King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three (41 page)

C
LOUDS SENT DARTING SHADOWS over the green hills and forest of Larandaril. The River Andredia flowed strong and swift, white curls upon its rapids as winter runoff swelled its banks. Yet, uneasiness weighed down upon her charge, her domain, and that tugged upon her heart. She finally decided to speak aloud some of her thoughts.

“We almost had him at Hawthorne.”

“The confusion would have been perfect cover; unfortunately, the riot was too massive for our men to converge on Sevryn, and he was pulled away from us.”

“It’s been days and no further sighting.”

“Not yet.”

Lariel turned in her chair, seeking the window and its framed view of her beautiful river valley, lush with springtime and maiden’s nod and not finding the sight as soothing as usual. She was seething, she thought to her faint surprise, and that was not something she did. Her grandfather had done much of it; and, although she couldn’t be absolutely certain, she was fairly certain Tressandre and Alton ild Fallyn seethed. They all had the same hardheaded temperaments about being obeyed absolutely and never crossed, as if humans could reliably be depended upon to do such things. She had thought herself a little more bendable.

Apparently not. Would her inflexibility cost her as dearly as it had Sinok? She couldn’t allow it to, but she carried a knowledge buried deep inside her. A moment would come when fate needed her. She’d seen it. She had to live to fulfill that moment, and that meant her life could not end at Sevryn’s hand. It could not! Doubt riddled her now. She carried within her that endpoint which she had shared with no one, not even Jeredon, but it loomed inevitably ahead of her. She accepted that. Now, however, she feared she would not carry out her part as seen, and that would be unacceptable. Kerith and all its peoples faced the unthinkable if she did not carry her burden forth to that future.

Lara ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her temples and jawline, thrusting the heavy curls back upon her shoulders. No more would she allow Sevryn to be a traitor against her. She could not. She had too much at stake. House Vantane could have taken the title from her if they wished, but Bistel had had power of his own and had never wished for the kingdom of Larandaril. He possessed his own lands to nourish, his own peoples to protect. Bistane and the other son—she could not quite recall his name at the moment—she did not think either of Bistel’s heirs would do anything other than follow in their father’s footsteps. No. She knew a web of conspiracies tightened to take her throne from her, and some of her enemies had not yet been revealed, but she feared Tressandre through experience and now Sevryn. What he knew about her Talents would make her cast out from the Vaelinars, that which her grandfather had known, nurtured, and guarded until death. She closed her eyes momentarily. The old Warrior King had even killed those servants around her as she grew up who might have suspected her Talents. She remembered a day when she had pled for Jeredon’s life as well. He had finally relented and let her brother live. His actions had led to much speculation that she had little or no Talent, but Sinok Anderieon dealt with that as he did most of life: he tore through it. Now she seemed called upon to do the same.

If she had Sevryn in hand, perhaps she could take his measure. Perhaps she could avoid the inevitable, now that her temper seemed cooled and logic could prevail. He’d been loyal to her and Jeredon all these many years, had he not? What made her think he would turn against her now? Gilgarran had trained him. That in itself made him an unknown quantity. Who knew what Gilgarran’s end game, so untimely cut short, had been?

Behind her closed lids, she saw again what she’d seen through Chastain’s eyes on an unknown battlefield, quite near in the future: Sevryn, clothed in the dark weavings of the Kobrir assassins, advancing on her, silvery blades in hand, close enough to kill her—

Lara wrenched her eyes open. Her memory staggered to a halt, even as her heartbeat jolted in fear. She knew what she saw.
What she felt.
Even as she fought within herself, she knew what she had seen.

Lara looked at Drebukar and stifled a faint sigh, managing it as a slightly longer than necessary pause. “We’ve sent the last of the troops out successfully?”

“On their way. Our presence here is strategic only, three squads apportioned over the valley to keep some semblance of security. These last we’ve sent out should bolster our presence considerably. We are ready at Ashenbrook.”

“We need to be. Reports of Raymy drops are coming in all along the coast, indicating Daravan’s hold is weakening. I think we can expect to see the mass of that army dropped at the river within the next handful of weeks.”

“Our troops are prepared.”

She smiled ruefully. “Overprepared, I should imagine. It’s been long seasons since the last engagement and we can only keep their edge for so long before it becomes tiresome. Not to mention expensive.”

“They’ll be ready,” he repeated firmly.

“I think we should join them shortly.”

He inclined his head, a gesture so like his father that when he lifted his face back into full view, Lara found herself shocked that the scar cleaving his skull in two was missing. To hide her momentary lapse, she turned away from him, who was not Osten though her heart and mind thought he should be.

“What word on Rivergrace, if any?”

“She’s not returned to Calcort. No involvement where Sevryn slipped our hold, but I can’t confirm that. They may still be separated, but I can’t imagine he’d stay away from her long. If we could find her, we would no doubt find him sooner or later. Master Trader Bregan has gone to ground. It’s said he’s dismissed all his servants—those who hadn’t already quit—and doesn’t come out of his manor. It’s said he’s gone out of his mind.”

“Bregan,” Lara repeated. “His caravans are still running?”

“His is a well-oiled empire. It would take more than a few weeks in seclusion to undermine it.”

“Let us hope so. Half our supply contracts are with his House. Keep an eye on him, if you can. I’d like to know what’s unhinged him if it’s something other than his propensity for strong drink. Put eyes on elder Bregan, too. I know the two of them hit heads often enough. If we can’t find out directly, the father might be more talkative. Nothing obvious, though. I need subtlety.”

“I’ll see to it. We have good contacts in Hawthorne.”

“We should. I spend enough money there.” Lara eased back in her chair. “Thank you for the briefing.”

“Anything else?”

“Not for a while. I’ll call.”

Farlen bowed sharply and left her. Lara stood up, changed her clothes and then donned her chainmail. Then she took a sword and shield off the wall, shoved her table and chairs aside, and began to drill as her grandfather had drummed into her very being oh so long ago. She did not intend to stop until she could no longer hold her weapons at all. She aimed at shadows with and without substance.

Rivergrace knelt upon the ground, fussing over her shoes. Horses stamped tiredly behind her and blew hot breaths. Her father’s shadow fell over her and she wondered for a moment that he could even throw a shadow. Its silhouette looked more whole than he did and she put a finger out to touch it, thinking of the legacy he insisted on passing on to her. She did not want to tangle and untangle the very threads of mortality. Worse, it tired her, leeched the strength out of her very bones, and she might never have the strength she needed to escape. She approached that point at which she no longer knew herself, and feared that when she did finally reunite with Sevryn, he would despise her. He dealt with death, but cleanly. None of this enslaving of souls or feeding of Demons. He would hate her as she’d begun to hate herself. A long breath sighed out of her.

“What is it, Grace?” His voice. As dry as he was. As quiet. As flat and unnatural toned. Perpetually tired, perpetually existing despite it. Would he have her end up as he did?

Her fingers twitched and she answered softly, “I can’t do it.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

She looked to Narskap. “Both. It is death and I don’t want to deal with it.”

“It’s worse than that, it’s Undeath and unnatural, but this is what we need to sow, for the moment. You must trust me, Grace. Trust me as if I have always been the father you loved once.”

His breath heated her ears as he spoke, bending close to her, seeming as if he did not speak at all, but she heard him. She concentrated on braiding the brittle laces of her old shoes carefully. The shoulder of the ancient apron she wore shrugged off her shoulder, and Grace tugged it back into place irritably, brushing off dried flakes as she did.

“Where on earth did you find those clothes?”

“On a dead woman in a cavern. I had need of them and she no longer did.”

“I’ll get you something more suitable as soon as we reach the ranch. I doubt if he burned Tiiva’s clothes.”

Rivergrace twisted about to look up at Narskap. “Tiiva was there?”

“After Lariel turned her out of Larandaril. She held an uneasy alliance with Quendius, but he soon found her guilty of disloyalty. Did you think she had run to Abayan Diort?”

“We weren’t certain where she had sought refuge, what alliances she might have made before she turned up in bits when Quendius used her to breach the border.”

Narskap nodded. “He took her soul with one of the arrows corrupted by Cerat. It was not a mortal wound though deadly. She lived long enough to ride to Larandaril, and there he killed her to cross the border, which still knew her essence and opened for her. Lariel had exiled her but not removed her signature to access the border. Even in death she managed to betray you.”

“He killed her?”

Narskap moved away and nodded. “Or perhaps he had me kill her. Some moments are hazy in my memory.”

Her mouth tasted coppery. Rivergrace brushed the back of her hand across dry lips. Tiiva of House Pantoreth, the last of that bloodline, with her brilliant hair and skin, and elaborate gowns, running Lara’s household as if it were a mighty empire. Perhaps, for her, it had been, though ultimately unsatisfying. Rivergrace had never felt accepted by the woman, never Vaelinar enough. She did not think she could stand wearing whatever wardrobe the beautiful but arrogant woman had left behind. She stood, slipping her hand in one of the many herbalist pockets of the apron. Ground-up bits of leaf and stem met her touch. Narskap had turned away, so she lifted her fingers to sniff them and almost sneezed in surprise.

Deadly hawk’s cap, unless she was mistaken. She brushed her fingers off carefully and made note to wash them as soon as she could, lest she poison herself. She watched the back of Narskap’s head. It wouldn’t work on him, but it would probably take down Quendius if she could dose his food. It might be her only chance.

Narskap turned back and crooked a finger.

“Rest is done.”

Rivergrace straightened her apron and approached, wiping her thoughts from her mind. She would have to consider her actions and what Narskap had said earlier. Was Death only a threshold that Quendius might enter and return even more formidable than he already was? Was Cerat his latest alliance? How far dared she go along the pathway Narskap had drawn before she had gone too far to ever go back?

Before she would lose all she loved and who loved her? Her thoughts reached out to Sevryn but could not find him.

T
HIS WAS HIS THIRD DAY in the gardens. Sevryn had tired of it the first day, but the late afternoon on the second day he’d been taken from the dirt to the sand of the arena, and no doubt this day would be no different.

“And this is hawk’s cap.” The herbalist’s crooked fingers caressed the plant gently. Shadows striped him as if he might be a beast crouched to pounce from the garden depths. He ached from bruises taken in his beatings but not from the exercise. The Kobrir were not tasking him any harder than he’d trained himself in the days when Cerat had raged inside of him and he’d feared to let Rivergrace know him. The garden held a kind of peace to it that tried to lull him, and he could not allow that. He cleared his throat and gathered his thoughts.

“I know of it,” Sevryn told him. He squatted by the bent man. “Not deadly until dried. The sun seems to anchor a potency within it, for whatever reason, otherwise it actually has a medicinal use as a purge.”

“Unless great quantities are eaten, yes. But once dried, it becomes a hundred times deadlier.” His teacher smiled. “What would you do with it dried?”

“I could use it like kedant, make a dip out of it to treat my blades, but it doesn’t work as well in the bloodstream. It needs to be eaten. It’s far too bitter to put in a drink. You could treat a pickled dish with it and it might not be too discernible that way.”

The Kobrir nodded. “Excellent. We make a dry capsule of it. There are those who will consume it regardless of taste.”

“For what reason?”

“It will abort the unwanted. A child or even a tumor. It takes but a pinch for that, and if the host body is strong enough, it can withstand the effects.”

This usage came as news to him. “It physically aborts a tumor?”

“No, no.” The elder dropped his jaw in a soundless laugh. “How could you even ask such a stupid question? But no. It stops the growth and, if dosed a few more times, makes it shrink upon itself until there is nothing left of it.”

“If the host is strong enough to survive the hawk’s cap.”

Another nod. “If would be the question, would it not? But if death is a certainty, perhaps an almost death would seem to be a respite? The dose is given over weeks, perhaps even months, to give the host time to work at keeping its strength. Sometimes we must kill to live, eh?” The herbalist got to his feet with bones that creaked and knees that popped audibly as he straightened.

“You seem the master here.”

The herbalist folded his hands together. His dark eyes gleamed from their depths within his wrinkled face. “Many are masters here.”

“You’ve set a task on me to find your king. But I’ve work of my own that needs to be done, and I can’t afford the delays.”

“Can you afford to live?”

“It’s not my life that worries me. I have other concerns.”

“Other journeys.”

Sevryn did not turn away from the unblinking gaze. “Yes. Important journeys.”

“You must find our king for us. This is a matter that will envelop all of us, whether one wears the black or not. It is a matter of many lives and many deaths.”

“He would be the most powerful of all of us. I take it he’s gone rogue?”

The herbalist looked away, breaking the tension between them. “I cannot say.”

“Or won’t.”

“No. I cannot tell you what I don’t know. All I can tell you is that what seems important to us only is of real importance to you, as well.”

He didn’t feel reassured. “Tell me where your king was last seen. How your contracts are made. Give me my weapons and let me go, and I’ll hunt him down for you.”

“Not yet.” The herbalist flexed, and his back gave an obliging crick-crack. He pointed downslope to where underbrush thickened and shadows grew darker, playing upon the ground. “It’s grown warm. Perhaps you would enjoy a swim? There is a tarn there, in the valley’s corner.” The herbalist shot him a look. “It is said to be bottomless.”

His shirt clung to his ribs with sweat. Sevryn considered a swim in what would undoubtedly be a snow-fed, cold-water lake as he had not been able to bathe in days. The possibility of touching Rivergrace within the water’s pool beckoned to him. The ache of her loss grew with every passing moment. Days of fight sweat and farming dust felt caked over him. He could use the cleanse.

“A swim is just what I need.” The old man watched him as he shed his shirt and boots, hiked down to the tarn’s sloping bank, and stood for a moment, watching its waters before putting his hands over his head and diving in.

Not that he trusted a single invitation from the Kobrir.

Icy waters parted as he plunged in. The shock felt good, kicking the weariness out of his system, bringing him wide awake and alert. It was, as he’d decided, a snow-fed pool, clean water as his examination of the growth and animal life about its edges indicated. The danger here, if any, came from its sheer iciness and what it might hold within. He ducked under once or twice but found its depths too dark to see clearly. One lap and he readied himself to climb out, knowing the coldness would affect him shortly.

Something grabbed him from behind, taking hold of his ankle and not letting go.

He dove downward instead of trying to make the bank, reaching for the long knife tucked into his pants’ waistband at the small of his back. The sudden reversal of his body weight loosened the hold, and he was able to twist free. Muddied waters hid all but a shadow of his attacker as he curled to meet him. He angled to his left in what he hoped would be a feint, and his attacker kicked forward.

Wrapped in dark cloth, the Kobrir could hardly be seen in the deep blue waters and the mud churned up from the bank. Remembering that the old man had warned him the lake was bottomless, he stayed near the edge of it, for he would gain the only propellant he could get from kicking out from there. His limbs began to numb. He wouldn’t last long, but the other had the same disadvantage. He pushed out away from it and at the trailing bubbles he could see, drifting upward to the surface like pearls. He rammed into his opponent and they locked, hand to hand.

The assassin had a grip of iron. Sevryn did not try to wiggle out, exertion that would only tire him; instead he played into it. On the streets long ago, he’d learned that strength alone did not win a wrestling match, particularly if that strength could be leveraged against the wielder. He fought back now in the same way, giving when his opponent expected a push, pushing back with his legs, entwining them, holding his opponent fully below water with him. Now they both held their breath, feeling their pulse in their ears, the leaden response of their arms to what they asked of them.

The cold would kill them nearly as soon as the lack of air. He could feel it penetrating, dulling his effort. It made his whole body heavy, almost too heavy to move, and his mind tried to slow with it. Heavy and dull. His mouth thinned. He could hold his opponent dear and near, hoping that the other would fall into unconsciousness before he did, but that would be a close call. The other felt icy in his embrace.

Sevryn arched his back suddenly, breaking free of the other’s hold by sheer, now unexpected force. He kicked free, hit the lake’s bank with both feet and drove himself upward, knife in hand, stabbing as he went.

He hit. Solidly. The blade wrenched against his hold. He could see a cloud as dark as ink spurt out even as he twisted upon himself, reversing his upward climb. No air for him yet. Not until he had his opponent and weapons in hand.

Not with his arms but his legs; he reached out to grasp the other. They clashed again, twisting and churning in the water. The Kobrir hit him, hard and solidly, in the rib cage, exploding what little air he had left in a spew. Sevryn bit his lips, hard, as he clamped his legs and thighs. Then with all the quickly draining strength left in him, he pulled toward the shore and climbed the lake’s banks hand over hand. Rock edges sliced at him, moss denied him purchase, and mud sloughed up everywhere as he fought for a hold.

Dark water churned furiously about him. Deeper than he’d thought, weighed down by the other’s body fighting him every handhold of the way, he climbed the stony bank like he would a wall. His lungs ached. He tasted blood through the teeth that sealed his lips from gulping for air. Rocks pulled loose as he clawed at them and then grasped for the next, desperation giving him new strength. Get out now or die.

He pulled himself upward and into the air, its acrid dryness hitting him full-force and he thought to just collapse there, half-in and half-out of the water, but he still held his attacker imprisoned in his legs. Sevryn reached down to grab the Kobrir by whatever he could best get hold of—turned out to be an upper arm—and hauled him out as well. His legs unlocked stiffly, and he rolled over and then got up, staggering out of weapon’s reach before going to his knees on the hot soil and feeling the sun blaze down upon his shoulders.

The Kobrir still bled. He writhed and curled into himself, too spent to even pull his feet from the lake. On the hill above, the herbalist gave a sharp whistle. Kobrir sprang up from everywhere, grabbed their kin, and bore him away.

The old one tottered down the hill. Sevryn looked up at him warily, his hands on his knees, as he filled his lungs and felt the pin and needle feelings coming back into his limbs.

“You did well. But then you suspected.”

“Why wouldn’t I? No Kobrir gives a gift without expecting a price.”

The herbalist held up his index finger, crooked by age and wear. “No being gives a gift without expectations. You would do well to remember, no matter who you deal with.”

Sevryn felt the corner of his mouth stretch and moving faster than he thought he could, he pivoted and threw his weapon at a shadow behind him. The knife hit deep, and the Kobrir collapsed with a surprised sigh. Sevryn moved to him and took the dagger out.

He looked back over his shoulder. “Even advice has its price, eh?” The water settled into its deep blue and calm seeming and Sevryn realized he had not felt or heard a single echo of Rivergrace within its depths. He hadn’t searched for it and, truth be told, it would have distracted him. Yet he yearned to have heard the echo of her essence in the cold, clear water, her silken touch on his very being. He craved it. He lived to receive and return it in kind. He prayed that what the Kobrir planned for him did not change him into a being from whom she would turn away. He cleaned his knife on his wet pants and went to retrieve his shirt with a quick look at the fallen bodies behind him. Never turn your back on the Kobrir.