The Warlord's Legacy

by Ari Marmell

  “Oh, Corvis.” A hand shot out, clutching Corvis’s chin with bone-bruising strength. Khanda made a soft tsk, tsk, wiggling the man’s jaw until the joint very nearly separated. “All this time, and you still don’t understand me at all. I don’t need the pages. The words are written down …” He released his grip and jabbed a finger into Corvis’s forehead hard enough for the nail to break skin. “… here. I tried to get what I needed from Audriss first, you know. Would’ve saved me a lot of time. But there wasn’t enough essence left in his skull.” He shrugged. “What are you gonna do?”

  It was rhetorical, of course, but Corvis answered anyway. “Stop you,” he said simply, his confident tone hiding—or so he hoped—the gaping, empty abyss that had opened in his gut. “We’ve been through this, Khanda, a long time ago. You don’t have the willpower to get into my mind.”

  The demon leaned even closer, until their noses nearly touched. “That was, as you say, a long time ago. I’m stronger now. I’m a lot angrier at you. And,” he said, straightening up again, “if you prove too stubborn, I’ll just make you watch while I do all sorts of unpleasant things to Mellorin.”

  Corvis’s breath slammed into a brick wall at the base of his throat. His face, corpse-pale already, went whiter than the helm he’d once worn.

  “Oh, my. Did I not tell you she was here? I’m so sorry; how utterly thoughtless of me. Still, perhaps it won’t be too unpleasant for her,” Khanda continued lightly. “She’s really very fond of me. She might even enjoy it, as long as I don’t tell her you’re watching.”

  He never realized the scream was his, never remembered lunging at the hell-spawned monstrosity. All Corvis knew was that suddenly he hung in the air, feet kicking, Khanda’s fist about his throat. The demon was standing now, and a missing lock of hair suggested that Corvis’s speed must have surprised even him.

  But it was all for naught, all just another dance at the end of Khanda’s strings. For in that moment of mindless, bestial rage, Corvis had not been, could not be, thinking of anything else.

  And with all thought discarded, all effort and concentration gone, Khanda had slipped easily into his mind like a worm eating through an apple.

  He felt the obscene presence sliding inside him, a slick and slimy thing, a tongue running across his thoughts, tasting his dreams. Images flickered, reflections of the recent past, and all were tainted and rotting at the edges where Khanda had touched them.

  /Really, Corvis./ The voice reverberated in his mind, so much worse than the phantom echoes of the past years, eclipsing his thoughts entirely. /Another noblewoman? Since you didn’t prove up to conquering, are you trying to fuck your way to the throne now? Or do you just find that the inbreeding makes them more docile?/

  Corvis could only gurgle. Even if he could have forced the words past his tongue, his mind thrashed too violently to form them.

  More movement, more images. A nauseating stench began to permeate his memories, corrupting even the most pleasant into something foul, something better forgotten. /The dog? Seilloah’s the dog?/ Corvis’s head felt as though it would burst as it filled with a cruel and hysterical laughter. /Well, I always said she was a bitch, didn’t I?/

  On it went, and on, farther and farther back. Through Corvis’s recent travels; the life he’d made and the plans he’d pursued as part of Rahariem’s Merchants’ Guild. And farther still, through his nightmarish experiences in Tharsuul, land of the Dragon Kings, and his all-consuming eldritch studies—not to empower his new plans, as he’d maintained and even believed, but as a means of escaping the pain of Tyannon’s rejection.

  He would have threatened, demanded, cajoled—even, gods help him, begged for it to stop. But he could not. Khanda hadn’t even left him that.

  Until … /Ahhh. There it is! And just in time. If I had to relive any more of your pathetic existence, I might just vomit. And you call my home ‘hell’ …/

  Corvis saw the words flash across his mind, one at a time, and Khanda peeled them off like scabs. Gradually, inevitably, the entire spell began to form, until the demon was but a single passage from the end.

  The scream, when it came, sounded in Corvis’s mind and ears both, threatening to shatter hearing and sanity alike. A geyser of pain erupted from his gut even as he fell to the street, a motionless rag doll.

  Khanda stood, his body rigid, jaw agape in astonished agony. A mask of blood and ruined, splinter-coated flesh peered over his shoulder from behind, and the wavy blade of a demon-forged flamberge jutted obscenely from his ribs.

  “I don’t know precisely what you are,” Jassion rasped, viciously twisting Talon in the wound. “But I heard enough.”

  The world held its breath. Corvis gawped up at the two men he hated most in the world; at Irrial standing behind them, her hands raw and bleeding where she’d dug Jassion free; and Seilloah slinking at her feet, one paw twisted at an impossible angle and clutched painfully to her chest.

  Slowly, Khanda looked down at the length of hellish steel that had skewered him like a haunch of pork. And then, finally, he spoke.

  “Ow.”

  Though it clearly pained him, he twisted at the waist, widening his own wound as he moved, and jabbed two fingers into the ragged flesh that had once been Jassion’s nose.

  The baron shrieked, stumbling back with both hands to his face, leaving the sword sticking clear through Khanda’s torso. And Khanda himself could only laugh at the stunned consternation in his enemies’ eyes.

  “I have complete control over my body, Corvis, save for those limitations the summoning spell imposed on me. Why would I possibly choose to make myself mortal? Don’t you understand, you cretins? You cannot kill me!” He extended a hand as though tossing a ball, and Jassion staggered farther—but only a few steps. He levitated for but an instant, clearing the earth by only a few inches before he fell once more. And for the first time, Khanda looked genuinely concerned.

  “No.” He spun, and there was Corvis, standing once more. Sunder slammed hard into Khanda’s ribs, cracking bone and sending the demon hurtling aside. “But it looks like we can hurt you, doesn’t it? Seilloah!”

  The dog looked up sharply, peered at the rubble toward which he was pointing. She needed no more than the long years they’d worked and fought side-by-side to figure out what he was asking, and she nodded. Again the stalks burst from the earth, this time lifting the heaviest of the stones and planks.

  Beside the road, features now twisted in an agonized rage, Khanda was rising once again.

  “Jassion!” Corvis called. “It’s the Kholben Shiar! Their magics must interfere with his!” And again he pointed, not at the rubble Seilloah’s plants were hefting but at the hard-packed earth below.

  Please, gods, make him understand!

  And though he twitched visibly, perhaps in frustration at the thought of taking orders from Corvis Rebaine, he obviously did. Jassion leapt the intervening detritus and slammed into Khanda before he could find his balance. The baron grasped Talon’s hilt and twisted, forcing demonic blade and demonic body downward. They toppled, the tip of the Kholben Shiar plunging into the earth. Jassion leaned on it, thrusting with all the strength he had left until it slid as far as it would go, the crossbar lying flush with Khanda’s skin, staking him to the road.

  The plants slackened their grip. Wood and stone rained down to bury Khanda in a makeshift cairn—and would have buried Jassion as well, had he not anticipated what was coming and rolled desperately aside. Obviously, and perhaps understandably, Seilloah held a grudge.

  He rose, somehow directing both an infuriated glare at Corvis and a wistful, longing look where his weapon lay interred.

  “Is he dead?” Irrial asked shakily.

  “You heard him,” Corvis said, turning away. “We can’t kill him. That probably won’t hold him for more than a few minutes.” He began to run, but managed only a few paces before his aches and bruises and burning lungs reined him back to an unsteady, stiff-legged walk. The others fell quickly into step b
ehind him.

  “Can we possibly get far enough in a few minutes?” Irrial wondered aloud.

  “That depends—on him.” Corvis halted abruptly, raised Sunder’s edge to hover within inches of the startled Jassion’s throat.

  “Where’s Mellorin?”

  FOR LONG MINUTES THE STREET WAS STILL, the nighttime silence broken only by the creak of settling rubble and the fearful cries of distant villagers too terrified to leave their homes. Low-hanging clouds began to thin, moon and stars peeking out to see if the chaos had ended.

  A peculiar snapping, combining the whistle of a sharp wind with the crackling of a bonfire, sounded a few yards down the road. The dust swirled as though kicked by a giant invisible foot, and a shape—human, feminine, lost in slumber—materialized in the dirt. It would have astonished anyone watching, had there been anyone watching, but the street, and the surrounding windows, were empty.

  Again, silent moments passed. The debris shifted, stone screeching on stone, wood breaking, and something that had once appeared human rose from the wreckage with a scream to shame the damned. Limbs hung at agonizing angles, splintered bone protruding through rents in the flesh. Blood caked its skin, flowed from a hundred tiny wounds. From its body, unmarred by the impact of the rubble, protruded the Kholben Shiar.

  Shattered hands, aquiver not so much with agony as rage, clutched at the blade. He could feel the insatiable hunger within the metal, a power that flowed from the same infernal wellspring as his own. He bit back a hiss of revulsion at its touch, all the while promising Rebaine and Jassion a thousand deaths.

  He’d expected that the Kholben Shiar could likely hurt him, even if they could not kill; known that the magics of other demons, no matter what form contained them, would cause him pain. But until he’d felt the weapon sliding through him, piercing mind and body, pinning him to the earth, he’d not truly understood what that meant. Khanda had not worn his human form long enough to comprehend mortal anguish, and nothing—not his various minor wounds, not even the torment of Nenavar’s ire—had prepared him for an agony the equal of any found in hell.

  Inch by inch, fingers shredding themselves even further against the edge only to form anew, he pressed back upon the blade, driving it out. Finally he felt the pressure and the pain ease, heard Talon clatter to the ground behind him, and he gasped in very human relief.

  On legs that bowed like saplings, that should never have supported his weight, the inhuman creature in human form staggered from the cairn. With each stride his body twitched, reshaped by the demon’s will. Step, and a leg ceased bending, bones knitting together and kneecap sliding into place. Step, and an arm snapped back into its socket, its fingers straightening with a series of pops. Step, and the blood fell from his face, revealing not the demonic visage that Corvis had recognized, but the more mundane features that had borne the name Kaleb.

  But though the greatest wound, the mark of Talon itself, had closed, it did not fade entirely. For all his control over his corporeal body, he lacked the inner strength to finish the job. Soon, yes, when he’d had the opportunity to rest, to recover from the unexpected torment. But not now.

  Leaving the weapon where it lay—hoping that some villager might be stupid enough to come out and try to claim it, offering him an excuse to tear someone apart—Khanda moved along the road, following the scents of fear and pain and very familiar blood. Past several houses and a smattering of shops he walked, until he came to a large wooden structure with a great hole battered in the side.

  Subtle, Corvis. Do you even know how to use a door?

  He didn’t need to enter. The scent wafting from within was more than enough to identify it as a stable. Nor did he need to examine the hoofprints that emerged, for he could literally see the magic rising off them like early-morning mists. Clearly, his prey meant to put as much distance between them as possible. Wise of them, that. Futile, but wise.

  With a deliberate, unhurried pace, he returned to the wreckage, drumming two fingertips on his lips as he thought. He’d misjudged Jassion, assumed that the baron’s burning hate would blind him to all else. Of course, he hadn’t intended that Jassion even hear his words to Corvis. He’d thought the baron safely unconscious, if not dead. Still, it was a mistake that had cost him, and—though he’d never have admitted it—shamed him. Once, Khanda had been a far better judge of mortal souls. His long association with, and his smoldering anger at, the Terror of the East had obviously clouded that judgment. Not again. His most important ally remained, and of her he would make absolutely certain.

  And there she was. Khanda jerked to a stop, staring at the ground beyond the rocks that had imprisoned him. He’d not seen her when he first emerged, too distracted by his pain and fury, but there she lay, asleep, not half a dozen yards from where he’d been buried.

  Ah, Corvis, you big softy. You went after her, didn’t you? For that was the true nature of the spell he’d cast upon her when she first joined him in his travels. Not to protect her, as he’d allowed both her and Jassion to believe, but to conjure her to his side should her father come too close, ensuring they had no opportunity to reconcile.

  Wincing, he knelt and lifted Talon by the hilt. He could feel the weapon squirming, and the skin of his own palm crawled at its touch. It had not been forged for his kind; its shape did not change, for he had no soul to taste. For his own sake, Khanda would have gladly left it behind.

  But Kaleb would not have, and for a little longer, Kaleb remained essential.

  Clutching the Kholben Shiar in one hand, gathering the ragged remnants of his clothes with the other, Kaleb moved to her. He knelt, removing the enchantment that kept her in slumber, and then collapsed to the road beside her, waiting for her to awaken.

  “OH, GODS! KALEB, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?”

  Only moments had passed before he felt her hands upon his shoulders, heard the horror in her voice. She didn’t even ask how she’d gotten here; she was more alarmed at finding him coated in blood than in finding herself sprawled in the street rather than upon the straw pallet where she’d slept. Feigning exhaustion—well, feigning part of it—Kaleb allowed her to help him up, slumped in her arms as he pointed with one shaking hand. “There,” he whispered. “I think … we’ll be safe there.”

  The restaurant’s porch and a portion of its outer wall had collapsed during the battle, but the rest of the squat structure appeared solid—and it had long since emptied itself of fleeing, panicked peasants. Leaning heavily on Mellorin, he limped and staggered inside and up the steps to the first empty room. Talon clattered to the floor by the doorway as he lurched toward the bed, while she darted back downstairs to gather supplies from the kitchen. She was gone only moments.

  Forcing himself to remain patient, he allowed her to bathe his face with a wet cloth, cleaning away the last of the dried blood and grime, and to bandage those wounds that still showed in his flesh. At times he groaned, even crying out as he clutched at her. Once or twice he heard her whispered prayers to Sannos the Healer, and had to suppress an instinctive sneer.

  Finally she was finished. Kaleb lay flat upon the mattress, stripped to the waist save for various bandages, his entire body damp—and, in a few places, rubbed raw by Mellorin’s heartfelt but unskilled ministrations. She sat beside him, eyes clouded by worry and unshed tears, holding his hand in hers. Her hair hung across her face, matted and disheveled from sleep, and flecks of dried blood speckled the tunic and leggings she’d worn ever since collapsing beneath the strain of Kaleb’s spells.

  “What happened?” she asked him again.

  “I … I managed to cast one final spell, to call you to me. I didn’t want to put you in danger,” he said, as though begging her to understand. “But there was nobody else.”

  “Who did this to you, Kaleb?”

  “Your … Mellorin, I’m sorry. It was your father.”

  “What?” Her voice had gone suddenly small.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, sitting up. “I never meant it to g
o like this. You—you were so exhausted, from my divination spells. We thought we’d let you sleep while we explored the town.”

  “Without me?” She sounded so terribly hurt, it was all he could do not to burst out laughing.

  “Nothing was supposed to happen, Mellorin. We just wanted to get the lay of the land, see if we could figure out where he was staying, who might be with him. The idea was to learn everything we could, then come back and make our plans.

  “But … Your uncle.”

  She nodded her understanding. “He wouldn’t wait.”

  “He was like a wild animal. As soon as we spotted your father, that was it. I should have known better, should never have let him come …”

  “It’s all right,” she told him softly—and then the implications finally struck home. “Where is Jassion?”

  “Gone.” Kaleb looked deep into her eyes. “He went with them. They must have done something to him; he wasn’t himself.” Carefully, remembering to limp, he rose and moved past her, toward the door. He bent with an audible grunt to lift Talon, extended it hilt-first toward the hesitant young woman.

  “No, I couldn’t …”

  “You can give it back to him, if you feel the need, once we’ve freed him. But it’s just the two of us now, Mellorin. And we’re stronger with it.”

  Trembling fingers closed about the hilt, and the Kholben Shiar shifted, folding in on itself. In seconds Mellorin held a brutal, thick-bladed knife with a wide guard, a weapon equally suited for parrying a larger blade or gutting an unsuspecting foe. A street fighter’s weapon.

  “I guess the formal training didn’t take,” he joked with a wince.

  For several heartbeats she examined the blade, and then resolutely placed it on the floor beside her and stepped forward to take his hands, guiding him back to bed. Allowing her to seat him, he gazed up at her.

  “Mellorin …” He paused, cleared his throat. “If this is too much, if you want to give up, I couldn’t blame—”