Elizabeth Haydon - The Assassin King

“Again, no one is toying with anything here, Your Majesty,” Rhapsody said. “And I do apologize for Achmed’s impoliteness. But what is unfolding is beyond the bounds of normal discretion now; we need every tool at our disposal to safeguard the mountains and those that live within them, as well as all die other members of the Alliance. Sorbold is gearing for war, and the holy city of Sepulvarta appears to be in its sights. I hope that when the time arrives, if you are needed you will come.”

“I suspect this is the last time you’ll ever see me, m’lady,” said the Nain king bitterly. “We retreated once to our lands because of the greed and selfishness and stupidity of a male and female ruler in this place. I had hoped to never see such a situation again, but alas, history appears to be repeating itself. May you not bring about the destruction you seek to avoid in the very process of doing so.”

He turned on his heel and strode from the throne room, slamming the great gold doors behind him. The sound waves reverberated through the room, showering dust from the columns that held up the ceiling.

“What’s in the bag?” Grunthor asked after me noise had died away. Rhapsody loosed the string and opened the bag. Within it was a small hinged box of solid gold. She lifted the lid to find it was lined in black ivory, a dead rock formation that was said to be implacable to all methods of scrying.

Lying within it was a single scrap of brittle material, filmy and translucent. She picked it up gingerly, and suddenly felt as if the world had ended around her. “I’ve no idea,” she said.

The last place that Achmed took the Dhracian was down to the ruins of the Loritorium, an unfinished repository that Gwylliam had intended to use to house the artifacts of ancient lore in his collection. It had been built deep in the belly of the mountains, at the base of a tunnel whose only entrance was in the Bolg king’s chambers.

This was because on an altar of Living Stone in the center of that unfinished repository slept the Child of Earth, the middle child of the prophecy.

He and Rath stood over her catafalque, staring down at her. The child was as tall as a full-grown human, her face that of a child, her skin cold and polished gray, as if she were sculpted from stone. She would have, in fact, appeared to be a statue but for the measured tides of her breath.

Below the surface of filmy skin her flesh was darker, in muted hues of brown and green, purple and dark red, twisted together like thin strands of colored clay. Her features were at once coarse and smooth, as if her face had been carved with blunt tools, then polished carefully over a lifetime. Beneath her indelicate forehead were eyebrows and lashes that appeared formed from blades of dry grass, matching her long, grainy hair. In the dim light the tresses resembled wheat or bleached highgrass cut to even lengths and bound in delicate sheaves. At her scalp the roots of her hair grew green like the grass of early spring. Achmed recalled his first sight of her, and what the woman who had tended to her, the last surviving member of a nearby Dhracian colony called the Grandmother, had said about her. She is a Child of Earth, formed of its own Living Stone. In day and night, through all the passing seasons, she sleeps. She has been here since before my birth. I am sworn to guard her until after Death comes for me. So must you be.

He had taken the words to heart, probably more than he had ever done in his life before. “She is much smaller and more sickly than when last I beheld her,” said Rath. “The bastard emperor who is gearing up for war has been harvesting the last remaining Living Stone from a basilica in Sorbold called Terreanfor.” Rath nodded; he knew the place well. “Perhaps that is what is taking its toll on her.”

Rath nodded again silently, and followed the Bolg king back into the upper mountain to a causeway tunnel overlooking the vast canyon that separated the main part of Canrif from the Blasted Heath beyond.

The wind echoed down and through the tunnel, singing a mournful song. The Bolg king and Rath took seats on the ground at the opening of the tunnel, staring west, and watched the sun spill its light like blood over the piedmont, the steppes, and the wide Krevensfield Plain beyond. They sat in silence, awaiting the sundown, until finally Achmed spoke. “Tell me of the F’dor, and of those who guard them,” he said. “I only know what little I was taught by Father Halphasion. Being disconnected from the Hunt, he could tell me very little, so I have carried the bloodlust in my veins with no understanding all my life.” Rath looked down into the rocky canyon, where great fissures had caught the last of the daylight in their crags. “There are two pantheons of the beasts—the Older Pantheon, and the Younger. They are not faceless, but each a unique personality, each with strengths one must guard against, and weaknesses that can be exploited. We know each one, for they have all been alive since the very dawn of Creation—and they have not reproduced, at least for the most part.

“The demons of the Older Pantheon were born of the fire that burned on the surface of the Earth at Creation. Those of the Younger Pantheon were born of the flames that sank into the Earth’s core shortly thereafter. The Younger are more innately evil, because tainted fire is all they have ever known, the element that destroys and consumes. But the Older had access to another way, a way they did not choose. Formed as they were, they were witnesses to the sky, to the stars, to the universe and its infinity—and they chose to disregard the life they saw abounding, to embrace the Void instead of the Creation they knew was out there. They knew of fire’s creative and positive uses—warmth, heat, light, the smelting of steel, the cooking of food for sustenance, the purging of illness— but they disregarded it, choosing instead only to torture and destroy with it. That choice of path is why the Older Pantheon is considered so much worse.

“The Older Pantheon stole the egg of die Progenitor Wyrm. Those of the Younger Pantheon stole its scales. Both are evil, avaricious, and seek destruction at all costs; so it is with those that worship Void. It does not matter that their actions will spell the end of their own race; our outlook is merely to help them achieve that end without taking us, and the rest of me world, with them.” Achmed nodded, then was silent for a long time. Finally he spoke, and when he did his voice was devoid of its usual arrogance, its customary edge. “In the ruins of Kurimah Milani, you said something about the bees, how a man could destroy every living specimen of their kind should he come into their vault with flame. Then you alluded that it was such with another Vault as well. I told you, I abhor riddles. Speak to me plainly—tell me what you want of me.”

Rath stared at him, then looked out over the deep canyon to the place where the light from the setting sun was bathing the Blasted Heath in colors of fire. “It is a great irony that to the Bolg you were polluted, unclean, a half-breed among mongrels that somehow made you less in their sight. Somewhere deep in the scars of your past you have assumed that the blood of your unknown father somehow tainted you in the estimation of the Kin as well—but I tell you, with the wind as my witness—that nothing is. further from the truth. To the Gaol, and all the Brethren who have been seeking you since your conception, you are a special entity, a rare gift to our race, the one who might finally tip the scales in our favor. We have not been searching for you to torture or abuse you, to cleanse the race of your blood—but because we need you. You, in a very real way, are our last hope.” Ram smiled at the look of rancid disbelief on Achmed’s face.