The Assassin King

  “More likely they are at the bottom of the sea,” Achmed said.

  “It’s always pretty to think so,” said Rath darkly. “In my experience, those scales never quietly go away. They seem to have remarkable power to stay where they will do the most damage, will cause the most destruction, as if the taint of the F’dor is on them still.”

  “What do they look like?” Grunthor asked. “So’s we know ’em if we see ’em.”

  “The scales are of irregular size,” said Rath. “All of them are oval and most are tattered finely at the edges. They appear gray or colorless until tilted or exposed to light, where their color can be discerned, and often appear prismatic, signifying all the lore that is within each of them.

  “I have never actually seen any of the scales of the Stolen Deck. It was considered far too sacred and terrible to be viewed by any other than the entities who were asked to guard it. I was told of the symbology of each of the scales, however, as were the other Gaol, so we would know how to identify them should we come across them in our travels. The white scale, one of the two most powerful and awful of the Stolen Deck, was said to have no image inscribed upon it at all. It symbolized Life or Creation, and was thought by many to be a picture of the very face of God. Its counterpart, the black scale, had inscribed upon it a picture of a key, a terrible harbinger of its power to open the Vault itself. It symbolized Void or destruction; as you can surmise, it had the power to bring about both of those things to an unimaginable magnitude.

  “The rest of the scales followed the pattern of the color palette, attuned to the lore you already know. The red scale was inscribed with a drop of blood, the orange scale flames, the yellow had an image of the sun rising or setting, depending upon whether it was the concave aspect, the original scale torn from the First Child, or the convex aspect, donated to the world from the hide of its parent. Likewise, the green scale showed an image of the earth, either clear or obscured, as did the blue scale, inscribed with the image of an eye surrounded by clouds or covered with them. The indigo scale, about which the least is known, was said to have been inscribed with a picture of a comet, in the old lore signifying change of great magnitude; hence the appellation Night Stayer or Night Bringer, indicating its power to bring about tremendous change, or to prevent it.”

  “Makes me wish we had that one right now,” said Rhapsody.

  “Hardly,” said Rath dryly. “The power that exists in those scales could cause even those who seek to save the Earth to bring about harm, intentionally or otherwise. History is littered with accounts of those of good intent and purpose who were dragged to stray by the power of those scales.

  “Finally, there was the violet scale. It was said to have been inscribed with the image of the throne, and it was the only scale that had but one side. Although the Progenitor Wyrm donated seven scales, for whatever reason that final note in the spectrum only had one tone, not a flat nor sharp. It was known as The New Beginning. I do not know for certain, but I suspect that any being who comes into power unexpectedly or inexplicably might have control of this scale, or at least had its power utilized on his behalf.”

  The three exhaled simultaneously.

  “Talquist, perhaps,” Achmed said.

  “Let’s hope not,” Rath said.

  “And the Given Deck?” Rhapsody asked. “Did you ever come upon any of those?”

  The Dhracian shook his head. “I have seen some of them,” he said, “but that was before the Seren Reader defiled them. The sole silver one was the Fallen Moon, the one whose misdirection allowed Ave to desecrate them in the first place. I believe there was one scale for each of the five trees that grow at the birthplaces of Time: Sagia, the tree of the stars which now is gone from the world; Ashra, the tree of pure elemental fire; Eucos, known as the Cloud Catcher, the tree of living air; Frothta, the tree of water which grows beneath the sea; and, of course, the Great White Tree. There may even be one for Bloodthorn, the evil vinelike tree of thorns that has its roots in the Vault itself. There are others—I only know of a few: the Forgotten City, the Endless Mountains, the Golden Measure, the Molten River, the Broken Plate, the Thief Queen, the Infant, Breath, Missive, the Time Scissors. I only know of any of these because I once read pieces of The Book of All Human Knowledge, the tome written by that Nain historian. I believe it was lost at sea centuries ago, brought to the shores of this world by the Third Cymrian Fleet, where it drowned in their shipwreck.

  “This new entity, the one you call Michael,” Rath went on, “both man and demon, rose in worldly political power as the centuries progressed, finally becoming the Baron of Argault, one of the most powerful magnates in the shipping world on the other side of the Wide Central Sea. It was he whom I was following when I came to this place. He’d always managed to elude me by hiding near water, which any Dhracian will tell you is the bane of our existence when we are on the Hunt. His strategy was successful; while he operated in broad daylight, in the plain sight of the eyes of the world, his constant presence proximate to the sea kept him from my kirai.

  “What is significant about this particular member of the Younger Pantheon was that his weakness was his need for control, coupled with his inability to maintain it over himself. Whether this was his human aspect or the demonic one is hard to say, because the man he chose as his host had a similar weakness.” Rhapsody shuddered, having been the recipient of that weakness.

  “His shortcomings occasionally took the form of desires of the flesh, culminating in the worst of all of his conquests: a Seren woman, born of ancient blood, who had refugeed from the island to the shores of Argaut to avoid the Cataclysm. While most F’dor will never procreate, because it saps their power, breaks open their souls, or whatever passes for a soul, when they do, the host of this demon could not resist the opportunity to defile the woman, to impregnate her, which he did, gaining, I suppose, an ill-considered thrill at the tarnishing of the one lore, ether, that was older and more powerful than his own lore of black fire. The result was an unbelievable freak of nature, an entity known as a Faorina, a denatured F’dor. There are very few examples of them in the world, not only because the demons themselves are jealous of their own power, but because those that are actually born usually do not survive. Most worrisome, the woman who bore this child and died because of it was a Reader, one of the tribe of Seren priestesses that is charged with the protection of and the ability to read the scales. If she brought any of them with her from the old world, from the Lost Island before it sank into the waves, those scales fell into the hands of the man who ravaged her. And her child was thought to have inherited her ability to read them.

  “I believe that man made use of a blue scale, perhaps even the blue scale of the Stolen Deck, to hide from the hunters of the wind. For a moment I tasted his signal, his vibration, coming from this place, as if he had lost the scale for a moment, but now it is gone again. One thing you should know, Bolg king, is that when I was making my way to this place in search of him, I had to slip between an armada of ships of all types, pirate vessels, merchant carriers, even warships, all massing in a great blockade far out of sight of the coastline off the western shore of your continent. I crossed the damnable sea in little more than a rowboat to escape their notice. But they gather; the Baron of Argaut had an impressive fleet of shipping vessels, which he maintained by being in league with a far-flung band of pirate ships.” He stopped, brought to silence by the look of horror on Rhapsody’s face.

  “So if in fact the one you called Michael, the Wind of Death, brought any of those scales with him to the shores of this land, and if they survived the wave that took him from the upworld and into the depths of the sea, and if by some freakish twist of fate they are in the hands of your enemies now, you are fighting not only the greed and lust for power that has been in existence since the dawn of Time in all men, but a far deeper, far more malicious, avaricious, and deadly hatred, a destructive primal power born at the beginning of Time for which there is no antidote, nothing to allay it.


  “And if this is so, I would say you have your work cut out for you.”

  39

  Chamber within the throne room, Canrif, Ylorc

  Trug was the Archon known as the Voice.

  The Bolg were an emergent race, demi-humans that were both primitive and instinctually resilient. In the time that Achmed had been king, they had gone from being scavengers and cannibals who scratched out whatever meager living they could from the rocky and jagged peaks that were their home to an up-and-coming nation of weapons builders, agriculturalists, carpenters, craftsmen, and weavers of tensile nautical ropes and fine women’s undergarments. It was a strange and comical medley of trade that sensibly exploited the resources of their kingdom of mountains, canyons, and forests of unique bluish wood and ancient vineyards planted in the Cymrian era that had been revitalized into producing fine grapes for wine.

  Achmed’s vision required more of a support network of leadership than could be provided by just him and Grunthor alone, especially now that Rhapsody had moved on, claiming a protective responsibility for the Bolg as well as for the sleeping Earthchild, but spending the majority of her time tending to the needs of the Lirin kingdom and her duties as the Lady Cymrian. To that end the Three had selected Bolg children who had been identified as especially intelligent or gifted, most of them orphans, to train in specified areas that would assist in the growing of the kingdom.

  Trug was one such child. Like most of his race, he did not give voice to his inner thoughts but rarely. Unlike most of his fellow subjects, it was part of Trug’s training to be able to speak; what he was speaking, however, were the thoughts of the Bolg king, both within the mountain and outside it. It was his path to be trained as the Voice, the Archon that King Achmed expected to handle all of the communications, both official and secret, on behalf of the Bolglands, including the management of the miles of speaking tubes that ran throughout the mountains, left over from the Cymrian Age. In that capacity he had been trained from childhood for the last seven years, selected at an early age by Rhapsody as having the potential for the task at hand, and systematically familiarized with language, cryptography, anatomy, and a thousand other studies of communications, verbal and otherwise. More than a year ago he had been deemed worthy to supervise the aviary, with its extensive fleet of messenger birds, as well as the mounted messengers who rode with the mail caravans. Shortly thereafter he had assumed responsibility for King Achmed’s network of ambassadors as well as his spies.

  Now he served as one of Achmed’s most trusted archons. And so when his voice came resounding up the speaking tube into the Firbolg king’s planning chamber within the throne room of Canrif, it was almost always answered immediately in the raspy tone the Bolg had come to know and fear.

  “Your Majesty?”

  Achmed, Grunthor, and Rhapsody looked up at each other in surprise. Trug had chosen a formal address, generally indicating that someone from outside the mountain had arrived.

  “What is it?” Achmed demanded.

  “There is a visitor to see you, sire,” the thin, uncomfortable voice answered in return.

  “Whoever he is, tell him to go away,” Achmed retorted. They had been poring over schematics in the back chamber in secret since returning to Canrif, and his mood was already sour.

  “He has been here for quite some time, sire.” Trug’s voice echoed back up the tube, followed a moment later by another sound.

  “Tell the bastard I must see him at once,” came a familiar voice that was not immediately recognizable. “I have been waiting more than a fortnight in this godforsaken place, and I will not wait a moment longer.”

  Achmed closed the speaking tube. “Who do you suppose that is?” he asked.

  Rhapsody was listening, her forehead furrowed. “It sounds a little bit like Faedryth, the Nain king,” she said uncertainly. “But what would he be doing here?”

  Achmed opened the tube again. “Tell the misbegotten warthog he can wait another fortnight as far as I care,” he said in a surly tone. “Or for the rest of his unnaturally long life. I’m busy.”

  A string of ugly words uttered in a guttural tone and an unknown language rumbled up the tube in return.

  Rhapsody nodded. “Yes, those are Nain curses,” she said. “It’s probably Faedryth.”

  “What is he doing here?” Grunthor asked. “‘Is kingdom is more than two weeks away, and unreachable by normal methods of land travel. Oi don’t remember any event that would give ’im cause to be in this area.”

  “I’m not at all enamored of the Nain,” said Achmed, studying the parchment scroll before him. “When they were here for the council at the Moot they consumed more than four times the victuals of any other race. I have finally returned home, and I am not in the mood to entertain a slugworthy lout like Faedryth at this moment.”

  “What on earth are you thinking?” Rhapsody demanded. “Faedryth is your ally, and mine. Now is not the time to be inhospitable to members of the Alliance, especially those who have done you no harm and offered you no real offense. Besides, if common courtesy is a requirement for visits of state within our realms, no one would ever have received you.” She pushed him away from the speaking tube. “Send His Majesty up forthwith, Trug.”

  Achmed glared at her and returned to the schematic of the Lightcatcher Rhapsody had been graphing.

  After a surprisingly long period of time, the Voice archon appeared, the Nain king in tow. The two Bolg ignored him, but Rhapsody rose immediately and made her way across the floor of the throne room that had been built more than a thousand years before during the height of the artisanship of Gwylliam’s reign. It was richly inlaid with mosaics and fashioned from some of the most beautiful marble mined in the Manteids.

  “Your Majesty,” she said warmly, “what a pleasure to see you. To what do we owe the honor of this visit?”

  The expression of thunderous annoyance knitted into the Nain king’s brow softened a bit at the sight of her.

  “I hardly expected to see you here, m’lady,” Faedryth said. He was attired in leather garments and boots of fine workmanship, but without the standard trappings of royalty. His glorious beard showed signs of inattention and travel, and he carried in his hands a velvet sack that he was clutching tightly. “I’d have thought you would most certainly be at the new home your husband has written to me of; he sought my advice in some of the fortifications, you know.”

  “Yes, indeed. He was most insistent that Nain traps and defenses would make it most secure.”

  “No doubt,” Faedryth agreed. “And yet I find you here, in the lands of a man of questionable wisdom, instead of the safety of your husband’s home.” He glanced at her bulging belly. “I offer both congratulations and the rebuke of being a father myself, m’lady; I had not heard that you were with child.”

  Rhapsody cleared her throat “Yes,” she said.

  “Well then, I suggest you take yourself at once to High-meadow. No child, and no one of any value, is safe here at this time.”

  “What are you blithering about?” Achmed said in annoyance. “I did not invite you; you’re not welcome in this place without a legitimate reason to be here, and yet here you are, insulting me. What do you want?”

  Faedryth eyed the Voice. “Send your servant away,” he said quietly.

  Achmed did not even look up, but gestured to Trug with his head to comply. Trug coughed politely and left the room, looking relieved.

  “All right, now, what do you want?” the Bolg king asked again. “Or perhaps you need a hot bath and some biscuits first?”

  Faedryth’s nostrils flared, and his brow blackened again.

  “Your arrogance is precisely why I am here,” he said. “Once again, you are meddling with forces you do not understand, and yet it does not stay your hand, or make you even reconsider your actions. I have to say this does not surprise me, at least in your case.” He turned and looked at Rhapsody. “On the other hand, given your training and your profession, m’lady, I have
to say that I’m shocked to find you participating in such a dangerous and inadvisable activity.”

  Achmed rolled his eyes. “Oh, this again,” he said. “Did I not throw out your ambassador several months ago when he came to bring me this very same demand of yours? I believe that I was quite specific in my response to him. I directed him to give it to you in no uncertain terms, and if I recall it was rather to the point. And yet here you are, in my lands, without an invitation. Go away, Faedryth. I find your concern to be insincere at the very best, and hypocritical at the very worst, given that you yourself have built the same instrumentality that you would see me not reconstruct.”

  “You arrogant horse’s arse,” Faedryth retorted angrily. “I built the original instrumentality of which you speak, I did. It was designed by a man who had more genius in the clippings of his toenails than is present in your entire kingdom, even with the presence of the Lady Cymrian. And it was an unwise thing to do. You do not understand the risks that you are undertaking; if it were only your wretched kingdom that was in the balance, you could blow yourself to smithereens for all I care, along with your entire miserable population. But alas, your ineptitude and indiscretion may spell disaster and doom for all of us—all of us. And I do not intend to see that happen.”

  “Well, hooray for thee,” replied the Bolg king. “Contrary to what you may believe, Faedryth, I do not intend to see that happen, either.”