The Warlord's Legacy

by Ari Marmell

  He smiled and allowed himself to lie back once more. “How long do we …?”

  “Long enough. You need to be rested for what’s to come. I’ll wake you if I think time’s getting short.”

  Corvis’s smile widened further, but he was asleep before he could sculpt his gratitude into words.

  FEELING A LOT MORE RESTED, but only a bit better overall, Corvis moved about the cavern on hands and knees, alternating between scrawling strange sigils on the rock with a lump of charcoal and complaining about what the stooped posture was doing to his back. He was once again fully dressed, and everything the travelers owned was packed and ready to go. “When we move,” he’d warned, “we may have to move quickly.”

  Every now and again Seilloah would rise up from a puddle of fur, totter awkwardly and in obvious pain across the floor, and point out a spot where Corvis had misaligned a design or muddled a rune. (At which point, of course, the echo of Khanda in his mind would mock him unmercifully.) Irrial, still not entirely certain what was going on and a bit put out that they’d not deigned to explain, hovered to one side and occasionally fed another stick into the meager fire.

  And then she jumped so violently she nearly swallowed her own eyes as Corvis, in a single swift motion, rose to his feet and drove Sunder into the nearest wall. The crunch reverberated vacantly throughout the cave, but it was the subsequent screech as he worked the enchanted blade from the stone that really set hair and teeth on edge, gnawing on the fringes of mind and soul like a maddened beaver.

  “Buggering hell, Rebaine! What in the gods’ names are you doing?”

  Corvis froze in mid-swing. “Why, Lady Irrial, wherever did you learn such language?”

  “Probably from spending—” She paused, wincing, at the second crash, and then the third. “—spending too much godsdamn time with you!” Another crash, a second wince. “Would you stop that!”

  He glanced at the small chunk he’d carved from the stone, then down at the powdered rock at his feet. “Sure, that’s probably enough. I—ow!”

  For several moments he hopped on one foot, waiting for the pain to ebb from the other. “What was that for?”

  Seilloah spat out a few strips of leather. “For not warning me. These ears are sensitive.”

  “Fine! Fine, I’m sorry. I should’ve told you it was coming.”

  “I believe I just said that.” And, simultaneously, ‘I believe she just said that.’

  This was not, Corvis knew without even taking the time to ponder it, an argument he was likely to win. “Irrial,” he said instead, “I need a gem.”

  “What?”

  “A gem. Diamond, emerald, doesn’t matter, though more valuable is better.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I know you took a few bits of jewelry from Rahariem.”

  The baroness frowned. “And you think you’re just entitled to them?”

  “Consider it fair price for escaping here alive. Unless you don’t think it’s worth the cost? You’re welcome to take your business elsewhere …”

  Muttering a few more of those words that she must have learned from Corvis, Irrial slipped a glinting blue ring from her finger and handed it over. He took it, flipped it over a time or two, and then snapped the sapphire from its setting and handed the silver band back to her.

  “Your change, m’lady.”

  “Thanks ever so,” she grumbled.

  He took a few more moments, gathering rocks from around the cave into a circle, for reasons that neither Irrial nor even Seilloah initially understood. Only when he placed the tiny sapphire in the midst of it and raised his axe high overhead did they comprehend: He wanted to ensure the shards and powdered gem didn’t get lost throughout the cave.

  And it was a good thing he did, too, as he first struck the tiny target only obliquely, sending it skittering across the floor, bouncing and rolling until it fetched up against the edge of his work space. His entire posture daring either of the women to comment, he stomped over to it, put it back in place, and tried once more.

  This time it shattered cleanly beneath the Kholben Shiar. Again bending over, and again struggling with the pain in his back, Corvis scooped up the dust and splinters into one palm and sprinkled them into the pile of rock dust he’d already gathered. Then, using an eating knife rather than Sunder, he drew a thin line down the palm of his left hand and squeezed exactly nine drops of blood into the mixture, adding water from a leather skin until the whole thing was a gritty paste.

  “What—?” Irrial began, only to have Seilloah look up and shush her.

  Corvis moved about the symbols he’d sketched, chanting an atonal, discordant litany as he went, daubing the gunk at various points across the runes. When he was done, he sat cross-legged in the center of it all and, pausing just long enough to draw breath, raised his voice to a shout. Sounds and syllables that were not words echoed across the cave—and then, though Corvis never wavered and his chant continued, those echoes stopped, sucked away by the stone.

  A minute passed, then two. And then they were there, appearing through the shadows and even the rock wall as though stepping between the curtains on a stage.

  There were five, or rather there seemed to be five; it was impossible to say for certain. They were half Rebaine’s height, but there was nothing remotely child-like about them. Filthy, maggot-pale skin covered long and gangly limbs that hung at improper angles and bent in unnatural directions. They did not walk so much as convulse, each twitch carrying them the distance of a single pace. Pink, irritated eyes sat, uneven and far too close together, above a jagged, tooth-rimmed slash.

  Corvis thought no less of Irrial when she whimpered and retreated as far as the cave’s walls would allow; he’d dealt with the foul things before, but it was all he could do to hold his ground.

  He spoke as firmly as a voice made hoarse by his prior incantations would allow. “I offer greetings to the gnomes, true and rightful lords of the earth’s inner flesh. I am—”

  “He knows.” It was the foremost gnome, indistinguishable from any of the others, who interrupted in a voice of grinding stone. They came to a halt, all as one, and the speaker tilted its head to a perfect right angle. “He knows who has come, yes, has climbed into, under, the skin of the earth.” He reached an impossibly long arm, sensuously caressed the cave wall with a cluster of irregular fingers. “Who dares again to call, yes, to spit the mountain’s voice through flopping human lips. He knows the Rebaine, yes. He never forgets, none of him forgets the Rebaine.”

  “Nor has the Rebaine forgotten him,” Corvis replied gravely.

  “What …?” Irrial whispered.

  “They call themselves ‘he,’ ” Seilloah explained quietly. “I don’t know if it’s their language, or something about how they think, but they all do it.”

  “So how do they know which one of them’s being addressed?”

  “No idea, but they always do.”

  “… call to him now?” the gnome was saying. “He has nothing left to say, no, to tell the Rebaine. It risks its life, yes, its flesh, to come here, to his home beneath, below.”

  “I’ve come to bargain, as we have in the past.”

  “So, bargain, yes, deal.” The vile creature licked its lips with something that more closely resembled a limp worm than a tongue. “Does it wish the same as before?”

  “No, nothing so long term. We require you to guide us through your tunnels, far to the west.” Then, at the creature’s puzzled blinking, “Ah, in the direction of the sunset. For at least …” Damn it, how do the little creeps measure distance? “… at least, um, thirty-thousand paces. My paces, not yours.”

  “It wishes to walk, yes, to travel below? Through his paths and corridors? This, he does not like, no, has never allowed. What does it offer?”

  Corvis pretended not to hear Irrial’s whispered “I don’t have a lot more where that first one came from.” He gestured vaguely toward the cave mouth, still hidden from outside by Seilloah’s phantasm.
>
  “Many men hunt us. I offer you the chance to spill their blood, to avenge the theft of your ancestors and the rape of earthen wombs, as I did before.”

  The gnomes cocked their heads toward one another, puppets with loosened strings, and whispered in tones that Corvis felt vibrating in his gut and through the floor.

  “No,” the speaker grumbled finally, “he does not think so, no, does not agree. Before, the Rebaine offered him crowds, yes, homes and cities high above, far above, where normally he cannot go, no, cannot reach. And now it thinks these men here, yes, in the hills above are payment? They are not payment, no. He can take them whenever he wants, anytime, yes.

  “And he can take the Rebaine, yes, and its companions.”

  “That would not be wise of him,” Corvis warned, rising to his feet with Sunder in hand. “It would also be inappropriate.”

  The gnome, which had just begun to step forward, paused. “It thinks so? He wonders why …”

  “Because I never actually did release you from my service,” he said with a smile. “You agreed to serve. It’s been some time, but I never ended our agreement.”

  It was a feeble argument, and he damn well knew it. But he knew, too, that the gnomes did not share humanity’s sense of time, and given their peculiar, even alien thought patterns, it just might …

  No.

  The laughter of the gnomes sounded like a man choking on gravel. “It is foolish, yes, pathetic and stupid! He will eat of its flesh, suck the juice of its inner white stones!”

  “Don’t do this.” Corvis wasn’t sure if he was still warning, or if he’d crossed the line into pleading. He felt Irrial moving behind him, heard the rasp of steel on leather as she drew. “We’ve worked well together before. We might again. Don’t ruin it now.”

  “He—”

  Every face in the chamber turned as the cat yowled, a wretched, high-pitched squall of pain and terror. Belly pressed to the floor, it fled from beside Irrial’s feet and out into the uneven hills. For long seconds, humans and gnomes peered at the illusory wall, as though they could follow the animal’s flight.

  Even as Corvis directed his bemused attention back to the gnomes, the foremost creature, the one who’d spoken, abruptly twitched. It was faint, scarcely a shiver, and the former warlord wouldn’t even have been certain he’d seen it were it not for what came next.

  “It is correct,” the creature said thoughtfully. Was there, perhaps, just a slight change in its timbre? “He has worked well with the Rebaine in the past, yes, before.” The creature twisted its head completely around to address the others behind. “He will guide it, yes, as it has asked.”

  Every other gnomish jaw dropped in a surprisingly human expression—assuming one allowed for the odd angles and excessive length of those gaping maws. “He is confused,” one of them—presumably the one who’d been addressed—began. “Why does he—”

  The speaker raised a crooked arm overhead, a motion more comical than threatening. “He is not asking, no! He is telling! He will guide it, yes, will do what he says!”

  The pronouns were, at this point, impossible for the bewildered humans to follow, but the gnomes obviously got the message. The one who’d been yelled at actually managed to look a bit hurt. “He will obey,” it murmured petulantly.

  The speaker nodded, a hideous gesture that took its head so far back it actually touched between its misshapen shoulder blades, and then stepped through a seamless stone wall without another word. Most of the others went their own way as well, leaving the sulking guide along with a very confused Irrial and Corvis. For several long moments, they stood motionless, unsure of what to say.

  “It comes,” the creature finally snapped at them, “yes, follows swiftly. He will not wait for it, no.” With that it stuck its arm elbow-deep in the wall. “Go, pass through, yes.”

  “What about—?” Irrial began.

  “I’m here.” From a narrow crevice a strange shape emerged, soft and malleable as though extruded from some digestive orifice within the rock. Only as it hit the ground and scuttled toward them did Corvis recognize the two-foot salamander for what it was.

  And it was then, finally, that he realized just what she had done.

  Face pale, he knelt down—ignoring the impatient muttering of their reluctant guide—and lifted the creature to perch upon his shoulder. “We’re dead if they figure out what you did before we’re gone,” he whispered.

  “They won’t,” she assured him quietly. “My previous host is, ah, somewhat indisposed. I walked him off a deep ravine down in the caves. It probably didn’t kill him, but he won’t be talking to anyone else for a good long—”

  “Come!” the gnome shrieked at them. “Or he goes alone, yes!”

  Steeling himself, Corvis stepped toward the wall. Every sense, every instinct, screamed at him to stop, that he was about to walk face-first into a solid barrier. Though he’d intended to stride casually through, he couldn’t keep himself from raising his hands before him, just to be sure.

  It was, he decided later when he’d calmed his mind enough for rational thought, rather like pushing through a curtain of beef fat. It failed, for half a heartbeat, to give at all, and then it oozed around his fingers, his arms, his face and chest. It crept over every inch of his body, pressing deep into his nostrils, the hollows of his mouth and ears. No, not over—through; he felt it sliding inside him, in his throat, his lungs, his gut. He struggled with a panic more primal than any fear he’d ever known, forced his gibbering brain to ignore the sensation of crushing suffocation that threatened to overwhelm him. Despite his efforts to blank his mind, he wondered what would happen if the impatient, spiteful little creature pulled its arm from the rock, allowing the wall to return to its normal state, and he found himself on the edge of hyperventilating despite his seeming inability to breathe.

  And then he was through, standing in darkness as unrelenting as a demon’s heart. Though the viscous stone had felt wet and pasty as it passed over him—through him, and he shuddered at the thought—it hadn’t clung at all. He was no dirtier than when he’d begun, not the slightest bit damp save for his frightened sweat. For a time he simply stood, breathing deep of the stale but welcome cavern air, listening as the salamander on his shoulder did the same. He heard a horrified gasp beside him and knew that Irrial was through as well.

  The air around them was dry, dusty, and very, very still. Wherever they were, it was a long way from any proper passage back to the world of light and wind.

  “It follows.” Corvis jumped at the voice; he’d heard no hint of the gnome’s passage. He took a moment to mutter a spell, sending a gentle light emanating from his left hand. The gnome, presumably quite capable of seeing in the dark, glanced back with some irritation, but he felt his own tension ebb somewhat, and sensed some of the stiffness pass from Irrial’s shoulders as well.

  Though there was, for the moment, nothing to see, nothing around them but an uneven passage of featureless stone. Corvis waved for the gnome to proceed, and the humans fell into step behind.

  “I don’t understand,” Irrial whispered, trusting the echo of their footsteps to keep her voice from their guide’s ears. “I thought you couldn’t inhabit anything with a soul.” She, too, had clearly pieced together what Seilloah had done to ensure the gnomes’ cooperation.

  “That’s correct,” the salamander told her. “I can’t.”

  “But—”

  “If you ever hear someone refer to gnomes as ‘soulless,’ ” Corvis said, “they’re not just saying the bastards are vicious. It’s the gods’ honest truth. I have no idea what the little shits really are or where they came from—nobody does, as far as I know—but they’re even less human than they look.”

  Irrial shivered. Then, “So why—?”

  It was the witch, this time, who anticipated her question. “Because they have a sense of self, and a will of their own. I can inhabit them, but control is another matter entirely. It’s very difficult. I doubt I could have
kept it up for more than a few minutes—not much longer than it took to get them to help us, really.”

  ‘And to deal with the only one who knew what she’d done. The witch’s teeth are showing.’

  It took, at best guess, mere minutes to lose all sense of direction, all track of time. There was nothing but blank stone that had never before been seen by human eyes; narrow, jagged passages that tore at clothes and skin; overhangs that lurked in wait to crack careless skulls. They heard only their own breathing and their own footsteps. Even the echoes were oddly muted, repressed by the weight of the earth overhead.

  At times they climbed, hauling themselves hand over fist up steep inclines that threatened to crumble beneath their weight, dropping them back into the shadowed emptiness; or scrambling down slopes on which standing was impossible, tearing hands and knees when they crawled, thighs and buttocks when they slid. And at other times they passed through solid walls, seeping through as the gnome held the way open, praying that the stone would never prove thicker than their lungs could handle. Corvis didn’t know for certain what would happen if he took a breath while he and the rock slid obscenely through each other, but he did know that he’d rather never find out.

  The air grew stale as they traveled ever deeper, and the barriers between them and the outside world thicker. He struggled not to wheeze with every step, heard Irrial gasping at the slightest exertion. And never once did the gnome show any inclination to rest, or even to slow its headlong pace, either unaware of, or unconcerned with, their discomfort. Corvis started to wonder if battling through the Cephiran patrols might not have been the better option after all.

  But slowly, so gradually he initially failed to notice, the walls spread outward, the echoes of their footsteps grew louder. Forcing his attention from his exhausted feet, Corvis examined his new surroundings and discovered a far wider passage, replete with forks and little side corridors. From within he heard the occasional scuff of movement, the hiss of a whispered word.