The Archon's Assassin

by D. P. Prior

  “Sorry to keep you,” Blightey said to Ludo as he clattered and creaked into the chamber. He propped the great sword against a wall. “I took the opportunity to change.”

  From hooks in the whitewashed walls, all manner of implements hung: pincers and prongs, saws and hammers, clubs and flails. There was a selection of manacles and thumbscrews—all the regular gear the guilds employed when someone crossed them, or they needed answers no one wanted to give. There were bullwhips, a cat-o’-nine-tails; there was a brazier filled with hot coals, a set of scalpels laid out on a wooden bench; rats in cages—these ones were living; glass tanks containing snakes, spiders, and scorpions. In one corner, an iron maiden stood. Its door hung open, revealing wicked-looking spikes inside. A gibbet hung from the ceiling; something rotted within. Clamps and bear traps were scattered about the floor, along with chains in sloppy piles. Stacked neatly against a wall were half a dozen stakes like the ones outside the castle.

  “Ah, I though you might notice them,” Blightey said with a touch of pride in his voice. “It’s something of a passion. You saw my little display on your way up, I take it? I’ll teach you how it’s done, if you like.”

  Ludo rolled his head forward and angled a look down at Shadrak. His eyes bulged above his glasses—he still wore his glasses, if nothing else. His black cassock was folded neatly upon a chair with his sandals on top. His Liber lay open on the bench nearest the rack. Bloody prints smeared its pages.

  “We were practicing lectio together,” Blightey said, “until you interrupted us.” To Ludo, he said, “Do you still call it lectio? Lectio divina? I do, but I’m so out of touch, I expect the nomenclature’s changed since my day.”

  The flayed monstrosity shuffled toward the book, but Blightey waved it back. “You are no longer needed. See?” He held up his hands. “Quite capable of riffling through the pages myself now.”

  “Pray,” Ludo gasped. He licked dry lips and swallowed thickly. “You pray lectio.”

  “Not me,” Blightey said. He looked at Shadrak with raised eyebrows. “Do you pray it? No? Thought as much.” He turned back to Ludo. “He doesn’t pray it, either. But let’s just call it a semantic difference.” He turned back to Shadrak and whispered, “That’s how you talk to these academic types. They love words like ‘semantic’.” Then to Ludo, he said, “What’s that other word you scholars are always slinging about? ‘Disjunction’. Yes, that’s it. Always makes me think of torn ligaments for some reason. Now, my little homunculus,”—he placed icy fingers on Shadrak’s shoulder—“help me out, if you will. Frater Ludo here—it is Frater, isn’t it?”

  “Adeptus,” Shadrak said, almost to himself. “He’s an adeptus.”

  “Is he now?” Blightey said. “Well I never. They all look the same with their clothes off. But as I was saying, I could use your help on this. The adeptus and I were having a little chinwag about scripture. I stand accused of doctoring it and obscuring the original meaning, and he thinks I have the wherewithal to remember which bit came from where so that I can—what’s the academic word for it, Ludo?—deconstruct it and reveal what he terms the ‘Golden Thread’. Well, I’m buggered if I can recall the warp and woof of what I did, so we embarked upon a debate about what is really essential to the spirit of said original. We had reached an impasse, and I was hoping you might adjudicate.”

  Shadrak’s brain was a scramble. He clutched in vain at threads of thought that might tell him what to do. His fingers twitched over his guns, but he could not draw them. He wanted to run—after all, Ludo had gotten himself into this mess—but his legs wouldn’t obey. Every word Blightey spoke, every piece of utter crap, captivated him. He had to listen, just like he’d had to listen to the bard’s spellbinding music at the Griffin all that time ago, and yet every instinct screamed at him to cover his ears, close his eyes, and curl up into a ball.

  “Take this, for example,” Blightey said. He picked up Ludo’s Liber, licked his finger, and thumbed through it till he found his place. “‘Of mankind, we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.’ Now, the adeptus here says this can’t be part of the Golden Thread, and yet I say it is the truth, and so it must be.”

  The chains holding Ludo to the rack clinked as he struggled to shift position and failed. When he spoke, he kept his voice soft, as if he were exercising patience with a slow student. “There is a pattern of giving, of generosity, of love that runs throughout the scriptures. This is what constitutes the Golden Thread. Before your alterations, there was one unified holy book.”

  “Was there?” Blightey said, with a conspiratorial wink at Shadrak. “Was there now? A single tome extolling the virtues of love? Theologians liked to think so, but even back then, it was an exercise in picking and choosing. I should know: I was like a boy in a candy store myself, memorizing all the phrases that brought me comfort, and studiously ignoring those that didn’t. It was only after life itself had tutored me in the truth that I afforded the other passages equal attention. How, for example, do you account for this—I’m quoting from the original—? ‘And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.’ Or how about this? ‘And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation.’ Or this: ‘And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.’ Does that sound golden to you?” he asked Shadrak. “The scriptures I recall were more gristle than grist, but we understood that. In the midst of the black death, or the Shoah, or the cold reign of Global Tech, the scriptures held up a mirror to life in all its cruelty. If anything, my modified version softened the image.”

  “The Golden Thread doesn’t obscure suffering,” Ludo said. “It reminds us of the context of suffering; weaves a path of hope, of love, of redemption through what otherwise would be unbearable. Any horror life holds derives from our fallen nature.”

  “Yes?” Blightey said. “Go on. Oh, before you do, Shadrak, do be a dear and fetch one of those stakes. I would do it myself, but this armor makes me so clumsy. You might ask why an invulnerable skull needs a body and armor? I ask myself such things all the time. But after an encounter I had out in the sticks, then the skirmish beyond the walls, and now you two arriving without so much as an invitation, you’ll understand the precaution. There are only so many options open to a skull. It’s amazing the difference a stout pair of arms and legs can make.”

  He waggled his fingers, and tongues of shadow sloughed off them, leaving trails of fuligin in the air. With a flick of his wrist, Blightey flung the shadows.

  The flayed man stiffened and began to putrefy. He let out a gurgling cry of pure anguish, then collapsed in a pool of slime. Another wag of Blightey’s fingers, and fire consumed the mess, leaving nothing but dust and ash in its wake.

  “Come on now,” Blightey said to Shadrak. “Chop chop.”

  Shadrak did as he was told and fetched a spike. Even without the display of magic, he doubted he’d have had a choice; Blightey had already demonstrated more or less total control over Shadrak’s limbs. It was as if the Liche Lord wanted to foster the illusion he might refuse, if he’d not been such a coward.

  “Sorry about that,” Blightey said to Ludo. “Please, go on. You have my undivided attention.”

  Ludo’s eyes tracked Shadrak’s return with the stake, but at the same time, he pressed on, as if he took hope from Blightey’s words. “Ain created man, out of all creatures, with free will.”

  “Ain means ‘nothing’,” Blightey said.

  “No-thing,” Ludo countered. “The infinite no-thingness that preceded the primal manifestation of Nous and the subsequent creation of all things.”

  “Touché,” Blightey said. “So, you have cleared the first hurdle. Well done. Most people assume, when I tell them, that the meaning of Ain affirms them in their lazily reasoned atheism. There is, as you have so articulately asserted, a being who is not a thing like the rest of us
things; or rather, the ground of all being, the unmoved mover, that which has no need or cause. Do you know what we used to call such a being?”

  Ludo nodded. “The Templum forbids the use of the name.”

  “Oh, pish,” Blightey said. “God is not a name. It’s a descriptor. Now, there was indeed a name it was forbidden to utter, but it was brought to the light of day anyhow and dissected, permutated, and made the basis for interminable conjurations. But the reason for me dropping ‘God’ from the Liber was purely political: as a word, it was about as popular as smallpox. You can credit that to the efforts of my erstwhile pupil, Sektis Gandaw. Do go on.” He nodded enthusiastically at Ludo, and at the same time waved Shadrak closer to the rack with the stake.

  Ludo licked his lips and again tried to shift position. Blood seeped from beneath the manacles holding his wrists and ankles. Despite the impression he tried to convey, he was struggling. Like Shadrak, he was terrified. He opened and closed his mouth several times, as if he didn’t know what to say. Eventually, he said, “So, you believe in Ain?”

  “I do not,” Blightey said. “Ain was my little joke. I believe in God, though. It may also come as a surprise to you to learn that I agree with your basic analysis about free will giving rise to the fall that produced so much cruelty and suffering. And yes, I accept the argument that the anger, the wrath, the vengeance attributed to the Creator is all a matter of gradualness, of imperfect understanding and attribution on behalf of the writers. What was it they used to say? God writes straight with crooked lines?”

  “And His mercy?” Ludo said. There was a rasping quality to his voice, like he was almost holding his breath. He reminded Shadrak of nothing so much as player of seven-card, trying not to let on he held a hand that would trump Blightey’s.

  “Yes, yes,” the Liche Lord said. “The ocean of forgiveness, in which we all swim.”

  “All of us?” Ludo said. He was watching Blightey like a hawk.

  “It has its limits.”

  “Ain’s mercy is infinite.”

  “No, it is not.” Blightey’s tone remained affable, but there was a finality to his words. Ludo started to protest, but Blightey held up a hand for quiet. “A moment, please, Adeptus. This is crucial.”

  He stood at Ludo’s feet and beckoned Shadrak to join him.

  “There,” Blightey said. He spread Ludo’s thighs wider with his palms. “You see the sphincter? Bring the top of the stake here. That’s it. A little to the right.”

  Shadrak’s hands shook with the effort to pull away. His guts twisted and writhed, and pressure built within his head.

  “Nothing is beyond Ain’s mercy,” Ludo said. His voice had gone up in pitch. “No one.”

  “God and I no longer speak,” Blightey said distractedly. “My own view on mercy is somewhat at odds with His. Experience has taught me that people are seldom merciful, and so they must either be indulged or utterly destroyed. If you offend them, they do not forgive; they retaliate. It therefore stands to reason that you must injure them greatly, then they can do nothing in return. Now, I need you to remain quiet for a second. Ready?” he asked Shadrak.

  Shadrak growled and tried to resist. He cried out to Kadee in his mind; to the Archon, but there was still no response. There was just him, and Ludo, and Blightey. And only one of them had the volition to act.

  “Gentle now,” Blightey said. “Easy as she goes. Don’t want to rupture the bowel.”

  The manacles holding Ludo’s ankles rattled and shook. His breathing quickened into staccato gasps that swelled into labored heaves. The tip of the spike touched puckered flesh, started to enter, and Ludo screamed.

  THE LION’S MAW

  The last thing Nameless saw was Galen’s hand reaching for him but not quite getting there. He pitched backward and dropped like a stone toward the water. He bellowed, a cry too primal to be a word; tensed against the pending splash, the snap of vicious jaws—

  —and then talons gripped his shoulders; hoisted him aloft. The beating of enormous wings, the sound of their thwop, thwop, thwop was a balm for his stuttering heart.

  The talons dumped him on the snowy ground at Galen’s feet. There was a violent flutter, cries of relief from his companions, and then Nameless found himself on his back, looking up into the gnarled face of Bird.

  “Laddie?” he croaked. “Was that…”

  Bird pulled his cloak of feathers tight. “Hazards abound,” he said, with a flick of his head toward the bridge. “And the next is before us.”

  Nameless rolled to his knees, followed Bird’s gaze to the door.

  “You all right?” Rhiannon said, stooping to offer him her hand.

  Nameless took it and climbed to his feet. “Better now, lassie.” Then to Bird he said, “The door is trapped, too?”

  Albert was already running his hands over the stony surface. “No lock. No mechanism. If it’s trapped, it’s nothing I’ve come across before.”

  Ekyls approached the lion’s head, growling softly in the back of his throat.

  “No, don’t touch,” Bird said, sweeping past Nameless to come before the savage and the door.

  “I say we look for another way in,” Galen said, eyeing the battlements atop the keep as if he planned on climbing.

  “Here,” Bird said, indicating the lion’s gaping maw. “Optical illusion. See.” He placed his hand in the mouth. The darkness beyond was so complete, the hand disappeared, as if it had been amputated at the wrist. When Bird withdrew it with all his fingers intact, Nameless breathed a sigh of relief.

  “An old homunculus trick,” Bird said. The lion’s mouth was so large, it could have swallowed him whole. Any of them. “It is a portal. Probably, the walls are impregnable, and there are bound to be more traps atop the battlements. I could fly up and check.”

  “No,” Rhiannon said. “No time. We need to find Ludo.” She didn’t need to add, “Before it’s too late.” Everyone seemed to get that.

  Galen said, “She’s right.” He sucked on his mustache, chewed, and spat, as if agreeing with Rhiannon were somehow distasteful.

  “Fine,” Nameless said, striding toward the door. “Me first.” It wasn’t what he wanted, but there seemed no other choice. Either he faced his fears head on, or he remained outside, cringing like a child afraid of the dark. It was galling to admit. He’d never been so scared in his life. Except the one time. Except when he’d been under the sway of the black axe.

  “Wait,” Bird said.

  Nameless suppressed the urge to punch him. He needed to do this now: get inside, confront Blightey, before he was reduced to a quivering jelly.

  “In Gehenna,” Bird said, “portals such as this lead to one of two places: where you expect them to go, or into oblivion. My people leave clues as to which, but sometimes the clues themselves are traps.”

  “Shogging homunculi,” Nameless grumbled. This was all he needed.

  “This is not one of ours,” Bird said, running his hand around the edge of the lion’s mouth. “But it is similar. The Liche Lord is known to our people. We have both aided and opposed him, as is our way.”

  “He got this idea from you?” Galen said. “So what do we do?”

  Bird shook his head. “With no clues, it is a gamble.”

  “Fifty-fifty,” Albert said. “Seems reasonable. Ekyls.” He gestured to the opening, but the savage pressed up close to Galen and glared venom at his former master.

  “It’s my fault,” Rhiannon said. “I should—”

  “No,” Galen said. “It is not. His Eminence was my responsibility first and foremost.” He twisted the end of his mustache and set his jaw. “Duty demands that I…”

  He trailed off as Bird pulled himself over the lion’s bottom lip and disappeared into the void of its jaws.

  Nameless counted the beats of his heart, willing Bird to reappear.

  One, two.

  Galen turned a worried look on him.

  Three, four.

  Ekyls snarled and backed away a step.r />
  Five.

  “Oh, well,” Albert said. “Can’t win them all.”

  Rhiannon spun toward the poisoner, black hair a wimple of shadow.

  Six.

  Bird’s head poked out of the darkness, and he said, “Come.”

  He ducked out of view again, and one by one, the companions climbed in after him.

  Nameless was the last to go. He hesitated longer than he knew he should. Voices whispered at him to turn back, find another way across the moat. He could live with the great helm. Being fed through tubes wasn’t so bad. And it wasn’t like any of them were really his friends, was it? He barely even knew them.

  He hated himself for even thinking such a thing. Rhiannon was a friend, wasn’t she? And Shadrak was in there somewhere. He had to be.

  He fought down the voices telling him he was mistaken, that you couldn’t trust assassins and thieves. Or women, for that matter. But it wasn’t helpful thinking that way. This wasn’t what he did, who he was. Self-doubt was for the beardless. And as for fear, it was a simple enough trick to turn it to anger. He’d been doing it most of his life. He just had to think about what his people had done to Lucius to prevent him from finding the black axe; then to relive what he’d done himself when he’d retrieved it in his brother’s stead.

  Livid, and with a new resolve, he clambered over the lion’s lower jaw and rolled into the pitiless dark of the opening.

  Dizziness swamped him, and his guts lurched into his mouth. For an instant, a new terror overcame him: the thought that he might once again vomit in the great helm. But then he was standing on solid ground, the pounding of his heart keeping time with a steady drip, drip, drip.

  It was still dark, but not the absolute blackness of the lion’s mouth. Here, it was murky, gray, sepulchral.

  Rhiannon was already pacing the floor, looking for some hint of which way to go. Albert, Galen, and Ekyls were looking about with hushed awe, or horror; and Bird seemed more intent on Nameless than on their new surroundings. Was it concern or something else? You never knew with his type.