The Assassin King

  At that moment, the Dhracian stopped where he was. He leaned forward on the channel ledge over the cavern and gestured to Achmed to pass him nearer to the wall. The Bolg king complied, holding the light aloft for Grunthor to follow, taking shelter in the sluice as a wave of angry insects swelled toward them.

  Rhapsody, hearing the mounting buzz, took a corner of the mist cloak and swathed the side of Grunthor’s face nearest the cavern, holding it like a tent for them both. The giant barreled up the last of the channel and into the sluice, dropping her gently to the ground.

  “Take cover, Duchess,” he said urgently. “Throw that thing over yerself.”

  Achmed was watching the cacophony of the hive. Black currents of insects swirled and raged, their mutual anger communicated in a rising scream. He turned and looked behind to see the Dhracian still standing at the channel’s edge, his eyes closed, his long bony hand raised, palm out, to the cavern beyond. He was chanting, repeating a series of sounds over and over again. The words made no sense to Achmed; in his mind they sounded like a repeated series of hisses and buzzes. But in his viscera he knew what the man was saying.

  Enemy. Enemy. Enemy.

  He also knew in his guts that the Dhracian was directing the bees toward the dragon, the way a hill of ants or a hive communicated with a common mind.

  A moment later his intuition proved correct. The cyclone of insects ceased their random fury and swarmed down as of one mind toward the beast, swamping her, covering her from maw to the spike on her tail, coating her wings until they were black.

  The wyrm staggered in shock, then writhed as the stingers met her eyes again. Blindly she let out a roar of rage, then made her way, fighting the swarm, to the trickling stream.

  The Dhracian opened his eyes and turned to Achmed.

  “Run,” he said in his low, sandy voice. “She will only be deterred a moment.”

  The Bolg king turned and fled through the opening and up the sluice, where Grunthor was furiously digging out a tunnel from where the sandstorm had filled in the fissure. The Dhracian was behind him a moment later, his footfalls silent in the echoing scream of the dragon, growing louder and nearer, in the cavern beyond the opening.

  “Cover yerself and the baby, miss, Oi’m gonna push ya through,” Grunthor said, gulping air from exertion. Rhapsody checked the child, quiet since his shriek, pulled the end of the mist cloak in which he was swathed over her head, and nodded her readiness. The giant Bolg seized her and shoved her through the last layer of sand, where she stumbled out into the dusk of the desert wind, where a thin crescent moon hung ominously in the sky above them.

  “Make for the horses!” the Sergeant shouted, emerging a moment later behind her. Rhapsody obeyed, pushing back the cloak and keeping her head down, making for the ruins as quickly as she could, her heart pounding in her chest, trying to avoid dropping the baby at all costs.

  The Bolg king and the Dhracian were just emerging from the fissure when the sluice exploded.

  A backwash of angry bees, swirling madly, roared around the head of the beast as she lunged up and into the tunnel, cracking the walls as she smashed into them. The dragon vomited fire, though most of it came out as little more than smoke, the firegems within her belly lulled to sleep by the honey and sweet water she had been consuming. With her cruel talons extended, she swiped at the Dhracian as he exited the sluice, howling obscene sounds of threat in draconic words that even she did not understand.

  Grunthor had almost caught up to Rhapsody by the time Achmed and the Dhracian cleared the fissure and followed them over the cracked clay dunes into the fading twilight. The desert wind spun devils of dust all around them, obscuring the horizon.

  “You’ll never make it on horseback, even if you can reach them,” the Dhracian said as they ran. “She will torch us all, especially if she can fly. We can’t outrun her.”

  Achmed stopped, breathing heavily, and nodded. He pulled forth the cwellan and loaded three rysin-steel disks on the spindle.

  The Dhracian stopped as well, but turned into the windstorm and began his cant, choking as the sand swirled into his mouth and sinuses. His cloak whipped around him but where he stood the wind died down, remaining still like a column of air, the eye within a swirling hurricane.

  Just then the earth was rent asunder in a horrific spray of rock and sand as the beast reared up from the fissure, her massive body shattered the ground around the sluice. She was coughing red sputum and bees along with rancid fire, slashing her great tail back and forth across the sand, striking blindly at whatever she could reach.

  Then she opened her wings, her crippled one healing but still black with bees, and attempted to take to the air.

  Rhapsody came to a halt at the top of the dune overlooking the ruins.

  “Where are the horses?” she gasped to Grunthor.

  The Sergeant-Major put his hand to his eyes.

  “Can’t see ’em,” he shouted back over the scream of the wind. “Might o’ been buried in the sandstorm or trotted off—Oi left ’em loose-hitched in case we didn’t make it back. Duck, miss.”

  Rhapsody slid on her heels and rolled, the squirming bundle in her arms, as a gigantic shadow passed over her head and landed, off kilter, on a ruined tower several hundred yards away. From atop the minaret, the beast looked around, scanning the horizon, the malice of her intent clear even at the distance.

  “Get back in that cloak!” Achmed shouted. “She’s looking for you.” He sighted the cwellan on the beast in the distance, but the chaotic gusts of the whipping desert wind and the darkness cloaked her, making his shot uncertain and likely to go astray.

  “Can’t,” Rhapsody gasped as she struggled to stand with the baby in her arms. “It might expose—Meridion to—being seen—”

  Come. Each of the three heard the word in their ears, a scratchy command behind them.

  They turned to see the Dhracian, his hand still held aloft. Before him a part of the air was motionless, still as doldrums inside the swirling currents, like a doorway in the air.

  Make haste. The beast comes.

  Of one mind, Grunthor and Rhapsody ran straight for the door in the wind. Achmed maintained his sight on the beast in the distance while the Dhracian held it open.

  Come, Assassin King. You are nearest.

  At that moment the dragon caught sight of the movement in the lee of the ruins. She loosed a thin plume of caustic fire that rolled down the parapet and into the ground, setting fire to the minimal scrub vegetation there. Horrific screaming rent the night wind as the horses caught flame, their pathetic cries echoing up through the night.

  A terrible stench tore through the air, the smell of brimstone and burning flesh. The dragon reared up and bellowed in frustration, then caught sight of other movement. Hobbled still by her torn wing, she leapt and glided to a lower ruin, a broken dome with arched windows, and steeled her sights on the four human figures running into the wind in the last light of the setting sun.

  “Feint right, Grunthor!” Achmed shouted, then fired the cwellan. At that instant the beast recoiled and inhaled, a deep and horrible rattle in her chest that echoed over the desert plain.

  The shot caught her wing just as the Dhracian seized the Bolg king and pushed him through the door in the wind. Unbalanced, the wyrm stumbled forward on the dome and loosed her breath, this time a greater billowing wave of heat and light that scorched the ground and caused the mother-of-pearl coating of the ruins to glisten with the reflected radiance of a million candleflames.

  The giant Bolg started to reach back for Rhapsody, but was himself shoved within the swirling vortex of wind, followed by the Dhracian. The Lady Cymrian, bringing up the rear, reached the door just in time to be engulfed in the flames of the dragon’s breath, her golden hair took on the light of a torch in full radiance as the fire swept around her, leaving her unharmed. She lunged inside.

  The wind door closed, leaving the dragon alone in the darkness of the ruins.

  The only sight th
e three companions caught before the door in the wind opened again was being elevated high above the desert plain, wrapped in a strong, sand-ridden current of air that glided southeast, whipping the desert sand ahead of it as it gusted along. Then all sight was engulfed in the mighty roar of the desert wind, a vortex of swirling, primeval power that carried them along the waves of sound as they rose and fell, finally terminating in silence.

  When the gust that had carried them died away, the four people were standing at the base of a hilly dune not unlike the ones that they had been riding before they came to the ruin. The mountains in the distance were still there, but nearer; they had reached almost to the steppes before the piedmont of the Upper Teeth.

  Achmed turned to see Grunthor shaking his head as if trying to expel the screech of the wind, or sand, from his ears, then looked over to Rhapsody.

  She was standing, her face white as the crescent moon, her arms filled with the ashes of the mist cloak.

  And nothing more.

  34

  “Well, that was a neat trick,” Grunthor said to the Dhracian, still picking the sand from his ears. “Oi’ve traveled the wind myself, but only when—” He stopped at the sight of the look on Achmed’s face, then turned around to see Rhapsody staring at the ashes in her arms.

  For a moment he could say nothing; seeing the expression on Rhapsody’s face was like watching the end of the world. When the words came to his bulbous lips finally, they were gentle.

  “How now, Duchess—where’s the lit’le prince?”

  Achmed shot him an acid glance.

  The Lady Cymrian stood stock-still, not breathing. Then, after the shock passed, she began looking rapidly around her, her arms twitching, causing the remains of the cloak to drift gently down to the ground like black snow. Her eyes took on a mad light, a glitter of panic that was almost too ugly to behold.

  “We—we have to go back,” she stammered, turning around and scanning the ground. “I must—I must have dropped him. Please—o-open the door again—please, we have to go back—”

  “Rhapsody.” Achmed’s voice was quiet. “Come here.”

  But the Lady Cymrian did not hear him. The sound of her heartbeat was pounding in her ears, threatening to burst; time had become suspended for her. She numbly crouched to the ground and felt around for something solid among the ashes, but there was nothing, just burnt strands of fabric and soot.

  Finally she looked up.

  “Achmed,” she said softly, “where is my baby?”

  The Bolg king reached out his hand.

  “Stand up,” he said gently.

  Rhapsody shook her head, feeling around on the ground in the darkness once more.

  “No, no, he must be here somewhere—he—Achmed, help me find the baby.”

  “Rhapsody—”

  “Damn you, help me—he has to be here somewhere—I had him tightly, Achmed, please, help me find him—”

  The Bolg king crouched down in front of her while the other two men looked on. He watched her in silence as she knelt on the ground, continuing to pat the earth helplessly in all directions, until she finally turned back to him. Then, before their eyes, she seemed to collapse; Achmed caught her as she fell forward into his arms.

  “No,” she whispered. “Please, no.”

  Achmed said nothing, but ran his bony hand awkwardly over her shining hair. He held her as she began to shudder, then she abruptly stopped and slowly looked up into his face, her cheeks wet with tears, but her eyes wide again in shock.

  Then she looked down at her abdomen.

  Distended there, between them.

  Rhapsody’s hand went to her belly, now expanded and swollen. Her expression became dazed.

  “It can’t be,” she murmured.

  Achmed’s brows drew together. He stood, pulling her up with him.

  “Where’s the light?”

  Grunthor jogged over and handed him the globe. “Ya dropped it just outside the sluice.”

  Achmed held the cold lantern up above her; there was no mistaking the bulge in her waist. A moment later, to his utter disgust, he thought he saw it move.

  Stunned relief came over Rhapsody’s face. “He’s kicking. I can feel him kicking.”

  “I’m going to be ill,” said Achmed.

  “Well, well, look at that,” Grunthor said, sounding immensely pleased, “the lit’le nipper found a safe place in all o’ that. ’Ow’d ’e do that?”

  “‘Born free of the bonds of Time,’” Rhapsody said. “Perhaps that means he can be in whatever time he knows of—and this is the only other time he has ever known.”

  Achmed exhaled, annoyance evident in the sharpness of his breath.

  “It’s to be expected, I suppose; history is riddled with many young men who could not resist staying inside Rhapsody as long as they could.”

  “Well, that was ugly, sir,” Grunthor admonished reprovingly. “You’re talkin’ about a mother, after all. So what’s the plan?” He looked around for the Dhracian in the dark, but the man was not to be seen. “And where’s yer friend?”

  He stands behind you, holding the door.

  Why are you still here? Achmed demanded of the darkness in the silent speech of his race. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot, and will not, join your endless quest for F’dor, though when I come across one, you can be comforted in knowing that I have been trained in the Thrall ritual, and will gladly do whatever I can to destroy it. There—are you satisfied?

  No. There is much that you still do not know.

  I expect that will be the case throughout time, Achmed answered. But for now, I have a kingdom to get back to, and preparations to make. We can waste no more time here; we’ve lost the horses, and we are ten days’ walk from the nearest outpost in the northern Teeth. So be on your way, and best of luck in your quest. I am sorry to have disappointed you after all this time.

  I will come with you, the inaudible voice said. I will open the doors of the wind for you, that the journey will be swift. And I will tell you of the Gaol, and of the Vault. And of your mother.

  Achmed thought for a moment. I will not be beholden to you, the Bolg king finally replied. I guard the Sleeping Child—and I will not be threatened, or wheedled, or coaxed into abandoning her, even for as worthy a quest as the Primal Hunt. We can travel together, and I will listen to what you have to say. But after that, you will go back to being an assassin. I will go back to being a king. If you agree, then we have a deal.

  The wind whistled around him, raising sand to his eyes. The stars twinkled brightly above as he waited for his answer. Finally, it came.

  Agreed. The Dhracian opened another door in the wind, behind which swirling currents of air could be seen. I am Rath; and so you may call me.

  PART FOUR

  The Tempest Rising

  35

  Golgarn

  Wars of conquest all have the same father, went the saying among the desert-dwelling tribe known as the Bengard race. He is Hunger. He and his children—Lust, Greed, Rage, Vengeance—are all formed of the same sand.

  If anyone knew the lineage of war, it was the Bengard. Tall, oily-skinned, warlike men and women of gargantuan height and mass, whose history of conquest was unparalleled in the Known World, they had a long and deeply held belief that war was not only unavoidable, it was necessary and valuable. There was something almost holy in the constant state of readiness, of willingness to fight for almost any reason, that in the minds of this culture of limited resources and harsh environment was to be cherished and admired above all else. It was not aggression for aggression’s sake, but rather the readiness for a war, whether of invasion or defense, that drove the race into the gladiatorial arena during outbreaks of peace.

  And the fact that they found mortal combat to be rather fun.

  But one thing the Bengard never truly understood was that while the father of war might always be Hunger, occasionally the mother of it was Fear.

  More than any fear that clung, when ban
ished by his waking mind, to the depths of his unconscious soul, Beliac feared being eaten alive.

  In a different situation, a different man, that fear might be considered more irrational than most. While fear itself was a hobgoblin of the black crevasses of the mind, requiring no basis in the bright sunlight of reality in order to exist, the dread of being consumed while still living was strange even among the more ordinary terrors humans harbored: the fear of darkness or enclosure, of reptiles or arachnids, of heights or being buried alive. If it were anyone other than Beliac, the fear that his flesh might be chewed off of him and swallowed before his eyes would have bordered on insanity.

  But Beliac had more reason than most to fear such a possibility.

  Beliac was the king of Golgarn, the seaside nation to the southeast beyond the Manteids, the mountains known as the Teeth.

  And his neighbors, to the north, were the Firbolg.

  Beliac had been king of Golgarn for a long time by comparison to the other monarchs on the continent. He had assumed the throne of his peaceful nation more than a quarter century before, and his reign had been a pleasant one, his twenty-fifth jubilee marked by genuine celebration on the part of the populace. The mountains that were the bane of easy trade to the north were also his greatest protection, and given the legends of the population that inhabited the other side of those mountains, he was grateful for the barrier.

  Nonetheless, in the recesses of his mind were the tales of horror told to him in childhood by his nursemaids and the other children, tales of marauding and murderous monsters who scaled the mountains like goats, their hands and feet equally articulated, searching for prey in the form of human children. As he grew older and studied the history of the continent, he learned the genesis of those fishwives’ tales was real—that in fact the Firbolg truly were a cannibalistic race, hardened by the conquest of every land they had ever inhabited, a conglomeration of bastard strains of every culture they had ever touched. They were demi-human rats, and like rats, they did whatever they had to in order to survive.