Elizabeth Haydon - The Assassin King

“What is to come will change us all in ways we cannot even contemplate now,” said Ashe. “But know this—it will surely come to pass. We cannot avoid it, but at least we are united in our determination to stand together against it. In this way, the second Cymrian era could not be more different from the first.” Anborn nodded. “And we will prevail. In this way, it could not be more different, either.”

“Glad as I am to have you with us, Lord Marshal, even you cannot hold back the raging ocean; its will cannot be stopped,” Rial said somberly. “The best you can do is build a seawall and keep patching it. With any luck the storm will pass before it gives way.”

“I’d rather think of a way to drain the sea,” Anborn muttered. “But, as I can’t, sandbag duty it is.”

“Yes,” said the Patriarch, rising with the others as the council meeting came to an end. “But on that day when you discover such a way to drain the sea, I am with you, bucket in hand.” As he ambulated noisily down the corridor leading away from the Great Hall, with its many porticos and side hallways, Anborn reached effortlessly behind the drape of an alcove where a small stone statue of Merithyn the Explorer was displayed and grasped a handful of gold ringlets, dragging then-owner’s head out from behind the heavy velvet swath. A high- pitched gasp echoed up the Grand Staircase to the floors above. “Ah, yes, you do make a fine little spy, don’t you now, m’lady?” he said with exaggerated courtesy, smiling at the shock in the glittering black eyes. “But apparently your assets are not as valuable as you thought. Keep working at it, though.” He released her curls and patted her head affectionately, then made his way down the rest of the hallway, the clunking metallic sound of his walking machine reverberating through the whole of the quiet keep. The girl remained in shock, still watching him, until the echoes faded into silence again. Then she hurried back to the buttery in the dimness of night, the light from the great lamps seeming to cause her shadow to lengthen, her hair to darken and fade into the gloom.

The wind off the sea was strong in the fading winter’s ebb, growing as the advent of spring approached. The gusts of the prevailing winds were steady enough to carry weather for miles inland, the vapor from the warming ocean blanketing the coastal towns and forests like a dream from which the land struggled to wake, winding its misty way eastward. Rath cursed as yet more icy water whipped around his head, drizzling down his neck. The ability to step between gusts of wind, letting the updrafts carry him great distances and sparing his feet the walking, was a great advantage of his race and profession, but it was not without cost. The arc along which he traveled in this way was an invisible wave of sound, oftentimes inaudible to the human ear, borne on the wind and anchored on each end at two points in the physical world. Rath had been upworld long enough to be able to recognize the beginnings and endings of such waves, and therefore more often than not was able to manipulate the wind to his benefit, as if opening a door at one end of the gust unto the other end, saving time in his travels and passing unnoticed across the wide spaces of the world. Occasionally, however, the wind was temperamental, refusing to be ridden the way a rogue horse or a jackass might. When this occurred, Rath found himself far off his planned course. Sometimes a fair wind turned foul when he was wrapped within its arms, following what had been a clear, strong wave, only to dump him unceremoniously short of the mark in a swamp or midden, or even in the middle of a pond. Whatever weather the wind was carrying was also unpredictable in its path, and as a result he would sometimes find himself bathing in sleet, being pelted on all sides by hail, or drenched in rain even though it had been a fine, dry gust into which he had originally stepped. In short, walking the wind was a necessary evil. But it was the only way one of his race, and his mission, could traverse the world quickly enough to follow the fragment of a fading heartbeat, the whisper of a demonic name. The gust subsided at the end of die wave of sound, and Rath stumbled out of the wind into the solidity of the world again. He pulled his hood farther forward over his face and looked around him. The place he had landed on the rogue gust was vaguely familiar, but Rath could not be certain if that was because he had walked this place before, long ago, or if every small, putrid farming settlement in a backward forested area was indistinguishable from another. Either way, he had appeared in a place that was as sleepy and nondescript as it was possible to be. A dense copse of trees and holly bushes loomed behind him, and Rath quickly stepped within it; he did not see the villagers about, but his sensitive skin registered vibrations that indicated humans were somewhere nearby, oblivious to his presence, most likely, but able to see him should he be out in plain sight. Once safely out of view, he began to cant his litany. Hrarfa, Fraax, Sistha, Hnaf, Ficken.

He tasted the wind for each name, concentrated until his throat went dry and his skin burned, but there was, as usual, nothing to be found. He listened for the kirais of his fellow hunters, and there too he found only silence or neutral reports; the searching songs of those like him had not discerned any new threads or heartbeats, any new clues to the whereabouts of the F’dor that those hunters pursued. As it had been for most of history. Rath exhaled slowly as the link to the minds of his fellow hunters dissolved. He prepared to move on, but there was a sour sensation in his mouth, a taste of something evil, or perhaps just something wrong, remaining behind where a moment before there had been nothing but the ambient air. Wickedness, evil, hate, they were so palpable that they often left behind traces of acid floating on the wind. Rath’s heart began to beat slightly faster, but his inner senses were not en-named yet; he had experienced this sort of thing many times over the millennia, a misdirection or false lead that would put him off his trail. F’dor, after all, were not the only entities in the world capable of terrible malevolence. Rath had no time for other such entities. His mission, bred in his blood and older than most of the Earth was old, blotted out all else. He inhaled deeply through his nose once more, his sensitive sinuses the last bastion of detection, only to find that whatever had been on the wind had vanished into it, if it had ever really existed in the first place. Rath turned his attention away from the distraction and cleared his mind again. Once more he loosed his kirai, this time calling the name of the living man he sought. Ysk. Once again, the slight tinge echoed back to him, distant, but still clear enough to be discerned. Rath tried to hold on to the vibration, but it, too, eluded him. Then, a moment later, he realized why. It was coming from a different direction than when he had first discerned it. The signal he had picked up when he first landed originated in the southeast. He had been following the prevailing winds in that general direction in the hope that he might catch a stronger vibration. Rath had guessed that the name had been sounded in what other hunters who had trod this continent more recently than he had described as the Bolglands, where Canrif, the royal seat of the Cymrian Empire, had once stood. But now, somewhat clearer and cleaner, it was echoing to the northeast, and not very far away. Rath inhaled deeply, expelling all the wind from his lungs. His target had moved and, moreover, the dead name had been sounded again recently, making a new vibration for him to follow. He closed his eyes and raised his hand to the wind, opening his mouth slightly, fishing about for a new gust of a strong northeasterly breeze to get him closer to his target. A jolt of shock ricocheted through him as he was struck violently from behind, the blow driving the air from his lungs as his chin and teeth smashed into the snowy ground. Caught unaware in the midst of his concentration, Rath gasped, inhaling the blood that had begun to pour from his sensitive sinus cavities. In shock, he dimly heard the sounds of raucous laughter, the grunts and scuffling as he was flipped onto his back in the snow and roughly gone over, his legs and abdomen battered with what felt like heavy sticks. After a few seconds his mind cleared, and he could think again. He sensed that he was in the grip of four brigands or, more likely, drunken ne’er-do-wells by the reek of them. Two of them were slapping wooden tools, rakes or hoes it seemed, against him to keep him supine, while a third searched his robe pockets and the fourth rifled his pack, unimpressed by the sounds of disappointment that he uttered. Rath lay still, feigning stupor and collecting himself, until the one rummaging through his clothes discovered his knife. The man yanked it from the calf sheath and held it high amid the buffoonish laughter of the others. “Well, lookee ’ere, boys!” the bandit crowed. “He’s got a lit’le blade! Right sweet it is, too— can probably terrify an apple with it!”