An Assassin's Blade: The Complete Trilogy

by Justin DePaoli

  The blacksmith slammed his empty mug onto the anvil and belched. “Ya look like you’ve never seen black glass before.”

  I laid my finger gently atop the edge of the blade, with no more pressure than a feather lying on your head. And the bastard thing still cut me. Felt as though my flesh was sucking it in, like sand swallowing water.

  I dropped the dagger onto the workbench and sucked at my finger. “I don’t wanna say it’s sharper than ebon… but that might be sharper than ebon. What the hell’s black glass?”

  “You really don’t know, huh? It’s lava. That’s all. Flows in the basins a little ways away. Well, all around, actually, but basins are prime gatherin’ spots. We go down there and chip away at it once it cools, break it into long, narrow shapes. Then you fix a hilt to it, and you got yourself a stabber. Or, better yet, a head-chopper-offer. It’s brittle, though. Smack it against steel and it’ll shatter, sometimes right into your eye; that’ll make ya blind, trust me.”

  That was disappointing to hear. I thought I’d finally come across something more valuable than ebon. The bite of a blade doesn’t much matter when it can’t hold up in a sword fight. Probably made for a hell of an arrow, though.

  “Is that all you have around here?” I asked. “No iron?”

  “None available. Only lava in Fragment Eight.” The smith jumped off the anvil and leaned in close. “Don’t worry ’bout it, the boys in Fragment One got us covered there. Black glass is our answer to the Wardens, not Arken’s armies.”

  I couldn’t ask for a better transition than that. “Seems you managed to befriend one of those Wardens.”

  He snorted and gave a shake of his head, one steeped in disbelief. “Yeah. Was rough from what I hear. Took nine conjurers to bring him over to our side. Nine! All worth it in my opinion. Protects our hideout well.”

  Well, fuck it all. Not what I wanted to hear. I’d guessed they’d lured a Warden over by way of a conjurer, but if it had taken nine to accomplish the task… then my plan of having Lysa reach into his mind and give him a little motivation to let us out of the city wouldn’t work.

  We’d have to find another way, because I wasn’t letting Lysa become a puppeteer for the rebellion’s war effort, no matter how justified their intentions were.

  After finishing my conversation with the blacksmith, I retired back to the tiny cottage Ellie had given my friends and me. There was one bed for Lysa, Vayle, Rovid and me. Some really extravagant living quarters there. We had stripped the sheets from the linen-stuffed mattress and placed them on the floor. That made for two more beds. Vayle would sleep with Lysa, while Rovid and I would take to the floor.

  “Where’s Lysa?” I asked.

  Vayle and Rovid shrugged.

  “You let her go off on her own?”

  Vayle looked up from the complex game of interlocking fingers she was playing. “She’s not a—”

  “A child,” I said. “I know, I know. Look, they want Lysa to be part of their rebellion.”

  “And if we say no?” Vayle asked.

  I flattened myself on the floor and reached under the bed, dragging the near-immovable tome of thoughts toward me. Beneath a bed isn’t exactly a great hiding place, but it was all I had to work with.

  “Then this,” I said, pulling and groaning, “ain’t comin’ with us. I’ve got my suspicions that we aren’t going anywhere, book or not, if we don’t agree to the terms. We need a way out, so put on your thinking caps and jolt your creativity to life. Also, fuck, I’m thirsty.”

  “You’re in luck,” Vayle said, tossing me a skin. “They’ve a well here, you know. You need only ask.”

  I gulped down some cool — well, warm, actually — water till my gut felt like it was going to burst, then I opened the book.

  “Er, what’re you doing?” Rovid asked.

  I scooted against the wall. “I’m reading.”

  “From that?”

  “Yeah. From this.”

  “Is that a good idea? I mean, it just… seems like you never wanted to do it before. Were always, you know, rather wary of opening it.”

  “It’s fine,” I reassured the reaper. “It’s only a bunch of words, right?”

  He shifted uncomfortably on the bed, opposite of Vayle.

  “Power,” I said, “has nothing to do with it, if that’s what you’re worried about. I want to know why Arken wants this book.”

  “What makes you think he wants it?”

  I gave both him and Vayle the spiel about the fragments, and how I had been conned. Then I begged them for some peace and quiet while I attempted to glean some useful information from this imposing, table-shattering book.

  The pages were as thin as dead autumn leaves, but as tough as steel. No amount of pulling or ripping would tear them. I wondered if even ebon could penetrate them.

  The top of each page followed this format:

  Name; Daughter of Mother & Father, Date of Birth.

  Sometimes Son would replace Daughter, depending on if the person in question was a girl or boy.

  After the person’s name came their thoughts. It was obvious early on that repeated thoughts and ideas had been purged, leaving behind only the original. Also, all names were alphabetically organized and all thoughts chronologically organized. Now if I could have only clicked my fingers and made the letters about ten times larger, I would’ve been set.

  Instead, I lay flat on my stomach, pushing my face almost into the book. The letters looked like the legs of ants that had been chopped into several pieces, then flayed lengthwise for good measure. My eyes hurt after fifteen minutes.

  After two hours, I wished Vayle would pick up the book and conked me over the head with it, putting me out of my misery. She, however, chose sleep over murder.

  It took me all of those two hours just to find Ripheneal’s entries. I figured if anyone who’d ever existed, gods included, had information on Arken, it’d be him.

  Lysa came in at some point. It was dark outside when she opened the door, and a mild air blew inside the cottage. We didn’t talk much, and before long she was asleep alongside Vayle. Rovid was sleeping a couple feet away from me, his snoring competing with the burble of a candle that danced its fiery jig beside me.

  Ripheneal’s thoughts were innumerable. Pages and pages, hundreds and thousands. I started by skimming the paragraphs with my finger, looking for keywords. I was about four hundred pages in when my eyes rebelled against me. They were dry and irritated, probably looked like I’d poured some raspberry jam in there. I marked my spot with the corner of my sheet, then stood up and shuffled my tired ass outside.

  The sky was as calm and beautiful as a spring night over Mizridahl. No clouds to bud in and take away the sparkle of the stars, no heavy blankets of smeared gray to halve the moon. It was pure and pristine, one endless stretch of blackness sprinkled with infinitesimally small winks of light.

  Was this the sky that hemmed in the living realm, or was it a sibling? And if it was the same, where did it begin? Here in the end of all things, or in the womb of creation?

  That thought gave me pause. Not because the answer to this philosophical question blew my mind, but because it sparked an idea.

  If Ripheneal created the book, how did Arken know about it? I couldn’t have known the answer to that question, but I figured that at the very least, he wouldn’t have had knowledge of its existence until much later on. His interest in the book would have likely concerned Ripheneal. Surely Ripheneal would’ve remedied that problem had it been a longstanding one. But if this was a recent development…

  I ducked back inside the cottage, burning vigor as fuel. I hadn’t eaten for almost ten hours. Hadn’t slept for going on a day now. Vigor was the only thing I had left. It burns quick, but damn does it burn it hot.

  I flipped through the pages, tossing back fifty at a time. Eventually I came to a new name on a new page, and I went back one.

  I will break the treaty myself if I must.

  That was his last thought.
The several hundred that came before concerned me, Occrum, the finding of the book, the four gods and goddesses — and way back there, ninety pages from the end, the name I was looking for appeared.

  Only a passing mention at first, but the turn of a page revealed more. The miniature letters looked so big now, each word screaming at me from the paper on which it had been recorded.

  …Who can walk between time if not a god or his servants? Ambushed for a second time… I should have listened to Polinia. I was foolish for believing Arken would ally himself with me. With us.

  .. Arken is still without the book. Why hasn’t his servant delivered it? Perhaps Polinia and I were wrong. A con from the inside? Laviel?

  .. Amortis is strange in appearance, and Arken did not appreciate my presence.

  .. His name is Occrum.

  .. Three hundred years and he still clings to the book as his own. The tears and his reapers are mildly concerning, but it’s all knowledge gleaned from my creations… and my tricks. Polinia urges intervention, but what if we’re wrong? What if he’s not a servant of Arken, but one of my own? Everything I’ve worked for will be for naught.

  .. Arken means to break the treaty. Intervention is inevitable, but I worry he has spies. He will put his plan into motion if I am too deliberate.

  .. Free will cannot be disturbed, but it can be pushed.

  The end. Well, not really the end, but the conclusion of the interesting bits. Ripheneal seemed to have misgivings about the presentation of Amortis. Was he unaware that it was a fragmented realm? Maybe it wasn’t always this way — something to ponder there. But there were more important matters that deserved my immediate attention. This treaty, for instance.

  Treaties are usually struck for three reasons: to forge alliances, to pacify a war effort, and to strengthen commerce. Now, I wasn’t exactly a curator of history between the living realm and Amortis, but the two probably didn’t engage in a whole lot of trade talks. Fairly safe to say that caravans didn’t travel between the realms, delivering wholesome food and silk bolts and sundry spices.

  This treaty, then, had been hammered out to ally Arken with Ripheneal, or… to stop the other from waging war. An alliance was possible, I guessed, but it didn’t seem very necessary. What would the point of it be?

  War, on the other hand… there’s always a reason for war. I needed to find out more about these fragments and their purposes.

  The troop of Lysa, Rovid and Vayle were still sound asleep. Catching some shut-eye seemed like a good idea, but one that my noisy mind likely wouldn’t listen to.

  I propped open the door and peeked out. The gentle blue of a newborn morning had washed away the stars. Some of the rebels were already working… if you counted gossip as part of their duties.

  I stepped partway out, then paused and looked back at the book lying on the floor, open. I should probably hide that.

  After pushing the book back under the bed — and groaning and possibly straining a muscle — and covering it with my sheet, I ambled along into the crispness of dawn.

  A jockey leaning against a wagon and taking a toke off a pipe nodded at me as I passed. Bakers were shoveling scraps of wood into their hearths, layering the bottom in preparation for the larger logs.

  A few moments later, the moistness and familiarity of the underground greeted me. It seemed odd that I hadn’t encountered a single guard, save the Warden, in my brief time here. Even stranger that none were present in the cave, where the rebellion’s apparent leader brooded.

  That brought up quite the interesting question. What kind of power did Elimori hold? She didn’t look much like a fighter. Maybe she had a dagger sheathed to her leg, but daggers aren’t known to deflect the sword of a hungry assassin. More than likely she was a conjurer.

  I would need to be more careful around her in the future. You can’t always tell when a hand reaches inside your mind and subtly reorganizes your thoughts till it’s too late. That insight had come courtesy of Amielle.

  Maybe that was why Ellie had been so revealing, telling me of fragments and of gods and of her plans to put them down. She wanted to gain my trust, whittle away my skepticism and premonitions. Then she could ease her way inside that skull of mine, flicking away those pesky independent thoughts, replacing my desires with hers.

  Or maybe my inherent paranoia was taking me to crazy places. It’d happened before.

  Expecting to find an empty room at the bottom of the cave — given the time of day — I was pleasantly surprised to see Elimori. Although the pleasantness was somewhat dimmed by the fact she wasn’t alone.

  She glimpsed me through the gap of raggedly dressed bandits standing before her, then returned her attention to their faces.

  It looked an impromptu meeting, like scouts who’d just returned from the field, relaying their findings to their commander.

  Because I’m nosy and quite interested in secrets, I tried listening in, but a cave does not make for an ideal or even acceptable eavesdropping spot, what with all the voices running into each other as they bounce off the walls and the ceiling. It was one large echo chamber.

  The bandits dispersed before too long, filing past me.

  “What are you,” I asked, “a bat? I never you see out of this cave.”

  Elimori sat on a crop of rock and washed a hand down her face. “Come to a decision, have you?”

  “Not quite. I’m after some answers, actually. Not that I haven’t thought about your proposal, but… er, are you sleeping?”

  Ellie’s head was down, her eyes closed. Her bob of black hair was wet and oily, clung to the sides of her gaunt cheeks.

  “We need her,” she said through gritted teeth.

  She snapped her head up, a fiendish scowl on her lips. As if she could see and was disappointed by her savage reflection in my face, she took a long, soothing blink that cleansed her expression.

  “Perfect conjurers are difficult to find. Most of them are imprisoned, serving Arken as slaves, or have had the rebelliousness beaten out of them. The addition of even one will go a long way in helping us return glory to the afterlife.” She put her elbows on her thighs and leaned forward, perching her chin atop clasped fingers. “It wasn’t always this way. Death was life transcended.”

  “Well,” I said, “by definition… yeah, I suppose so.”

  “Literally and figuratively. Imagine a world where fear does not exist. No fear of hunger or death or disease. Suppose you were born with the wrong last name. It doesn’t matter in death, because there are no lords or ladies or kings or elders or priests you must swear fealty to in order to receive your monthly allotment of broth.”

  Sounded like a nice place. Of course, there was one minor problem with it all. “But there is a god…”

  Ellie nodded solemnly. She was quiet for a while, chewing her cheek. Then she looked up and said, “The years I’ve spent running — there have been a lot of them — have never made me forget this world used to be good, and it can be again. I was here when it all began, when the rolling meadows churned and the flowers rotted and for as long as the sky stretched, all you could see were hideous mountains. The ugliest, grayest, most depressing mountains you’ve ever seen, filled — just filled — with iron. And I remember the taskmasters came then, and the forges were put down, and at the end of the day, you’d look at your hands and they’d be smeared with soot and black dust.

  “I remember running, till the meadows returned and I saw the trees again. I didn’t know then, but that was the newly created Fragment Two. It collapsed in the years to come, and I ran again, and again. Eventually I told myself I couldn’t run anymore. I had to fight. There were others like me, and we fought, and we lost, and we ran once more. But this time… this time the people of Amortis are ready to reclaim their home.”

  Even I — a jaded fuck — couldn’t help but be struck by a pinprick of inspiration, that little chill that scurries across your neck when you hear the underdog let out her one final rallying cry. But love ultimately over
powers inspiration.

  “Lysa means a lot to me, Ellie. More than you could possibly know.”

  “This is her fight,” she said, “not yours. Let her decide.”

  “Mm. Give me your plan. I want to hear how you’re going to end a god.”

  She stood and peeled away the oily strings of hair from her eyes. “Gods can bleed. I know, I’ve seen it happen. Anything that can bleed can die.”

  “I’m talking strategy. I figure you put a blade in Arken’s throat, he’ll keel over, but how do you intend on getting to that point?” Actually, I wasn’t certain what would happen if, say, an ebon dagger went into and through the throat of a god. Gods could die, sure, but… how? Death for Lysa, for Ellie, for all the others in Amortis, was only temporary. Was it the same for a god, or did their banishment from existence linger permanently?

  “Each fragment,” Ellie explained, “is specialized. And we have people in every fragment, siphoning its metals, food, herbs — anything that is found and made there.”

  Hmm. Not a bad strategy as far as preparation goes. But something wasn’t making sense here.

  “Break it down for me,” I said. “How’s Arken benefiting from the fragments? Look, I’m not suggesting the bastard isn’t some evildoing god, all right? But no one — god or not — plays the wicked bad guy for the hell of it.”

  “He has an army of his own. Most supplies seem to go toward bolstering that army. He wishes to use his militaristic force to deliver a final killing blow to the rebellion. Beyond that? I’m not sure.”

  And that was the point where I shat out my insides, guts and all. Felt that way, anyhow, like my stomach and liver and all the juicy organs took a plunge.

  I prefer clear evidence to inference, but you don’t get a lot of that in this world, so you have to take the hints and implications as they come, then arrange them into a believable map that leads you to a reasonable conclusion. With Ellie’s revelation, I had two pieces of information in my hands: Ripheneal’s suspicions that Arken was intent on breaking a treaty, and Arken’s construction of an army.