Elizabeth Haydon - The Assassin King

Melisande uncapped her waterskin. “Have you ever seen fairies at a fairy pond?” she asked before she took a drink. The Invoker shook his head. “I’m not certain they exist anymore, though I am told by ancient Cymrians who I respect that they once were real, long ago, before the death of magic in the world.” Melisande took another sip, then dried off her lips and recapped the skin. “I’d hardly say that magic is dead, given that you and Rhapsody can say a single word and make wood burst into flame.”

Gavin shook his head again. “Some people might call that magic, I suppose, but really it’s elemental lore, power left over from the creation of the world,” he said seriously. “Magic was more complex. It was formed from elemental lore, but it needed a certain atmosphere in which to survive. When the sister of the Great White Tree, the ancient oak known as Sagia, was destroyed along with the Island of Serendair, where both our ancestors came from, it took a good deal of the magic out of the world, Lady Melisande Navarne. The world’s a darker place than it used to be, and growing dimmer all the time.” He regarded the child in the shadows of the flames. “But after what you’ve been through in your life, I don’t suppose I have to tell you that.” Melisande inhaled, then let her breath out slowly, considering. “My father didn’t believe that,” she said finally. “He believed in fairies, and magic, and honor and chivalry, and that you could hang on to the ideals of better times in history, and if you did, they would one day come back. I think that’s why he kept the Cymrian Museum so carefully. I used to help him polish the statues and clean the exhibits, and he would tell me of the grand times of the Luminaria, the age of Enlightenment, when the Cymrians were building great cities and cathedrals, and making advances in science and music and literature. He felt that if we maintained the memory of those times, we could recapture them someday.”

Gavin leaned back against a tree as the horses moved away from the pond. “Your father was a great man, Lady Melisande Navarne,” he said quietly, without a hint of sarcasm. “May he rest peacefully beyond the Veil.”

Another chorus of primal howls broke the stillness, much closer than before. Melisande skittered away from the fire as the Invoker rose, in one smooth, quick movement, to a stand. “Mount your horse,” Gavin said, taking the mare’s lead and holding her steady. Melisande complied, fumbling for the horn of the saddle, with a quick boost from the Invoker. He handed her his staff. “Hold on to this—you won’t need it, but it will make you feel better.” Then he turned and walked away from the fire. The shadows seemed to open and swallow him. Melisande waited atop the mare, nervously gripping the staff. Well, she thought ruefully, you wanted responsibility and adventure, stupid. How do you like it? She glanced around the forest glen where Gavin had made camp, at what appeared to be glittering eyes watching her from the dark recesses beyond the edge of the firelight.

Another brief howl was suddenly cut short, and in the distance she could hear the muffled sounds of cracking branches and the rustle of leaves, louder than what the wind was making. The moon broke through the clouds above the forest canopy, spilling silver light over the dark trees, making them shine eerily, their still-bare arms twisting menacingly in the dark. Melisande swallowed the impetus to call out for the Invoker again, and waited. The wind whispered across the glen, fluttering the grass and the newborn leaves, making the fire crackle and wink.

The Invoker appeared at last at the far edge of the glade. As always, he had made no sound in passing, but his face was grim and his body tenser than it had been when he left. “What’s wrong?” Melisande asked; her voice came out in a choked whisper. “Where did the coyotes go?” The Invoker came back into the circle of firelight. “I drove them off,” he said. “But I think we will move on from this place just the same.”

“Why? If they’re gone, why don’t we just wait until morning?”

Gavin exhaled. “The second set of howls you heard was the pack warning each other of our presence,” he said seriously. “The first was a call to food. They were feasting on the remains of what appears to be a woman; it’s hard to tell. She’s unrecognizable.”

The backs of Melisande’s ears tingled numbly.

“I thought you said coyotes don’t generally harm people, especially full-grown ones.”

“They don’t,” said the Invoker. “I do not believe they killed her. Strange—even the foresters who travel the holy forest of Gwynwood south of here would never broach these lands. I wonder what a woman was doing here, in this place that has been sacrosanct from the beginning of history.”

“Oh, no,” Melisande whispered. “Oh, no.” The Invoker lowered his chin and stared at her. “I—I forgot something Rhapsody told me to convey to you.”

“What is that?” Melisande fought back tears. “She said I was to tell you that the foresters should comb the woods for a lost Firbolg midwife named Krinsel, and should they come upon her, they were to accord her both respect and safe passage back to the guarded caravan to Ylorc. But I—I forgot, in all the commotion.” She began to tremble so violently that Gavin reached quickly up and pulled her down from the mare, who was starting to dance impatiently in place. “It’s all right,” he said soothingly, or at least an approximation of an attempt at comfort. “You’ve told me now. We’ll keep watch for her on the way to the dragon’s lair.”

“But what if the foresters who set out first came upon Krinsel and killed her, not knowing she was supposed to be left unharmed?” Melisande persisted.

“Foresters are trained to accompany and guard wanderers, not kill them, unless they are threatened,” the Invoker said. “Had they found a Bolg woman, lost in the woods, they would have reported it to me, and taken her back to the Circle. And they would not have left a body for carrion in any case; it’s against Filidic practice. She would have been burned. I don’t know what happened to this woman, if she in fact is your lost Bolg midwife, but I do know that whether you had told me at the outset or not, it would not have dissuaded Fate if she was to meet it. Stop looking for reasons to be worried, Lady Melisande Navarne. You will have more than enough of them when we get within a few miles of the dragon’s cave. Now come; there’s a thicket up ahead where we can pass the night in safety and a semblance of calm, if not peace.” The little girl nodded, and allowed the forester to lead her away from the fairy pond, the dark waters of which reflected back the racing clouds passing in front of the shimmering moon.

By the time Rath reached the glen the back of his throat was burning with the caustic taste of acidic blood. Cautiously he slipped through the shadows, following the buzzing in his throat and sinuses, the sensation of needles running through his veins. Rath fought down the racial hatred that was causing his teeth to clench and his heart to pound furiously, concentrating instead on the demonic whisper of the name, hovering on the wind just beyond his sight. Each step, measured against ten of his heartbeats, brought him closer. Rath focused on being quiet. After such a long journey, so many centuries of pursuit, it would be cataclysmic to lose the beast at this moment, when it was almost within his grasp.

His night-sensitive eyes could see something now, at the outskirts of his vision, something tethered to the end of the gossamer thread of sound that glittered evilly in the moon- light, hanging amid the branches like a strand of spider silk, evanescent and deadly. Even the threat of what it led to could not prevent Rath from hesitating for a moment, enraptured by the beguiling beauty of it, the visualization of kirai, this fiber of undying connection between the wind of his heritage and the black fire of the F’dor.