The Assassin King

ODE

We are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties

We build up the world's great cities,

And out of a fabulous story

We fashion an empire's glory:

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song's measure

Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself with our mirth;

And o'erthrew them with prophesying

To the old of the new world's worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

Or one that is coming to birth.

—Arthur O'Shaughnessy

THE POEM OF SEVEN

Seven Gifts of the Creator,

Seven colors of light,

Seven seas in the wide world,

Seven days in a sennight,

Seven months of fallow,

Seven continents trod, weave

Seven eras of history

In the eye of God.

SONG OF THE SKY LOOM

Oh, our Mother the Earth;

Oh, our Father the Sky,

Your children are we,

With tired backs.

We bring you the gifts you love.

Then weave for us a garment of brightness-----

May the warp be the white light of morning, May the weft be the red light of evening,
May the fringes be the fallen rain, May the border be the standing rainbow.

Thus weave for us a garment of brightness

That we may walk fittingly where birds sing;

That we may walk fittingly where the grass is green.

Oh, our Mother Earth;

Oh, our Father Sky.

— Traditional, Tewa

THE WEAVER'S LAMENT

Time, it is a tapestry

Threads that weave it number three

These be known, from first to last,

Future, Present, and the Past.

Present, Future, weft-thread be

Fleeting in inconstancy

Yet the colors they do add

Serve to make the heart be glad.

Past, the warp-thread that it be,

Sets the path of history Every moment 'neath the sun

Every battle, lost or won,

Finds its place within the lee

Of Time's enduring memory.

Fate, the weaver of the bands,

Holds these threads within Her hands,

Plaits a rope that in its use

Can be a lifeline, net—or noose

Western seacoast, Avonderre

On a morning of unsurpassed fineness, the sun rose over an incandescent sea, rippling with light so bright as to be painful in its radiance. The winter wind dancing over the gleaming waves, fresh with the sweet hint of a spring coming far away in the southlands, carried with it the scent of blood. Rath cursed and lowered his head to his chest, pulling bis brown hood farther down over his stinging eyes. He waited for the water beneath his translucent eyelids to clear, then blinked several times and looked up again at the shoreline. The sea was so calm that the edge of the land barely wavered in the distance. Rath clutched the oar in his sinewy hands and put his back into rowing for the beach. With each stroke, each pull, each screech of wood against the oarlock of his small boat, he canted his list of targets, every one of their names engraved permanently on his memory'. Hrarfa, Fraax, Sistha, Hnaf, Ficken, he whispered in the odd, buzzlike language of his ancient race, the one form of speech that was inaudible to the wind. Rath was always careful not to put information on the wind, especially the sea wind, where it would blow recklessly about the wide world, to be heard by any ear that knew how to listen. Rath was well aware of the loose tongue of the wind; he had been born of that ephemeral element. He gritted his teeth as he rowed, mentally cursing the waves over which he traveled. Water had long blocked his Seeking vibration and kept him from his quarry. Each stroke moved him closer to being free of it, but that did little to calm his growing ire. Until he was away from the sea and the cacophony of thick vibrations that it generated, he would be unable to hunt. So he concentrated, as always, on his list. Hrarfa, Fraax, Sistha, Hnaf, Ficken. Once through the roster of would-be victims that had been his agenda for as long as he could recall, he silently intoned one last name that had been recently added.

Ysk. It was not a name in the language of the others, but rather one that had been conferred on its owner by an ignorant species, a demi-human race that barely formed words at all. Ysk was the Firbolg word for spittle, for the regurgitation of something foul. That monsters had given someone such a title could only convey the deepest disgust, contempt that had no limit.

It was perhaps the worst name that Rath had ever heard. It was also a dead name, a name whose power had been broken more than a millennium before, whose history lay at the bottom of the sea on the other side of the world. A name all but forgotten, indeed, completely erased from the wind and from memory, except for the recollection of Rath and his kind.

It was the last name on his list, but the first one he would actively seek upon landing.

When the beach was finally close enough that rowing was disproportionate effort, Rath climbed out of the boat and left it drifting in the tide. He had sighted his landing carefully so as to be able to come ashore unnoticed in a small, rocky alcove be-tween two fishing villages.

His luck was holding; there was no one in sight for as far up and down the beach as he could see. He turned away from the sea wind with one last glance over his shoulder; the little boat was slowly backing away in a graceless dance, spinning aimlessly in the current. Rath waded to shore, ignoring the pebbles and seaweed that coated the sand beneath his feet. His soles had no nerves in them anyway, the calluses from millennia of walking through fire were almost as thick as a boot would have been. Once on the beach, he hurried forward until the scrambling froth of the waves was no longer able to reach him, then stopped in the cold, dry sand, pulled back his hood, and tilted his head to the southwest, listening to the wind. He waited for the span of a hundred heartbeats, but no voices akin to his own could be heard; none of his fellow hunters had anything to report, as was the case most of the time. As it had been for centuries

into millennia. Rath lingered a moment longer, then turned his back to the west, away from the crashing of the waves and the rustling of the foam. He took a breath of the salt wind, inhaling over the four openings of his windpipe, clenched his teeth, and loosed his kirai, the Seeking vibration by which his race sought then-prey. The buzzing sound came forth from the deepest opening in his throat, a vibration heard only by him. Then he opened his mouth, allowing the air that was rising from within his lungs to pass over the top opening in his throat, forming words again. Hrarfa, Fraax, Sistha, Hnaf, Ficken. One by one he canted the names of the demon spirits he was hunting, feeling the slight variation in tone as he changed from one name to another. If the kirai matched any of those names to a vibration it detected in the air, his throat would burn as if with caustic fire; he would taste the beast's blood in his mouth, feel its heartbeat in his own chest. He could lock on to that rhythm and follow it.

But, as always, there was no taste of any of the names on the wind. Finally, he intoned the last name. Ysk. This name, of course, was different. Unlike the others, it was the dead name of a living being, a name once given, in another lifetime, to a man with a soul. However tainted that soul might be by the ravages of time and personal failure, it could never be as acidly evil as the essence of the demonic beings Rath and his fellow demon hunters regularly pursued.

And however dead the name might be, Rath had reason to believe its original owner was, in fact, still alive, though his vibrational signature had changed along with his name.

And not long before, he had heard the dead name, spoken aloud, on the nattering wind. He hoped to get a taste of it once more, now that he had crossed the sea and finally come ashore in the place to which he had tracked the name, the place it seemed to have been last spoken.

He inhaled, letting the wind pass over his tongue, then canted the name. Ysk. There was a remnant of it still on the wind coming from the southeast, though faint and hollow; perhaps it had been years since it had been voiced. Still, this continent, this place known in old lore as the Wyrmlands, was the place where the name had last been sounded. Rath could taste that much. Satisfied, he stripped his pack from beneath his cloak, opening it carefully on the sandy ground as the wind whipped off the sea, buffeting the skin of his naked head. He quickly checked his provisions and the minimal tools of his trade, as well as the dagger he wore in a calf sheath. The weapon was little more than a child's knife, meant only for the meanest of self-defense against any beast or man that he might not be able to otherwise avoid. No one who observed him would consider him armed. Rath carried his deadliest weapons in his head.

Determining his water supply to be sufficient, he quickly repacked his provisions and slung the pack beneath his flowing brown cloak. Then he glanced at the sea one last time; the little boat was no longer in sight, lost in the blazing glare of the rising sun. A moment later, to any eye other than his own, so was Rath.

The forest of Gwynwood, north of the Tar'afel River

The same sunlight sparkling on the sea thirty score miles away was illuminating the frosty dew that lingered in the air of the forest, bathing the wood in hoary radiance. Shafts of dusty gold illuminated the bare trunks and limbs of the white trees, making them gleam even more starkly against the neighboring evergreens, patchy with frozen snow. No winterbird broke the morning stillness with song, no rustling in the branches or undergrowth signaled the presence of any of the forest residents that traditionally braved the cold months or felt the beginnings of Second Thaw that had been evident for a full turn of the moon. This place, always alive with wild music, emitted no sound, not the fluttering of needled boughs, nor the cracking of icy burdens in the diffuse sun. Even the wind itself, a customary singer that rattled the empty branches and whispered through the laden great beasts, who believed that they were without souls, who acknowledged that the Afterlife held no place for them, longed, as each sentient creature longed, for some vestige of immortality. To End was to consciously give up any chance of that forever. More terribly, it left a hole in the shield of power by which the race of dragons protected the Earth. With the loss of each member of the ancient race came the loss of the control, of the stewardship, by which they kept the forces of chaotic destruction that were imprisoned within the very earth from destroying it. Finally the harsh voice of Sinjaf, the vaporous dragon steward of the great poison swamps and everglades of the eastern island chains, crackled through the silent glen. “Llauron was not wyrm, but wyrmkin,” he said curtly, his fear transmitting like a headache to the assemblage. “He was bom a man, with dragon's blood in his veins, true, but not really one of us. His loss, while tragic, hardly affects the shield—.” “Llauron served to guard the Great White Tree of earth, just as the Daughters guard the three other remaining trees,” interjected Talasynos, a Daughter herself and protector of Eu-cos, the tree of living air. “From the time he was a child he has tended it, loved it as we Daughters love the World Trees. When my sister Elynsynos gave up her corporeal form to escape her pain, he, as her grandson, took on her stewardship. Had he not, the tree would have been destroyed, as so much of the Wyrmlands were destroyed, in the wars of men. His transformation to dragonkind was complete; he gave up his humanity to join our service. Do not fool yourself, Sinjaf; this loss is as great as it would have been should Elynsynos herself have Ended.” The last of her words echoed hollowly through the glen. Finally, Mikanic gave voice to what they all were thinking. “Where is Elynsynos?” The great wyrms focused their eyes, then their other, deeper senses, on the question, seeking her vibrations in this place ovver which she had held dominion since birth. They scanned the horizon, sought her within the running sap of the trees, beneath the surface of the ground, tasted the air around her for a trace of her ethereal form, listened for any whisper of her on the wind. Not a single echo of her could be felt. The horror of the Ending surged within the assemblage into even greater fear.

“Surely she cannot be dead,” came the insistent voice of Chao, a sparkling creature from the bright lands of the rising sun; frail and nervous, he was the most evanescent of the kin. “We would have felt it as we did the death of Marisynos, who guarded Sagia, when the Island of Serendair was consumed in cataclysm.” “Perhaps we did feel it,” said Sidus darkly. “The reverberations from Llauron's Ending were vast enough to draw all of us here; mayhap Elynsynos's death was masked within them. Clearly her dominion is broken; these lands of hers are without protection, vulnerable. Can you not feel the loss of her magic?”

“There are so many holes in the shield already,” murmured Valecynos. “We have lost so many of our kind—look at us. Only a few hundred remain of what was once the greatest of the Firstborn races; how can we guard the Earth with but a few of us? Without a Guardian for the last of the World Trees?”

“We can but concentrate on what is below,” said Witheragh, “and leave the rest to the races of man.” “The races of man are the root of the woe!” exclaimed Dyansynos. “You may coexist happily with the Nain, Witheragh, but most of us live in conflict with the other races, maintain an uneasy truce, or avoid them altogether by keeping to the depths, hiding in the bowels of the Earth. It is their folly that invites the Unspoken in; it is their bodies to which the demons crave to cling, being without form themselves. It is through man that the F'dor propagate, through man they accomplish their destructive will.” “Men must fend for themselves now,” said Mikanic. "There is naught we can do for them. While Elynsynos was here, she held these lands completely under her dominion, more so than any of the rest of us has managed since the beginning of the world. Her folly, her association with a man of a Firstborn race, led to the downfall of that, to the war that followed. It is foolhardy for us to try to save any of them now. We must do the best we can in holding a fragile world together, to guard against the evil