The Assassin King

15

The small carriage was outfitted and ready at the western gate shortly after the two Firbolg and the Lady Cymrian had departed by the northern one. Gerald Owen coughed as the dropping temperature stung the inside of his lungs. He looked up into the cold night sky from the courtyard, illuminated only by a single hooded lantern, at the stars spreading out beyond the canopy of trees that were the beginning of the wooded lands to the west of Haguefort, through which they would be riding, eventually melding north into the holy forest of Gwynwood and the Circle, their destination. For all that bitter cold had returned, the sky itself was clear and the wind gentle; it seemed that they would have favorable enough weather to make good time. He conferred quietly with the drivers and their two escorts, then signaled to the window of the keep. A few moments later the buttery door opened quietly, and the two Navarne children appeared, both clad in dark shirts, trousers, and gray cloaks that blended into the night. Gwydion Navarne closed the buttery door quietly, then took his sister’s hand and led her through the herb garden and across the cobbled courtyard to the tree-lined area where the coach was waiting. “Oh, good, they’ve used the roans yoked in a doubletree,” Melisande whispered. “Should be a fast ride.”

“Is everything ready, Gerald?” the young duke asked nervously, loosing Melisande’s hand and passing the bag carrying the last of her supplies to the coachman. Melisande snagged the waterskin from his hand and attached it to her belt. “Everything, m’lord,” the chamberlain replied. “The Lady Cymrian sent word by winterbird to Gavin at the Circle, so he will be expecting us, no doubt. I’ll see to it that Lady Melisande is delivered promptly and safely.” Gwydion nodded, trying not to vomit. Melly had been too little to remember the last time they had seen their mother, but the memory was as clear to him as if it had happened yesterday instead of nine years before. He had been eight years old at the time, a quiet lad of books with a deep love of the woods that his mother shared. She had also shared his propensity for shyness, unlike his father and sister, whose natures were abundantly social and warmly cordial. He missed her still, the scent of lavender or lemon in her hair, the gentleness of her hands as she smoothed the covers around him at night, the way the comers of her mouth crinkled when she smiled—the memories always made the hollow space in his stomach ache when he let them come back. Worst of all was the last one, of her and her sister, his aunt who he barely remembered, climbing into just such a carriage, on their way to the city to buy Melisande some shoes in which to learn to walk. They were laughing, her black eyes, so like Melly’s, were sparkling, and she had held his face in her hands, had kissed him on the cheek and forehead and whispered in his ear, words he could still recall in the very tone of her voice. Be a good little man. Help your father. Remember that I love you. He had endeavored to fulfill all of those requests. Most of the time it wasn’t difficult. “I know you will,” he said rotely to the chamberlain. Melisande, who rightfully fancied herself an excellent groom, had already made a check of the horses’ bindings, to the quiet amusement of the coachmen, and was standing at the door of the carriage. “Enough,” she said impatiently. “Time to go.” Gwydion exhaled deeply and went to the door. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Listen to Gerald,” he said seriously. “And don’t take any silly risks.” He saw her eyes narrow, and suddenly remembered how it felt to be underestimated because of age. He quickly reached into his boot and pulled out a small knife in a sheath. “Here,” he said more pleasantly. “You know how to use this better than I do—it was Father’s.” Melisande’s expression of annoyance melted into one of delight. “Thank you,” she said eagerly, taking the knife and turning it over in her hands. She hugged her brother quickly, then reached for the door. Gwydion forestalled her, opening it for her and lowering the step. She climbed up, then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said, her black eyes dancing. “And don’t have too much fun without me.”

“Same to you,” Gwydion replied. “On both counts.” Melisande grinned, her golden curls bobbing within her hood, then stepped into the darkness of the coach. Gerald climbed in behind her. “Don’t worry, m’lord. I’ll see to her safety.” Melisande leaned out the carriage window. “I’ll see to my own safety. Make certain you see to yours.” Gwydion nodded, shut the door, feeling like the world was coming to an end. Again. He stood in the darkness of the courtyard, watching until the carriage was swallowed into the dark branches of the trees and the night. Melisande Navarne had never been in the woods to the northwest of her home. She had been to Tynan once, to the wedding of Rhapsody and Ashe, and had once been allowed to go with her fattier to the province of Canderre, northeast of Navarne, to visit distant cousins. She had begged him to take her east to Yarim as well, because the exotic desert clime enchanted her imagination, and she longed to see the place her mother’s family and her own black eyes had come from, but Stephen Navarne had always ruled it too distant, and the times too dangerous, to risk. One day, when you are older, and the world is better, we will go, Melly, you and I, he had said. One of the saddest lessons of Melisande’s young life was the knowledge that even though one day she might indeed see Yarim, the only one of the circumstances in her father’s promise that would come to pass was that she would be older. On occasion she had also traveled to the southwest, most especially to the coastal province of Avonderre, where her family attended religious observances at the great seaside basilica of Abbat Mythlinis, the cathedral dedicated to the element of water. It was a place that she had both a fascination with and a fear of. Melisande sat back in the dark against the smooth fabric of the seat, listening to Gerald Owen snore, and closed her eyes, thinking about the basilica. She remembered the first time she saw it, on the Naming Day of someone’s child she didn’t remember, and had been afraid to go inside. It was one of her earliest memories, from when she was no more than four years old. The basilica had been built at the water’s edge and fashioned to resemble one of the great broken ships of the First Cymrian Fleet, the vessels in which her ancestors had come to this continent, fleeing the coming cataclysm on the homeland, the Island of Serendair, on the other side of the world. Being young, she had not realized that the representation of an enormous shipwreck had been intentional; she had believed they were entering the cadaver of a real ship, sundered on the sand, and the thought had disturbed her greatly. Once inside, she was even more certain that she was right. The immense entrance doors, fashioned from planks of varying lengths with a jagged notched pattern at the top, appeared to depict a vast hole torn in what would have been the keel of the ship, with a crazily angled spire that was supposed to represent the ship’s mast. Great fractured timbers, the bones of ships lost in the passage, were set within the dark stone walls, making the interior resemble the skeleton of a giant beast, lying on its back, its spine the long aisle that led up forward, the timbers ancient ribs reaching brokenly up into the darkness above. If looking up had terrified her, looking to the sides was even worse. A line of thick translucent glass blocks had been inlaid in the walls at about the height of her shoulders. The churning sea was diffusely visible through them, bathing the interior of the basilica, and the faces of the people gathered therein, with a green-blue glow. Instead of feeling the power of the All-God, or appreciating the celebration of the birth of a new child, she had instead panicked and screamed until her mortified father had removed her from the basilica. Now she was on her way to the Circle, to a place her father had respected but felt was unsafe to bring her. Beyond that, she was charged with traveling to the lair of a beast that was, in her time, the matriarchal wyrm of the entire continent, a being about whom the history books were full of dire tales, from the abandonment of her triplet daughters to the rampage that left the western half of the Middle Continent in cinders. Rhapsody had called the stories lies, had loved the dragon and in fact had gone to stay with her during her pregnancy, trying to learn everything she could about the care and delivery of a child with dragon blood. She trusted the dragon; Melisande trusted her adopted grandmother implicitly, but still wondered if there wasn’t at least a grain of truth in the old stories. Whatever else she was, Melisande was blessed with an intrepid spirit and a curious nature. Being the younger child of a noble line, with little expectation of ever sitting in the duchy seat of her father’s line that her brother now occupied, she had been allowed to explore what she wished, to study subjects and skills normally reserved for boys, and to question the ways of the world. So when she was asked to embark on the mission she was now undertaking, she knew she should be nervous. Instead she was merely excited. She was dozing, wrapped in light dreams of the basilica of water and the dragon’s lair of the lost sea, when the first bolt hit as her carriage came under attack. Gerald Owen was shocked awake by the impact. “Driver—driver!”

“We’re under attack,” came the muffled reply. “Stay down.” The elderly chamberlain’s eyes opened wide; Melisande took his hand, and together they moved clumsily to the floor of the coach as it picked up speed, the vibration from horses’ hooves thundering through the shell. From the roof of the carriage they heard a light thump and the sound of a crossbow firing in return. “The footman is an expert in the crossbow,” Owen said to the girl, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “The Lord— made certain of it. He should be able to repel anything that might give chase.” Melisande nodded and smiled encouragingly. Several more thuds slammed into the back of the carriage, behind where their backs had been a moment before. The lady shuddered at the sight of four bolt tips sticking through the upholstered fabric. Outside the carriage they could hear the noise of pursuit and evasion, shouted commands and cursing. The carriage rattled and shook from side to side as rocks and ruts in the road were made into more serious obstacles by speed. “Don’t—don’t worry, m’lady,” Gerald Owen stammered. “I’m not,” replied the girl. “But you are standing on my hand.”

“Apologies,” the chamberlain mumbled, quickly moving his foot. Missiles screamed by beyond me window in the carriage door. The sound of a bolt hitting its mark echoed from above, a crossbow firing in return, and the carriage rocked wildly from side to side, spilling the contents of the seats to the floor and sending the two passengers sprawling. With a horrific thump and another violent shake, the carriage lurched violently as it ran over something large in the road; Melisande shuddered. By the sound and direction of it, it seemed to be the driver. Her theory was born out a moment later as the carriage began swerving unevenly in the roadway. Shouts from above could be heard, answered by others behind. “I—I don’t think the door is locked,” Melisande said, watching it flap open and closed. Gerald Owen struggled to his knees and crawled over to the door, reaching to lock it. Just as he sat back, a rider appeared at the left side of the carriage, visible only in minute flashes through the velvet drape, and slammed his hand against the carriage door, then reached through the curtain at the window. The thunder of a horse could be heard next to them. “Go away!” Melisande shouted. “Just go away! Leave me alone!”

“M’lady, shhhhh,” Gerald Owen cautioned, reaching for her. The hand came through the window again, farther this time, a rough, calloused hand with sword blisters on the palms. It grasped wildly, then pulled back again. Melisande dodged as it came within a hairsbreadth of her. She straggled toward the right side, but the careening coach was veering between ruts in the road, the horses unbalanced by whatever was occurring in the combat. The arm lunged in once more, this time grazing her cheek before seizing a handful of her hair and dragging her back toward the window. The Lady Navarne gasped aloud. Gerald Owen lunged awkwardly for her, grabbing her legs and pulling her back, but the hand did not let go, only wrapped her hair around it like a rope, and yanked again. Fury replaced the panic in the black eyes. Melisande pulled the knife Gwydion had given her from her boot and, with an artful arc, swung at the arm, missing. Another yank, and her head grazed the window curtains. Melisande, her back now against the bottom of the door, slashed above her head, hitting her mark and dragging the knife shallowly across the wrist of the arm that had held her fast an instant before.

The arm retracted quickly amid cursing in a tongue she didn’t recognize, then shot through the window once again, bleeding slightly and reaching around in wild swings through the carriage.

Then it grabbed the door handle and began to twist it.

The child steeled herself, waited until the hand was fully engaged around the knob, then took a deep breath and, without so much as a blink, buried the blade to the hilt in the back of the man’s hand below the knuckles.

A scream of pain, followed by gagging, rent the air outside the carriage window. Melisande grabbed for the knife, still embedded in the hand, and dragged the hilt downward, slashing open flesh and muscle and covering herself and Gerald Owen in pulsing blood. “I said leave me alone!” she screamed. “I’ll cut your bloody fingers off if you touch me again!”

The carriage shuddered violently as horse and rider impacted the side. Then it lurched up in the air with another sickening thud, a scream trailing away behind it, and smashed down in the forest roadway, rocking sickeningly before falling with a jolt onto its right side, all of the contents shaken loose and landing on top of the stunned passengers. Woozily, Melisande struggled to right herself. She was aware of the sounds of strife outside the carriage still, but her attention was turned at the moment to Gerald Owen, who was lying in a heap at the bottom of the carriage, a gash over one eye. “Gerald—”

“Go, child,” the elderly chamberlain whispered. “Get away from—here if you can.”

The little girl looked around wildly, then reached above her head and pushed the door open. She climbed up slowly, using the door for cover, and looked around. A gray mountain horse was standing across the forest road, its tack tangled and saddle bindings broken, but otherwise uninjured. Farther back in the roadway behind them a crumpled body lay in a twisted heap, marks from the wheels of the carriage scoring it. The hand was extended lifelessly on the ground, slashed open in a pool of blood. The body of her coachman lay off to the side of the road farther back.

Farther away still she could see the two soldiers in her escort engaged in combat on horseback with four men in similar uniform; she could only distinguish between them by the color of their mounts. Melisande shuddered; shock was threatening to close in on her. She hoisted herself up by her arms out of the toppled carriage and looked behind her. The footman with the crossbow was lying on the ground in front of the carriage, pinned beneath the broken doubletree, moaning incoherently. Before him one of the horses was pinned as well, the other dancing nervously in its hitchings. Melisande went cold; she glanced around and, seeing no one else, crept over the collapsed coach to the footman. She tried to lift the doubletree off him, but it was too heavy. He was gray in the face, sweat pouring from him, but he did manage to meet her eyes.

“Fly, m’lady,” he said. Then he shuddered and fell unconscious. Practicality descended. Melisande contemplated taking the mountain horse but discarded the thought, realizing she had no knowledge of the animal and that it was ill-suited to taking on forest paths. When she believed the soldiers were too engaged to see her, she hurried to the roans, and with small nimble fingers and speed born of much practice, she unbuckled the one standing and mounted it, pulling herself up easily. It was a horse she knew well; it recognized her and did not bolt She kicked the horse and leaned forward over its neck as it started, then broke into a fast trot, a faster canter, and finally a smooth gallop down the forest road. She kept up the gallop for the better part of half a league, then slowed to a trot again. The forest road was dwindling to little more than a footpath, and the night sky was giving way to the gray of predawn. By the time the clouds grew rosy she had left the road altogether, traveling north, as best as she could figure, spurred on by panic and an inner call to flight born of the horror she had witnessed.

When the sun finally crested the horizon, filling the frosty woods with diffuse light, making the trees shine silver and white in its radiance, Melisande finally came to a halt. She listened, but heard nothing behind her except the sounds of the forest, of ice creaking on the boughs of trees, the rustle of the pine needles in the morning wind, and the calls of winterbirds that were just beginning to wake.

She had absolutely no idea where she was, except utterly lost. Finally able to breathe, she dismounted and looked around, then the sensations that had shut down in her fight for survival came roaring back. Even through her boots and heavy woolen stockings her feet were chilled; she was shivering with cold and trembling with fear, and hungry, but without any supplies or provisions except the waterskin at her side and the knife in her boot.

She looked around at the endless greenwood, realizing she was not even sure where the path was now. The Circle should be north of here, she reasoned, or perhaps west. Her chin quivered, but she willed it to stop. Then she straightened her back, took hold of the horse’s bridle, and started off toward the north.

She had gone a thousand paces when grief overwhelmed her. Melisande sat down on the rough ground beneath a towering shag bark hickory tree and began to sob as if her heart would break.

After a few moments, calm restored, she stood up, got back on the horse, and started off into the forest in search of the Circle and Gavin.