Assassin's Shadow (Veiled Dagger Book 2) (9 page)

“What are we to do?” Allette asked. She still held her hands clasped in front of her mouth, eyes wide with shock and fright.

It seemed that the old apothecary had either been driven mad by the Obscura, or had lost himself in the act of trying to quit.

Ariswold’s feet dangled before the two women at eye level. There was no way that they could remove him from the noose without aid. Taria knew almost no one in the city, and Allette’s acquaintances were mostly drug addled peasants and merchants who could no longer be trusted, especially within the house of the man who held all the medicinal mysteries of the kingdom.

“Harwin!” Taria said suddenly. “Do you know where the blacksmith Harwin lives?” she asked Allette.

“I think I do,” she replied.

“Good. Go and fetch him, you can take Bedlam. Hurry, go now!”

Allette rushed out of the house and climbed atop the gray mare. The horse, trained expertly by Taria, made no protest, and trotted off with the stranger aboard as though she carried Taria herself.

Back inside, Taria took a moment to calm her thoughts.
What would Rothar do?
She asked herself.
He would not make any assumptions, and he would try to see what others could not.

Taria forced herself to look up at the face of the apothecary. His mouth was agape, his tongue distended from the open maw. His eyes were wide open and frozen in fear. Ariswold stared eternally ahead, looking not as though he were seeing heaven, but observing hell itself.

Shuddering, Taria moved her gaze to the rope. The noose looked expertly tied, and the knot at the rafter was practically a work of art. Taria looked at the old man’s hands, his knuckles bulged with arthritis. There was no way that a feeble old man with arthritic hands could have tied those knots. The realization made Taria gasp. Ariswold did not end his own life, he was murdered.

Carefully, Taria began to search the home. She found evidence of a struggle, albeit a small one. Some books and containers were scattered on the floor in one corner of the study. Some of the spilled substances had mixed and blackened the wooden floor, and an acrid odor still hung in the air. Again, trying to think like Rothar, Taria hunted for evidence of Obscura use. There was no pipe, no ash, no stash anywhere that she could see. For all intents and purposes, it seemed that the man had been living fairly clean.

The front door swung open and Allette came back in, trailed by a hulking man with big hands and kind eyes. He introduced himself as Harwin.

“I have heard so very much about you,” said Taria.

“And I, you,” replied Harwin. “I only regret that we have to make our first acquaintance under such morbid circumstances.”

The big blacksmith looked up at Ariswold and frowned.

“What a thing,” he said, “to live so long and die so poorly.”

Taria showed Harwin and Allette the elaborate knots. They agreed that they could not be the work of Ariswold. With Harwin’s help, they were able to cut the old man’s body down. He was stiff, and Harwin guessed that he had been hanging there for more than a day.

“So, what do we do now?” asked Taria.

“I will have the undertaker come for him,” Harwin said. “And we need to get word to Rothar as soon as possible. This certainly could be connected to all that had been going on lately.”

Taria told him that she expected the men would be sending Peregrin’s falcon regularly, and she would send word of Ariswold’s demise as soon as she could. Harwin left to collect the undertaker and Taria draped a cloth over Ariwold’s body, taking care to gently close the old man’s eyes before laying the sheet over his face.

Allette had been quiet for some time, and now Taria watched her as she perused the contents of the apothecary’s shelves, touching glass vials and lifting jars to inspect their strange contents. Taria worried for a moment that the young woman may be thinking about taking something. She had been doing so well over the course of the last day, but Taria knew that it could not be easy for her.

“It is more than a loss of a life, you know,” Allette spoke without turning from the shelf.

“It always is,” replied Taria.

“What I mean is, all of the knowledge he held is lost,” said Allette. She was holding a tall, narrow jar, filled with a blueish fluid. In the fluid floated several small onion-like roots.

“Do you know what this is? What it treats?” Allette asked Taria.

“I do not.”

“Nor do I, nor does anyone. He was the only one in the kingdom who knew all that he knew, and he helped so many people. Who will do that now?”

Taria shook her head. “I suppose someone will have to learn… perhaps it will be you.”

Allette looked at Taria, surprised. “Me?” she laughed. “I am hardly qualified! I am only a simple weaver!”

“No person is a simple thing at all,” Taria said. “Come now, let us go back to the house.”

Deep in the Banewood, an arrow whistled through the hazy light of mid morning. At the end of its trip, the arrow cut short the life of a rabbit that had thought it was well hidden.

“Not a bad shot for a city dweller,” Peregrin joked.

“I was taught by the best,” replied Rothar.

The pair walked to retrieve their late breakfast. The horses were resting near a stream to the north, where they had already prepared a small cooking fire. They had rode through the rest of the night after watching Mortez die in the old tree. Now they had agreed to stop to rest and eat.

While Mortez had supplied them with plenty of intrigue, their experience with him had yielded little as far as answers. Not knowing where to find the Reapers, they decided to head across the Banewood to convene with the huntsmen search party. Rothar had no doubt that there was a solid connection between the murdered and missing huntsmen and the Reapers. Years of experience had given Rothar a sense for detecting a singular evil, and now he could feel the dark pulse of something hateful moving through the kingdom.

Peregrin expertly skinned out the rabbit and skewered the carcass, setting it to cook over the flickering orange flames. Rothar closed his eyes. He had not slept in too long, and right now was one of the rare times that he felt safe resting. He knew no man more capable than Peregrin.

“Go ahead and get some sleep,” Peregrin said. “I will wake you when it is time to eat.”

Saying nothing, Rothar nodded to his friend and allowed himself to drift off.

It seemed like only minutes passed before Peregrin patted him on the shoulder to rouse him. The smell of meat was in the air and Rothar saw that Peregrin had gathered some root vegetables from the forest as well. He also saw that Peregrin’s falcon had returned.

“Any word from Taria?” he asked.

Peregrin did not look up from the food he was preparing, and he waited a moment before answering.

“Yes, she said they would go to check on the apothecary, and that Allette is feeling well.”

“Very good, very good,” said Rothar.

“I will send the bird back to stay with them in case they need to contact us.”

“That is very kind of you, Peregrin, thank you.”

Peregrin glanced up at him. “You do not need to thank me, Rothar. Do not forget, I have known Taria for a great many years, same as you, and I wish for her to be safe.”

Rothar raised his eyebrows, a little surprised by his friend’s words. “Of course, Peregrin.”

The two friends ate in silence, listening to the myriad of sounds in the forest around them. It was said that a huntsman can close his eyes in the Banewood and identify any animal, simply by the sound it makes when it moves through the wood. Rothar possessed this skill as well, but no one in the kingdom had better ears than Peregrin.

A faint humming sound reached them, carried on the wind and Peregrin stopped eating, cocking his head slightly to listen. Rothar sat silent, eyes scanning the wood. The sound was growing steadily louder, and Peregrin snatched up his bow.

“What is it?” Rothar whispered.

“I am not sure,” Peregrin hissed back. “It is unlike anything I have ever heard before.”

The birds had gone silent in the Banewood, and the only sound was the humming, mixed with the rattling of branches in the soft wind. As the sound grew, it became evident that it came from high above, and was moving towards them. Rothar kicked dirt onto the small cooking fire. He knew it would cause smoke, but hopefully smoke would dissipate and go unnoticed, while a flickering flame is visible to even the unobservant.

The two crouched in the shadows of the dense canopy and watched overhead. Through the sunlit lacework of treetops, the sun was being blotted out, starting in the west and spreading east. A giant shadow moved across the sky, humming incessantly. For Rothar, it was like being at the bottom of the ocean and watching one of the behemoth fish of the Blackwater swim between himself and the surface.

Peregrin notched an arrow but Rothar stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, shaking his head slightly, never taking his eyes off of the hulking shape in the sky. In moments, it was out of sight, the steady humming growing more and more faint, until it was gone.

“What in heaven or hell do you suppose that was?” Peregrin exclaimed.

“I do not know, but it is traveling the same direction as we are, so perhaps we shall cross paths again,” answered Rothar.

Peregrin shook his head. “I would be perfectly happy if we did not.”

The men repacked their meager equipment and saddled their horses. Before they set off again to the east, Peregrin sent his falcon back to the King’s City. As Peregrin was preparing the bird, Rothar noticed a small scrap of paper on the ground. It was the note that the falcon had returned with while he was sleeping. He guessed that Peregrin must have dropped it. Picking it up, he read:

Rothar,

We are well. We will of course go to the home of Ariswold to look in on him.

I miss you dreadfully and can not wait for your return. Be safe, my love.

Taria

Rothar folded the note and put it into his pocket before Peregrin turned back to him.

Back on the trail, the men surmised about what it was that they had seen in the sky. It did not seem like an animal, but it certainly was like no cloud either of them had ever seen. Peregrin was still determined to shoot it if he chanced to see it again.

By late in the afternoon, Peregrin guessed that they must be near the area to which the search party had been sent, and he commenced to make particular calls as they rode onward. At long last, one of the calls was answered by a voice in the distance, and Peregrin and Rothar headed toward the sound. They found the search party, a group of ten huntsmen, waiting in a shallow valley amidst a scruffy growth of pines. The men looked weary but determined. They had not yet found any of the missing scouts, nor had they seen any new enemy, but they had picked up a trail and were following it.

Rothar dropped to the ground to study the trail. The hoof prints of more than a dozen horses pockmarked the forest floor. The animals appeared to be riding single file, and here and there, tiny droplets of dried blood could be found on dried leaves or brown moss. Someone or something was injured, though that came as no surprise, considering the impaled state of the huntsman who’s body had been recovered.

The search party included an elder named Stone, a pair of strong twins called Dewitt and Trevitt, and a marksman by the name of Gamble. Stone informed Rothar and Peregrin that they had picked up the trail at the head of the tributary of the great Banewood river, and they had followed it west for a whole day already.

“We had better increase our speed,” said Dewitt.

“Yes, there’s more blood the longer we track,” continued his twin, Trevitt.

“And… there is something else we should inform you of,” Gamble said uncertainly. Rothar saw the marksman’s eyes flick up to the sky for just an instant.

“Does it have anything to do with an enormous, flying shadow?” Rothar ventured.

The men’s eyes all grew wide. “Yes!” said Gamble. “So you have seen it too!”

Rothar thought he heard a hint of relief in the man’s voice. He wondered if the group had been considering that they might be collectively mad after seeing the flying apparition.

“We have,” said Peregrin, seeming to fight a smile. “It passed over us this morning.”

The men of the search party glanced at one another. “So you have only seen it once?” asked Stone.

“Yes, why?” asked Peregrin.

“Since we started to follow this trail, it - or something like it - has passed over us a half dozen times. We seem to be traveling on the same route, so to speak.”

Even as Stone was finishing his sentence, the low humming could be heard in the distance, getting closer with each second. The men moved to cover and watched as the specks of light that filtered down through the trees were again blocked out, one by one, until most of the sky was as black as night and the air was filled with a humming like a thousand nests of bees. The brief eclipse was over in less than a minute, and the shadow continued on before the men again mounted their horses and went on tracking their missing brethren.