Mythborn: Rise of the Adepts (30 page)

“Does your hawk have a name?” Tomas inquired.

“I do not name my weapons,” she replied in a monotone, looking back at the dark-winged predator. “Three ways to kill from behind?” she asked flatly.

Tomas’s mouth quirked up, his master’s preoccupation with the darker side of their arts no secret, but did not hesitate to clarify. “Armed or unarmed?”

“Fastest.”

“Wind strike, base of skull; short blade, point thrust down between the neck and shoulder; blade thrust, forty-five degrees up into skull from base of neck.” He was quiet for a moment then added, “The blade would have to be thin enough to cut the artery below the collarbone for the point thrust.”

Kisan was quiet, still looking at her direhawk. It tilted a head to one side, those eyes unblinking. “Adequate.” The word came out but without any life. She wasn’t even sure she could recall the boy’s answer.

Apparently in an effort to lighten the mood Tomas changed subjects and said, “Funny, but there was a time people thought the stars marked one’s adherence to the gods.”

Kisan was startled out of her reverie and looked at Tomas in askance, as if seeing him for the first time. “What?”

Tomas gestured at the sky with his chin, “The stars, Master… gods who guide our destiny. I find that amusing.” His eyes sparkled with mirth and in another time or place it would have been infectious. Here and now, though, it only served to irritate her.

Tomas continued, oblivious to Kisan’s mood, “Take me, for instance. I was born in the summer under the stars of the Benevolent Ruler, Pious... or at least that’s when my birthday is celebrated.” Tomas smiled. “So, I guess I’ll be in charge of all this one day,” he said, waving his large arms about.

Kisan snorted, “Yes. People are a stupid, superstitious lot,” missing Tomas’s joke entirely. She petted her hawk again, then leaned her head against its breast and closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of its feathers envelope her.

“What about you, Master? What god rules your destiny?”

Something about the easy banter Tomas assumed, so unlike Piter, who had been consumed with memorizing everything Kisan said or did, finally began putting the young master at ease. Piter’s death was still too recent, but she felt herself responding to the gregarious nature of her new ward and answered, “Dyana the Huntress, believe it or not,” she scoffed, then said in voice tinged with chagrin, “I was short with you, and perhaps not as forthcoming.”

Tomas smiled and offered, “I did not mean to presume.”

The master held up a hand and said, “I did not lie, in that I do not name my weapons. However—” she paused, looking at her direhawk—“he names himself, Temairex.”

Tomas smiled, his eyes wide. “Really? It sounds quite noble.”

Kisan nodded, feeling for the first time a small easing of the recent loss and guilt, “It is, and perhaps—” then her eyes widened and she stopped in midsentence.

Even Temairex sensed something, flapping his wings and sending a whirlwind of air across their small open space. The bird would have already taken flight if not for the harness holding his leg to his tree trunk sized roost. Kisan calmed him with a touch, thinking.

Something was dreadfully wrong. In the back of her mind, there existed a tenuous link, a common bond amongst all the adepts on the Isle. It was so constant it was largely ignored. Even now, she could sense Giridian in his chambers, and Dragor training.
Thera
... that link had been severed and only one thing could break it.

“Pit—Tomas, get inside. Now!”

She had almost called him “Piter,” but the boy understood the message. Without checking to see if he obeyed, Kisan went to the edge of the observatory, looking down into the darkness. She couldn’t see anything but that didn’t mean there was no danger. Something or someone had silenced Thera. She didn’t know what, but she was going to find out. Whatever it was, it was about to face a true Master of the Way.

* * * * *

Time crawled along, but the leader’s composure never wavered. They trained for this and knew their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. The key to their success would be their speed and surprise. He had, however, made a calculated deviation from their assignment and detoured to finish this hall first.

His reasoning had been simple. Once the adepts knew of the attack, the conflict would create chaos, and in that chaos, some of the magelings might escape. It was a priority none who used the Way survived, especially the young ones, who dreamed more vividly than did the elders.

A moment later four shapes came racing down the stairs, still silent, and crouched next to the team leader. With hand signals, they made a curt report:
All dead.
The quick hand motion was too short to give full weight to the fact that dozens from the Hall of Apprentices would not wake the next day. The leader nodded once, then looked to the next structure. Like ghosts, they slipped into the darkened spaces along the path and leapfrogged their way to the Hall of Adepts.

As they neared, the leader held up his hand again and the team came to a halt. Reaching into his tunic, he pulled out a small metal cross, carved with runes. He gingerly placed it against the doors and waited.

The metal cross began to glow, then the runes lit. With a flash, the tiny talisman was gone, as was the protective spell that held the door shut. The leader raised two fingers and two men shot past him like black darts, through the now open door. The rear two took positions in the dark recesses of the entryway, protecting their egress. He and his second slid through the doors and joined the two already inside.

The Hall of Adepts had a grand curving staircase on the inside spiraling up through each level to where the masters’ chambers lay. Taking those stairs would be suicide, he knew. Too many wards and cantrips designed to alert these so-called, adepts. He looked to his team and flexed his gloved hands. They scintillated for a moment, purple and amethyst. He then moved to the underside of the staircase.

Without hesitation, he grabbed and pulled, flattening himself against it. The magic of his uniform and his training took over and he climbed like a spider rapidly up the underside of the staircase. His team silently followed, the four of them looking like black, four-legged insects.

When they reached the first landing, they grabbed the lip of the floor and vaulted over the banister. Their feet barely touched the rail before they leapt upward to the ceiling. There they clung again like spiders and made their way to the first door.

The first man to the door took out another talisman and affixed it. Silently the device negated any wards on the door, dissipating in a flash and sparkle, leaving no trace of itself. They looked at one another, synchronizing their next move.

Then, without a sound, one pulled the door open while two fired poisoned darts into Giridian’s back as the adept replaced a book onto his bookshelf. The poison’s double dose went to work immediately, locking his muscles and constricting his breathing. Even without a
coup de grâce,
Giridian would be dead within moments.

As the first two held their positions, a third man entered and punched a lethal dagger into Giridian’s back. The blade was cross-shaped, designed to create a wound that would not close. A small
huff
was the only sound the ursine adept made as the knife punched into his heart, then pulled out. His attackers were moving out of the room before Giridian’s lifeless body hit the floor.

These adepts were proving to be easier targets than had been indicated. He had thought their element of surprise would have been over with the death of the first... but that did not seem true. No matter, now they needed to find Themun Dreys and put an end to him. At four against one old man, he was confident in the outcome and continued forward toward the main chambers.

* * * * *

Kisan did not have time for the circuitous route down the main stairs of the observatory. Instead, she leapt from the parapet and dived like a falcon, falling down the side of the building. At careful measured moments, she reached out and touched the citadel rushing by, slowing her fall using the Way and her own training. Just before she reached the ground her legs snapped out, the balls of her feet kicking the rough stone wall.

In an instant, her downward velocity transformed into a rotation and Kisan used that momentum to flip herself, arcing gracefully over and out from the wall. She landed lightly, crouched in the darkness. Summoning the Way, she sank low to the ground and expanded her senses: sight, hearing, smell, and touch. As she did so, she quickly reviewed what she knew.

Whoever silenced Thera must have known much about the Isle and the people living here. It made sense they had intimate knowledge of adepts, the training ground’s layout, and the defenses they could expect. She would be foolish to assume they were any less trained than she was. Kisan quickly readied another spell, then cast it.

The air next to her began to darken, then separate into two distinct clouds. They sucked in the surrounding air as they sparkled and coalesced. Where Kisan crouched, two duplicates of her now mirrored her stance.

“I speak, you obey,” she said to them.

They nodded and said, “Yes, Master.” Their voices, exactly like her own, sounded eerie in the night air, but Kisan knew they would serve their purpose. Though they were not alive and could only follow simple verbal commands, they were better than normal mirror images. She could create dozens of those, but they lacked substance and could only follow a single order. These were more complex and served two critical needs.

The most obvious was as decoys... but because of the increased power spent in making them, Kisan could also use their senses as her own, even control them to some degree. As scouts, they would serve to provide her with information, and that would be her key advantage. Should they be discovered and attacked, they would even die, feeling solid and real. It was her only chance.

“We will make our way behind the Hall of the adepts.”

“Yes, Master,” the doppelgangers whispered.

Kisan looked around. She had purposely fallen into a shadowed area that was almost pitch black. Her line of sight to the front of the hall was obscured by the building itself. Nevertheless, she had no doubt whoever was attacking was just around the corner, waiting.

She looked to the duplicate on her right and said, “Walk to the front of this building. Do not stop for anyone.”

The doppelganger nodded, then stood and started walking around the circular hall. Kisan motioned to the other to follow and they started circling the other direction. Her mind opened a path to the Way, and whatever the first doppelganger saw became clear. She then moved to the first defensible position she could find, one that had a clear view of the courtyard in front of the Hall, but where someone hiding in that area could not see her.

Through her simulacrum’s eyes, she saw its approach to the front of the building. At first, nothing seemed amiss, and there were no obvious signs of attack. Perhaps she had been wrong. It was then she saw that the front door stood ajar. That would never happen...

Before she could do anything, she heard through the doppelganger’s ears the sound of something firing with whispers of air. Her double had few battle skills, so it was pointless to try to evade. Rather Kisan concentrated on the doppelganger’s response.

She felt two small pinpricks on her own skin, letting her know her doppelganger had been hit with two dart-like objects. The grouping was tight, no more than a hand span at fifty paces, and centered on her throat. Within a heartbeat, she felt a numbing paralysis in the doppelganger’s body. If those darts had hit her, she would have been helpless.

Quickly, she mentally forced her double to fall facing the door with its eyes open. She could feel what the double felt, hear what it heard, and knew these attackers expected those darts to work. Until she knew what and whom they were facing, she was going to play along. The double collapsed in a heap and turned its head exactly the way she wanted. Now Kisan could watch what happened next.

At first, nothing stirred the night. Neither movement nor sound broke the silence and no one appeared. Kisan realized they were waiting... then it dawned on her they were waiting for the poison to take effect. Even as she came to this conclusion, two shadows detached themselves from the dark recesses of the doors. They moved quickly, their wide forms blurring with some sort of magic.

Kisan was shocked at their speed and their seeming ability to use the Way. However, her training took over and she watched dispassionately as these men made quick work of her first scout. One punched a dagger into the base of the skull. The other searched the body. They worked with the practiced efficiency of highly trained thieves. As both finished their gruesome tasks, no word was exchanged. Then they quickly dragged the body out of sight and resumed their stations, melting back into the darkness.

Kisan’s resolve hardened as she watched their quick and controlled movements over her double’s corpse. She knew two things from observing them. First, she would not underestimate them, for they were highly disciplined. This would have been her fate had she rounded that corner without a plan. Second, no parley had been offered, no terms, nor discussion. She was facing enemies with the clear objective to kill, not talk.

She was not worried that the ease with which they dispatched her doppelganger would arouse their suspicion. The fact was that given the right circumstances, anyone could be killed by surprise, even a master as well trained as she.

Inwardly, Kisan smiled. She was no longer surprised, and that meant these men would be facing a true disciple of the Way in battle. She motioned to her remaining double and together they moved forward into the night. Nothing these assassins did would save them now.

* * * * *

Dragor finished the end of his
kata
with a fast spin kick, his mind and body one. His breathing came easy, exhaling on time with each point of impact while he continued his practice movements. The point of
kata
was to allow him to train his body and mind for that perfect strike, against a perfect opponent.