King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three (34 page)

V
ERDAYNE STAYED ON ONE KNEE, catching his breath and studying the remains of the creature he’d just dispatched. He could not count it human now, but it had been once. He would burn its remains the way he and his father burned aryns corrupted with black thread—using fire and salt—for there was no way he wanted to see this thing rise yet again. Even as he watched it, he thought he saw a quivering in the fingers of one detached hand, lying among chunks of flesh hacked apart which had bled only when his sword had finally pierced the thing’s guts. As if it had no blood in its body save that which it had drunk from an earlier kill.

He got up, sword in hand. His tashya had run after dumping him unceremoniously when the thing had attacked, but his cart ponies had stayed, quivering in their harness and rolling eyes that showed far too much white in their fright. He rubbed both muzzles with his free hand and murmured words of praise to them. Not relinquishing his sword, he gathered his bag of salt, his flint, and tossed them near the remains, slowing only to pitch dry kindling across the battleground as well.

The salt he scattered first, and then lit a fire over it, a pyre of sorts, for a being who did not deserve an honorable burial but got one of sorts anyway. Through the flickering flames, he studied what was left of the body. A soldier, though a poor enough one. Mercenary. And, around here, that meant a man who rode under Quendius.

Verdayne spat to one side. That knowledge meant that he would have to look for black thread as he made his way to Calcort, for he knew that Quendius had murdered Magdan while they were bringing in saplings to replace the great aryns corrupted by the blight that had seemingly come out of nowhere, with devastating effectiveness. He could not prove Quendius had spread the blight as well, any more than Magdan could, but the old man had muttered epithets about it often enough. He looked to the north, a tug deep in his heart to follow after, to see if he could catch the weaponmaster’s trail. Quendius moved in shadow and his domain in the badlands had never been found, at least not by anyone who lived to tell the tale. He was as close now as anyone had been to a warm lead in decades—and he couldn’t take it.

He rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. Revenge wasn’t his charge. The black thread among the aryns was. His family had laid that burden on him, and he’d accepted it. It was the same blight on the books he carried for Tolby’s examination. From tree to page to . . . where? His father would have cut, salted, and burned whole groves to prevent the contagion from raging across the land. Could he be so bold as to do the same? Destroy the great library lest one unaffected book held the seeds to corrupt another? He didn’t think he had it in him to lay waste without more proof. Certainly Bistane had not thought destruction an answer. With any hope, Tolby Farbranch could tell him what they must—what he must—do when he showed Dayne what his tinctures could do. Page by page they could save a book. He did not know if that would help at all in the larger scheme of things.

When the fire had burned, an evening mist drew its cooling arm into the forest, and he dared to shovel dirt over the ashes, thinking furiously as he worked.

If he had his tashya, he’d cut his ponies loose and send them to Pepper Straightplow, a Dweller farmer who lived within two days’ ride of this grove, but he’d not found a sign of the hot-blooded Vaelinar steed, so cart travel was all that was left to him. He whistled them up and fed both a ration of grain and spoke to them, low but commanding, telling them what he expected of them. They would take him to Calcort at the fastest pace they could manage until their tendons bowed and their wind broke, if he asked it of them. He was not quite that demanding.

Not quite.

S
AND CRACKLED OVER HIS EYELIDS as Sevryn opened his eyes. It husked its way through his throat as he inhaled to take a breath and speak. It rattled at the bottom of his rib cage as he sat up. A Kobrir leaned over him. He felt the presence of others watching him in the shadows ringing him.

“Might you be the king of assassins?” He got the words out and then had to spit off to the side to clear his aching throat.

The Kobrir tilted his head to let out a barking laugh, a laugh similar to one Sevryn had once heard from a man who’d survived a knife to the throat. He had never heard a Kobrir laugh, but he thought perhaps this one carried similar scars.

“Do you think,” and the being wrapped all in dark clothing, with even his face veiled in black, leaned close. “Do you think we would bring you all this way and save you the work of your quest?”

From the harshness and growl of his words, Sevryn thought his assessment of a badly scarred windpipe correct. He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “I did not ask to be abducted.”

“Perhaps you would rather we’d killed you.”

“If you could have.”

Another barking laugh. “You’re not as invincible as you might think.”

“True. Your drugs brought me down.” Sevryn stood cautiously, stretching his limbs as he did, gauging his balance and strength. Besides the feeling that he was half made of grit, he seemed to have no detrimental side effects. Water would cure his ills . . . he hoped. The drugs used might have an ill effect entirely the other way. He would be cautious drinking at first.

As if reading his thoughts, the Kobrir offered him a waterskin. Sevryn bowed and took it, wet his mouth, spat out the water, and then took two cautious sips before handing it back. The Kobrir’s face, what could be seen behind the masking and veil, gave away a raised eyebrow. “Not thirsty?”

“All in good time.”

“Careful. That is good. Always take care among your enemies, and be even more careful among your friends.” He tossed the waterskin at Sevryn’s boots. “We gave you a journey, but circumstances have changed, and we find ourselves now in a race against time. We cannot wait for you to find your way.”

“Not to mention that I have side trips planned.” Where was Grace now? Did Lara hold her? Did she think he hated her for sending him on without her? There was a distance between them he dared not let grow, or they might never find their way back to each other.

“True. To your best interests, perhaps, but not ours.” The Kobrir beckoned over one shoulder. “When you are ready, your trial begins. Perhaps you are worthy of the quest we gave you, and perhaps not. We would have ascertained this more slowly, but as I said—”

“You’re in a hurry.”

“Indeed.”

Sevryn bent slightly to pick up the waterskin. He took a full drink this time, and waited as it coursed through him, rinsing away the gritty aftereffects of whatever drug they’d given him. An inhalant. He would have to learn and remember it as it could come in handy. He drank another mouthful, before fastening the skin to his belt. He was far from hydrated, but he could function. He and the Kobrir watching him traded nods.

The speaker pointed at the shadows and said: “Begin.” He faded back into the gray edges of the shadows where he could be both seen and unseen, his silhouette blurring. Sevryn looked up. He stood in a rock formation that was more cave than not, its ceiling wide open to the sky and elements, a jagged bowl. He marked the speaker’s position by a rock formation before turning to the opponent who seemed to appear out of nowhere.

This Kobrir was incredibly slender and wiry. Corded muscles showed under his wrappings, but none of it bulky. Sevryn noted that this man would be fast and could probably outleap him, if it came to it. He passed the back of his wrist over his eyes again, clearing the last of the clouds from them. Then he patted himself down. They’d left him with his weapons. He smiled at that. The Kobrir answered his smile with a wide one of his own.

“You will use one of our weapons.”

“This is an
ithrel
,” the wiry Kobrir told him. “It is used thusly.” He opened the wicked looking blade and handle with a hard flick of his wrist, sliced through the air at its greatest extension, and then closed it down to its shortest length, filling his hand with it to make a cut by Sevryn’s head. So close, it left a tang behind of metal shavings and oil, the scent of its recent sharpening filling Sevryn’s nostrils. He pulled his chin in with a blink. The Kobrir looked at him intently. “Understand?”

Others in the shadows stirred at his back wordlessly.

“Best me, and you may pass.” The Kobrir tossed the weapon at him, taking a step backward to fall into a stance, filling his empty hands with another ithrel in the time between one breath and another as Sevryn caught it up.

The warmth behind fell back hastily, freeing him to move as he must. He flicked the ithrel open. It took a strong wrist flick to make the weapon answer, and by the time he had it positioned, the Kobrir had stepped in and shaved the air by his face with the whispering blade. Sevryn pivoted out of range before the other could test him again. The danger here would be to assume he knew anything of the weapon, its balance and even its range. He swung back, found it parried, and the force of the blow vibrated heavily down, almost numbing his fingers. An unexpected aspect of the fight. He swapped it from hand to hand and back again, settling it tighter, settling the grip deep into his palm. He thought he saw a ghost of a smile flash across the other’s half-masked face.

Yes, the ithrel held undoubted advantages to one used to handling it.

Within seconds, he realized the advantages and disadvantages of the weapon. If he took the time to think about it, he would find himself dropped in his tracks. No. This is where his innate abilities and his decades of training told him, telegraphed instinctively through his muscles, his nerves, his frame, what he need to know to handle the ithrel. To think about it, to reason, to do anything but react would take far too long to be able to defend himself. Turning the ithrel in his hands, he took his measure not of the weapon but of the being facing him, one of the elusive Kobrir who might—or might not—be human.

Slight, wrapped in dark cloth that took advantage of the dappled shadows of the forest as easily as it did the harsher shadows of alleyways and foreboding buildings, the Kobrir moved with an uncanny suppleness. He bent where you could not expect a man to bend, leaned at an angle you dared not think a human could defy the pull of the earth, and leaped effortlessly. But his eyes were still eyes, not like the wet bulbs of a Raymy or the red-slit pupils of a Raver. This enemy was both common and uncommon.

Sevryn could take his measure quickly and almost without thought, as he had been trained by Gilgarran to do. After a flurry of exchanges, initiated and parried, he knew that the man had a definite tell: his glance would dart to the left just before he drove in with a series of attacks. It would not be enough to defeat him, but it was enough for Sevryn to realize his own strategy.

It was for this, after all, that Gilgarran had trained him. Not necessarily the weapon, but for the meeting and measuring of an enemy. Trained to determine how best to dispatch him, whether by blade or guile, by attack or espionage, but always to be formidable . . . and effective. From the day he had been scavenging in an alley, in a slightly less than reputable side of town, and Gilgarran had literally dropped on him from out of the sky or, more precisely, from a leap off a second-floor balcony, Sevryn had been an apprentice in matters he often did not understand. To this day, with Gilgarran long dead at the hands of the weaponmaker Quendius, Sevryn did not have a complete overview of Gilgarran’s agenda and network. He had been but a single strand in a complicated web, and even by following as many strands as he could discover, the final weaving could not be seen or its purpose discerned. Gilgarran had been one of the few Vaelinar who had originally supported Lariel in her ascendency to Warrior Queen, but that had only been one tiny gossamer pattern of Gilgarran’s desires. To fathom more would take a lifetime he did not feel like pursuing. He had his own pattern to weave and complete. And this, what Gilgarran had trained him for, was part of it.

Someone let out a small gasp behind him as the very fabric of the moment parted across him, slashed by the ithrel moving swiftly over him. He parried it, twisted the blade back on his own, metal whining as surfaces ground over each other before separating. The bones in his hands and arms vibrated, his teeth clicked together, his elbows flexed to answer the move. And here, he thought as his body fought, was the difference between what Gilgarran had trained him for, and what he had become. He was no longer only an assassin. What he plotted as he stood here was not to kill but to answer the blows being delivered, to divert them, to turn death aside, to present such a challenge that the other would fall back, would retreat, would give up and run or surrender rather than meet the inevitability of the death he carried. He was more than an assassin. He was the judgment between life and death. Or so he had trained himself to become.

He would kill if necessary, if death was all the opponent could offer. But he stepped into the fray not to deliver death but protection to those targeted, to shield the life/lives at his back, to withstand the expertise of those determined to dishonor life.

A thin smile tugged at his mouth. The Kobrir’s gaze darted to his left. Sevryn moved with more than the speed of the cutting ithrel, flicked his wrist to open the weapon, and cut deep, blood spurting out as he did so, spattering him with coppery scented warmth as the Kobrir’s grip disintegrated with the blow. The slender being staggered back, wound his hand in a sleeve of cloth, ripping it free from his other arm, and fell back into fighting stance, his wound staunched down to dull thuds of blood spattering to the ground at their feet. Blood loss would end their battle now, if one of them did not down the other first. The Kobrir swapped hands and Sevryn’s smile tightened but did not lessen.

He, too, knew how to fight with either hand. He shifted his own ithrel. The pupils of the Kobrir’s dark eyes widened a bit, and then narrowed. He should know, Sevryn thought, that his opponent would do no less. He, Sevryn, had known. If the Kobrir could misjudge him in this, what other mistakes would the famed assassin make?

Tender-hearted Rivergrace, in an unspoken plea for compassion, would have had him withdraw from the challenge. She carried his soul, after all. But he could not. He—they—had come too far to quit. The shield did not buckle simply because it had been struck. That was its purpose.

The Kobrir pressed. If his movements had been swift before, now they were blinding, seeking a quick and decisive end. His own heartbeat drummed the strokes left he could deliver before he would be too weakened to fight. He drove in at Sevryn with a surety in each delivery, sending Sevryn back on his heels. His forearm stung and his sleeve separated into shreds on his arm.

Blood for blood, then, although his flowed far less speedily and from far shallower a wound. He would not stand in this cavern till they both dropped. He gave off his own tell, one he had deliberately primed the Kobrir to recognize. He dropped his chin, signaling his intent to lunge on his right foot to deliver an attack.

The Kobrir answered as he thought he would, and their ithrels locked in a parry on their left sides, meeting each other, crisscrossing in front of them, bringing them face-to-face.

The difference was that Sevryn had filled his right hand with his dirk and held it to the side of the assassin’s neck, bringing blood quickly to the point as he did.

The Kobrir’s eyes widened as he froze in place.

“I was taught,” Sevryn said, “never to fight one-handed if I still had two hands.” He pushed the dirk’s point a little deeper. Blood sprang freely.

“I give,” the Kobrir answered. “You have bested me.” The ithrel fell from his hold and he went to one knee, free to feel his pain, to grasp his wounded hand.

Shadows moved in to lift his weakened form and carry him from the rock-bounded arena. Sevryn slipped the waterskin from his belt. It had done what he had hoped it might: at least one knife-scoring showed along its leathern side as it had blocked his open flank. Smiling wryly, he uncorked it and finished the water.

As he lowered the skin, an old Kobrir approached him. Still in dark wrappings, his age was apparent from the stoop of his back and shoulders and hesitancy of his walk. Sevryn watched him. This fellow may not have the agility required of an assassin, but he doubted that he was any less dangerous.

His suspicions were confirmed when the old Kobrir struck, a blade slicing across the back of Sevryn’s wrist before he could pull out of reach. Not a killing blow by any means unless the blade had been poisoned.

He could feel the surge of kedant through his blood before he dropped back on his heels, out of range. The heat of it, the power of it, sang through his veins, offering him wonders he did not dare to accept. Sevryn gave a shake of his head.

“I am immune to kedant.”