Ash and Ambition

by Ari Marmell

“A pretty speech,” one of the lesser nobles sneered. Harsh whispers from those around him and a murderous glance from Marshal Laszlan silenced him. Other than the breathing of the throng, only the faint grind of the ambassador’s chair on the stone broke the stillness.

  “I don’t believe it’s any great secret that certain segments of Quindacran society are…” Her lips twisted dramatically, as though trying to change places. “…envious of Kirresc. Your wealth, your farmland, your timber, your highways are all superior to ours. You know it, we know it. Normally those factions, those voices, are hushed, their bitterness overshadowed by all we have to gain from our relations with you, but…” She started to shrug, stumbled, and recovered her handhold on the chair. “I fear I cannot say I would be entirely shocked if what your agent discovered is true.

  “I can make you no promises, Your Majesty. I won’t disobey any of my king’s royal commands, or return here if I’m ordered not to. But I will travel to Vidiir, and if possible I will let you know what I can learn about this.”

  Again a number of voices sounded in protest, objecting to letting her return to Quindacra, doubting the veracity of anything she’d said—not many voices, no, but more than a few. Hasyan raised a hand for calm, and when that didn’t work, he whispered a command to Orban. The marshal reached out, took the horn from the herald who’d signaled their entry earlier, and sounded a blast like the ones used to signal his troops clear across a battlefield. The chamber fell into a shocked silence.

  Several guards peeked in from the hall outside, ensuring everything was all right, before once more closing the doors.

  “Thank you,” Hasyan said fondly. Then, to the gathering at large, “We understand your fears, your frustrations, your suspicions. Even if we shared them, however, what would you have us do? Ambassador Guldoell has not acted against us. She has committed no crime. We have no hard proof of Quindacra’s communication with the enemy, nor are we at war with them. On what grounds would you have us detain the ambassador? With what justification would you have us commit such an offense, even potentially an act of war?”

  A few angry mutters rose in reply, but no clear answers or useful suggestions.

  “Right. Ambassador, we do have to assign guards to watch over you until you have gathered your belongings and departed. They’ll travel with you as far as the border. We hope you understand, and we assure you this is to protect you from any, ah, over-enthusiastic citizens as much as to protect any of Kirresc’s secrets from you.”

  “I understand, Your Majesty,” she replied, albeit stiffly.

  Nycos thought Hasyan looked very much as though he wanted to further explain, or perhaps just to sigh. Instead, he nodded. Again the doors opened and Leomyn Guldoell departed, a quartet of Kirresci soldiers marching in step around her.

  “We believe,” Hasyan declared, “that this is sufficient food for thought for now. Please feel free to return to your quarters, or enjoy whatever hospitality Oztyerva has to offer, though I suggest you ruminate on what we’ve been told here today. Servants will find you when it is time for supper. Your Graces,” he said, gesturing to the dukes on either side, “and Mistress Rasik, if you would remain here with us and our advisors, we’d like to spend a bit longer discussing possible strategies…”

  Nycos, whose senses were currently only a bit better than those of normal humans, lost the thread of the king’s declaration amidst the multitude of other conversations and other sounds filling the hall. Lower-ranked nobles moved toward the open doors or milled about beside the rows of chairs, discussing or arguing over everything they’d learned. From beyond, more voices still, as servants and gentry called to their betters, or guessed and gossiped about the meeting from which they’d just been excluded. The movement of so many bodies, and the drafts through the open door, set the banners above to a lazy, languorous flapping.

  Unsure as to whether Mariscal would expect him to meet up with her, or whether she would make her way toward the exit with the rest of the crowd, and made vaguely uneasy by the thought that Silbeth Rasik might soon depart, now that her role in this international drama seemed near its end, Nycos stood where he was. If nothing else, he would give the meandering throng time to clear out, so that his bad mood and nagging worries wouldn’t compel him to elbow a few lingering aristocrats from his path.

  He stretched a bit, casting about over everyone’s heads—scowling briefly as Margrave Andarjin, currently pontificating to his cronies and hangers-on, passed through his view—trying to locate Smim amidst the horde of waiting servants. He knew the goblin must be there, but the creature’s short stature made him difficult to pinpoint among—

  Hmm.

  At the side of the broad doorway, one of the guards politely but firmly directed the edge of the human current aside so that a man clad in the tabard of a Kirresci royal courier could squeeze his way in. Clearly the messenger must carry some word of great import to demand entry now, rather than waiting for a less busy, less chaotic time. Nycos almost shrugged it off, assuming he would learn of the matter later if it involved him or his interests, almost turned away.

  Almost. Something about that courier nagged at him, something in the way the fellow moved. He couldn’t identify it, and clearly nobody else saw it. Because of his enhanced vision, or because he was paranoid and imagining things? Just in case, Nycos began to push his way through the thinning mass of humanity.

  “My king! Beware!” Balmorra, the old astrologer and seer, pointed a gnarled and shaking finger at the oncoming courier. “Beware!”

  Hasyan and the nobles twisted about, seeking to understand the danger she’d seen. The royal bodyguards rushed forward, as did Nycos and the other knights still in attendance; he found himself several paces ahead of Zirresca, though both drew their sabres in near perfect unison. The nobles who had lingered in the throne room scattered, many dropping half-empty goblets and glasses as they fled.

  Chanting under her breath, Balmorra dipped two fingers into the cup of wine from which Duke Ishmar had been sipping and then daubed her eyelids with the rich crimson liquid. An invocation, no doubt, meant to show her clearly whatever it was she’d sensed in the messenger, to pierce any magic or illusion that might hide—

  Every muscle in Nycos’s body clenched so tightly it was all he could do not to topple over, rigid as any statue. What would she see when she looked at him?

  Her attention, for the moment at least, remained focused on the danger at hand. And the cry that followed a heartbeat later had nothing whatsoever to do with dragons.

  “Psoglavac!”

  They knew the word, all of them—the Kirresci from their myths and fairy tales, Nycos from the experience of centuries. A living nightmare, a voracious eater of flesh both living and dead, a ravenous ogre with a lust to kill and consume.

  But not a creature, to Nycos’s knowledge, able to alter its shape. So how—?

  He—it—looked at them all and grinned, drool running unchecked over its lips to dangle from its chin. It swept the assembled warriors and nobles with unblinking eyes as they closed ranks to protect their king, and yet Hasyan was not its prey.

  It snarled, screamed in furious triumph, charged the line of sword and spear without hesitation. And Nycos wondered, his heart pounding and his head abruptly full of questions, if the others had even noticed that the attack had come not when its gaze had landed upon King Hasyan, but upon him.

  The first of the king’s bodyguards, a tall and powerfully built soldier, drove the tip of his spear directly into the “messenger’s” chest. Steel tore through fabric and seemingly through skin before deflecting from something unseen beneath. From nowhere, the attacker produced a massive axe—the haft uneven, twisted, knotted, more branch than handle, the blade bedecked with blooming flowers of rust. The whole thing was impossibly huge, taller than its wielder, and yet he swung it as the lightest sabre. Mail, flesh, and bone crunched beneath its bite, and the mangled lump that had been a brave warrior flew through the air to sprawl across the lower
step of the dais.

  Nycos leapt, channeling his will and his magics through his body, stronger than any three soldiers by the time he landed. He struck the human-shaped ogre a vicious blow, yet even his supernatural might fell short. His sabre shivered, ringing like a wind chime as it rebounded from whatever lurked beneath mundane flesh.

  The false messenger staggered, knocked off balance by sheer force of impact, but lashed out with a backhanded fist. Nycos dodged beneath, if only just, but the knight who’d charged in behind him was less fortunate. Bone audibly shattered, piercing muscle in a dozen fragments, and the woman fell screaming to the floor, her left arm limp as rope from the bicep down.

  More soldiers struck, more blades landed without visible effect, more people died beneath murderous axe and devastating fist. Silbeth Rasik lifted one of the fallen swords and joined the struggle, landing countless blows and easily dodging every riposte, yet she, too, seemed unable to deal this foe any real harm.

  Although he fretted at the risk, fearing his own exposure, Nycos caused his limbs to grow stronger still. He lunged, grasping the haft of the monstrous axe, and for a long moment they struggled, shifting to and fro, a step forward, another back, twisting and turning.

  As he stepped to his right and the dais came into view, Nycos spotted Balmorra standing beside the throne, Duke Ishmar’s wineglass still clasped in her hand. Again she’d dipped her fingers into it, and he recognized the tension in her old and hunched shoulders. She was prepared to act, to do something, yet she hesitated. Something stayed her hand.

  His opponent snarled and Nycos leaned back, launching a kick at the thing’s knee, but it proved faster. In that moment when the knight was off-balance it twisted, yanking the axe from Nycos’s grip and sending him flying across the chamber. He crashed through multiple rows of seats to land in a heap upon the stone, and he knew that any other man would have been as broken as the chairs.

  As if that was precisely what Balmorra had waited for, she flung out her hand, sending drops of wine spraying across the dais, and then she lifted her palm to her lips and blew. A tiny stream of droplets flew over the heads of the guards and the knights, much further than they should have gone, becoming a faintly violet mist that settled over the false courier.

  Instantly the figure grew, doubling in height, splitting the human skin it wore and leaving it in tatters upon the floor. The thing thus exposed reeked nauseatingly of rotten meat and plague-ridden dog. Its hide was thick, mottled, hairy; its features canine, with one central, bloodshot eye. It boasted only a single muscle-bound arm in which it clutched its axe, leaving Nycos to wonder if the fist with which it had lashed out had been purely a function of its human guise, or perhaps the horrid thing’s tail.

  Psoglavac. The tales did the foul thing no justice.

  It screamed in agony and fury, a grating, piercing cry like a wolf howling around a mouthful of broken glass, and redoubled its attack.

  Even in the face of that monstrosity, though, Nycos couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of what had almost occurred. For whatever magics the diviner had thrown, whatever spell had revealed the ogre, it was only because she’d hesitated that Nycos hadn’t been caught in it, too.

  By now, more soldiers had flooded into the hall, drawn by the commotion; guards not only in royal service, but loyal to the other attending nobles as well. Crossbows fired from the entryway, embedding themselves shallowly into the psoglavac’s skin. Spears and swords stabbed, aiming at the eye, the ears, the throat, the groin, anything that might yield to blade more readily than its hide.

  None of it helped. With no more reaction than the occasional wince or grunt of pain, with no more difficulty than it took to press through a mild hail storm, the ogre again advanced on Nycos, swatting and slashing at anything standing in its way.

  And Nycos grew afraid.

  Not for his survival, no. He’d no doubt he could destroy this thing, and probably without too much difficulty, once he put his mind and his full efforts into it.

  What he could not do, he realized with a mounting sense of dread, was to defeat this opponent without giving away his own nature. The strength and speed required to kill it, to say nothing of the other powers on which he might have to draw, were all too obviously inhuman.

  Unless he found some means of concealing them.

  He cast about even as he scrambled to his feet, examining the crowd of servants and guards who were gathered in the entry hall, unable to help yet too fascinated to flee. And there, in the forefront…

  “Smim!” Nycos lurched to his feet—snatching up one of the unbroken abandoned wine glasses in the process—and sprinted toward the door. “Smim, come here!”

  The goblin’s whole face bulged in horror, until he very much resembled an apoplectic frog, but he obeyed. A few shaking, staggering steps, and he met his master at the very end of the throne room.

  “I—I don’t really believe there’s very much I can—”

  Nycos had no time to explain, not with the psoglavac closing from behind, the tumult of the fierce but futile struggle advancing audibly through the chamber. Instead, with a strident shout of “Have you got it?” he thrust a hand inside the goblin’s coat.

  “Master?” Smim whispered, utterly bewildered.

  “Later. You’ll understand.” Nycos pulled back, one fist closed tight about the glass goblet he’d palmed earlier so that it would appear he’d taken something from Smim’s pocket. His other hand shot out to the side, yanking a small burning lamp from its sconce by the door. Immediately he raced back toward the rampaging ogre, leaving a flaming trail of splashing oil to flare and gutter in his wake. With every step he concentrated, felt the uncomfortable and unnatural shift inside his jaws as glands changed shape, producing a substance that most definitely was not saliva.

  Silbeth saw him coming, saw that he had something in mind, and called out. The others surrounding and hacking at the psoglavac drew back, clearing a path—which suited not only Nycos but the beast itself. Again it howled as it hurled itself at its target, axe rising high.

  Nycos jumped, hard, off his running start, twisting in midair to avoid the arc of the rusted blade. For the barest moment he wrapped himself about the head and chest of the ogre.

  His first blow shattered the wine glass atop the dog-like head, even as he spat his newly formed mouthful into the matted fur. In the speed and chaos, and with a modicum of luck, it should look like he’d broken a container of some mysterious fluid on its skull.

  His second, delivered just as the beast’s writhing shook him loose to go tumbling back to the floor, smashed the burning lantern with its open flame on the same spot.

  The sudden gout of fire was blinding in its intensity, hellish in its heat. The psoglavac’s scream was impossibly high and grotesquely wet. It staggered amongst the knights and soldiers, many of whom were forced to look away from the blaze. Maddened by the pain, the creature dropped its axe to beat mindlessly at its own scalp, desperate to extinguish the searing flame.

  A hopeless task, that. Little in this world could extinguish dragonfire before it burned itself out. Given the tiny quantity of saliva Nycos had managed to work up, however, it was only a handful of seconds before it did just that, dying, sparking one final time, and finally fading to nothing.

  The psoglavac still stood, but it was not what it had been. It teetered drunkenly, its single eye bulging and quivering. The hair was gone from its head, and much of the hide on its scalp had melted and burned away, revealing cracked and blackened bone. Various fluids bubbling through those imperfections to run along the exposed skull, often steaming where they met the open air.

  It would probably have died in moments, but the defenders of Kirresc were unwilling to wait. It was Dame Zirresca who stepped forward, sabre raised high, to bring her sword down upon charred and weakened bone. Skull split with a sickening crack, as did the organ beneath. The ogre shuddered a final time, its maw gaping to drool a mouthful of blood, and collapsed.

  The
throne room was a frozen tableau. Soldiers stood throughout, exhausted, horrified, surrounded by the blood and bodies of fallen comrades. Near the rear door huddled a pack of those guards, along with his Majesty’s advisors and the king himself. Doubtless his bodyguard and Marshal Laszlan had attempted to drag Hasyan to safety, and just as certainly he had resisted, refusing to leave those who fought in his defense.

  Silbeth, not legally permitted to carry steel in the throne room—only the nobles and their guards had that right, no matter that she was his Majesty’s guest—immediately dropped the sabre she’d scavenged. Nobody would speak ill of her efforts to protect herself or others, but now that the crisis was passed, propriety must again be obeyed.

  Zirresca and the young Sir Tivador moved to Nycos’s side and helped him to his feet. He cast about in sudden fear, worried for his friends, but Mariscal had already run to her father’s side, ensuring the old duke was unharmed, and Kortlaus… Nycos only now remembered that the baron had been among the nobles to leave the throne room as soon as the court was dismissed, on his way to attend other duties. He hadn’t been present when the monstrous assassin struck.

  The assassin who, no matter what everyone else assumed, had not been here for his Majesty Hasyan III.

  Or was it everyone? As the king and his inner circle returned to the dais to oversee the cleanup, to ensure the living were properly treated and to honor and commend the fallen, Nycos strove to figure out what Balmorra knew, what she had seen beyond the psoglavac itself. Her features remained impassive, however, save for her sorrow over the loss of life, and she avoided meeting his gaze.

  “I think I can safely say that we’re all grateful for your brave efforts in protecting his Majesty and the rest of us.” Margrave Andarjin spoke from the doorway, surrounded by his own bodyguards as well as his usual flunkies and hangers-on. Although he remained pale to the lips, any lingering fear was absent from either his words or his posture. “You are all brave men and women, and you should be proud. You’ve done yourself and the court honor today.”