The Warlord's Legacy

by Ari Marmell

  Days matured into weeks, and Khanda did not appear. Every waking moment became an exercise in paranoia, the travelers watching over their shoulders, jumping at every sound, hands dropping to weapons if a horse so much as snorted. Wounds refused to heal, thanks to the constant tension in their muscles and the pounding of horseflesh beneath them.

  Even worse, Seilloah had never returned to that camp amid the rolling, rocky hills, and after hours spent in searching, they’d been forced to move on. Corvis felt as though he’d left one piece of himself behind in that hollow, and another, even larger, in the lonely farmhouse where he’d all but abandoned his daughter. He wondered, on occasion, if very much of him was left to lose.

  Now, only a few days shy of their goal, they’d stopped in yet another small town, taken rooms for the night in yet another small inn. It was bustling without being too packed, laborers crowding the benches and tables, barmaids wending their way from one throng to the next. It smelled neither of food nor drink but of autumn leaves. Corvis wondered idly how they managed it, but didn’t care enough to ask.

  Mellorin had always loved the autumn, as a child.

  Jassion sat halfway around the room, uninterested in conversation. He idly examined the blade he’d purchased in Orthessis to replace Talon, checking it for flaws that might somehow have escaped his notice during a dozen prior, similar inspections. Corvis couldn’t help but remember another tavern, another common room, another sword, another conversation. He couldn’t decide if it felt like yesterday or another lifetime.

  Irrial, it seemed, had noticed the same similarities. “It sort of feels like we’re running around in circles, doesn’t it?” she asked from across the table.

  “You’ve no idea,” he told her bitterly. “He’s done it to me again, Irrial.”

  “What are you …?”

  “Khanda.” Hatred dripped like venom from the name. “Another war. Another threat to my family. And Khanda lurking around its edges, hiding behind whoever started it, drawing me out. Using me for what I have, or what I know. I’m tired enough of battle—I’m bloody sick of being led into battle by the nose!” He couldn’t hold his hands entirely steady as he took a slug of a drink he’d forgotten he’d ordered; foamy suds sloshed over the tankard’s rim, dribbled down his fingers. “I’m tired of seeing the wrong people die.”

  Irrial furrowed her brow at that, and Corvis was certain some biting comment was on its way, but it never materialized. Instead, “You’re really worried about her, aren’t you?”

  “She’s my daughter,” he said simply. “I’d die for her.”

  “I believe you would, at that.” She sounded amazed, though whether it was at his assertion, or at herself for believing his assertion, Corvis couldn’t guess. They sat, each drinking, each contemplating the other.

  “I don’t understand you, Corvis,” she finally told him. “But I think I understand Tyannon a little better. There really are two different people inside that soul of yours, aren’t there?”

  “I’m not sure I follow.” Or maybe you’re just going somewhere I don’t want to follow. Postponing her reply, he waved over one of the barmaids, barked an order for another flagon and more bread and cheese. It was gooey, salty stuff, that last, but after weeks of dried meats, it’d do.

  Irrial waited, her face blank, until the woman had come and gone, returned with the order and gone once more. She leaned in, so she might make herself heard over the growing crowd without shouting.

  “You so clearly care about Mellorin—about all your family. I know you’re worried sick about Seilloah, I saw your concern for our brethren in the Rahariem resistance. I think … I think you even truly care about me, despite the last few months. I know you certainly used to.”

  “Well, gods be—”

  “I’m not done.”

  A pause. “Sorry.”

  “I’ve seen all that, Corvis. I’ve seen that you’re not just a monster. And I know that you care for the people of Imphallion as a whole—or you think you do, at any rate. You’re helping them now, even if you also have personal reasons. You told me once that everything you’ve done, you did for them, and I think part of you really means that.”

  Corvis swirled his mug until it sloshed. “Um, thank you?”

  “And yet,” she said, her tone growing hard once more, “you have no trouble at all wading to your goal through rivers of blood. Slaughtering families, hanging body parts like bunting.

  “Consorting with demons.”

  “It wasn’t like I wanted to—”

  “But you did. It doesn’t matter if you wanted to—you were willing to. You know what I think, Corvis?” she asked, gesturing with an empty fork.

  “I’m not certain I want to,” he confessed.

  “Too bad. I think that you’re so disdainful of people as a whole that you forget—that you let yourself forget—that each one is a person. You talk about Imphallion like it was a single entity, because that’s how you see it; it’s the only way you can give a damn about it. You’ve added it to your list of ‘worthwhile individuals,’ and everyone else can hang. I think that you’re so focused on those few you care about, it’s never even occurred to you that everyone else is just like them. I think you’re so wounded, inside, that you only have so much sympathy, and the more people you’re dealing with, the thinner that sympathy is spread.

  “You care about people, yes. Deeply, passionately. But only some people—because nobody else is a person to you at all. And to pretend that you do what you do for ‘the people,’ rather than the handful of souls that mean a damn to you, is the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”

  Corvis found himself staring into his tankard, clasping it with all ten fingers for fear that he might otherwise lash out. “And even if …” He cleared his throat, coughed twice. “If all this is true, why point it out? What difference could it possibly make?”

  “Because I also think …” It was her turn to pause. Her voice had gone soft, softer than he’d heard since they left Rahariem. He wanted to look up, to see if her face had softened as well, and found he didn’t dare. “Because I think Tyannon was right. I think you could be Cerris, instead of Corvis Rebaine. I’d like you to be. But I don’t think you know how, and I don’t think any of us are ever going to be able to show you.”

  By the time Corvis forced himself to raise his head, she was gone from the table. And for just an instant, as the tavern disappeared beneath the memory of a flower garden behind a dilapidated old church, he couldn’t tell if it was Irrial or Tyannon who was walking away.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  AS THREE DUSTY TRAVELERS MOUNTED the broad stone steps, the guards at the door—and there were guards at the door, now, accompanying the ubiquitous clerk—moved to block their path. Jassion marched in the lead, poised, arrogant, and without visible trace of the hideous injury he would sport until the end of his days. Behind him trailed two figures clad in the costly but relatively bland garb of servants. One, the woman, held the arm of the elder man, who took small, hesitant steps as though injured or ill.

  He was, in fact, gritting his teeth and straining not in pain, but in concentration, trying to keep three separate images affixed firmly in his mind. It would have been easier had he not still suffered lingering aftereffects of Khanda’s attack; had his soul not been wringing its hands inside his body, wracked with fear for Mellorin and Seilloah; had he been at his best.

  But only a little easier, for all that.

  While Jassion spoke in low but commanding tones to the soldiers, Corvis glanced upward, peering intently at the sky through the illusion that masked his features. The uppermost reaches of the Hall of Meeting blended with the overcast skies, dark grey on darker. Only a smattering of windows and, in a few instances, the crows and sparrows perching along the roof’s edge, made the looming structure visible against the clouds.

  “I’m really not comfortable with this, Corvis,” Irrial whispered in his ear.

  “They can’t see our real faces,” he
reminded her.

  “And that worked out so well for us last time?”

  He shrugged. “We’ve just spent weeks in the saddle. I’m not recovered from one of the top five worst experiences in my life. My head feels like a sack of meal left out in the rain, and my body like there’s a pair of ogres waltzing up and down my spine. You’re lucky I’m lucid; you want new ideas, go pester someone else.”

  “I suppose that’s fair.” Then, “Only one of the top five?”

  “My years have been blessed with an astonishing variety of discomfort.”

  They didn’t hear what Jassion said to the guards, but eventually he waved them forward. The soldiers stepped aside, and the trio walked with measured tread into the seat of Imphallion’s mercantile government.

  “It’s disgraceful!” Jassion hissed as they walked, his tone still vaguely nasal. He kept his voice low despite his clear agitation, lest any of the many scurrying pages and couriers overhear. “War with Cephira, attacks by—ah, ‘Rebaine’—and for all their added security, the guards just took me at my word and let us in!”

  “Well, you are who you said you were,” Irrial pointed out.

  “They didn’t know that!”

  “We’re pretty far from the front. And it’s not as though they expect You-Know-Who to walk in the front door.”

  “It’s disgraceful,” he muttered again. “If a soldier has a job to do, he should do it! I’d have these men flogged if they worked for me.”

  Corvis, feeling that Jassion’s sense of propriety was perhaps misplaced at the moment—particularly since they were the security breach the guards’ negligence permitted—chose not to say anything to get the baron even more riled. He did, however, roll his eyes at Irrial, who rewarded him, oh so briefly, with that amused curl of her lips he’d not seen in far too long.

  Through familiar corridors, up familiar stairs—and even, once, past a stain of what was probably familiar blood—they wended their way. It looked much as it had the last time they’d been here, save for the presence of many more guards. Corvis began to have serious doubts about their plan, unsure if they could win free should it go wrong. But as he had no better notions to offer, and as it was already too late even if he had, he kept his misgivings private.

  The top floor, and back to that one particular office guarded by half a dozen sentries. Jassion made as if to march right past them, until they steadfastly refused to clear the way. With a full-blown aristocratic glower that Corvis wasn’t certain was feigned, he announced, “The Baron Jassion of Braetlyn, and associates, to see Guildmistress Salia Mavere. Right now.”

  “Have you an appointment?” the guard asked, just as impressed with this strutting noble as he’d been with all the others he’d thrown out.

  “No.”

  “Then—”

  “Just announce us. She’ll see us.”

  The guard didn’t bother to hide his sigh, and Corvis feared he’d have to physically restrain Jassion from bludgeoning the man to death. After a few deep breaths, however, the baron calmed himself, and the soldier indicated the door with a shallow tilt of his head. One of the other men cracked that door open and stepped inside. They could just hear the voices, here in the hall, and while they couldn’t make out a single word, the surprise in one of those voices was more than a little evident.

  The guard reappeared, shaking his head in astonishment. “She’ll see them,” he told his commander, now sounding as surprised as Mavere had.

  “She—what? But …”

  “She said she’ll see them.”

  The officer was visibly crestfallen. “All right,” he grumbled. Then, before Jassion took half a step, “but not under arms.”

  “My companions are not armed,” he replied. “Search them if you like. As for me …” He raised his hand, slowly so as not to cause undue alarm, to touch the hilt protruding over his shoulder. “I’ll not be relinquishing my sword, no. Ask the Guildmistress. I doubt she’ll explain why, but she’ll assure you it’s all right.”

  Corvis did his best to look meek, face aimed at the floor so nobody would see him grinding his teeth. Just seeing the blade on Jassion’s back was enough to make him want to …

  The guard returned to the office looking even more dubious, and came out looking even more perplexed. “She says it’s all right.”

  The officer grunted something impolite and stepped aside. Without so much as a nod of acknowledgment, Jassion strode past, Corvis and Irrial following close behind.

  “Baron Jassion?” Salia asked, rising from behind her desk. “I have to admit, I’m a bit concerned to learn you’re here. Why—?”

  It all happened at once, between one breath and the next. Irrial firmly shut the door behind her. Jassion bowed low before the Guildmistress, far lower than was his wont. And Corvis, allowing his concentration to lapse and the illusions to drop, sprinted across the room like a starving leopard. His fist closed around Sunder’s hilt, yanking it from the scabbard across Jassion’s back—and gods, had that taken long hours of arguing, and many oaths on Jassion’s part, before Irrial convinced him to place the weapon, however briefly, in the baron’s care. In the heartbeats it took him to vault the desk, sending a flurry of parchment in all directions, the Kholben Shiar had shifted once more from Jassion’s two-hander to Corvis’s axe, the blade of which now gently kissed the priestess’s throat. Corvis wasn’t certain whether he, or Salia herself, was more disturbed by the weapon’s eager quiver.

  “If you so much as raise your voice above a whisper,” Corvis warned her, “the Blacksmiths’ Guild will be, ah, let’s say, looking for a new head.”

  Her glare was sharper than Sunder itself, her face as pallid as those parchments drifting slowly to the floor, her jaw clenched tight enough to bend raw iron—but she nodded shallowly.

  “I’d apologize for the discourtesy,” Jassion told her, moving to stand before the desk. The bandage tied across his face, discolored where humors occasionally seeped from his ravaged nose, was now clearly visible. “But in all honesty, I’d prefer to let him kill you.”

  “Jassion, what …?” Even at a whisper, her fury and her confusion—and yes, her fear—were palpable.

  “I do not,” he said harshly, “appreciate being used, Mavere.”

  “I don’t know what you’ve done to him,” she began, eyes flickering to the man at her side, “what spells you’ve cast on him, but—”

  “No spells, Salia. No tricks, no sorcery. You said that you had knowledge of magic when we last spoke. Take a good look at him.”

  She shrugged, wincing as the movement scraped the skin of her throat across the blade. “Wouldn’t help. Illusions I can detect; they’re visible. If I could sense spells of the mind, I’d have discovered all your puppets in Guild ranks long ago.” Her voice seemed almost wistful at that.

  Corvis frowned, but it made sense.

  “And I cannot,” she added, “think of anything other than the most potent magics that would inspire Lord Jassion to cooperate with you.”

  “You should have thought harder then,” Irrial interjected, sliding the latch home on the door and stepping into the center of the room, “before starting all this.”

  The Guildmistress looked from one to the other, saw no pity anywhere. Corvis could see in her expression that she was weighing the odds if she called for the guards.

  “You’d be dead before your voice reached them,” he warned. Her shoulders slumped.

  “Where’s Kaleb?” she demanded.

  Jassion smiled shallowly. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you—oh. Perhaps you mean Khanda?”

  So stiffly did Salia tense that Corvis had to yank Sunder back a hair to avoid cutting her. “How did—?”

  “What were you thinking, you stupid bitch?” Irrial and Corvis exchanged worried glances, concerned that Jassion’s own temper might alert the guards, but so far the baron was managing—albeit barely—to keep his voice low. “How could you use me that way? How could you unleash something like that crea
ture on your own people?”

  “I assure you, Khanda is completely under control.”

  “Not for long,” Corvis told her. Then, at her expression, “You asked what could inspire Jassion and me to work together? That’d do it, wouldn’t you think?”

  “It’s not possible. Jassion, whatever Rebaine’s told you, it’s a lie. He—”

  “Is more convincing than you. Especially given what I’ve seen recently.” Then, though it clearly cost him, he forced his voice, his expression, to calm. “Mavere, I only saw the aftermath of the Twins’ rampage through Mecepheum, but you were present for all of it. You’ve seen what creatures of such power can do—and you’ve seen how little we can do to stop them. We know some of what Khanda plans, and I assure you, if he succeeds you’ll wish you’d died back then.”

  “It’s a lie,” she insisted stubbornly.

  “Perhaps you’ll want to ask Nenavar about that?” Corvis suggested. Again, standing so close, he couldn’t possibly miss the tension that ran across Salia’s body like a cold shiver. She knew the name, all right.

  “It’s he who assured me that the bonds on the summoning were unbreakable. And I’ve seen him put Kaleb—Khanda—in his place. Besides, even if I wanted to, I’ve no means of just calling him here. I’d have to send a messenger, and I doubt you’re willing to sit in this office for the hours it would take for a reply.”

  “I can be surprisingly patient,” Corvis told her. “So can Irrial. Jassion might be a problem, I imagine.” He ignored the bandage-wrapped glare. “But that’s all moot, since you’re not sending a messenger. You’re going to take us to him.”

  Her laugh was a forced and feeble thing. “And why would I do that?”

  “Because even walking through the halls or the streets, we can kill you before any help arrives,” Jassion snarled at her. “And if you won’t help us, there’s no reason not to kill you right now for what you’ve done!”

  “More to the point,” Corvis said, shaking his head in exasperation, “no matter how certain you think you are that we’re lying to you, you can see Jassion and me standing here, working together, telling you the same thing. And you’re worried that we just might be telling you the truth. Tell me, Salia, would Verelian be served by his own priestess unleashing a demon in the mortal world? Are you willing to go down in history as the next Audriss—assuming there even is a history after Khanda gets through with us?