by Ari Marmell
He felt his head sag, and pressed the thumb and forefinger of his free hand to the bridge of his nose. Much as he might have liked someone to talk to, a part of him was glad that he was alone for the moment-that there was nobody present to witness his weakness. Or at least, a faint chuckle in the back of his thoughts reminded him, nobody real. Moving from the window, he slumped hard in the nearby chair, unwilling even to expend the effort to reach the thin and lumpy mattress.
Corvis couldn't remember the last time he'd been so weary, so weighted down and oppressed by his own body-although, he admitted with a rueful grin, that might just be due to failing memory. No physical exhaustion, this, easily solved by a day or two of relaxation, a few nights' rejuvenating slumber. Rather, he felt himself sinking, suffocating, in the mire of a mental and emotional fatigue so thick that it bordered on despair. Not since the darkest days of the Serpent's War had he so desperately wanted the world to just go away for a while, to cease its incessant demands. He dreaded the thought of returning to Mecepheum's morass of Guilds and Houses and politics and corruption, and in the deepest recesses of his soul, a voice-his own voice-beseeched him to give it all up. Forget the mystery, forget the conspiracy, forget Imphallion. It's not your responsibility; it never was. So what if someone has murdered in your name? It's a name that cannot possibly be hated any more than it is already. Why continue? Why not find a home somewhere, far from the Cephiran border, and make a life from what years remain?
He knew his answers, of course: His sense of the greater good, tarnished and frayed though it may have been, so rigid and uncompromising that it had allowed him to murder thousands that he might save millions. His loyalty to companions who had fought and bled at his side. His concern for a family he had lost yet still loved. And, he conceded, his own pride, a towering pillar of fire that refused to be doused.
But for a brief time that evening, had anyone asked Corvis Rebaine if those reasons were sufficient, if they made the struggle worth continuing, he could not truthfully have answered yes.
And it was there, at the nadir of his inner pit of exhaustion and desolation, that the gods elected, in their own peculiar way, to yank him out of it.
Corvis was standing up from his chair, mind and muscle groaning with the effort, before it occurred to him that the heavy knock reverberating through the door didn't sound like it came from Irrial's modest fist. He straightened, frowning thoughtfully at the door. No safety there. He hadn't thought to twist the lock as he'd staggered in-not that it really mattered, since both latch and door itself were flimsy enough for an angry rabbit to take down, given a sufficient running start. He thought about keeping silent, but that probably wouldn't put anyone off more than a few moments.
So he stepped, not to the door, but back to the window. You're being paranoid, Corvis. It's probably just the proprietor. Still, only once he'd hefted Sunder from where it leaned against the wall below the sill did he call out, inviting whoever it was to enter.
The door drifted open with a melodramatic creak, revealing a looming shape in the flickering lanternlight of the hall beyond. And Corvis, blood pounding in his ears, old agonies coursing through his limbs, could only think to say, "I'm rather stunned that you were able to keep calm enough to refrain from kicking the damn thing in."
"I figured there was no need to rush," said the Baron of Braetlyn. "I've been looking forward to this for such a very long time."
Chapter Nineteen
"Are you certain?"
The sorcerer's glare, despite the drooping and exhausted lids that muffled it, could well have flayed the hide from an elephant at fifty paces.
"It's a fair question," Jassion protested. "You've been running on the edge of collapse for days now. We can't afford a mistake at this point."
"Oh? Used up your budget for them, have you?"
"If you're just going to stand there being insulting…"
"Not at all, old boy. I can accomplish a great deal while being insulting." Then, with a tired sigh, Kaleb rose from where he'd knelt. "Yes, Jassion, I'm quite sure. I was sure yesterday. I was sure the day before that. I was sure the day before-well, I think even you can spot the pattern, yes?"
"Will you-?"
"Yes. It's not an easy spell to cast once, let alone on subsequent days like this. But yes, it was worth it, and yes, I'm sure he's quite nearby now-the spell tells me as much-and yes, I'll be ready. I recover quickly. Get out there and start asking around. Learn where he's staying, if anyone's with him. I'll be good as new by the time you get back."
"I still think-"
"Don't. You're not good at it. You will come back and get me, Jassion." It was clearly an argument they'd had a time or two before. "I don't care what sort of opportunity you think you have. I don't care if you find him unarmored, unconscious, and nailed to a stump, you will come get me before you try anything!"
"Fine."
"And don't sulk. It's unattractive."
It was the baron's turn to glare, but his features swiftly softened. "Mellorin?"
"She'll be fine. The spell's a greater strain on the focus than the caster, but she just needs a good long rest."
Jassion frowned. "She doesn't have time for a 'long' rest."
"Sure she does. In fact, I've already cast a second enchantment to ensure that she won't wake up for some time. Not until after we've done what we need to do."
"Oh?" Jassion's brow furrowed. "You think that's wise, Kaleb?"
"I thought you'd be happy keeping her out of harm's way."
"I am. I'm just surprised that you're willing to do it. And just how do you plan to explain to her, after she's come all this way and made it possible to find the bastard, that you decided she didn't need to be there for the end of it?"
"Tell me something, old boy: Do you really have any intention of trying to take Rebaine alive? Really?"
"Well…"
"Exactly. I'm pretty sure I can explain putting her to sleep a lot more readily than I could justify anything she'd see in the next few hours."
And I'll need her loyalty when all's said and done, he added silently.
"Good to know your relationship is based on honesty and trust," Jassion grumbled. But he made no further argument, saying instead, "I'm as ready as I'm going to be for this."
Kaleb nodded and spoke the eldritch syllables, reaching out to mold Jassion's face like so much clay, ensuring that the baron could wander the streets and ask his questions without being recognized should Rebaine spot him. It was a temporary transformation, but given the size of the obnoxious flyspeck of a village, it should more than suffice.
As soon as Jassion was gone, Kaleb began to pace, shedding all signs of fatigue like a sweaty tunic. His brow furrowed in contemplation, concentration, as he steeled himself, gathering magics that even Jassion had never seen, readying himself for a confrontation six hellish years in the making… THEY GLOWERED ACROSS THE ROOM, each at the other, two men bound by a chain of loathing that ran the breadth of Imphallion-and through the wounded heart of a woman whom each, so far as he was capable, had loved. From the open doorway and between the slats of the floorboards drifted the scents of roasting bird and beast, the dull susurrus of half-drunk laughter. Hardly appropriate heralds of the violence to come.
Corvis felt Sunder quiver in his grasp, like a charger straining at the reins, and only then did he truly register the massive sword upon which the man in the doorway so casually leaned. It had been a dagger when Corvis saw it last, but he knew it instantly for what it was. He could feel the bloodlust, smelted into the steel and only tentatively leashed, as clearly as he could sense the smoldering rage, repressed just as feebly, emanating from its wielder.
He wondered, briefly, how the baron had gotten hold of the vile weapon, but he'd not provide the satisfaction of asking.
It was Jassion, instead, who broke the brittle silence. "It was a pathetic attempt at misdirection, Rebaine," he said. "Did you really think that just entering town separately, or checking into different roo
ms, would be enough to keep us from spotting your accomplice?"
"Frankly," Corvis said with a shrug, "we were more concerned about any Cephiran operatives looking for the pair of us traveling together. I wasn't even thinking of you."
It was a petty sting to the baron's pride, but Corvis could tell from the twitch of the other man's jaw that it landed. "Be that as it may," Jassion growled, "in a village this size, any newcomer draws attention. We identified her easily enough." He offered a dismissive wave, and Corvis found his eyes drawn to the green glint on Jassion's finger.
"I'm surprised you're still wearing that ring, Jassion. As I recall, it got you in a bit of hot water during the Serpent's War."
But if he'd hoped to rile the baron further, reminding him of the universal suspicion he'd brought upon himself with his behavior, he was doomed to disappointment. "It's an heirloom, Rebaine. It should belong to Tyannon, really, but I understand you gave her another ring to replace it." His lips curled in a vicious, mocking leer. "I also understand she's not wearing it anymore. Maybe I should consider giving her mine, at that."
Sunder's blade slowly rotated as the haft twisted in Corvis's trembling fist. "I'll do it for you. Would you like her to have it with or without the finger?"
"Ah. Is that about enough, do you think, Rebaine?" Jassion asked, mockery squirming like weevils through his words. "Have we spent long enough nattering on like bickering fishwives?"
"I certainly hope so," Corvis told him. "I'm looking forward to lancing you like a boil and watching you shrivel." He shoved the room's table aside with a juddering crash. The cramped room made for a poor arena-especially given the oversized weapons each man carried-but it was the best readily available. "What are you waiting for, Baron? Too cowardly to attack when Kaleb's not around to hold your hand?"
Corvis's mention of a name he should have had no way of knowing was apparently lost upon Jassion, washed away in a flood of fury along with whatever satisfaction the baron had hoped to obtain by prolonging the confrontation. He crossed the room in a handful of steps, Talon raised high and gouging a path of splinters from the ceiling above. Nothing but murder remained in his sweating, twisted face, and Corvis could not have said whether it was the pounding of his boots, or his inhuman cry, that made the flimsy chamber tremble.
And then he was upon Corvis, and through Corvis. Braced for an impact that never occurred, Jassion slammed hard against the windowsill, arms flailing awkwardly as he tried both to keep hold of Talon with one hand and to keep himself from toppling headfirst through the open window.
Corvis-who had made swift use of Jassion's grandstanding, sidling slowly from the window beneath a cloak of subtle illusion-stepped in from the side, looming behind his startled and unsteady foe. Sunder whirled once, twice, as he neared, then swept through an arc that would have left little but empty air between Jassion's gut and his ribs.
But for all his maddened fury and shock, Jassion had clearly lost neither his speed nor his senses. The narrow window allowed no room to parry or to dodge, but that still left one avenue of escape. Even as Sunder blurred toward him, the baron shifted his weight, letting gravity have its way. He toppled from the window, the Kholben Shiar passing inches above his twisting body, and landed with a bone-jarring thump on the packed earth of the road below.
I guess, Corvis reflected as he leaned outward to study his groaning foe, that it was too much to hope he'd fall on Talon or break his neck.
'You want everything just handed to you the easy way, don't you? No wonder I had to do all the hard work myself.'
Corvis vaulted the sill and dropped, twin clouds of dust puffing outward as his boot heels struck the earth. Jassion scrabbled madly backward like a drunken spider and lurched to his feet. The little finger on his left hand protruded at a curious angle, and he winced visibly with every step, but neither the demon-forged sword nor his hate-tempered gaze ever wavered.
They came together, Jassion unslowed by his injuries, and the crash of the Kholben Shiar was the shriek of a thousand tortured angels. Talon's edge pressed hard on Sunder's haft as the warlord and the baron leaned into each other, feet shifting as they circled. Around them, the already sparsely populated street rapidly emptied, men and women fleeing from the gale of violence blowing through their midst. By fits and starts, the din from the restaurant faded as the folk within recognized that something was amiss.
Jassion brought a knee up viciously, driving for his opponent's groin, but Corvis twisted to take the blow on his thigh instead. He staggered, limping for only a step or two, and swept Sunder in a fearsome parry. Again the demon-forged weapons slammed together, and again after that. Feet sidestepped and bodies twisted with a dancer's skill, even as heavy blades chopped and slashed with a force and a fury more brutish than elegant.
Corvis ducked under a high, arcing swipe, and knew only too late that he'd walked into a trap. Jassion continued his spin, carried by the momentum of his swing, coiling his body low and lashing out in a sweeping kick. Corvis felt his ankles shoot out from under him and toppled like a felled oak. The air escaped his lungs as though fleeing for its life, and the world grew fuzzy as he struggled to breathe.
The moon disappeared from the nighttime clouds as Jassion loomed above, Talon clasped underhanded. The Kholben Shiar plunged earthward as though eager to return to hell, and Corvis could not possibly lift Sunder in time to parry.
Acting on nothing but primal instinct, he slapped desperately at the flat of the blade with a bare hand. And as Talon jerked aside, sinking deep into the dirt mere inches from his ribs, Corvis knew that he owed a dozen prayers to Panare Luck-Bringer.
Startled and off-balance, his sword sticking more than a foot into the earth, Jassion could not twist aside as Corvis kicked out with both legs. The baron bent double around the impact, hurtling backward to slam against the restaurant's outer wall. Corvis scrambled to his feet, breath coming a little easier, whispering through a hoarse and ragged throat.
The tiny sprouts and sprigs protruding from the soil began to wiggle, desperate to escape the confines of their earthen prison. With a speed seemingly impossible for one so badly beaten, Jassion had risen and crossed half the distance between himself and his foe when the first of the tendrils wrapped around his ankle, yanking him to a halt. A second strand, and then a third-roots and stems, blades of grass and winding weeds-wove themselves over his feet, binding him to the spot until he might as well have been one of those plants himself.
Corvis lunged, but Jassion was already gone. Talon swept downward, severing the plants that held him, and he was twisting aside, all so swiftly that he appeared little more than a blot upon the scenery, a blurred silhouette glimpsed through a thick fog or a filthy pane of glass. And Corvis, no matter how he hated the thought, knew that he must do the same.
As Jassion had clearly already done-as he himself had dared a few days before-he drank once more from the well of power bubbling in the depths of the Kholben Shiar. And again he recoiled, fighting to keep tight rein on his own emotions lest they be swept aside and lost amid the exultation and bloodlust within the demon-forged blade.
The bulk of the village disappeared, his vision closing in on the street immediately before him. The clouds of dust resolved themselves into individual specks and particles; the stars in the firmament ceased to twinkle. He heard the shouts of distant citizens, too terrified to draw near; the sharp breaths of patrons watching through the restaurant's windows; even the beating of his own heart, and Jassion's as well, now slowed to a casual cadence.
Jassion came at him, falcon-swift and tortoise-slow at once, and Corvis was already parrying before he'd consciously decided to move. Once more the weapons clashed, but they sounded now like slow, ponderous thunder. The baron again kicked one of Corvis's legs from under him, but Sunder swept down and out before he'd toppled more than a dagger's length, propping him upright long enough to catch his balance. Straightening, Corvis drove an uppercut into his enemy's chin, and he saw the tips of each individual
hair splaying upward as Jassion's head snapped back. He lashed out with the axe, missing as Jassion ducked with equally inhuman speed. The Kholben Shiar tore instead completely through the nearest wall. The combatants had already exchanged a dozen more blows, moved yards down the street, before the splinters fell to earth.
Jassion's shoulders tensed and Corvis was already dodging away from the expected swing, but the baron jabbed instead, wielding Talon like an awkward spear. Corvis hurled himself aside, heard more than felt the thud as he slammed back-first into another neighboring shop, knew instantly that Jassion would follow with a wide slash that the wall would prevent him from dodging. Hoping the wood was as thin as it had felt, he drove an elbow back with inhuman strength even as his other hand raised Sunder in an awkward one-handed block.
The wall splintered, giving way beneath the impact as the meeting of the blades drove Corvis through the wood. Both men crashed to the floor amid broken shelves and shards of pottery. Clay dust matted itself across Corvis's cheeks and forehead, transformed into paste by rivulets of acrid sweat.
Both hands now locked on Sunder's haft, he strained with all the mundane and mystical might at his command, and it wasn't enough. Jassion crouched atop him, pressing down on Talon with the strength not just of another Kholben Shiar, but of a younger body and a maddened rage Corvis couldn't comprehend, let alone match. Elbows pressed to the floor, arms quivering with strain, he held the axe crosswise, inches above his chest, and with every breath it-and the sword pressed against it-crept nearer. He had no leverage to throw the baron off him, no angle from which to kick, not even sufficient room to bend his neck back for an awkward headbutt.
So Corvis, instead, craned his neck upward and bit down with all his strength on Jassion's nose.
He felt cartilage give under the pressure; heard it snap even over the baron's agonized cry; gagged as he tasted blood and mucus sluicing between his teeth. Jassion jerked away, leaving shreds of skin and flesh behind, and Corvis gasped in relief as the pressure against his arms and chest eased. Daring to take one hand from Sunder, he drove the heel of his palm into Jassion's chin, and then, as the baron fell back farther, planted both feet in his chest and shoved. The younger warrior hurtled back through the hole in the wall to sprawl in the street. Corvis spit the vile gobbet from his mouth before rising and following his enemy.