The Guild… prologue pt. ii

The assassin moved over to the door making no more noise than the wind itself. Easing it open he peeked out into the almost totally dark and deserted hallway. That disappointed him a little. He was hoping for something a little more challenging. Not to worry though. He knew that the closer he got to the king, the better lit the halls would become, and the more populated, even at this time of night. He slipped out into the hall, and the darkness enveloped him like a lover. This was his element. This was where he belonged, in the darkness, a shadow within a shadow.
He moved effortlessly through the barren hall, his booted feet making no sound on the rough stone. Luxuries weren’t afforded down here where guests never come, so the halls were devoid of any of the fineries that adorned the other parts of the castle, such as carpets and tapestries. In fact, he was the only “guest” that this part of the castle had seen in quite some time. Slowly, he made his way through the halls and up a flight of stairs before he ran into the first of what was going to be many guards. The guard was standing by a torch and a window and seemed to be nodding off a bit. Why should he worry? Surely no one in their right mind would come down to the servant’s hall if they were going after the king. The servants lived in a part of the caste far removed from the king’s bedchambers.
The assassin contemplated killing the guard, but decided against it. There would be plenty of killings to come. But, he had no problem with using terror to further his goals. The first thing he needed to do was douse the light. Quickly, he retreated to a closet not far from his position and picked up a burlap sack, which he wet by placing it out a window into the gentle rain that had been falling all day. Once it was good and soaked, he crept back to his position to find the guard napping at his post. He drew his dagger and gently began rapping it on the stones, right outside of the light cast by the torch. The guard started, and, after wiping the rest of the sleep from his eyes, turned to the place the sound was coming from.
“Who’s there?” he called. The only answer he got was the continuous tapping of metal on stone. He took the torch out of the wall bracket and slowly started walking towards the end of the hall where the sound was coming from. With every step he took, it felt like the noise was slipping further and further away from him, but it was always just loud enough to goad him into taking that extra step. He got to the end of the hall, and instead of sticking his neck around the corner, which only a fool would do, he stuck the torch out first.
Before he could take his next breath, the torch was covered in a wet burlap sack, and hit out of his hand. From behind him he could feel the point of a dagger pressing into the back of his neck. As it dawned on him who it was standing right behind him, with the dagger point in his neck, the guard felt an abstract horror climbing up his spine. And the fact was slowly dawning on him that the king was going to die, and it was his fault.
“Turn around,” he heard. And slowly, hoping that he would live through the next few moments, the guard turned to look the famous assassin in the eye. Before him, in the almost absolute darkness, two yellow, eyes stared at him with an evil that seemed almost preternatural. The last thing he heard before he was knocked unconscious was an icy voice telling him, “You’re dead.”
* * *
“There’s no way in hell that any man is going to get past us here.” Two guards were having a small argument outside the door leading to the king’s room. “There’s the two of us here, Jansen and Stanton down below us, and more lights in this corridor than a midsummer night has stars. I don’t understand why everyone is so jumpy.”
“I don’t know about everyone else, but right now, the only reason I want to draw my sword is so I can ram it down your gullet if you don’t stop talking!”
“Seriously, what can one man do against all of us? He’d have to be crazy to try something like this. There’s nothing to worry about.”
You obviously have never heard stories about this man have you?” When his partner shook his head, the guard gave a sigh and started recollecting all the stories he had ever heard about the assassin. “The say that this man can kill in broad daylight, in the middle of an open field and the only way you know he’s there is because his dagger is slipping through your body. And his dagger! Rumors say that there is no metal that dagger can’t cut through. He moves so fast, that all you see are the yellow glow of his eyes, and only when he wants you to see them, and that’s usually right before he kills you. He gets close enough to tell you that he’s going to kill you, and before you know it, you’re dead. There has never been a target given to this man that hasn’t been dead within a fortnight of his accepting it. The fact that he’s now actually working for the Southern Empire is a little disconcerting. Or so, rumors say.”
“How do these rumors spread? He sounds like a demon from hell by the way you describe him. Surely, he doesn’t leave any survivors.”
“So you would think. But he always leaves one person alive to spread the tale. But, he blinds them so that he is the last thing they see before they die is his eyes. So maybe you’ll get lucky and he’ll decide to keep you alive, but I wouldn’t count on it. Now shut up and stay alert!”
With that, both guards turned a steely gaze down the stairwell that led away from the door they were guarding. They could see the lights of torches burning down the stairs at every sconce. And, even though lights surrounded them, they couldn’t shake the darkness that seemed to be falling around their minds. What if he really was there? What if he had found some way into the room already? What if the king were already dead?
Suddenly, both guards snapped up from their own internal musings and looked down the stairs. They had both heard the sound of metal hitting stone. Hard. It was the sound of someone swinging a sword and hitting the wall. They knew the only reason someone would be swinging a sword now was if they were swinging at someone. They listened intently for any other sounds that would issue from the bottom of the stairwell, but none came to their ears. As if they shared one mind, both guards unsheathed their swords at the same time, knowing that in the next few moments they would most definitely need them.
They watched and waited for something to come up the stairs at them, but they could spot nothing in the glow of the torches. Then slowly, with each terrified breath the guards took, the lights got dimmer and dimmer, ascending the stairway. Halfway up the stairwell, the darkness sped up, moving faster and faster, so it was getting noticeably darker and darker with each passing second. The last torch on the stairwell that they could both see was still lit, and thinking to save them some type of light, one of the guards moved forward to grab it off the wall.
As soon as he got there, there was a small flash of light, a sharp ping,and the now lightless torch hit the floor, with the guard’s hand still attached. Before the shock could register in the guard’s brain that he was now missing a hand, a small blade shaped like the letter S had buried itself in his skull. A second blade just like the first flashed through the darkness, careened off the wall behind the second guard and neatly lobbed off his head, before returning to the darkness from whence it came.
The assassin slowly ascended the last few steps till he was standing over the first guard’s corpse. Pulling the blade from the head of the corpse, he cleaned it on the guards tabard, folded it on invisible hinges till it looked like a crescent moon, and placed it next to an identical looking piece of metal sheathed on his thigh. It had been quite fun killing his way up here, but it wouldn’t be quite as fun as the terror the death of the king would bring on the survivors of the survivors of this night. All the servants safe in their beds would never know how close they came to death tonight had they been roaming the halls.
Satisfied with the nights work, the man tiptoed over the bodies and made his way to the door. The time for stealth had passed. And there was no one left who could do anything to stop him anyways. He pushed open the doors to the king’s bedchambers with a bang, startling the king out of his sleep. The king sat up quickly, with the look of a man who had not gotten a good night’s sleep in some time, and started to scream. And in a flash, the man flicked his wrist forward, and the dagger he kept concealed there flew forward and straight into the king’s heart.
As abruptly as the screaming started, it stopped, and the king was dead. The doorway was empty as well, only the winds passing through like an uninvited guest. The only mark there was, other than the dead bodies littering the castle, was a piece of paper attached to the blade sticking out of the king’s chest. On that paper was inscribed one word: the name of the most feared assassin in the world.
Curare.