The Assassin King

32

Grunthor, can you see me in the dark?”

“Yes indeed, Duchess.”

“Can you give me the pack and some light, then?”

“Certainly.” A cold blue light emerged, casting a glowing radiance at the mouth of the tunnel. The three companions looked around. They were in a smooth hallway formed of ancient clay, with semicircular walls in which long deep grooves had been carved. The light of the globe reflected off those walls and glittered in the darkness with the same eerie radiance as that of the broken walls and towers of the ruins above. A cool breeze blew in from the darkness at the end of the corridor.

“Looks like a sluice of some sort,” said Achmed. Grunthor nodded assent. “Perhaps part of a sewer system.”

Rhapsody removed her cloak with the baby wrapped in its folds. “Wonderful,” she muttered as she riffled through the pack. “Why is it that whenever the three of us enter a city, we always seem to come in through the sewer? If I recall, that was our first sight of the Bolglands as well.”

“Seems oddly appropriate, given what you are currently engaged in doing,” said Achmed acidly over the soft cooing sounds of the baby. “Gods, Rhapsody, are you certain you’re not feeding him sulfur?”

“Fairly certain,” she replied, smiling down at the child in the dark. In the gleam of the cold light globe his hair and skin were almost translucent, the tiny vertical pupils of his clear blue eyes twinkling. She kissed his tiny belly, then swaddled him quickly as the howl of the wind rushed past them, screaming in and around the tunnel entrance. “Good thing you got over yer fear of the underground in time, Duchess,” said Grunthor, looking outside. “That’s a strong one, strong as the last. Oi ’ope the ’orses don’t get buried. Glad Oi got the supplies when Oi did.”

Rhapsody stepped over the grooves in the floor of the tunnel, cradling Meridion in the cloak, and sat with her back against the wall. Achmed and Grunthor turned away while she nursed the baby, watching the fury of the sandstorm outside the tunnel and listening as the harsh cry of the wind and the soft sounds of the child both faded into silence. When the storm appeared to have passed Grunthor hoisted himself out of the tunnel and looked around. “Fissure’s filled in a bit,” he reported upon returning. “May ’ave ta dig out when we leave.”

The Bolg king nodded, then turned and walked past where Rhapsody was sitting and followed the broken sluice down into the breezy darkness. He gestured to the others. “There’s a large opening ahead at the tunnel’s end, where that wind is coming from. Bring the light, and we’ll have a look around before making camp for the night.”

Grunthor offered Rhapsody his enormous hand and helped her to her feet, then took out the light globe. They followed the Bolg king down the sluice to the end of the tunnel where a dark opening yawned.

As they neared the opening, both Rhapsody and Achmed flinched. A humming drone of immense volume was issuing forth from beyond it, echoing up the sluice tunnel and vibrating against their skin and eardrums. It was not the deep, slow song that Rhapsody had described, but more the noise of static, a discordant buzz that was electric.

Rhapsody’s eyes glinted nervously in the cold light. “I’m not certain this is a good idea, Achmed,” she whispered. “Isn’t that constant droning irritating to you?”

“Your constant droning has been irritating me for fourteen hundred years,” he replied. “I will survive. Better to know what is in there than to be caught unaware. Stay here. Grunthor, give me the light. Careful; the floor has some oily spots beyond here.”

The blue-white ball was passed forward; the Bolg king stepped up to the opening, avoiding the thick pools on the floor, holding the light ahead of him. He leaned in and looked around. “Well, that explains the bees,” he said after a moment.

Rhapsody and Grunthor exchanged a glance, then joined him at the opening. Beyond the hole was an immense cavern, the ruins of what may have at one time been a huge public bath. Gigantic stone columns glittering with mother-of-pearl held up the remains of the ceiling that had at one time been painted with extravagant frescoes, intricate mosaics lined the walls, formed from tiles of fired glass, the colors still brilliant though partially obscured with grit, the reds especially vibrant, even in the cold blue light. It was difficult to see much of the floor below, hidden as it was in shadow beyond the light’s reach, but the remains of a system of water delivery could be made out, leading away from the sluice, where long trenches lined with colored tile fed into long-dry fountains containing what appeared to be rows of stone seats. An enormous vault reached into the darkness above, shattered at one end. The trickling sound of water could be heard, just below the droning hum that rose to the level of a roar past the opening.

Growing along the walls and columns at the extreme edge of the light were nodules of every size, thick mold spores of fungus that covered entire frescoes. Higher up, the ceiling was covered with what appeared to be massive stalactites, long hanging threads that looked like fangs in an enormous maw. Around those stalactites bees were swarming, more bees than their eyes could even take in.

The buzz of the immense hive was as loud as thunder echoing through the mountains. The stalactites were only the outermost edge of it; the remainder, cemented by sand and bee saliva over two millennia, sprawled threatening across the ceiling of the vault and out of sight in the darkness beyond the light’s reach. Near the hole in the vault, the hive was shattered, with broken combs of wax and honey oozing thickly down to the floor below, around which tens of thousands of agitated insects swirled, buzzing angrily. The vibration of it traveled up Achmed’s skin, leaving it burning with static. Rhapsody drew the baby closer within the folds of the mist cloak and struggled to cover her ears with one arm. “All right, Duchess, perhaps we were safer outside,” whispered Grunthor. “Don’t make another sound,” Achmed cautioned in a low voice. “If you spook them, they’ll swarm us; we can’t outrun them.”

Nor can you outrun me, Ysk.

The words crawled over Achmed’s skin, echoing in his blood. Though no sound reached his ears, he heard them as clearly as if they had been spoken right next to him. Almost imperceptibly he started to turn to look behind him.

Do not move.

The command scratched against the insides of his eyelids. The Bolg king flinched in pain. There was a familiarity in the words, an unspoken and voiceless communication that was transmitted through his skin-web, inaudible to his or any other ears. He had been spoken to like this twice in his life before, once by his mentor in the old world, Father Halphasion, and again by the Grandmother, the ancient woman who guarded the Sleeping Child, but neither of their methods of communication had transmitted the raw power and pain that was being forced upon him now. They were spoken in no language, just transmitted in understanding. Tell them to move within.

Achmed swallowed. With each command it seemed as if another invisible thread was cemented around him, hampering his ability to move. He inhaled into his sinuses, attempting to loose his kirai to see if the Seeking vibration would help him glean information about the speaker, but his breath stopped in his throat.

“Rhapsody,” he said quietly in Old Cymrian, “step forward and aside, out of the sluice. You as well, Grunthor.”

The Lady Cymrian, standing at his right, who was at that moment assessing the tone of the hive’s vibration in the hope of generating a complementary one, looked askance at him and, seeing the serious expression on his face, complied, stepping onto the ledge and to the right of the opening.

Grunthor, on his left, obeyed as well, but as he crossed in front of the Bolg king he glanced back up the sluice behind him and slowed his gait. A shadow of a man stood directly behind Achmed, robed and hooded in the darkness, less than a breath away. Grunthor continued to cross, but subtly reached for the throwing knife in his belt. Suddenly, the breeze that had been blowing up the sluice, generated by the movement of millions of wings, died away, along with all the rest of the air in the sluiceway. The two Bolg gasped for breath as even the air within their lungs was dragged from them. Grunthor’s hand went to his throat, but Achmed remained still, the veins in his neck and forehead distended. Rhapsody turned and, seeing her two friends compromised, stepped hurriedly back toward the opening in alarm. A voice, this time audible, spoke in a low tone that hovered below the droning of the hive.

“Stay within, lady, unless you wish to see the same visited upon your child.”

The globe of cold light fell from the Bolg king’s hand and thudded on the ground. Rhapsody froze, drawing the cloak and the baby closer to her chest, as both of the Bolg sank to their knees, struggling to hang on to consciousness.

“Stop, I beg you,” she whispered in the same tone as the voice had sounded.

Be silent. The command stabbed her eardrums; Rhapsody gritted her teeth and leaned back against the wall. She watched in horror as both of her friends fell forward, Achmed first, then the giant Bolg Sergeant-Major, their eyes protruding, faces purple in the remains of the cold light. She steeled herself against tears, rather feeling hatred running like fire through her veins, as Grunthor’s body finally went limp. Achmed, who had fallen with his face toward her, met her gaze with his own, then tried, and succeeded ever so slightly, in smiling encouragingly at her. Rhapsody thought she saw him wink. Then his face went slack as well.

A shadow approached and fell over the bodies in the blue light. Rhapsody stood as still as she could as a robed hand, long-boned and thin, reached down from the opening and seized Achmed, dragging him to his feet and out of her sight.

Suddenly the breeze picked up; it had been blowing on her all along, but she saw it riffle through Grunthor’s oily hair and across his cape, making it flutter on his back as he lay prone. After a moment the giant Bolg stirred slightly, then coughed. Achmed came around after a moment, his head thudding, to find himself gazing numbly into two pinpricks of light within a dark hood. The figure that held him in its grasp stared at him for a moment longer, then dropped him to the floor and pulled down the hood of his robe. In the diffuse light Achmed could make out features he recognized instantly, but in a form he had never seen before. The man who stood before him was thin as a whisper, taller than Achmed, with wide shoulders, sinewy hands, and skin that was scored across every inch with exposed traceries of veins in a great web that gave a dual tone to it. His head was smooth and bald, tapering in width from the crown to the angular jaw, his eyes black as ink without a visible iris, bisected by silver pupils; looking within them was like looking into a mirror in a dark room. A Dhracian. Full-blooded. But one very different than any he had seen before. Get up and step within, the man ordered. This time the command did not cause pain, but rather thudded succinctly against his skin. Achmed obeyed, rising slowly, allowing his body to unfold until he was standing erect. He stumbled past the opening where Grunthor was lying and shook him until the giant shuddered with life, struggling to breathe, then helped him sit up. “What the bloody—?”

“Shhh,” the Bolg king cautioned. Grunthors gaze focused on the figure standing before them, then swung in the direction of Rhapsody, who was still leaning against the cavern wall, the baby wrapped within the mist cloak in her arms, panting. “Can you stand?”

“O’ course Oi can stand,” the Sergeant-Major muttered. “It’s just a matter o’ how long it’ll be before Oi can.”

“Stand and step deeper within,” the Dhracian said in his audible, fricative voice, the same sandy voice that Achmed spoke with. “Each moment you tarry you risk waking the beast.”

“Beast?” Rhapsody whispered as the three men came closer to where she stood. Hie thin, bald man picked up the light globe, handed it to her, and gestured impatiently down toward the bottom of the cavern. Achmed nodded; Rhapsody turned and led the way along an angular, descending ledge, at one time one of the feeder channels in the water system, being careful to avoid the nodules of mold and broken bits of hive on the walls down to the enormous cavern’s floor. They passed beneath thin long strings of dripping honey, trying to avoid making contact with it; the viscous liquid expanded after each heavy drop fell, then lengthened again, spilling its golden treasure across what had once been a fountainbed. All around them the air swirled with the beating of innumerable wings and the heavy sound of droning that drowned out all other noise.

They finally came to a large basin for what had once been an immense bath lined with seats of fired tile, through which a trickling stream was slowly running, meandering around obstacles of broken statuary and the wreckage of walls. The robed man stopped beside the stream and pointed to it.

“Drink,” he said to Achmed and Grunthor. “It will restore you.”

“Oi’ll pass, thank you,” muttered the giant Bolg. “Oi feel just ducky.”

The Dhracian snorted, and eyed the Bolg king. “And you?”

Achmed said nothing.

The Dhracian watched him a moment longer, then crouched down by the spring and cupped a hand into it, then drank from his palm. “As you wish,” he said. He turned away and walked over to a sheltered alcove with blue marble walls that had most likely been a place where bathers had disrobed before taking part in the medicinal baths. The Bolg followed him, but Rhapsody stayed beside the stream, listening to it as it trickled through the cavern floor; it was a musical sound, similar in tone to the song she had heard when they were above. She crouched down, still clutching her mist cloak close to her, and removed her pack, fumbled around in it, and finally brought forth an empty water flask, which she quickly filled one-handed, then capped again and returned to the pack. She joined the men inside the alcove, one of the few places in the entirety of the massive vault that the bees had not chosen to colonize, probably because of the slippery finish of the blue marble walls. Between the shelter of the spot, the breeze whistling through, and the hum of the bees, all noise seemed to be swallowed, occluded, she noticed.

Achmed turned to the Dhracian. “Why are you here? What do you want?”

The ancient man stared at him without rancor, as if assessing him for market. Finally he spoke, and when he did his voice was toneless in the wind of the cavern. “I have a task for you.”

The Bolg king chuckled wryly. “You have come to assign me a task? Why would you think such a thing possible? And do you really believe that strangling me is the way to assure my cooperation?” The dark eyes narrowed. “You are of the blood, yet you do not feel the call of the Primal Hunt?” Achmed’s eyes narrowed similarly. “I feel it,” he said sullenly. “I have answered that call more than once, and have sent more than one putrid F’dor spirit back to the Vault of the Underworld, or into the ether. But I still do not understand why you feel you can attack me and my man-at-arms, nearly choke the life from us, and then expect me to accept a task from you, as if I am your errand boy. I actually have my own thoughts about how I might spend my time, not to mention my own responsibilities—and neither of them involve accepting a task from anyone, let alone you!” His voice rang with rancor, and the last word echoed in the alcove around them.

The ancient Dhracian said nothing, just stood in silence, watching Achmed carefully. Finally he pointed to the place in the vault where the wall and the hive around it was shattered. “Beyond that wall is a Wyrmril, a beast that came here a short time ago seeking healing from a place that was nothing but a memory. She sleeps now—her fire is cooled in a surfeit of honey and sweet water—but any sound, any distraction, could stir her awareness.”

“Oh, goody,” Grunthor said under his breath. “Anwyn. Oi wondered where that bitch had fled to.”

“You may feel competent to take her on—but what of your child, lady? Can he survive a dragon’s breath?” The Dhracian looked up at the expansive hive that had consumed the entire ceiling of the vast place. “That being said, you are in far greater danger from the bees, even though it is their noise that is keeping you alive, the movement of their wings allowing you to hide within the wind from the dragon,” he noted, almost idly. “When Kurimah Milani stood as a haven of healing, the ancestors of those bees were captive, raised by a follower of the man who built this city for their honey, which was used in medicines and soothing emollients. They were the only creatures to survive the destruction of the city.” His reflective gaze returned to the three. “Whatever their harmless-ness was then, they could now kill us all with but a thought—and, like our kind, they are of a single mind, able to communicate silently among the entire hive as if it were one entity. Should they swarm and attack, our dead bodies will swell like figs soaked in wine before they burst, and the bees feed upon our carcasses.”

“Please forbear from further description,” Rhapsody interjected. “I think we understand.” The Dhracian smiled coldly, still addressing Achmed.

“This is the only place in all the world that bees of this species live; they were brought from the old world, a place that no longer exists, and have grown and changed over the centuries to be unlike any other. If someone were to come into this vault, with flame perhaps, he could eradicate all of the bees of this type from the face of the earth.” His voice grew even more toneless and soft. “It is just so with another Vault.”

“You are talking in riddles,” Achmed said darkly. “I probably neglected to mention how much I hate riddles. What is it you want?”

The Dhracian met his gaze with a piercing one in return. “I have come to bring you into the Hunt, as you should have been all along. You are needed, Ysk. Time is growing short.” A sarcastic smile crawled over the Bolg king’s face. “And here again you address me by the name that was bestowed on me in spittle, as reviled and disgusting a title as has ever been conferred. Why should I help you? I have my own responsibilities, my own burdens to bear. A kingdom that requires my attention.”

“Yes,” said the angular man, “the Assassin King; so I have heard. I called you by the only name I had for you, though you had cast it off long ago, because the one you were given after that, the Brother, made you all but impossible to find on the wind.”

“That was the point.”

“I have been looking for you all your life,” said the Dhracian. “I knew of you before you were born; so it is with all the Brethren.” His voice grew less harsh, as if the wind was softening the effects of the sand in it. “The Zherenditck, those who have joined the Hunt and walk the upworld in search of the F’dor, share a link, a communication, that transcends time and space; they are of one mind, and so what happens to each of them is known to all. But you are not Zherenditck, you are Dhisrik, one of the Uncounted, a Dhracian of the blood who is not tied to a Colony, and therefore outside the common mind. You do not understand the bond between us; ironic, for someone who was renamed to be Brother to all, but akin to none. You have kin, Ysk—or whatever you choose to be called now—kin that have been combing the wind for you since your birth. Your mother was one of us, one of the Gaol. We witnessed your conception, experienced it, suffered through it as she did, though not as much as she did.

“We searched in vain, across the years, across the wide world. You were not to be found. Then, when one of the other Dhisrik, Halphasion, sent us word that you had been taken in and renamed, trained, made aware of your Dhracian heritage and the blood pact that it commands, we waited for you to come to us, to join in the Primal Hunt. But you have not been compelled by the deepest calling in your blood, though you may have heard it, may have used its power to make a name for yourself. Instead you have listened to a lighter voice, an upworld call, that has wheedled you to the concerns of earthly men—power, comfort, friendship, security—who knows what pleasure, what commitment, could have swayed you from that which is primordial in you, allowing you to deny the undeniable? It nauseates me to know that such a thing is even possible in one of our order. I took the air from you to see if the ultimate obscenity were possible—that one of the Brethren had become the host of a F’dor. I am glad to see it was not so, that a tainted spirit feeding off of you did not beg or wheedle, or try to run to another host as your body was dying. But I confess that had it happened, it would not have surprised me, given how you have been able to deny the undeniable, to undo the inevitable, and ignore what runs in your own veins. Perhaps you were aptly named by the Firbolg. There is something inherently odious about one of the Brethren who feels the needles in his veins, knows the burning of the skin, the blood rage that is our shared burden, but does not join in the Hunt.

“So I have come to discover this, Assassin King—are you more king? Or more assassin?” Achmed’s face was a mask of stoicism, but his mismatched eyes gleamed with an intensity that frightened Rhapsody.

His answer was drowned in a sudden squeal from within the mist cloak in her arms. The sound pierced the noise of the hive, drowned out the tricking of the brook, and resounded through the rains of the bath.

All three men started. Rhapsody’s eyes widened in panic; she jostled the bundle, reaching within to try and soothe the child, but the squeal only intensified into high-pitched shrieking, louder than she had ever heard before.

“Meridion, Meridion, shhhhhh, no, no,” she whispered, futilely trying to put the baby to the breast. “Gods, please, you’ll wake the dragon.” But the child continued to wail, his plaintive cries echoing off the cavernous chamber and shattering the low hum. Because, unlike his mother, he knew the beast was already awake.