King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three

by Jenna Rhodes

  “That goes without saying; however, there are a few hundred of them . . .”

  “And each is as valuable as the next, as far as we know. Separate them or have each contaminate the other until none is left.”

  Azel scratched at his chin. “Nothing fancy as the sanctum now, but . . . yes, there are possibilities. I will have to set wards.”

  “One of your many Talents, as I recall, Master Librarian.”

  That garnered a small smile. “Yes. Not widely known but true. It will take me some time, however. And I will have to set a guard upon myself because one day those wards will have to be taken down and only I will know the undoing of them.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Such is power. It both makes and imprisons a man.”

  Bistane tilted his head to one side. “And a third thing, nearly forgotten.”

  “What?”

  “Have I time to nap a bit and sharpen my sword before I go after that skulker?”

  “I think you might. These deeds always seem best done after the sundown.”

  Bistane could see signs aplenty that the scholars were wary and some downright frightened. Doors had heavy bolts newly added to them. The main entry door now had a massive board that could be lowered across it, and as Bistane examined it, he could feel the tingle of a ward on it as well. They’d done everything they knew how to do but have a cleric come bless the place with sacred flame and cleansing water, but as the students were, for the most part, Vaelinars, they didn’t believe in the Gods of Kerith.

  He made the rounds outside, twice, knowing that night might draw it out, and not just the curtain of nightfall, but the depths of it when most souls were hidden deep in dreams. As it came to pass, the skulker was never found or dispatched. It, perhaps, with an uncanny intelligence, found out it was being hunted and fled. Or perhaps it was never quite what Azel and his students and timber men had made it out to be. There were some small signs of a presence. A scratched lock. A shutter hinge bent and easily loosened on a back window. Beds of twigs and leaves and grass in the woods that stank of something that made the dogs paw at their noses and growl. But nothing Bistane could face and skewer on the point of his sword. He left after a few days with two parcels in his saddlebags and Azel distracted with his current feat of re-housing his important library collection and coming up with the energy and will to ward each book separately. He looked even grayer when Bistane rode out.

  Verdayne took a deep breath as though just realizing he’d been holding it. He sat back and rolled his empty glass between his palms as his brother finished.

  “And so that brought me here.”

  “Did you run across sign of that thing, whatever it was?”

  “I’m not sure. In the wilderness, you can find subtle signs of death wherever you look. Animals prey upon each other and not always neatly. Whatever it was, it appeared to flee south. I didn’t follow. I’d been gone too long from home, and I had this—” He withdrew a small parcel, wrapped solidly in oilcloth, tied and sealed with wax. He dropped his heels from the desk so that he could lean forward and place the bundle on the top between himself and Dayne. “For you.” He topped off both glasses before settling back.

  “Me? Do I look like a Tolby Farbranch to you?”

  “No, but you look like the only one I can trust to deliver it to him.”

  Silence followed. Bistane put his glass down next to the book. “Father hired and trained a good many men to help him with his holdings, but he only had two sons. The lands will prosper for a time without us when there are things only one of us can do.”

  “You want me to go to Calcort.”

  “Now, more than ever. Not just to take the book to Farbranch but now also to see to Nutmeg.”

  “I’m not a swordsman! I won’t be much use as a bodyguard.”

  “Of course you are. You just don’t like to admit it because seeming not to be gives you an advantage.” Bistane eyed his brother shrewdly. “Admit it. You like being underestimated.”

  “I like not being a bloodthirsty warlord.”

  “Dayne.”

  Dayne felt a slight smile creep over his mouth, almost unbidden. “All right. I do like having a leg up. A fellow like me sometimes needs the odds on his side.” He swirled his drink before setting it down. “Why send me to Calcort?”

  “Because you’re my brother.”

  “That is not always a good thing among the Vaelinar.”

  Bistane leveled a look at him, smoldering, his lips thinning. Dayne shrugged. “You know what I mean, Bis.”

  “This is as much about Nutmeg as it is the decaying books.”

  “The books are Ways, or part of one. The library is paramount among our memories, and you want me to go because of a girl? An unwed Dweller girl flush with child?”

  “Not just any girl. Father thought a lot of her.”

  “Yes, as I recall, he called meeting her a ‘feisty breath of fresh air.’ She wasn’t so impressed by him that she forgot how to speak. He thought that her friendship with Lariel ensured that our Warrior Queen would stay in touch with the more common peoples. Not that I think she needs to be reminded. She keeps her pact with the sacred river well and honestly, and with the people who depend upon that river all the way to the sea. I’ve always wondered why she is called a Warrior Queen when she’s more of a mother on guard.”

  Bistane raised an eyebrow, and Verdayne flushed slightly in response. He turned away for a moment. “Not that she gives off a maternal air in any way. To me. Or you.”

  He cleared his throat with a noise that indicated it had suddenly become rather tight.

  Bistane took a deep breath, then another. He looked away, across the study, at the artifacts of his father’s life. “The books are, of course, paramount.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “Ways are changing. Snapping back into that from which they originally came or warping into something unknowable. We twisted the threads of creation and now those threads are being knotted or slashed undone altogether. I need you at Calcort with Tolby Farbranch and his daughter. Will you do as I ask?”

  “Never a doubt.”

  “Accordingly, I also ask you to watch out for Nutmeg. Tell her a bit of your life. What you’ve been through. It can only help the child later.”

  “I’ve not had such a rough life here.”

  Bistane met his brother’s eyes evenly. “Nor has it been as welcoming as it could have been, from myself and others.”

  That brought a flush to Verdayne’s cheeks, bringing the Dweller looks out in him even more. “You’ve been a good enough brother!”

  “I could have been better.”

  “You were insulted at first.”

  Bistane nodded. “I was. That our father should have needed another son! I realized later that it was family and love he needed, and you and yours provided.”

  “I thought you told him he should have gotten another dog.”

  “No, I told him that I was going to treat you like a puppy.” Bistane grinned suddenly. “And I did, rather! You were a round, rollicking child.”

  “And sturdy. Don’t forget sturdy.”

  “You needed to be.”

  “Anyone who touched me had to fear being beat down by you. Or old Magdan.” Verdayne leaned back in his chair, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You taught me what it was to be Vaelinar. He taught me what it meant to be Dweller.”

  “And Dad?”

  “He taught me everything. But you don’t always believe your parent, do you? It took the two of you to convince me. You can depend upon me.”

  “Good. I leave for Larandaril tomorrow morning.”

  “Then you can bid me good-bye at first light.”

  “Done.”

  “And, hopefully,” Verdayne added, picking up his glass again, “Done well.”

  Abayan Diort

  TO THE EAST, and to the so
uth, were the lands that the Wars of the Mageborn ruined and left to pool with magic gone corrupt, a fractured boundary between the provinces of the First Home and the far-flung nomadic holdings of the Galdarkans. An encampment lay there, pitched in the desert.

  A soft wind rose off the oasis, shivering the many tents grouped about it, and moving particularly the one great canopy. It lifted the words being spoken softly, as a wave might crest under a ship or a sporting dolphin, and carried them to a listener.

  “A Vaelinar comes to your house.”

  Abayan Diort shifted in his leather-slung chair at the words, the beginning of night breezes rippling the canopy of his tent overhead, the noise like the sails of a ship upon a great and restless sea. He responded. “Like Death, a Vaelinar is as inevitable and unwanted in my house.” He pushed his boot out and toed a line of colored sand at his feet, not moving a grain. He studied the Galdarkan woman, one of his own, as she knelt among the colored sands. “One doesn’t have to be a prophet to utter that.”

  She flinched, her cupped hand scattering sand haphazardly over her design. She looked down at it in dismay. “I can’t—I cannot—”

  “I know,” he acknowledged, not unkindly. “You cannot tell me how to rule, and what kind of man would I be if I asked you to, and if I took your readings as such? I would no longer deserve the regard I’ve earned. As for you. Tell me truly, can you read?”

  The oracle rocked back to settle on her heels. After a very long moment, and a sigh, she shook her head. “Not this. Not now.”

  “Will you be able to read again?” He had heard many things from her before and knew that, as sometimes they all did, her well had gone dry. It happened. She feared him for it, but she shouldn’t. He couldn’t blame her.

  She lifted her face up to meet his gaze, before dropping to look down at the colored sands. “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  He stood, and bent to take her hands in his. They were trembling. “Don’t worry. You will be honored for your service. And your honesty.” He walked out of his tent then, to go stand in the wind, leaving her to clean up and cry in solitude.

  A Vaelinar comes to your house. Would that one would, one particular Vaelinar, a proud and beautiful woman, a Warrior Queen as he was a warlord. He favored her, with her cascade of gold-and-silver hair and her eyes of bright blue studded with gold stars and streaks in the remarkable way of the elven, the Vaelinarran eyes. Abayan put his head back and gazed at the bright multitude of stars overhead. As above, so below. A field of races walked under them. The beastlike Bolgers, the invader Vaelinars, the majority of Kernans, the short and sturdy Dwellers, and his own, the golden-skinned Galdarkans. Each had their strengths and shortcomings. There were Kernan who claimed they could read the future in the fields of lights which shone down upon their lands of Kerith, but he laid little stock in them. If you could not read the future in your own self, how could you perceive it in the firmament of something as distant and untouchable as a star? He knew, as his own prophet did, that the spreading and reading of colored sands was only a focus for that which she brought forth from within herself. And he did not judge her harshly for not being able to prophesy at the drop of a grain of dirt. No one could, nor be expected to. No matter how he wished his indecisions and worries could be prophesied away.

  He could not rely on battles to gain the destiny he wanted, but . . . Abayan tightened his jaw. The destiny he had begun upon, solid in his choices, had started to twist in his mind. He could not place the blame on any one circumstance, nor even upon a solid event. He had set out to unite his nomadic people, to give them union with one another and present a front to those of the First Home, the Kernan and Vaelinar who ruled the western lands. The years of a Galdarkan empire lying fallow had been long enough. They had atoned for the brutal indifference of the Mageborn and Mage Kings who had ruled in the east before destroying themselves, leaving only their servant guardians the Galdarkan behind in their dust and ruins. Centuries after, he had been born, and he had looked into their past and present and decided on what kind of future he wished his people to gain. Had they agreed with him? Not all. Most but not all. And it was his bringing those who disagreed with him to their knees before they would join him that had angered Queen Lariel of the Vaelinars. She alone held the true power to withstand him.

  And had.

  Yet he thought she understood him.

  Dare he still hope that she might come to want to ally with him, to wed their ambitions and their peoples? After meeting her in battle and then standing with her in war, he had thought perhaps there still lay a chance . . . but she had not asked to speak with him in weeks, other than to discuss the logistics of keeping a standing force in place against that time when their mutual enemy would return. For what did she wait? Did she wish him to speak first?

  Abayan’s throat dried as it never did when contemplating a maneuver. It was not that courting Lariel Anderieon was not formidable, it was. But what stayed him now was that she had not become his obsession. Her alliance and love his goal. Her being with him the only right answer among all the other answers in his world.

  That stayed his hand.

  He did not know what he wanted. He did not know the best way to go forward or retreat. He had lost his bearing.

  Why?

  He knew that he was desirable. A scroll from Tressandre ild Fallyn lay upon the small side table in his tent. Her words had prompted his call for his oracle and yet, the failure of his servant did not perturb him overly. The ild Fallyns were a hard, ambitious people even among the hard and ambitious Vaelinars. He’d seen them glory in the blood of the battlefield and he knew from the glittering of their eyes and the flash of their weapons that it did not truly matter whose blood showered them from head to foot. Any blood would do. Any blood would give an ild Fallyn both the power and pleasure desired. He had no doubt that Tressandre walked in beauty . . . and cruelty. Did he wish to take a woman of that ilk to his people and his bed?

  His oracle left the tent and began to move past him, and then she hesitated. Abayan took his attention and thoughts from the stars to look to her. “Yes?”

  She swallowed tightly. Afraid, he knew. Afraid of him and her failure.

  “It’s all right.”

  She shifted her slight weight. “As . . . not as an oracle, but as a woman of your clan and a . . . a friend . . .” Her voice thinned away entirely.

  “Go on.”

  She gathered her nerve. A familiar sight, he’d seen it in his soldiers again and again. He did not speak, but he watched her and let his mouth soften in encouragement. “I’m listening.”

  “I feel you’ve lost your way. You don’t falter, but you’ve many thoughts.” She tried to clear a rasp from her throat and failed. “You’ve made yourself a king of us, but . . . but you were made to be a guardian. Is it one and the same, or do you fight yourself? Warlord. Diort.” And she bowed her head, unable to say more.

  He waited a long moment to allow her to continue if she could, but she did not try. He put his hand on her shoulder briefly. “Thank you. I shall consider that.”

  The oracle spun away from him, and disappeared into the night among the tents, her slim figure there one moment and gone the next as Abayan watched.

  A wisdom, then, which he had sought; the barest of crumbs, and yet there it was.

  He was Galdarkan. By their very nature, they were guardians. The right hands of the rightful rulers of the eastern lands, yet . . . there were no more kings to vouchsafe. The Mageborn rulers had killed one another, and the Gods themselves had killed off their remaining bloodlines, however faint they might be. That very same past had scattered his people, made them nomads with little more than clan allegiances until, for their own survival, he decided to knit them back together. Now that he had done so, he felt . . . Abayan clenched his fist. He had denied the feeling but now it flooded him, unwelcome, dark, and terrible. Now that he had stitched a nat
ion together, he wanted to hand it over to . . . someone.

  Someone the Gods decreed could no longer exist.

  His bloodline had been created to hand his people to a Mageborn, and then stand at his right hand, protecting as he had been created to do. He could not do it. He should not. But if he did. If he did, would it be Queen Lariel Anderieon or Tressandre ild Fallyn in the place of the impossible since no Mageborn existed?

  Abayan stood, his teeth clenched until the sinews of his neck ached, overwhelmed by his failure.

  AWAY FROM THE FOREST and field lands of the north, standing near the cove which held the bridged city of Hawthorne, Bregan staggered into the front yards of his home, his legs weary and his mind fogged. The horse which had brought him home trailed along listlessly after he slipped off its bridle and saddle and dropped them on the ground carelessly. He was a dead man. A dead man. He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. He could barely remember what possessed him, what drove him to treachery except that the Gods of Kerith had leaned low from the heavens to speak to him, and he’d had no choice.

  None.

  Be that as it may, he highly doubted that they would give him much more of a bargain than that. There would be no heavenly intervention when Sevryn caught up with him. And Sevryn would, for he had survived Bregan’s treachery. It was only a matter of time.

  He made it into the villa and yelled for a bottle. He did not intend to be sober when Sevryn kicked down his door. And the man would. Bregan had turned him over to the enemy, but he had survived, and he would come hunting.

  SEVRYN LEANED THROUGH the doorway. “It’s time to say your farewells.”

  “I know.” Rivergrace tossed her head, a mannerism she seldom used unless she’d been around Nutmeg. It was her sister’s familiar gesture, like that of a mountain pony, a showing of reluctance and sometimes, downright mulish, defiance. “I wish I could stay until after the baby is born. She needs me. Mother does, too. I need to be here.”

  “As if we’d have any way of knowing when that might be.”