…and I felt the Seed inside me begin to sing.
“You belong to Isahd!” He was rushing in at full speed, his extremities arcing back to strike.
I lifted my eyes to his monstrous visage. My hand tightened upon my sword, then loosened as I took a deep breath.
I dove to the side, trailing the sword behind me to cover my flank like a shield. I felt one of his boneless limbs impact the blade and heard a scream that brought dust from between the rocks of the walls. It hit me like a physical force and sent me sprawling. I slapped the ground with my free hand, absorbing some of the shock of the fall, and rolled into a crouch.
Finnegan screamed with pain as one severed tentacle flopped about like a landed fish. The blade of the Phantom Angel wept blue flame, the fire dancing about the steel, burning the dark corrosion from it in long streams. It burned like fire, but flowed like water off the blade, extinguishing as it fell to the grate below. The room was bathed in its blue glow as Finnegan shook the whole cistern again with an outraged roar.
Witch-fire, the inquisitor had called the sword Witch-fire.
His many limbs shot at me, one pinning me to the wall as I tried to escape. The Angel lashed out, and though it severed the limb like a torch parting Fog, its mate found my thigh. It was one of the mouthed eyes and I felt the teeth bite deep even as the bone snapped. I screamed, but somehow swatted at another weaponed limb as Finnegan yanked me from the wall and sent me through three of the braziers.
The intense pain, the horrible sound of sizzling fat, or the smell of burning flesh woke me, and after I was awake it didn’t matter which had done the job.
“Drop it!” He shrieked, picking me up and slamming me back first into the pile of coals, “Drop it!”
One tentacle pressed down into the center of my chest, pushing me back into the irregular pile of coals. I glanced to my right, and saw I did, indeed still have the Angel in my fist. As the fire seared the nerves in my back to death, I found the strength to use it.
Finnegan screamed again, spurting black blood across my chest as he recoiled with a truncated stump. It burned like acid and hissed on the coals with the sound of screaming children. I struggled to my feet as numbing waves flooded into my shoulder and sent the world into an unfocused blur. He picked me up by one ankle and drew a line of barbed tentacle teeth across my fist, finally separating me from my weapon.
He slammed me into the center of the room, across the body of Brogan, and a lifetime away from where the Phantom Angel fell. Finnegan leaned in close to my twitching form, opening his mouth and spreading the halo of small eyed tentacles wide to crush my head. “It is a shame you have become so corrupted from your true path, Simon.”
As he came close to me I pondered the dead raven on the grate near my face. Whatever reason Finnegan had feared it, as a sign, portent, enemy, or avatar, it was dead now. As he pulled himself completely upright and spread himself to blot out everything else, I came to a moment of absolute peace. Maybe that was the answer, the reason I had been spared so many ignoble deaths so that I might die here instead. This one bird had died and so spared my life and turned the tide for a moment. Perhaps history, perhaps Aelia, needed just one moment more.
I let the whole world go and lived from heartbeat to heartbeat, as serene and deadly as I had ever been in my life. I managed to say, “My name is Crow.”
Somewhere inside the Seed caught fire, burning into my soul past the pain and blood and tears. My eyes snapped open and burrowed into his twin dark pits as he made his lethal lunge for my face.
Left hand closed over the hilt of one of Brogan’s poisoned swords, waiting for me all this time at his dead feet. The blade came up, the point aimed unerringly at Finnegan’s heart. Finnegan, for all his power had forgotten he may have had numerous tentacles, he had only one body, only one heart, and his size meant he had weight. He simply could not veer, could not stop.
I heard a scream that sounded like a mountain itself had split asunder, then everything went black.
The world was in color, however it was bold, rich. The fir greens reached into me and pulled at me, the sparse clouds above no mere white, but a brilliant mother of pearl. The water of the steaming pool was warm, silken and wet like a virgin’s womb. The fir trees above captured my attention as they played around each other, the skeletal hands of dancing lovers. I lifted my head from the coal-black loam to stare at a cloaked angel across from me standing chest deep in the pond.
I had always known he was there.
Something began to scrape my heart with veins of frost as the figure raised his arms. Two hands carved of aged alabaster emerged from within the robe woven of webs and night. He held a regal raven in his right hand, carved of ebon wood so pitted and worm-eaten it seemed to wither in his grasp. His left held the finest sculpture I had ever beheld. Easily ransomed for a king’s crown, the gold and ruby blazed in the shape of a lidless eye. Sparkling facets caught fire in the too bright sun, lighting an unending fury within it. He seemed to be offering the statuettes to me, waiting with the patience of one who has no life left to trickle through the hourglass. Power. Secrets. Wealth.
Seeing the riches before me, I paused.
The eye was heavy, an anchor to me that would pull me into the mud at the bottom of the pool. I saw in the multifaceted gems along it’s back a thousand different fates for me, but all of them were in the end the same. I would end my life empty, soulless and alone. I began to drink in the deep rich, ebon wood of the Raven. It was not worm eaten, but the was made to look so from the whorls of the wood’s roiling grain. Each of the paths in the wood was a mystery, a new path, another quest, another deed, another hope. Wisdom.
I solemnly accepted the raven to my breast.
I opened my eyes and there was Finnegan’s book, lying dejected under the ruins of the desk.
17
The Most
Powerful Weapon
The last grand feast had begun.
A bonfire erupted from the fire pit, driving spears of light into every corner and heat into every soul. The dwarves were in full residence, seated in places of honor with beards perfectly plaited and resplendent in gilded armor of black dwarvish steel. Spreading from them in ripples of descending blueness of blood were the nobles of the Kingdom of Noria, the Scions of Ryan.
Every fine breast was covered in silk, lace, or velvet. Gold and silver thread surrounded pearls or jewels like the corona of frosty moons captured on dresses and doublets of the great and the good. Candelabras of precious metals roared like trees afire over plains of silver piled high with hills of food fitting every description.
The band played sweetly and quietly in the corner, filling the air with beautiful notes. If the nobles noticed the disturbances at the main gate, they gave no sign. Conversation twittered from table to table, as each attempted to look most cultured, most civilized in front of the dwarves at the head table. Even when the sounds of shouts and screams became hints of words, the most powerful people in the kingdom ate on. Even when the cries gathered enough presence to cause all the bodyguards in the room to tense visibly, they ignored the stray cries begging for attention.
It wasn’t until the cries resolved into words that a few of the highest born glanced at one another uncomfortably. There had been too much blood and too many bodies surrounding this venture for them to totally discount that they might be next. They glanced upwards, to the comforting shadows of the guards on the roof of the great hall, and to the walls, where up to ten soldiers from each entourage stood ready. But the comfort was fleeting, for the sounds got louder, and cries resolved into screams. The screams became closer, and then stopped suddenly.
The conversation inside the hall limped on for several more seconds until a resounding strike on the huge double doors echoed from corner to corner. Another strike, and another. Then the latch was finally tripped, and the thick oak doors were pushed open revealing my disheveled form to the room.
Luxuriously cared for, the doors did not creak, whic
h was too bad. It would have made a fantastic entrance. Still, I was bloody, bruised, limping, and shivering slightly either from blood loss or from some contagion. Even Brogan’s cloak, pulled closely, could not warm me nor bring color to my pallid face. My eyes were sunken and the intense pain of my severely burnt back turned my mouth into a constant rictus grin. I stumbled in, two sacks gripped in one defiant fist, sword hanging from the other- tip dejectedly scraping along the ground.
I paused a few steps into the Hall, more from exhaustion than design, and caught Aelia’s eyes. Gelia was tense beside her, but Aelia was stricken. I glanced over my shoulder and saw myself in a large silver mirror hung upon the marble wall. I had finally become the sunken eyed demon that had hunted me across the kingdom.
Others probably found their voices first, but even though the Dwarves were given the place of honor at the high table, this was still Horatio’s house, so it was he that finally managed to stand as the stunned silence was broken by a pattering of doubtful murmurs. His head whipped around to note that nobody was chasing me into the hall, tackling, beating, or arresting me. It was an obvious disappointment. Every feasting blueblood had ten men in attendance, and apparently that included Horatio. He gave one of them a meaningful look, and they started toward me from their position-comically- by the door to the kitchens. Only then did he address me with, “What is the meaning of this?”
Maybe he had seen too many plays, maybe the disease addled bards use that line so often is it is borne out by use in reality. Still, I sighed for want of original banter, “Your Grand Grace, since she has come to your home, Her Grand Grace Aelia Conaill has been beset by assassins. I-”
“Yes! I had noticed the plague of murderers that had assailed our house since your arrival, peasant.” And down to my bones, I know that bastard had planned this speech. “The shadow of Death Himself has passed too close to our door. Or perhaps an agent of something more sinister. I had heard that you were banished from the service of our sweet cousin. I notice no deaths have stained our walls since.”
I had become predictable, and he had prepared for my next grand entrance into one of his feasts. He had spun a tale to cast the barest shadow of a doubt upon me. As a peasant, that was more than enough to doom me to execution. I looked over to Aelia and tears were already streaming down her face, utensils trembling in her hands. The soldiers were almost upon me, so it was time to stop being polite.
“Agreed. Thomorgon has hovered above this castle. He has watched carefully.” The room was shocked that I would name the God here. They did not move, but they recoiled from me. The soldiers marched more intently as I continued, “But it is Isahd that has caused these miseries.”
That was enough to stop even the guards as the shock deepened and became sharp. Even the most powerful in the country did not trifle with the God of Murder. Horatio sputtered “You are mad, mad to tempt such powers with intemperate words.”
“I do not fear Isahd.” I lied. “For I have penetrated his stronghold, I have faced his champions, and I have destroyed them.”
Horatio forced a laugh, which dragged a half a dozen more from the mouths of lackeys and lickspittles “You, lowly creature? Alone? You discovered the home of the assassins, danced into their lair, and killed them all? Whispers at court have said you were formidable, but now I see you are simply an insane braggart.” More laughter that he started and encouraged with theatrical gestures. “How could you find a nest of vipers that the whole body of law could not?”
And, as always, the truth popped out of me at the worst possible time, “Perhaps because I looked.”
And suddenly I understood, for who had means to pay the assassins but the rich? Who else had the means to hunt them down? They were like the barbarians of the Ridge Mountains. There was no laughter anymore. Horatio inflated with wounded dignity, finding firm footing directly upon his own self worth, “Your words are poisonous, and in our mercy, we should lock you away so your madness, your lies do not affect others.”
And the soldiers started toward me again, so I reached into the bloody bag.
“How unfortunate for you that I have proof.” And I pulled forth the letter of safe package that had gotten me past every gate and guard up until now. It was Finnegan’s head. The skin was pulled tight over nearly skeletal features. The cluster of stalks erupting from his mouth sat limp and dead, crowning eyes open, dead, and unseeing. Screams shattered against the ceiling, and two dozen nobles and half as many guards were immediately ill. Making frantic signs to ward off evil, the guards backed away, so I took the opportunity to limp forward.
Questions were flying in all directions, but one shrill cry rose above the background noise, “What is that hellish thing?”
I stumbled, Finnegan’s disembodied head rocking in my hand as I reached the spot directly in front of Horatio and- as I had for his supposedly traitorous captain- placed the head in front of him. “It is the Master of Assassins, thrall of Isahd.”
The imagery was clear to all assembled and the room erupted in noise. Horatio erupted, “Silence! I will not have my Great and Grand Noble name sullied by this commoner! I demand this peasant be flogged until dead! I demand he be drawn and quartered! I demand trial by combat immediately!”
I would be unlikely to be anyone’s champion at the moment, or even to be able to act as my own. I turned from him, as deadly an insult as a commoner can give a noble, when a guard pounced on me from behind. I could not fight back, could not even think as my broken, poorly splinted, thigh, cracked ribs, and the many burns created a chorus that blotted out the whole world. Even so, I could guess the guard had only one eye as he kicked me twice and saluted his Grand Duke, “Sir! Lieutenant Palmer spoke to me about this man. He said while we were wrestling he saw an assassin’s mark on his back!”
Horatio grasped this lifeline with obscene haste, “Very good soldier! Disrobe him!”
I struggled to my feet as the guard I had robbed of his eye ripped Brogan’s cloak from my shoulders and let it flutter to the floor. The entire room erupted into gasps of horror.
I crushed my eyes shut, waiting for the order for my execution, but it never came. Then I felt the sting across my back from the clotted kisses of the coals I had been pressed into by Finnegan’s thoughtless wrath. The tattoo, my mark of geas and doom, must have been erased by the uncaring claws of fire. I slowly turned so everyone could see the wound upon me, coming full circle until facing the guard who’s face had drained as color. Then I stuck my thumb in his remaining eye. He screamed and thrashed on the ground as I limped painfully down the aisle. I could not stifle a smile.
I took another step around the great bonfire and people recoiled on all sides, as if I were tainted by the massive burn on my back, or even from touching the mutated head of the Master of Assassins. Maybe they were right, for my strength was ebbing fast and I sprawled into a table and had to blink away stars from my eyes. Almost without thinking, Right held himself out, straining across the dozen paces to where Aelia sat.
I could not see it but I felt her jump from her chair and, hiking up her skirts, ran to my side. Her smell smashed into me like an angry wave out of the sea, cracking walls inside and washing away a full day of misery. She cupped my dirty, bloody face in her hands and looked deeply into my eyes.
Still Horatio raged, “Cousin! I demand you renounce that villain and give him up to justice, lest you drag your family name into the vile pigpen of his baseless charges.”
I stared into Aelia’s eyes, glancing over her shoulder to the iron rod form of Roehm only momentarily before digging in the other sack. I pushed myself off of the table as I pulled the iron shod book from the other satchel. I held it aloft, “This is the book of the Master of Assassins, taken from his own banquet table. See how the eye of Isahd looks at you?”
The room erupted into more shock and outrage. I brought it down and flipped it open, paging frantically until I had come to one in particular. The entire hall swallowed all noise as I turned the pages to the Grand
Duchess and hooked my finger to the page. “See what is written there in the hand of The Master of Assassins?”
She read, and reread, her brow becoming troubled, then confused. She shook her head in denial and met my gaze. Aelia was a bright girl. She thought, well, what I had thought, and what everyone in the room thought: This was Finnegan’s list of contracts and payments. Yet as she read it contained no more than a list of ingredients and instructions. The Master of Assassins had a terrible hunger, and this book had contained his recipes for thousands of meals cooked by half dead servants.
I turned my eyes and she followed my focus all the way to where Horatio stood, sweating, pale, and lips twitching with half held back excuses. No amount of proof brought to this room or to any court by a commoner would ever chain his leg or free his head from his neck. Yet, there are more powerful things than the law, more unstoppable forces than evidence. Guilt is one of those.
Aelia finally understood. Understood and believed.
She glanced around the grand hall, shocked at the number of faces that were coming to understand the nature of the book and what must be written there. She looked at me, searching for some hint, some advice, but there was nothing I could say with an army on all sides every future hinging on our next words.
Gingery, daintily, Aelia reached forward and ripped out the page I had chosen, careful to note it was blank on the reverse side. She folded it and slipped the parchment into her bodice. Then she took the book from me and walked toward Horatio. There she stood, silence ringing around her like the second before a charge is called on the field of battle, still and serene as her cousin trembled on the edge of tears. Aelia turned back to the crowd and lifted the book again. Then without a word she fanned out the pages and dumped the thing, spine up, onto the bonfire.
It disappeared without ceremony, without a green flash, ominous laughter, or puff of smoke, it simply sat in the hottest part of the fire, crackling merrily as all bodies in the room but one began to breathe again.
I Know Not: The Legacy of Fox Crow Page 26