It was immense, this divan, and thickly strewn with glittering silks, luxurious furs, and many plump pillows. Thereupon reclined the fattest man I have ever seen. He must have weighed five hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce, and his obesity was repulsive and almost frightening, like a deformity. He was stark naked to boot, with a sumptuous velvet robe thrown casually about him, and through its front his vast paunch and wobbling, womanish breasts gleamed with an oily dew. It was perfume, I realized as I approached his silken nest. He was literally soaked in the stuff, and it was all I could do to breathe.
Amid this tangled bed of furs and jeweled silks and fat pillows, Gurjan Tor squatted like a bloated and obscene toad. From a low taboret of precious metals he was gobbling tidbits of wine-soaked meat. His little slitted eyes watched me, cold and shrewd and calculating, as I made the required obeisance. But neither then nor at any point during the interview did he for a moment cease slobbering over the greasy meats.
He was completely bald, his yellow moon-face inscrutable, save for the eyes. They were black as ink, and cold as ice. And they seemed to look through me to the very roots of my soul.
In few, terse words the bowlegged little man who had fetched me reported on his questioning of me. What he had to say seemed to please Gurjan Tor, for he smiled. Still stuffing his mouth with juicy gobbets, he inquired of me in a soft, high-pitched, almost feminine voice of my expertise in the use of certain weapons, of my experience in the several arts of stealth, and of my origin.
I told him what I truthfully could; and, as for my nonexistent career in thievery, I made up what details I could invent which sounded plausible.
Again, my answers seemed to please him.
“You speak with the accents of Phaolon,” he observed shrewdly, “yet claim birth among the forest barbarians; how is that?”
I was already perspiring, and this did not help my equanimity any, as you might imagine. For one thing I had never actually realized the Laonese spoke with regional accents.
I shrugged, attempting to appear unruffled. “My parents may have come from that city, for all I know,” I said. “Many are they whom the monarchs of the various cities have driven into exile among the forest-wandering tribesmen…”
“True enough,” he said in his high, sweet voice. Then, addressing the bowlegged man, who had doffed his visor upon entering the room in what was obviously accepted social custom among the Assassins, he said;
“Klygon, I am pleased. This youth shall be enlisted among the novices at once, and placed in training for Project Three. See to it.”
We backed from the Presence. The fat man did not deign to notice, having turned his full attention to a tray of sweets.
Chapter 24
I LEARN THE ARTS OF STEALTH
And thus I became an Assassin. Or a novice in training, at any rate. And my friend, mentor, master, and comrade was to be none other than Klygon the Sly, as he was called. For, as Master of the Novices, it was his task to teach and train the young apprentices of the Guild in the secret arts.
Klygon was a hard man not to like. His humor was sly and infectious, and his enthusiasm for assassinry—or whatever you might wish to call it—was that of a master artisan for his craft. The ugly, comical little man was an unsparing taskmaster, true, but he was wise and witty, generous and loyal. I grew fond of him.
I grew also to become a trained and experienced Assassin, and in less time than it seemed possible. I had been selected for one particular task—the mysterious “Project Three” of which Gurjan Tor had spoken—and my every waking moment for the next twelve days was devoted to the acquisition of the skills I should require for this task.
We rose at dawn and for two hours before breakfast Klygon drilled us in the formal and informal arts of swordplay. The formal arts consisted of those of the courtly duello; you might call it the art of fence. As I sorely lacked instruction in this science—so indispensable to one who desires to continue living in a world filled with ferocious monsters and no less savage human adversaries—I soaked up everything Klygon could teach me with great interest. As for what I have termed the informal arts of swordplay, these were the dirty tricks of rough-and-tumble street-fighting, the skills of the gutter.
After breakfast, as if we were not already aching from sore muscles, we exercised in a huge vaulted cellar-like chamber. Here Klygon taught us how to fall and tumble and roll and bounce back up, how to scale ropes, run on ladders, use line and grapnel, climb surfaces so smooth that even the nimblest monkey might find it difficult to seek a toehold. We learned also how to tread as soundlessly as a cat; first on a bare floor full of creaking boards, then on a darkened stair littered with pots and pans, and finally on a bed of crisp, dry leaves. No Mohawk on the warpath could slink through the forest aisles as silently as I, when I completed this phase of my training.
Normally, I was given to understand, the pace of Klygon’s tutelage was more leisurely. In my case the pace was accelerated almost beyond human endurance, and all because of the impending Project Three, whose hour was rapidly approaching.
I began to pick up bits and pieces of information, which I fitted together one by one. In the first place, I learned that there was much more to being an Assassin than just learning how to kill silently and swiftly. Of a certainty the Assassins of Ardha killed political opponents on commission; but they also dealt in kidnapping, in blackmail, and in the theft and sale of secrets.
There is probably no need for me to say, that, in the matter of becoming a novice of the Assassins, I had no choice; in fact, my wishes were not even consulted. The decision was that of Gurjan Tor alone. It was either accept and make the best of it, or die in any one of a number of less-than-pleasant ways. For once you have entered the house of Gurjan Tor, and have been admitted to the secret circle of the Assassins, there is no leaving it, save as a member of the Guild, or feet forward, as the saying goes. So I perforce became an Assassin.
The political situation here in Ardha was singularly complex, I learned. For years a three-way power-struggle between Throne, Temple, and Guild had all but rent the kingdom asunder into sharply divided factions.
Some time ago, when the Tyrant delivered his ultimatum of marriage or war at the court of Niamh the Fair, he had held the central position of power. But the failure of that attempt, and his subsequent failure to either bring Phaolon to its knees or mount an army of invasion, had considerably wakened his grasp on the reins of power. The failure to launch an invasion, I now learned, was due simply to a lack of funds.
Seeing the power of the Throne Faction eclipsed, Holy Arjala the Goddess Incarnate had made her bold strike for power. Yielding the Temple revenues for one year to Gurjan Tor had won her the temporary allegiance of the Guild to her side; and thus the balance of power tipped from Throne to Temple. It was Arjala’s ultimate ambition to share the throne of Akhmim, thus uniting the power of both factions into a single cause. This had been done, incidentally, in Phaolon much earlier; in the reign of Niamh’s father, Throne and Temple had aligned in marriage, and my beloved princess was herself considered the Goddess Incarnate in her realm, as well as queen thereof. But the Phaolonians represent a higher and more sophisticated level of civilization than the backward and warlike race of Ardha; in Phaolon, the national religion was a social custom, to which lip service was paid, but it exerted little power and little authority over the minds of the citizenry; not so in Ardha.