28.

Assassinations on the arcane train.

28.

 

Archbishop Hobst had just sat down to enjoy some wine and cheese before turning in for the day when a frantic knocking on his door interrupted him.

“What in the hell…”  He mumbled as he sat his snack down and went over to the door.

“Who’s there?”   He asked coarsely, very irritated at being interrupted.

“It’s me!”  A feminine voice whispered as loudly as she could while still keeping it as a whisper.    Clearly it was the damned Nymph girl again, probably chickening out of the whole thing.

“What’s wrong now?”  He snapped back, whispering so none in the other cabins could hear.

“Open the door, Your Grace; we’ve got a problem.”

“Problem?  What problem?”

“Please!”  The voice begged, “Open up and I’ll tell you!  It’s urgent!”

With an exasperated sigh, he unlocked his cabin door and flung it open.   Before his eyes could even focus on the woman standing there, he felt a sharp stab in his gut.   He tried to cry out, but the woman had quickly covered his mouth with her other hand while pushing him back into the cabin.     Caught off guard, he stumbled backwards, lost his footing and fell hard onto his back, knocking the wind out of him.   

His eyes began to glass over as a terrible burning surged through his body and he felt his lungs constrict tightly, cutting off any air before he could even recover from the fall.    His attacker kept her hand firmly against his mouth until his convulsions eased and death blanketed him like a shroud.

She poked the dead body a few times with the dagger, to make certain that he was dead, shuddered in revulsion at what she had just done,and wiped the blood off the blade on the dead man’s clothing.  Then she stood up and with her back against the Archbishop’s cabin door, began softly chanting a spell while clutching a delicate pendant in her hand.   For several minutes the chant continued, barely audible, until the pendant glowed a warm pink and suddenly the woman’s face changed.

It wasn’t a dramatic change - in fact it was almost subtle, but when the spell finished, a close duplicate of Avalynn stood there.

Oh, she was slightly taller and rounder of shape, for it could not alter height or weight, but the skin, eye and hair shade all now was identical to the former princess.

She had no mirror to verify the success, so concealing her features in her cloak, she stealthfully slipped out of the cabin then retraced her footsteps,  pleased to find the dining car now empty.   

As she entered the royal car area, she took off her cloak and wrapped it around her arm so it would conceal the dagger that she carried.

She pressed the pommel a second time to recoat the blade and continued on her way toward the royal suite, nodding at a couple of servants that stood near the entranceway to the hall leading to the sleeping quarters.

As she’d hoped, they assumed that she was Avalynn arriving for her rendezvous with the ‘new’ prince.   

It was time for stage two of her plan.   

 

 

***

 

It felt to Denrich as if he had waited several hours for Avalynn’s arrival, but in fact it was just over one hour.   He had fought an urge to sneak around and see what she was up to, but he suspected that Hobst might have someone watching his cabin.

He had to figure out a graceful way of not sleeping with her, if events led to that.     Denrich suspected strongly that she wasn’t eager to have sex with him either, yet he wasn’t sure if she’d go through with it to ‘seal’ their relationship or not.

He was beginning to wonder if she was going to show up at all, when, a few minutes after midnight, a soft knock on his cabin door dashed these hopes.

Let the game begin, he said to himself as he stood up and unlocked the door.

She was wearing a very delicate tight-fitting gown that left extremely little to his imagination and seemed to greatly glorify her bosom and showcase her flawless feminine shape.  In spite of himself, he could only focus on how gorgeous she looked as she quickly hurried into his cabin.

He locked the door behind her; only then noticing that she carried a cloak tightly wound around one arm.   Perhaps she planned to conceal herself with it after a night of sin; he pondered quietly as she carefully sat her bundle on the table next to the bed, and then turned to him.   Her arms were spread wide and she did a half spin, clearly wanting him to comment on her seductive gown.

“I’m not sure that you are wearing enough to keep me warm tonight,”  He said, referencing a comment he’d made to her before they had parted earlier.

“I’ll have no problem keeping you warm,”  She said confidently and there was something about her voice and her bearing that seemed very different from the nervous girl that he had left earlier in the evening.

He scrutinized her for a few moments but his gaze didn’t seem to bother her and she just stood there serenely smiling, letting him look at her.   She looked like Avalynn, but he was uneasy.

“Is there a problem?”  She asked, coming over to him and slipping her arms around him with unexpected familiarity.

It was her touch that triggered his memory, but just as he opened his mouth to say something, Xael put her fingers softly against his lips and leaned in close to his face.

“Shh, love; there is an assassin just outside this door listening to us.   Don’t say anything but what he would expect to hear from two people about to engage in lovemaking.   I’ll explain later; trust me now, please, okay?”

“Are you ready for me?” She said somewhat louder, looking at him squarely in the eyes.

“Um…yeah, I’m ready…Avalynn.”

“Just play along,” She whispered softly and then she was kissing him passionately, maneuvering him toward the bed.

He had no idea what she had in mind, but he let her draw him down on the bed.

She slid them down onto the mattress, kissing his neck and nibbling on his ear while whispering softly, “You’ll need to do just what I tell you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“The assassin is waiting for Avalynn to kill you with a dagger.   Then he’ll come in and kill her.    So we need to make him think that I am killing you in the midst of passion.”

“Okay,”  Denrich responded, his mind spinning from all of the intrigue.

“Make some moaning noises,”

“Moaning noises?”

“Yes; like you are having sex.”

“But-“

“For Heaven’s sake, love!   Call out Avalynn’s name and groan a bit.”

“But-“

“Do it!”  She hissed in his ear.

“Oh…Oh Avalynn…Oh…”  He said loudly, feeling completely foolish.

“Lord, help us,”  Xael sighed quietly in his ear, “Make it sound convincing!”

“Oh!   Oh Ava!  Oh!”  He tried to put passion in his voice but sounded more foolish than ever.

“Let’s hope the assassin buys it.   Now listen closely - I’m going to go stand behind the door with the dagger - keep up the groaning and moaning until I wave my hand at you, then make a surprised sound and a loud gasp and slump down on the bed and stay still.   The assassin will probably come into the room then and I’ll get him.”

“Are you insane?”  He whispered back.

“No time for debate or we’ll both be dead.   Now get started making noise!”

Without waiting for his reply, she rolled off of him and scooped up the rolled up cloak on the table next to the bed.

She gestured to him to resume his love-making sounds as she slipped free a wicked-looking dagger from the cloak, and then concealed herself in the shadows near the door.

Confused and a bit alarmed at the whole thing, Denrich just did as she had told him for nearly a minute before he saw her hand waving at him from the darkness.

Remembering her words, he suddenly cut short a groan and said in a much more convincing voice, “Ava!  What?!   Hey!   Oww!”

He slumped down onto the bed, which caused a creak of protest from it and laid perfectly still on his back, though every fiber of his being was posed for action.

With speed that surprised both of them, the door flashed open and suddenly there was a dark form over the bed with a knife or dagger drawn.

Thankfully, Xael was ready and lunged out of the shadows, stabbing savagely at the dark form in between Denrich and her.

Denrich twisted to the side as the assassin fell, stabbing forward with his blade.    Denrich was just out of the way in time, for the knife ripped deep into the mattress.   Xael fell with him, her dagger stabbing wildly until Denrich pulled her away.

He pushed her back behind him and grabbed up a chair then approached the bed.    The man lay there gurgling and twitching, but only for several moments before that ceased.

Denrich poked at him several times, but he didn’t respond, so finally he pulled him off of the bed into the floor and turned him over.

“Well, he’s dead, I’d say,”  he told Xael, who still wore the skin of Avalynn, “Was that dagger poisoned?”

“Was it ever!”  She replied, telling him about her assassination of Hobst.

“You killed the Archbishop?!”   He gasped after she confessed.

“You don’t know what he was plotting, Denrich!   Let me tell you what he had in mind.”

She told of overhearing not only his enlistment of Avalynn as an assassin, but of his perverse relationship to the Queen and how his own daughter carried his child, who they would pass off as the King’s heir.    He learned of the murders and schemes that Xael had overheard and how he intended to then kill Avalynn as well as double-cross the assassin that Xael had just killed.

“Unbelievable,”  He said when she had finished, though he fully believed her.

“I’ve been trying to protect you, love, since you arrived in court.”

“That night you left me for your rendezvous-“

“I didn’t have sex with Duke Mersexx; he is one of the King’s closest friends - I used a spell on him to find out information.”

“Information?”

“On the High King, about St. Catherine’s and Mother Julia, on the Queen, Bishop Hobst… even you and your beloved St. Wemricshire.”

“He wouldn’t know anything about me!”

“Yes, but he might know what Reddric actually thought about you and could have been a partner in any scheme that he cooked up.”

“So is Reddric in on these assassinations?”

“No; his scheme was to have Avalynn seduce you and find out if you were sincere.   Then he’d probably take the duchy away from her, imprison her or perhaps even kill her.   If he learned from Avalynn’s report to him that you were not after his throne, he would probably let you live.    But Hobst made Avalynn think that she was serving Reddric by killing you and that her loyalty to the High King would prove her worthiness as duchess.   She was his pawn as much as she was Reddric’s, but Reddric doesn’t want you dead, at least not yet.”

“Well, what happened to Avalynn?   Did you kill her too?”

She frowned at him, “I’m not an assassin, love!    Hobst and this assassin were trying to kill us!”

Denrich touched her shoulder, surprised to find that she was trembling, so he pulled her to him and she clutched him tightly as she struggled to control her nerves.

“I’m sorry, Xael; I know you aren’t a killer.   But you are not a woman to be crossed, either!”

She looked up at him and smiled weakly, “When I need to be, I can.”

“So what happened to Avalynn?”

“I clubbed her over the head and used one of my most precious magic items - it was my mother’s Ring of Concealment.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s an ancient magic ring that can be used two ways.   The wearer, who knows how to activate it, can speak out loud something - such as who they wish to be or where they were at a certain time, or nearly anything, really- and while wearing the ring, whatever they spoke out loud will appear as the truth if someone else uses some sort of magic on them to find out something.    So, for example, if I said that I slept last night with Bishop Hobst while wearing the ring, and tomorrow one of Reddric’s wizards would use magic to find out where I was last night, it would show the lie that I had spoken to the ring as the truth.    It is very powerful and useful.”

“What about the second way of using it?”

“Well, that is what I used with Avalynn.    When it is put on someone else’s finger who does not know the activation words to stop and start it, then I activate it while she is wearing it, I can in effect hypnotize her into believing whatever I tell her and she will believe it fully until the ring is removed.    I told her that she had lost her memory after being bonked on the head.   I told her that she remembered that her name was Xael and that she knew there were people trying to kill her and that she could find safety by getting to St. Catherine’s convent.    I also told her that she would die immediately if she ever took off the ring.”

Denrich looked at her in amazement, “So she thinks that she is you, but she doesn’t remember anything about being you, or even who she really is?   She only knows that she is in danger and needs to get to the convent.”

“Yes; I figured this way it was kinder than killing her.    We can free her at any time by just taking the ring off of her finger.   I told her to hide in the baggage car until the train makes its next stop, then sneak away.”

“Amazing, Xael.   But how did you take her form?”

“Another one of my mother’s most precious magic items - it’s this pendant I’m wearing - when I chant a specific spell while holding it, and speak the name of a woman, the features, skin, eye and hair color are changed to match hers.”

“But you can only take the form of a woman, not a man?”

“Right, and the features cannot be too different from mine or the match won’t be exactly right.   If Avalynn had black hair, I would have only been able to get a medium brown color. I can’t change my height, weight or bone structure.   My degree of success this time is due to our physical similarities.”

“So what now?   Do you assume Avalynn’s life?”

“For the time being.    But we’ve got to figure out what to do with the body of the assassin.”

Denrich knelt down by the corpse, “If we leave him here and concoct a story, Reddric might get suspicious.    I say we move him into Hobst’s room and make it look like they killed each other.”

Xael nodded as if that had been her thoughts as well.

“You do know, Xael, that when they find Hobst’s body, it will cause quite a sensation.     An Archbishop murdered will be the talk of the island and probably most of the world for many months.    There will be church officials investigating too, and they will probably have some old magic items that will reveal to them what happened to him.”

“If they do, it will seem that Avalynn killed him and I would just switch back into my natural form.”

“I don’t know - it sounds rather risky to me.”

“So what do we do then?”   Xael asked with some degree of frustration.

Denrich scratched his chin, “I don’t know just yet, but I think I might have an idea.    First though we need to get this guy into Hobst’s room.”

“The halls should be empty this late - if we are quiet, we should be able to get him there unseen.”

“We still need to move fast and quietly.   I’ll get a cloak to throw over him; I need you to serve as a lookout between here and Hobst’s room.

“Okay; I’m beginning to wonder if I did the right thing.”

“I wish you had told me about it before you acted.”

“I didn’t have time, love!   Besides, remember that you were not too happy with me when we last parted.”

“You deceived me, Xael.”

“For your own good, love!”

“We’ll talk about this later, Xael.    Let’s get this over with.”

 

Soon Denrich had covered the body of the assassin in a cloak.  While Xael stood at the doorway nervously peering up and down the hallway, he scooped up the cloak-concealed body over his shoulder and hurried down the hall, through the dining car and (after Xael opened the door for him) into the noble’s sleeping car.

Thankfully, no servants were around, at this late hour and even the royal servants had gone to bed after seeing ‘Avalynn’ enter Denrich’s cabin.   Xael had left Hobst’s door unlocked and she pushed it open for him as Denrich hurried inside.

The sight of the fat Archbishop dead on the floor near the door was distressing, but he could not help but feel some relief that the powerful, scheming man was dead.    Thinking of Xael stabbing him was troubling, though he certainly wasn’t a fan of the Archbishop.

After Xael gently closed the door, he slipped the assassin down onto the floor and unwrapped the cloak.

“I was going to position them to appear that they’d killed each other,”  He explained to her, “But now I think I have a better idea.”

“I’m for anything.”

“We need to keep both bodies in here and any servants from entering here until tomorrow afternoon.”

“Okay, but why tomorrow afternoon?”

“Tomorrow afternoon, this train will go through Nivervale Barony, which is very rugged.    At one point the train hugs the side of a steep pass overlooking Niver Fjord, which connects to the ocean.    If we could do it at the right time and remain unseen, we could possibly dump the bodies off the noble sleeping car’s coupling platform and they’d slide down the steep hill into the deep Fjord, where they’d never be seen again.    Then we’d just play as clueless as everyone else on the train as to what happened to Archbishop Hobst.    If they never find his body -or that of the assassin- they can’t use detection magic on the corpse and will perhaps just assume that Hobst disappeared for his own reason.   He met with Bishop Calric for dinner, according to Avalynn, but the train never stopped to let him off like she said it would, so I’ll bet Hobst made up the story just to insure Avalynn could be alone with me.   If not, Calric and his servants could be problems for us.”

“They’d want to know what happened to him!   I know the Queen will.    I didn’t see any indication that Hobst had a dinner guest, so let’s assume he lied to Avalynn about that. ”

Denrich shrugged, “Maybe we leave a few false clues that would seem to hint that Hobst disappeared to be with a mistress.”

Xael snorted, “That would be believable!    But we’ll have a time keeping his servants from checking on him and they’ll be alarmed when he doesn’t take any meals.    Hobst had a reputation of being somewhat of a glutton, you know.”

“I think if we do it right, it might work and that could keep us from being questioned too closely by Reddric.”

“What about the smell when the bodies start to decay?”

“We’ll wrap them up in bedding or Hobst’s clothes and hope for the best.   There will be a few stops before we go past the Fjord, but we don’t dare dump the bodies at one of these stops or they’ll figure out the whole thing.     Dumping them in the Fjord is probably the safest move.”

“You sound like you’ve done this before, Love.”

“No, but I have dealt with some murderers during my time as Sheriff of St. Wemrichsire, so I know how killers think.”

Xael smiled weakly, “I guess I’m a murderer now, aren’t I?”

“I hate to think of you killing anyone, Xael, though I understand why you did.”

“Do you hate me?”

“Of course not!    I’m helping you conceal it, which is certainly a terrible thing for a Sheriff to do.    But Hobst was quite dangerous and evil, so he deserved his fate.   I just wish you had come to me first.”

“What good would that have done, Love?”

“I would have volunteered to kill him in your place,”   he said with some grimness.   Xael looked at him with amazement.  

“You’d do that for me?”

“To keep your hands clean, I would.    Sometimes killing someone seems easy at first but haunts you later.   I pray that is not what happens in this case.”

He stood up and Xael went over to him and took his hands in hers.

“I’m sorry I got you involved with this, Love.   Maybe I acted too hastefully, but something had to be done or Avalynn would have tried to kill you.    I doubt she would have succeeded though, for you probably knew she was up to something.”

“I was a bit wary of her.    That is another good deed that you did.    You kept her from being a murderer or at least attempting it.”

She smiled at something positive, “So what do we do now?”

“We get out of here as quickly as we can and return to my cabin.    As Avalynn, you’ve now become my lover and will stay with me, so that will explain your presence at my side.    I want you to stay close to me for the rest of the time on the train so we can escape quickly if things unravel.   I’ll put a note on the outside door of Hobst’s room that he wants privacy and that might keep his servants away for a while, and if we’re lucky, until we reach Niver Fjord pass. ”

“I’m all for that - let’s get out of here before they start to stink.”

 

They slipped out quickly and rushed down the hallway toward the royal suites again.

“What about Avalynn?”  Denrich asked as they slipped into the cabin, “Is she going to be alright without her memory?”

“She’ll be fine - she’s a survivor, love, and you need to remember that she was going to assassinate you tonight.”

Denrich smiled, “She was going to try to kill me.   I knew something wasn’t right about her, so I was already suspicious.”

“But you still worry about her?”

“She’s spoiled and naïve; maybe a bit cold and uncaring, but she’s also a pawn in all of this, so yeah, I am worried about her.”

“She should slip off the train at the next stop, love.    We need to worry more about the bodies being discovered by the Archbishop’s servants.”

“We really can’t do anything or it would look suspicious to see us lurking around watching.”

“So we need to make everyone think that I am Avalynn and that we were together all night?”    She slipped down onto the bed, looking up at him expectedly, “Well?   Aren’t you going to join me?”

“Yes, but don’t get a wrong idea,” he replied, slipping off his boots then sliding down next to her.

“So what do you think of me as Avalynn?” She asked him softly as she nestled up next to him.

“I prefer you as Xael, but you don’t dare change your appearance back.”

Xael sighed, “Yes, I’ll have to keep up the charade for a while I guess.”

“What I want to know is how you can be so calm after killing two people?”

Xael grabbed his hand, “Feel how cold my hand is?   I’m far from calm, love; I just know how to control my nervousness.”

“You don’t have to conceal anything from me,” He assured her.

To his surprise, she immediately dropped her shield and burst into tears, clinging onto his shoulder as she buried her face onto his chest.    He just hugged her close as she dampened his shirt with tears.   It was clear that she was truly letting go of pent up emotion and he was relieved to see it.   He stroked her hair and let her cry, wondering what the next day would bring.