Karis led the Prince of Aranjura’s five best assassins through the long sands, up the Inisbi River, and across the sea to the Isle of Rot where the sorceress hid. Aya the Animal Shaper had taken the form of a snake and poisoned the king in his bedchamber, leaving him on the edge of death and unable to wake from a terrible dream. So they said. The prince had wanted revenge. After Karis’s father had been murdered, he had taken revenge with his own sword. The prince should have done the same. Instead, Karis led the troop charged with that task. The prince had bought his revenge with gold.

The forest paths turned to treacherous highlands, where ogres prowled the scree-covered hills, and nomads hunted intruders on their land. But Karis had traveled across this isle many times and knew the clans willing to ignore passersby. Strangers coming this far often sought the realm of the gods, or were gods themselves. Sacred. Dangerous. The assassins looked the part. Armored by dwarves under the folds of their black linen, heads wrapped in golden cloth, they carried three slender, elven blades each and a manmade bow curved like the horns of a goat.

Karis wore only the black wool of his homeland, dark as his braided beard, and carried his father’s great sword—a weapon far too heavy for the likes of these assassins. Slender. Wiry. Athletic in their way. The tallest was a head shorter than Karis, and all seemed uninterested in keeping up their fitness on the journey. For them, the quest was a diversion and taxing in and of itself. Karis lived on the road where strength was a virtue. He spent his coin on meat and trained in the early hours while the assassins slept.

They’d likely outlive him. Built like acrobats, Karis expected they’d flee if they found trouble. Reputation be damned. Karis didn’t plan to become an old man by running.

A wiseman walked along the ridge, not far ahead of Karis. He wore the starry robe of the sorcerers of Aranjura and had been known to seek out Aya for her wisdom. They had tracked him for some time, having run afoul of him on the Inisbi and nearly dying to the storm he had conjured. Tired from the long miles, he hobbled with a staff, and his golden eagle rode his shoulder. Without the eagle’s enchanted eyes, the wiseman was vulnerable.

Two of the assassins took aim into the empty air, hidden from the wiseman by the curve of the hill. They loosed their arrows and willed them to arc so dramatically they bent to follow the trail. Each arrow found its target. One in the old man. The other in the eagle. Karis raised an eyebrow at the spectacle, satisfied as to how these soft, pampered swordsmen earned their reputation. If there was a defense against their sorcery, he didn’t know it. The leader of the assassins, Zalan, forced a truth-telling potion on their victim who spoke Aya’s secrets with his last, labored breaths—the location of her home in the Valley of Chimes.

After another week of traveling, they stopped at the pass leading into the valley. Impossible cliffs rose on either side to meet a sky gray as the stones. Beyond, a forest haunted by the aberrant creations of the gods, waited to torment anyone foolish enough to enter.

“Through here,” said Karis, “Beyond the valley are cliffs that fall into a rocky sea. There are no ships on the far side. If she leaves, it will be through here.”

Zalan threw back his hood. Grey braids fell thickly on either side of his head. He waved his hand dismissively. “Find her or flush her out. We’ll wait here.” Ah, to double the number of words he’d spoken to Karis by asking something so stupid. Why would it be his job to hunt her down? He was not an Aranjuran, nor an assassin, nor interested. Merely their guide.

“What?” asked Karis with barely contained anger. The assassins put their hands on the hilts of their swords. Karis had plans to spend his gold. Three years’ wage for four months’ work. He would live like a king when he returned. Losing his life now seemed foolish. “I am not the prince’s executioner.”

“Be that as it may, you have served him well, and you will serve one more time,” said Zalan.

He opened his palm and held out a bit of profane green flame. It burned in the air, feeding on his lifeforce, or the lives of those around him. A threat worse than the sword and feared by all. Yes, the green flame could make a man burn, but it could also make him age. These assassins could kill the old by stealing their last days, and without leaving a mark. Karis’s face twisted in disgust, and he took a step back, toward the valley. Such magic wasn’t obtainable through human effort—only by the gifts of otherworldly beings.

“Good boy,” said Zalan. “Fetch.”

Karis turned and walked into the pass, but he had no intention of returning with the mystic. Only twenty feet in, a small cave burrowed into the mountain so that he could leave the assassins’ sight. His days were numbered. Even if he returned with the mystic, they would almost certainly kill him, having no more need of his service and having already made him an enemy. The way their arrows curved through the air, fighting them at a distance was impossible. But to disrespect him after such a long journey? To threaten him with magic? It couldn’t stand. And it wouldn’t. Karis never cowered at the moment of truth, always ready to plunge in. He drew his great sword from the harness on his back and charged the assassins.

The five of them scrambled back and drew their swords, shouting. Stiff as elven steal might be, the thin, light blades wielded by such slender men had no hope of even slowing Karis’s swing. The first raised a feeble defense, but his guard was crushed under the weight of the blow. Karis’s sword split his victim’s clavicle, shattering it and the ribs below even through the dwarven armor.

A torrent of green flame washed over Karis, burning his skin. He screamed in pain but ran through it, grabbed an assassin by the collar, and held him to the flame as a shield even as the assassin stabbed him in the gut. The assassin’s cries became a moan as his body wrinkled and dried like the grave, the flesh burned away, and even his bones turned to dust. The fire stopped with Zalan sweating and spent, surprised at the sight of Karis on his feet. A bigger man had more lifeforce to burn through. More wood for the fire. He drew the elven short sword left in his gut and threw it at Zalan. For all his gifts, he couldn’t see the future and ducked his head into the hilt to be knocked unconscious.

The two remaining assassins circled and closed in together. Karis ignored the one behind him, knowing his blade was too slow to defend against elven steel, and hammered a strike straight down into the man ahead of him. His elven blade ripped from his grip and bounced arrow high off the stones. Skull and teeth scattered to either side.

Sharp pain ripped across Karis’s back as the final assassin raked Karis with the narrow blade again and again. Unbearable pain kept him hunched, the muscles of his back unable to straighten. His ears rang from the blade skipping off his spine.

Karis swung without looking, spinning in a waist-level blow difficult to either duck or jump. Steel clashed, and the assassin cried out as he tumbled over the rocks to die on the scree below.

Blood pooled so thickly under Karis’s feet there was a splash as his knee hit the ground.

Karis crawled as Zalan stood, smearing a trail of blood. Zalan held his head dizzily and looked the wrong way, nearly staggering into a ravine. Karis grabbed Zalan’s narrow calf and pulled so hard he squealed as he fell to the ground. Karis climbed on top as Zalan worked his knife into ribs, guts, and lungs, but Karis had stamina enough for one more thing—he wrapped his hands around Zalan’s throat and squeezed until after darkness consumed them both.

***

A sharp aroma pulled Karis from his sleep. Naked but for bloody bandages wrapping his torso, he sat up in a pile of animal furs. A fire burned in the small, clay fireplace beside him. Dried herbs hung in such quantity from the cottage’s walls he could hardly see the wood behind them. A startling, white streak painted his beard. No doubt an effect of the green flame. “Hello?” he asked, but his voice strained and failed with barely a noise. In the far corner, his sword rested with his scorched clothing, but he leaned an inch too far and pain shot through him worse than when he’d been cut.

“Shhh, drink,” said a young woman with a smokey voice. A wooden bowl came to his lips, but he grabbed her wrist to stop her. She was beautiful. Long waves of rich hair spilled to her waist. Eyes wine dark as the sea. “Drink,” she repeated, more firmly this time. “I think I owe you my life.”

Karis relaxed his grip and let her pour the fatty broth in his mouth. The liquid restored his voice. “How am I alive?”

“Magic,” she said, “obviously.”

“Then I owe you my life as well…Aya?” While he might have incidentally saved her life, he did not fight those men to do so. Her magic had saved him, and a life debt was not easily repaid.

She nodded sternly as if to silence him and turned to tend the fire. “Rest. I will help you heal before anyone else comes. I’ve seen your future, and you don’t die here, old man.”

Karis fell back into the furs and laughed in spite of himself.