Kage Baker - The Anvil of the World

“I can’t blow the hole in the damned wall by myself!” hissed her brother.

The Master of the Mountain did not smile, but something glinted in his black eyes.

“Child, you are your mother’s daughter,” he said.

Svnae gritted her teeth. “That was just exactly the wrong thing to say.”

She fired. Lord Ermenwyr shouted and grabbed her arm belatedly, but the Master of the Mountain smiled. He put up his hand and caught the arrow an inch from his throat. In his hand it became a black-red rose.

“And you are also my daughter,” he said, sounding pleased. Svnae reached for another arrow, but found her quiver full of roses. Glaring, she took the bow and hurled it at him as hard as she could.

“Damn you!”

“Stop this nonsense and come down,” said the Master of the Mountain. “Your mother is going to have a great deal to say to you about this.”

Lord Ermenwyr groaned, and Lady Svnae went pale.

“We’d better do as he says now,” she said.

“Is it painful?”

“Yes, it is,” Smith said, gasping. “It hurts a lot.”

The Master of the Mountain regarded Smith’s arm, which was colder and more blue than it had been. Below the elbow it looked as though it was turning to stone. It was in no way stiff or swollen, however. Shaking his head, the other man dug a flask from a camp chest and offered it to Smith.

“Drink. It may help.”

Smith accepted it gratefully. “Thank you, my—er—lord.”

“The name’s Silverpoint,” said the Master of the Mountain. “Most of the time. Though my son calls himself Kingfisher, doesn’t he?”

“Lord Ermenwyr?” Smith nodded. Mr. Silverpoint poured himself a drink and sat down in the chair opposite Smith’s.

“Lord Ermenwyr,” said Mr. Silverpoint, with only the faintest trace of irony. He stared at the hanging lamp and sighed, shaking his head. “He’s a costly boy. Doctors, tailors’ bills, theater tickets. Brothels. Health resorts. And now I understand he’s bought a slaveless galley.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When I was his age, I’d never seen a boat, let alone a city.” He looked at Smith, raised an eyebrow like a black saber. “And I owned nothing. Not even myself.”

“You were a slave?” Smith asked.

The other man nodded. “Until I killed my masters. I broke my own chains. I owe no miracle man for my salvation.

“But I owe you a debt, Smith. You’ve made a habit of saving my children. They haven’t been as grateful as they should. I’d like to help you.”

“I’m not sure you can,” said Smith. He drank. What was in the flask was white, and it did dull his pain a little.

Mr. Silverpoint did not reply at once. He sipped his own drink, considering Smith. The lord’s pavilion was made of rich stuff, black worked with silver thread, but it was spare and soldierly within. Without, the camp sounds had tapered off; only the creaking of insects now, and the occasional challenge and password from the guard.

“I’ve been following your career with a certain amount of interest, Smith. Tell me: How long were you an assassin?” Mr. Silverpoint inquired.

“Ten years, I guess,” said Smith, a little dazedly. He hadn’t expected to be discussing his personal history. “I tried being a soldier. I tried a lot of jobs. But it always came back to killing. It just—happened.”

“You were good at it,” stated Mr. Silverpoint.

“Yes.”

“You never trained with a master-at-arms. You never studied weapons of any kind.”

“No, sir. My aunt never had the money for that kind of an education,” Smith explained, drinking more of the white stuff.

“But the first time you ever found yourself in danger, you acted without even thinking and—”

“And they were dead,” said Smith wonderingly. “Three of them, in an alley. Two throats cut with a broken bottle and the other killed with a five-crown piece, and I’m damned if I remember how. Something about hitting him with it in exactly the right place to make something rupture. I don’t know where I learned that trick.”

“But you didn’t like the work.”

“No, sir, I didn’t. So I kept trying to quit.”

“You were an orphan, weren’t you?”

“What? Oh. Yes, sir.”

“And Smith is an alias, isn’t it? A name you selected purely by chance?”

“Well, it’s very common, sir.”

“Interesting choice, all the same. What is your real name?”

The question was uttered in a tone of command, not loud but swift as a green dart. And Smith knew perfectly well what folly it was to tell one’s true name to a mage, especially one with Mr. Silverpoint’s reputation, but he felt the reply rising so easily to his lips! He fought it until he sweated, with those quiet eyes regarding him all the while.

“I’ll tell you my first name,” he said. “What about that?”

“You are strong,” said Mr. Silverpoint. “Very well, then.”

“My mother died when she had me,” Smith said. “She looked up at the door as they were wrapping me in a blanket, and she said there was a shadow there. That was the last thing she ever said. So my aunt named me Carathros. That’s how a priest would say, ‘The shadow has come.’ ”

Smith stared into the past. Mr. Silverpoint watched him. At last, “I’ve heard what Ermenwyr thinks is the truth,” said Mr. Silverpoint. “Insofar as he’s ever capable of telling the truth. Svnae and Demaledon have told me what they know. Now, you tell me: there is no Key of Unmaking hidden in Rethkast, is there?”

“There is, sir,” said Smith. “I saw it. It was in a hole in the rock.”

Mr. Silverpoint shook his head.

“That’s the keyhole,” he said. “My daughter didn’t realize the truth until it was too late. Your Book of Fire says that the Key of Unmaking was hidden, but not in the bones, not in a place full of bones. Not in the charnel house of Kast. There’s an error in the text, you see.

“What it actually says is that the Key was hidden in the bone, in the sense of flesh and bone. Descendants. Heredity. A trait passed on in the blood. Something that would lie dormant, until the Father of your people decided to use it.”

Smith looked at his arm. It was iron, and ice, and it knew exactly how to put an end to the cities of his people. He had dreamed its dreams. It had always killed for him, all his life, gotten him out of every dark alley and tight corner in which he’d ever found himself, earned him a living with what it knew. But now it knew its purpose.

“I’m the Key of Unmaking,” he said.

Mr. Silverpoint was watching him.

“A courtesy to the children of other gods,” he said.

“When there are too many of you, a slaughterer is born on the Anvil of the World. His destiny is to bring on a cataclysm. What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t want this,” said Smith, though he knew that what he wanted no longer mattered.

“It seems a shame,” Mr. Silverpoint agreed. “But you’re stuck with it, aren’t you?”

“Can you help me?”

“I don’t meddle with gods,” said Mr. Silverpoint. “All I can do is witness your decision. Whatever you do, though, you’d better do it soon. That’s my advice, if you want any control over what happens at all. The pain will only get worse; until you obey.”

“I have to go back in that room, don’t I?” said Smith sadly.

Mr. Silverpoint shrugged. Setting his drink down, he rose and selected an axe from a rack of weapons in the corner.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he said, holding the tent flap open.

They stepped out into the night, and the guards on duty came to attention and saluted. Mr. Silverpoint nodded to them.