Isa found his mood infectious and lifting his spirits. He allowed the merriment of the crowd to flow through him, no longer trying to ward it off with his ghastly stares. “How’s the boy, Gaidal?” Isa asked.
“Good. Suppose you can find out all you want about him tonight. He’s her favorite subject.” Grimbald paused before a tent brimming with hundreds of honey cakes stacked in a neat pile. They were round and about an inch thick with an indentation for a glob of glistening honey.
“Help yourself, Captain!” The man in the tent gestured behind his mask of black beard.
“Sorry, can’t resist,” Grimbald said to Isa as he snatched two cakes in each hand, golden crumbs falling over his polished bracers.
Isa snickered. “Do you know why the Arch Wizard wishes to see me? Must be more than just a crime to send such a distinguished man to find me. And seems a bit coincidental… news must have traveled fast.”
Grimbald’s cheeks bulged with stuffed honey cakes, golden crumbs lining his lips, and he raised his finger for him to wait. He grabbed an ale from a laughing barmaid’s serving tray as she spun to avoid a child, unaware of his theft. He sucked down a few loud gulps and beckoned for them to march on. He started to speak, cleared his throat, then took another gulp, emptying the ale and placing it on a table beside a set of ten or so that had been set up on the street. “I’m not supposed to tell you anything, but I’ll give you something.”
A horse-drawn cart carrying ale and wine casks clambered down the street and they split apart to let it pass. Cheering erupted as it went by, someone shouting for the cart to make a drop here. Isa pressed himself against a table’s edge, the canvas tent flap tickling his neck. “Hey there, even Tower assassins gotta eat, don’t they?”
Isa turned to flash the man a scowl but found the merchant smiling so broadly he softened. The man had cheeks flushed from alcohol and his head topped with a few sprigs of absurdly long kinked hair. He offered him a skewer with peppers, onions, and a Shroomling sandwiched between them. The Shroomling had a broad mushroom shaped head, the face and body of a tiny humanoid. He almost started to deny it but felt his gut rumble with protest.
“That looks like blood…” The merchant squinted at him.
“Suppose murdering does make a man hungry,” Isa said flatly. The smile fell from the man’s face as Isa took his offered skewer from limp fingers. “Thank you.” Isa nodded, snickering at the man’s horrified eyes.
He made his way back to Grimbald and dragged the roasted pepper off the wooden skewer with his teeth, uncaring of the Shroomling juices running down his hand. What was a little fat when you were already covered in blood?
“Glad to see you’re partaking in the festivities. Knew you had some cheer in those bones.” Grimbald slapped him on the back, producing a thump in his chest.
“Said you had something for me?” Isa tore into the Shroomling’s belly and strings of cooked meat peeled up and slurped into his mouth.
Grimbald drew close and his face darkened. “Only telling you this because of what we did… what we did together against the Shadow. You’re right. There’s more to her request than your crimes. In fact, she doesn’t care about them. Nor do I. I can’t tell you any more.”
Isa’s balls tightened, dread a smoldering coal in his stomach. He took another bite to swallow it down. He would complete the Test of Stones, then discover the next test he’d be forced to face.
FOUR
The Test of Stones
“Only when you can subdue the enemy through intimidation and without bloodshed have you truly won.” – The diaries of Nyset Camfield
The twilight sky was cold, a smudge of orange and gray. The air was misty and the waking moon obscured by sheets of clouds. To the south, over the Tower’s bridge, New Breden was lit as bright as day with roaring bonfires, hundreds upon hundreds of torches, and twinkling lanterns. Occasionally, the wind dropped, and Isa thought he could hear the odd cry of joy on the air, even at this distance. He wondered for a moment what it would be like to have such a carefree existence, but reminded himself that strength had its costs, duty an oppressive weight.
The wall was in ruins after the Death Spawn had sieged the Tower, but was now immaculately rebuilt. Nyset had commissioned they be built at least a story higher and fitted with new defensive structures and grisly spikes. There were towers built upon the wall to extend the reach of archer’s arrows, and merlons were pierced with arrow slits. The masons made the bricks they used in the traditional manner, infused with silver flecks to give them a glorious shine when the sun struck its sides. The mix of old and new stones gave it a patchwork appearance.
The catacombs of the Tower where the Swiftshades, the Tower’s assassins, trained was an underground fortress. Isa started for the main gate along the eastern side of the Tower on the surface. Dark figures patrolled the wall, some with longbows and others with fireballs hovering ominously beside their shoulders, glowing orbs in the mist. A female Dragon wizard and an archer pair glanced down at him, their eye sockets blanketed in shadow. He gave them a nod, and they nodded back.
The entrance to the guild was a yawning archway in the wall, the portcullis raised to allow him entry. There were two Swiftshades on guard, both veterans with raised hoods showing only the pale flesh of the bottom half of their faces. Only bold veteran Armsman and drunk wizards dared to tread in their domain, if they knew where it was, and few did. More often than not, people who found the entrance were adventuring townsfolk, walking the craggy trails that curved around the eastern wall. One false step and it was a lethal drop into the jagged rocks poking up from the shore below.
“Master,” one of the guards said, both bowing with respect. They darted together, their midnight cloaks flapping and blocking the entrance. “We must be sure,” the same man said. Metamorphoses, shape-shifting Death Spawn, were thought long dead, but one could never be too cautious. The roar of crashing waves echoed up from the cliffs behind.
“Go ahead,” Isa said impatiently.
“The first chemical in the Test of Stones. What is its name and why is it used?”
“Leechwood Venom. It’s used to cull the weak from the strong,” he said with a snort.
The guards met each other’s eyes from under their hoods and shifted back against the sides of the entrance.
He didn’t acknowledge them as he swept past, steeling himself for the task to come. Torches softly burned along curving walls making an oval shaped room. A few apprentice Swiftshades scrubbed the walls and swept debris into neat piles, looking deferentially away. The clang of metal on metal rang out from one of the four adjacent hallways where blacksmiths forged their peculiar brand of weapons.
He remembered the first time he saw this place, thinking it an impossible maze of haunting statues and ghastly tapestries depicting the variety of ways to end a man’s life. He remembered seeing the sword racks, seeing the reflection of his face when his head was still full of thick hair. It felt just years ago, but it had been well over twenty by his count. He stopped counting some time ago, realizing it didn’t matter.
Marian, the recruit to be tested today, stood in the center of the room, his fierce eyes staring out into the void. He was of his sixteenth name year, lean and well muscled, bruised, battered, and scarred from years of practice. His hair was the color of amber and tied into a bun behind his head that highlighted a round face.
“Tell me what you know of the Swiftshades, Marian,” Isa instructed, leading him deeper into the catacombs.
Marian recited from his and Lorven’s teachings. Lorven was Isa’s second, prepared to take over his duties if he were to perish. “The Swiftshades are the Arch Wizard’s blade in the night. We smite the enemies of the Tower and the realm. We do what must be done when the weak cannot bloody their hands.”
“Not bad,” Isa nodded. “You have studied well. But is your body prepared?”
“Yes, Master,” Marian said with resolution in his voice. Marian was a good swordsman, proficient in the bow, needed some work w
ith the axe, and abysmal with the hammer, Isa’s weapon of choice. He was hot tempered at times and possessed a rare intellect seen in warriors.
Torches hissed as they walked deeper into the catacombs, the dim hallway ever winding. The stones making up the walls were thin and black as coal, thousands of them piled upon one another and badly crumbling. It was written that these catacombs were built for the old gods, here long before the Tower was a thought, long before the Dragon and the Phoenix touched man. They were only discovered five-thousand years ago, thought to be well over twenty-thousand years old.
A rivulet of stone dust hissed from the ceiling. His boots scraped on a pile of loose stones pushed into a neat pile, dashing them across the hall. He’d have to discipline the apprentices, he thought.
Isa could smell the boy’s sweat, taste his fear on the air. He wondered if Burtz had thought the same about him before his testing. Burtz had eventually left the Swiftshades to take his skills to the Armsman. How many boys had he led down these halls this year? It had to have been at least ten. “What is it that we do that others cannot?”
Marian audibly swallowed, and Isa strode on, giving him time to think about his answer. They turned left into a narrow hallway, now walking in single file. The air was dry as a furnace, leaving nostrils coated in layers of black dust. Isa stopped at the sparring chamber where the clacking of wooden axes and hammers rang out. The chamber had high vaulted ceilings, and arched windows ran along the very top edge to let in air and light. Two lads of about ten and thirteen were fighting in the middle of a circled group of a dozen students. Torches sputtered on the walls, casting flickering light over their grim figures. Gray light played on shuddering cobwebs at the top of the ceiling, showing that the roof had been forged by something hot enough to melt the stone, leaving it with a smooth texture.
The air cracked as another rapid exchange of slashing, hacking, and parrying rang out. When they got too close to the circled students, one of them would violently shove them back to the center, sending them tottering off balance. The older boy dropped low for a sweep and took a blow to the side of the head from his opponent’s wooden axe. He stumbled back and blood streamed from his temple, chest heaving and growling. He tried to right his footing before his opponent came, but he was relentless, taking a hammer blow to the gut, and an axe chop to the neck. The boy collapsed with a howl of pain, and the younger boy raised his boot to stomp on his head, his face twisted with fury. It was the womb of the Tower’s assassins.
“Stop!” Lorven called out, made the boy freeze, then shifted his eyes to Isa.
Isa nodded and started on, the students paying him no mind, else they’d feel the sting of his whip. They walked in silence for a few minutes, torches like demon’s eyes in the empty halls.
“You fight, you kill,” Marian finally answered, looking up at him.
Isa turned his narrowed eyes on the boy, saw his cheeks shining with sweat. “What else?”
“We kill,” he said again. “We storm the houses of kings, brave arrows, Death Spawn carnage, blades and Dragon fire. When cavalry charges against us, we do not flee. We stand. We cut our way through to the target the Tower deems to be destroyed. We fight when others run, we do the work that no one else could live with.”
“Why do we do these things?” Isa halted and looked down at him. He almost started to feel himself squirm, as if he were being asked the same questions for the first time. He felt a deep discomfort, a sense of wrongness he had learned to make his friend. He never had a choice in this profession. None of them did, raised here as orphans, abandoned by those who were supposed to love them. He never knew what he wanted to do with his life, but as he grew older, he learned that training killers wasn’t it. And so it went.
“We do it for the peace of the Realm,” Marian said.
Isa felt his heart thunder with violence, felt the blood rushing through his fingers.
“Yes, but for what else? The Midgaard Falcon fights for the realm, as do the wizards and the armsmen. But why are we different?”
Marian bit his lower lip. “We follow the Arch Wizard’s direct orders. We-we kill anyone without question. We do what must be done, no matter the consequences.”
“You sound a little unsure, Marian. Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
Lorven’s shouts carried down the hall. “Dimwitted bastard. What did I tell you about parrying high? Get that axe up, you dumb shit! You miss it again, and I’ll flog you until your bones are showing. Look at what I have to work with! Shit eating simpletons!”
“We murder children… women, new babes, old men. We do the dark work. We soil our hands with murders that cannot be washed clean,” Marian said with iron in his voice, his eyes wide and unblinking.
“Yes,” Isa nodded at him, gave his best-pleased smile, despite the dread clawing at his throat. He started on, his practiced footfalls hardly a whisper. “Some say when our bodies pass beyond this life, we do not enjoy the pleasures of the Shadow Realm like the souls of other men. Are you ready to make this sacrifice? To know only emptiness, maybe endless misery awaits your soul?”
They came upon a long corridor with ten doors on either side leading into the dormitories of the trainees. They were empty tombs now, all their former occupants in the sparring room. Isa peered between the small section of bars into a spartan room, saw a made bed with the sheets pulled tight to not show a single wrinkle.
“Yes, Master. I am ready!” Marian sounded as if he were still convincing himself.
“Once the testing is complete, you will be soul bound to the Swiftshades for the rest of your time in this world. You understand once it is done there is no turning back? Are you prepared for this?”
“Yes,” he said through gritted teeth.
Isa’s face was an emotionless mask. “You will never search for your parents once you are given leave, for, after the test, they will be dead to you. Do you understand?”
“The Swiftshades are my only family.”
“Good.” Isa nodded. More of Lorven’s indiscernible threats carried down the hall. The man did have an impressive voice. “Let’s get on with it then.”
They made their way to the end of the corridor, turned left at a T-intersection, passing a full-sized statue of a grimacing Cerumal, its eyes gleaming with amber gems. It was carved from a block of obsidian with white veins, the detail impeccably showing its striated muscles and jagged plate armor. It had been carved by one of his veterans who fought in the Shadow War.
Isa strode for the door at the dead-end and gave the heavy iron three hard knocks. He saw Marian stiffen out of the corner of his eye and the door swung open on shrieking hinges. Two cloaked figures stood motionless in a row behind a slab of gray slate, the third who opened the door joining them. The room was no bigger than a dormitory, just enough room for the slab and a few occupants. On the adjacent side of the slab was a small table with a spiraling tube of glass, tipped with a needle at one end and a wide opening at the other. Beside the spiraling mechanism were three flasks, one amber, another a faintly glowing green, and another a bright red swimming with black flecks.
“Is it ready?” Isa asked. The figure in the middle gave him a subtle nod. “Come,” Isa beckoned to Marian, who shuffled in with his thick eyebrows bunched up.
Isa turned to face the boy and put his hands on shoulders that felt all too small. It was likely the first gesture of affection the boy had ever received from his trainers, and it showed by the puzzlement on his face.
Isa started the speech he’d given tens of times now, each time still filling him with ice. “Your family didn’t want you. They didn’t want you to be a hero. Didn’t want you to honor your family name. They didn’t want to boast about you to their friends. To them, you were nothing. That’s why you’re here. They wanted to be rid of you, nothing but a piece of rubbish to them.”
Marian swallowed, and his lips formed a rigid line, his eyes staring fire back at Isa.
“But you’re one of us now, we’re your
new family, your new brothers. You will kill in the name of the Tower, in the name of the Arch Wizard until you breathe your last. Nothing else in your life will matter from this point on. You will have no other concerns. No marks. No women. No friends but the friendships you make with your other guild mates. Today, all of your dreams, all your ambitions go to die.”
One of the Swiftshades shifted, his boots scraping against the floor and echoing like a scream in the quiet.
“Do you accept this fate?”
“Yes,” Marian croaked.
Isa gave him a grim stare and directed him toward the slab. Marian knew the protocols, knew what would happen next but had no idea how it would feel. There was nothing that could prepare a man for this.
He peeled off his sticking shirt, blooming with sweat in his armpits. Next, he stripped off his threadbare pants, woolen socks, and finally his smallclothes.
“Where should I…?” He peered around the room with his clothing bunched in his hands, held protectively over his groin.
“Give them here,” Isa said and whispered into his ear as he took them. “Be strong.” There wasn’t a whole lot he could do for the boy, but it was something. It was more help than he’d received before his testing.
Marian’s jaw worked, and he made his way for the slab, his back undulating muscle and scars. He crawled onto it and lay down with a shudder, his limp cock hanging over his thigh, arms prickling with gooseflesh.
Isa faced the Swiftshades on the other side, pulling their hoods back to show the white pallor of their heads. He brushed his fingers against the stone’s sides, remembering the unnatural feel of that frozen block against his back.
“Secure him,” he commanded. They unfurled broad leather straps from the bottom of the slab, working them around the boy’s body and using a ratcheting mechanism to make them tight. Isa tested them with his hands, giving them a tug.
He slid the table over to his side, careful to not spill any of the components required for the Test of Stones. He eyed one of the flasks and saw it wasn’t aligned with the others, shifting it slightly so the three formed a perfect column. There was something about a lack of symmetry that made it hard to breathe at times. He inhaled deeply, steadying his heart. He jabbed the needled end of the glass spiral into Marian’s arm and watched as a bead of blood leaked into it.
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