entire facade. A carved wooden sign on street level read: 'The Charlesgate Inn,' and robed mages floated casually out of the doors on the higher levels, turning around, suspended in midair, to lock the doors behind them.
Cy entered the bottom floor of the inn and rented a room for a few days. He wanted to learn as much about his target as he could before he had to face the man.
Hopefully, Cy thought, Shadow will be so engrossed in his research that he won't see me coming.
It was the young assassin's only hope. In open combat, Cy may have been able to defeat that skilled fighter in Kath, but an archwizard was an entirely different story. If he didn't get a quick, clean, surprise kill, he'd be done for. As he settled into his room, he realized he'd get only one chance at this assassination. He intended to make the most of that chance.
Before Cy had left for Karsus, Lume had opened the raiding party's store of materials and weapons to allow Cy his pick of equipment. They had racks and racks of swords, armor, and bows, and even some things Cy had never seen used before. The job he had been tasked with would be difficult for sure, but extra gear wasn't going to make it any easier. In the end he simply took with him а small crossbow, some magical leather armor, and his own enchanted dagger. Better to travel light, he decided.
The ornately carved brick tower that Shadow lived in was easy enough for Cy to break into. In fact, there wasn't even a lock on the door. Not wanting to fall prey to overconfidence, the assassin moved through the entry hall very carefully, checking every few feet for traps or magical glyphs. It took him almost an hour to creep slowly down the hall and around the corner.
For all of his caution, there were no traps in the long hallway. At least I wasn't blown to bits, he thought. Hounding one corner, he entered a very large, grossly wealthy sitting room. The raider in Cy was in awe. Perhaps Lume should have sent him to simply rob the arch-wizard. The riches held in this one room could have paid for a hundred assassins ten times over. High-backed chairs sat around ornately carved wooden tables. Silver sconces with mage-lit stones in them were stationed around the windows, and jeweled candelabras rested on desks, tables, and windowsills. Leather-bound books sat in hundreds of neat rows, arrayed over several dozen large bookshelves lining the walls.
A door swung open on the opposite side of the room. Cy crouched and somersaulted behind one of the high- backed chairs. He pressed himself close to the furniture and held his breath. Heavy footsteps echoed across the hardwood floor. Cy clutched his dagger. So much for surprise.
The footsteps got closer then passed the chair. Cy felt a light breeze pass his cheek, and his vision filled with vivid, swirling colors of magenta, yellow, and silver. The young man blinked, trying to rid his head of the befuddling magic, and the colors passed-but they weren't magic. Cy's vision cleared, and he recognized the hem of a lady's skirts. A young blonde woman, wearing heavy, embroidered linens and carrying a silver tray had passed Су'8 hiding place. She walked swiftly past the chair and out into the hall. Her heavy footsteps receded.
Cy stood up, and the door swung open again. Ducking his head behind the furniture, he was certain he'd been seen this time. Once again, heavy footsteps traveled across the floor. Cy dodged behind the chair, rolling across the floor, around a table, to pop up behind whoever had entered the room. Bringing his dagger down in a broad arc, the young assassin stopped cold. The same blonde, brightly dressed woman who had just passed, only a moment before, was again standing in the middle of the room, only this time she was carrying a large silver jug. The woman's skirts rustled as she continued across the floor, unflinching and unfazed by Cy.
The door opened again. Cy spun around, his dagger out in front of him. The blonde woman was coming out into the sitting room for the third time, but now she had a large box in her hands. Her brilliant blue eyes stared straight ahead as she continued to move toward the young assassin. Two sets of heavy footsteps echoed on the hardwood, one in front and one behind. Shaking his head, certain that he was under magical assault, Cy leaped out of the woman's path, landing hard on a plush leather chair and letting it break his fall as he clattered to the floor.
Spinning around and backing into the corner, Cy scanned the room for any way to escape. Two blonde women-both wearing identical magenta, yellow, and silver linen skirts, one carrying a jug, one a box-continued across the hardwood floor. Neither seemed the least bit interested in Cy. They moved through the room and out into the hallway, intent on carrying their packages to their final destination. The young man watched them as he stood in the corner catching his breath.
The door opened again. Two more blonde, brightly dressed women-the same woman Cy had seen three times already-entered the sitting room and proceeded across the hardwood, their footsteps echoing heavily as they crossed. Cy made no attempt to hide this time, and the women ignored him completely. Picking up a book, the young assassin hurled it at one of the women. It struck with a thud and fell to the floor. Still, the women ignored him.
If they aren't illusions, thought Cy, then they must be constructs.
Convinced that he wasn't under a spell, he continued on his mission.
A set of stairs led down one side of the room. Cy crossed and headed down, avoiding the female golems as he went. The stairway was long, and the air grew cooler as he continued down. The old wooden steps were warped in places, so Cy was careful to transfer all of his weight onto each step slowly, so as to avoid creaking. At the bottom, another hallway continued on. A doorway near the end was partly open, and light spilled out into the hall from the opening. Another of the magenta-skirted women came out of the room and walked down the hall. Slipping past the unobservant construct, Cy looked through the opening. He could see a bed and a night stand in half of a nice, if messy, bed chamber. Someone was shuffling around with a drawer and some papers outside of his field of view. Cy pulled his dagger from his sheath, pressed himself up against the wall, and waited. Several moments passed. Sweat started to bead on C/s forehead. The shuffling inside the room continued.
A drawer slammed shut, and a figure came into view and sat on the bed. Square jaw, sandy-brown hair, green eyes, small wire-rimmed glasses, and a tell-tale scar on his left cheek-this was Shadow. Though younger- looking than Cy had expected, this man matched the descriptions Lume had given him. The archwizard's attention was focused on a large stack of papers he had in his hands, and he was making marks on them with a piece of charcoal.
Cy took a deep breath and held it. Raising his dagger up to his shoulder, he burst into the room, hurling the enchanted blade at Shadow as he did so. The wizard didn't even look up from his papers. He simply waved his hand, and the dagger stopped in midair. Worse, Cy stood frozen as well, unable to blink or even wipe the ever-increasing sweat from his forehead.
For quite some time, Shadow simply continued to read his papers, leafing through them casually as if he didn't have an assassin magically suspended in his bedroom. Eventually, he finished with his work, straightened the papers, and turned his attention to Cy.
'Aren't you a little young to be an assassin?' he asked. Cy didn't answer. This had been his first assassination, so he really didn't know how the industry worked. He supposed he'd never get the opportunity to find out now.
'No matter,' reassured the archwizard. 'Your age isn't important. What is, however, is the fact that you tried to kill me. So?' He looked Cy right in the eye. 'What do you suppose we should do about that?'
Cy tried to spit at the man, to show his indignation and contempt for the wizards who mucked around with the powerful, otherworldly magic that he felt certain would be the doom of all the world, but he was stuck. He couldn't move his lips or even his tongue.
'Well?' asked the archwizard. 'Aren't you going to answer me?'
The man chuckled, then he put his hands on his knees and stood up from the bed. He plucked the enchanted blade from where it was suspended in the air.
'Very nice, very шее indeed,' he commented. 'Don't have much use for these sorts of toys.' He walked over to a chest of drawers and placed the dagger on top of it. 'I have a few I keep around as souvenirs of the assassins who have most interested me, but I generally don't like to use them. All that blood and such.' Shadow wrinkled his nose. 'No, magic is much cleaner.'
He picked up a wand with a clear stone attached to the end of it by a leather band.
'And,' he added, walking back toward Cy, 'far more entertaining and punitive. Just think, if I simply poked you with your blade a few times, sure it would hurt, but in short order you'd die, and the agony you'd feel would be over. With magic-' he brandished the wand-'I can trap you inside this crystal. There you will die slowly as your predecessors sap your strength and tear at your skin.'
