with more than a few hints of Vaelinar in his blood, leaned on his stone-working pick, a knife-like smile parting his lips. “His lordship says we are ne
arly done. The anchor is set and set deep on this side. We’ve got nets below, three of ’em,” and he paused long enough to spit to one side, although Tranta could not be sure if it was an opinion of safety nets for the rope bridge or not. “When we hitch it up, it should hold. Even if typhoon winds hit. Though,” and he squinted through one plain brown eye, “I wouldn’t want to be on it then.”

  “Nor I. Sounds like good work from you and all your lads.”

  “Thanks for that. His Lordship might walk on air, but it’s we who bite the rock, and bite it deep.” He hefted his pick. Before joining his crew, who sat on break waiting for the ild Fallyn engineer, he surveyed his side of the cliff. His jaw worked a bit as if chewing the words up first. “I be sorry for the Jewel,” he offered, finally. “My brother is a fisherman, my father a short voyage trader. She guarded the harbor well for all of our lives. Our words of sorrow for the loss of your lordship.”

  Tranta dropped his chin. “I thank you for that.”

  The foreman nodded back and sauntered over to his crew. On the far side, Tranta could see the rest of the workers busy, and no sign of the ild Fallyn yet.

  Tranta traced the barrier with his sigil and passed through again. It parted reluctantly, with a shiver, and he knew that its force was weakening. He would have to decide, and soon, what to do with the remains of the fiery mistress who had dictated all of his life before she could be carted off and sullied by hands that would hold her only for wealth and greed.

  A ray dazzled his eye. Clouds thinned overhead and the rubble lit up, and he could hear a hum in his ears. The empty cradle turned in its stead at his elbow, but the noise did not come from the machine’s near silent workings. Tranta bent cautiously. He put his hand out. Warmth flooded his senses and vibration his hearing, and his nerves fired into vigilance. The hairs at his temples and back of his neck prickled. The gem nearest his palm nearly leaped into his grasp, burning, twisting in his hold.

  There, there, there.

  The stone fired in his hand, burning, glowing, and sending a beam striking outward. Not enough to destroy, no, but undeniably it pulsed in frantic warning.

  Tranta fumbled at his belt for his telescope as he strode to the seaward edge and knelt there, one hand full of the fiery eye and looked upon the waters. He swept the stretch once and then caught it, where the beam fell upon glittering waters, its red eye bobbing on the ocean’s tide.

  Intruder.

  He could see the helm of the boat cutting through the waters swiftly, and the lens brought into detail not the exact shape of the rowers, but enough of them to know they did not move like men.

  Tranta shot to his feet and bellowed, “Send a bird down to the port. On the leeward side of the cliff, near the cove of Keniel, intruders.”

  Excited shouts and cries followed his orders and in another breath, a bird took wing, followed by a second a long moment after as the work crew fumbled to send word. The first bird, undoubtedly, had escaped when they’d opened the cage to get the second. Someone had the presence of mind to yell, “Message away!” to confirm the obvious.

  Raymy. Scouts from the remnants of the original force, perhaps, lying off the coast and out of sight, venturing timidly into their waters to look for their army. Or perhaps not. Whoever or whatever sailed that boat did not bear a badge which gave them clearance to ply their trade upon these waters, the badge which allowed the Jewel of Tomarq to overlook them.

  Tranta’s hand trembled. He looked down at it, as the stone remained hot and heavy in his hand, pulsing with its wispy voice. Dare he call it that? Its voice thinned and then tailed off, as if knowing the alarm had been called and heard. Or had he heard anything but the wail of the wind over the cliff and across the cradle and through his hair? How could he have heard anything? It was his mind, only his mind, and the alarm he had called, had he condemned innocent men? He retrained his scope on the waters below, to the leeward side of the cliff where the boat cut the water closer and closer and he could no longer say with any surety if its occupants moved as men did or not. They had tarps up to cut off the sea spray and wore oil skin cloaks and floppy hats as further protection against the water, hunched over their oars as they rowed with quick and steady strokes. He dropped the orb, pain throbbing through his hand as if it had burned to his very core.

  It fell among its mates and rolled to a stop on the bruised and tender green grasses of the cliff top, shaded by the workings of the cradle. He folded one hand over the other gingerly in protection, but the heat fled as quickly as it had come, and his flesh seemed none the worse for it. How could he have felt such heat and not been seared by it?

  Tranta stared down. Shaded, no longer refracting the light of the sun, he expected to see the dazzle dim and then bleed out altogether, but the orb glowed steadily. Then, one by one, other orbs caught fire in the rubble. His head felt muzzy as the vibration picked up strength to thrum louder and stronger in warning. He stood among them as belief forced its way into his body and mind. The Jewel of Tomarq lived still. She served, even broken and shattered and unable to strike as she had been faceted to strike, but she sounded the alarm. He squatted again, to be closer to the glowing stones. Their color grew even more brilliant as he knelt over them, as his belief in them grew. The Way had been changed, malformed by the attack, but she had not been broken.

  Triumph surged through him. She had been made to be used, freed to face the sun in all its glory, and she wanted to be used still. He had only to find a new Way for her. He filled his pouch with a handful of the larger pieces, gems the size of his fist, experiments flooding his mind.

  The Kernan foreman cut short the moment he was savoring. “Istlanthir! Lord. A bird has come to the field post.”

  Warmth still flooded his mind. He blinked it away. “Back to roost?”

  “Nay, lordship, a new bird. Field owl, it looks like. Has th’ other birds all in a fright. No one dares go near it, so the master sent me for you.”

  That cleared his mind like a dash of cold seawater. “Field owl, you say?”

  “So the coop lad marked it. He’s a bit dim, that lad, but he knows his fowl.”

  “He should.” Tranta opened his barrier and stepped through again, the afternoon sun on the back of his neck. He tightened his hair in its brace, the ponytail snagging a few blue strands on his rough hands as he did so. He shook them off and watched them drift away like spiderwebs on the wind off the sea cliffs. The ild Fallyn engineer sat on a stump, charts and diagrams held down by rocks on a table in front of him, but lifted his gaze long enough to give Tranta a jerk of a nod as he passed.

  Tranta did not trust the man any further than he could throw him, but it was not politic to slight him any more than it would have been to refuse his help. Was that a bird feather drifting off the hem of the man’s short cloak as Tranta passed? And if it was . . . why?

  Before Tranta could think much more on it, the coop lad came pelting up the crest of the hill. He carried the field owl in both hands, unaware of the creature’s ability to rip him open with either beak or talon. He thrust the carrier at Tranta. “Sir! Sir!” Then he stood panting, too winded to say anything else.

  Tranta put his forearm out and spoke a soothing word, and the owl turned harvest moon eyes on him, blinking. “Fed him yet?”

  “Just a scrap, sir. Just a shred.”

  “See to it, then, soon as I get the tube off.” Tranta felt the owl settle on his arm and close its claws tight about him. Owls felt even lighter than most birds. It swiveled its head about to fix its gaze on his face. Tranta spoke a few more words, nonsense really, part of a sea chantey that had been in his head all day, and the owl settled, eyes half-closed. He rubbed the knuckle of his finger down its chest. It radiated heat just as the Jewel of Tomarq rubble had. He found the tube and untied it quickly. The owl dipped its beak down to rub the back of his hand as he did so, and found itself transferred briskly back to the coop lad’s arm. “
Go and feed him. Settle him in, but keep him isolated.”

  “No fear, sir! Lordship.” The lad took a deep breath. “The other birds are scared spitless of this one.”

  No doubt. The owl was probably a predator of their kind. He kept no vantane in his roost, but if he had, that proud war bird would have scared this field owl even as it terrified the others. Pecking order.

  Tranta found himself grinning at his thought, as he twisted the tube open and popped the tiny scroll out. His smile disappeared immediately.

  “What is it, Lord?”

  “Word from afar. I may be gone for several days. No one crosses that barricade, not even the Stronghold of ild Fallyn. To do so will mean death. Understand me?”

  The Kernan squinted his brown eyes as he looked back to Tranta’s warding, and he nodded, tightly. “No one, Lord.”

  Tranta thrust the note in his pocket and took the easy way down from the cliffs, whistling for a groom to bring up a horse.

  IN THE NORTHERN HILLS and forests of the lands known as First Home, a manor house sprawled at the edge of mighty aryn groves, with far-flung fields beyond them. They did not look like the holdings of a warlord, but they were, and now, the inheritance of a man who had lived long and well among the Vaelinar. Bistane Vantane felt the welcome weight of his family’s estate fold about him like a cloak as he rode in, dismounted from his weary horse, and turned his reins over to one of the waiting stable lads. “Rub him down well, Cathen. He deserves it, he brought me all the way from Ashenbrook.”

  He watched them move toward the open stalls in the back, the horse dampened with sweat and blowing lightly, but walking soundly. Then he turned away.

  “Welcome home, Lordship.”

  Bistane paused in the stable doorway. His leathers creaked faintly as he looked to see who called his name, and spotted his brother Verdayne standing half-shadowed.