King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three

by Jenna Rhodes

  A twig snapped. Her head shot up and she searched the nearby trees, hugged by scraggly shrub, but saw nothing. Smelled nothing. Heard not another sound more. Anger bled out through her nerves, and fear rushed in to replace it. She’d resisted the dark water, but this, in the light of day, chilled her blood. Danger stalking through sunlight made it that much more potent. She backed up a step into the undergrowth and nearly stumbled on a clump of fallen leaves and twigs. A scuff of her boot toe brought to light the desiccated corpses hidden there.

  She stared in shock at the sudden death. Three young hens, once fat and rich of plumage, lay next to each other, shrunken down as if drained of every drop of moisture their carcasses had once held. She had no inkling of how long ago they might have been killed or even how they had been killed or what kind of predator would hide the evidence. What would do such a thing . . . kill, blood, and yet leave the meat? One carcass would be enough for ritual, as reprehensible as she found the thought. But three? Uneasily, she shoveled debris back over the bodies and stepped away. The nerves along the back of her neck tingled in warning. Holding her breath, Grace refocused on listening. Something furtive moved again. More than the noise of the movement, she caught a sense of size. Something big vacated one area and flowed into another, and that something was big, or at least bigger than she was. Yet nothing of shadow or substance met her sight. She frowned and scanned the area about her slowly, carefully. Something on the run toward her shattered the calm.

  The brush and trees around her began to thrash their branches and roar with wind like an incoming ocean tide. It almost smothered the noise of pounding hooves.

  Rivergrace backed into a defensible position, tightened her grip on her sword, and waited.

  Raiders, and riding hard. They swept along the ridge, daring the border of Larandaril as if they knew the magical toll it could take out of their hides and were uncaring of the consequence, their whips in hand and knives in their teeth as they bent over the short, stubby manes of their ponies.

  Grace broke her position to run sideways in the opposite direction, grabbing the long, green limbs of a sapling and letting it spring back as the raiders rode past, the ones in front curbing their horses hard and wheeling around even as the tree snapped through the air, knocking one of them from his saddle into a hard fall, head- and neck-first into the ground. Without seeing if he stirred, she ran back to her original chosen place to dig her heels in, and knew her eyes had gone more gray than blue, the storm-ridden color of an icy lake. Ponies turned and leaped against boot heels jabbing their flanks as bits cut their protesting mouths. Four remaining raiders came at her. Not so many, she told herself. Sevryn could have taken them down with thrown daggers before he’d even draw his sword. Men, if only just, with the hard-eyed intensity of Kernan and Vaelinar tainted with Kernan blood, their faces weathered by sun and weather and scarred by fighting.

  She reached for the Fire inside of her, the anger, that she had unleashed for Sevryn and Hosmer on the streets of Calcort but found herself empty. Worse, she found herself tender and aching inside as if her torrent of magic had left her torn and burned herself, worse than merely being emptied. She shoved back a flinch and curled her mouth into a downward grimace. She gave them not a word, not the satisfaction of perhaps hearing the fear in her voice, as they came at her.

  The moves Sevryn and Lariel had drilled into her took over. She barely felt herself stand until the last moment, then step aside, calmly slashing at the exposed mid-thigh of the closest rider and watching the blood spurt free as she did, splattering her and soaking him, as she ducked under the swing of his sword. His hoarse voice filled the air with curses. A whip lashed out, catching her shoulder, ripping through fabric and stinging her skin, but she did not feel it until she had moved back into place and then took a lunging jump at the third rider who had fallen behind. The trees and shrubs limited her accessibility, and she used that as a natural barrier to shield her flanks as she took a deep breath and gathered her nerve and cut the pony down—ah, tree’s blood, she hated to do that as the animal let out a scream and went sliding to its knees to plunge floundering upon the ground, rider half-pinned under it. She came around sharply and took a second slice at the animal, to put it down humanely, her heart pounding in her chest as she did. It was but an animal, a beast made to service the savages that rode it, and she could not let it suffer. Grace did not mind that her boot heel came down in a vicious stomp on the pinned rider’s throat as he grunted and tried to pull himself free.

  And then there were two. The downed rider, his face laid open to the bone from the lash of the green-skinned sapling, and his fellow, still mounted and wheeling about to her blind side, whip and knife in his free hand, reins knotted about the other. They spread apart until she could not watch one without losing track of the other, and knew they had her as long as they flanked her. She had but one option.

  Grace moved into the shrubbery as if hoping it could shield her entirely, and with a sharp cry, fell, her leg betraying her and crumpling as she tripped, dropping her sword. The raider on foot let out a triumphant grunt and bounded after her. She rolled in agony and came up with her dirks buried in her fists and felt his hot breath as it stunk in her face and she gutted him, right to left and then left to right as he fell on her. She shoved his body aside as a horse whinnied sharply. A fist hit her temple, crushing sight from her eyes and air from her lungs, as pain flashed black, then red and orange. She struggled in vain to get to her knees and could feel herself topple for real, world going dark, even as she had a sense of whatever it was that had run the ridges and stayed murderously quiet in the shadow while she fought, as it sprang free and deadly. She lost her battle to stay conscious.

  AT LAST HE HAD SOMETHING of what he’d come for. He sat, drawing shadows in around him, his hands crossed on his horse’s withers in front of him, big hands, scarred by untold decades of work on weaponry and the use of them. Quendius watched as the girl collapsed, having already given the signal for capture rather than kill. He lifted one hand to scratch a rough nail along the line of his jaw, waiting but not as patiently as he would have liked. He frowned, his Vaelinarran eyes scouring the ridgeline, but he did not see as his fellows did, even though he had the multicolored eyes. No. They betrayed him, just as everything else in his life had, at one time or another. He felt as a blind man might feel, bitter and disoriented, blockaded from his potential, denied his birthright. Angry. But at least he was away from the banks of the Ashenbrook, where everything had gone to death and ash. It had been reborn with the advent of the rains, brought at last to these drought-stricken lands by the woman who lay struck down before him. She might have more use than he’d originally planned. He had no more use for greenery than he had for ash, but he understood the value of both to others. He waited.

  A second wing of his raiders swept over the ridge, even as a being tall and spare, dressed in little more than rags, came out of the shelter of trees and brush, and with a sweep of his arms and swords moved into a fighting stance over the sprawled body of the fallen girl. A noise of satisfaction fell from Quendius. The lone fighter gave a rising growl, a sound barely more than human, but he had little to fear as the raiders fought to keep their mounts from bolting. The riders yanked at their headstalls and drummed their heels against their mounts’ sides to drive them at their quarry without effect. Its very scent seemed to fill the ponies’ nostrils to send them plunging and bucking away, their riders cursing and spurring them into sullen obedience when they finally gained some control, far enough away that the ponies shuddered to a halt. Two of his best whirled their mounts and whipped them back around, driving them at the defender by brute force. Two more raiders fell, lifeless, from their saddles as they got within sword reach of the lone defender. Quendius rose in his stirrups, his chest bare even in the raw spring air, an open vest of white, curled wool his only upper garment except for his weapons harness. “Enough.” He cut the air with both his hand and voice.r />
  His horse did not fight his command to advance close to the ragged, wiry being who defended the fallen girl. It sashayed sideways until Quendius pulled it to a halt. He leveled his gaze on the lone swordsman and his face creased into a wide, humorless smile. “I should have known months ago and made my search easier. You would be where the girl is. I finally intuited that much. If you lived at all, if you held any semblance of life, you would be where your daughter is. Surrender. You’re the quarry, not her.” Quendius put his hand out as if to accept a proffered blade.

  The swordsman looked at the weaponsmith, color drained from his lean face as hope fled, to leave his eyes hollow in his skull, his teeth bared in a feral snarl. He shifted his blade in his hands, fingers in claw curls about the hilt, presenting only his flank to vulnerability.

  Quendius studied him. “My hound,” he said finally. “Did you think we could be unbonded by such a thing as betrayal? I’m here for you. I know that you knew I would follow you if at all possible, and I have. Though,” and he paused. “You’ve done all you could to make it impossible. But not enough.” He withdrew his outheld hand.

  The swordsman bent long enough to gather a fallen short sword from the bent grasses under his feet and secured that in offense as well, his stare unblinking.

  “I can always make her my target, Narskap, but it would be a waste. As long as she’s alive, I have your balls in a vise. We both know that. Perhaps you seek to protect her from what you see when you close your eyes. What might a dead man see when he looks upon sleep?” Quendius shrugged. “So, given that, move away from her and give me your weapon. You are my hound, and you will always be my hound. Even death hasn’t taken that leash from you, and I venture to say that nothing ever will.” Quendius swept his piercing gaze over the other. “Or is it undeath? You are both and neither. Maker and unmaker. Once you tricked Gods and Demons into the weapons you forged, sucked them into the mineral marrow of your creations. Do you now trick them to overlook your meager soul? I thought you had lived and crawled away from me on Ashenbrook’s battlefield, but now that I finally have you in front of me, I see that you didn’t live. It’s no wonder the ponies wouldn’t get near you. They can smell the rank otherness of your form.” Quendius leaned over in his saddle, dark eyes blazing at Narskap. “Do you think? Can you speak? Or do you find existence an instinct only, too long ingrained in your flesh to let it go?”

  “I think.” Words rattled out of the spare man’s throat, like pebbles cascading along a dried-up creek bed. A very long pause followed. “I live.”

  Quendius let his gaze drop to his forearm, where a sword had struck a passing blow. The flesh parted, but blood only welled up in sparse drops, like a desert reluctant to give up its water. Even as he looked at it, the gap closed and flesh began to seal to flesh. That sight drew his close attention, a greedy interest.

  Quendius swung off his horse. “You cannot live.”

  “I live!”

  Quendius shook his head slowly.

  “No. No, you don’t.” He moved to Narskap, took the sword from his hand without protest, and laid his palm on the other’s chest after twitching aside clothing that was little more than rags. “I feel no heartbeat there. Can you? Does your heart rattle in your rib cage like a frightened, imprisoned bird? No. Does your pulse drum in your neck until you think your head might explode from the force of it? No. Do you pant with eagerness, hound, to be on the hunt? Or in tiredness from the exertion of the trail? No again. You have no breath other than what it takes to speak, I watched your throat. I watch you now. What are you, my hound? What have you made of yourself?”

  “Leave us be,” Narskap said. His breath, if what it was could be called breath, held a dry, musty odor like a root cellar that had been closed up overlong. Not unpleasant but not alive.

  “I can’t,” Quendius answered simply. “Especially not now. Not without answers to the questions I have. Do you feel pain?” He took the surrendered sword and drew a long gash down Narskap’s chest.

  Narskap hissed as his skin opened, and he jerked his head back, lips curled.

  “Some pain, it would seem.” Quendius touched the tip of the blade to the wound as a single, crimson drop welled up. The blood smoked as it ran onto the sword. “Damn these eyes. If it weren’t for these, perhaps I could see. What are you, Narskap?”

  Narskap said heavily, “Your hound.”

  Quendius smiled grimly. “Perhaps I earned that. But it’s not the answer I seek this time. Never mind. We have time. You more than I, it seems.”

  With his free hand, he signaled his remaining raiders. “Mount up. Catch the free ponies. Take the bodies. I want little left behind. This is still within Larandaril’s reach, and I want no clues. Be careful with the girl. I don’t want her marred.” He turned his attention back on Narskap. “Don’t think to return her to Larandaril to be free. I’ve taken much time and pain to place someone deep within the Warrior Queen’s little kingdom. She will be shocked if and when she discovers the traitor, for this alliance is probably one of the best I’ve ever forged. But if I must sacrifice my hard work to keep Rivergrace hostage, I will, make no mistake. Her only chance is with you, Narskap, father that you want to be, however awkwardly. Obey me, Narskap, as you were bent to obey me from the very first, and if you don’t, she won’t be the last to suffer. Do you understand me?”

  A very long moment paused, and then Narskap’s chest rose and fell as though he had to remember how to speak. The long gash closed despite the upheaval of his body. “I do.”

  “Good. In return, I promise you a very eager pupil. I am your apprentice as well as your master. I want you to unveil this new Talent of yours in every aspect. I have a feeling that I’ve finally found what I was born to do.” Quendius twitched a hand, and two raiders leaned from their mounts to grasp Narskap by the arms and toss him aboard a riderless pony. He waited until all of his men had left and raked his eyes one last time over Rivergrace’s sprawled form lashed to another, lagging into line just ahead of him. Quendius mounted and drew even.

  “He thinks he will protect you,” he murmured to her still form. “But not even in total obedience will he keep me from what I intend.” The corner of his mouth pulled in what, for him, was a smile.

  Rivergrace woke slowly. Her limp body rocked back and forth to the gait of the horse she straddled, her head and neck flopping painfully every now and then, and it was the pain, a lightning surge through her muscles and somewhere at the back of her eyes, that woke her completely. She became aware of an arm across her rib cage, holding her close to a body that was not warm but chilled. Captive. Her skin shivered as she thought of becoming mist again and dissolving away from her captor’s hold, but it held her as tightly as he did, unwilling to let her go, and she didn’t have the strength to force it. She was caught, well and truly. Her eyelids fluttered as she tried to look down and see who—or what—held her. A breath tickled her ear. “Gather your strength.”

  The words were no warmer than the figure that held her. Rivergrace contained the shiver that swept through her. The arm about her rib cage was clothed in little more than rags, the skin tight and drawn, sinews and bones delineated clearly under it. A man more skeleton than mortal. She tilted her head slightly.

  “Father?”

  “Once. And yet, it seems, always.”

  “You’re not well.” She traced a fingertip along the back of his wrist, not daring to say more.

  “I am dead, Grace, or to be more precise, Undead.”

  He said it so quietly that she nearly believed it. “I looked for your body at Ashenbrook.”

  “I was already gone. You wouldn’t have found me.”

  “And now?”

  “I abide. But what I am shouldn’t worry you.”

  “You tell me you’re Undead and I shouldn’t worry?”

  “I exist. I remember; I learn. I breathe just enough to form words when I wish t
o use them. My heart beats just enough to move blood through my body. But I don’t need to breathe to continue existing, nor does my heart need to keep beating. Occasionally it stops altogether. I can even heal although that is most sluggish and requires . . . outside intervention.”

  She did not want to ask what he meant by that. “How did this happen?”

  “First, you die. And what comes after, you needn’t know. It’s not a burden I would give you.”

  “There must be something I can do!”

  “Nothing.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  A soft sound that might have been a chuckle if there had been enough breath behind it. “I’m fairly certain.” A long pause followed. “I thank you for your worry.”

  “You’re my father.”

  “I haven’t been your father for most of our lives. I’m not so Undead that I can’t feel the pain of saying that.”

  Rivergrace straightened in her father’s hold, her body aching. “We have to get away.”

  “No. Not yet. We’re here to learn.”

  “Learn what?”

  “Look to your fore. Tell me what your Vaelinar eyes see.”

  She straightened in his hold. In front of them rode a tall, arrogant man sitting confidently in his saddle, flanked by two men on either side. The flanking riders were ragtag warriors, but the man who led them was of a category altogether different: Quendius, the weaponmaster. The man who lived for wars and their consequences, a man who would rather rule ashes than not rule at all. She sucked in a tight breath before spitting out his name.

  “Yes, you know him, but tell me . . . what do you see?”

  The back of her head pounded dully at her, the sunlight shone a little too brightly, and her ribs and one knee let out a lightning jab of pain every now and then as the horse swayed under them, and she did not want to look at Quendius. Narskap snuggled his arm about her a little more tightly in reassurance.