Sneaking into the estate of a rich, pampered merchant should be easy for an assassin. For Zeriel, it was anything but. Yes, he was a member of the Te Et Sha, a group composed of the most powerful assassins across Eleshar, spoken of only in the whispers of those who knew of their existence. Unfortunately, he held the position of worst among them.
The infiltration was a long and arduous event for Zeriel, easily taking twice the time it would have taken his fellow assassins. Luckily, it was a dark month, one of the thirty-day spans where the sun slept below the horizon. The darkness provided him with the cover he needed to cross the expansive grounds of the estate without being seen. His only obstacle was the soft light provided by the polychromatic bioluminescent plants of the estate’s gardens.
Difficulty aside, he eventually made it inside his target’s mansion and to his bedchamber unseen. He listened at the chamber’s door for movement or voices inside. The hallway he stood in was lit by white vine lanterns on shelves along its walls, each one darkened by a thin cloth draped over it. The vines that grew from those pots glowed with a pure white light, a hundred times brighter than any other plant on Eleshar. It was a marvel of selective breeding achieved hundreds of years ago by a man whose name Zeriel could never remember. The coverings muted the lights, providing Zeriel enough darkness to cover his infiltration.
A rumbling snore sounded from the other side of the door. Satisfied, Zeriel reached for the handle. Just before he touched it, though, a man appeared next to him as if out of thin air.
He was shorter than Zeriel and his close-cut black hair had streaks of silver on the sides. His face had the sharp lines of cracked stone, and his dark green eyes shone with mischief. He always wore the same perfectly tailored dark blue doublet and black trousers. Lines of thread that glowed bright orange climbed the seams of his clothes. They created spiral box-like patterns that crisscrossed black lines in the same pattern. The man leaned on a waist-high cane topped with a golden ball that was inlaid with jewels of all sorts. He wore a flat-topped hat with a large orange feather stuck to the side and facing backwards. “Are you sure it’s safe?” the man asked. “Maybe he’s not the only one in there and that snoring is coming from someone else. I bet he’s got a crossbow across his lap, waiting for you to enter.”
Zeriel had known this man for over ten years. In their first meeting he introduced himself as Jekjarah, and at the time he had no reason to doubt the man was real. But it didn’t take long before Zeriel discovered Jekjarah was just a figment of his imagination. Although he looked and sounded as real as any other person, Zeriel knew better. When he was in his early teenage years, he’d fallen deep into a shaft in his Clan’s mine. Jekjarah appeared to him while he was stuck there waiting to be rescued. The hallucination brought voices along with him, though they never appeared to him as Jekjarah did. Instead, they tormented him with malevolent commands to hurt or kill himself, and constant lies and emphatic curses.
He’d visited many healers and shaman over the years. While they all gave a different explanation for his affliction—a mind fracture, that he was some ancient Void Walker, or that he was afflicted with something they called the curse of echoes—he quickly discovered that however they tried to define it, nothing would change the nature of what was wrong with him, and there was no cure.
With a sigh at the hallucination’s doubt, he checked both directions of the hallway and saw no one. “He’s alone in there, Jek,” he whispered.
“But how can you be sure?”
Footsteps sounded from down the hallway, likely from a guard patrol. The noise forced Zeriel into action. He left the hallucination where he stood and swept into the chamber.
Just as he’d expected, a single man was sprawled out on a giant fourposter bed dressed in a brown night shirt and white nightcap. His covers were strewn about, and he faced the ceiling as he snored. The room was surprisingly plain for a man with so much wealth. A fireplace stood opposite the bed with a single potted white vine lantern on the mantle, covered to provide just enough light so one wouldn’t stumble in the dark. A small four-paned window was set in the far wall with thin white curtains pulled to the sides. The only real decoration in the room was a giant portrait of the man himself hung over the fireplace.
Jekjarah appeared next to the bed, his arms crossed and posture hostile as he inspected the sleeping man. He turned toward Zeriel with a mixture of resignation and anger on his face and said, “I guess he was alone, after all.” That expression immediately changed to one with wide eyes, and a manic smile stretched unnaturally across his face. “You’re going to kill him now, right?”
Jekjarah’s fast-shifting expressions didn’t bother Zeriel. He was familiar with them by now and assumed it to be further proof of his own insanity. Instead of concern he actually shared the unrestrained glee Jekjarah displayed. The emotion pushed him to move, and he pulled a dagger from his belt. His fingers scraped along the tightly packed pouches also attached to the belt, tearing some of the skin of his knuckles, but Zeriel barely noticed. Death was the only thing on his mind.
A few steps. A hand over the man’s mouth. A quick stab through his rib cage and into his heart. Exhilaration surged through his body. He reveled in the process and tried to extend the moments.
His target’s eyes shot open in panic, pain, and fear. The reaction only served to enhance Zeriel’s excitement. Blood seeped from the wound around the knife as the man thrashed in his futile attempt to fight, but it was in vain. Zeriel released the hilt of his blade and rubbed his hand in the man’s blood. His other hand pressed harder on his target’s mouth. With muscles strengthened far beyond any normal man’s, it only took one arm to hold the dying man in place.
He brought the bloody hand to his face so he could inspect it.
“Let me see!” Jekjarah exclaimed. His face slid uncomfortably close to Zeriel’s as he tried to get close.
It was an even shade of red across his palm. Intriguing lines cast by the subdued reflections of the lantern on the mantle played across its surface. He moved his hand to his nose and breathed in the scent, intoxicated by the iron aroma.
“Come now,” Jekjarah said as he grasped at Zeriel’s wrist, though his hands only passed through it. “Share it already.”
A different set of hands grabbed the arm Zeriel used to hold down the dying man, the very real hands of his target who was able to rip his mouth free of the assassin’s grip.
The dying man sucked air into his lungs and screamed, “Assassin! Guards! There’s an—” He was cut off as he coughed blood all over himself. The knife had obviously missed his heart.
“Damn it,” Zeriel said as he pulled the knife out of the man and rammed it back into his chest. He continued, not counting the number of times he struck. He just kept stabbing until there was no doubt the man’s heart was shredded. Only once his target’s eyes stared unblinkingly at the ceiling did Zeriel feel confident he’d accomplished his goal.
“Time to go,” Jekjarah said, now standing next to the door.
“Obviously,” Zeriel responded. He hurried to the door and stepped into the hallway in time to see guards appearing around corners from both directions, three on his left and four on his right.
“Assassin!” one of the guards yelled as he pointed at Zeriel. They sprinted toward him and cut off all routes of escape. He scanned the walls; the hallway had no windows. He steeled himself and pulled a second dagger from his belt, holding it point forward in his dominant hand while he held his second knife point backward in the other.
Jekjarah walked through the closed door to join him in the hallway. He noticed the guards who sprinted toward them. “You really messed up this time.”
“I can see that just fine without your—” Zeriel was cut off by a pulling sensation at the base of his spine that unceremoniously ripped his consciousness from his body.
v
White flashed across Zeriel’s vision. A few moments passed before he regained his sight and found himself sitting near the end of a long stone table. His eyes were fixed on the far side of the room, and he couldn’t move his head when he tried. He stared past several tall beige pillars and out into a lush oasis with buildings that poked through tall palm trees. Beyond that was desert as far as the eye could see. Strangely, the sky was bright blue as if it were the middle of a light month.
“Are you listening Plaxes?” a man said, annoyance weaved through his tone.
Zeriel’s body sighed involuntarily as his head turned to face the man. From his vantage he saw others sitting at the table—eleven total, including himself—and a single man at its head.
That man had bluish-gray hair that fell well past his shoulders and his eyes were a bright blue that gave off a slight inner glow.
“You want me to assassinate him,” Zeriel said, but the unmistakably feminine voice that came from his mouth wasn’t his. One of his hands moved to his face on its own and he rested his cheek against it lazily. Zeriel was shocked to see the skin on his hand was pitch black. Not the dark brown tone of the Allakhanians that bordered on black. No, the skin on his hand was blacker than anything he’d ever seen, darker than the night itself. “Assuming it’s even possible to assassinate him,” the feminine voice said through him.
“I agree,” said a man from across the table. Zeriel’s eyes shifted to regard him. He had shoulder-length blond hair and the strong features of a traditionally handsome man. He was adorned in gleaming silver plate armor with white and gold paint in the crevices of carvings that swirled as they traveled across its surfaces. “He brought every Keeper in—”
“Don’t!” The man at the head of the table screamed as he shot to his feet. “Never use that title to describe us. We’ve grown beyond the servants he would make of us. Each one of us at this table cast that off long ago. We are the gods now.”
The man raised his hands in surrender. “Must we always pick at that old scab, Nedon? Yes, we are gods, but we must still face facts. There may not be one of us at this table who has the strength—”
“I’ll do it,” Plaxes’s voice said from his lips. She turned her head toward Nedon. “We may never get another opportunity.”
Nedon smiled and returned to his chair. “I’m glad you see it as I do.”
“When do—” The pulling sensation returned, interrupted Plaxes, and in a flash Zeriel was ripped from her body.
v
White covered his vision a second time, and when he could see again, he watched in horror as the seven guards he’d completely forgotten about were moments away from slicing him limb from limb. He acted on pure instinct, dodging through their initial strikes, then rolling through a widened gap between the two on his left.
His effort wasn’t enough. One blade sliced his left side and bounced off his ribs. Another sliced the outside of his right quadricep, and immense pain flashed through his leg when he put weight on it.
Terror threatened to freeze him where he stood and a sudden and powerful desire to disappear into the shadows overcame Zeriel. To his shock the shadows around him responded. They pulled from the cracks in the wall, the spaces under the shelves where the white vine lanterns cast their light, and even from the shadows of the men around him. Every shadow in a twenty-foot radius pulled toward him and exploded into a black mist.
Moving was agony, and he had no idea what had just happened, but an assassin doesn’t miss a perfect opportunity when it presents itself. The moment Zeriel was back on his feet, he pushed the pain to the back of his awareness and exploded from the other side of the black fog, then ran as fast as he could.
He left the guards yelling and confused behind him. It seemed the seven of them were the only ones in the building, giving Zeriel the opportunity he needed to disappear into the darkness of the estate’s grounds and make his escape.
By the time he arrived at the small copse of trees where he’d left his horse, he could barely walk. Mounting the beast took all the strength he had left. He flopped into the saddle and found himself lying across the animal, forced to grip its neck to keep from falling.
“It’s a long ride to the nearest Whisper,” Jekjarah said standing next to him. “The Veil doesn’t reach this far from civilization.”
“I know,” Zeriel said through the pain.
Pathetic, a voice said in his mind. He recognized it, though just hours before he wouldn’t have. It was the woman whose body he’d inhabited in the vision.
“Plaxes?”
Interesting. I wonder what you saw of my past that revealed my name to you.
Not once in the years since his affliction had a new voice appeared, and never had he descended into a vision so all-consuming as the one he’d just experienced.
“I don’t—” A lance of pain shot through his chest and Zeriel growled through gritted teeth. His situation was dire, so he coaxed his horse to a trot, which was the most he could handle from the animal. “I don’t have time for imaginary voices right now.”
I’m not imaginary. Her tone had an element of annoyance in it.
“That’s what they all say.”
She let out the same sigh she had in the vision. And when you used the shadows to escape certain death, was that imaginary?
Zeriel paused at that. Plaxes had a point, but he had a hard time accepting what happened as anything but a hallucination? Then again, he couldn’t see how he could have escaped without some magical black fog to cover him.
I was worried that after all these years someone would have found the sliver. Just creating the thing was distasteful enough. But to think, after all these millennia, I’d be saddled with someone like you. Zeriel caught a hint of contempt in her tone.
Exhaustion hit him and he felt suddenly very sleepy. That was not a good sign. “I don’t think you have to worry. I’ll probably die before I find a healer. When that happens, you can have your sliver back, whatever that is.”
There was a long pause before Plaxes’s voice entered his mind again. This might be a good test, then. If you do survive, then perhaps I will make use of you. Her presence left his mind before he could think to respond.
Zeriel was surprised at her sudden departure, then angry at her for cutting off their conversation. Though, what else could he expect from one of his voices.
Leaving the conversation behind, he emptied his mind of all thought as he rode. If he was going to die, he’d do it in silence. Unfortunately, his other voices wouldn’t let him have such peace.
You deserve death.
Those guards are chasing you. Can’t you hear the beating of hooves behind you? Surprisingly, he thought he could.
Slit your wrists and your pain will end.
No, cut your throat.
No, stab your heart.
On any other occasion he’d be able to distract himself from the voices, but injured and exhausted as he was, there was no defense against them. They spoke non-stop for hours, and a few times Zeriel almost obeyed them.
Despite his mind’s antagonisms, and against all reason, Zeriel was alive and conscious when he entered the village of Bustan. It was a quaint hamlet nestled in the northern forests of Allakhan that bordered The Great Divide, a giant desert that separated the southern nations of the continent from the northern nation of Kloren. The forest that surrounded Bustan provided a pleasant green and blue glow as a backdrop to the spattering of small buildings. A creek snaked its way through the center of the village, separating farms from homes and shops. White vine lanterns hung on poles along the main road, exposing him in a way he’d been trained to avoid. Half-dead as he was, he didn’t care. The Whisper saw him coming immediately.
This member of the Veil was also the local blacksmith, and despite the late hour, he was already outside his shop with a young man in tow hurrying to receive Zeriel. The Whispers were operatives of the Te Et Sha and part of a network spread across Eleshar they called the Veil. Whispers provided safety, rest, and even healers; whatever the Te Et Sha needed. The Veil was also the primary method the Te Et Sha used to pass messages to and from their assassins.
The Whisper grabbed the reins of Zeriel’s horse and looked him over. “Go fetch Kulku,” he said to the younger man. “And be quick about it. We don’t have much time.”
To the boy’s credit, he obeyed quickly and without question or complaint.
The Whisper pulled the horse toward a small stable next to his smithy. It was barely large enough to hold two horses, though luckily one stall was empty. “Don’t worry, you will soon be covered by the protection of The Veil.” Every muscle in Zeriel’s body relaxed at the man’s statement, so he was glad to let the Blacksmith help him off the horse and inside into a bed.