The Assassin King

  When all the waiting, all the long-held fantasy melts away, and the moment that a man has wished for in vain for years suddenly arrives, the weight of time shifts, Tristan discovered. The blood was hammering in his ears in time with his racing heart, drowning out all but its thudding tattoo. Time slowed; dimly he could hear her voice beyond the pounding whenever his mouth moved from her own, his name the only word he could make out, but whether it was being repeated in passion or in resistance he could not be certain.

  The rich fabric of the brocade dressing gown whispered in his shaking hands. Beneath the gown her skin was bare, and warm in his palms as he sought her. Like a freezing man discovering a blazing bonfire, he drew nearer, pressing, insisting, and found no resistance, no barrier, only acceptance, only welcome.

  How many heartbeats their actual coupling lasted, Tristan was not able to gauge; he only knew that time was suspended in the bliss of finally attaining that which he had come to believe was unattainable. As her arms and legs wrapped around him, her hands cradled his face lovingly, the Lord Roland began to weep, hot, painful tears of disbelief and jubilation in at last having his desire, and his love, returned by the woman who had stolen his soul on the day he met her.

  Finally, when he could sustain the act no longer, he pulled her even closer and buried his face gratefully in the waves of her flaxen hair. He kissed her neck, then whispered into her ear, damp with the dew of sweat from the fire and their passion.

  “This night, no one is cold in your house.”

  He could feel her smile against his neck.

  She pulled back and lay in the crook of his arm, smiling up at him, the light of the fire dancing in her eyes.

  “Are you comforted, Tristan?”

  The Lord Roland sighed happily. “Immensely.” He leaned up on his elbow, listening past the door. Upon hearing nothing in the hall beyond, he brushed a tangled strand from her face. “And know that I will treasure this night forever—” His words faltered, but he pressed ahead, unwilling to lose the opportunity. “And all those nights to come.”

  The firelight dimmed in her emerald eyes.

  “Nights to come?”

  “Yes,” Tristan Steward blurted. “Now that we’ve—now that you and I have—” His words slowed as her face changed, her expression becoming guarded before his eyes. “But you need not fear Gwydion finding out, Rhapsody. We will be careful hence. I would never disclose to him, even in the most accidental of circumstances, what we have done.”

  She exhaled sharply. “Tell him whatever you want,” she said tersely. “He won’t believe you anyway.”

  Tristan blinked as if he had been slapped. Until that moment, he had not realized that he expected her gratitude in return for his discretion. “No, no, I would never compromise you—I love you—I don’t want to ruin anything that you value. Just knowing that you care for me—” His words faltered at the blank expression on her face. “You—do care for me, Rhapsody? You must, to have, to have come to me like this—”

  “Of course I care for you, Tristan,” she said, shifting uncomfortably in his arms.

  Tristan felt his fading hope return. “Then we can continue to meet clandestinely?” he asked. His grip on her tightened unconsciously as she squirmed more noticeably, as if trying to break free.

  “Of course we can—oh, bugger it, enough. This is making me ill. Get off me, I can’t breathe.”

  With an almost violent shove, she pushed out of his arms and rose to a stand, turning away from him and straightening her dressing gown as she did.

  To Tristan’s utter shock, as she stood, her body and shadow lengthened, taking on height and width that it had not had a moment before. In the fading light of the fire her hair seemed to darken, her face to elongate, and when she turned around, her eyes sparkled with a wicked black light.

  The Lord Roland felt all the breath leave his body.

  After two attempts that produced no sound and sour spittle, he finally got his mouth to form the word.

  “Portia?”

  The chambermaid laughed merrily. She continued to stand, looking down amusedly on his astonishment, until his mouth finally closed.

  “Isn’t self-deception a remarkably powerful entity?” she asked playfully. “I told you, m’lord, I’ve been at this a long time.” She turned and headed for the door, then stopped for a moment.

  “You should get up from the floor, Tristan,” she said. “Your position there does not befit the position you will soon attain.”

  Then she left the room without a backward glance.

  27

  The Kingdom of the Nain

  Faedryth, king of Nain and Lord of the Distant Mountains, stared ruefully into the darkness beyond the gleaming throne in the center of his Great Hall hidden deep within the cavernous earth. Though the seat of power had been his, undisputed, for nearly a thousand years, it never ceased to give him pause whenever he beheld it.

  A single slab of crystal purer than the flawless diamonds adorning his crown, the throne was a rough-hewn chair shaped from the living rock, growing seamlessly from the cavern floor, reaching in jagged and uneven slabs skyward to the dark vault of the Great Hall above. The Nain who had lived in this place before Faedryth, despite being the greatest miners, architects, and road builders the continent had ever known, had left the miraculous formation almost untouched, preferring to merely polish it and tolerate some discomfort of their monarchs’ hindquarters rather than insult the earth that had given birth to such an awe-inspiring wonder by altering it in any way. Accordingly, they had also deemed it appropriate to outfit the Great Hall with only the barest of torchlight, so as not to presume to externally illuminate the giant pure gem that glowed with a light of its own.

  The Nain king glanced around the empty, cavernous room, and returned to his musings. He recalled the first time he had ever seen this place, led here under a flag of truce by the guards of Vormvald, the Nain king who had reigned over these lands when Faedryth came, more or less as a refugee. Vormvald, then in the hundred and twelfth year of his reign, had graciously taken in Faedryth and his followers, thousands of Nain from the other side of the world where Faedryth had once been their king. At the time they were both men in their middle years, but unlike Vormvald and his subjects, Faedryth and his followers had been granted an enduring and uncanny youth, a dubious blessing of near immortality, conferred somewhere in the course of their flight from their doomed homeland. This dubious blessing had already caused several of their number to take their own lives.

  But Vormvald did not know that. The appearance of thirty thousand of his kind, under the banner of a seemingly humble and cooperative leader like Faedryth, had been seen as welcome reinforcement of the military, mining, and construction brigades of the Distant Mountains. He made Faedryth’s people, survivors of the destroyed Island of Serendair, at home in his lands, appointed Faedryth his viceroy, allowed the newcomers autonomy under their king, and set about, with the former king’s help, transforming his own kingdom, achieving even greater visions of magnificent architecture and invention. The production of the mines doubled, the artisanship and artistry of the forge and smelting fires became legendary, and the kingdom, now united, continued its self-sufficient progress hidden a thousand miles away from any of the other races of man.

  The influence of the Cymrian Nain, as Faedryth’s followers were known in the Distant Kingdom, was immediately apparent. Their ingenuity with the hinge and pulley, in the forging of weapons with which Vormvald was not familiar, their ability to move earth and sculpt the stone of tunnels and mines, quickly became part of the societal fabric of the Distant Mountains. The old Nain king was delighted with the accomplishments that were wrought, the cities that were built, the works of art that were fashioned, the inventions that were realized. All the while, as each new era of advancement came and went, replaced by another, greater era, Vormvald’s eyes began to dim, his hand to weaken, his beard to gray into the whiteness of mountain snow.

  But not Faedryth
. He remained as youthful as on the day he had arrived in Vormvald’s court. He had been a partner in vision, in labor, in the rule of the United Kingdom of Nain, and when Vormvald finally failed in his fourth century of life, passing from the world as each man passes to the next one, Faedryth became the kingdom’s undisputed ruler. Vormvald’s heirs squawked for a generation or two, but in the end Time erased his dynastic line, and their claim to the throne, and eventually their mortal memories, as easily as the jeweler’s cloth polishes out a scratch in an otherwise flawless gem.

  Now the crystal throne was Faedryth’s. It had been for a millennium and yet, somehow, there was still a newness to it, and an uneasiness, a vague sense of intimidation each time he placed himself on the horizontal plane in the rock that served as the seat. He had become accustomed to its deep power, the pressure and flow, the sheer might that radiated from the depth of the earth through the giant glowing crystal, an authority sanctioned by the very mountains over which he ruled. Faedryth could feel bloods he had not been born to, as if he could feel the breathing of the earth, and that power was now his power. Nonetheless, Faedryth had never taken the throne for granted. Great and vain as he was, the mighty immortal leader of a deep nation of hidden men, smiths and builders, miners and jewelers, and an army numbering almost half a million, in spite of all the riches at his disposal, recognized that there were still a few things greater than himself.

  One of those things might be within the black ivory box he now held in his hands.

  A soft cough behind him stirred Faedryth from his reverie. Thotan, his minister of mines and his only nonmilitary earl, hovered at the edge of the fireshadows, respectful in his silence. Polite comportment was unusual for a Nain lord; most Nain spoke little unless they were in their cups, but even so did not give much concern to how they were perceived by others. Thotan was different, being the administrator of the merchants, the upworld Nain who took the wares from their mines across the seas to the kingdoms of men and sold them, allowing the rest of the kingdom its peace and solitude in the silent earth. His job required uncharacteristic forbearance and civility; Thotan had been waiting patiently beyond the gilded doors of the throne room since the king had summoned him more than an hour before. Faedryth exhaled, then nodded to him, almost reluctantly.

  Thotan turned on his heel and hurried from the room.

  The box in Faedryth’s hands felt smooth against his calloused palms, and cold. He continued to stare at it, lost in thought, until Thotan returned with Therion, Faedryth’s aide-de-camp, followed by fourteen of his most highly trusted corpsmen, each in the silver fittings and banded black leather of Faedryth’s personal regiment, in pairs. In their arms they carried something wrapped in linen, heavy, bulky and regular of shape. From the expressions of measured concentration on their faces, it was clear that their cargo was both fragile and precious beyond reckoning.

  Faedryth watched in grim silence as the corpsmen gently set their burdens down around the base of the crystal throne and carefully unbound the silk ropes that secured their wrappings. The flickering torchlight flashed ruby-red suddenly as it came to rest on the first of the objects, a large, smoothly honed piece of colored glass with a thickness the width of Faedryth’s hand. The piece had a perfectly curved edge on the outside, an arc of a circle a little more than a seventh of the circumference, and tapered like a wide pie wedge to a smaller, similar arc, which Therion’s corpsmen were busily fitting into place at the base of Faedryth’s throne.

  “Careful, you oxen,” the king muttered under his breath; he clutched the black ivory box more tightly as the second and third pieces were simultaneously unwrapped, revealing similar pieces of glass the colors of orange fire opal and yellow citrine. A moment later an emerald piece emerged from its bindings, deep and green as the ocean most Nain would pass their lives without seeing. As it was carefully fitted into place, a large gleaming piece of sky-blue, like a topaz of clearest coloration, and a deep indigo arc emerged, not as wide as the others, for its place in the spectrum was smaller than the six core colors. Until the dim torchlight fell upon it, the smaller piece seemed almost black, but in the flicker of illumination the rich sapphire hue glowed quietly, unobtrusively, becoming part of the darkness when the light moved on.

  Finally, with the greatest of care, the last piece was removed from its linen wrappings. The violet arc was perhaps the most beautiful of all; there was something achingly clear about the amethyst hue, something fresh, like the beginning of a new day after a dark night, the clearing of a smoke-filled sky when battle was done. As it came forth, the scent of the room changed, the thick staleness of stagnant mountain air giving way to a fresh breeze that stung the king’s eyes, making them water at the edges in melancholy memory. The corpsmen, affected similarly, sat back on their heels, almost reverently. The last piece remained, out of place for the moment, awaiting Faedryth’s order.

  The Nain king looked down at the box in his hands again. The tip of his beard, resplendent gold that curled into platinum at the ends like the hair of his head, brushed the black ivory lid. There was irony there, in the contact of dead hair with the box; black ivory was the rarest of all stones, harvested from the deadest parts of the earth, not from living animals as traditional ivory was. The places from which it was mined were spots of utter desolation, where magic had died, or the earth had been scorched beyond repair, devoid of its unique power to heal itself, unlike after wildfire or flood, where new life sprang up from the ashes or mud. Black ivory was the physical embodiment of an emptiness beyond death—of Void, the utter absence of life—and therefore anything that was hidden within a box fashioned of it was surrounded by total vibrational darkness, invisible to every form of sight, even the most powerful of scrying.

  Even holding such a box made Faedryth’s soul itch.

  Knowing what was inside it, or rather, not knowing, made it burn.

  “Is my daughter here?” he demanded tersely.

  “Verily,” Thotan replied. “And each surviving generation of your line as well.”

  Faedryth snorted. “Send in my daughter,” he said, beginning to pace the dark floor. “The rest are too old.” Thotan nodded; like Faedryth, he was a First Generation Cymrian, one of the more than one hundred thousand original refugees from the Lost Island of Serendair, and thereby seemingly immortal as well. Also like Faedryth, he had seen that immortality eke slowly from his own family, so that while he himself maintained the same vigor of youth he had possessed on the day fourteen hundred years before when he set foot on the ship that bore him away to safety, his children had aged as if they were of his parents’ generation, his grandchildren more so, until his more distant progeny had grown old and died, while he continued on, as if frozen in Time.

  The gilded door opened again, and Gyllian entered the room. Like her father she had wheat-colored hair, but whereas his was tipped with the beginnings of silver, all of hers save the faintest of golden strands had been given over to the metallic color. She bore her age well in spite of it, and strode directly to her father’s side, the lines of her face deepened into creases of silent concern.

  Faedryth reached out his hand and brought it to rest on the side of her face for a moment; to touch one so aged and wise in such a fatherly way had always seemed strange to him in his eternal youth, but in the few moments of tenderness he allowed himself, the object was always Gyllian.

  “The Lightforge has been made ready,” he said quietly, words he had spoken to her on several occasions before. “Are you, in the event you need be?”

  His daughter nodded, still silent.

  Faedryth inhaled deeply. “Very well, then. Stand at the door. Tell the yeoman to make ready.” He nodded to Thotan; the minister of mines bowed quickly and left the chamber, followed by Therion and the corpsmen. The Nain king allowed his hand to linger on his daughter’s age-withered cheek one moment longer, then let it fall to his side.

  “All right,” he said brusquely to the ghosts and memories that lingered, invisible, in th
e air around him. “Let us do this.”

  “Do you want to wait to speak with Garson one last time?” Gyllian asked, her mien calm and expressionless, as always. The Nain princess had forged her reputation in the battles of the Great Cymrian War, and had been cured in the smoke of those battles like leather, molded and shaped in their endless campfires into a woman with steel in her spine. That notwithstanding, she was measured and deliberate in her counsel, always seeking to exhaust other means before opening doors that, once opened, might not be able to be closed again.

  A small, sarcastic bark escaped Faedryth’s lips.

  “You want to see me heave yet another Orb of State into the wall?” he asked, his eyes twinkling fondly above a darker expression. “There are still shards from the last one scattered on the far floor.”

  Gyllian’s expression did not change. “If that is the price of appropriate consideration, it is a small one,” she said evenly. “Before you resort to using the Lightforge, I would see you shatter a hundred Orbs, until you are certain of what you undertake.” The stoic expression in her eyes softened into one of concern. “The risks are far too grave not to. And besides, I know it feeds your ego to know that you can still heave and shatter a sphere of annealed glass the way a mere youth of a hundred winters can.”

  Faedryth chuckled. “All right, then, Gyllian, if you wish it, summon Garson.” The princess nodded slightly and returned to the doorway, leaving the Nain king alone in the flickering darkness with his thoughts.

  And the black ivory box.

  Faedryth was afraid to hold it and, at the same time, afraid to set it down. He had been bedeviled by the contents ever since they had been unearthed from the deepest of the crystal mines almost half a year’s time before, was nervous in their presence, fearful that this odd magic might be the final straw to tip the scales of his sanity. While the Lightforge might assist him in knowing, finally, what they were, expending its power was something Faedryth considered only under the rarest, and gravest, of circumstances, knowing the risk to himself, and the world, that came in the process.