King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three

by Jenna Rhodes

  He frowned and walked around, stretching his legs and letting the horses rest a bit, the afternoon upon the road and wild grove.

  He took an aryn branch in hand, lightly, spreading its leaves out, looking upon its stem and branches, checking for any sign of the awful blight which had begun to take root even among the near indestructible aryn. None here in this grove. He released the branch which sprang back into place, releasing its aromatic scent as it did, and he inhaled deeply. It lifted his spirits even as it filled his lungs. There were many who cursed where Vaelinars set foot on First Home and the rest of Kerith, but there was no one who cursed the aryn trees. Except for the bastard who’d spread the black fungus among them, but they had a handle on that, finally, thanks to Tolby Farbranch.

  He walked the grove, the cart ponies following behind him, used to doing this work with him, stopping when he did to crop at the various grasses and flowers which grew outside the shaded grove. Every step reassured him.

  And that was when he found the fire circle. Small, almost insignificant, hidden by the deep shaded interior of the grove—which made it all the more insidious. What if the grove had caught fire? Unlikely, true, in this wet spring, and the aryns rarely burned all the way through. They had a tough skin and a resiliency to fire, but the idea that a camper had dared to start a fire here, in the depths of the grove, rather than out in the meadow or down by the nearby stream—what madness was this? But he could tell from the ring that it was not laid out with the intentions of harming the grove, but rather to cook a simple meal and warm a body throughout the still chill night.

  Verdayne stirred the ashes with a finger. More than cold, now dewy, the fire had been out for days. He could smell it but without any great intensity. The wood used had been kindling gathered from nearby trees, none of it aryn. The few bones were of fish, and ground into the ashes so they would meld into a fertilizer of sorts, given time. A transgressor with sensibility then, if twisted. He sat back on his heels, thinking.

  His jaw tightened. What if he’d come across the very bastard whose work sent him here? He’d skewer the man alive for poisoning the aryns. But he’d have to find him, first, wouldn’t he? Dayne could feel his nostrils flare, almost like a hound on the hunt. Fortune had led him to this site, along with his task of scouting the groves to see which needed spraying and which did not, and if he had the chance to catch the bastard, book delivery or no book delivery, by Gods he’d do it!

  When he stood, it was to see if he could find a trail, however faint, hidden in the grove. The ponies nickered nervously as he moved in and out of their sight, so he whistled to them and they trotted to catch up, the cart bouncing at their heels, and his tashya steed jogging along behind with a bored set to his arched neck and head. He found what he was looking for: signs of a horseman moving deliberately through the grove, weaving through the trees. There was no sign on the aryns of the fungus or the salve that contained it. No damage. Havoc did not seem to be the goal here; subterfuge had been paramount on the intruder’s mind. Who would do such a thing and for what reason?

  The horseman had moved swiftly, and Verdayne wasn’t about to catch up to his next camp without getting back in the cart and hustling. A second campsite caught the corner of his eye, so well hidden that even searching for it, he barely saw it. Dayne moved to it, and the smell of ash and woodsmoke filled his senses, meager but much sharper than at the other site and hence more recent.

  He went to one knee beside it, hands out, palms down, and let his Vaelinar blood sense what it could. A faint stirring tingled along his skin, as if from a breeze no one else could sense as he moved through the grass, through the growing things, and among the living things in the immediate area. The fire was cold, but he could feel the muted intensity with which it had burned when it had been lit. Smell the charred flesh of a small coney on a stick across the rocks which banked and kept the flames in check. Felt the bruised grasses where the intruder had sat to cook and then eat. A wider spot which bore an imprint of resting. Not sleep. Dayne’s head tilted a bit as he contemplated this realization, and the smell of old, musty, mummified death. Not decomposition for living flesh, but as if a body had been stored for years and no longer existed as flesh but as something else. He did not like the sensation and, dropping his hands, stood quickly.

  He’d still no idea of what had disturbed the forest or why, but if the intent had been to spread the black fungus, it had never been made. Therefore, the camper had another purpose in mind. What? As he moved out of the canopy and looked skyward, spotting the sun’s movement, he realized the direction the horseman headed. The trail had been circuitous, but his instincts pinged. He sighted what he’d followed so far, and where he was headed, and where that other’s trail led.

  His mysterious camper moved toward Larandaril. Verdayne could follow further, but he’d been given his task to reach Calcort, another road forking away. He couldn’t be in both places at once. He had no excuse for mere curiosity. Bistane would skin him alive for delaying as long as he had, even if it was to track an intruder. A chill danced down the back of his neck like an angry insect, and he swung his hand to smack at it.

  He could almost smell the essence of Vaelinar on the branches floating about him, and in the bent grasses, and against the leaves brushing him in turn.

  A Vaelinar. Through here. In hiding.

  A Vaelinar who did not smell like a living thing.

  A being using the aura of the aryns to obscure his presence. Trespassing where nothing could scent or see him, something which wanted to be undiscoverable. Something skulked through his groves, and Dayne didn’t like that at all.

  He thought of his brother’s tale at the library, and his skin went cold. Something similar had been haunting Ferstanthe. Infecting the books? Done there and moving on to Larandaril with a new purpose? Yet without a sighting, he didn’t have enough evidence to change his quest.

  He took a great gulping breath, and tasted death upon it, at the back of his throat, like rusty iron. Not good at all. When he got to Calcort, he’d send to Bistane to tell him what he’d discovered, but he couldn’t do anything until then, unless the crofters he would meet in the next day had messenger birds of their own. Not likely. No need to. Dwellers had their own means of communication, and rarely was anything urgent enough to be sent on wing. Life was shorter there, but moved slower, an oxymoron if ever he’d found one.

  He whistled and his ponies heard him, came trotting through the glade reluctantly, sweet spring shoots still hanging from their whiskery lips, a meal interrupted. He patted both of them and murmured words of praise for their intelligence and their work, and they both whickered into his hands, proud of themselves and somewhat mollified. Lastly, he moved to his tashya mount, small for one of the Vaelinarran hot bloods but good-sized for his own stature. The horse put his head down and blew over his hands, but it was an uneasy gesture, for the horse flung his head back up, high, looking over the grasses and through the trees as if sensing what Dayne had been following.

  Verdayne reached his hand up to scratch behind the gelding’s ear. “You feel it, too. I’ll find some sugar grass to thank you for that—don’t like feeling as if I have gone wobbly in the brain.”

  The gelding snorted and ducked his head down to butt him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. Laughing, even as he struggled to catch a deep breath, Dayne staggered back a step and hung an elbow over the cart’s bed. The gelding had a cantankerous nature and was known for his head butts, and still he’d been suckered into standing close enough and long enough with his guard down to receive one.

  He rubbed his chest and gave a last coughing whoop as the breath came back to him.

  Dayne showed the horse his fist. “See that? All the sugar grass you get will fit in there!”

  The gelding curled his lip in disdain before swinging about and leaning on him, pressing him against the side of the cart. Dayne took it for a few moments, the wa
rmth and ordinariness of the horse comforting, before he shoved the animal away and then slapped his rump. “Don’t go thinking you and I are friends now,” he growled.

  He returned to the front of the cart and pulled himself up, chirping as he did. His ponies swung into an easy trot even before he had the reins settled into his hands. He had places to be.

  MEG TRIED TO FIND a comfortable position in which to recline, a seemingly impossible task because the child within was all angles and strong, pushing at her in determined nudges. Night had fallen, Rivergrace and Sevryn were several days into their journey, the family meal had been shared, and her father had gone off to an early bed as he had early work. Garner had come and gone, drifting off without much explanation, but Lily had frowned after him, muttering something about “tempting the luck of the Gods,” meaning she thought he’d gone off to gamble somewhere. Keldan kept nearly the same hours as their father, for he worked shoulder to shoulder with him, although there were occasional nights when he spent some time with a local girl or two. And Hosmer. She tried not to think of Hosmer behind the lines of quarantine. She’d been reassured, but she would not believe it until he returned, safe. That left Lily who sat by a lantern in the kitchen, her hands working on something for the baby that she kept hidden from Nutmeg if not entirely successfully.

  She rubbed her stomach and the fragrance of the herbal oils she’d been using to soothe her skin drifted up. “If you could smell this,” she told the baby, “you’d like it. Maybe you’d think your Mom always smells like this.” That made the corner of her mouth quirk. The floral fragrance also held an underlying essence of qynch oil, a pressed oil with many uses. She inched her shoulders a bit higher, wondering if she’d be able to sleep in her position that night. A cold breeze fluttered fitfully through the shuttered window. She couldn’t keep it flung wide open, her Dad and everyone security conscious, but she’d found a way to cheat on the closed window a bit.

  Lariel’s guards had not yet arrived but had sent word that they would be in Calcort in the morning, so they were very close. Close enough that they might even press on through the night to make the city. The quarantine, in its third day, kept the vineyard quarter secured off, as Sevryn had predicted, making guarding her much easier. And efficient. Nutmeg sighed. If Grace and Sevryn had really wanted her safe, why hadn’t they stayed? But she knew better than that. It had just been nice having Grace close again.

  Nutmeg turned her chin, looking across the room, to the corner where she had a safe buried under the floorboards. She had almost told Rivergrace about the burden and gift Warlord Bistel had laid upon her. Almost. Wiser not to, she supposed, but she trusted her sister. Grace should know.

  Nutmeg got up, not gracefully or with the bounce of energy for which she’d been known, but well enough, and went to the corner. She moved the small vanity dresser that covered the floorboards where her father had cleverly carpentered a cubby hole, without asking why, or even remembering later that he had, although she knew Tolby never missed anything. He probably assumed that she had some keepsakes from Jeredon she wished to keep safe and private. He would never in a million years have guessed the safe spot held a journal written by a Vaelinar warlord and entrusted to her upon his death.

  She pressed the three boards which opened and then slid away to reveal her hiding spot. Wrapped in oilcloth and then silk, she took the journal out and laid it upon her knees as she sat down, her back to the vanity dresser. Her baby kicked wildly, either in excitement for her change in position or because the journal, with an aura even her Dweller eyes could recognize, revealed itself.

  Nutmeg stroked her fingertips over the worn leather. “Do you see it, baby?” she whispered. “The way you saw the door? I swear I felt you grow quiet when I looked at it. I’d not a chance of seeing it on my own, I know that. I felt you grow still and knowing and warm with the seeing of it, through me. It had to be you, Tree’s blood, I never saw that way afore.” She wiped a wispy, tickling lock of hair from her forehead. She did not know what Rivergrace saw when she looked at things with those beautiful eyes which marked her indelibly as a Vaelinar, eyes of aquamarine, stormy blue, and the deepest blue of a bottomless lake. Did she see the aura that Nutmeg had seen? The door of ashen gray, the look of dead and tempered wood, with its lock of sooty black? The green-gold of the living vineyard around it, or the silvery bloom around Grace herself, and the shadow that Sevryn cast wherever he walked. She’d feared to ask her sister. What if no one alive saw what she saw, and she only imagined it, or the strain of having a child had driven her slightly crazy? It did not help that the visions she had came and went, fleetingly. “Look on this now, if you can. This is not from your father, but it is part of your bloodline, and we have to keep it safe.” Meg sighed. Bad enough that she carried the child of a Vaelinar power line, but if she did see—she was invested with abilities she ought not to have. Kernan witchery was not greatly appreciated among the people. Vaelinar power even less so. She would have to be even more cautious than before. Meg rubbed a tiny yet growing furrow between her brows.

  She had another burden she’d vowed to keep safe, one that was as hidden as her child was obvious. She’d thought, briefly, to share it with Rivergrace but then changed her mind, and Nutmeg still did not know if she shied away from sharing because she did not want to be thought of as stealing from a dead man’s body or if she so coveted the thing, she could not bear to share it with anyone. Her hands shook a little as she clasped the journal tightly.

  The leather smelled of a masculine scent, and woodsmoke, and horse sweat. Bistel must have carried it wherever he went, tucked inside his shirt and leathers and mail. It carried a wealth of years upon it, worn leather but polished from the touch of hands upon it, Bistel’s hands, opening it time and time again, to read and write within. Nutmeg opened it carefully.

  She’d done so once, when she had first gotten it. Written by a Vaelinar for Vaelinar, she expected to make no sense of it, and had not, except for dates here and there, time spans that impressed upon her the sheer enormity of Bistel’s lifespan, hundreds of years longer than she could ever hope to live. She wondered if, should she learn to read the words, she might discover that all those years actually made him wiser as well as older. If life were just at all, it would have. But life, as she had learned all too well, had little sense of justice. The pages were a creamy white and she touched them tentatively, afraid of their possible fragility, but they met her fingertips with a resilient surface. Not an ordinary paper, then, perhaps a parchment of some sort. She leaned close, peering. Whatever it was, the pages glowed. Then she leaned back. The baby shifted a little inside of her, and she could almost imagine a tiny hand reaching out.

  “They don’t glow, normally, do they?” Meg whispered. No one answered her in any way, and she turned the blank page.

  Boldly printed, the words leaped out at her. A TREATMENT ON THE CREATION OF VAELINAR WAYS.

  Underneath, in smaller yet no less compelling letters, was written: And the Downfall of Bloodlines Tied to Unsuccessful Creations.

  Meg sat back as if shoved, closing the book abruptly. She knew that Bistel and his people worked a Magic upon Kerith that those native to her world could not. They could sway and even change the laws of earth, air, fire, and water, twist them, braid them, to make new creations that were nothing like illusions or sleight of hand. They were major changes branded upon Kerith, changes that often went against the very Laws of Nature, and for lack of a better word, they were called Ways. Ways like the Ferryman of the Nylara who could traverse that broad and raging river no matter what the weather, or season, or flood level. Ways like the Shining Sisters. Ways that had stayed, and a few that had been destroyed, like the great Jewel of Tomarq. Ways that, for all their wonder, were each and every one singular and could no longer be made by most of the Vaelinars who walked Kernan lands. The talent and strength it took must have been prodigious and for this, the rest of them could only give thanks,
or they might have seen the Vaelinars mold their world into a totally unfamiliar landscape. Those days were gone.

  Her hands shook. Unless, perhaps, one could read and understand this book. What she held, what Bistel had given her guardianship over, was nothing less than a kingmaker. The Vaelinar who possessed this book and could use it, would wield untold power, for it seemed to Nutmeg that Bistel had taken the unfathomable and made it understandable. The ild Fallyn would kill for it. Meg’s head jerked upright. Perhaps they already had. If she had thought they might come after Jeredon’s heir, it meant nothing next to the tome she held. Her life would be tenuous indeed if they had an inkling of what she held. Her death sentence would become not only desirable but a necessity if they knew of this treasure. She had not told anyone, but she had no idea whose eyes might have viewed Bistel’s final moments. She pressed the book to her burgeoning stomach. Bistel had known the charge he’d laid upon her, and what she would do to uphold it. “Never,” she whispered fiercely. “They won’t have it. By all the Gods of Kerith and beyond. Never.”

  It wasn’t till candlemarks later, her cubbyhole closed and dresser back in place and her curly head pillowed in near perfect comfort, on the verge of drifting away to sleep, that her eyes flew open in realization. She’d read it.

  Read every foreign symbol as easily as the tally books she helped keep for their orchards and vineyards, and patterns for fancy ball gowns, and those silly rags of gossip passed around on the streets for only one penny. How she managed it, she could not guess. There wasn’t a babe born who could talk, read, and write straight out of the womb. So what ability did Jeredon’s child have that could enable her to interpret the unknown? Nutmeg’s eyelids fluttered. There were days, she thought, as she settled back down to sleepiness, that were almost too much to take in.