King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three (5 page)

He paid the pigeon master, who thanked him and said, “Good news?”

That was the only thing out of character. Why would the man ask what sort of news he sent? Sevryn stared at him for a moment before answering, “Who asks?”

The man had the grace to flush and stammer back, “N-no one, good sir. No one at all.”

“There had better not be.” He took Grace by the elbow and steered her back outside.

Now he had to wonder if his messages would be delivered to whom he had intended. Message agents were sworn to be discreet and this one had been . . . almost. Hosmer looked down from his mount. “Done?”

“No. Is there another messenger in town?”

Hosmer sat back in his saddle, thinking. “One,” he answered slowly. “A dodgy fellow, though.”

“Nonetheless, we’ll stop there as well.”

Hosmer looked to his sister. “Not safe for her there.”

Rivergrace put her chin up. “I can hold my own.”

“No time to waste, Hosmer, arguing with her.” Sevryn made sure Rivergrace was seated before swinging up himself. “Take us there.”

And so Hosmer did. The dodgy fellow smelled of beer, and his birds were field owls, their big yellow eyes blinking as they entered the birder’s hut and aviary.

“How much?”

The bird man gave a twisted grin, only half his face obeying the attempt. Half-brained, Sevryn thought, as he watched the man limp across the dirt floor of his cottage, one arm hanging slightly, one leg dragging a bit behind. But the floor of the cottage was well-raked and clear of bird debris, a difficult task with as many bird perches as were set into the dirt. He revised his opinion of the fellow. Perhaps a stroke had rendered him but half a man.

“A gold bit each.”

Sevryn winced, thinking of old days when he might have killed to have a gold bit pass his palm. Still, a bit was less than a half and far less than a full coin. Reminding himself that most of the coins in his purse had come from Queen Lariel, he nodded. “Done.” He watched the shrewd intelligence gleaming in the man’s eyes. “Another bit if you can tell me if Master Trader Bregan has left town.”

“Oh, that one! Aye. Lit off like his tail was on fire. Took his caravan back to the coast empty. No profit in that. Someone put the fear of the Gods into that one.”

Rivergrace turned her back slightly to hide her expression as he dropped the promised bits into the man’s good hand. He tucked his fee into his own coin purse and made a sweeping bow only slightly affected by his condition. “Ink ’n paper on the counter. Write what you will. I’ll attach them.”

“We can do that,” Grace murmured.

The birder shot her a look as if assessing her ability. The field owl at her elbow clacked his beak, and she put her hand out to gently stroke his throat feathers. The man gave his grimaced smile again. “As you wish. Loose them, too?”

“I will.”

The bird perches were marked with the flags of the cities and holds to which they’d been trained to fly as destinations. He chose his birds swiftly as Grace penned the notes, her handwriting even smaller and clearer than his. Sevryn and Grace braved their clacking beaks to fasten the letter tubes to their legs before they were set free. As Sevryn watched them take flight as only an owl does, swift and silent, he felt more certain that the word he sent would be carried to its destination, one way or another. He watched them take wing, the birder silent at their backs, letting them do as they would, but ensuring that his birds were being handled safely.

They were. Sevryn had chosen his messengers carefully before setting them to the sky.

He could not afford to be silenced.

“W
HAT IS THAT?” Rivergrace asked quietly, her words muffled as she did not wish them to carry, to disturb the quiet which had finally fallen in the Dweller farmhouse. She sat behind him, her body cushioned in quilts and linens, her hair tickling his face as she leaned toward him. She watched what he held.

“A present from the Kobrir,” Sevryn told her, as he turned the shiv over and over in his hands, carefully, for it was as keenly sharp as any stabbing/slicing weapon he’d ever come across, and it reeked faintly of kedant as well.

“They know us well enough to leave presents now?” She smiled faintly as she sat on the small bed behind him with the point of her chin on his shoulder so that she could look down at his hands as he examined his gift.

“So it seems.” He did not wish to let her know about the cuffs, so he kept them close, burning his skin even as he did so, from the malignant, binding magic which was twisted into the fiber of the steel. He paused, letting the engraved, ornate letter D shine in the candlelight.

She sucked in her breath. “Daravan?”

“My thoughts exactly, yet how can it be?”

“The Ferryman.”

He thought of how they had last seen Daravan and his brother who resided neither in the flesh nor entirely in the phantasmic, a Way in and of himself, linked inextricably with Daravan who, as the named brother, held the only life the two of them shared. It was Daravan who told them that the Vaelinars were not the
Suldarran
, the Lost, as they believed themselves but the
Suldarrat
, the Exiled, traitors against Trevilara their world and queen. It had struck them deeply, and hard. Yet, even as Daravan had exhorted them, railed against them for their trespasses in Trevilara’s war, he took the tide of Raymy, lizard men who had no heart and souls as any man would reckon them, and sent them on a journey where only a Way could take them. Perhaps it had been to a when rather than a where, for such was the twisted nature of the Way known as the Ferryman, but the invading force had been swept from the field of Ashenbrook. It was but a temporary diversion, but without it, the battle, and all, would have been lost.

That troubled him. He did not hold Daravan as the sacrificial type. Why had he swept up the Raymy? When would they come back, a massive tide of war and destruction? What had been Daravan’s true intentions? At Ashenbrook, the massed armies of the Vaelinars and the Galdarkans had stood to do what damage they could. If the Raymy, turned aside from the battlefield of Ashenbrook, returned elsewhere and could not be met by an army, what destruction could they truly wreak upon Kerith? He knew that Lariel, as Warrior Queen, kept forces marshaled at Ashenbrook. But what if she were wrong?

The Raymy would return. Perhaps any day. Perhaps in a decade. They did not know. So an army camped. Waiting.

Sevryn turned the shiv in his hands yet again.

“If he’s found his way back . . .” Rivergrace began and then halted.

“We know the Way he created to take them is not perfect. We have handfuls of Raymy who drop here and there, as whimsical as frogs dropping from a raincloud and as lethal as the deadliest viper.”

“But the bulk of the army stays . . . wherever it is he took them.”

“As far as we know.” Sevryn traced the D. “I know Daravan had dealings with the Kobrir. He admitted as much. He meddled. He assassinated. He did whatever it took to keep us from regaining our heritage and our truth. Whatever. I would not put it past him to have returned and be doing it again.”

“I saw—” Rivergrace hesitated.

“What?”

“A shadow that did not fall as other shadows did. A river of darkness moving past and against the flow of dimming light.”

“Even the Kobrir don’t move like that, although they would like to.”

“I’m thinking of a story Lily told us once of a man who brought her a cloth, a weave unlike any other. Nightweave, she called it. He left her a number of coins to tailor a hooded cloak for him—”

“I remember. She kept the remnants.”

“Aye.” Rivergrace moved from her position behind his shoulder to sit next to him. “She thinks it was Daravan who commissioned the cloak. She never knew for certain. And if it was, and if he had such a garment with such powers, then a river of darkness could indeed flow against the pattern of falling light.”

“Well, then.” Carefully, Sevryn put the shiv away in his wrist sheath. “We have two votes for Daravan.”

“The Raymy cannot be far behind.”

“If he can control it, he will use their return to destroy us. He endeavored to do it in the past, and I doubt he’s given up his goals.”

“For Trevilara.”

The corner of Sevryn’s mouth twitched. “She must,” he said, in slow deliberation, “be a hell of a woman, like you.”

Rivergrace slapped the back of his hand lightly. “I don’t know if I’ve been complimented or reviled!”

“Come close, and I’ll tell you.” He turned his head to blow the candle out, reaching for her as he fell back onto the bed. His hands traced messages of love and longing over her skin.

O
N THE COAST OF THE COUNTRY, Tranta Istlanthir paused, hanging halfway between the sky and the ocean, the wind tugging at his gear as it strained to pull him free. Rough waves far below him futilely sent fingers of spray after him, thinning to a salty damp mist before they fell back into the sea in a foam of white and green. He set his hands to his ropes again, balanced on his feet to check the setting of his spikes, and looked up to the cliff’s edge which loomed perhaps three body lengths above him. Nearly there.

The ild Fallyn had sent one of their best levitators to assist in building a footbridge across the chasm on the land side of the cliff, from the rough hills which held the now deserted Istlanthir and Drebukar guard barracks. Work on the bridge progressed rapidly, but he did not wish to wait. He climbed, as he had always climbed, and his father before him had, to the cradle which held the Jewel of Tomarq. It was a kind of sacrifice to the gem which had caught the fire of sun and magic to aim her wrath upon trespassers of the bay and coast. Did she know of the sacrifice? Had she sensed his brother’s death leap to protect her before she herself was shattered? She was only a stone, but he had always thought of her as more, for she had been made a Way and that, in itself, made her unique. The wind twisted him upon his gear and he took a deep, stabbing breath. He had fallen from her heights once. He had caught himself upon the same capricious wind and broken the fall, saving his life but laming himself and losing the memory of it for days. If he had but remembered in time, he would have known that a spy had been observing her weaknesses up close, and he had met with her potential attacker who had driven him off the cliff. He would have deduced that that enemy would return until he had accomplished his goal in destroying her entirely. Instead, it was his brother who had met the return and failed. But it was not his brother’s fault. No. Tranta owned that himself, even if it would not bring his brother back.

Tranta wiped his face dry with the back of his hand and set to finishing the climb. It proved farther than three lengths, but it mattered little, for when he topped the edge and pulled himself onto the summit, it was done.

No one else had ever stood in the shattered remains of the Jewel. He’d set a barrier for the bridge workers which no one could cross. He did not wish the ruins to be disturbed or picked over by those who thought her relics might make a pretty ring or bauble. True to her majesty, the Jewel of Tomarq had not broken into dust, but into shards as big as his fist and bigger, into splinters that would rival a throwing dagger, into rocks the size of a man’s head. He dropped his gear on the ground and sat to remove the harness of spikes from his boots. The sun had risen while he climbed, and it was still bitter cold on the cliff as he squatted in the ruins and looked at the failure of his House.

It was said that when the Drebukar miners unearthed the gem, she came free willingly from the dark under the mountain’s vein, already near polished and whole although she would be faceted later and when the mine’s patron, the head of the House of Istlanthir laid his hands on her, she asked to be set forever in the sun. It was also said that the heads of both Houses dreamed of her destiny and that they worked together to forge the Way that would make her the Jewel, the Shield, of Tomarq. It was the first and only time two Houses made a Way between them.

Tranta did not doubt it. The gem had always held a majesty and an affinity for the sun’s fire, her judgment and justice an apocalyptic spear which burned to ashes whatever it struck. Lariel had told him to give up. To gather the remnants together and bring them to Larandaril until they could decide how best to dispose of them, while House Drebukar reopened the mines of Tomarq to search for her likeness. He did not think the mines would hold a twin to her might, and even if it did, the Way that was made into her depths could never be unmade and laid upon another. Ways did not survive their unmaking and, often, an insufficiently skilled Vaelinar did not survive the attempt to create a Way. It was, for a bloodline, a once-in-a-lifetime happening.

He touched the gem nearest him. He could see from its shape that it belonged melded to the crooked splinter lying next to it. He mated them to one another upon the ground, moving through the bits and pieces, putting the puzzle back together as he had attempted once, twice, a dozen times before. She bit at his fingers and palms, some of her edges sharper than the finest made sword. His hands went raw and bloody before the sun had even begun to climb on the eastern horizon and workers began to arrive on the other side of the barrier. This here, which must go . . . no, not there, but
there
 . . . And yet, it would not be enough. It had never been enough. He paused at the edge of the fire pit, its charcoal interior now cold and dead. He could not create enough heat to meld her edges back together. If he could bring the mouth of a volcano to her, perhaps . . . even then, it would only be a perhaps. Who knew what fires and pressures had created her in the first place? He was not a God.

He ground his teeth in frustration, kneeling among the hundreds of other pieces he had not yet fit together, and looked at the travesty of his attempts. Blood from his torn hands dripped slowly and thinly upon the glittering bits. Sweat from his brow trickled down his face and jaw to fall upon the splinters. If it were enough to give his soul to make the Jewel whole, he would have given it. But it was not. Yet, even as he squatted and his blood dripped down, a heat reflected from his shattered puzzle and light dazzled over his hands with a faint sizzling sound, and the thousand tiny, jagged cuts healed. He sat down in shock.

Tranta rubbed his hands. Usually she did not cut him. The fragments would turn in his fingers and hands so as not to harm him, but today he had been frustrated and she had responded in kind, twisted at his maddened touch upon her. Yet—and yet—she knew his touch on her and rose to protect him. Tranta examined his hands minutely. Not a scar. No pinkness or so much as tenderness. He twisted his hands back and forth in examination. The Jewel of Tomarq had healed him, but she was never a healer. Always a guardian. Had he discovered a new power within her depths? He needed to test it. Perhaps he was not meant to return her to her former glory because a new destiny awaited them both. Fatigue swept over him, and he put the heels of his hands to his eyes. With his brother gone, he was the only guardian the Jewel had left, and he feared he was failing her. Seeing things he did not really see. Hoping for a restoration that he could not possibly affect. He sighed.

Spring clouds filled the sky, dimming the day. Someone shouted at him over the barrier, and Tranta went to answer the call, parting the ward with his body to see what the problem might be. The Kernan foreman with more than a few hints of Vaelinar in his blood, leaned on his stone-working pick, a knife-like smile parting his lips. “His lordship says we are nearly done. The anchor is set and set deep on this side. We’ve got nets below, three of ’em,” and he paused long enough to spit to one side, although Tranta could not be sure if it was an opinion of safety nets for the rope bridge or not. “When we hitch it up, it should hold. Even if typhoon winds hit. Though,” and he squinted through one plain brown eye, “I wouldn’t want to be on it then.”

“Nor I. Sounds like good work from you and all your lads.”

“Thanks for that. His Lordship might walk on air, but it’s we who bite the rock, and bite it deep.” He hefted his pick. Before joining his crew, who sat on break waiting for the ild Fallyn engineer, he surveyed his side of the cliff. His jaw worked a bit as if chewing the words up first. “I be sorry for the Jewel,” he offered, finally. “My brother is a fisherman, my father a short voyage trader. She guarded the harbor well for all of our lives. Our words of sorrow for the loss of your lordship.”

Tranta dropped his chin. “I thank you for that.”

The foreman nodded back and sauntered over to his crew. On the far side, Tranta could see the rest of the workers busy, and no sign of the ild Fallyn yet.

Tranta traced the barrier with his sigil and passed through again. It parted reluctantly, with a shiver, and he knew that its force was weakening. He would have to decide, and soon, what to do with the remains of the fiery mistress who had dictated all of his life before she could be carted off and sullied by hands that would hold her only for wealth and greed.

A ray dazzled his eye. Clouds thinned overhead and the rubble lit up, and he could hear a hum in his ears. The empty cradle turned in its stead at his elbow, but the noise did not come from the machine’s near silent workings. Tranta bent cautiously. He put his hand out. Warmth flooded his senses and vibration his hearing, and his nerves fired into vigilance. The hairs at his temples and back of his neck prickled. The gem nearest his palm nearly leaped into his grasp, burning, twisting in his hold.

There, there, there.

The stone fired in his hand, burning, glowing, and sending a beam striking outward. Not enough to destroy, no, but undeniably it pulsed in frantic warning.

Tranta fumbled at his belt for his telescope as he strode to the seaward edge and knelt there, one hand full of the fiery eye and looked upon the waters. He swept the stretch once and then caught it, where the beam fell upon glittering waters, its red eye bobbing on the ocean’s tide.

Intruder.

He could see the helm of the boat cutting through the waters swiftly, and the lens brought into detail not the exact shape of the rowers, but enough of them to know they did not move like men.

Tranta shot to his feet and bellowed, “Send a bird down to the port. On the leeward side of the cliff, near the cove of Keniel, intruders.”

Excited shouts and cries followed his orders and in another breath, a bird took wing, followed by a second a long moment after as the work crew fumbled to send word. The first bird, undoubtedly, had escaped when they’d opened the cage to get the second. Someone had the presence of mind to yell, “Message away!” to confirm the obvious.

Raymy. Scouts from the remnants of the original force, perhaps, lying off the coast and out of sight, venturing timidly into their waters to look for their army. Or perhaps not. Whoever or whatever sailed that boat did not bear a badge which gave them clearance to ply their trade upon these waters, the badge which allowed the Jewel of Tomarq to overlook them.

Tranta’s hand trembled. He looked down at it, as the stone remained hot and heavy in his hand, pulsing with its wispy voice. Dare he call it that? Its voice thinned and then tailed off, as if knowing the alarm had been called and heard. Or had he heard anything but the wail of the wind over the cliff and across the cradle and through his hair? How could he have heard anything? It was his mind, only his mind, and the alarm he had called, had he condemned innocent men? He retrained his scope on the waters below, to the leeward side of the cliff where the boat cut the water closer and closer and he could no longer say with any surety if its occupants moved as men did or not. They had tarps up to cut off the sea spray and wore oil skin cloaks and floppy hats as further protection against the water, hunched over their oars as they rowed with quick and steady strokes. He dropped the orb, pain throbbing through his hand as if it had burned to his very core.

It fell among its mates and rolled to a stop on the bruised and tender green grasses of the cliff top, shaded by the workings of the cradle. He folded one hand over the other gingerly in protection, but the heat fled as quickly as it had come, and his flesh seemed none the worse for it. How could he have felt such heat and not been seared by it?

Tranta stared down. Shaded, no longer refracting the light of the sun, he expected to see the dazzle dim and then bleed out altogether, but the orb glowed steadily. Then, one by one, other orbs caught fire in the rubble. His head felt muzzy as the vibration picked up strength to thrum louder and stronger in warning. He stood among them as belief forced its way into his body and mind. The Jewel of Tomarq lived still. She served, even broken and shattered and unable to strike as she had been faceted to strike, but she sounded the alarm. He squatted again, to be closer to the glowing stones. Their color grew even more brilliant as he knelt over them, as his belief in them grew. The Way had been changed, malformed by the attack, but she had not been broken.

Triumph surged through him. She had been made to be used, freed to face the sun in all its glory, and she wanted to be used still. He had only to find a new Way for her. He filled his pouch with a handful of the larger pieces, gems the size of his fist, experiments flooding his mind.

The Kernan foreman cut short the moment he was savoring. “Istlanthir! Lord. A bird has come to the field post.”

Warmth still flooded his mind. He blinked it away. “Back to roost?”

“Nay, lordship, a new bird. Field owl, it looks like. Has th’ other birds all in a fright. No one dares go near it, so the master sent me for you.”

That cleared his mind like a dash of cold seawater. “Field owl, you say?”

“So the coop lad marked it. He’s a bit dim, that lad, but he knows his fowl.”