Elizabeth Haydon - The Assassin King

The air in the glade sharpened to cracking as the lore of primordial earth blended with the demon’s dark fire and the ether that was extant in the blood of Faron’s Seren mother, all now fused within the statue of Living Stone.

The demon shrieked joyfully within Faron’s ears as it recognized its own, the seed of tainted fire that had been bequeathed from his father. With your lore and mine together, we are truly godlike , it whispered, reveling in the solidity of stone flesh and the spark of ethereal magic. We alone have the power to find and take the Sleeping Child—and then the Vault will be opened . The voice dropped to an almost maternal croon. And all the world will burn beneath your feet—my child . The demon’s mutability, its innate power to change form and aspect, coursed through the titanic body, refining its features. The milky eyes that had at one time been out of place in the rough-hewn stone sharpened, became more lifelike and clear, growing lids that allowed him to blink and close them against the grit of dust. The hands stretched and extended, the rough edges resolving, the place in the palm from which the stone sword had been torn smoothed into the image of calloused skin. Each finger appeared to grow knuckles, each knuckle defined by a series of tiny grooves in the smooth earthen skin. The swirls of clay that had at one time suggested hair lengthened and became heavier, with each individual strand visible. The muscles of the shoulders, torso, genitals, and legs lengthened and striated until they appeared as human tissue, pulsing as if they were alive. Faron raised his head to the moon, basking in the light, reveling in the sensation of wind passing over the tiny earthen hairs in the smooth skin of his stone arms. A rasping gasp on the other side of the glen caught his attention. The titan turned to where the man he had struck had been flung. He was lying on his side, clutching his chest, his sinewy hand held shakily aloft in the breeze that rustled the newborn leaves on the trees and scrub bushes all around him. Behind him he could hear someone approaching. Someone comes , the demon’s voice cautioned. Kill the Dhracian, and let us be gone from here . Faron lunged across the glen. Rath lay still, struggling to breathe, feeling the hiss of air in the back of his throat from his punctured lung. He willed himself to keep from losing consciousness, softly canting into the wind a report to the Gaol of what he was witnessing, knowing that no more dire news had been sent in all the time of their upworld history. A favorable breeze caught the words and carried them aloft, into the sky, where they would circle the wide world, bearing their dread tidings to those who could hear them. The titan’s volcanic blue eyes came to rest on him. A light of malice entered them, causing them to gleam in the reflected light of the moon, the edges tinged with the red rim of blood that occasionally betrayed demonic possession.

And then it was coming for him. Rath reached up with a shaking hand. For all that the currents of air had been confounding him since his arrival in the Wyrmlands, a beneficent wind was blowing through the glade, a strong, warm updraft with a heavier gust behind it. Thank you, he thought as the titan bore down upon him. Just as it arrived, Rath disappeared into the wind.

The sound of cracking branches and pulsing waves of blue Sight flooded the small glen in the woods beneath the moon. Ashe froze. The dryness of the air was unmistakable, the thin charge that hung, like static energy, from every current of air. Great power had been expended here, power that was primordial, elemental. The wyrm within his blood could feel it, and shrank away at the intensity of it. And yet there was nothing to be seen, no scorched ground or trees, no violent upheaval or signs of destruction. The breeze blew gently through the glade, rustling the infant leaves that had just grown large enough to flutter on their stems in these early days of spring.

Ashe slowed his steps. It seemed to him that this innocent setting had a taint to it, an odor of malice, of deadly intent, but then the whole world was beginning to taste that way to him. A prickling ran down his neck and over his skin; his dragon sense urged him forward, warning him of what he would find.

Deeper in the glade the woman’s body was lying, curled as if she were sleeping.

The Lord Cymrian exhaled dismally, then came to her side.

“Portia,” he said brokenly. He crouched down and put his hand against her neck, but it was merely an attempt to deny what he already knew. There was no breath, no warmth, no heartbeat, no sign of life—in fact, all sense that life had ever resided within her was missing. Her skin was as cold as marble, her body frozen in the rictus of death. On her cheek a bloody tear had frozen.

“M’lord—”

“Stop, Owen. Spare me your consolation; I don’t deserve it. My family’s bane has always been its temper, its lack of control, and I am just the most recent one to stain our collective soul with the destruction of innocent life.” Ashe took off his cloak and gently laid it over her as if it were a blanket. “My father would find this ironic, I have no doubt. All the years I walked the world unseen, hidden from the eyes of men, with no power or authority of my own, I condemned him for the decisions he made, for the suffering he willingly visited upon others in the accomplishment of his goals, all of which were intended to serve the greater good. And now that I am the one who holds the responsibility for the Alliance in my hands, I have inaugurated the prosecution of what will no doubt be a grim and devastating war with the blood of an innocent peasant.”

“Innocent peasants die in war all the time, m’lord,” said Gerald Owen flatly. “If you’ll forgive my impertinence, you’ve been in enough conflicts to know this, have fought in enough battles to be inured to it. You were the one who told us that what is to come will change us all. Did you think that you were above it happening to you?”

Ashe just continued to watch the dead woman’s face as clouds passed before the moon, sending shadows across it.

Gerald Owen bent to the ground. “Come, we must return to Highmeadow. I’ll carry the girl.”

“No,” said Ashe. “I’ll do it.” He gathered the body in his arms and carried it back to the horses, keeping it before him in the saddle as they made their way home. Deep in his mind, mixed with the grief and guilt that was threatening to consume him, was the unmistakable and undeniable sensation of relief.

The wild ringing of bells from the distant garrison, caught and picked up by the carillon towers of Jierna Tal, dragged Talquist from his repose.

The bells of the garrisons along the border had been ringing regularly day and night each changing of duty shift since the invasion, or to signal comings and goings of troops and divisions. Until now he had barely noticed them. But this pealing was different; there was an urgency, an insistency that rang with portent and caused dread in the Emperor Presumptive’s heart. Talquist rose from his thickly besilked bed and robed himself. Then he went to the balcony and looked out over the dark streets of Jierna’sid glowing in the lanternlight and the radiance of a hundred duty fires burning at the patrol centers. The smoke of the foundries belched into the night sky, on the other side of the city, hovering in the air like a thousand ghosts before the wind carried it into the desert. “Why are the bells ringing?” he demanded of one of the guards stationed there. “Go and discover this.” The soldier bowed and hurried away down the inner steps.

He was back several agonizing minutes later.