King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three (46 page)

Nutmeg sighed. The baby moved sluggishly inside her, as if stretching a bit and finding little room to do so. Her skin ached. She stood and put the book back in its hiding place, manipulating the wood boards carefully so they would not creak and then found her skin cream. A light rub and perhaps a nap before she started dinner. That sounded like something she could handle, in place of Vaelinar mysteries and destinies. She put her head down, wondering what Rivergrace would make of Verdayne.

R
IVERGRACE DISMOUNTED at the edge of a tiny freshet and drank first, despite the horse’s impatiently yanking at its reins, for he would muddy the waters if she let him drink first. Only a moment or two after she gulped down what she could, he nudged her aside with his thick, heavy head, chomping at his bit, and took her place.

She stepped back after tying the reins loosely to the saddle, giving the beast enough room to drop his head for grazing as well, and walked back to a knoll and sat wearily. Her legs ached, her clothes felt as if they could walk away without her in them, and her thoughts were not her own. Not really, not anymore. She could feel the tiny fibrous tethers of the others tied to herself, her making of them. They drank at the brook’s edge as well, slurping through mouths that sounded as if they must be numb, but she could feel the real thirst that drove them—blood.

Grace closed her eyes. Quendius would let them beat the meadow for whatever they could scare up and devour. Mice, hares, even the disgusting stinkdog made prey for the Undead. They would cut off limber tree switches and walk through the growth, scaring up whatever they could and then pounce on it, devouring squealing bodies alive. She opened her eyes, knowing herself not to be safe if she did not keep watch, not even with her father about. Did their desire for blood influence him? It had to. She held no confirmation of it, but she knew it had to, if she as a living being felt the palpable hunger. She wouldn’t watch it and wished she could not hear the hunt.

Quendius walked past her without a glance. He moved to each of the Undead in his charge now, nearly twenty, for he had picked up a patrol or two and no one escaped his sword now. Each man stopped as he approached them. Then he did something Grace had never seen him do, and she felt it to the very core of her being.

He put his palm on the chest of each of his men. When he moved away, he carried a bit of their thread with him, a thread torn from Grace and from Narskap, for she saw him stagger and go to one knee, his face even more pale than his Undead state normally colored it. She felt a twisting ache inside of her but kept herself steady and her face neutral. She could not let him know he affected her somehow. Quendius raised his face to the sky and grunted faintly each time, as if he felt the impact of what he was doing. When he had finished, he swung about and eyed Narskap.

“You’ve done good work for me.” He pressed the heel of his hand to his own chest. “Cerat holds them for me, as you promised. It stands for me to gather more and have an army no one can face. The Demon smells a war brewing. All I must do is let them fight themselves, and reap the dead.” He looked briefly at Rivergrace before turning and walking upriver to find clean water of his own.

Narskap searched wildly until he met her gaze and they stared at one another. Dread gathered in her bones and sent a chill arching through her as she realized whatever Quendius had done had shocked Narskap. Fear shivered deep inside of her at the look on his face as he ducked away from her quickly. It did not stop when a flock of silverwings streaked the sky overhead and circled about her before winging off.

She knew the birds well. They were wont to follow her whenever she traveled their territory, often thought to be favored by the Goddess of the Silverwing River. She’d always considered them lucky.

Grace turned about. She had not, she realized, been paying much attention to their travels, thinking they had continued to move north and east toward the badlands, which hid the fortress Quendius called home. But silverwings did not range so far north or east.

No. Quendius had slowly circled them. They were headed south and were far closer than she realized, not far from the Silverwing River and the sacred Andredia.

She forgot to breathe for a moment. Would it bring her back toward Sevryn, or would she be lost forever?

Quendius lifted his hand and turned, tugging on all of them invisibly. “We have a war to scavenge. Every being that falls will become a brother of ours! We ride and we ride hard.”

The Undead let out a grunting cheer.

Sevryn

S
EVRYN SLEPT as he’d trained himself to do, dropped into a light doze that would refresh him but not cloud his awareness of what happened around him. When the Kobrir sleeping around him had dropped into that trough that the dead of night often brings, he rose and made his way to the latrines as quietly as he could but not so quietly that it seemed he wanted to avoid detection. To be too quiet would betray that it was silence and sneaking that he sought, bringing attention he did not wish. To be too loud would be just as problematic.

Once in the relative solitude of the jakes, he undressed quickly, stripping down and repositioning each of his weapons in a different, more expedient location, including the ithrel. Bretta’s sharp eyes had caught the placement of each and every one as he’d dressed before, and he’d no doubt that she had noted the positioning carefully and reported it. He’d taught himself years ago to position his weapons where they would likely not be spotted, and thus when he reached to draw one, he would not be noticed. Surprise was as much an element of his success as ability. His training now gave him even more of an edge and he wouldn’t relinquish that because Bretta had watched him arm and dress. Why? Because they told him he had graduated and he knew full well they had not given him a final exam.

When he returned to his sleeping spot, at least two nearby Kobrir stirred and turned, noting his activity even if they did not react openly to it, and he curled into his blanket, his wariness ever sharper. The morning would bring the answers he sought—and more questions, he was certain, he’d overlooked asking.

He woke just before what he knew to be dawn. He could feel the bare warmth of the sun just touching the bones of this desert, and its glow ate across the sands and up into the rock. The rustle of moving bodies, combined with the sharp tang of fires, stirred in the morning breeze. The pungent aroma of spices being tossed directly onto the firewood as well as into the cooking pots sizzled into the air as he stretched and moved toward the cooks. He searched, as he always did, within himself for signs of Rivergrace. He ached for the barest touch of her, at the thought of stroking the curve of her throat, of untangling her hair from her temple, of feeling her lips swell beneath his. What would she think of him now, what the Kobrir had made of him, finishing the job that Gilgarran had begun and Quendius had, unwittingly, contributed to, as well? Would she accept him as she always had? Would she understand that what he had done and would do, would be for her? She would not, he thought, as gentle as her soul was, but she might listen to him long enough to explain . . . once he found her. And he would find her as soon as he won his freedom here and took care of the obstacles that threatened her.

They parted for him as he strode near. They stared without staring, their gazes darting away as soon as they had been noticed, tugging their veils into place in case they had revealed something unseemly. As he walked through, he noted at least eight fighters missing.

Eight, then. Or more. If he had been one of them, he would not have tipped his hand as to how many able-bodied fighters he had. He didn’t expect they had either. They had always had his fear, but now they had earned his respect. He still did not know what they were as a people . . . they had a sinuous quality to their movement as if they might have joints he did not, and bent in ways he could not . . . and they had not dropped the veil of secrecy from their lives despite his living in the midst of them. Not much of it, at any rate. He knew a little more than he had and, as far as he could tell, he knew as much of them as anyone alive on Kerith today.

And that, too, made him cautious about stepping away from them. There would be those who would argue he was not worthy, he would never be worthy. There would be a few who merely regarded him as a contract to be collected upon, and he knew that Lariel had most likely put a price on his head. It would have been done discreetly, but he had little doubt. It was probably what he would have done in her position, barring taking care of the problem himself. She could not: she had to keep her hands relatively clean and direct a defensive war against an enemy who would not give her advance warning. But he would have trusted her, despite the seeming betrayal, because they had years between them of loyal service and friendship.
He would have trusted her until proven otherwise
.

The last of the Kobrir parted before him and he saw that they had led him to a massive cavern arena he’d never seen. It had little ceiling left, the elements having broken through ages ago, and sun and shade striped the area brightly, the sharp rock walls sending spear-like projections against that backdrop. He halted, heard the murmur of voices drop to nothing behind him, and did not turn. One voice instructed him: Find your guide. He sidestepped into a shadow and loosed his Voice, telling the rock and sand and shale to accept him, and melded into their presence.

Still as stone. Dark as shade. He balanced on the soft soles of his shoes, his senses so alive that he could nearly feel every grain of sand and rock beneath him. He inhaled as quietly as he knew how, sussing the air long and slow and deep inside his lungs. When he moved, he did so as a splinter of darkness, another step, then two, sidelong to pause again, his eyes growing in his ability to see in the dark, knowing that as he adjusted, so did his opponents. They would not see him, however, not as long as the shadows held him close as a brother.

In that closeness, he found his first opponent and took him out, quietly, silently, with no more sound than an outward gust of breath from the fallen Kobrir. In other circumstances, Sevryn would have left him dead. This time he left him unconscious and curled on his side. He moved away from the fallen quickly before being revealed.

Stone fingers pointed his way to another assassin. Sevryn used one hand and the crook of his elbow this time disliking the noise of the first conquest. When the man fell limp in his hold, he left him propped against the cavern wall where he’d found him and none the wiser that he did not just simply remain lying in wait for Sevryn to pass.

Three, four and five were nearly as easy. Five almost broke his cover, thrashing one leg out as he fell into unconsciousness, but Sevryn flicked his shadowy coverage about them and the movement was swallowed up hungrily. He saw then his objective, a hunched-over being at the far end of the cavern’s progress, his head in a burlap bag and his voice mumbling in a low-pitched monologue which might or might not contain sanity. His guide.

Sevryn watched the wretched being for a moment, wondering if the ordeal would be worth it. As he sidled through another spear-like patch of darkness, he suddenly realized that he had left himself wide open and flung his head back, looking up—even as Bretta plunged down at him.

He had only a flash of her face, her dive tearing her veil free as she leaped upon him, and then they were hand-to-hand and she fighting as though her life depended upon it. She curled her hand upon his neck, clawing deep and brought him down into the dirt with her. Her scar turned livid as he used her weight to anchor his twisting somersault back to his feet, and she scrambled up.

He balanced himself and watched her find her center, her lips curled back as though she were some great, feral beast he faced. His pact with stone and shadow faded away as the two of them stood exposed by the striped rays of sun slanting down on them, and he heard the murmurs of surprised Kobrir as he seemingly appeared out of nowhere. His attention locked on Bretta, her center of balance, and aware of her speed, rage-fueled this time. She slipped a little to her right. He mimicked her movement. Dust rose in the tiniest of clouds from their feet. He listened, not to their breathing or their steps, but to minor sounds in the background. Sounds of stealth, if he could catch any, for certainly there were still Kobrir he had to pass once he got through Bretta. They would not rush him yet, giving Bretta her chance to best him.

She palmed a dagger, a small one with a jagged edge, unfamiliar to him, but Sevryn knew it would slice wickedly and painfully. He disarmed her and took the time—and taking a blow just off a kidney—to toss it far across the arena where she could not easily retrieve it. As he took three deep, grunting breaths to shrug off the pain of her hit, he reflected that she’d probably meant the dagger as a loss, getting in a blow that could have doubled him over in pain. She’d missed her target but just barely, and pain radiated throughout the small of his back, agony that faded even as he shoved it aside to focus on her.

Bretta curled her fingers slightly and beckoned, a nearly imperceptible motion. She wanted him on the offensive. Sevryn danced a step back, refusing to step into her opening. Her lip curled in unspoken contempt. She lunged at him, both hands spread, and he parried her attack at her wrists, slipping one hand up and the other down—which was just what she wanted, as she grabbed his forearm with a grip of iron and his left hip with another claw-like hold.

But she didn’t find the weapons she thought to find there. She blinked twice, the only surprise she showed, as he spun out of her hold and dropped back a step to bring up his ithrel, the weapon she thought she’d imprisoned along his flank. Her mouth closed tightly as he nodded to one side in sardonic apology and his calf felt bared now, with the weapon pulled away from his skin and out of his wrappings. The pupils of her eyes flared in surprise even as he struck, and she ducked away out of sheer instinct, the ithrel shaving the top of her right shoulder, parting the fabric of her shirt with the faintest of whispers and leaving a long, crimson line after it. He’d claimed first blood.

No time to note it, let alone celebrate, for she dropped to one knee and loosed throwing stars at him. One buried itself in his shin guard, and the other sliced past his ear with its signature air-splitting noise. He flicked the buried one back at her. Bretta batted it away with a backhand even as her glove parted, sliced open, and blood welled out.

Second blood. None of them so deep as to cause either of them any pain or even slow down their attack, for nothing even close to a bleeder had been hit, but he had to wonder. Wonder when she’d become so clumsy or was she, like a mother bird with a broken wing, decoying him into an action that would prove fatal to him?

She’d dropped down from above. Was she positioning him for another? Sevryn took four running steps to his left and vaulted onto a low boulder that hugged the arena’s rock wall, scattering a knot of observers who darted off for safer climes as he swapped holds on his ithrel and looked up just long enough to target. He cocked his hand and threw, the ithrel tumbling end over end before
thudding
deeply into a long, dark shadow that perched out of place along the broken stone rim. The Kobrir dropped with a soft moan, to curl upon the sands.

Bretta let out a cry, a half-shriek torn from low in her throat, and rushed him.

He jumped as she did and they clashed in midair, hands and feet blurring as she attacked and he defended, landed and rolled under her kicks, to come up free and breathing hard. She lunged at him again, her fingers laced, her hands in one fist. He scrambled under her assault and came up with both hands to break her hold and got a kick in the lower stomach for his effort and a second to his right knee. His leg gave way, and Sevryn rolled as he went down. Red pain lanced through his knee, but he wasn’t hurt as badly as she’d intended. He proved it by getting up on that leg and bouncing to his feet. Her face creased in a frown, her scar deepening into an ugly purple-red.

He took the fight to her, then, determined to close it before she forced him to hurt her as badly as he had the first time they’d met with blows. She fought him as daringly as she had in the past, and he reacted as his body had been trained and retrained, with no time to think between blows and parries, forcing her to be the first to step back and take a deep breath. His knee sent lightning pains into his thigh as he put his weight fully on it, but he did not react to it. He could not let her know he had a weakness. Blood ran its way down her hand to drip sullenly into the dirt, and she shrugged her head to one side, easing a neck muscle.