The Assassin King (22 page)

The statue was perhaps ten feet at the apex, its arms and legs muscular and thick in the crudeness of its carving, with none of the features of human limbs save for knees and elbows. Its eyes were hollow, absent of pupils, and it stared at the ceiling, its hands at its sides.

Fhremus had had such a statue described to him, not long before, in the breathless voices of his own soldiers. They had each told hint tales of such a mammoth titan lumbering down the main thoroughfare of Jierna'sid, murder in its intent, as it waded through a throng of defending soldiers, crushing them like wheat beneath its feet. It had dashed wagons and horse carts, broken through gates and barricades, until it made its way into the palace of Jierna Tal itself.

He had come back to the palace in all due haste at the reports, hoping to find the emperor alive, believing the possibility of him to be uninjured slim. Instead, he discovered the damage to Jierna Tal to be minimal, mended in most places, including the corner of the emperor's own chambers, and the emperor in excellent health, with no apparent injury, none the worse for wear. Upon beholding Talquist for the first time since he heard the reports, he began to wonder if they had been the product of hallucinations.

Until this moment.

“That's not, er, the statue—”

“Yes, indeed,” said Talquist smoothly. “It is, in fact, the titan of animated stone that just a sennight ago burst forth into the streets of the city, crushing soldiers and destroying everything in its path. A beautiful thing, is it not?”

“If you say so, m'lord,” said Fhremus, not knowing what else to say in response.

The Emperor Presumptive chuckled. “You have to at least admire the handiwork of our enemies, Fhremus, even if you don't appreciate their intentions. I have to admit when I saw it from the balcony I was sore distressed, not knowing what forces of nature could have come together to allow such a thing to exist. But in my time as a merchant I have seen many oddities, many strange things in many lands, and more than anything else I have seen weapons in all shapes and sizes— poisons that you would never believe to be toxic, hidden in the softest of silk, blades so unobtrusive that you would not even notice them before you bled to death, traps so ingenious that even the most vigilant of guards would not see them before plunging to his death or being crushed beneath a block of immense stone—so there is very little that surprises me anymore, Fhremus. Thank the Creator that I'm in His favor, that as His anointed one I'm under His protection. Otherwise Sor-bold would be Ieaderless again, as we so recently were after me death of our beloved empress and the crown prince. Who knows—perhaps you would once more be at another Colloquium with the counts of the major provinces again looking to disband the empire and absorb the smaller lands into their own.” “Indeed, m'lord,” Fhremus murmured.

“So how do you suppose this giant stone assassin came to be animated?” the emperor asked.

“Really, I've no idea.” “Then allow me to educate you in the lore of our enemies,” said Talquist tartly. "We are not up against mere men, Fhremus, men like ourselves who have only our wits, our brawn, and our blood to defend the land we love. We're up against an alliance led by men of insidious power, heirs to the throne of Gwylliam and Anwyn, with the blood of the Cymrians in their veins, and the powers which that evil race possessed. These are not mere mortals, Fhremus—time seems to take no toll on them, have no dominion over them.

Many of the dynasty of Gwylliam are still alive, more than a thousand years after that cursed despot set foot on our shores, in the wake of the tidal wave he brought with him, and began systematically butchering our people on the path to what would eventually become his stronghold in the mountains now called the Teeth. In addition, the Patriarch himself is in league with the Lord Cymrian. This Patriarch, so recently installed, is an apostate, following a long line of those who perverted our religion, the holy and pure worship of the Creator that our ancestors practiced, and instead call him by other unholy names, the All-God, the One-God. In the Patriarch's hands and the hands of his benisons are all of the elemental basilicas, and the primal lore of living earth, wind, fire, water, and starlight housed there. And his ally, Gwydion of Manosse, the Lord Cymrian, is in league with Tyrian, the Bolglands, the Nain, Manosse, Gaematria, and in control of all the armies of the Middle Continent. How can one fight against such foes?“ ”We are ready to do so, m'lord," said Fhremus.

“No, you are not,” replied Talquist darkly. “You underestimate our enemies, and the powers they have at their disposal. Observe.”

He stepped before the statue and raised his hand. “Awake, Faron,” he commanded.

Within the sightless eyes of the statue two blue irises appeared, milky at first, then taking on an expression of threat. Fhremus stepped back involuntarily.

“Move the table,” Talquist commanded, pointing to a thick sideboard of heavily carved wood weighing as much as three men.

The statue stared at him for a moment, then at the commander menacingly. Then it stretched as if sore, flexed its arms, and walked to the sideboard, which it seized and threw across the room into the wall, where it crashed, one of its legs broken.

Talquist turned to the shaken commander and smiled.

"This, Fhremus, is the handiwork of our enemies. What in stasis would be no more than a stone statue is in fact a living machine, animated by only the Creator knows what sort of Cymrian spell or magic. Blessedly, I have turned him to my will, and now he follows my commands. What would have been my assassin will now be the standard bearer of your army.

Had I been any less than what I am, any less blest by the Creator Himself, I would be in my grave, and Sorbold would very likely be at war."

“Sorbold will be at war anyway, m'lord,” said Fhremus. "Gwydion of Manosse cannot be allowed to send assassins after our Emperor Presumptive, and let that go unanswered.

Revenge must be extracted for this, lest he feel emboldened to try again."

“So now perhaps you can see one—and only one—of the reasons we must move now, rather than waiting to be attacked,” Talquist said, picking up his glass and finishing the contents.

“The piece you are overlooking is that Gwydion of Manosse is not merely the lord of the Middle Continent, and a man with massive ancestral holdings in Manosse and Gaema-tria, but he is the descendant of a bloody dragon. Between the mythic power of his ancestry from Serendair, which all the Cymrians have to one degree or another, the bedeviled lore of the Sea Mages, who have studied the tides and currents of the seven seas for so long that it is said they can control them, his grandfather's knowledge of machinery and invention, and whatever magic the dragon bequeathed him, is it really so hard for you to imagine that the Lord Cymrian, who has found a way to animate solid stone, has also discovered a way to make incendiary, unmanned machines capable of walking over borders, and perhaps even through mountains, with the ability to explode and wreak havoc on our cities, our outposts, and our holy sites?”

“What then are we to do, m'lord?” Fhremus asked.

“We will begin with the Patriarch,” Talquist replied, secretly pleased that the commander had bought the lie so easily. “We will take Sepulvarta first; truly that should be the northernmost point of our border anyway. That land is in the foothills of the Manteids, and once we own it, there is only the wide Krevensfield Plain to the north beyond, which is indefensible. It is where we will begin to take back what is ours.”

“The holy city?” Fhremus asked nervously. “You plan to make war on the All-God's capital?”

“He is called the Creator,” Talquist replied, an edge of steel in his voice. “It is the Cymrians who've chosen to name him the 'All-God'; what sort of foolish name is thatl We are about to right centuries of wrongs here; our task is a holy one.” He sighed morosely. "No one wants war less than I do, Fhremus. I am a merchant by background; I had hoped that my reign would be a time of peace and prosperity, that our goods would reach new markets around the world. War disrupts trade; there is nothing I want less than that. Unlike the Cymrian rulers of the Alliance—not just Gwydion of Manosse, but his Lirin wife, and the Bolg king, who knows how long he will live—I am a mere mortal, Fhremus. I will live a human's life; even Leitha, with her extraordinary longevity, lived a mere ninety-one years. Time has no sway over the progeny of a dragon, nor those who came from the cursed Island of Serendair. Our grandchildren will be dust in their graves while these tyrants are still in the bloom of youth!

Our time is limited; we must make the most of what little we have. We owe it to the Creator."

A nagging bell rang softly in the back of Fhremus's mind. He tried to remember if he had ever seen the Emperor Presumptive at any of the services held in the local abbotry or any of the chapels that served the soldiers who were quartered in Jierna'sid, and decided he had not. The commander himself took every opportunity to be blessed by the local priests, as did most members of the imperial army. But, he reasoned, that was not unexpected; undoubtedly the Emperor Presumptive had his own chapels and houses of worship within the palace.

None of that mattered anyway.

“I stand ready to receive your command, m'lord,” he said finally.

“Come with me, then, Fhremus,” Talquist said, a pleased look on his face. “And I will show you how one defends a nation.”

Fhremus had, over his many years in the army, smelled many horrific odors. The caustic smoke of the steel fires in the smithy, the repulsive reek from latrines and offal piles that were the result of any large encampment of soldiers, and the stench of corpses moldering beneath the blazing Sorbold sun were all familiar to his nose; he had become almost inured to them.

None of them could have possibly prepared him for what assaulted his nostrils in the tunnels beneath Jierna Tal.

As he followed Talquist down the cavernous passageway, his instincts, honed by years in battle, were on fire, the gut-deep sense of danger that served to warn every soldier of an adversary or threat looming ahead of him in the dark. Having seen the regent emperor's new standard bearer, who followed silently behind them, all but indiscernible in spite of his stone frame and massive size, Fhremus could only imagine what awaited him at the bottom of the tunnel. The smell of decay that permeated the very stone of the walls was like breathing in death, even through the dense weave of the linen scarf.

As they descended, the darkness became more and more impenetrable and the tunnel wider.

The small lantern in Talquist's hand did not serve to dispel even the gloom that weighed on their shoulders, but instead provided little more than a hoary ball of cold light that gleamed hesitantly into the blackness directly ahead of them, then was swallowed in shadow. In a way, Fhremus was grateful. He could not see what lurked on the cave walls at the edge of his vision, but more than once caught sight out of the corner of his eye of what appeared to be skittering movement across the dank surface. He steeled his will and concentrated on keeping the regent within his limited sight.

The farther they walked, the danker the air in the tunnel became, until Fhremus had beads of water dripping from his helm and eyebrows. His skin was clammy with more than trepidation; moisture beaded on his oiled jerkin and ran down off the front of it, splashing in thin rivulets on his boots. “This place was at one time the sewer of Jierna'sid,” Talquist said. His voice, muffled by the scarf and the mist, echoed against the distant walls and was swallowed in much the same way as the light had been. “Then the dynasty of the Dark Earth, Leitha and her forbears, built the great aqueduct system, abandoning this place.” Fhremus remained silent, his eyes futilely scanning for the walls that had receded into the dark.

Then, in the distance, he began to hear a strange sound, like the harsh whistling of wind over the desert, punctuated a moment later by a deep hum that fluctuated below it. The noise was constant^ growing in volume as they grew closer. Though he did not recognize the sound, it chilled him deep within, even as it scratched mercilessly at his eardrums.

“We are almost to the giant cistern,” Talquist said, his voice suddenly soft. “Follow closely, Fhremus, and do not lose your footing. 'Twould be tragic.”

Fhremus glanced over his shoulder. He thought he could make out the dimmest shadow of the titan's outline, but when he looked again he saw nothing but darkness. Nervously he turned back again. Talquist had come to a stop at the edge of what appeared to be a massive circular canyon, a hole of vast proportions that had once contained all the runoff of the mountains, a water volume similar to that of a river in flood. Fhremus stopped behind him, fighting nausea from the stench that had become

acidic, stripping the lining from the inside of his nose and resonating up into his sinuses.

Below the canyon's rim the noise had grown to a deafening pitch, a screaming whine below which a growing bass note was rising, thudding like war drums.

Talquist held the light over the rim, then beckoned him closer.

“Come,” he said softly, a tone of reverence in his voice. “Look.”

Fhremus swallowed silently and approached the edge. As he did, something small and hard grazed his face; instinctively he brushed it away, like a fly, and peered down into the darkness. For a moment it seemed as if he was standing above the funnel of a tornado at night.

In the inky blackness below, air seemed to swirl with the ferocity of a whirlwind, screaming as it passed. The movement was as vast as the greatest desert dust storm Fhremus had ever seen, towering walls of sand that had torn up and buried entire villages. But unlike a storm, the motion was chaotic, sporadic, with millions of flashes that had no course, just speed and sound.

The regent emperor was watching his face closely. His smile widened, and he held the lantern up over the swirling chasm of stench, screeching, and sickening motion.

In just the faintest ray of light, Fhremus could see what was spiraling in the cistern.