by Ari Marmell
"Emdimir?" He'd never heard Irrial's voice reach quite such a pitch as he did in that disbelieving squawk. "After all this, why would you want us to go back east?"
He shrugged. "Near as I can tell, that's where she is."
"Well…" Irrial frowned. "At least it's not all the way back to Rahariem. I'm not sure I could face… What?" she demanded at the sudden chagrin, almost schoolboy-like, on Corvis's face.
"I, uh… I wasn't sure how to tell you, or, well, even if, but…"
"Yes?" It was, perhaps, the most venomous yes Corvis had ever heard.
"Emdimir's fallen, Irrial."
Her freckles appeared rich as ink, so pale did the baroness's face become. "What?"
"A couple of weeks ago, according to the mercenary talk I overheard at the Three Sheets."
"And nobody's done anything? Still nobody's done anything?" Her voice was rising so fast, it threatened to take wing. "What's wrong with everyone? What's wrong with the damn Guilds?"
"Irrial, we should really be more qui-"
"What's wrong with me?" She reached a final, undignified screech, and then slumped in her chair, her tone following suit. "Gods, they keep coming, farther and farther, and I haven't done anything… We'll never free Rahariem now, we-"
"Irrial!" It was Seilloah, not Corvis, who barked that name-a peculiar sound indeed, coming from a feline mouth. "You are working for Rahariem. It's what you've been doing. Don't forget it."
"Right. Sure I have."
"And besides," Corvis added, "you've seen the soldiers. Some of the noble Houses are mobilizing. Yeah, I know, it's not enough, but if the others start to follow their example…"
"Horseshit. They're bloody useless, the whole lot of them are going to die, and you know it." Her hair fell around her face and hung limp for a moment, until she'd finally regained her composure. "All right," she said, looking up once more. "Emdimir, then. For, what was her name? Ellowaine?"
"Ellowaine," he confirmed.
"What," Seilloah asked slowly, "makes you think she's the one?"
Corvis smiled grimly. "Because Ellowaine's a mercenary, Seilloah. And since Emdimir's occupied just now, her being there almost certainly means she's either a prisoner, or…"
He let it dangle, and Seilloah understood.
"Or she's working for Cephira."
Chapter Fifteen
SHELTERED FROM THE WORST of last season's malice by the gentle shade of surrounding slopes, the valleys of the Cadriest Mountains had long since shed their verdant summer garb, wrapping themselves in coats of scarlet and gold for the autumn to come. The air, though still, was refreshingly cool and smelled of tomorrow's gentle fog. After the distant swamp's oppressive breath-and the strenuous journey over many a hillside trail, down forest paths, and on the King's Highway-the vales were a paradise unto themselves.
But if so, it was a paradise only the horses bothered to notice.
Jassion, as always, saw nothing but the distance stretching before them, separating him from the man he hated more than anything in this world. It seemed, at times, as though the baron's obsession was a tangible barrier he carried around him, one that hemmed him off from the rest of the world.
But for the ignoble nobleman, Kaleb cared little. No, he would reserve his concern, and devote attentions that might otherwise have noted the surrounding beauty, to Mellorin.
The young woman had drawn inward since their encounter with the ogre. Her cloak had become a cocoon, a rampart, a security blanket; her horse an island amid an otherwise empty sea. She spoke to her companions only when she must, and even then, despite her obvious anger at him, directed her queries and comments to her uncle. She'd barely met Kaleb's eyes during those many days, though she often snuck quick glimpses when she thought his focus lay elsewhere.
And Kaleb, after many nights of considered deliberation, finally had to admit that he hadn't any idea of how to deal with her. He was a man of many talents, of substantial knowledge-more than either of his companions suspected-but the eccentricities of young women lay beyond his ken.
He dropped back, ostensibly permitting his mount to crop a few mouthfuls of the deep green grass that sprouted in the shade of far more colorful trees, and allowed Jassion to move some distance ahead. Then, startling the horse with an abrupt yank on the reins, he fell into step beside Mellorin's palfrey.
Still, she would not look at him.
"It's beautiful here, isn't it?" he asked, gesturing as though she'd somehow missed the hills that rolled like playful toddlers around the feet of their mountain parents. "A man could certainly understand why even an ogre would make a home here."
Silence, save for the call of circling birds, the bleating of some distant beast.
"Mellorin," he said, far more softly, "are you ever going to speak to me?"
She offered only a soft sniff, and Kaleb had already tensed to tug at the reins and move away, a scowl forming on his lips, before he recognized it as a sound, not of disdain, but muffled grief.
"Would you truly weep for an ogre?" Only the tenderness in his tone prevented the question from becoming accusation.
Finally, finally, she turned her face his way from within the folds of her hood.
"I don't understand," he told her. "I watched you fight, when Losalis's men attacked us."
She nodded. "And it's the fact you and my uncle see no difference that bothers me. Oh, gods…" He watched her clasp hands to her stomach, as though she would physically restrain the emotions threatening to overwhelm her. "Gods, Kaleb, is everyone in this world like him? Is my father just more honest about who he is?"
For a few moments, the sorcerer struggled to form a reply, for he knew what the wrong answer might cost him. "Mellorin," he said, "do you know what happened to your uncle at Rebaine's hands?"
"I know he was a child when Denathere fell. I know he saw my father disappear with my mother."
"Your father's men didn't flee when he did. First, they slaughtered everyone in the Hall of Meeting. Nobles, commoners, men, women… Everyone."
"But-Jassion?"
"The master of Denathere's Scriveners' Guild saved him. He hid Jassion's tiny body with his own." Kaleb shook his head. "My understanding is, old Jeddeg's the only Guildsman of whom Jassion has ever spoken highly.
"Mellorin, your uncle waited in a pit of corpses, and he was conscious for every moment of it. He struggled to breathe beneath the weight of the dead, to keep their blood from his eyes and mouth, for hours, before anyone found him."
Mellorin had gone white as a corpse herself, her lips trembling. "I had no idea…"
"It's not something he shares readily, though anyone who was around in noble circles at the time has heard the tale. Jassion is-broken. I don't think he'll ever be an entirely rational person, though we can certainly hope that once he's caught up with your father, his temper might cool a little."
"And you?" There was no mistaking the bitterness that flavored her words. "What's your excuse?"
"My-?"
"The ogre wasn't a threat to us, Kaleb! I know why Jassion killed it anyway. I want to know why you didn't stop him!"
"I could tell you it wasn't my place," Kaleb said slowly, "that, appearances aside, I'm the servant in this expedition, not the master. I could," he reiterated, raising a finger as her mouth opened to interject, "but I won't."
"Then why?"
"Do you remember what I told you about my magics? About never really having been afraid?"
She nodded.
"I've also grown accustomed to doing things the, ah, expedient way," he admitted. "When you have more power than everyone else, I suppose you start to view people as just problems to be dealt with. I've killed before, Mellorin. Sometimes a lot, and often without much more provocation than your uncle."
"And you're satisfied with this?" she demanded.
He reached across the gap between the horses to rest a hand on her arm. "I used to be," he said. "Now I think I want to do better."
Yes, he thought as M
ellorin tried, and failed, to repress a bashful smile. I believe I am, indeed, doing so much better. THEY STUMBLED UPON THEIR DESTINATION not long after, cresting a shallow rise into the hollow between a pair of great, grass-clad slopes only just too small to be counted among the proper mountains of the Cadriest range.
The valley sprawled wide, a cupped palm full of lush greens and bright golds, undulating where the edges of the hills failed to conform to even curves. A bucolic cottage hid shyly within the shadow of the leftmost hill, and beyond that stood a primitive but sturdy fence of wooden posts. It formed an enclosure sufficient to pen an enormous herd of barnyard animals, or perhaps one abnormally lackadaisical dragon.
It turned out, thankfully, to be the former. Scores of sheep, goats, and the occasional cow wandered about, on both sides of the fence and through an open gate. And it was only those animals that offered the newcomers any sense of scale for the whole tableau.
"You could hold a masquerade ball in that house!" Mellorin murmured after several moments.
Kaleb shrugged. "That's a guest list I'd love to see."
"Are we certain Davro lives here?"
"I'd say so," Jassion answered. "Even if Kaleb did bollix up the spell"-the sorcerer bowed sardonically at that-"I can't imagine any human hermit needing fifteen-foot ceilings."
"I know," she admitted. "It just doesn't seem very-ogrey."
"Are you sure that's not 'ogrish'?" Kaleb asked her. "Perhaps 'ogresque'?"
Mellorin grinned; Jassion looked about ready to strangle something. "Are you two quite finished?"
"Probably not," Kaleb and Mellorin told him in unison.
The baron began marching toward the house, muttering a dozen separate imprecations. With a shared chuckle, the others fell in behind.
"I'm not seeing any smoke from the chimney," Jassion said after allowing himself a moment to overcome his latest snit. "But it's warm enough here that that doesn't prove anything. I'm hoping he's out, so we can catch him unawares, but keep your eyes open."
"I-"
"Shut up, Kaleb."
The rich tang of grasses and turning leaves gave way as they neared, overpowered by the musk of, as Kaleb later put it, "Beef, mutton, wool, and leather in their hoofed larval stage." This close, they could see a few swine as well, rooting in the mud beneath a trough behind the house.
A trough that dripped with the sludgy remnants of a very recent feeding.
The trio drew to an abrupt halt as the implications dawned. Hands dropped to hilts, or rose in readiness to cast.
It was Mellorin who, glancing just the right way through sheer happenstance, saw the spear arcing toward them. She screamed something garbled even as she dived to the soil. The weapon planted itself in the earth nearby, vibrating with a dull thrum, and Kaleb completely understood when he saw her eyes widen in alarm.
It looked very much like someone had just hurled a sharpened tree at them. The spear was two feet longer, and a third again as thick, as that wielded by the ogre in the swamp.
They turned-Mellorin and Jassion picking themselves up from where they'd thrown themselves aside-and there he was, emerging from the house's shadow. The tip of his horn surely cleared fourteen feet, and Mellorin could damn near have stretched out her saddle on one of his arms. In one fist he clutched a second spear, not quite as large as the first, and a weapon that was less a sword than a row of jagged steel teeth protruded from the other.
"All right." His voice was the cry of the earthquake, the deep echo of the mountain hollows. "I knew someone would find me eventually, so let's get this done with. I have cows to milk. You want to tell me what horrible atrocities you're here to avenge, or should we forgo the formalities and just start ruining each other's outfits?"
"Yep, he's definitely been with your father," Kaleb whispered to Mellorin. Then, more loudly, as Jassion began to slide Talon from over his shoulder, "No! Damn it, no steel!" Then, louder, "Davro, we're not here to hurt you."
"Good," the ogre said, his advance never slowing. "Because I'm pretty certain you won't."
"Look," Kaleb continued, backing slowly away, "we just want to talk to you. Just talk!"
"He's not buying it, Kaleb," Jassion growled.
"He's also no good to us dead," the sorcerer reminded him. "My name is Kaleb," he shouted.
"Never heard of you."
"This is Jassion, Baron of Braetlyn."
That, finally, got a reaction. The ogre halted, nostrils flaring. "You, I've heard a great deal about." He cocked his arm, ready to throw, and Jassion tensed to spring aside.
Mellorin stepped forward, shrugging off Kaleb's hand as he reached to stop her, ignoring his hiss of warning.
"My name," she said, holding sword and dagger out to her sides rather than before her, "is Mellorin Rebaine."
And the ogre finally froze-more out of shock, Kaleb surmised, than anything else.
"Mellorin Rebaine?" Perhaps uncertain he'd heard properly, Davro tilted his head, his horn and his shadow making him look very much like a bewildered sundial.
"Yes. I know you've no reason to love my father-"
The ogre unleashed a peculiar barking cough, and the others could only wonder in confusion. It wasn't until he wiped away a tear with the back of his sword-hand that they realized he'd been laughing.
"I see that you've inherited a certain gift for understatement," he said finally.
She nodded. "Among other things. But that's actually why we're here, Davro. Help us, and you might find some measure of retribution."
Davro's brow furrowed, making the great horn quiver. "Perhaps," he said, planting the butt of the spear in the soil beside him, "you'd better come in after all.
"But please use the scraper by the door, would you? I just swept the damn place." "I take it you're no great admirer of your father, then?"
Mellorin sat on the edge of a lumpy mattress that was apparently stuffed with untanned hides and untreated furs, and tried hard to breathe as little as possible. Kaleb perched beside her, offering no sign of his own discomfort save for the occasional flaring of his nostrils, while Jassion stood apart and made no attempt at all to keep the revulsion off his face. Davro himself squatted atop a broad stump that apparently served him as a stool. This close, and undistracted by the rigors of battle, Mellorin noted that each of his hands boasted only four thick fingers, and the deep red of his skin-which she'd previously attributed to sunburn, both on him and the ogre in the swamp-was his normal shade.
Recognizing belatedly that she'd been addressed, she blinked and focused on Davro's face, trying not to gawk at the solitary eye, the towering horn, or the protruding lower tusks. "I, ah, actually know surprisingly few details of my father's life," she admitted. "I didn't even know who he really was until a few years ago, and my mother still thinks me ignorant." Or she did before I ran off with Kaleb and my uncle. "But no, I'm not happy at all with what I do know. Corvis Rebaine was not a good man."
"Again with the understatement," Davro rumbled, accompanied by another bestial chuckle. "So what is this, then? Are you out on a great crusade of justice, to make right your father's wrongs?" The disdain was palpable, thick enough to paint with.
Kaleb frowned. "I'm not certain that her motivations are germane to-"
"No," Mellorin interrupted. "That is, if I can make up for some of what he did, I'll certainly take the opportunity. But it's not why I'm here. I want," she elaborated without waiting to be asked, "to find out how he could do what he did… why he abandoned his family to pick up where he left off after so many years."
"He wanted to protect you from Audriss," Davro protested, even as his expression twisted in what could only be stunned disbelief that he was defending the man.
"Originally, maybe. But he didn't stop there."
"Of course he didn't." The ogre shook his head. "I should have known. You can't believe anything that bastard says. If he told me the sun would rise tomorrow, I'd stock up on torches."
"Right. I want to ask him why."
"I see." The ogre chewed the inside of his lip. Then, "And if you pull the other one, my horn lights up like a firefly."
"What-?" Mellorin sounded almost shocked, and Jassion was scowling darkly, but Kaleb's lips curled into a shallow, knowing smile.
"The thing about your father," Davro said, "is that he had a motive for everything, be it ulterior or just-uh, 'terior,' I suppose. And I don't believe for a second that your apple, however cute and tiny, fell that far from his ugly, ornery tree. Curiosity can make a person do a lot of things, but give up the only life they know? Uh-uh. You don't have a question, Little Rebaine, you have a goal."
And for the first time in Kaleb's experience, he saw the girl's expression twist-not in fury, not in sorrow, but in hatred. "My father," she repeated, "was not a good man. He was a monster. Those lives he didn't destroy…" A single tear threatened to spill from her eye, then evaporated in the searing heat of her emotion. "… he turned into lies. And he never paid for any of it."
"He lost his family," Kaleb pointed out. "He lost you."
"Another crime, Kaleb. Not a punishment."
"All of which is utterly immaterial," Jassion growled, unable to swallow his rising impatience-and, just perhaps, taken aback by the fervor of his niece's hate. Mellorin leaned back, breathing heavily, and allowed the interruption to go unchallenged. "We need your help finding him. Nothing else matters."
"I have no loyalty to Rebaine," Davro said thoughtfully. "And precious little affection for him."
"Then-"
"But I also don't need trouble from the likes of him again, and he knows where I live. I like my solitude; you might've picked up on that. I'm not convinced it's in my best interests to get involved."
"Is that so?" The baron took a single pugnacious step. "Then perhaps, ogre, you might consider what sorts of attention we can call down on your valley! You'd never be left alone again, if you-"
"No!" Kaleb shot to his feet, grasping Jassion's shoulders and spinning him around. "You might try not talking for a change, old boy. You clearly need the practice."