King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three (45 page)

“But you can see it? This absence?”

“I’ve been doing this with you for days. Of course I can see it, or I couldn’t be working with it, but I can’t describe it, except that it’s anathema. It’s loathsome.” She wanted to worry her fingers together at the thought but could not, not as long as she held this man’s threads. This dying man was bargaining with all he was worth to keep on living, somehow.

“You are fire and ice. And this is nothingness.”

“Yes. I think you can describe it like that.” She paused as the man before them staggered to one knee. She frowned, twitched her wrists, and then tied the braid off.

“Are you done?”

“He either stands and exists or falls and dies. I can tell which I think would be better for him—for any of them—but you don’t wish to hear it. You know it yourself.” She broke away from the bare embrace Narskap held her in, and finally chafed her arms as if cold or so she could shrug off the indescribable feeling that crept up her fingers. She did not look back as the man gave a grunt and clambered up to his feet. He swayed as unsteadily as a newborn foal.

Narskap shouted, “Get him to blood, or we’ll lose him yet.” He followed after Rivergrace’s footsteps as she walked away, not wanting to see the thing eating.

She sat down as far from the camp as Quendius had made clear she could go, mopping her forehead with the back of her sleeve. She felt sweaty and dusty, but that was dirt she could wash away. The stain of what she had just done, and had been doing, sank below her skin. To her very bones. She could hear a cheer behind them. They had made another Undead. Most of the troop they rode with now consisted of Undead, the ones who’d survived Quendius’ and their meddling. She wanted to shrink at the sight of them, but she feared to show them any emotion, any weakness, any frailty.

She’d been taken hostage so that Narskap would do the bidding of Quendius, but now that he’d drawn her in, made her his apprentice, his partner, she doubted that she’d ever be freed. She was as much a prisoner to her father as to the other. She was as valuable now to Quendius and his plans as Narskap was, and the Gods knew that the hound was never free of his leash.

Rivergrace looked at the ground below her feet. Even if she escaped, where would she go? Who would have her now, tainted with the stink of the Undead? How could she ever face Sevryn or Nutmeg and let them see what she had done, what she could do, what she had become? She had bent a little each day to stay alive a little longer until she had come to this. Had it been worth it? She didn’t know. She couldn’t know until Narskap did what he had promised, what he had held for her, to end Quendius. Even then, she wondered if it would be worth it. The death of Quendius would not roll back the days to when she was innocent of manipulating life and death.

She put the base of her hands to her temples and held her head. The spring season called her, the dew forming on the early evening grasses and leaves, the promise of a shower upon the land only a day or two away. She could dissolve into a mist again and this time not come back. Scatter herself to the land so that it might live and her stain be gone . . .

“There is a purpose,” Narskap said. “For which you must live. Even if you don’t understand it now, you will.” As if he could read her thoughts. Perhaps he could.

“Empty words.”

“No. A promise. What I do, I had planned to do alone, but I can’t. It will take the two of us to bring Quendius down.”

“And yet you keep making him stronger.”

“Perhaps.”

She turned to look at her father. At the stranger, Narskap. She had learned long ago that she could not really reconcile the two men, but Narskap survived because he was the stronger. And within that strength, he held tightly to the remains of himself as husband and father, sheltered closely, so that virtually no one but herself could see the difference. But she did. For a moment, she felt a surge of hope.

He lifted a finger. “Not even in our thoughts.”

He stood and left her alone then, wondering how she could trust him. Then she scrubbed her face with her hands.

No hope. Quendius would sniff it out and quash it. That is what the hound of the weaponmaster meant.

Show no hope.

But deep inside, Rivergrace cupped it close, like a golden thread of life.

L
ARIEL STARED across the room. “What word of Sevryn Dardanon and Rivergrace Farbranch?”

Farlen thumped his substantial body down on the edge of Lariel’s desk. “None. Nothing has been seen of either.” He watched as she eased herself onto her chair, tilting her face away from him, not wishing him to see what the mirror showed her every morning: dark circles under her eyes and new fine lines creasing the corners of them. “Our inquiries have been discreet but fruitless.” He wiped absently at a gravy stain on his shirtsleeve.

“Nothing.”

“It doesn’t mean they aren’t out there, although with Rivergrace . . .” He shrugged. “She commands her element of water too well. She could be the sacred River Andredia for all we know.”

“I doubt that. And, if she were, I would know it.”

“She turned to mist and disappeared.”

Lariel stared at him. “She used the cover of mist to hide her escape. Nothing more. Don’t attribute qualities to her she doesn’t possess. She wasn’t raised as one of us nor trained as one.”

“Agreed,” although the sharp line between Farlen’s heavy brows did the opposite. “As for Sevryn, we know he can be as elusive as he wishes to be.”

“He must be found.” She rapped her nails in irritation and then laid her hands flat for a fleeting moment. The scar at the base of her missing finger had begun to lose the coloration of newness. She considered it.

Farlen scratched his scalp for a moment, vigorously, before asking, “What did Tranta have for you?”

“Good news, after all this. The Jewel’s Way remains. Although broken in pieces, it still holds guardianship. He’s made lampposts of the fragments, and we’ll use them at the harbors and coastal cities.”

He sounded dubious. “They work? Will they still flare out and burn invaders?”

She touched the gold-and-ruby pectoral at her throat. “They work exceedingly well.” She smiled faintly at Farlen. “Your two Houses did a mighty working with that Shield.”

“Not likely to ever be duplicated. It’s good the Way wasn’t shattered as well although I will say from what I know of it, all we did was find the gem. It’s the Istlanthir who worked it.” His eyes scanned her waist. “He made the girdle as well? Like the collar?”

“Yes. The posts that Tranta has fashioned work differently. They have the same cradle the great Jewel had, so they retain an independent movement, side to side, up and down . . . it’s quite remarkable to see them at work. The Jewels maneuver the cradle. At first I thought it might be a random movement, like the wind, but no. There is a sentience there, Farlen. The Istlanthir often talked about it as though it were alive, but I never quite believed it until I saw it. Tranta has managed to preserve it, through sheer determination. We tested it.” Lara’s voice faltered then, and she cleared her throat lightly. “His adaptations work devastatingly well.” She shook her head in slight disbelief. “Will it save us? Not from a massive invasion, but then the original Jewel couldn’t have either, until it was massed at Hawthorne, and although it’s a natural harbor with easy shores to approach, we would be foolish to think that’s the only point to invade. We’ve a long coast.” She inhaled tightly. “As for invasions, have we any more reports of Raymy movement?”

“Two more drops.” He hesitated in that deliberate, Drebukar way of his, so like Osten it made her heart sorrow for a moment at the death of her old friend. “Like the contagion in Calcort, they seem plague-ridden. It gives them no quarter, they fight as ferociously as ever, but now we’ve carcasses we must treat carefully, as well as wounded.”

“Anyone contaminated yet?”

“A handful.” He looked at her steadily. “No one survived.”

“No one?”

“They were already wounded from the fighting, so perhaps . . .” he shrugged, his leather shoulder pads creaking. “I would hate to hazard a guess at how destructive the illness can be.”

“Plague.” Lariel’s hands went into rapid motion again, reaching for a pen and the small message sheets for the birds. “We need to apprise all the healers we can reach, Hawthorne, Calcort, as far north as we dare send. Have the traders send word to their east-going caravans as well. Although I doubt the Raymy will hit there, it could still be carried.”

“Abayan Diort?”

“By all means, if you can reach him, give him word as well. I had hoped the quarantine at Calcort was an aberration, but we cannot believe that now. Bistane is how close to Ashenbrook? I have to make plans to pull out and meet him there.”

Before Farlen could answer, the windows of the manor darkened and began to shake. The wooden frames creaked and spoke to one another, and the plaster holding the glass panes within them began to crack and powder and the glass itself rattled. Thunder began rolling through the valley of Larandaril, vibrating the very stones of her home as it KER-acked repeatedly. Clouds rushed in overhead, dark and crowding, boiling together and shredding apart noisily. It grew in tenor and strength, rolling into booms and shouts of fury. The stones echoed it, shuddering, and great crackling noises rent the manor. The walls did not split but sounded in low, deep tones. The flooring boomed below as if it were a giant drum being struck over and over. Lariel pitched to her feet and ran to the nearest window. Black skies where only a blue and clouded sky had reigned just moments before. She threw the window open, the wind tearing the frame from her hand and throwing it back with a crash. Farlen moved as if he could protect her, from what neither of them could guess.

She smelled the sea come storming in. Salt and brine filled her senses and stung her eyes like spray off coastal rocks.

The clouds opened and poured, in buckets. The air turned the color of iron from the rain and the forests, barns, and pastures could not be seen through it. It rattled over the manor like a hailstorm except there were no icy bits bouncing about, just fat, heavy raindrops. She put her hand out and the fierceness of the rain stung her skin to a bright pink immediately. Then, as abruptly as it had come in, the rain shut off, water funneling everywhere, across the ground and the stone courtyard, the manor house in a wet sheen, her face damp with it. The last of the rolling thunder bled away, taking the water with it, and the noise, but not the black of the sky.

She licked her lips. Tasted her fingertips.

Salt. Her senses had not failed her.

“What does it mean?”

Lariel shook her head, Farlen looming at her back. “I don’t know.”

Farlen cleared his throat. “You asked of Lord Bistane,” he offered, trying to return to a norm. “We only know he’s en route.”

Lariel stayed at the window, watching the dark clouds peel away from the capricious spring sky in shreds, going, going, gone. “Good,” she answered quietly. “Everyone is gone that I dare send. We need to follow.”

“We can move whenever you order.”

She closed the window shutter and latched it firmly, pressing her fingers tightly against the wood so that Farlen could not see the tremor she felt in them. Lara’s mouth felt too dry to speak easily. She moved inexorably but blindly toward that moment of betrayal she had foreseen. Had she seen truly? Did she prepare to march toward her own death? She took a deep breath. She still had time. She had the Jewels about her throat and waist. She could prevail.

“Good.” She added, “See if the water below is salted.”

Farlen quirked an eyebrow at her as he got to his feet and went to do as she asked. Fairly certain he would return with a positive response, she pondered what it meant. Sea spouts sometimes came in with sudden storms. Fish had been dropped a league or two in from the shore, as if snatched up in an unearthly net. It wasn’t unheard of. But not as far inland as Larandaril.

Except they hadn’t had a storm, not really, just that momentary buffeting which had come from out of nowhere. A storm that had, literally, just dropped out of the sky. Lara looked back to the window. “What are you bringing us, Daravan?” she murmured. “And most importantly, when?” It must be soon, she answered herself. Very, if unpredictably, soon.

V
ERDAYNE DIDN’T STIR as Nutmeg entered the great barn and cider mill where he and Tolby had laid out the work they had planned to do, but Tolby dropped a shoulder to look about at her. “Put a scarf over your face,” he instructed. “I’ll not have you breathing in fumes or mold whilst I’m working.”

Lily had draped a wrap over her shoulders when she’d left the farmhouse, undoubtedly guessing where she headed, and so Nutmeg wrapped it lightly over her nose and mouth despite the heat which had gathered in the barn during the day. She saw that Tolby had had glass covers made, great spherical lids, to place over each book. Both men peered back down at them as she joined them.

“This one,” Tolby said, and tapped the lid. It rang faintly. “Far too gone for us to save, but it responds to the spray nonetheless.”

Nutmeg leaned close. “What do you mean?” Her father hadn’t been talking to her, but she had no intention of being left out of the conversation, since walking and talking was about all the exercise left to her now. And thinking. The two Vaelinar guards, dark-haired Hiela with faintly copper-toned skin that reminded Nutmeg of the shifty Tiiva and silver-haired Unar with sooty-skin that reminded her of the weaponmaster Quendius, took up places just outside the barn and proceeded to play an obscure Vaelinar game that had something to do with the palms of their hands and the backs of them, and manipulating a hide-bound ball no bigger than their thumbs back and forth. She supposed it had something to do with keeping them dexterous although she’d never seen Sevryn play it, and he had the quickest hands of any she’d ever seen, even Jeredon. It kept the guards occupied, which meant they probably weren’t listening very much, if at all. “The book has stopped falling apart?”

“Indeed. But we can’t regenerate it.”

“Makes sense.” She frowned at Verdayne. “Can’t make something out of nothing.”

“Well . . . not in this case, at any rate.”

She looked at it, knowing she could read it if she brought her power up, but not wanting to, in case either of them would notice. “Was it something important?”

“
Books of All Truth
are all considered important.”

“I know that but, Important. Even amongst the likes of those.”

Verdayne looked at her. “We cannot lie when we write them, or the library won’t accept them. It is a compact, a vow, made to the library. It was done so that we might have the truth at hand when we needed it, regardless of how it reflected on the writer of that journal or the other participants in that history.”

She gave an impatient huff. “That, I know. Everyone knows.” She shifted weight. Her ankles had swollen and she felt clumsy, but her mind worked. Or it was supposed to! “They can only write the truth as they know it. That doesn’t always mean absolute truth.”

“And that’s the thorn of it, isn’t it? When the time comes, it’s hoped that scholars can overlay the many books and find a righteous perspective. But what’s within here is as close to truth as can be hoped.” Dayne smiled tentatively at her.

She didn’t know what made her cross at him, sometimes. Sometimes all she wanted was a kind word from him. Nutmeg crossed her arms over her stomach and decided to stay silent.

Tolby, ignoring them, raised the second lid and carefully, with a sprayer like the ones he used on his precious orchards and vineyards, misted a bit of fluid onto the waiting book. He lowered the lid quickly.

“So . . . what are the scholars waiting for?”

“Waiting for what?” Verdayne had looked down to see what Tolby was doing, and his attention snapped back up.

“You keep saying, when the time comes. What time will that be?”

“I’m no scholar. I suppose it’s when they think things are dire and cannot get any worse.”

Nutmeg moved to stand by her father. “That’s no fun.”

“Fun?”

“Fun. There must be all sorts of information you could use now. Helpful facts. Explanations.”

The corner of Verdayne’s mouth quirked. It made the line of his strong jaw even more definitive. She watched it. “Scholars are of the opinion that when the
Books of All Truth
are so consulted, their mission will be fulfilled and they will fall to ash.”

“Rotten apples! They disappear?”

“So it is thought. Any look at them would have to be quick and thorough before they’re lost forever.”

She folded her arms. “Ridiculous. They’re disappearing now.”

“Because they’re diseased.”

“Or,” and she lifted an index finger, “because other Ways are failing, too.”

Verdayne closed on the two of them and lowered his voice, despite the fact that the two guards at the door were chatting (or perhaps chanting, Nutmeg couldn’t quite be sure) and involved in their game. “We only know of a few. It could be aberrations.”

“Perhaps,” Nutmeg told him, “but I’ve been about Larandaril and there’s rumors.”

Tolby put his hand on hers. “There are always rumors, Meg. That doesna mean you can go about repeating them.”

“These are true rumors.” She pointed at Verdayne.

He shook his head. “Never. I don’t know what you’ve heard, so I can’t verify that. I know what I’ve seen myself, and those are not rumors. The aryns are failing. Not all, and not many—yet. But this same mold which corrupts the books is very similar to what eats away at the borders of our groves. Yet it might not be the failing of a Way. The debris from the wars of the Mageborn is dangerous and not studied because of it. We could be facing something none of us has yet identified.”

She shoved her unruly bangs from her face. “Word pinching.”

“Word . . . what?”

“Like a baker shoving and pulling at dough about to make a pie crust out of it, you’re pinching at words.” She paused as the baby put out a hand or foot and shoved it quite hard into her rib cage, making her catch her breath a bit.

“I do not pinch at words.”

“Then why, for the sake of all that grows green, can’t you say magic going bad is bad magic?”

His mouth thinned before her answered. “Because it’s not that simple.”

“Nothing is except for you, perhaps!”

“Nutmeg! Lord Verdayne is our guest here and you’ve no cause for that.”

She stepped back, her face warming at Tolby’s reprimand. She looked down. Swollen ankles, tight sandals, dirty barn floor. “My regrets,
Lord Verdayne
.”

“Accepted, although I admit you have a point. Of sorts.”

“Of sorts?” Her voice rose.

“There is bad magic and there is magic which has failed. If—or when—it fails, it simply dissipates. It doesn’t turn into a morass of chaos and toxin.”

“Like that?” Nutmeg pointed at the near-destroyed book.

His jaw worked. “Ah.”

Tolby took her hand and pointed it at the bell in the center. “On the other hand, sometimes mold is merely mold.” He looked down at his handiwork and smiled.

The newly misted book looked near pristine at the page where it lay open, with only a slight rust stain where black mold had been festering but moments before and even that disappearing. Verdayne leaned in. “Very effective, Master Tolby!”

“With little damage to the ink or binding.”

“So it seems! We’ll have to treat it page by page.”

“I think that’s wisest. And dry between each application. We don’t want to warp it, nor do we want to give the mold a chance t’come back.” Tolby scratched the back of his head. “I’ve enough on hand to do the job here, but we’ll have to tincture far more for Ferstanthe.”

“Will there be any trouble transporting it? How virulent is it?”

“Stoppered kegs should be good enough. I might have a bit of trouble rounding up all the herbs I need—once I start buying, the price will shoot up. Demand and all bein’ what it is.”

“We can afford it,” Verdayne told him firmly. “Perhaps you should make the solution at the library itself. I can send to Azel to gather the quantities.”

Tolby shook his head. “I won’t be leaving my stead here at this time of year, but I could send Keldan. The lad has a good head.” He looked past Verdayne to Nutmeg. “I’d send you, lass, but I think the journey would be difficult on you, and your mother would never forgive me for putting distance between her and that baby. She’d have my head.”

“On a stick,” agreed Nutmeg. She leaned over the first bell-shaped lid. “Was this treated already?”

“With an earlier potion. We thought to strengthen it a bit.”

She nodded. “Good. Because the mold is coming back here, ever so slightly, on the edge.”

Tolby bent over. He swore. “There’s the fly in our success.”

“No, no, that could be expected with the weaker application. Reapply, let it dry, and we’ll check it in the morning.” Verdayne lifted the cover.

Nutmeg took it from his hands. “Men,” she said. “Treating the book and not the dish.” She showed him the inside lip of the glass bell. “Spray everything. It contaminated itself again.”

Tolby peered down his nose. “She’s right. There’s mold on the glass. Not much, but it doesna take much.”

“We’ll have to put scalding water over the lids after you spray the books. Then dry them.” She set the lid aside. “Would not hurt to scour the table as well. Any decent cook could have told you both that.”

Dayne gave her a slight bow. “Your sharp eyes saved us a bit of work on that. We might have been set back days.”

“Aye,” her father said and hugged her about the shoulders. “Now I suggest you get inside and put your feet up for a while, or Lily will have my head on a stick anyway.”

“Going, going,” Nutmeg said reluctantly. “But only to save you.”

She left the barn, dropping the scarf from her face gratefully, the cooler air pleasant on her face. Her two guards abruptly left their game and fell into place, one at her flank and the other at her heels. They left her, reluctantly, when she closed her bedroom door.

Nutmeg bent over as far as she could comfortably to stare at the shadows under her bedstead. Then, carefully, she lowered herself to her knees and scuttled under as far as she could until she found Bistel’s journal and fetched it out. Getting up took a moment or two, and left her huffing a bit for breath, the worn leather book firmly in her hands. When she sat in her corner chair, she opened it, sunlight coming through her window in slats, patterned by the half-opened shutter.

She could read it now, without strain or worry, and opened it to a page at random. Bistel’s careful penmanship filled her vision. “My aryns,” it read, “both define and deny all that I have written heretofore about Ways. Firstly, it involved an item that was living. An item that was not native to Kerith. And, for all that I was the one who planted it and willed it to grow, I had not made preparations to create a Way nor did I generate incredible amounts of power and Talent to induce it to do so. That a greenstick staff would grow—that in itself was somewhat remarkable, although the staff had developed tiny buds suggesting that it wished to grow—that it would grow if only given a chance—and I could feel the intense need and longing within the staff to do so. I planted it with a tremendous surge of hope within myself that it would succeed at its goal, fulfilling both our longing, myself and the staff’s.

“That it grew, and its seeds grew, and its saplings flourished, and that they became a barrier against the corrupted energies left by the Mageborn Wars, astonished no one more than I. And yet, the phenomenon pleased no one more than I. The aryn tree grows to be a majestic, logging-worthy tree, with immense benefits while it grows and flourishes. It resists insects and fire. It increases the watershed capability of any plain on which it is introduced. Its bark can be eaten by forest animals in times of famine, and the tree survives. Its canopy does not starve the forest so that other saplings can flourish. Its boughs are fragrant, I’m told its needles make an excellent herbal tea with healing properties, if steeped properly, and when it drops a limb and goes to the lumber mill, the wood is hard, well-grained, and faintly aromatic.

“All of that takes a back seat to what has become its primary purpose, which is to absorb and filter the chaotic evils of magic dregs left behind by decades of war long before we came to tread these lands. The aryns do not do this overnight; it has taken decades, even a few centuries, to cleanse the soils and borders they guard. Their presence is valuable and desired. Thus it bothers me that they now seem to be under attack, from a pernicious mold, which is not accidentally introduced nor exists naturally. I believe this same mold is a variant of the one introduced to the library of Ferstanthe. While I cannot with any certainty point out the perpetrator, I have narrowed it down to a few possibilities: a Master and his apprentice. It is a crime of more than opportunity, it is aimed at the very hearts of the Vaelinar.”

Nutmeg closed the book on her finger. So Bistel had known of the library’s problems even before Azel d’Ferstanthe had. She wondered how he’d given notice to the big, burly librarian before the battle that was to take his life. She knew he had, he must have, but even so he did not trust the library enough to leave this book there.

Perhaps the mold had even been spread to destroy this book, if he’d left it behind. She frowned.

Yet another reason not to reveal its existence, even with Verdayne here and being so . . . appealing. Strong, perceptive, and appealing.