“So… You’ll lead us to Tarha-Nan?” asked Salelia with an innocent smile on her face. She seemed as beautiful as ever in the soft, graceful morning sunlight that bathed the forests.
The leader of the assassins - a middle-aged athletic man with greying hair - exchanged glances with his two comrades. Then he nodded slowly and ate a spoonful of the soup cooking in the nearby fire before answering.
“We… We will, yes. ” His tone wasn’t the most confident one, but he sounded honest, at least. And also very, very grim. “We’ll be breaking part of our orders… But we won't break the most important. We refuse to enter the city. We’ll wait out ‘till someone contacts us or the period of time given to us ends. We must leave you several hours worth of walking before Tarha-Nan.”
“Even so…You’re doing us a great service, honorable members of the Guild.” The witch bowed her head slightly and threw a smile at the three crude-looking men. All of them replied with stony gazes and sharp nods.
“It’d be a real fuckin’ miracle if our organization is still existing, lady.” One of the assassins frowned and looked at the needle that he held between his fingers.
The sorceress tried to cheer him up with a handful of kind words, but without much of success. Meanwhile Ehrir, who watched the conversation from the side, felt a sudden tap on his shoulder.
“What do you want?” Of course it had to be Zaster. Or Nalia, in rarer cases. Or the two at the same time, in the worst possible one. Now both of them were besides him, the young girl smiling naughtily from the back of her horse next to the living corpse.
“We just wanted your opinion on… A thing.” The Unliving’s voice had an ironical tint to it.
“And what would that be?”
The young woman’s tongue was faster than that of the undead man.
“How do ya’ think that that all of the stuff going down in Tarha-Nan is turning out? Did those thugs manage to kill the Changeling? I mean, those bleak looking guys over there claimed that there were a lot of them. They were well-equipped, too.”
Ehrir gave Nalia a sharp look. She just winked at him as an answer. She knew very well that no one in Salelia’s group (except the witch herself, possibly) knew about the Thirdborn. Her disciples were well aware that about the whole deal with tracing Arleon but remained in the dark when it came to Farnaraen.
Why had Nalia begun such a discussion? Did she expect him to lie, or was just playing around?
“I… I don’t know. He’s said to be a powerful sorcerer, right?” The Undone One shrugged and tried to sound as unconfident and unsure as possible. “Maybe he managed to get away from the assassins. Slaughtering them, on the other hand… I don’t believe this to be possible.” He spoke honestly. Arleon probably couldn’t handle the forces of one of the most elite criminal organizations in Tarha-Nan. The Thirdborn, on the other hand…
“Those people here don’t seem very confident in the fact that he didn’t slaughter them.” Zaster’s tone was whisper-like and dark. “Still, they probably don’t know much about sorcery… They seem dishearten, that much is obvious.”
“It sure is, zombie.” Nalia cackled. She knew how annoyed the undead man was with this particular term. “So… We’re gonna travel with this knife-wielding, poison-making trio from now on? Our food supplies are gonna diminish even faster then, ya’ know?”
“I’m not really concerned”, Zaster said while shrugging his shoulders. “You are those who have to worry.”
Ehrir smirked at his words before replying.
“Those three mentioned that the city isn’t really that far away. A few days of travelling or a whole week… Something along those lines. We’ll be able to hold up. And they see pretty well fed themselves, without any kind of food around as far as I could see. They should be able to hunt and provide food themselves.”
“Yeah, yeah…” The young woman nodded unsurely. “They don’t seem particularly warm, though, do they?”
“I wouldn’t expect more from a band of trained cutthroats.” Ehrir looked towards the three men. They seemed somewhat ordinary, despite their unusual clothes and emotionless faces. Their group didn’t fit the environment particularly well. The assassins were covered in the same shade of dark grey from their hoods to the tips of their boots. This monotonous clothing contrasted sharply with the forest around – full of countless vibrant colors, dancing lights, shadows and dozens of different forms of life.
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“Well, our group is definitely getting bigger, in any case”, remarked Zaster.
“Yep. With a little bit of luck, we’ll march into Tarha-Nan with a freaking army behind our backs”, Nalia said.
***
The day ended with Ehrir’s group not moving at all. They raised their camp near that of the assassins, and ate together with the three dark-looking men. The trio wasn'’t particularly talkative, but answered the questions of Sevrian and Salelia, going into great details about the political situation in Tarha-Nan. Yet, they didn’t reveal much about their own guild or the other organizations ruling the city from the shadows. They talked a lot the man that their brothers in arms were tasked with killing. It quickly became clear that they didn’t really know his identity, besides the fact that he was a powerful sorcerer. Regardless, they seemed hopeless, sure in the annihilation of their guild. Ehrir was sure that they wouldn’t shed a word about the Thirdborn or agree to help them if they weren't in such a desperate situation.
The Undone One recalled the morning with a slight smile on his face. The group's leader – he hadn’t memorized his name yet – looked so shocked for a second when he caged him back in the morning. Once unable to move, he surrendered to the witch’s questions pretty quickly. The sudden appearance of his comrades didn’t make the situation better for him, either. The two were confined in a matter of seconds by the albino’s Creation and the threat of being burned to a crisp by Zaster. The negotiations went better from then on, understandably.
Still, much of the group still didn’t trust the assassins.
“Hey, do you think they will try to attack us along the way?”
“Probably not. There are about fifteen of us, most can cast magic on a whim. The others are well-armed brutes, to put it bluntly. There’s an archer too. Their chances of success are non-existent.”
“I don’t think that they are afraid of large numbers or low chance of success... If they have the element of surprise at hand, that is. They were trained to stay calm even in the face of an overwhelming enemies. If the rumors are true...”
“Rumors?”
“I’ve heard that they put the likes of them through ten hells worth of training before giving them the rank of a full-fledged guild member. Who knows what they are capable of…”
Such conversations sounded within Ehrir’s tent even after midnight, although he preferred to not interfere in them too much. He needed good sleep, but hardly managed to get any. The dawn came too soon, and with it – the need to start travelling again. There weren’t any signs of suspicious activity around, and the guards shared that the night has been quiet.
“Quiet... If you exclude my damned tent…” mumbled Ehrir while massaging his temples and blinking at the blinding light hitting his eyes from all directions.
***
The path towards Tarha-Nan wasn’t any lighter the one towards the mountains. The slow crawl through the forests proved to be as boring as ever, despite the occasional appearance of an open area, a lake or a small valley. “The adventure I dreamed about seems to be quite boring after a few weeks of mindlessly walking through the wilderness”, Ehrir often said to himself. He usually spent time thinking about the city of cutthroats and what might wait for him there.
The Thirdborn appeared again and again in the Undone One’s mind. His looks had changed, he figured that much out from the assassins’ tales. The frail old man whose flesh he was trapped in during the second part of the Clairvoyance was now a tall, muscular young man with exceptional beauty. How could this come to be was unknown. Another of the Changelings’ secrets, undoubtedly.
Farnaraen also showed himself as monstrously strong once again, and this time outside of the vague legends from millennia ago. The trained killers mentioned that they were out here solely because someone from the organization had to stay away from the city state in case things went bad. Hundreds of assassins were tasked with taking the life of one man. The guild master or someone from the leaders of the city surely knew the man’s real identity to dispatch so much forces. The sheer number of people was mind-boggling. And to think all of them were most likely killed by the Thirdborn already…
The Undone One constantly fought these swarming thoughts in an attempt to fend them off. He did his best to focus on the journey ahead of the group.
Their route was changed after the appearance of the three men. The trio possesed a well-detailed map showcasing a shortcut through the forest. It would quickly lead the travelling party to the road towards Tarha-Nan. The need to detour and wander around the coast of the nearby ocean was no more. It took mere four days of walking for the forests to give way to fields, some of which were protected with fences and obviously worked on by humans. The farms themselves appeared soon after, causing Zaster and the ratman to cover themselves with hoods, gloves, scarves and veils. Despite this, the group still managed to gather a lot of attention, especially when the farm workers noticed the assassins.
"It's a normal thing... Every farmer here comes to the city to sell his produce. And anyone who is regularly in city can recognize the mission uniform of a guild member. We've never really tried to hide", explained one of the three in a low tone.
The group slept in one of the farms before continuing its way. The owner seemed displeased with them, but also scared enough to let them use his barn. The landscape around was quite bizzare, combining both the usual countryside look with ancient pieces of ruin rising from the ground.
On the fifth day the path to Tarha-Nan appeared before them - paved with white cobbestlones, at least fifty steps wide and stretching from one horizon to the other.
Only two days worth of travel separated the sorcerers from their goal.