This story is protected under international and Pan-American copyright conventions. Please remember to donate to Nifty if you are financially able to do so.
Author information: Website: http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/books.html Email: kavrik@hotmail.com Art from my stories: http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/my-artwork.html
I previously published "Wraith" on the Nifty Archive. It can be found at: http://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/sf-fantasy/wraith/
I finished a new picture of Jordan from "Oculus", the sequel to "Slipstream", and it's in full color.
Check it out at my art page (he's wearing a leather jacket).
"The Assassin's Apprentice" is a complete fantasy novella, and I intend to post a new chapter every week. This tale is told in first person present tense.
Chapter Four
My room's on the second floor of the guild. I wonder why I'm not put on the sleeping porch with the other boys. Talen offers no explanation. It's about six feet wide and eight feet long. But despite its smallness, it's my home after so many years of having nothing of my own.
My room's by no means luxurious either. The walls are made of plaster covered over with the scrawlings made by boys who lived here years before my coming. Many of them are in oiled pastel or wax, and I can't read their names but suspect them to be as illiterate as I. Only the dreadfully young or those who can't read have such poor penmanship. I've seen what proper scrawlings should look like. Before I got sold for sex, I worked as a page for a money lender. I still had dreams back then, and I lived in a world where men didn't rape boys.
To my chagrin, I discover that my room is on the east side of the house. And, when morning breaks, it becomes a sweat lodge, with light reflecting off the white plaster making it seem somehow brighter than it should be.
To make matters worse, a small fly is trapped in the corner of the window, and I hear its scrapings quite clearly, buzzing against the panes of glass and sometimes landing on my sweaty skin. Of course I can't kill the damned thing 'cause I'm still drunk with sleep. It's frustrating. And my reflexes are slowed by the pounding in my head.
I get up sometime around six o'clock, and I stretch before reaching for my clothes. I hear footsteps then, coming down the hall. I've excellent hearing, and I can tell that the person making those footsteps doesn't weigh much.
They stop just outside my door. I think to myself that if I open it, I can surprise whoever it is.
I watch the door for a moment, and I see the lock I've placed over the latch come loose. I look around quickly for something to defend myself when the door swings inward. I take a step back and place my hand on the window ledge. I take a quick glance out the pane of glass, realizing instantly that I could be out and onto the street below with a simple hop.
"Hullo," a voice says to me. "I didn't think you'd be awake just yet."
Framed in the doorway is a man older than myself. He's in his mid-twenties I think. He has neatly trimmed blond hair a bit darker than my own and deep set green eyes. He's wearing a brown leather jacket and boots with khaki-colored pants and a broad belt of black leather and shiny buckles.
"My name's Swift," he says. "You're Kian, if I'm not mistaken?"
"Maybe," I say. "Why didn't you knock?" I step away from my purchase on the sill and dust my hands off. I'm trying to hide the fact that he surprised me, or that I nearly bolted from fright and sailed out the window. I feel rather ashamed of myself, but at least I'm no longer sleepy.
"My apologies," Swift says with a grin. "Let me explain. To begin with, I'm the trainer around here, and I'm supposed to break into the rooms on occasion."
I bite on my lip just a little. "I don't want you breaking into my room," I start to say.
"It doesn't end there chum. I also lock you out of your room too. If you can't get into your room at night then you sleep outside until you can. It's damned good motivation for greens like yourself to learn how to pick a lock. That and it teaches you not to sleep heavy. A man's biggest enemy, after all, is sleep."
I grab my belt off the bed and knot it around my waist. "Well, I'm not much of a sleeper."
Swift regards me with a truly smug expression. "Don't be sore, chum. I'm just doing my job."
I hate people upbraiding me like that.
"Besides," he adds. "Don't you think we could be just a little grown-up about this?"
I look at him severely then, not blinking, but allowing my stare to fill the room with tension. It's a painstakingly cultivated process, and I want him to realize just how close he is to losing his front teeth.
Swift shrugs and removes an eight-inch dagger from a sheath in his right boot and pitches it onto the bed. It's an admirable weapon with a gleaming edge and a solid bone handle that's been wrapped in shark skin. The back side of the dagger has sporadic notches in the steel.
I back down at the sight of the knife. I roll my eyes at him rocking uncomfortably on the balls of my feet. "Nice blade."
He indicates for me to take the knife. "I don't much like playing games, but if you feel that you can draw my blood with that thing, I'll give it to you if you can cut me once with it."
"Cut you once?" I clarify.
"Yes...once" he says.
I grab the dagger in my left hand and spin about to face him. He withdraws into the hall, holding his hands up. "This isn't a fight you want to cull," he admonishes. "I don't want to harm you."
"Harm me?" I ask. "I'm the one with the knife here." I make a feint and lunge, addling my feet a split second before I connect, changing my blow from an upper one to a lower one. I think I have him, but Swift is astonishingly fast. He rebuts my blow, coming round with a chop at my wrist which stings like hell. I also overstep my balance. He punches me in my spine just below the neck and kicks me in the balls. All in one disappointing motion, I'm on the floor counting dust bunnies and trying to keep myself from puking.
I don't know how long I lay there in this humiliating posture, holding my swollen testicles with mortal, trembling hands. I feel paralyzed, I feel both debased and overwhelmed by the awful truth of every painful contraction. He's kicked my ass. I admit that to myself. And I think it's one of the reasons I don't want to pull myself off the floor.
Finally, Swift snatches me by the arm and hauls me up. "You're a mess," he says. Then he sheaths his blade again.
"Breathe slow," he instructs settling me in a chair. "I'll get you some water." He walks off for a moment and returns with a tin cup. The pain is starting to subside into that dull throb all guys can relate to. I glare at him accusingly.
"Here," he says, handing the cup to me. "It'll help settle your stomach and get the taste of vomit out of your mouth." I take the cup from his hand and drink it down. Meanwhile, he pokes about my room and my stuff. "Do you have a change of clothes?"
I set the cup down looking at my shirt and pants from yesterday lying in a pile at the foot of the bed. "Yes. Over there, on the floor."
"Good. Don't change into them until tonight. Your apprenticeship begins today. It's hard sweaty work, and you'll be thankful that you've something clean to wear."
After I finish the cup, Swift takes me by the shoulder. His grip is firm and unyielding.
"Follow me," he says.
He leads me out of my room and down the dusty corridor. Others on the floor are now starting to rise with dawn inevitably increasing to day over the city of Clothol. I find myself thinking of Talen and wondering when I'll see him again or hear his perfectly splendid laugh cut through the silence.
There is, at the end of this hallway on the second floor, a small shrine where a table and heavily decorated altar burn incense to the god of thieves. The altar is draped with a grand tablecloth made from red silk with painted flowers, all roses, embracing the hand of a lovely damsel with blindfolded eyes. Her linens and robes are bloodied from the thorns, and her hand carries a scale with a dagger on one end and thirteen gold coins on the other.
The scale, I note, is in perfect balance.
Swift opens a cleverly disguised door and reveals to my eyes a restricted staircase made completely of maple wood planks that ascends into the gloom. Swift kicks me on my backside and once I'm on the first step, closes the door behind me. At my feet, the wooden planks sound hollow and empty and my weight as light as it is, makes the wood shriek loudly as if it were living and in constant protest of being trampled.
I look up the stairwell but my eyes pick out few details. The walls and the floor itself are made of the same wood. I put my boot on the next of these steps, and I hear it creak under my weight.
All of the steps that ascend the narrow alley between the walls are as poorly constructed as the first. All of them let out a shriek as if warning me that they're just about to give out underneath my shoes. I climb these steps, counting them silently in my mind. There are thirty of them, thirty howling steps. As I draw closer to the top a door appears in the gloom. It's unadorned save for a strange symbol, a knife or dagger lying in a pool of blood. The whole of it is engraved on the door which I reason is not made from the same wood as the stairs. I raise my hand upward to knock when a voice from the other side calls out for me to enter.
I hesitate and push on the door. It swings inward on well-oiled hinges.
What I see is truly amazing.
The door opens onto a large room that is a flat of oriental variety on the top of my house. The stone walls are covered in fine expensive rosewood panels, and it's walled-in on all sides. Magnificent urns stand on pedestals on the deck, exquisite plants bloom under the open sky. Around the perimeter is a ten-foot wide deck that is completely railed-in by waist-high beams of rich ironwood. The floor is made from ebony beams cut unevenly so that some of the boards are narrow while others are wide.
A courtyard occupies the center, and I see white sand covers the entire surface. It's been painstakingly raked into pleasant designs. The heated air above these sunbaked sands dizzies me.
The dark beams on the walls draw my attention to the arches which hold aloft the supports for the dome that lays open and incomplete to the sky. There's also an overhang sheltering all of the deck and most of the yard. It's made of the same wood as the walls and the door, and it's highly polished...almost reflective. On the far side, I spy a set of three wooden steps that lead into a large chamber with a straw mat floor and a large wooden weapon rack. The three steps are girded by three candle stands, each bearing aloft a candle of a different color: one red, one gold, and one yellow, and they're only burned about halfway down. The candle stands themselves appear to be made of cyprus, carved in simple bas-relief and gilded in thin sheets of hammered gold.
Afternoon sunlight streams through the aperture in the roof and gleams hotly off the surface of the sand. The room has the smell of spice or incense about it.
I look around the corner of the door but I see no one.
"Come in," a voice says. "I am surprised you can hear anything at all with that racket you made coming up the stairs."
I hesitate for a moment.
"My name's Kian," I say. My mother taught me introductions are important, but I also hope that I can get the stranger to speak again. "I was shown the stairwell, and I assumed that this is where I needed to go."
I take another step and look about trying to spot the owner of the voice. Once past, I let the door close behind me, and I wander forward to the edge of the deck. I could have jumped over the rail and onto the neatly raked sand, but on second thought, decide this action might not be welcome.
Instead, I follow the deck around the perimeter, tracing the wooden wall to the room on the far side of the courtyard.
"Where are you?" I ask. "I can't see you."
The only sound I can hear is my own breathing. I reach the weapon room and peer inside, but it's empty.
As I turn, the voice says, "Stop."
I don't move.
"What do you see in the sand?" the voice asks me.
I look down at the courtyard. A little sweat rolls down from my brow, and I wipe it away. "Patterns," I say. "Waves and circles...mostly circles, like ripples on water."
"And do the circles move?"
"No. Of course not; it's sand, not water. Ripples in water would fade as they hit the shore. The sand...well, it's kind of permanent."
There's a movement to my left, and a man stands where none had been before. It's like he just appears out of thin air.
"Were you there the entire time?" I ask.
The man turns to me. He has hazel eyes and hair that's dishwater brown. His face is covered in a five o'clock shadow, and I put him at roughly forty years in age. "You tell me," he says. "Did you see me there?"
"No. I didn't."
"Do you believe everything you see?"
I think about this for a minute as he waits, studying me.
"Your eyes can deceive you young Kian. Remember that if you remember nothing else."
I watch him with my eyes. He's huge with a solid body and muscles of iron. I know right away that he's stronger than I. His eyes, bloodshot and cruel, have sized me up long before I ever entered the room. But I resist the urge to bolt. My instinct instead turns to survival.
"Are you going to kill me?" I ask.
He seems surprised. "Kill you? I don't think so. You're different than the others."
"How am I different?"
"You saw me for what I am," he remarks then. "That tells me that we think alike. You're a beautiful boy and a murderer, Kian. I like that combination."
"I'm not a murderer."
He snorts derisively. "You just haven't been given the chance." He has an unpleasant grin. It seems almost like a sneer. My dad told me once that if you frown 200,000 times, it'll make a permanent line in your face. A little useless trivia, but somehow appropriate considering my current predicament.
"Then what will you do with me?"
"I plan to train you," he says. "I plan to teach you how to kill. And then, you'll see, you're more like me than you even can begin to know."
I decide not to say anything.
He regards me skeptically. His ugly smile turns upward in a hideous grin. "Pretty lad," he says. "Finer than any I've been sent. Close your eyes and tell me what you hear."
I shut my lids and listen. At first all I hear is the wind. I still my breath and struggle to pick out the details.
I hear voices far away, and I realize we're still only three stories above the street. From the positioning of voices, I believe the room is actually above the east side of the building. I pull my senses in tighter around me, and I can hear breathing. It isn't my breathing. It's his breathing and then it stops...like he's holding his breath in an attempt to be quiet.
I jerk my eyes open and eye him coldly. He has a knife in his hand, and he's watching me intently. "At first I heard the wind. Then I heard the voices from the street and finally you...breathing. That's all."
The man looks wholly unpleasant. "Did you hear the silence? A thief's got to be silent if he's to be good."
"Yes. I heard the silence."
"You've got good ears and good senses." He compliments me, scratching his chin with his dagger. "Tell me something, young Kian, what's the one thing in this world, that even if you name it, you break it?"
"That's easy," I reply. We'd just talked about that. "Silence."
"You're quick," he states. "What in this world exists to give, but if you do so, you must keep it?"
"Your word."
"Clever. Can you do hard work?"
"I'm not afraid of it...if that's what you mean."
"Can you tell the difference in coins by simply listening to them hit each other?"
"Sometimes," I admit. "Silver sounds pure. It sounds good, almost musical."
He pauses for a moment, looking me up and down with his bloodshot eyes. We're almost the same height, but he's standing on the wooden floor of the weapons room, and thus, he's about a foot higher. I find myself feeling small in his presence. But I know I'm not small. He just wants me to think I am.
"Take off your shirt," he commands. "I want to see what kind of body you have."
I pause for a moment, considering his request. I unbutton the front of my shirt and slide it off my body. He steps forward and runs his rough hand down my chest much the same way as a man, at market, would inspect a horse he's looking to buy. I flex my six pack abs and my ribs flare under the skin like rows of iron pipes.
"Hairless," he says. "You're in shape at least. You've got fine muscle tone. Your body is your resource, Kian. Remember that if you're to be a killer. You must only eat enough to nourish it and I stress...protein only. If you indulge in gluttony you'll get fat, and a fat man is a dead man in our business."
He grabs me by the right hand and pulls me into the room that he's standing in.
"The exercise I put you through will feel like torture, Kian. I want you to give me one hundred percent and then another one hundred percent. I want your sweat to sparkle on the floor like puddles of rain under a summer storm. And after that we shall begin. You need to be stronger and leaner than you are now. If someone dares to punch you in the gut, I want their hand to break on your muscles. I want your toes and fingers to be long bony things covered in sinew and skin. To accomplish this, I'll have to push you to the brink of death. I want one-hundred sit-ups and then fifteen pull-ups in three repetitions every day for the remainder of this week. In the weeks after that you'll work at these numbers until you can do sit-ups indefinitely and until all of the muscles in your body are ripped and burning. You can use that bar over there. After that, I'll help you warm up."
He walks over to the wall and gestures at a plain rod. "This rod," he says, "is made from bamboo. I've seen it split open a man's skin with one hit. I'll use it on you if I ever feel that you're not giving me everything that I've asked you to give."
I swallow hard, looking at the rod which seems to have a bit of red along parts of it. "Yes sir." I say.
And so I begin my grunting and sweating.
"My name's Constantine," he declares, watching me. He sits down then, enjoying a smoke, and watching a faint breeze brush the leaves of his trees and watching the clouds darken over above. It smells to me like a storm is on the horizon.
Chapter Five will post sometime next week. Have a good holiday if you are in the U.S. And please check out my artwork if you have the time.