Dark Game (Merikh Book 1) (3 page)

“Something occurred to me while I was waiting for you to pick me up. How many times in your entire life have you seen something you could describe as magic? Real magic, the kind I ran into tonight. The kind from before.”

“Twice, and I think I know where you're going with this.”

“Both times were with me. Gallivanting around the world with your husband, doing what we're doing now, for years. And only while I'm around has this been happening.” I’d had the thought before, after the first time. Maybe there was a reason the clans didn't let new assassins go off on their own. Maybe there was something about my training, the same something that let me see and feel the magic in a way nobody else could, that somehow drew it to me. Maybe this was something I was going to keep running into, and keep dragging Mouse into.

“Then we'll get really good at dealing with it, won't we?” She meant it, and it scared me even as it made me more sure than ever that I needed her.

“You're pretty cool, you know that?”

“Honey, I was pretty cool before you were even born. Now I'm working on a whole other level.”

A tingling in the back of my throat gave me a moment's warning before the nausea hit. Magic, and stronger than the night before. Almost as strong as the night we lost Mouse's husband. It hit me like a truck and left the room spinning as I tried to get control of myself.

“What is it?” Her voice came from the end of a tunnel, faraway and barely loud enough for me to hear. I forced myself up and stumbled as I turned to the window. Each step was a chore but something drew me forward. I reached the window and I thought I could feel her hand on my shoulder but I wasn't sure. I tore open the curtain and took in the town.

The sun was just rising over the hills to the east but I wouldn't have needed the additional light. Energy, like a fog descending from the sky, slowly drifted down into the streets, swirling around the buildings and the early morning pedestrians. It glowed a sickly yellow and turned the town cancerous until it slowly faded away, seeping into the buildings and the people. When the last of it faded so did my nausea, leaving everything as it was before.

“Tell me what you're seeing.”

“There is something very wrong in this town. Something big.”

The Knight: Two Old Enemies

By the time the spectral knight arrived on the pier, the god was already seated on a bench. Its body today was that of a middle-aged, balding man wearing a long black coat to ward off the cold wind. It sat in silence and watched the waves pass by on their way to the beach, ignoring the rattle of the chain attached to the collar around the knight's neck.

The pier was mostly empty, with only a few chilly tourists making their way from one local art exhibit to another, the pieces arranged down each side of the weathered wooden planks. Looking around, he couldn't see anything to distinguish it from a hundred other such locations he'd been dragged to. He could be anywhere in the world; not that it mattered anymore. He knew his place, had learned his place more than a thousand years before in a radically different version of this world.

With the heavy chain weighing him down he moved beside the god, Ahn, and waited to see if anything would be needed of him. He didn't know what the purpose of the visit was, never knew what the purpose of their visits were. Ahn was mercurial, disinterested in everything even as he kept tabs on an entire planet. From the moment it rescued the knight from his descent into the nether, the god had been dragging him through the ever-changing world, allowing him to watch as it tweaked its creation, erasing old mistakes and smoothing over rough edges. Mistakes like the giants which once plagued the knight’s kingdom and rough edges like his kingdom itself. His past no longer existed and his future was unsure, tied to the winds of a being the knight could never understand.

The other god arrived. The knight hadn't seen this one in a hundred years, since the two had decided to erase the existence of a kind of weapon that would have changed the outcome of World War I. Though the gods, Ahn and Ehl, would always be enemies, when they agreed on something they could shake the world.

Ehl wore a man as well, a young black man in the tightfitting clothes commonly worn when exercising. Where Ahn was always frowning, Ehl never stopped smiling, and this time was no different. It strode over and collapsed onto the bench, beaming at the world as though this was the happiest day of its life.

“Why so glum?” Ehl said. It reached over and grabbed Ahn's arm and gave it a shake. Ahn glared at the presumptuous touch and Ehl removed the hand but kept on smiling. “The pieces are finally coming together. The world is finally behaving as it should. Soon the charade will be over and all this”—it waved its hand at the entire world—”can be left behind. I don't know about you, but that gets me hard just thinking about it.”

“You have always been too confident.” Ahn's voice, no matter who it wore, was always slow and measured. “The game is not yet over. You have not yet won.”

“Sure, but it's just a matter of time. My children rule this world now while yours are reduced to hunting for followers, praying to you for people to pray to them.”

Ahn sighed and finally turned to look at the other god. “As your children were two hundred years ago, and a thousand before that, and ten thousand before that. You always think the game is won and you are always disappointed.” Ahn went back to contemplating the sea.

“But this time things are different, aren't they? This time it feels different, doesn't it?”

“Perhaps,” Ahn conceded.

“Is that why you're cheating, in the hopes of ending the game by destroying it?”

Ahn turned to face Ehl again, a hint of confusion on its borrowed features. “What do you mean?”

The knight worked hard to keep his mind a blank so as not to give away his surprise at the sight of his master betraying an emotion.

“I know it was you. I know it was you who did it directly, who hired someone to kill one of my priests. And not just anyone, not just some hitman. No, you hired a clan assassin.”

Ahn closed its eyes and searched the world for a hint of what Ehl was talking about. It found what it was looking for in a moment. “I didn't do that.”

“One of my children traced the request. Not to one of your children, or one of your priests, or even to a human. The request seemed to come from nowhere, which means it must have come from you. I found this odd as I'm sure that's against the rules.”

“Again, I didn't do this. There is something odd here.”

Ehl sat back with its arm along the back of the bench and looked out to sea, perhaps searching for what had so entertained Ahn. When it returned its focus to the conversation, it changed topics. “Why do you have this ghostly human with you all the time? Surely he can't be that entertaining.”

“I find it useful to understand how they see the world. He gives me perspective.”

“The perspective of an ant, perhaps. What good will his perspective be when we destroy all of this because you couldn't handle losing? Will you keep him when we create a new world? Will you elevate his mind so he can understand what we have done and will have to do?”

The wind picked up as thunder rolled in the distance. “I did not do this.”

“And yet when you inspect the situation you can see what I see. It certainly looks like one of us did it.”

“I will investigate.”

The knight pictured his home, his family, his history that they had erased. He concentrated on the only image he could recall of his youngest son's smile, in the hope, probably vain, of keeping his surprise to himself. The gods did not need to investigate, not in the way Ahn had meant. With the slightest expression of will they knew everything, from the flight of a butterfly to the inner workings of the most distant star. For one of them to suggest that they would have to investigate something was a revelation, and somehow more terrifying than when he believed them to be omnipresent.

“Do that,” Ehl said. It stood and wiped blood from its nose. “I'm curious how this was done without my knowledge. Assuming, of course, you're telling the truth.”

Ahn ignored the blood coming from its own nose and said, “I am.”

“It could be...her.” Ehl said “her” with distaste.

“It isn't. Can't be, and you know that.”

“I also know that it has to be one of us. If not you, then who?”

Ahn and Ehl moved on simultaneously. Their bodies collapsed in place, one on the bench and one on the pier. They twitched and spasmed as the last of their life left them.

The knight had seconds to himself. Moments before the chain connecting him to his master pulled taut and dragged his ghostly form somewhere else. A breath, a heartbeat, to himself.

He used the brief solitude and allowed himself a smile.

The chain twitched and he was gone.

Chapter 3

I was late for work at Midway bank. I hurried down Main Street, skipping my usual morning coffee and stepping through the doors of the grand old building as they were opening to the public for the day. I’d made it two feet across the floor when the manager's voice rang out.

“Mark,” Stephen said, striding toward me like a king in his court. “I expect this from the locals, but not you. You're from the main office. You're better than this.”

Stephen was how we’d constructed our backstory; he’d been sent to try and help the ailing regional bank get back on its feet. The whole county was suffering but that didn’t stop the bosses from wanting to make a profit. Stephen was a go-getter, a man with his eyes firmly locked on the top of the ladder. He was also an egotistical dick, which we used to our advantage. When I presented myself and told my story of being sent by the main office to help realize Stephen's brilliant plan, he ate it up. I insinuated that we knew each other slightly in our old positions and he’d run with it, concocting a vague but complete history, one he now fully believed.

“Sorry, boss. I overslept. Won't happen again.” In truth, I hadn't slept at all. Seeing a mystic yellow fog descend on the town had rattled me, and I hadn't even done my training. I was acting alert and awake but most of the world was a numb blur.

“You make sure it doesn't. Maybe only take half your time for lunch today. Show a good example. Now, go check on the network connection to the back of the ATM, would you? The company says they won't be able to send anybody out until tomorrow and we can't have that, can we?”

“I'm on it,” I said, attempting to be cheerful.

“Good man.”

Stephen wandered off to harass somebody else and I took a position at the beige metal box in the corner of the room. I fished my keys from my pocket and selected one of the many I was sure I wasn't supposed to have, slotting it into the lock and turning.

The rear of the machine was a mystery to me; there were several of what looked like stripped down desktop computers wired into a collection of mechanical moving parts. The rear of the screen produced a bundle of cables that joined with a tangled mass in the middle that would make it impossible for me to work it out.

I’d studied up on computers and networks, enough to fake it for a week and no more. I’d done pretty well, considering, but this was a step beyond.

“You have no idea, do you?” Patty was a clerk and the current focus of Stephen's interest. She was just out of high school, with short dark hair and a hole where her nose ring would normally be. She wore the dull grey skirt and white shirt the bank required but she was obviously uncomfortable in it.

“I'm a computer guy,” I said, turning away from the confusing machine to look up at her. “I'm pretty sure this is illegal, anyway.”

“Stevie is a Grade A douchenozzle.” She sat on the floor with her back to the counter, out of sight of the manager's office. “We have been consigned to the lowest level of hell, and he is our tormentor.”

I smiled. “Aren't we in a delightful mood today?”

“It's Wednesday, the worst day of the week.”

“How so?”

She looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in town. “Well, Monday is hellish but at least you expect it. It's the death of the freedom of the weekend. Tuesday is when your hangover finally goes away, so that's not too bad. Thursday is when you start feeling the anticipation and making plans for the weekend, and Friday goes by in a blur as the glorious moment of your emancipation rushes ever closer. Wednesday is just blah.”

“You're overthinking it.” I liked her, despite the melodrama. She was only a few years younger than me but she'd come from a completely different world. I was raised in a monastery and my purpose had been drilled into me from the moment I could understand the concept, whereas she was having to find it herself. I found it fascinating how she was having to slowly tease out the fundamental truths of her life, and I almost wished I could have stuck around town longer if only to see who she'd become.

It didn't hurt that she was almost painfully cute.

“You can't overthink these things. Time is precious and we're wasting it in here.” She gestured at the old stone building, dismissing it with a wave. “I left home to see the world. Now I'm going to grow old in here, and probably end up marrying Stevie.”

“That would be amazing,” I said, and laughed as I dodged her kick. “I'm sure you'll have adorable children.”

“Patty,” Stephen's voice called out over the intercom. “Please come to the manager's office. Patty.”

She pushed herself into a crouch and peeked over the counter to check whether he could see her. When she was sure it was clear she stood and spun on her heel to look down on me again. “You get back to work, slacker. That machine isn't going to fix itself.”

I put a whine in my voice. “But I don't wanna.”

“That's not what I expect to hear from a company man, Mark. I expect results.” She spun in place again and stomped off, leaving me alone with the mystery of the ATM and a cold rear from sitting on the polished stone floor.

“I think she likes you.” Mouse's voice made me jump. I’d forgotten I had the earpiece in. I reached into my pocket and thumbed an answer on the Blackberry.