The Assassin's Tale

  THE ASSASSIN'S TALE

  Jonathan Moeller

  Description

  Mara is an assassin of the Red Family, the dreaded assassins of the city of Cintarra, and few can match her lethal skill.

  But Mara has a dark secret. Her father was a dark elven prince, and his terrible power stirs in her blood.

  And when she faces her next target, that power threatens to devour her…

  The Assassin's Tale

  Copyright 2014 by Jonathan Moeller.

  Published by Azure Flame Media, LLC.

  Cover image copyright Andreicu88 | Dreamstime.com & Fernando Cortés | Dreamstime.com.

  Ebook edition published July 2014.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

  The Assassin’s Tale

  The assassination did not go badly, not as such.

  Mara just hadn’t expected it to go so strangely.

  She walked along the Via Rexis, the broad street that led to the Forum of Princes in the heart of Cintarra. Mara had spent a great deal of time wandering (and sometimes fleeing for her life) through northern and western Andomhaim, and of all the towns she had visited, she liked Cintarra the best. It was the largest city in the realm, home to nearly a hundred thousand people, and it seethed with energy and activity. People filled the streets, human merchants and porters going about their business, orcish mercenaries visiting from the kingdoms of Rhaluusk and Khaluusk, dwarven traders from the Three Kingdoms, halfling servants in noble livery conducting errands for their masters.

  She wove her way through the crowds, her small stature letting her slip through with ease. Today Mara wore a green dress that matched her eyes, a belt of black leather around her waist, sturdy boots clicking against the flagstones as she walked. She wore her pale hair tied back in an unfashionable style, but it kept the hair out of her eyes.

  And it also concealed the tips of her ears.

  All those people going past on the street might well try to kill Mara if they knew what she really was.

  To say nothing of the organization to which she belonged.

  At last she came to the Forum of Princes, the broad square at the heart of Cintarra. One side fronted the river, and gangs of workmen labored to unload barges laden with goods. The grim towers and walls of the Prince’s Castra rose upon another side, the Prince’s green dragon banner flying from the ramparts. Stalls and booths filled the Forum, clustered around the bases of statues of High Kings and Princes and Swordbearers of old, while shops lined the Forum’s remaining two sides.

  Mara made her way to the Sheathed Sword, a wine shop with a fine view of the Prince’s Castra and the barges filling the river. The Sheathed Sword’s owner liked to claim that it was far above the taverns favored by the common rabble, that only the noble and wealthy came to his establishment, which Mara supposed simply made the Sheathed Sword a fancy tavern for rich men.

  Liveried footmen waited at the door, and they bowed and opened the door at her approach, as her dress was fine enough to allow her to pass as a merchant’s or knight’s daughter. The Sheathed Sword’s common room was opulent. Six hearths crackled with flame in the walls, throwing a cheery light over the gleaming floorboards and the walls of polished white stone. Tapestries hung on the walls, showing scenes from the scriptures and Old Earth, of the Dominus Christus feeding the five thousand, or Arthur Pendragon defeating the Saxon hordes at Mount Badon. Merchants and minor nobles sat at round tables, eating and drinking and discussing business and the affairs of the city. Halflings in the livery of the Sheathed Sword scurried back and forth, carrying trays of food and drink to the patrons.

  All save for one halfling.

  Mara’s target.

  He sat alone, leaning back with his gleaming black boots propped upon his table. Some of the nearby merchants gave him sidelong, thin-lipped looks. Almost all the halflings Mara had ever met were the domestic servants of nobles or wealthy merchants. Centuries ago, the High King had defeated the pagan orcs, freeing the halflings from millennia of slavery, and in return the halflings had sworn eternal loyalty to the nobles.

  Yet here sat Jager of Cintarra, a halfling and one of the richest merchants in Cintarra.

  Despite herself, Mara found herself amused by the audacious front he displayed to the world. Jager had curly hair and bright amber eyes, his face pale and square-jawed. He wore a crisp white shirt beneath a black leather vest, his black trousers tucked into his gleaming black boots. A jeweled dagger and short sword hung at his belt, and he held a goblet of wine in his right hand, smiling as he regarded the Sheathed Sword’s common room. He looked like a king surveying his domain with indulgent amusement, not a halfling merchant regarded with scorn by half the room.

  A pity she would have to kill him.

  She didn’t want to do it. But the cold jade bracelet upon her left wrist made it necessary.

  Mara walked towards his table, staring at the back of the common room as if she had spotted friends there. A small wax sphere, no larger than her knuckle, waited in the fingers of her right hand. The sphere would dissolve when it touched wine in Jager’s goblet, and the tremendously powerful poison within would stop Jager's heart and kill him in short order.

  Jager glanced to the right, smirking at one of the merchants, and Mara saw her chance. She walked past his table, her hand moving to drop the sphere into his wine goblet…

  “How appalling,” said a deep voice.

  Mara froze and saw Jager staring up at her with a smile that did not touch his amber-colored eyes.

  “I’m sorry, sir?” said Mara.

  “My manners, of course,” said Jager, getting to his feet with a flourish. It surprised her that such a deep voice could come from such a short man. Though she only overtopped him by a few inches. “To let such a lovely woman pass without offering greetings. I am Jager of Cintarra, merchant of fine and beautiful things, and it pleases me to make your acquaintance.”

  He bowed over her hand and kissed her fingers.

  Her right hand. Did he know about the poison? Did he know what she really was?

  “Thank you,” said Mara, buying time to think. “I am pleased to meet you as well.”

  Jager laughed.

  “What is so funny?” said Mara.

  “My charm is indeed overpowering,” said Jager, “considering it has made you forget your very name, my dear lady.”

  Mara considered for a moment. “You can call me Mara, Master Jager.”

  “Mara?” said Jager. “A poor choice of name, I fear.”

  “And why is that, sir?” said Mara. Did he know that she was a part of the Red Family? “Do you often make the custom of criticizing women’s names?”

  “If I recall the lectures of my village’s priest correctly,” said Jager, “the word ‘Mara’ meant ‘bitter’ in the tongue of the ancient Hebrews upon Old Earth. The term hardly seems to suit you.”

  “You do not know me well enough to judge, sir,” said Mara. “Perhaps I am most bitter and miserly.”

  “If you were bitter, you would scowl more,” said Jager.

  “It is rude to scowl at strangers,” said Mara.

  “Ah, but we’re not strangers, are we?” said Jager. “So we may scowl all we wish. Like this. See?” He made a face at her, its appearance so comical that Mara burst out laughing. “Your turn.”

  “E
nough, Jager,” said one of the merchants at a neighboring table, a stout, white-haired man in his fifties. “Stop pestering the poor girl. If she wants male companionship, she can find it readily enough.” An ugly smirk came over his face. “And if she does, she will want a real man, not an uppity halfling rat in expensive clothes.”

  She expected Jager to take offense, but instead he grinned. “Is that so, Quintilius? A real man? Meaning a man like you, I expect?”

  Quintilius leered at Mara, and she did her best not to cringe in disgust. “She would be most satisfied.”

  “And flattened, I expect,” said Jager, and some of the other merchants laughed as Quintilius’s leer turned to a scowl. “You would be the death of the poor woman. Which, I imagine, explains the somewhat pinched expression of your mistresses. Why, they are taking the opportunity to catch a breath before they are smothered again…”

  A chorus of laughter answered him, and Quintilius scowled and turned his attention back to his food and wine.

  “Now, then,” said Jager, hooking his left arm through Mara’s right and leading her forward, “now that the unpleasantness has been settled, let us return to our business.”

  “We have business?” said Mara.

  They stepped back into the sunlight, the Forum bustling around them.

  “Oh, we do,” said Jager. “You were trying to kill me, which I admit is unsettling.”

  “I don’t…” started Mara.

  “The wax sphere filled with poison,” said Jager. “As I recall, it is a favorite trick of the Red Family. You see, this might shock you, but despite my irresistible charm and rugged good looks, lovely women rarely walk up to me.”

  “I was walking past,” said Mara.

  “They don’t do that, either,” said Jager. For just a moment, a hint of bitterness entered his deep voice. “The proud lords and wealthy men of Andomhaim mustn’t contaminate themselves with a haughty halfling who doesn’t know his place, oh, no. That would be unthinkable.”

  “Perhaps you are misnamed, sir,” said Mara. “Perhaps you should have my name.”

  Jager blinked, and then laughed. “Perhaps I should at that. But, you see, I must object to being murdered, even by a pretty young woman. I suspect you have the poison on your person, so if you will oblige me by accompanying me to the barracks of the city militia, then…”

  Mara spun and drove a foot into his instep. Jager saw the move coming and twisted like an eel to avoid it, but by then Mara had already ripped free. She turned and sprinted for the alleys behind the Sheathed Sword, her skirts flapping around her legs. Jager turned and pursued her. He was fast, and unlike her, he was not encumbered by a long skirt.

  Her mind sorted through potential courses of action. Killing him in the street was not an option. For one, she would be arrested. More importantly, the Matriarch had commanded that Jager’s death was to look accidental, and Mara knew better than to cross the Matriarch’s will. She supposed she could scream until someone came to her aid, but she was carrying the poison.

  No. It was time for a different course of action.

  Mara darted into the alley, just a few paces ahead of Jager, and ducked into a doorway.

  And then she drew upon the shadows within her.

  They were the gift and the curse of her blood. Her mother had been a freeholder’s daughter, kidnapped by orcish raiders and dragged to the Nightmane Forest as a slave. Her father had been the Traveler, the dark elven lord of that Forest, and from him Mara had inherited command over the shadows.

  She had also inherited a curse that would eventually destroy her, but mastery over the shadows had its uses.

  They rose at her command, wrapping her in darkness, and Mara went motionless.

  An instant later Jager burst into the alley, looking around. Mara held her breath as he looked in her direction, but his eyes passed over her. He craned his head, examining the roofs and the windows and the doors, but he didn’t see her. All trace of his charm had vanished, and he looked hard and tense and wary, ready to flee or fight as the situation demanded.

  She would not have expected such a reaction out of a wealthy merchant.

  “Damn it,” he muttered. “Why do the pretty ones always try to kill me?”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, Mara smiled at that.

  Jager turned and strode out of the alley.

  Mara waited and counted to a thousand, but Jager did not reappear.

  She released the shadows, left the alley, and went to report her failure to the Matriarch of the Red Family of Mhor.

  ###

  Cintarra was centuries old, and the Matriarch had hidden herself in the city for almost as long.

  Mara did not know the truth of the Matriarch’s story, not all of it, but the Matriarch liked to talk, and sometimes she seemed to forget that anyone else was there. She had once been a wizard and a noblewoman of the dark elves, one of the rulers of this world, a mistress of both fell sorcery and countless slaves. Then the urdmordar had come and overthrown the kingdoms of the dark elves, the surviving dark elves becoming slaves to the great spider-demons. To avoid that fate, the Matriarch had murdered her own children and fled, hiding herself in Cintarra. Hence the title the dark elves had given her – the titles they used among the lesser kindreds always had a hint of mockery to them.

  And the Matriarch had slain her own children, a crime that even the dark elves found abhorrent.

  Over the centuries she had gathered the Red Family about her, training them as killers, as worshippers of the orcish blood god Mhor, unleashing them in exchange for payment. Most of the Family believed that the Matriarch was a follower of Mhor, that she had trained them as assassins to harvest blood for Mhor’s kingdom. Mara knew better. The Matriarch did not believe in Mhor or God or any gods, only in her own power.

  Legends surrounded the lair of the Red Family. Most of the realm believed that the Red Family was a grisly story and nothing more. Those who did believe whispered of a secret temple built of skulls around a pool of blood. Others claimed the Red Family laired in a tower with no doors that could only be entered with the spilled blood of an innocent, or in a hidden crypt deep beneath the city’s catacombs.

  Currently the Matriarch lived in an opulent domus not far from the heart of the city, attended by human and halfling servants sworn to secrecy. There was no hidden lair. The best hiding place, the Matriarch always said, was in plain sight. If someone even suspected the existence of her hiding place, she simply killed all the witnesses and moved to a new location.

  The strategy worked. The Matriarch had lurked in Cintarra for nearly five hundred years…and most of the lords of Andomhaim still thought her a myth.

  Those who had not hired her services, at any rate.

  The guards at the door looked like unremarkable footmen, but they were Brothers, and they admitted her without question. That was heartening. Had the Matriarch ordered it, they would have killed her without question.

  Inside the domus was silent. Mara climbed the stairs to the solar at the back of the house. The door swung open at her approach, revealing a glass-walled room with a fine view of the gardens of the inner courtyard. Two Red Brothers stood in the room, both wearing their formal blood-colored leather armor. One was middle-aged, with a narrow face beneath a tangle of graying yellow hair, his eyes hard and predatory as they considered Mara. The second was about Mara’s age, shorter than the older man, but heavy with muscle, his black hair and beard close-cropped.

  The Matriarch herself sat between them, and Mara felt the power surrounding the ancient dark elf.

  She was pale, her black hair piled in an elaborate crown upon her head, silver earrings glinting in her long, pointed ears and upon her slender fingers. She wore a voluminous blue robe trimmed in black, woven of the finest material. Her eyes were black, solid black, like windows into an endless void. Those empty eyes turned to Mara, and she felt the weight and power of them like a physical blow.

  She knelt at once.

  �
�Rise, my daughter,” said the Matriarch, her voice more musical and resonant than any human voice. Mara stood, and the Matriarch regarded her for a moment. “You have failed, I see.”

  “Yes, Matriarch,” said Mara. “The target realized who I was, and spotted the poison before I could put it into his wine.”

  “Were you exposed?” said the Matriarch.

  “No, Matriarch,” said Mara, wondering if she was about to die. “The witnesses thought Jager was trying to seduce me.” His amber eyes and mocking smile flashed through her mind. “Once it became clear that he knew the truth, I fled, concealed myself until the way was clear, and made my way here to report my failure.”

  “For you have indeed failed,” said Matriarch. She looked at the older of the two Red Brothers. “Rotherius. What shall we do next?”

  Rotherius shrugged. He bore Mara no ill will, but if the Matriarch commanded it, he would kill her without hesitation. “Sometimes our plans are simply foiled by ill fortune, Matriarch. Let Mara try again. That shall determine if she is a worthy servant of Mhor or not.”

  The Matriarch looked at the younger assassin. “And you, Cassius? What is your counsel?”

  “Kill her at once,” said Cassius, his dark eyes cold and hard. After the Matriarch had first recruited Mara into the Red Family, Cassius had tried to lure her into his bed. She had rebuffed him as politely as she could, and when that failed, she had drawn on the shadows and resorted to force. He had never forgiven her for the humiliation, and would kill her if he ever had the chance. “She has failed you, Matriarch, and she had failed Mhor. Let her blood fall as a guilt offering to Mhor.”

  “And you, Mara?” said the Matriarch. “You chose to employ the poison sphere, far too simple a stratagem against so cunning a target as Jager. Why did you choose that, might I ask?”

  “He is a simple merchant, rich and arrogant,” said Mara. “I have used the poison sphere against such men before. I did not think he would see the danger.”