Death Comes To All (Book 1) (8 page)

"How?"
Drom stuttered, amazed at the transformation in his companion. "Did
you use magic? Is this an illusion?"

"Of
course not," Garan, or Malik as he called himself now, answered.
"Any decent mage, even a weak one, can see through an illusion.
Most cities have human guards at their gates with enough magic to
dispel most glamours. Thankfully, for those that are willing to take
the time to learn, there are plenty of ways to disguise yourself that
don't require magic. A wig to cover your real hair can make a great
difference. False facial hair can go a long way to change your
appearance. With enough practice a person can even learn to move his
face in certain ways to change how it looks entirely, and I know all
of those tricks.

“I
can teach you a few, but there are better ways to change your looks.
Shifting your face, for instance, takes years of practice. If we just
shaved off the fur on your face, trimmed up a little on your arms and
such, and put something on your head to cover those ears of yours, we
could get you to pass as a human pretty easily. Not a very attractive
one, granted, but we would only want to disguise your true nature,
not find you a wife or anything."

Of
course not
, Drom thought bitterly.

He
silently started to pull oranges off of the tree, dropping them into
his pack as instructed, brooding in his thoughts.

Why
would any woman ever find me interesting or attractive? Not likely.
He had resigned himself to that truth long before, but the pain of
its realization was still sharp in his mind.

He
carefully moved around the rust colored ground that covered one area
of the campsite, where the boar had been dropped.

They must have removed the carcass during the night, he realized, or
early enough in the morning that it was already gone when he woke up.
They couldn't have cleaned all of the meat off of the animal, he
thought. They wouldn't have had enough room in their packs for it
all.

The
scavengers will be eating well off of whatever remains.

In fact, their packs didn't seem to have anything in them at all from
the outside, though surely they must have packed some of the meat
away. Perhaps they really did have magical packs. They were very
expensive, but not unobtainable to those who could afford them. The
two of them had made two thousand gold killing that trog guard, just
on that one job alone. Certainly such things wouldn't be out of their
price range.

Once
his pack was so full that he was certain he would not be able to fit
even one more orange into it he strapped it to his back, then
carefully strapped the sword to his waist the way he had seen others
wear them. The unfamiliar weight threatened to throw him off balance,
but he knew that in time he would get used to it. He would have to,
he knew. Regardless of what profession he chose, it was too dangerous
to live in one of the cities without protection.

"Are
you ready to go?" Raine asked him.

"Yes
Raine, I have enough food now to last me for a few days," he
answered.

"It's
Tara now," she reminded him sternly. "He is now called
Malik. It's unlikely that we will meet anyone on this road, but if we
do they might know us by those names. Make certain you don't call us
by the wrong one."

"Tara,"
he repeated. "And Malik. Tara, is Raine your real name, or is it
Tara?"

"Neither,"
she answered simply. "I don't use the name I was born with. The
same thing is true for Malik. I don't know his real name, and he’s
the only person I’ve ever trusted with mine. A name has a past
attached to it. Parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters maybe.
People from your past, those that you care about, can be used against
you if your enemies find them. To live the lives we've chosen, we had
to leave those connections behind us. I know Malik said you don't
need to change your name if you don't want to, but it might be a good
idea if you did. You don't change your name and your appearance to
protect yourself as much as to protect those people in your past that
you care about. At least in my case. Malik is hiding from his past,
and the name attached with it. I don't know what that name or that
past is, but I know that much about it."

"Was
he right about being able to make me look human?" Drom asked.
"It would be easier to blend in as a human than as a hornless
sorvinian."

"You're
right about that. As you look right now, you would likely stick out
in a crowd," Tara answered, thinking. "We should take care
of that now, before we get back to the road. Sit down here on the
ground, and whatever you do, don't flinch."

Walking
up to him, she pulled out a long, thin blade. He sat down as
instructed, trying his best not to move a muscle. Raine,
or Tara
,
Drom reminded himself sternly, silently got to work. Drom had never
felt so nervous in his life. Knowing what this woman did for a living
only made it that much worse for him, though in reality he was
probably safer with someone so skilled with a blade than he would
have been with any barber.

She
spent nearly ten minutes carefully removing the hair from his face.
Malik took notice shortly after he started, and watched her with a
look of amusement etched across his face.

It’s
the one thing that stays the same,
Drom thought as she worked.
He
could change his clothing, or even his face, but he always looked
like he was amused.

It
had struck Drom as strange since the moment they had first met. His
companion had his moments, mere seconds of extreme intensity, and
then that smile would once more push its way to the surface, as if he
couldn't hold it back. He wouldn't have expected an assassin to enjoy
life the way that this man seemed to.

I
wonder which is truly the facade, the man's apparent merriment or the
intense, serious person he can become.

Finally,
after what seemed like an eternity to Drom, Tara pulled away from him
and stepped back to admire her work. He had felt the sharp edge of
her blade while she had been working, but she had not nicked him, not
even once. He didn't have any sort of a mirror, so he couldn't see
for himself, but he could feel with his fingers the smooth skin of
his now hairless face.

Everything
was gone, every hair that had covered his face. Even the hair on the
back of his eyelids had been removed. She had left him eyebrows,
carefully trimmed, and a small flicker of sideburns that went down
almost to the edge of his jawline, but no more.

I
doubt that anyone would recognize me now,
he thought,
not even
my own parents.

He
tried to imagine how he must look now, but found he couldn't. He had
always wanted to look more like a human, had even imagined what it
would be like, but his imagination just couldn't put the pieces
together. He knew that many of his features, the shape of his face
and his lack of horns, had always been human-like, but those who had
always told him that had been sorvinians.

Without
the fur on my face, will I look that way to a human?

"So,
how do I look?" he asked his two companions, who continued to
stare at him. "How bad is it, really?"

"Well,
you’re not going to win any beauty contests. You almost look
human," Malik said at last. "A bit too pale though. Your
skin has been covered with hair all your life. Honestly, it's not as
pale as I had expected. The skin color will darken in time, but as it
is right now the skin color doesn't match the hair. There are people
in the north that have pale skin like that, but their hair is
generally a dark red color, closer to the color I have now. Were I
doing this for myself I would just dye it the color I wanted, like I
did for my hair. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t do anything to
hide those ears of yours. I can't do anything to make those look
human, at least not anything that I can prepare quickly. Instead
you’ll have to use a wig that we can hide your ears under. I
have a shaggy red one that would be long enough.

"Once
we're finished with this, I'll let you borrow what I was wearing
earlier to complete the look. When we're done, no one will ever
recognize you."

"I
thought that those clothes were from a uniform?" Drom asked,
confused. "Like an assassins guild or something. You were both
wearing them in the bar."

Malik
laughed. "Assassins don't wear uniforms, or at least not one
made for assassins. However, you’re not
completely
wrong. What we were wearing was a uniform of sorts, that of the
Thane. They are a group of mercenaries. They usually work as guards
for merchants, but unlike the city guards they aren't under the
control of the mages. You'll find dozens of them in any port city.
Seeing one of them escorting a merchant is nothing out of the
ordinary." He pulled the familiar black cloth out of the bag and
handed it over to Drom.

Drom
looked down at the uniform and realized a problem. "These
clothes are made to fit you," he said. "There's no way
they're going to fit me."

"It's
nothing to worry about. That uniform was always a little loose on me.
The man I took it from was closer to your size, though not quite as
tall I think. It should fit your frame just fine. It might be a
little short in the legs, but I doubt that it will be all that
noticeable. Just tuck the bottoms into your boots and you shouldn’t
have a problem with it."

He
found that Malik was exactly right. They were perhaps an inch or so
too short at the ankles, and higher on the wrist than he would have
liked, but they fit him all right otherwise. He stretched this way
and that, getting used to the unfamiliar clothing.

"That
should work for you until we reach our destination," Malik said
to him. "Once there we can have a few sets of clothing made for
you, should you decide to stay with us a little bit longer. Right now
you're helping me. Just by being here you're adding to my disguise,
and that's worth something to me. So in addition to teaching you how
to handle yourself, both with a weapon and without one, I'll pay you
fifty gold pieces for your time. That's from here to our destination,
which should take us about a month to reach. It's a little less than
a well-trained guard would make working for a merchant like the one
I'm posing as, but it will be enough to get you clothing and a good
blade, with a bit left over to hold you if you decide to go your own
way from there. If you decide to stay with us longer, we'll talk
about payment again. Is it a deal?"

It
was far more than Drom had ever thought he would earn in a month of
work, and he hadn't expected to get paid for traveling with these two
at all. He thought they were doing him a favor, not the other way
around. Malik was going to train him to fight, something that he was
already certain he would need to learn if he hoped to live in one of
the cities. That alone was worth more than any benefit he could be
bringing them. Now Malik was offering to pay him on top of everything
else he was doing. It was all too much, and once he had recovered
from the shock of the offer he said as much.

"Well
I can't have you wearing my clothes forever," Malik responded in
his usual, jovial manner. "Besides, like I already told you, a
regular guard would be making more than that. Were you one of the
Thane, which is what you're dressed as, you would be making four or
five times that. So really you're being underpaid. I'm taking
horrible advantage of you."

"We
both know that I'm not a real guard," Drom said. "This
sword at my hip isn't even mine, it's yours. If we got into a fight I
wouldn't even know how to use it. I don't seem to be of much use, so
I don't know why you're paying me. It’s not that I don’t
appreciate the thought, really I do. It’s just that it seems to
me that you’re helping me, not the other way around. Really I
should probably be paying you."

"Look
Drom, we'll reach the client in about a month, like I said. Until
then, you’ll be adding to my disguise, which, as I said, is of
use to me. Teaching you how to fight might also be of use to me, in
the unlikely event that we get into one and I can’t fight to my
full ability for some reason. So I’m paying you for your time,
and that’s all there is to it.

“Between
now and the moment we reach our destination, you'll be learning
everything you need to know about combat. I don't mean to sound
overconfident, but I think I will make a rather good teacher. I
haven't lost a fight since I was younger than you, and I don't have
anything close your strength. With the right training, who knows how
good you could become. Just accept what I'm offering and we'll take
it from there."

There’s
nothing else for me to say
, he realized. Tara was impatient to
go. She had been standing at the edge of the campsite for nearly ten
minutes, her pack already set on her back.

Drom suspected it was probable that she knew every campsite on that
road, and knew exactly how far it was to the next one.

I’m
probably holding them up, trying to argue with Garan about paying me
for my time. I’m being terribly foolish.

"You're
right," Drom said after a moment "Sorry about everything. I
didn't mean to keep everyone waiting." He strapped his pack to
his back. "I'm ready to go when you are Garan."

"That's
Malik," the assassin reminded him sternly. "You need to get
used to it. After all, it would be very bad if you said the wrong
name in front of others. Should you travel with us for longer you'll
find that I change my name, face, and occupation fairly regularly.
You will have to learn to keep up with things. Just think of me like
a different person. I don't look the same as I did before after all,
and from here on I'll be using a different voice than the one you are
used to. I've only been talking in this voice, the one you know,
because I know no one else is around. Trick would have told us
otherwise. He'll be keeping to the trees from now on, by the way.
Garan had a dragonling companion, but Malik does not. He'll follow
close by, and will discreetly let us know if anyone approaches."