The Assassin King (35 page)

Rhapsody shuddered. “Don't remind me, please. The nightmares will only get worse. Let's take shelter with the horses in the ruins.”

“Oi'll go get the diaperin' supplies and the rest o' the provisions,” Grunthor said, jogging to the ruins. “Oi think you're right about the young prince needin' changin'.Hrekin.”

“You don't want to see what's below the sand?” Achmed asked while they waited.

“No. I want to get to Ylorc, get out of the wind, and get started working on your bloody Lightcatcher. I don't need a reminder of our travels along the Axis Mundi, thank you very much. I'm Lirin; we don't belong underground, and you well know it.”

“Oh, come now, you said you were looking forward to returning to Elysian, and that's underground,” said Achmed in exasperation. “What's the difference? How can you, a Namer, pass up the chance to possibly find what sounds like it would be one of the greatest recoveries of lore in the Known World? If this is Kurimah Milani, do you want to leave it for someone else to find?”

“Yeah,” said Grunthor, dropping her pack in front of her. “What would ol' Talquist make of this place, Oi wonder?”

“I will not deliberately take the baby into danger just to—”

“It can't be any more dangerous than being out in plain sight, especially with night coming on,” Achmed said. “It could be a good deal less dangerous, miss,” said Grunthor seriously.

“Look be'ind you.” Rhapsody and Achmed turned around simultaneously and were slapped full in the face by the sandy wind. From the west a great wall of dust was approaching, sweeping ahead of it whatever scrub vegetation had been drying in the wide expanse of red clay desert, its force growing with each second.

Grunthor leapt down into the fissure again and began clearing the sand away from in front of the rift where he had indicated a tunnel to be present.

“ 'urry in if you're goin',” he said. "Can't 'old the bloody sand up fer long. Give me good ol'

Bolgish basalt any day."

Achmed climbed down into the fissure and crawled within the rift, emerging a moment later.

“It's all right, Rhapsody—the ceiling is high, and it appears to be a vault or cavern of some sort. We can stay in here until the sandstorm passes, then be on our way.”

The Lady Cymrian exhaled, then climbed down behind him, followed by Grunthor, into a place of vast and endless darkness.

As the gathering windstorm approached, a shadow followed silently behind them.

Grunthor, can you see me in the dark?"

“Yes indeed, Duchess.”

“Can you give me the pack and some light, then?”

“Certainly.” A cold blue light emerged, casting a glowing radiance at the mouth of the tunnel.

The three companions looked around. They were in a smooth hallway formed of ancient clay, with semicircular walls in which long deep grooves had been carved. The light of the globe reflected off those walls and glittered in the darkness with the same eerie radiance as that of the broken walls and towers of the ruins above. A cool breeze blew in from the darkness at the end of the corridor.

“Looks like a sluice of some sort,” said Achmed. Grunthor nodded assent. “Perhaps part of a sewer system.”

Rhapsody removed her cloak with the baby wrapped in its folds.

“Wonderful,” she muttered as she riffled through the pack. “Why is it that whenever the three of us enter a city, we always seem to come in through the sewer? If I recall, that was our first sight of the Bolglands as well.”

“Seems oddly appropriate, given what you are currently engaged in doing,” said Achmed acidly over the soft cooing sounds of the baby. “Gods, Rhapsody, are you certain you're not feeding him sulfur?”

“Fairly certain,” she replied, smiling down at the child in the dark. In the gleam of the cold light globe his hair and skin were almost translucent, the tiny vertical pupils of his clear blue eyes twinkling. She kissed his tiny belly, then swaddled him quickly as the howl of the wind rushed past them, screaming in and around the tunnel entrance.

“Good thing you got over yer fear of the underground in time, Duchess,” said Grunthor, looking outside. "That's a strong one, strong as the last. Oi 'ope the 'orses don't get buried.

Glad Oi got the supplies when Oi did."

Rhapsody stepped over the grooves in the floor of the tunnel, cradling Meridion in the cloak, and sat with her back against the wall. Achmed and Grunthor turned away while she nursed the baby, watching the fury of the sandstorm outside the tunnel and listening as the harsh cry of the wind and the soft sounds of the child both faded into silence.

When the storm appeared to have passed Grunthor hoisted himself out of the tunnel and looked around. “Fissure's filled in a bit,” he reported upon returning. “May 'ave ta dig out when we leave.”

The Bolg king nodded, then turned and walked past where Rhapsody was sitting and followed the broken sluice down into the breezy darkness. He gestured to the others.

“There's a large opening ahead at the tunnel's end, where that wind is coming from. Bring the light, and we'll have a look around before making camp for the night.”

Grunthor offered Rhapsody his enormous hand and helped her to her feet, then took out the light globe. They followed the Bolg king down the sluice to the end of the tunnel where a dark opening yawned.

As they neared the opening, both Rhapsody and Achmed flinched. A humming drone of immense volume was issuing forth from beyond it, echoing up the sluice tunnel and vibrating against their skin and eardrums. It was not the deep, slow song that Rhapsody had described, but more the noise of static, a discordant buzz that was electric.

Rhapsody's eyes glinted nervously in the cold light. “I'm not certain this is a good idea, Achmed,” she whispered. “Isn't that constant droning irritating to you?”

“Your constant droning has been irritating me for fourteen hundred years,” he replied. “I will survive. Better to know what is in there than to be caught unaware. Stay here. Grun-thor, give me the light. Careful; the floor has some oily spots beyond here.”

The blue-white ball was passed forward; the Bolg king stepped up to the opening, avoiding the thick pools on the floor, holding the light ahead of him. He leaned in and looked around.

“Well, that explains the bees,” he said after a moment.

Rhapsody and Grunthor exchanged a glance, then joined him at the opening.

Beyond the hole was an immense cavern, the ruins of what may have at one time been a huge public bath. Gigantic stone columns glittering with mother-of-pearl held up the remains of the ceiling that had at one time been painted with extravagant frescoes, intricate mosaics lined the walls, formed from tiles of fired glass, the colors still brilliant though partially obscured with grit, the reds especially vibrant, even in the cold blue light. It was difficult to see much of the floor below, hidden as it was in shadow beyond the light's reach, but the remains of a system of water delivery could be made out, leading away from the sluice, where long trenches lined with colored tile fed into long-dry fountains containing what appeared to be rows of stone seats. An enormous vault reached into the darkness above, shattered at one end.

The trickling sound of water could be heard, just below the droning hum that rose to the level of a roar past the opening.

Growing along the walls and columns at the extreme edge of the light were nodules of every size, thick mold spores of fungus that covered entire frescoes. Higher up, the ceiling was covered with what appeared to be massive stalactites, long hanging threads that looked like fangs in an enormous maw. Around those stalactites bees were swarming, more bees than their eyes could even take in.

The buzz of the immense hive was as loud as thunder echoing through the mountains. The stalactites were only the outermost edge of it; the remainder, cemented by sand and bee saliva over two millennia, sprawled threatening across the ceiling of the vault and out of sight in the darkness beyond the light's reach. Near the hole in the vault, the hive was shattered, with broken combs of wax and honey oozing thickly down to the floor below, around which tens of thousands of agitated insects swirled, buzzing angrily. The vibration of it traveled up Achmed's skin, leaving it burning with static. Rhapsody drew the baby closer within the folds of the mist cloak and struggled to cover her ears with one arm.

“All right, Duchess, perhaps we were safer outside,” whispered Grunthor.

“Don't make another sound,” Achmed cautioned in a low voice. “If you spook them, they'll swarm us; we can't outrun them.”

Nor can you outrun me, Ysk.

The words crawled over Achmed's skin, echoing in his blood. Though no sound reached his ears, he heard them as clearly as if they had been spoken right next to him. Almost imperceptibly he started to turn to look behind him.

Do not move.

The command scratched against the insides of his eyelids. The Bolg king flinched in pain.

There was a familiarity in the words, an unspoken and voiceless communication that was transmitted dirough his skin-web, inaudible to his or any other ears. He had been spoken to like this twice in his life before, once by his mentor in the old world, Father Halphasion, and again by the Grandmother, the ancient woman who guarded the Sleeping Child, but neither of their methods of communication had transmitted the raw power and pain that was being forced upon him now. They were spoken in no language, just transmitted in understanding.

Tell them to move within.

Achmed swallowed. With each command it seemed as if another invisible thread was cemented around him, hampering his ability to move. He inhaled into his sinuses, attempting to loose his kirai to see if the Seeking vibration would help him glean information about the speaker, but his breath stopped in his throat.

“Rhapsody,” he said quietly in Old Cymrian, “step forward and aside, out of the sluice. You as well, Grunthor.”

The Lady Cymrian, standing at his right, who was at that moment assessing the tone of the hive's vibration in the hope of generating a complementary one, looked askance at him and, seeing the serious expression on his face, complied, stepping onto the ledge and to the right of the opening.

Grunthor, on his left, obeyed as well, but as he crossed in front of the Bolg king he glanced back up the sluice behind him and slowed his gait. A shadow of a man stood directly behind Achmed, robed and hooded in the darkness, less than a breath away. Grunthor continued to cross, but subtly reached for the throwing knife in his belt.

Suddenly, the breeze that had been blowing up the sluice, generated by the movement of millions of wings, died away, along with all the rest of the air in the sluiceway. The two Bolg gasped for breath as even the air within their lungs was dragged from them. Grunthor's hand went to his throat, but Achmed remained still, the veins in his neck and forehead distended.

Rhapsody turned and, seeing her two friends compromised, stepped hurriedly back toward the opening in alarm. A voice, this time audible, spoke in a low tone that hovered below the droning of the hive.

“Stay within, lady, unless you wish to see the same visited upon your child.”

The globe of cold light fell from the Bolg king's hand and thudded on the ground. Rhapsody froze, drawing the cloak and the baby closer to her chest, as both of the Bolg sank to their knees, struggling to hang on to consciousness.

“Stop, I beg you,” she whispered in the same tone as the voice had sounded.

Be silent. The command stabbed her eardrums; Rhapsody gritted her teeth and leaned back against the wall. She watched in horror as both of her friends fell forward, Achmed first, then the giant Bolg Sergeant-Major, their eyes protruding, faces purple in the remains of the cold light. She steeled herself against tears, rather feeling hatred run-

ning like fire through her veins, as Grunthor's body finally went limp. Achmed, who had fallen with his face toward her, met her gaze with his own, then tried, and succeeded ever so slightly, in smiling encouragingly at her. Rhapsody thought she saw him wink.

Then his face went slack as well.

A shadow approached and fell over the bodies in the blue light. Rhapsody stood as still as she could as a robed hand, long-boned and thin, reached down from the opening and seized Achmed, dragging him to his feet and out of her sight.

Suddenly the breeze picked up; it had been blowing on her all along, but she saw it riffle through Grunthor's oily hair and across his cape, making it flutter on his back as he lay prone.

After a moment the giant Bolg stirred slightly, then coughed.

Achmed came around after a moment, his head thudding, to find himself gazing numbly into two pinpricks of light within a dark hood. The figure that held him in its grasp stared at him for a moment longer, then dropped him to the floor and pulled down the hood of his robe.

In the diffuse light Achmed could make out features he recognized instantly, but in a form he had never seen before. The man who stood before him was thin as a whisper, taller than Achmed, with wide shoulders, sinewy hands, and skin that was scored across every inch with exposed traceries of veins in a great web that gave a dual tone to it. His head was smooth and bald, tapering in width from the crown to the angular jaw, his eyes black as ink without a visible iris, bisected by silver pupils; looking within them was like looking into a mirror in a dark room. A Dhracian. Full-blooded. But one very different than any he had seen before.

Get up and step within, the man ordered. This time the command did not cause pain, but rather thudded succinctly against his skin. Achmed obeyed, rising slowly, allowing his body to unfold until he was standing erect. He stumbled past the opening where Grunthor was lying and shook him until the giant shuddered with life, struggling to breathe, then helped him sit up. “What the bloody—?” “Shhh,” the Bolg king cautioned. Grunthors gaze focused on the figure standing before them, then swung in the direction of Rhapsody, who was still leaning against the cavern wall, the baby wrapped within the mist cloak in her arms, panting. “Can you stand?” “O' course Oi can stand,” the Sergeant-Major muttered. “It's just a matter o' how long it'll be before Oi can.” “Stand and step deeper within,” the Dhracian said in his audible, fricative voice, the same sandy voice that Achmed spoke with. “Each moment you tarry you risk waking the beast.”