The Outlaw King: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book One (13 page)

Chapter Thirty-Six

The
dirt rose up to claim him, and he struggled against it. It was no use. It
clogged his ears, blinded his eyes, and he could no longer breathe. He choked,
covered in dirt. No air reached his lungs. He was dying. Then, without undue
difficulty, the realisation came to him. He was already dead. Buried
underground, and this was how the dead felt.

            Panic
abated, and he rose through the damp earth. Then, as suddenly as the feeling
came, he was free! He rose into the night air, and danced as the stars danced,
a being made of light.

            The
feeling did not last. Sucked violently across the face of Rythe, he screamed,
No! I want to be free!

            But
some shackles cannot be broken.

            He
flew across Sturma, seeing with his spirit eyes the rivers’ paths, the groaning
forests, the farmers’ patchwork landscapes, and then a castle. He was in the
north. He could feel it in the texture of the air, the caress of the wind. And
then, suddenly and painfully, his spirit was caged again.

            He
had eyes to look with. There – a hand. What was that? A feeling of warmth.
There was no temperature in the spirit world. He was alive again. And his was
the body of a warrior. He could feel his powerful muscles under the fine shirt
of silk he wore. He turned and saw a man walking toward him across a great room
– a throne room. There, at the end of the room, a great throne. And a weight
upon his head. A crown.

            A
king.

            The
man approached – no! Do not let this man near me! The spirit within screamed,
but the body without merely smiled and opened its arms in welcome.

            The
man, close now. The spirit could see murder in his eyes. A dagger flashed, and
the king’s heart was pierced. The spirit held on for longer than the body.
Remember those eyes. Remember the face, for you are the man that killed me and
I will have my revenge.

A
tearing. And then flight once more. The spirit did not resist the pull. To be
inside a dying shell was torture. But it had seen what it came for – the
murderer’s face. In my next incarnation I will seek him out, the spirit
resolved.

            A
joining. A new body. The same castle, the spirit understood. A warrior’s body.
The King’s son. A man already. And in his hand a sword. Blood on the blade.
Soldiers all around – their uniforms bearing the same crest as the man with the
dagger, that of the hawk. The man that murdered – me?

            But
there is no me in spirit. Just a long succession of lives. And this one is near
its end. It must be. So many soldiers, death on their minds. And yet, no blood
on their blades.

One
lashed out, and the sword in the spirit’s hand blocked and slashed through the
throat. The body’s legs bunched, and leapt as more men charged in. Water all
around, the sensation of drowning again, but this time in water, not dirt. And
then bursting into the air, sucking life giving air into lungs. The spirit
wishes that this shell could live.

            A
jump. The same man. Holding a woman, and a babe, and a witch is there. The babe
and the witch look somehow familiar. The babe wails and the spirit hears its
own voice. But the eyes are vacant. There is no spirit there, and the spirit
realises it is absent because it watches its own birth through the father’s eyes.
The witch tries to save the baby, still born. The babe will be fine when Tarn’s
spirit returns, he knows.

            The
man loves the woman and the child. The same man that fought on the battlements.
The spirit looks to the mother, and sees the love for the babe and the man
there. It resolves to hold onto this also. It will take as much from this
journey as it can, and perhaps with such knowledge it will make it back into
the babe’s body, and find a home there.

            Split.
A sword lashes out and takes the man in the chest. The same feeling again.
Warmth fading. With dying eyes the spirit looks around, and there is the babe,
grown but still a child. Soldiers hold him now, their garb adorned with a
boar’s crest. But the spirit understands that these are the same breed of
soldiers the father fought with before. The warrior, the king’s son, watches
his own son as he is taken away by soldiers.

            The
spirit realises the boy is him. There is a me in spirit. I am the son.

            And
Tarn awoke with tears in his eyes.

*

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The
Guryon slid through the planes, always coming back to the mortal realm. No
matter how it (they, perhaps, for its souls were legion) approached the
problem, it could not sense its prey. A spell, weakening, but still with the
vestiges of power. The spell obscured the man it hunted from its myriad senses.
None of its souls, each with a power unique to itself, each assassins in their
own right, could sense the man.

            It
came to rest in the fields of Gern’s Crest, near the east coast of Sturma, after
travelling through the planes like a bolt. Sturma was a small country in
comparison to the others in the realms of Rythe, and even smaller still to a
being of the Guryon’s particular talents. Still, with nowhere to start it could
take an age. It thought on the problem, and came to the conclusion that it
would not spend years hunting.

            The
dagger was a great prize, and the price was fair, but it would not waste time
on an endless hunt. The man might well die of natural causes before the mark
could be found. There were plenty of other deaths in far-flung realms that it
could bring about more easily.

            The
Guryon resolved to make the attempt. It was an assassin’s right to refuse a
mark, as long as payment had not been taken, and in this case payment had been
withheld until after the deed.

            Yet
it hungered for blood. It disliked passing up a kill.

            It
needed a cool head. The cool head of a killer. Within its many minds, agreement
was reached. One attempt, and then it would pass on the kill. There was only one
thing it could do in such a situation. It hunted down those that were not
touched by the spell, those that crossed the mark’s fate.

            If
it could find them, it would find the man there also.

            Outside
a farmhouse, a sturdy structure built from wood, the Guryon appeared. The
planes, the places between worlds, called to it, but it held its being in
stasis, resisting the pull, resisting the calls of other beings of power who
summoned it. It was not time to go yet. It could sense the love here. Perhaps
it would find the mark after all.

            The
man may be hidden, but there were many tools an assassin could bring to bear if
he truly wanted to find someone. 

            It
stepped through the door.

            Gard
jumped back from his chair, knocking it over, and placed himself between the
shimmering, burning haze that stood jittering, stuttering, as it battled
against the call of the planes, in his kitchen, and Molly, rigid with fear
behind him.

            ‘Get
out, demon!’ shouted Gard, one hand on Molly’s shoulder, pushing her behind
him.

            A
reek pervaded the room, the stench of a thousand deaths, and a piercing whine
came from the man shaped haze covering the door into the house. There was no
mistaking its purpose. Evil seeped from it, darkening the room.

            The
thing spoke, but Gard could not make out its words. It continued to speak, and
Gard realised that its words, while disjointed and filled with alien symbols,
could be discerned.

            It
had come for Tarn.

            ‘You’ll
not get him, you vile thing!’ cried Gard, and with that he shoved Molly through
the door leading from the back of the house.

            And
as they emerged, the thing stood in front of them once again, blocking their
escape. Gard looked behind him, into the kitchen, as if expecting this thing to
be a double, but no, there was only one.

            Gard
did not know what courage was, and would not recognise it in himself, but he
knew fear. It made his legs weak. But he steeled himself. He had to protect
Molly and Tarn.

Roaring
with rage to cover his fear, Gard leapt to battle. He swung a powerful right
cross at the haze, reasoning if it could not be hurt he would lose nothing by
trying. He did not feel the connection, but instead a sharp, burning sensation.

            His
fist was no longer there.

            He
held his scream within, although Molly screamed for him. He knew all was lost.
Looking down, he saw the cauterised stump where his hand once joined his arm.

            Something
sickly came from the creature, and Gard realised it was laughter. He backed
away, holding the stump of his hand.

            ‘I
hope you rot in pieces through the many hells!’ he spat at the wavering form
before him.

            The
laughter followed him and then the creature was gone. He turned to see Molly’s
fearful face, and then she was obliterated. Before him stood the thing once
more, and Gard’s wife, his only love, was nothing but a thin red haze
surrounding the creature. Gard had no time to scream, and would not, for the
fear had been replaced by burning anger and hatred for the monster before him.

            The
thing asked him once again, ‘Where is the king?’

            Gard,
gritting his teeth against the pain and rage, thought he misunderstood. There
was no king. There had not been a king since the old one was murdered, at the
end of the civil war.

            For
a moment, he thought about saving himself, but then he thought of his honour
and realised even if he spoke the thing would not, could not, let him live.

            He
stood his ground and said nothing, his mouth set in a grim line. If this was to
be his death, then so be it. He had lived and loved well. He was ready to pass
the gates. With all his heart, he prayed that Tarn would stay away. I am proud,
he thought, and my death may be unsung but I’ll not scream for you, beast.

            Even
when it took his eyes, Gard made no sound at all.

            The
woman’s soul it took with it, but the man it left behind. He deserved to die in
his own lands. He had not begged. He had not screamed.

            The
Guryon respected that. He could die in his own time. His soul could be free.

            It
was an assassin, not a hunter, but it searched nonetheless. It searched for the
line in the past, and found it, but it could not travel through time. That
route was not open to it. Its senses were like smells, and the line of kings
like the smell of metal. But it split, shards going in every direction. It
searched the present, and found nothing.

            A
hint, like ore in the earth, that it turned its thoughts toward.

            Further
on, it jumped, searched other years down the line. It sniffed and screamed. The
line fragmented, became every man, every living thing. It screamed because it
was like smelling
itself
. The line of kings, sensed, became a river, a
torrent, an ocean of souls. For a time the planes’ assassin was rendered
insensible. It shook itself, tried to hold onto its substance although its
senses were pulled in a million different directions at once.

            It
could not be. The line of kings would become like the Guryon itself,
uncountable souls, not within the planes, but within time, stretching for a
thousand years. It was not impatient, but as it shuddered and pulled its
essence back from the brink of time, the one plane denied it, it realised that
it would fail.

            The
price could not be met.

            The
space where the Guryon had been blinked and nothing remained but the stench of
rotting meat and bloated bowels.

            The
smell of the mark had been strong on the man and the woman, but still they did
not tell the Guryon where the mark was. He tortured the woman’s soul for a
time, but her soul rebelled with every strike, every shred of fear she had
turned into venom for her tormentor. It had thought the woman would have been
the easier of the two, but she proved just as unyielding.

            Undone
by a human, a mere mortal being. That one soul could deny its power!

            Already
it was being called to six different planes. The pull of the call was always
strong, and the Guryon battled to hold itself together. But that was its curse.
The greatest assassin in all the worlds, but to be so it had to obey the call.
After all, what was an assassin without a master? Just another murderer.

            It
felt no compunction about hurling the woman’s soul from its being into the
darkness between the worlds, between the thousand heavens and thousand hells
reserved for creatures that lived and breathed. The Guryon’s respect for her
was tainted by its anger at her rebellion.

            She
could find her own way past Madal’s gates.

*