An Assassin's Blade: The Complete Trilogy

by Justin DePaoli

  With no end in sight to the reaped still coming through the tear, I pulled one reaped in particular from the crowd. He was the first one to say Occrum’s name. Seemed stronger than the rest, more cognizant of the situation. Less likely to chew on his own rotting flesh.

  “I want you to scout that fortress. Tell me what Occrum is doing. What he has at his disposal. His defenses. His weapons. Everything. Do not get caught. Understand?”

  The reaped made a fist, struck his chest, and jogged up to the fortress. When the door refused to budge, he launched his frame of bone at it, striking it madly with a blur of pointed knees and elbows. The wood cracked and splintered and crunched under the blows. After punching a wide hole through it, he climbed through. Efficient and effective, that one. I would call him Bones.

  A few minutes later, he climbed back through. No worse for wear, so that was good. But I knew my enemy well, and so I defended against any foul play with an ebon sword in guard position. If Lysa had managed to rearrange a reaped’s thoughts, then Occrum could do the same, turning my new friend against me.

  Bones — a bland, but fitting name — began to rattle off his findings.

  I blinked. “What do you mean he isn’t there? He has to be there.”

  “Only… one man,” he said, voice uncoordinated and detached. “Searched entire fortress.”

  None of this made sense. “What’s he look like, the prisoner?”

  “Old with a gray beard. Bloody.”

  No… no, it couldn’t be. Rav couldn’t possibly be alive. This was a ploy to get me inside the fortress. Occrum was here somewhere, hiding.

  I counted out fifty or so reaped. “In that fortress, now. Turn the place upside down. Report what you find. Go!” I ordered another handful to patrol the perimeter of the island, starting on the left side, and another patrol to begin on the right side.

  They all returned to tell me the same thing: Occrum wasn’t there.

  Not there. The guy who was, by his own admission, more stationary than a fucking rock had up and left? I had to see this for myself.

  With a menagerie of corpses filing in behind and beside me, I entered Occrum’s fortress. I walked his stone floors. I put my hand against his stone walls. I spat on his torches that seemed to breathe an eternal fire. Half-expecting the bastard to leak through the walls like an apparition, my vigilant eyes scanned everything.

  To the room with the golden book. That’s where I went. Maybe Occrum had cloaked the room, masking it from Bones and company.

  The blueprint of this place may not have been imprinted in my mind, but you don’t forget where you were held prisoner. Up a set of steps, and another. Down a hallway, past an opening on the left and two on the right. Then stop, because you’ve arrived.

  The long reach of ebon arrived inside first. I stepped in behind, my faithful cadavers at my rear.

  Clouded eyes squinted at me through long strings of oily gray hair.

  “You,” I said, waving my sword at him, “are supposed to be dead.”

  His dry, cracked lips parted. His mouth held that position for a while before he finally said, “It’s too bad… isn’t it?”

  “Where’s your brother?”

  Rav rolled his head onto his bare shoulder stained with blood. He peered up at the army of reaped behind me, then swallowed. His eyes oscillated. Looked as though they were swimming into a vortex, about to be sucked into oblivion.

  Wrought iron shackled his ankles together. A chain leading from the clasps looped around the stubby legs of a steel chair, then connected to an iron ring fastened to the wall. Some more chains were wound around his waist, chest, and arms.

  “Where is he?” I asked again.

  “Gone,” he croaked.

  “And the book?”

  “Gone.”

  I looked at the wall where the book used to stand, its pages shimmering with gold from the ceiling to the floor. It sure seemed like one hell of a feat to move something like that.

  Rav gasped. “Wa…ter. Water, please.”

  I crouched before the old man, put my hand on his knee. “You tell me where your brother’s gone off to, and I’ll see about getting you some refreshments.”

  He tried to swallow, but as if he’d taken a gulp of dry sand, he retched, tongue flailing out his mouth. “Please,” he begged, his voice hoarse.

  “Where do you propose I find this water?”

  “Puddle,” Bones said.

  “What?”

  “Waterrrr. High.” He pointed a finger toward the ceiling.

  “Wa—” Rav fought to get the word out. “Water… reclamation.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Get our friend here some water.”

  Bones departed for the apparent water reclamation project Occrum had going on here.

  “How’s your spine?” I asked, patting the back of the chair. Rav winced. “It’s a shame Lysa hadn’t finished you off, you fucking traitor. She’s dead now, because you and your brother wanted to play God.” I stood up, finding my hand tightening into a fist and an unrelenting rage gripping me. “You fucking cunt!” I screamed, bashing my knuckles into his wrinkly face so hard I felt his goddamn bones crunch.

  His teeth scraped my knuckles, bloodying them up. They’d be a lot worse than bloodied by the time I was finished with him.

  I grabbed the snake by his greasy hair and threw his head back against the wall. “You’ll tell me everything I want to know, or I’ll make these the worst moments of your five hundred years of living.” I drew a circle around his eye with the tip of my sword. “And I’ll start by dissecting you.”

  A squeak. That was all that came out of that worthless bastard’s mouth. Bones returned with a bucket of water. I told Rav to open wide, then poured it on his face, forcing him to lap it up like a dog.

  “There,” I said. “You got some water. You’ll get some more if you cooperate. Where is your brother?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I clicked my tongue. “Mm. I should inform you that if you choose not to cooperate, you’ll receive ebon instead of water. So, let’s try again. Where is your brother?”

  “I swear!” Rav said. “I don’t know! He left here days ago. Days ago!”

  Now there was the Rav I knew. Full of piss and sunshine. “He sits in his fortress for, what, five-hundred-some years? And all of a sudden, he takes off? Just like that?”

  His leg quivered, and the other seized momentarily. “Promise me something,” he said. “Only one promise. I must have it, and I’ll tell you everything. Everything!”

  “Fine. Let’s hear it.”

  He put his face forward, blew his grizzly hair out of his eyes. I had a feeling he’d have steepled his hands and bent the knee if he was able. “Send me to the beyond. End this life of mine, I beg.”

  “Huh. That’s a strange request, given I’ve heard naughty things in Amortis await those who have been naughty boys in the realm of the living.”

  “You have no idea what my brother has done to me. The horrors I hear and see and feel and—”

  “I don’t care what he’s done. It’s not enough as far as I’m concerned. You chart me a course to your brother, and I’ll gladly stab you right through your fucking skull.”

  “Occrum is a thief, and the owner he stole from wants his book back.”

  The cold enclosure of stone chilled me from the inside out as I heard those words.

  I circled the dimly lit room, kicking dust along the floor. Fourth or so time of going around and around, I stopped and looked at the reaped. Then at Rav. Then at the reaped. Connections were made. Very unsettling connections.

  “Did you know,” Rav said, “that gods walk this world?” I hadn’t known that. But I did have a rather bad feeling I’d met one. “More water, please.” After having the bucket emptied on his face, Rav belched. “I feel much better.”

  “Don’t let your newfound satiety stop your talking. Keep the secrets coming.”

  “A promise is a promise,” he said. “So long as
you keep yours. The owner of the book has sniffed my brother out. It appears Occrum left a trail leading directly here when he last visited the world below.”

  The world below? What kind of term was that? “You mean Mizridahl? And Lith?”

  “Yes, among other locations.”

  “What business did he have there?”

  “The molding of the conjurers. He saw to their work himself. Risky business, and he knew it, but Ripheneal hadn’t been close to his heels in generations. He thought he could slip by.”

  Sadly — or perhaps terrifyingly — my assumption that I’d met a god had proven to be correct. Vayle was right, after all. Conjurers, phoenixes, madmen with magical hear-all, see-all books, and now a fucking god. This had to be the end. I’d finally found the bottom of the well.

  “I told him to that leave that blasted book here,” Rav said. “Told him I’d watch after it. But the thing drove him mad. Didn’t trust a soul alone with it. And he brought it along with him, down there, and this thing — this book — it oozes power, see? Oozes a scent which its owner can sense. Oh, and he sensed it. Took him a while, but he chopped at the weeds and the vines and all the thick undergrowth, and there he had himself a trail to follow.

  “I foresaw it all. And I planned my escape, because I’d be implicated too if Ripheneal found me here with my brother. I had another place to go, to take the book — a place where Ripheneal wouldn’t find it. I’d influence the whole of creation just as my brother had done, only I’d do it better.”

  I almost made mention of how Lysa had thrown a kink into those plans — one might even say into the spine of those plans — but thought better of it. Needed to keep him talking, and insults could have hindered that.

  “Occrum said his intention to eradicate life was to keep his little book safe and sound,” I began, “out of the hands of tyrants. Let’s pretend that’s true and not some narcissistic nonsense. If a god had trouble finding this place, what hope could a bunch of wayward kings and peasants have?”

  “Unless they learn to fly, none whatsoever. It was never about that, truthfully. Those are the lies he tells to keep his reapers in line and working for the good cause, and the lies I handed off to you. Extinction served only one purpose: to remove Ripheneal from this world. Then, my brother would have free rein to go wherever he wished. And likewise do whatever he wished. Perhaps he did not know how to create new life, but he could have learned. He could have… become a god.”

  “Seems he created the conjurers just fine.”

  Rav coughed. “Create… no. Molded. They existed before, see. It’s all up here.” He tapped a finger to his head. “The book showed my brother the information needed to teach, to mold a new generation of conjurers.”

  Rav could well have been misleading me, for one reason or another. But in most cases of deception, there exist morsels of truth. It seemed a waste not to seek them out.

  “I’ll play along,” I said. “Let’s say he did create the conjurers, that this is all true.”

  “It is.”

  “Right. Well, you know what question’s going to follow. Why? Seems to me the conjurers were one colossal waste of time and money. Reaped certainly seem more efficient in eliminating wide swaths of life than conjurers.”

  Rav winced as he sat forward in his chair, frail hands gripping the armrests. “My brother… he wants to create, see? He wants to be god. But he can’t, yes? The power is beyond him, for now. He could influence without repercussion, however, if the conjurers took your world. He’d still have beings with which to play, who he could direct, order, breed…”

  “Till Ripheneal swatted him away, yeah?”

  “If the creations are removed, then so too will be the creator. Trust me; I’ve read the words.”

  “Ripheneal’s… the creator?”

  Rav grinned. “If the creations are removed, then so too will be the creator. After all, my boy, if you infuse yourself in something and it dies, would the same not happen to you? My brother thought he would weaken him by eliminating all life except conjurers. They were your last hope for humanity. But you stopped them. You stopped his plan, and now you face annihilation. Indeed perhaps my brother does not know the recipe for creation, but I do not doubt in due time he will find it. Especially without a god pursuing him.”

  Simplicity and directness had taken a stroll into abstract territory now, pockmarked with riddles and other nonsense. Things I didn’t have time for.

  “So this Ripheneal chap is a god. Why doesn’t he put his big boy shoes on and, you know, call down a cataclysm or some godly shit to obliterate the reaped?”

  “There are boundaries, free will among them. Don’t get too caught up in the god business. High and mighties create in the beginning, but all they do after is observe. ’Less you steal from them, then they get downright personal.” Rav cackled. He clearly regretted that decision as a pained look twisted his face. “But to involve another of his creations? No. Laws against that and all.”

  Funny. It seemed Ripheneal was all too happy to lend a hand in taking out Occrum, what with ten thousand reaped at my side. Maybe there was a technicality with that, given it was only an offer, and I had to make the ultimate decision.

  “Where’d your brother flee to?” I asked.

  “I’ve told you. I don’t know. But given his life is tied to his plan of world extinction…”

  “Somewhere that guarantees its success,” I said.

  “Indeed.”

  Discomfort tightened my chest. The world’s a big place, so I’d been privy to learning. By that notion, Occrum could have been anywhere. But understand a man’s motivations and you can expose his place of refuge. Occrum wanted the populace — every man, woman and child — gone from this world. The only threat to his strategy lie in Lith. He had to have known his reapers hadn’t found Serith and Nilly. He was going there to find them himself.

  Vayle, I thought. She was walking right into it.

  “I’ve got to get off this island, and you’re going to help me,” I said. “Conjure me a phoenix. And tell me which way Lith is. Then… I’ll put you out of your misery.”

  Rav sat back tall in the chair. “You’ll want to go downward. We’re rather high in the air at the moment. Hopefully not too high for the birdies to fly past. Release me, and I’ll conjure you whatever I can.”

  I straightened my sword at his face. “No funny business. Understand?”

  “I wouldn’t think of it.” He grinned. He wouldn’t be grinning for long.

  I cut away his chains. He tried to stand and promptly fell in a heap, his thin, concave face kissing the unforgiving stone.

  “Fuck, you better not be dead after all this,” I said, crouching down and inspecting his head.

  He made some noises. I picked him up, threw his bony frame over my shoulder and trudged past the reaped. Or rather, into the reaped, since their numbers were never-ending. Out of the fortress I walked, to the edge of the island, where I put the old man down. He braced himself against me, his veiny legs wobbly and as brittle as autumn leaves.

  Rav ogled at the fog, seemingly lost in its thick, smoky curls. A haze swept across his lenses, muddying the green of his eyes. That lost, murky stare — I’d seen it before in men who were clinging to life. Or rather, clinging to death.

  I was about to shrug him off, wake him up from whatever stasis had claimed him, but then… well, he went fucking mad. Grunting noises came from his mouth, and his lips trembled. Snot dripped from his nose, and his head crashed against my shoulder.

  And he said this: “Barghagh! Barghagh!” And he gasped, clutched his temple and flung himself backward, where he fell to the ground. The back of his skull sunk into the sand.

  Bones looked at him, alarmed.

  From behind me, a whoosh. And another. Flames glided through the fog, boiling the mist into nothingness. The phoenix came to a rest beside me, its fiery plumes hissing.

  “Is he dead?” I asked Bones.

  The reaped put an ear to Rav�
�s mouth. “No.”

  “Good. Take a few of your friends here and bring him to Silma of Crokdaw Village. You know where that is?”

  “Yessss.”

  “Tell her he’s the brother of Occrum, creator of the reapers. Mention that it’s a gift from Astul. Oh, and give Taryl this.” I unsheathed an ebon dagger. “He’s been good to me, and I think he’ll enjoy it. Everyone else, go back through the tear and wait in the meadow.”

  The way I figured, better to make friends in Amortis than enemies. Especially if I had to spend eternity there, and eternity might be coming sooner rather than later. True enough that I’d promised Rav a quick death, but I’d also promised him he would greatly regret ever fucking me over. And I tend to keep first promises over seconds and thirds.

  “After you drop him off,” I said, “go to the Prim. Tell Lysa I sent you, and inform her of the others at the meadow. She’ll know what to do.”

  I bade my fleshless friends goodbye as they filtered into the cove, then turned to the phoenix. “Girl? Or boy?”

  The phoenix rolled its head.

  “Sorry, you’re right. Terrible way to ask a yes-or-no question. Let’s try this again. Blink if you’re a girl, roll your head if you’re a boy.” The phoenix blinked. “Well, girl, we’ve got ourselves the journey of a lifetime to embark on. Let’s hope we have another after this, huh?”

  I stuffed my hand inside the pocket where I’d always kept my secret vial. I’d be damned if Occrum brought me to the edge of death, only to take me as a reaper. The vial was still there, and so too was the folded piece of paper Lysa had given me. I’d forgotten about it.

  I pulled it out and read it again.

  In Vereumene, where I hated you.

  In Vereumene, where I last thought about you.

  Wonder what that poem would’ve been like, I thought. Probably some sappy thing abou—

  And that was the moment it all made sense.

  I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Lysa had taken refuge in Lith and so brazenly announced her location and intentions out there in the form of her thoughts, and in the written word. But now… now I understood.