The Assassin King

40

The last place that Achmed took the Dhracian was down to the ruins of the Loritorium, an unfinished repository that Gwylliam had intended to use to house the artifacts of ancient lore in his collection. It had been built deep in the belly of the mountains, at the base of a tunnel whose only entrance was in the Bolg king’s chambers.

This was because on an altar of Living Stone in the center of that unfinished repository slept the Child of Earth, the middle child of the prophecy.

He and Rath stood over her catafalque, staring down at her. The child was as tall as a full-grown human, her face that of a child, her skin cold and polished gray, as if she were sculpted from stone. She would have, in fact, appeared to be a statue but for the measured tides of her breath.

Below the surface of filmy skin her flesh was darker, in muted hues of brown and green, purple and dark red, twisted together like thin strands of colored clay. Her features were at once coarse and smooth, as if her face had been carved with blunt tools, then polished carefully over a lifetime. Beneath her indelicate forehead were eyebrows and lashes that appeared formed from blades of dry grass, matching her long, grainy hair. In the dim light the tresses resembled wheat or bleached highgrass cut to even lengths and bound in delicate sheaves. At her scalp the roots of her hair grew green like the grass of early spring. Achmed recalled his first sight of her, and what the woman who had tended to her, the last surviving member of a nearby Dhracian colony called the Grandmother, had said about her. She is a Child of Earth, formed of its own Living Stone. In day and night, through all the passing seasons, she sleeps. She has been here since before my birth. I am sworn to guard her until after Death comes for me. So must you be.

He had taken the words to heart, probably more than he had ever done in his life before. “She is much smaller and more sickly than when last I beheld her,” said Rath. “The bastard emperor who is gearing up for war has been harvesting the last remaining Living Stone from a basilica in Sorbold called Terreanfor.” Rath nodded; he knew the place well. “Perhaps that is what is taking its toll on her.”

Rath nodded again silently, and followed the Bolg king back into the upper mountain to a causeway tunnel overlooking the vast canyon that separated the main part of Canrif from the Blasted Heath beyond.

The wind echoed down and through the tunnel, singing a mournful song. The Bolg king and Rath took seats on the ground at the opening of the tunnel, staring west, and watched the sun spill its light like blood over the piedmont, the steppes, and the wide Krevensfield Plain beyond. They sat in silence, awaiting the sundown, until finally Achmed spoke. “Tell me of the F’dor, and of those who guard them,” he said. “I only know what little I was taught by Father Halphasion. Being disconnected from the Hunt, he could tell me very little, so I have carried the bloodlust in my veins with no understanding all my life.” Rath looked down into the rocky canyon, where great fissures had caught the last of the daylight in their crags. “There are two pantheons of the beasts—the Older Pantheon, and the Younger. They are not faceless, but each a unique personality, each with strengths one must guard against, and weaknesses that can be exploited. We know each one, for they have all been alive since the very dawn of Creation—and they have not reproduced, at least for the most part.

“The demons of the Older Pantheon were born of the fire that burned on the surface of the Earth at Creation. Those of the Younger Pantheon were born of the flames that sank into the Earth’s core shortly thereafter. The Younger are more innately evil, because tainted fire is all they have ever known, the element that destroys and consumes. But the Older had access to another way, a way they did not choose. Formed as they were, they were witnesses to the sky, to the stars, to the universe and its infinity—and they chose to disregard the life they saw abounding, to embrace the Void instead of the Creation they knew was out there. They knew of fire’s creative and positive uses—warmth, heat, light, the smelting of steel, the cooking of food for sustenance, the purging of illness— but they disregarded it, choosing instead only to torture and destroy with it. That choice of path is why the Older Pantheon is considered so much worse.

“The Older Pantheon stole the egg of die Progenitor Wyrm. Those of the Younger Pantheon stole its scales. Both are evil, avaricious, and seek destruction at all costs; so it is with those that worship Void. It does not matter that their actions will spell the end of their own race; our outlook is merely to help them achieve that end without taking us, and the rest of me world, with them.” Achmed nodded, then was silent for a long time. Finally he spoke, and when he did his voice was devoid of its usual arrogance, its customary edge. “In the ruins of Kurimah Milani, you said something about the bees, how a man could destroy every living specimen of their kind should he come into their vault with flame. Then you alluded that it was such with another Vault as well. I told you, I abhor riddles. Speak to me plainly—tell me what you want of me.”

Rath stared at him, then looked out over the deep canyon to the place where the light from the setting sun was bathing the Blasted Heath in colors of fire. “It is a great irony that to the Bolg you were polluted, unclean, a half-breed among mongrels that somehow made you less in their sight. Somewhere deep in the scars of your past you have assumed that the blood of your unknown father somehow tainted you in the estimation of the Kin as well—but I tell you, with the wind as my witness—that nothing is. further from the truth. To the Gaol, and all the Brethren who have been seeking you since your conception, you are a special entity, a rare gift to our race, the one who might finally tip the scales in our favor. We have not been searching for you to torture or abuse you, to cleanse the race of your blood—but because we need you. You, in a very real way, are our last hope.” Ram smiled at the look of rancid disbelief on Achmed’s face.

“You alone among us are born of wind and earth, Bolg king,” he went on. “While we tread the tunnels and canyons of the Underworld in our endless guardianship, we are strangers there— and the demons know it. They understand how deeply our sacrifice costs us, how much the wind in our blood resents being trapped within the ground, away from the element of air for all time. And even within their prison they laugh at us, because in every way that matters, we are as much prisoners as they.

“But the earth is in your blood as much as the wind is. You have a primordial tie to it that neither the Kin nor the Unspoken have. You have power there, a corporeal form that would be protected by the element of earth bequeathed to you by your father, protected by the very Living Stone of the Vault, should you choose to walk within it.”

Achmed felt his throat tighten. Deep in his blood the words appealed to him, fed the dark racial hatred that he harbored within him. Still uncertainty held sway. “I am not of the Gaol,” he said. “I am but half of the blood of the Brethren—and that which was of the other half raised me, if such words can be applied to my upbringing. I know none of your lore, your prophecies—your history. My skills are limited, my talents pale in this area. While I was given a blood gift that allowed me to unerringly track the heartbeats of any of those born on the same soil as I had been, that was an upworld gift. Each time I have faced one of the Pantheon, I have needed help to complete the task. Without that assistance, I would be dead or possessed myself.”

The silver pupils of Rath’s eyes expanded as the light faded over the steppes. He fixed his gaze on Achmed, as if to add measure to his words.

“What you do not know is this—you could walk the Vault alone, and when you were done the silence would ring with nothing but the whisper of your name.”

“I think you overestimate me as an assassin,” Achmed replied. “The answer to the question you asked me in the cavern is this—though it was not always so, I am more king than assassin now. My primal calling is to protect the Earthchild, and the Earth, but not for the sake of old racial enmity, but rather for her own sake, and the sake of those who live upon that earth. And for my own selfish ends as well. It is, as you said before, an upworld calling. So I am a king, though if you knew me better, you’d judge me not much of one.”

The Dhracian hunter shook his head.

“I do not have to judge you. You guard the Sleeping Child. A king with foresight, but no courage, no mercy, would have shattered her, broken the ribs, smashed all possible keys. The doorway would be just as safe. No, whatever reputation you wish to have, I know what kind of king you are.”

“Tell me of the Older Pantheon,” Achmed said, his curiosity finally getting the better of him. “What do you know of the eldest of the F’dor? What are the names of those that you hunt?” Rath pulled the small dagger from his calf sheath and ran it idly over the wall of the tunnel. “To say the entire name is rarely possible. It would be like identifying a waterfall by imitating its rhythm until it could be distinguished from every other waterfall. How long would that take? A year, all spring? This is a race not bound by the motion of tongue, nor, at first, by the notion of time. They were all born whole, so to speak. Their growth is a measure of fuel, not years; their experiences and strength counted in souls, not centuries. “Nevertheless, we must name them, to catch them, to call them, to count them. There are few enough now to begin to master the list. I shall give you enough of a name to hold in your ear, but too little for the wind. Hrarfa is one that I seek; she, a whispering flame, like incense, sometimes smoldering, more scent than fire, like a beacon, or flickering bog light at other times, beckoning with false promises. The Liar of liars.

“Then there is Hnaf, sputtering, almost wet, at home near water, hiding by it, pretending to be nearly extinguished. In the small lore we have of the Vault, he was mistrusted by his own kind, possessed of a cheap malice. The Outcast of outcasts.

“Some we track by the human shells they leave behind. The greedy Ficken lays in wait for unsuspecting small folk, both of stature and spirit, at the forest edge. It—we know not its gender—prefers to consume many, farmers, goodwives, halfwit laborers, rather than take prize victims and grow fat on ambition and fear. The Glutton. “Some are bold, even brave, have fought and survived the Thrall ritual. The hunters of the Gaol do not always win. Like Bolg or men, the F’dor speak at the hour of their doom. Some snarl, some beg, some bargain, some weep. Do not mistake me. You are a fool if you treat them as if they think as we do, feel as we do. Each one is different, like a village of candles, or a hillside of armed fires. This is all they have in common with us. They beg, they bargain, they weep because they have been hunting us so long, and have seen us, been us. They know these keys to the human soul, and manipulate them, though they themselves are immune to such pleas for pity. And sometimes their deception has worked, even on the Gaol. “Few other than the Gaol have the gift to see them, and then their nature is hidden, just like ours. The Nain king has been making lenses to scry for that which is hidden, but none has proven reliable either to detect or predict. I do not think it will be long before he wishes to attempt to capture one, so he can study it. The Nain king is great, and learned, and ancient, but he will gaze upon this thing which is not really a thing, but only a being, and he will not realize that it gazes also at him.”

“He is a fool,” Achmed said. “And is far more likely to bring about the wakening of the wyrm than I am.” Rath shook his head. “He was an ally—and in this battle, you will need every upworld ally you can muster. It was a mistake to rebuff him, Bolg king. Far better that you should have to suffer him as your foolish ally than as your wise enemy.”

“He would never aid the Bolg in a time of need; it is more like the Nain to retreat to their mountains and make a stand there, even when the rest of the world is falling apart. It is how it was at the end of the Cymrian War, and how it will be now. So whether he is my enemy or my ally matters not—he will behave in the same selfish, isolationist manner either way. That’s what kind of king he is. And if that is how he has judged best to protect bis people, I cannot fault him for it—but I don’t have to tolerate his stupid demands, either.”

Rath shrugged. “Either you are an assassin, or you are a king,” he said, closing his eyes and letting the night wind pour over his face. “A king must tolerate such things. An assassin cares not.” Achmed fell silent.

As the breeze kicked up, the Dhracian opened his mouth out of habit and began to cant his list. Hrarfa, Fraax, Sistha, Hnaf, Ficken.

The wind shifted, blowing from the north. Rath sat up as if struck. His mouth was filled with fire, the back of his throat burning with caustic blood. He had caught a trace of one of the Older Pantheon.

Hrarfa, he whispered. The word sank down into his heart and anchored itself through his vessels. Beating in time now with another heart, far off.

Rath scrambled to his feet, his face twisted in pain and excitement. Achmed stood quickly with him. “You have caught a trail?” The Dhracian nodded. “I will go with you.” Rath shook his head. “Stay here,” he said with great effort. “Guard the—Earthchild. It may be a diversion. It is my lot to follow this now.” The needles had begun to pulse through Achmed’s veins, whispering words of hate as they ran hot through him. Reluctantly he nodded in assent. “Good fortune be with you,” he said as Rath made his way down the causeway. Rath stopped and looked over his shoulder. “I will bring you the tale, if I am alive to tell it,” he said. Then he vanished into the wind.