The Assassin King

37

Deep within the old Cymrian lands, past the wide heath beyond the canyon and sheltered by a high inner ring of rock formations was Kraldurge, the Realm of Ghosts. It was the only place the Bolg, without exception, did not go, a desolate, forbidding place from the look of its exterior structures.

What heinous tragedy had occurred here was unclear in the legends, but it had been devastating enough to permanently scar the psyche of the Firbolg who lived in the mountains. They spoke in reluctant whispers of fields of bones and wandering demons that consumed any creature unfortunate enough to cross their paths, of blood that seeped up from the ground and winds that ignited anyone caught on the plain.

It also was the place that marked the beginning of the lands of their king’s First Woman, as the Firbolg called Rhapsody. For them this was an even better reason not to go anywhere near the place. Within a range of guardian rocks that reached high into the peaks around them stood an uncovered meadow, overgrown in meadow flowers that Rhapsody planted upon coming to this place, now untended in her absence. A hill-like mound rose in the center of the meadow, a place she had paid special attention at the time, due to the unsettling nature of the vibration she found there. There was something innately sad and overwhelmingly unsettling all throughout the hidden canyon-dell, but most especially at this place on top of the mound. For that reason she covered it in heartsease, flowers that in the old world the Lirin planted in cemeteries and on battlefields as a sign of mourning and reconciliation, and most particularly of condolence. She did not know at the time, nor did she know now, what she was trying to apologize for, what had happened deep within the history of the sad, windswept place that caused the very ground to cry out in pain, but she knew that whatever it had been was so traumatic, so ultimately wrong, that nothing could be done save for the gentle offering of flowers and a song of comfort in the hope of reclaiming the earth at least a little there. Some of the reputation Kraldurge had as a playground for demons and other harbingers of evil came from its geology. Anyone walking through the circle of guardian rocks found themselves in a hollow canyon, surrounded by a circle of towering cliff sides. It was impossible to walk there without one’s footfalls sounding up the canyon walls, echoing at an enormous amplification, so that anything that might have been waiting would have had ample warning, something always dangerous in the Bolglands, which for years had been roved by hungry demi-humans in search of any prey they could find. The canyon that hid the grassy field was so tall that the wind rarely reached down into it; it howled around the top of the surrounding crags, creating a mournful wail. Even the bravest Bolg or most educated human could mistake the noise for demonic shrieking. Despite the natural explanation for the sound, there was still the sense of an innate sadness to the place, a feeling of overwhelming grief and anger. In her time as putative duchess of these lands, Rhapsody had begun to wonder if Kraldurge was a forgotten burial ground from the earliest conflicts of the Cymrian War. There was no mention of it in the manuscripts of Gwylliam’s vast and spectacular library, a collection of manuscripts and scrolls containing much of the wisdom of the world that they had located upon discovering this place four years before. The offering of peace flowers had seemed to work; now, though the wind continued to shriek and howl around the top of the rocks, filling the canyon with the same eerie, unsettling noise, the ground seemed to sleep, peacefully if not really in peace.

Or at least it had before the dragon came. The wind moaned high above the canyon, still laden with the last ice crystals of winter, as the final door of their journey opened. Rath stepped out into the dell, then moved aside to allow the other three travelers to come off the breeze. Rhapsody was the last to come forth. The return of the baby to her womb had caused many of the symptoms she had experienced in the course of her pregnancy to return; the nausea and light-headedness and, more particularly, the blurring of vision made her feel more unsteady than the the two Firbolg in the course of traveling the wind. As a result, she sensed a sudden silence from the three men, a silence unusual in that none of them was given to talk much in the first place. But she could not see why.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Is everything all right?”

“That would depend upon how you define ‘all right,’” Achmed replied, turning slowly around and surveying the damage before him.

The towering walls of rock were scorched in places rising up almost to the summit. The ground that at one time Rhapsody had believed might contain the bones of soldiers who fought and died in the Cymrian War or, perhaps even before mat, the bodies of those souls, starving or sickly, who had not survived very long after the stragglers of the Third Fleet had arrived in Canrif was sundered from one side of the meadow to the other. “Don’t look quite the way it did when you were ’ere, Duchess,” Grunthor said. “The new tenant is a bit less tidy than you were.”

“New tenant?” Rhapsody said humorously, straggling to focus her eyes. “What new tenant? Who did you rent my lands out to, Achmed? I thought you were going to keep them for me in perpetuity; I earned them, after all.”

“Well, this is more a squatter than a tenant I would say,” Achmed answered, searching for the passage down to the hidden grotto known as Elysian. He found it a moment later in a pile of overturned rocks and sod that had been riven by the wyrm’s passage. Originally the passage had been hidden in an alcove that always seemed touched by shadow, so carefully obscured that it had taken Achmed quite some time to find it the first time. “I don’t know if you’re going to be able to go down to the grotto or not, Rhapsody. Perhaps it would be best if you just come into the city itself, and take rooms inside the mountain.”

Rhapsody recognized the tone in his voice. “What are you not telling me, Achmed?” she asked sharply, turning again and struggling to see.

“As always, you are listening for what I am not telling you, rather than to what I am.”

“That’s because you always say much more in what you are not saying. Tell me; what has happened here?”

The Bolg king sighed. “Before she came to find us in the forest at her mother’s lair, Anwyn came here looking for you,” he said. “Whether she remembered this place from the battle at the Moot, or whether there was something about it that called to her from the Past, Grunthor and I have no idea. I did not know until after we had set forth on our journey that she had come to the Bolglands first. Apparently she did not like the fact that your scent now was clinging to her cottage, or maybe she hated the way you redecorated it. In any event, it’s my understanding that she’s destroyed the grotto, or at least the house on the island in the middle of the lake. There’s no sense in going down there now, Rhapsody; the firmament that holds up the cave is probably unstable. It’s not safe, and I promised your infernal husband that I would do everything in my power to keep you safe, so while this was a good choice of destination because of the strength of the wind here, there’s really no reason to stay.”

The men watched as the Lady Cymrian turned around again, still struggling to see the place they first came when they arrived in the Bolglands. She extended her arms out in front of her and made her way to where the passage had been, then felt about on the rock wall. She turned back to them, her face contorted with grief.

“The opening is still here, Achmed,” she said. “Please; I want to see the grotto. I need to know what has happened to my house.”

“Oi don’ think that’s a good idea, Duchess,” said Grunthor gently. “Are you telling me that the structure of the cave is unsafe?”

“No,” said the Sergeant-Major, unwilling to lie to her. “Nuthin’ but an earthquake will take down that dome. That cave’s right solid, and the lake is there still. But there’s nothing left of your house; nothing worth mentioning, anyway.”

“Are you certain?” Rhapsody pressed, numbly feeling the wall face again. “My instruments, my clothing? Did nothing survive?”

“Nothing Oi saw,” said the giant Bolg. “I didn’t row out to the island itself, o’ course, but that was partly because Oi could see pieces o’ the house floating all about the lake. If ya want to come back at some point and see if there’s anything we can salvage, Oi’d be glad to come with you. But for right now Oi think we should get you settled inside the complex. It’ll be good to have you in there again, miss.”

“What are you looking for specifically?” Achmed asked impatiently. “Whatever need you have, it can be met within the walls of Canrif.”

Rhapsody sighed and began to walk back to them, her hand on her swollen belly. “I doubt it,” she said. “But we can go if you wish. There was a Naming garment there, one that no doubt had been worn by the three brothers, Meridion’s grandfather and great-uncles. It was a family heirloom, and I thought perhaps it would’ve been nice for him to be able to wear it when we have time for a proper Naming ceremony.”

Achmed snorted and started out of the meadow.

“Perhaps you ought to wait and see when and if he decides to be born again,” he said, following the pathway out of Kraldurge. “If I heard the prophecy correctly, he’s not subject to the whim of Time. For all you know you could be carting him around in there until his eighteenth birthday or beyond.”

“All right,” Rhapsody said briskly, ignoring him. “Let’s get to Canrif; now that I’m pregnant again, I’m in desperate need of a privy.” Rath had not expected to find what he did in Canrif. He had not had occasion to walk within the mountain for centuries, a reasonably long period of time, even for one of his advanced age. At that time he had been tracking the demon known as Vrrinax, a F’dor with an inordinate amount of patience that had taken refuge on the last of the ships of the Cymrian Third Fleet, too weak to subsume any host but a sickly cabin boy. The demon had bided its time, slowly growing stronger, passing to more and more powerful hosts as it could, until it had learned to hide so successfully that Rath had been asked to take it on.

For all that he was modest, and had not shared the information with Achmed, Rath was the most accomplished of all the Gaol, the single greatest hunter of the Brethren. In short, an Assassin King himself.

He could still smell its essence as he silently traversed the hallways of the underground city that the Cymrians had called Canrif, the word meaning Century in their now-dead language. It had been a very long time, but some traces of evil remained in stone, in water, in wood where great wrongs had been perpetrated, or great deeds of maliciousness formulated. Something of that ilk must have happened here, he reasoned. And in particular, he believed it had begun on the floor of the throne room. Still, the Three were inured to it. Even the Firbolg king did not notice as he trod the floors of the place, an action that made Rath almost sick with disgust. Only the Lady Cymrian avoided the place where the taint was emanating from, as if she had seen a vision there, or was made uncomfortable by the traces of memory.

What troubled Rath about that was the lack of racial memory. While the Lady Cymrian and the Sergeant could hardly be expected to do so, those of Dhracian blood carried within them forever the scent of the Mood of every beast they slew.

And Achmed had killed two of them in relatively short time.

It did not bode well that the Assassin King could even sleep within the walls of such a place, the place where the blood of a F’dor that had died at his hands still vibrated in the walls, the very floor of the place.

He followed his hosts silently around as they went about their business, to the corridor where his quarters were, to the hallway outside the mountain peak of Gurgus, where the Lightcatcher was being rebuilt, and even to the overlook of the underground city itself, still in the process of being restored. Everywhere he looked, he saw Firbolg artisans and soldiers, archons, educators, and masons, all working to restore what had been one king’s vision. It was clear to Rath that the Bolg were another king’s vision, a king who saw himself as building a people, not a mountain stronghold, a noble cause in the eyes of men, but a distraction for one who could be an even greater hunter than Rath. He would watch closely. When the two Bolg, Rhapsody, and Rath entered the room at the base of Gurgus Peak, a tall young man with a full beard and head of dark hair came up to the Lady Cymrian immediately, smiling broadly. “Hello, Rhapsody,” he said. “Welcome back; it’s wonderful to see you.”

Rhapsody stared at him, befuddled. “I’m sorry,” she said, “do I know you?”

The two Bolg and the bearded young man laughed.

“You don’t remember Omet?” Achmed asked mockingly. “And you were the one that insisted on saving him in the kilns of the Raven’s Guild.”

Rhapsody’s bright green eyes opened wide in shock. “Omet?” she asked in amazement. “You are twice as tall as you were the last time I saw you—and were you not bald?”

“I was,” said the young man agreeably. “But it was hot in Esten’s kilns, and it is cold here in the mountain.”

“Omet has taken the lead in the annealing of the glass and building the Lightcatcher,” Achmed said. “He’s one of the few artisans I allow alone in the room.” His voice fell away awkwardly; Omet had been gravely injured in the explosion that rocked Gurgus Peak, and it was the red spectrum of the Light-catcher itself that had saved his life. Rhapsody hugged the young man warmly. “I’m so very glad to see you,” she said. “Well, you’re the one that told me to go carve my name in the mountains for history to see,” Omet said, smiling. “I’m only doing what you told me to do.”

Rhapsody looked around. Any evidence of destruction from the explosion was no longer present; the room had been restored as if nothing had ever happened. A wooden dome covered the ceiling of the tower, beneath which she could see colored glass of all hues. “I look forward to you showing me what you’ve done,” she said. She looked behind her to see Rath standing beneath the dome of the ceiling, staring up into the circle of glass. “Are you all right?”

The Dhracian nodded. “I have seen this before,” he said, still staring up into the tower. “It was in such a place I first learned the Prophecy of the Decks.” The Bolg king inclined his head. “Care to elaborate?” The Dhracian finally broke his black gaze away and stared at Achmed. “You have not been told the Prophecy of the Decks?”

“No.”

“It is this,” Rath said. “ ‘That which was Stolen will be given freely. That which was freely Given will be stolen.’”

“It means nothing to me,” said Achmed crossly. Rath inhaled deeply. “I will tell you the tale. And then you will know what you are up against.”