King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three

by Jenna Rhodes

  The sky rained death, blackened by arrows falling upon the Raymy, and bodies toppled. As before, not enough. Never enough to even slow them down. Sevryn gripped his weapons tightly. Raymy plowed into the Andredia, choking the river with their diseased flesh, and Quendius began a chant that would bind the river with its cargo to his will. He could feel the raw power rising. The weaponmaster had found a Talent . . . in death.

  Sevryn felt her touch him before Rivergrace cried out, “Never!” She drew his power from him, causing him to lose a step as he moved to meet a sword, and she stood in a void between the forces, untouched by arrow or blade, her hands moving. A golden river of flame fountained upward from the ground, sucked from their power and hers, weakening all of them even as it walled them in safety for the moment. He gagged at the stench of burning and fought to keep on his feet.

  The Raymy fled the fire. They streamed across the broken ground in a fighting panic.

  Behind him a strangled cry and a curse from Tressandre. He remembered that pungent voice and the Foresight grabbed him up, sent him pivoting on his heel. Ild Fallyn behind them? Had the Raymy drawn their attention at that crucial moment? Lariel would never allow the ild Fallyn behind her, not after having Foreseen the disaster of this time, could she?

  Sevryn fell back a step, Alton in his range of eyesight, and Tressandre at the corner of his vision. On foot, he raced toward her, toward Alton who’d curved his sword close to his body, kicking his horse at Lara. He called for the shadows and they answered him, cloaking his weaving run toward his queen and friend, abandoning Rivergrace, his heart torn in two. He lunged at Lara. Chastain yelled in warning, close and yet not close enough to aid.

  It had all changed and yet remained the same. Sevryn leaped in the air, turning, the back of his hand bringing his weapon about when Lariel burst into orange flame, her jewelry flaring out at Alton ild Fallyn and his scream of terror as the Sentinel set him alight. Sevryn let the sword go in a throw that thudded deep into his throat, cutting that scream short. As he came back to earth, his sleeve smoked in the fury of her protective jewelry, golden links now charred and dull. Lara turned to look at Sevryn in surprise. Turned as her lamed horse stumbled, and she began to slip from his back.

  Tressandre ild Fallyn growled at them both and leaned across her horse, steel in her hands. He swung across her to parry Tressandre’s blow. Too late. Just a bare heartbeat too late.

  Their silvery blades clashed in the patchy gleam of the sun as it tried to break through storming clouds. They sang, howling against one another.

  Tressandre’s long dagger sank deep into Lara’s flank, parting chain link and silk under tunic and flesh, driving home as Lariel gasped in pain. She pitched forward over her mount’s shoulder, coming to earth, losing her seat.

  Losing her command.

  Losing her life.

  Sevryn recovered, fingers loosening a throwing dagger from an ankle sheath, and Tressandre spat as it sank into the curve of her neck where it met her shoulder and armor could not protect her. She reined away from him as Lara fell at his feet, her life spurting out in crimson beats. Each fountain counted a failing heart.

  He could hear Bistane yell sharply. Felt the press of mounted horsemen about him. Chastain lunged at Tressandre and cried out as she gutted him. His horse bolted at the chaos, carrying him out of reach, but it was Lara who commanded his attention.

  “For ild Fallyn!” A chorus of voices chanted with Tressandre, and she disappeared in a cloud of guards that began to hack their way out. He did not see her again, but the Raymy toppled like trees being axed down for lumber.

  He went to his knee.

  He drew the painted dagger from his sleeve. The anointed blade. The one given to him for the king of assassins and he broke his vows, all of them, as he struck. He drove it into her exposed inner thigh where the chain mail coat could not protect her. Another spurt of blood spilled onto the ground, and then it stopped even as her face went pale and her eyes fluttered as she looked up at him. Her golden jewelry sizzled out, stones burnt to an ashy gray. Her body went still. A horse pounded close.

  Bistane slid to the ground at a run. “Sevryn!”

  He threw an arm across the other. “She’s not dead. She’s not dying. My blade is poisoned. It mimics death. Don’t leave her side till she wakes. It may be days. It may be weeks. She will heal if you tend it. Don’t take the blade out. Do you hear me? Do you understand? Don’t take the blade out until she heals. The poison on the blade is the only thing keeping her alive as she heals.”

  Bistane looked at him with wild eyes. “I don’t understand anything. Tressandre brought her down, but you gave the crowning blow . . .”

  Lara made a small noise. Her lips worked. “No.” She attempted to take Bistane’s hand and failed. He reached down and took it up. Her eyelids fluttered again, butterflies slowly settling into place, and she grew still. Very still.

  “She’s not bleeding. She’s not dead,” he repeated firmly.

  “What have you done to her?”

  “The Kobrir call it the king’s rest. It will maintain her. I hope.”

  Bistane looked at him slowly. “You don’t know.”

  “I know it’s all the chance she has. That was a killing blow from Tressandre.”

  “There’s an antidote?”

  “Yes. The Kobrir have it.”

  Bistane let out a very long breath. “If they will relinquish it willingly. If not, I will persuade them.” He smiled thinly before adding, “You got Alton.”

  “I know. Abayan Diort is on the way. Your numbers should be enough.”

  “You know that.”

  “I do.”

  Bistane looked distracted for a moment, looking at something beyond the two of them that Sevryn could not see, and then he nodded abruptly. “We can hold for Diort’s forces.”

  Sevryn got to his feet. Bistane stayed kneeling by Lara, but he shouted orders about that his men broke into ranks to obey. The noise of the battle returned to hearing, as if they had been locked away and Sevryn searched frantically for sight of Rivergrace. And found her walking toward him.

  Eyes of blue on blue and aquamarine and a touch of gray saddened as she looked at Lara. “It is all she feared.”

  He defended himself. “No. She’s bound into a coma. She can awaken. I didn’t kill her.”

  “The Kobrir dressed and armed you.”

  “But they don’t command me.”

  Her mouth turned down at the corner as she heard his lie. He started toward her, but she put her hand up.

  Grace turned halfway and saw Alton’s cramped and half-burned form on the ground, his head nearly severed from his neck. She frowned. “Did I. . . .”

  “No. No, that fire came from Lara. From Tranta’s Sentinel, I believe.”

  Grace knelt beside her queen, her friend, her enemy and gently smoothed the platinum-streaked hair from Lariel’s face. “Bits of the Jewel of Tomarq, I would guess, striking at an enemy.” She tapped one ruby-faceted gem that had not burned out at the curve of Lara’s throat. “Take care of her, Bistane.”

  “I will.”

  She then put her hand out to Sevryn. “Aderro.” They entwined fingers as he pulled her back to her feet. He could feel the cage that enclosed her, as fine as spidersilk and as corrupt as Cerat, tethered souls caught and woven in a cold hell about her. His heartbeat leaped in his throat at the Demon touch. He recoiled, and she felt it.

  “It’s not your darkness that turns me away, but my own,” she said softly.

  “Grace . . .”

  She shook her head quickly. “I follow my father,” she said and then no more, lowering her gaze, her soft expression marred by guilt and shame. She pulled her hand from his and ran.

  A bloody path led to the river and she returned to follow it, her wall of flames burning lower but still as hot. Narskap met her, taking her by
the elbows, ignoring Sevryn in her wake.

  “Remember this,” he said. “Cerat is never diminished no matter how many times he is divided.”

  Rivergrace looked at him in suspicion. “What are you telling me?”

  “What I must. He lives to corrupt. Innocence is the most perfect bait to catch him. He is most powerful whole.” Narskap shook her lightly. “Will you remember?”

  “You speak in riddles.”

  “You’ll understand if you remember.”

  Sevryn closed with them, put his hand on Narskap’s bony shoulder and spun him away.

  “Leave her be,” Sevryn growled. “Leave her be and back away!”

  “I gave her life,” Narskap said, brittle eyes burning into his. “I gave her death.” With a move Sevryn did not see coming, with a Demon-given speed, he struck and Sevryn fell to the ground in a swell of black-and-red-driven pain. Rolling in half-blind agony, he watched in a blur as Narskap swept Rivergrace off her feet and carried her away.

  “BRING HER TO ME.” Quendius raised his chin in victory.

  “No. You have what you need.” Narskap stepped into the lapping waters of the Andredia and hauled the nearest raft onto the bank. He made the mistake of turning his back on Quendius as he did. “All the dead and dying you could wish for are here.” He motioned to Rivergrace. “Step aboard.”

  “All I need but not all I want.”

  The weaponmaker caught Narskap by the throat. Rivergrace jolted forward a step and stopped as her father’s eyes met hers, stern in their warning not to interfere. She smothered her anger in her throat and stayed. Waves of the Andredia danced close to her, the water agitated in white-and-crimson-dashed foam.

  Quendius shook him like a hunting dog with prey gripped in its jaws. “Your service is no longer required. I know what it is you’ve done and how to do it. If I need assistance, she will grant it to me.” He began to squeeze, his charcoal skin turning white about his heavy, scarred knuckles, hands closing inexorably about Narskap’s neck. Rivergrace could feel the web of life threads that she had helped her father weave shake about her, a gossamer cage of lives held between life and death. They quivered and breathed, shook and billowed, and she knotted her hands to keep from losing them as they wore torn from their anchoring to Narskap. Narskap’s breath escaped from his throat like steam from a whistling, fretting kettle as Quendius squeezed tighter and the sound turned to smothered grunts. He kicked futilely as Quendius hiked him in the air, but he looked at Rivergrace, unwaveringly, and she thought she saw a kind of resigned peace in his eyes.

  “Before you leave, I’ll take this, however.” Quendius reached his other hand into Narskap’s chest, pushing through skin and into the rib cage. Into muscle and bone, a great scarred hand that had forged weapons alongside Narskap for decades, its thick fingers sent rummaging past the heart until he found what it was he desired: the burning coal that was Cerat buried deep within Narskap’s body.

  Narskap wriggled and groaned as Quendius ripped the essence free. His gaze pulled from Rivergrace as Quendius tore him apart and held the chunk of liquefying Demon matter high. He held it triumphantly for a moment and then swallowed it whole, sparks and streams of fiery molten rock cascading between his fingers and then his lips as he did. He smacked his mouth in satisfaction and opened it to laugh. The Demon Cerat roared triumphantly from the depths of Quendius’ throat and out his mouth.

  For a moment it seemed as if his body would reject the substance. He quaked and bent over, retching. His body quaked as he pulled himself back into a stand and when he opened his mouth, Quendius howled a second time. A fiery shower issued as he did, sizzling and dancing to nothingness about his face and Grace held her breath, watching Narskap broken open and dying as he dangled from the fist that held him up. But that moment passed and Quendius stayed on his feet. He shook Narskap’s limp body a last time before dropping it on the ground, ignoring the mouth that opened and made a last, pleading sound that never finished.

  Narskap fell into a collapsed lump of rags, mummified skin and bones, nothing even remotely like what had been a living man left to him. His ruins shuddered into quiet.

  Quendius tapped his chest and a hundred or more threads shimmered as though they were strings on an instrument and he had plucked them. Rivergrace shook her head, her own ties to the army of Undead struck, and thrumming across her agonized self. She hugged herself close protectively, praying that Quendius could not see that she had the souls he claimed also anchored to her.

  Overhead, the skies split. Her ears roared with the thunder and pressure of the storm lowering to rage over the battlefield. She looked up at a widening window into another world. Daravan had lost his hold on reality, and the worlds clashed together again. She could feel Kerith weaken as the lost Vaelinar world opened upon them. A Way that no one should ever have created gaped open.

  Quendius smiled widely.

  “You will come with me.”

  He turned and crossed the river, his Undead army at his heels, each man picking up a Vaelinar body and carrying it with him, multiplying his numbers with every step. He didn’t look back as if assured she would follow. Rivergrace darted out, knowing she had to stop him even as she felt compelled to trail him. She sought flame in her body and found she’d gone cold, tired, burnt out. She had nothing left to seek there, and although water answered in its stead, she knew that water would not stop him, not unless she could mount a flood so high and furious it would drown all of them. She dropped her hands in defeat.

  Her body trembled as she took an unwilling step after.

  “You won’t go with him.”

  She looked over her shoulder. “I have to.”

  “I’ll hold you.” He came from behind her, breathless, covered in blood and shadow. He would not let her leave him behind. Sevryn put his arm about her waist. His Kobrir cloth had slipped from his head. Blood trickled down from his scalp, and he leaned as much upon her for support as she upon him.

  “Anchor me,” she whispered to him.

  “Always.”

  “I don’t want to go with Quendius.”

  “Then you won’t. Not like this.” Sevryn’s breath warmed the tip of her ear, his face closing to touch her cheek. She could feel her ties stretching tighter and tighter. The Andredia whipped up in agitation as black clouds swooped in like birds of prey bearing down on them. She could smell brine on the forest air. She thought, if she stood firm enough, she could stand with Sevryn forever.

  Shadows appeared upon shadows. The very firmament of the grove and meadow seemed to ripple as if it were nothing but a painted page that the wind now tossed and turned and prepared to rip apart. The landscape seemed to stretch. The wind became visible as a rippling purple ribbon that both caressed and tore at the physical world. Rivergrace put her hand on Sevryn’s shoulder. “Gods help us. Someone is securing that Way.”

  “Securing it.”

  “Creating it, and then weaving it permanently into Kerith. It wasn’t created here, but it’s being forced from the other side. Sevryn, we can’t let that happen. It feels wrong.”

  “It could destroy Kerith. Or not. But I can feel its power, and its pull.” He paused.

  “That’s what Quendius is waiting for, that open Gate.”

  “It has to be Daravan.”

  She’d seen it at Calcort when he’d barely sensed it, Daravan’s manipulation of a Way, but now his skin prickled as if a thousand fire thorns had descended upon him. He couldn’t doubt her. He flung his arm across her. “Stay with me.”

  “Sevryn, Quendius tows me after him. Sooner or later, I will follow. This cage of souls binds me. If I let them go, they will never have a chance to live or die as meant.”

  “They’re mercenaries. Murderers.”

  “They’re people. Not all are killers. Not all have a choice.”

  He heard it in her voice, that compassion for li
fe. “Let them go. Let them be on Quendius.”

  “I can’t. I helped weave their cage. You have to understand—I’m the monster, not them.”

  “Don’t talk like that.” But he knew what she meant, instinctively, because he thought of himself that way. A weapon forged and then honed by the Kobrir. He couldn’t let himself be used, but knew inevitably that it would happen. “I’m holding you, not just because you asked, but because I love you. I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you; even when I died, I knew you and that I loved you. Let me hold you.”

  He moved restlessly and tightened his arms about her, feeling the tension in her body, feeling the energy sizzling through the gold-and-black threads that covered her like a gossamer web. He could feel her growing cold. He could feel himself in the chill.

  An opening blinked and then grew wide. Where feathery evergreen should exist, a nothingness gaped out of which darkness escaped to wisp fleetingly across their view. The Way grew like a mouth, a maw of chaos that opened to swallow them down, or perhaps an Eye of Darkness peering into them, all of them. The wrongness of it sank into his very bones like a Kobrir venom.

  A tall man stood in the center and strode across, and disappeared like the shadow he commanded. He shouted an order to be followed, a Voice that rang with Vaelinar magic to Sevryn’s ear. It could only have come from Daravan, the man who’d given Sevryn that self-same Talent among others. A voice he’d never heard raised before, never heard in more than speaking tones, and now realized it had been uttering orders in whispers, subverting, pushing, shaping that which should never have been shaped, sculpting Fate as Daravan and Daravan alone wished it, and using the Kobrir to bring to death those who could hear and disobey.

  Sevryn cursed in a low hiss.

  Rivergrace turned her face toward his. “What is it?”

  “The bastard is no hero who saved us all at Ashenbrook, who took his brother’s brother and swept up the Raymy in a tide.” Sevryn spat to the other side. “He retreated from forces who would have devastated his. He saved the Raymy, not us . . . and now he’s brought them back to strike at the heart of Larandaril.”