King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three

by Jenna Rhodes

  Bregan flung his hands in front of his face, gasping for breath. Heated air roared around him, and then all became still. Light bled through his protective fingers, brilliant and blinding, and he sat up, slowly, and squinted as he lowered his hands. Illumination swam before his vision as moisture dripped unbidden from his eyes. He scrubbed them dry and shook his head. Every lamp, sconce, and candle as far as he could see across the room and into the next room was lit, flames burning blue-white hot. He could feel their blazing heat. He turned his face from the sight and saw, where he had slapped his hand on the wall, an imprint. Rectangular in shape, it held a sigil across its face, a lilting symbol. Mouth and throat like cotton, Bregan attempted a swallow, but his tongue stayed glued to the roof of his mouth. He knew that sign. Knew it almost as well as he knew the gold stamp and seal of his trading house. Knew it better than the lines across the palms of his hands. Knew it to be a twin to the signs emblazoned on tiles placed on cavern walls on the Pathways of the Guardians. He held a fingertip over the imprint, hesitating. Some workman or craftsman had placed this here, right under his nose, and he had never noticed it.

  He’d built this house from the ground up when he knew that he could no longer live under his father’s roof and boot, just as his father had one day learned that he could not live under the rule of Bregan’s grandfather. That dispute had not turned out well, although the dynasty had passed successfully from one grand trader to another. Bregan had never held patricide as an option. He had simply had his bags packed and gotten out. He had made his own fortune by then, nothing as it was now, but his coffers had paid for the raising of this manor and the buying of his own string of caravans and more. Guards not only to secure his goods and businesses but his person. His father, after all, had already stained his hands once with familial blood. Bregan had never doubted that he could do it again.

  He traced the tile upon his wall. This, however, he would swear had not manifested from his father’s greed. This had come from who knew where and must surely have been here all along, and he’d simply never seen it.

  But the hairs rose on the back of his neck and told him differently. He had never noticed it because it hadn’t been there before. He placed his finger onto the imprint. A blue spark flew from his skin to the tile with a sizzle of heat, jumping as his heartbeat jumped, before the shock shivered away. And as the sensation and sound faded, he heard an echo at the back of his thoughts.

  Listen, O Mageborn.

  White heat curled at his back. That settled it. The drink had poisoned him, curdled his brain, tainted his blood, and corrupted his very soul. He could not afford to listen!

  Bregan took to his heels. He flew through the rooms and corridors, a shriek stuck in his throat and desperation in his shaking hands. He squelched out every candle and sconce he could reach before their heat set the timbers and walls on fire as if they were only so much dry kindling. Every room stood ablaze in light, light he’d been cursing for and, it seemed, his need had been answered. Now, in fear for his life and property, he fumbled to put it all out. In the last room, little more than a storage closet, he stood, trembling and out of breath, and put his shoulder to the wall. Lest he doubt it had been real, his fingers throbbed, singed and stained with the soot from wicks and his cuffs stained from the oil splashed from lamp basins and sconces as he’d snuffed them out. He stood in darkness again and closed his eyes.

  He had an enemy. An enemy that would use him and set him against Sevryn, and through Sevryn, against the Warrior Queen herself. And there was no way he could protect himself against this unknown enemy who could conjure up such power. Deceit and manipulation, he had used before and would again. He thought he had heard the voices of the Gods before. What made him think now was any different?

  What made him think it wasn’t?

  Because there were no more Mageborn. Had not been for centuries untold. The Gods themselves had put a plague upon them, scourging them from the face of Kerith for their transgressions, and the people had died, leaving no root or seed behind them. The death toll had been devastating and final. No one with even a jot, a token drop, of Mageborn blood lived. Not one. If he thought he listened to Mageborn and they taunted him, he would be a dead man. The Gods themselves would put him down, like a diseased and broken animal.

  Someone had set a trap for him. Someone who coveted his position and his assets and, likely, his life. There could be no other explanation. Except there was one . . . Bregan scrubbed his hand over his chin, found both trembling, and stopped.

  The Gods, if he did hear Gods, had a most twisted sense of humor if they thought to label him one of the destroyed people. Did they now tell him that he, too, was marked? Not likely. The Gods would not bend to talk to the likes of him. He returned to the scenario of his ruin being plotted. A great possibility was that one of the Vaelinar tormented him, although he had never heard of talents among the elven people to be like those of the Mageborn. Still, it was the invaders who held powers over earth, air, fire, and water alike. He would need the skills of a trader guild apprentice to count all his enemies among the Vaelinar. He would have no allies if the Vaelinars had declared him anathema. No one, not even his father, would stand by his side. The invaders had proven themselves too strong, century after century, and he knew his own actions lay suspect because of the Raymy. He was doomed. No one would stand by his side, no one would come to tell him if what happened was real or imagined, magic or insanity. Bregan dabbed at his eyes, now watering from the smoke, and moved out of the storage area. Two lone lamps burned downstairs and he went to them, drawn like a moth to dancing flames. He stood there without a coherent thought in his head for so long that the only thing holding him still on his feet was the clever golden brace of elven make. His hand dropped to the top of it, mid-thigh, and he drummed it for a moment mindlessly before the touch of it woke him to his actions. He turned and slapped the imprint again. At his action, and his thought of darkness, the two remaining lamps sputtered out.

  Light blossomed when he placed his palm upon the wall again. Not blindingly, but the room he stood in illuminated itself as if he himself had put a spark to every wick. White heat invaded his thoughts, blindingly, and he closed his eyes against the onslaught, shuttering it away. It went, reluctantly. His hand began to shake uncontrollably, and he snatched it from the imprint and hugged his arms to himself. Strength bled away from him as surely as darkness had bled from the room. Back to the wall, he slowly slid down it until he crouched upon the floor, enveloped in a power for which he had no word and no control and which, he could feel in his bones, would be the death of him. He had nowhere he could go and no one he could trust with whatever shreds of a mind he had left.

  Alcohol had pickled his brain. He’d gone insane and, like most crazed people, he did not even know it. Did he hallucinate as old, drunken wicks of men did lying in the black gutters of the worst hellholes in town? Was he even in his own home, still? Bregan thought and thought but couldn’t find any reassurance in himself. Despite all he’d drunk, he felt as dried out as a salt creek wash in a desert. His body cried out for water, his lips cracked and sore, but he couldn’t bring himself to stand up and fetch a cup. He didn’t trust himself to draw water and not more alcohol. He couldn’t trust himself at all.

  He hugged himself tighter as the lamps and candles put forth enough light to create mocking and dancing shadows of a cage about him. Bregan swallowed down a breath. He began to make a list of his options and found it distressingly short.

  SPRING WHISTLED THROUGH THE TREES of Hold Vantane when he led his horse out of the stable and checked the carriage as well, all the equines stomping their hooves and snorting white breaths into the early morning as they signaled him their readiness to be off and on the road. He saw no sign of Bistane about, but the stable lads were all up and awake, so his brother might have left even earlier. He swung up on the wagon, and turned upon the road south, his saddle horse following on a lead.
<
br />   The Hold had been his home for most of his life, ever since that day Bistel had come to claim him, and he glanced back as he left. He squared his shoulders. He had only one suspicion which he had not told his older brother. Dayne smiled to himself as he thought that, for Bistane was much older than he, and it was not likely he’d ever again be related to anyone older since the death of their mutual father. His suspicion nudged its way back to the fore of his thoughts. The books resisting the virulent corruption of the libraries were those which had been printed on paper made from aryn pulp, a rarity in itself for the trees were not so populous that they could afford to harvest them for ordinary things like lumber and paper. Yet, even those trees could not totally withstand the black mold and the devastation it left behind even when treated and thought eradicated. He was a gardener and a steader, not a warrior and not a librarian, and he was not at all sure what Bistane had in mind for him by carrying these parcels, except for the trust imparted upon him to do so. And perhaps that was all it was. His brother trusted him more than anyone to do this task and placed the burden of the histories of their people upon him. The books of Ferstanthe contained irreplaceable writings.

  If he were a suspicious man, he might wonder if his brother had ulterior motives for sending him to the Dweller family who would be raising a crossed child like himself, and perhaps could use a bit of wisdom personally gained. If he were suspicious. If Bistane were anything like the strategist their father had been. Perhaps he was. He’d hailed one of the stead’s artists and had a small painting made of the Farbranch girl from Bistane’s memory of her, and when it had dried, his brother had pressed it into his hand.

  “This is the lass you look for.”

  “I thought I was searching out the Farbranch vineyards on the river.”

  “That, too.” Bistane’s head had tilted as he considered the canvas. “It’s a good likeness, for having not seen her, but he didn’t quite catch the . . .” Bistane’s hand had danced over the canvas a moment as if rearranging in his mind what he saw. “The liveliness. The spark of humor and intelligence in her eyes. Hard to explain.”

  Verdayne had looked down on the canvas. He saw eyes of cinnamon and brown, a generous mouth, a tumble of light brown hair that no doubt would catch the sunlight, brows arched gracefully, and a dainty nose. The chin held a stubborn jutting. He could understand why Jeredon had fallen for the girl who’d pushed and pulled him out of self-pity and marched him into healing. He folded the canvas over to protect the likeness. “I’ll take care to see she’s as protected as the Ferstanthe books,” he’d promised.

  Verdayne turned back and settled onto his cart seat. When the time came, and he reached Calcort, he was not certain how he could advise the Farbranches. How could he look Tolby and his wife in their faces, and into the eyes of young Nutmeg, and tell them that their lifespan in comparison to the child would be as that of the family dog to their own lives? Could he explain the acute loneliness of seeing your family age and die before you without hope of saving them or yourself that pain? Should he? Could he advise them how to avoid the prejudices against half-breeds? He hadn’t dodged those unpleasantries, even as sheltered as Bistel had kept him, although in the last ten decades it had gotten better. And what about siblings if Nutmeg should go on with her life, and marry, and bear other children, Dweller children? He and his brother had had words and deeds between them that, now, he realized any brothers had. Then, he had taken it to heart as bullying rather than the head butting any siblings did. He had finally learned to tell the difference. Had he any hope at all in instructing Nutmeg Farbranch how to deal with it?

  If Bistane had thought to send Verdayne only as a teacher, the least he could have done was ask him if it was a task he would accept.

  Perhaps it was wiser Bistane had not. Verdayne had no idea what his answer would be and likely would not even when he reached Calcort even though he had days and days to think upon it. Open his past up to strangers, peeling away walls he’d taken decades to build to shield himself? He did not think he could. He knew he didn’t wish to. Better for them to head into their tomorrows without knowing the inevitable sorrow and bitterness that could await them. Foreknowledge wouldn’t avert their future and it might be better for them simply to face it one bleak day at a time. He had faced little at home, but away from home, he had not always been sheltered. Better to concentrate upon the books. As perplexing and despairing as that problem was, it was far better than trying to understand the hearts and minds of others. Gods knew, he did not understand his own. He clucked to his ponies and let them think about the road ahead, as he held the reins lightly between his hands.

  Two days out, the road had become little more than a rough lane where wheels and hooves might have passed—or might not. The early spring day had begun with drizzles, but the sun forced its way through before midday, and by the time he reached his destination, the cart ponies were tossing their heads and stepping out sprightly, their nostrils flared wide to catch the intoxicating scent of the aryns on the wind.

  The trees had leafed out nicely, after a two-year drought and much worry on his part. It did not look, Verdayne thought, as if the lack of rain had affected this part of the forest greatly. He stood in the cart for a bit, letting his legs take the jostle and bounce over what could barely be called a road, reins firmly wrapped in his hands to telegraph his needs to the two ponies who shook their manes and pranced their hooves in a bit of wildness. He brought the cart to a halt and set the brake with a kick of his boot. His ponies snorted as if to say they had come to a standstill because it had been their will, not his, and the caramel-patched one rolled a white-ringed eye at him as he passed by. Verdayne slapped it lightly on the neck, both rewarding and reminding the pony who was boss here. His saddle horse, tied to the back rail of the cart, snorted as if in scorn at pony antics. He would leave the cart at a homestead along the way, but he saw no reason he should not work a bit as he made his way to Calcort. There was urgency, he supposed, but nothing a few days would harm. He had work to do, work that Bistel had raised him in, and he loved to do.

  Although, as Verdayne stepped clear of his cart, putting his head back and resting fists on his hips, to take a good look at the aryns, anyone could see they were the kings here. Their palm-sized leaves rippled in the breeze, their varying spring colors of dark green and light green and even golden green moving in a sea current from branch to branch, tree to tree. More than their majesty, he could sense their magic. Where the aryns stood, the tides of burned-out sorcery from the Mageborn Wars and their spillover of chaotic magic stopped. Were repulsed by wood and leaf, turned back from lands never meant to be touched. Were cleansed in roots that thrust deep into the earth and the earth’s underground rivers. Were unmade and dispersed as though never called up and woven by power-mad Magi. That was not to say peace ruled here in the aryn groves. No. But the happenings here sprang from natural elements, just as fearsome and devastating as the unnatural but, once expended, they did not twist back upon themselves in vengeance and hatred as though a living beast. Verdayne looked upon the trees and not for the first time wondered what these lands would have suffered if the aryns had not taken root here and turned back the remnants of a long ago yet still smoldering war. The aryns were not native to the lands of Kerith, but the Mageborn had been.

  “Vaelinars came to our country in a blast of lightning and thunder, but the Mageborn,” his long-passed mother would whisper to him, “the Mageborn created fire and wind to carry death across our country. They tried to raise themselves to be Gods upon the backs of our dead. And they failed, but their deeds live after them, foul and smoldering, pools of arrogance and ill-will and poison. Never forget them, my Verdayne. Not the Vaelinars who fathered you or the Mageborn who would have killed you rather than look at you twice. Never.” And she would kiss him on his forehead as if sealing her words into his memory.

  She had, or he would not think of them now. Verdayne let out a small sigh. H
er talents had been passed to him, the knowledge of earth and growing things, of the cycles of life which vibrated through all things Kerithian. She had never questioned the dual nature of his Vaelinar father, a man who waged war as no other had or could and yet spent most of his years farming and cultivating the groves of aryns. “There is light and there is shadow,” she would say. “Your father is both, but to me he is love.” That, then, had embarrassed him, but he had been young. Young in only the way a native born of Kerith can be when held accountable against the long-lived Vaelinar. His mother’s lifespan had been a tenth or even less than that of Bistel’s.

  He had lost her, and his half brothers and sisters, before he could scarcely know what it meant to have Vaelinar blood intertwining with his own. He would not live a stretch of life such as the elven did, but still would see three or more generations of his Dweller blood flourish, wither, and die in his own lifetime. It came as a harsh realization. He felt guilt for his lifespan and for his inability to hold onto the short-lived members of his family. After his mother passed, the others seemed to have slipped through his fingers like water.

  He rode a wagon because he carried aryn saplings to be planted where needed and the farm where he intended to leave his cart was the holding of a great-niece although Verdayne didn’t think she knew she was related by blood to him. Her children certainly did not. There was no meaning to it, he thought, having an uncle and then a great-uncle and then a great great-uncle who stayed in his prime while they fell to dust. He resented it on his end, and Gods knew, he had the better part of the bargain. No. It was a burden he felt best unmentioned. Also, and he hated to think it, there was that small part of him that thought they might seek to take advantage of him, of his relationship to them, rather than his love for them and theirs for him. It was a tricky business being part of the Vaelinar culture.