She sought out the thoughts of her sleeping parents, wanting to alert them to the danger they were in. But there was nothing there for her to sense, perhaps because they had already fled.
She opened the door to their bedroom. They were still in their bed, an unrecognisable, crumpled mass beneath the sheets.
There was nothing there for her to sense because they were already dead.
How?
That was impossible!
The six assassins hadn’t yet intruded this far into the house, she was sure. She had seen them too early for them to–
Seven!
There were seven assassins, not six!
How had she missed the seventh? The one who had actually entered the house before any of the others?
Because, because – because she had detected seven people, but had been fooled into thinking the seventh was herself!
The six assassins were setting fires around the shop and house. In the loft, the kitchen, every floor, including the basements and cold storage.
So where was this seventh, the one who had murdered her parents?
Quick; a process of elimination!
The seventh isn’t with any of the six!
Isn’t passing, or has passed, any of the six!
The window at the hall’s end: it wasn’t open. And they were three stories up, but–
Imp asked a fragment of her mind to swim out through the window, to search for any–
Found her!
Her!
She’s hurriedly climbing down the side of the house. Ramming home spiked boots into the mortar between the stones, driving home daggers to act as handholds.
Not bothering with keeping silent anymore, Imp dashed towards the window. A dark-cloaked assassin was instantly there to block her off, appearing at the top of the stairs as if out of the darkness itself.
Imp considered making him slash his own throat.
Instead, she instils within him the impetus to leap out of the window, to dash himself to death on the pavement far below.
It clears the window frame for her. In a graceful dive, she leaps out after him, with no need to look out, to see where her target lies.
She can see her clearly in her mind; and that, ultimately, is the only place where you need to see anything.
She lands on and grabs at the descending assassin, intending to take her with her, dragging them both to their deaths.
The assassin is ridiculously strong, however. She clings on to her spiked holds. No doubt she had known Imp was about to land on her, had sensed her intentions; but it was still an impressive feat, nevertheless.
Imp made a grab for one of the daggers, intending to simply lash out wildly, hoping to use the fact that the other was still clinging to the wall as an advantage.
She was wrong.
Wrenching her spiked boots clear of the wall, letting go of the dagger handholds, the assassin let them both fall towards the ground.
They parted before striking the pavement. They each wanted to ensure that they weren’t the one the other deliberately landed on.
Imp fell cat-like, absorbing most of the impact in a roll. The assassin landed equally smoothly, coming up from the roll in a run.
Imp launched herself at the assassin’s back, slashing out with the dagger she’d brought down with her. She missed the body, but sliced deep into the cloak. She pulled aside a huge strip of black cloth that jerked the assassin to an abrupt halt, whirling her around on her feet.
As the cloak split, and the hood fell back, it released a blaze of long red hair.
It was the queen.
The Queen of All the Knowing World had just killed her parents.
*
Chapter 13
1,000 Years Later
The buisoar’s underground home was more like a small cottage rather than an animal’s warren.
Ladders led down from the trapdoor, opening up into a small room with boarded walls. There were chairs, a table, a bed. They had all apparently been repaired in some way, as if previously discarded, allowing the beast to claim them as his own.
Light came from partially filled glass bottles, whose long necks (Desri would later learn) had been forced up through the earth, catching and directing the sunlight into this underworld home.
Most bizarre of all, though, was the way the beast politely, a little embarrassedly, offered her a chair.
‘Will they return? The hounds, I mean?’
The beast shook his head to Desri’s question.
‘I’ve laid a number of false scents. It will lead them on a merry chase.’
Desri nodded in satisfaction.
She wasn’t quite sure why she had asked the question, but she felt she had to say something. She wasn’t quite sure what she was doing here. Wasn’t quite sure this was a sensible thing to do, walking willingly into a beast’s lair.
Then again, what an odd lair for a beast!
She accepted the proffered seat with a gracious smile.
‘How did you know my name?’ she asked at last, having told herself up until now that he must have overheard her being called this. That he must have been watching her for a long time.
She had to know.
‘I’ve known your name for a long, long time, Desri.’
She expected a knowing smile from him. (Again, though, what would a smile on this beast look like?)
His shoulders sagged, a sign, surely, that he was ashamed?
‘Why are you following me? How can you speak like this? Who are you? Is this some witch’s enchantment?’
Suddenly, all the questions poured out of her.
His great mouth rose at either end.
Was this a smile?
‘Perhaps I can give you one answer to all these questions,’ he replied sadly.
He knelt before her, his eyes on hers.
Tears appeared in his eyes, fell down his face, through his fur.
‘It’s me, Desri. I’m Cranden: the boy you once loved!’
*
Chapter 14
1000 years earlier
Taking advantage of Imp’s shock, the queen shrugged free of her black cloak, running off down the darkened streets.
Darkened, that is, but for the growing red glow of the reflected flames rapidly spreading throughout Imp’s home and her father’s shop.
Imp sensed a presence, a fool who thought his mission had been successfully completed. A fool who had let down his guard.
Imp appeared before him, but told him she wasn’t really there. She slipped out his own knife, drew it across his throat.
She told him he was dying while being eaten alive by a pack of hunting dogs.
Another assassin was just inside the house, stepping aside from the fire he’d fanned into life. Imp froze him to the spot,
She let him watch as the flames spread towards him, licked at his cloak, gradually enveloped him.
Tell me; why did the queen want my parents killed?
He wouldn’t answer. Even though his mind was now a shrieking cacophony of intense agony, he retained enough control to veil this from her.
There was another, perhaps too far away to exert any control over. She tried it anyway.
You failed, she told him.
You will die, when they hear how you let them down.
I know the queen ordered this. I know because I saw it in your mind, fool.
How will your masters repay you for disclosing such a secret?
He slashed his own throat.
The others had gone. As assassins, with their own high level of Knowing, they were out of range.
Either that or the energies of the swiftly spreading fire were causing problems with thought waves and patterns.
And that’s when it dawned on her: the queen would have had more than enough ability to hide her presence from a relative amateur like Imp.
Why hadn’t she? Why had she let herself be discovered escaping from the building?
Had it being careles
sness, overconfidence?
She probably wouldn’t have realised how much Imp’s own abilities had increased recently, after all. Not unless she had deliberately set out to Know her before the attack.
Then again, perhaps the queen was always sure of being able to escape. Had it really just been the shock of seeing the queen beneath that cloak that had made Imp freeze so, letting her go? Or had Imp also been an unwitting, unknowing victim of the Knowing?
The spreading fire had woken up those in the nearby houses and shops. They were rushing out onto the street.
Imp told them all that she wasn’t there. She walked past them all unnoticed.
It was good, Imp thought, that an assassin had died within the fire.
His body, like those of her parents, would be burnt to an unrecognisable cinder. By morning, there would hardly be anything left of the shop or house.
Most people would believe that she had also perished in the fire.
Of course, the queen, and those who had wanted her and her parents dead, would know otherwise.
She had to disappear. To leave town as soon as possible.
But first she needed someone who could lead her to the Assassins’ Assembly.
And to find him, she would have to hang around here for just a little longer.
*
Chapter 14
1000 Years Later
The beast had obviously prepared himself for this moment.
He had realised Desri wouldn’t believe him: how could she possibly believe that this monstrous creature was once any boy, let alone the boy she had loved?
He swiftly reeled off a number of facts that only Cranden could know: the time of their first kiss, how it had all gone wrong (interrupted by his parents); her pledge to him when he had left for war, a promise that she would wait for three years of no information before even thinking of courting another man; a promise, too, that she would continue to love him if he came back horribly injured.
But this: this was far worse than any injury. And Cranden was aware of this.
‘I don’t – I can’t – expect you to keep that promise,’ he added hurriedly.
The burrow he’d created, despite it’s vast size, was too low for him to stand completely upright on two feet. He was obviously uncomfortable with the way that resting on all fours made even more beast-like, for he attempted to stand anyway, despite the way he had to bend low beneath the ceiling.
His voice was still the harsh growl Desri had heard the previous night, yet he seemed determined to speak as well and as clearly as possible, despite the way it appeared to be putting him under considerable, perhaps even painful, strain
‘I mentioned it only to prove who I am: but I know I’m now a monster! I can’t expect anything of you Desri!’
Even so, he instinctively stepped towards her, as if briefly forgetting who he now was, as if ready to reach out for and grasp her trembling hands.
‘Is…is it witchcraft?’ Desri asked uncertainly.
‘Hah! That, at least, would give me some hope of finding the witch who did this, and killing her.’
‘But…but there must be someway of reversing this change?’
She hesitantly moved a little closer, her head raised a little: the pose she’d taken before their first kiss. Cranden stepped back, away from her, his great head slumping across his chest.
‘The true love of fairy tales, you mean?’ Cranden whispered bitterly, as if he had once hopefully considered this himself. ‘I’ve met others like me, who thought that same thing.’
He shook his head, a sign of the hopelessness of it all.
‘There are others…?’
Desri couldn’t prevent a hint of horror from underlying her voice.
‘But how? How did this happen?’ she asked quickly.
Cranden shrugged miserably.
‘It was after a battle, a battle whose dead created a feast for the buisoar…’
He paused, breathed deeply: he was a buisoar now, of course.
‘Then…then I’m not sure what happened. It was, possibly, some form of witchcraft; but not, as in fairy tales, a curse on a single man. It was more like some great enchantment, where we woke up as these beasts after fighting only hours before.’
At first, he hadn’t even realised that he had become one of the monsters: he simply thought he had woken up in the midst of the horrors of a lost battle. A lost battle even more terrify than normal because here the victors were ultimately the buisoar, hungrily devouring the dead of both sides.
Wondering why they weren’t attacking him, he’d made to run; only to realise at last that his body wasn’t responding in the way he had come to expect it to act. His arms failed to push him upright onto two legs, as he’d intended. Rather, they wanted to help propel him forward, being of course forelegs, not arms. Even worse, it dawned on him that his huge jaw was wet, sticky: dribbling with the blood and flesh of men he’d also been feasting on.
Sickened by what he had done, what he had become, and choking on his own vomit, he ran from the field. As he ran, he saw a few others doing the same thing, doubtlessly because they had also abruptly become aware of what they had become.
He could have stopped to talk to them, to try and work out how this could have happened. But he was too disgusted by his present state to allow anyone, even one who had suffered the same fate, to see him brought so low.
Besides, when he at last first tried to talk, all that had emanated form his mouth was a low, bestial growl. It had taken him a long time to train his vocal chords to create even the most basic forms of speech.
It was only later, when he was miserably wandering the forests – how could he head on home, revealing himself as this monster to those he’d once loved? – that he came across beasts who were like him, bitter at what they had been transformed into. Some had approached their homes, expecting understanding, but they had been chased away, only just escaping with their lives. Wives, parents, children; they all disbelieved the ridiculous claims these bewitched monsters were making.
‘But if there are so many of you, then surely–’
Cranden interrupted Desri’s hopeful cry with an irate shaking of the head.
‘Not so many of us: only a few, it seems, fully remember who they once were. And they are the most cursed of all!’
‘Cursed? But surely, if you do remember–’
‘Remember the love I once enjoyed, that I can never hope to have again? That life that was once mine–’
He pointed bitterly to his head with a huge paw.
– ‘It’s all still in here! But it can never, ever be mine again.’
With a wave of his arms, he indicated his miserable surroundings. For the first time, Desri noticed that his splayed-out paws were almost like human hands, yet gnarled, disfigured, as if they had been deliberately broken many times to achieve this affect.
A part of Desri wanted to rush forward and, with a loving embrace, reassure Cranden that he was unnecessarily worrying about this; yet a greater part of her held her back, repulsed by the beast who was really standing before her.
Cranden couldn’t fail to notice this reticence, the way she rose on her feet, hesitated, stayed where she was.
His great maw expanded into what could have been a grin, perhaps a bitter one.
‘You see, Desri, how much better it would have been for me? How much better if, like most of these beasts, that’s all I believed I was – a beast?’
Once again, Desri had the urge to dash towards him. Once again, a greater part of her fought that urge and won out.
‘We must stop the hunts; immediately,’ she said instead.
Cranden’s great head moved slowly, sadly, from side to side.
‘How? Who would believe us? Because of me? A beast they will, at best, say is a creation of witchcraft, or trickery. Anything, any excuse they can conjure up, in fact. It’s all better, isn’t it, than having to admit you’ve really been eating the flesh of other humans?’
*
/>
Chapter 15
1000 Years Earlier
Naturally, the Assassins’ Assembly was blamed for the fire that had destroyed the home and shop of Imp’s parents.
The bodies of the dead assassins had been found just outside of the burnt-out butchers. They wore the dark cloak of the assassins’, each equipped with a host of interior pockets containing various devices that helped them carry out their tasks.
As Imp had suspected, none of them carried any device linking them to the queen.
Which meant that the only people aware that the assassins hadn’t really been the ones involved would be the queen and her close followers, Imp herself – and the Assassins’ Assembly.
The Assassins’ Assembly wouldn’t like to be linked to an attack they hadn’t personally undertaken, Imp reasoned. Especially one that had supposedly left some of their members dead.
That would be bad for their reputation – incompetence.
She moved from inn to inn (none of which charged her anything for her stay, as no one could remember her being there), while giving anyone who saw her the idea that she lived out on the streets (disguising herself in the impression rather than the reality of rags and filthy clothing) while she waited for the arrival of the assassin. She knew that at least one would be sent; someone who could work out who had really been responsible for this incompetent attack that had stained their otherwise infallible reputation.
When he finally did arrive, he made sure he wasn’t easy to spot, of course. Nevertheless, Imp saw him straight away for who he was.
His Cloud of unKnowing was just a little too perfect, like the beginnings of a hole in the confused and tangled thoughts of a busy street.
He walked past people with an anguished expression, as if urgently rushing to his next business meeting. Yet his mind was wandering amongst them, seeking out anyone who might be able to provide him with information about what had gone on here that night.
He glanced at the spots where he now Knew the fallen men had been found, searching for any small fragment that would help him identify who had died here.
He studied the burnt timbers, his eyes and mind attuned to looking for the small clues that would lead him to the truth. Even the way a fire had spread, or the positions were it had been deliberately started from, could help pinpoint the real perpetrators, for every group had its preferred methods, its special expertise.