Weapon of Flesh Read Online Free Page B

grasp.  He wielded more power than that sniveling Duke Mir, sitting so smugly in his walled keep, high on the bluff that overlooked the city, and surely garnered more respect from his guild members.  Why, not even the city constabulary, half of whom were on the Grandfather’s payroll, respected that doddering old fool.  Only the Royal Guard remained steadfastly loyal to Duke Mir, but he had spies aplenty among them.  They were no threat.
    The Grandfather’s minions, the entire Guild of Assassins, respected him utterly.  They had learned to respect him.  They had learned that disrespect resulted in death, or worse.  And there was worse.  They had all witnessed worse first hand.  They had witnessed it from the Grandfather’s own hand, for he was not only their guildmaster, he was their foremost practitioner.
    But this night, despite the distain he expressed toward his highborn neighbors, the Grandfather of Assassins was elated.  He had come to this, the highest point in all the city save for the spires of the Duke’s Palace, not to gaze down at those who were nothing but contracts or clients to him, but to take delivery of a message that his eyrie-master had just received.  He held that message now in his triumphantly clenched fist, for his life was soon to become much easier, and his business tenfold as lucrative.  The message he clenched so tightly bore only two lines, lines that only his eye would ever read and understand.  He flattened the crumpled parchment once again, though he had read it many times already.
     
     
    Your weapon is ready.
    I will arrive with it in seven days.
     
    ~ Corillian ~
     
    “Arrogant bastard,” he muttered under his breath, crumpling the parchment again.  “Sixteen years, and he makes me wait another week!  Ha!”
    He turned and stalked back into the tower, casting the crumpled note into one of the glowing braziers that lit and warmed the eyrie.  He could wait one more week.  After all, he’d been waiting almost two decades for this.  What was seven more days?

    By the beginning of their third day on the road, the boy was beginning to think that the only true danger in the world beyond the plateau was boredom.  They’d been plodding along at a pace that could be challenged by any tortoise in good health, and the most dangerous thing they’d encountered had been a nasty patch of poison sumac.  Every night they ate their stew and he watched while the Master slept; then in the morning they would eat their porridge and the boy would pack their gear.  The Master allowed the boy the few hours of sleep he required in the back of the wagon during the early part of their daily travels.  He would wake him around mid-morning and order him to once again resume his plodding pace beside the wagon.  The boy’s keen senses attended to their surroundings as the Master studied his books and scrolls, lounging in the driver’s seat.
    The trip would have been endurable, even pleasant, if not for the boy’s nagging curiosity.  So many questions rattled around inside his head that he began to be distracted by them.  Where were they going?  How long would it take to get there?  What was a Destiny, and was his different than anyone else’s?  He had even tried to ask the Master for some answers to these questions, but had just been told to be quiet and vigilant.
    After three days, he was bored with being vigilant.  Oh, he was still watching and listening as best he could; the spells of obedience required him to do exactly as he was told.  Yet, while his eyes and ears were tuned finely to their surroundings, his mind wound through complex trails of thought, surmising this and imagining that, all concerning his destiny.  It was undoubtedly the distraction of his own tumultuous thoughts that allowed him to be so caught unaware.
    The snort of a horse snapped his attention back to his razor-sharp senses in a heartbeat, and he immediately knew that there were at least six people on