by Ari Marmell
Jassion, with a determination that Corvis could not help but envy, was already standing. Blood formed a mask across his features, dripped down the sides of his neck, and his heaving breaths whistled obscenely through the wreck of his face.
Yet Corvis, though lacking in any such fearsome wound, was gasping no less harshly. His entire body felt bruised and battered, his ribs as though they'd been hammered flat upon Verelian's anvil, his ankles stuffed with ground glass. He had many years on his opponent, and they clung to him now, a weighty chain about his waist.
Both men slowed, now drawing upon the magics of the demon-forged blades just to keep themselves steady.
And Jassion smiled, a stomach-churning sight. "You cannot hurt me, Rebaine, not any more than you did when I was a child. And I can keep this up longer than you."
"You probably can," Corvis admitted between gulps of air, allowing Sunder to sink just a bit. "But Jassion? I cheat."
At his best, Jassion would have sensed her coming, been able to dodge or at least lessen the blow. As it was, when Irrial's sword slammed into his hauberk, severing links and splitting skin, it was all he could do to scream and twist aside, preventing her from delivering an immediate second thrust through the rent in the armor.
Rather than follow and risk stepping into range of that monstrous flamberge, the baroness dropped into a defensive stance, the tip of her blade leveled, waiting for him to come to her-and to present his back to Corvis. Jassion, Talon drifting back and forth before him, declined. He stepped slowly backward, trying to gain enough distance to focus on both.
"What took you so long?" Corvis asked breathlessly.
Behind Jassion, the roots and stalks he'd earlier escaped reared like striking serpents, grown to a dozen times their former size. Several whipped outward, drawing bloody welts across his exposed skin, while others curled tight around arms and legs, lifting him bodily from the earth.
From around the restaurant's shattered corner, a mangy hound slunk into the street, crouching at Irrial's feet and scratching idly behind one ear with a back foot.
Corvis allowed himself just a moment to worry for his friend-he'd known the salamander was swiftly dehydrating once they'd left the caves, but he'd not expected her to need a new form so soon-and then focused once again on Jassion. The baron hung helplessly, limbs thrashing, literally spitting as he screamed what sounded like sheer gibberish.
Hesitantly, Corvis opened his mouth, then shut it with an audible click. No. No more words, no more taunts, no more time. Not for Jassion. He advanced on the helpless nobleman, no longer a warrior but a headsman. He again felt Sunder quiver in his fist, and for the first time in years he shared the unholy weapon's anticipation.
But the blow would never fall.
The air grew suddenly thick, heavy against their skin, clogging their ears. A horrible shriek split the night as the sky itself screamed, and then the wrath of the heavens, all unseen, struck the earth.
Corvis had little memory of the seconds following the impact, save that entire buildings had crumbled, and that the chunks of wood and stone somehow hurtled inward, further battering at his flesh, rather than outward from the center of the blast. He found himself sprawled atop a pyramid of broken rock, with no notion of how he'd gotten there. His ears were filled with an angry buzz. Through bleary eyes, he spotted Irrial lying in a crumpled heap, blood flowing from an ugly gash across her scalp, and his stomach clenched until he saw her pulse flutter in her throat. Of Seilloah-or Jassion, for that matter-he saw no sign.
But there was someone else, a thin-faced, brown-haired man standing over him, lips curled in an almost friendly grin. "I've waited," he said, leaning in apparently to ensure that Corvis could see him. "Oh, I've waited for so long."
"Kaleb, I presume?" Corvis offered, then paused to cough up a lungful of dust.
"I'm crushed, old boy. You don't remember me?"
Corvis frowned. He'd never seen this man, of that he was certain, but there was something about that voice…
"Well, it's to be expected, I suppose," Kaleb continued, kneeling so his face hovered but a few feet from Corvis's own. "You probably just don't recognize me in this outfit. Here."
Like melting wax, the sorcerer's features began to shift-but the fallen warlord turned away, unwilling to watch. For in that moment, Corvis knew-without question, without doubt-and that knowledge was a blade, slicing holes into his soul that he was certain would never heal. He understood how the murderer had known so much about him and his methods, understood how Jassion had tracked him down across a kingdom, understood how a sorcerer could have so much power.
Understood what it was he faced, and why he could never have won.
"Look at me, Corvis. Look at me."
His sight blurred by bitter tears, Corvis looked-looked into a new face, features even more gaunt than before, hair the color of dead straw, and eyes…
"Say it just once, Corvis. For old times' sake."
… eyes that each boasted a pair of pupils side by side, uneven pools of infinite darkness. And beneath their stare, Corvis could scarcely whisper, or even breathe.
"Khanda…"
Chapter Twenty
HE COULDN'T THINK, couldn't move, couldn't breathe. His mind was swaddled in a rotting shroud, muffling the sights, the sounds, the scents of the world. It took long moments to recognize that the pain in his side was caused by the broken rock on which he lay, that the peculiarly harsh rain drizzling down across his face actually consisted of the splinters of shattered buildings.
But it was, all of it, unreal, diaphanous, a waking dream. Only the flesh-wrapped nightmare gazing gleefully down upon him was real.
"I can't…" He had trouble forcing the words to come, his lips and his tongue made numb as the blood drained from his face. "It's not possible. You can't be…"
"Astonishing." Kaleb-Khanda-shook his head sadly. "I knew you'd counted on me for a lot, old boy, but I'd never realized that included forming coherent sentences. How have you gotten by all these years?"
"I banished you!" Corvis actually sounded accusing, as though Khanda's reappearance was a personal betrayal. He struggled to sit up, groaning at the aches and bruises that flared anew across his battered body.
"What can I say, Corvis? Hell's not what it used to be. Security's really gone to-well, you know."
But the old soldier's brain was finally catching up with his senses. "Someone had to call you… Call you back by name. That's what they got from Ellowaine, isn't it? Your godsdamn name!"
He rolled aside, as rapidly as the rocks and his own wounds would allow, lifting Sunder in one hand, but it was a pathetic blow, a feeble spit of defiance. Khanda casually backhanded Corvis's forearm and the limb went numb, the Kholben Shiar falling from limp fingers. Corvis curled around himself, clutching his throbbing arm…
And from where he lay, he saw a bit of rubble behind the demon, an uneven heap of wooden detritus, begin to shift.
"Why?" he asked, forcing himself to meet Khanda's repulsive eyes. "Why would they summon you?"
Khanda grinned, an inhuman rictus from ear to ear. "I don't believe I'm going to tell you that."
"Why not?"
"Because you want to know." That awful grin grew even broader. "And because, ultimately, it doesn't matter. You humans are such petty, insignificant schemers. You think you're playing games, but you're all just pieces."
Corvis forced himself to smile. Across the street, Irrial had dizzily crawled through the dirt to the boards, begun laboriously to dig toward whoever lay moving beneath. Keep his attention… "Are we? It seems to me you wouldn't be here without one of those 'pieces.' And I know a little something about summoning incantations, Khanda. You don't exactly have free rein. If you did, you'd have had more than enough power to find me long ago. You're limited here, demon. You're human."
The world briefly vanished behind an array of blinding suns as Khanda struck him across the face. "Why, Corvis, such language." He sighed theatrically and settled hi
mself on the ground, sitting cross-legged as though beside a comfortable campfire. "But you're right, of course. I don't have anywhere near my full might. Even when I was living inside a pendant and a slave to your every primitive whim, I wasn't at my best. There's never been a demon freely unleashed upon your world, not in your recorded history anyway. Even the most maddened conjurers aren't that crazy. And that, old boy-not revenge, though I certainly welcome it, and not my orders-is why I've come for you."
"I thought," Corvis grunted, struggling to get his feet under him so he might rise, "that you weren't going to tell me what this is about."
"I'm not going to tell you what they want," Khanda corrected casually. "But I want you to understand what I'm doing. It's so much more fun if you know enough to be horrified. You see, you have something I need."
He leaned back, waiting, clearly content to let the former warlord ask-or figure it out for himself.
It doesn't make any sense. I don't have anything… The demon couldn't use the Kholben Shiar; Khanda knew more or less everything Corvis knew, up until six years ago. There was nothing.
Except…
"Oh, gods…"
Khanda actually clapped like an excited schoolgirl. "I knew you'd get there. You really were almost competent at times, for a human." He leaned in, voice marred by excited breathing. "I can't use my own power against him. The summoning and binding spells won't permit it. But someone else's magic, an incantation that doesn't draw on my own abilities? That's something else entirely. And I was around you, and your pet witch, more than long enough to learn human methods of sorcery.
"Think of it, Corvis! With that spell, I can force 'Master' Nenavar to release me from my bonds, to grant me not only my freedom but my power! Enough to make this wretched dung-ball of a world my plaything-to make Selakrian look like a charlatan. You remember what Mecepheum looked like six years ago? That was nothing!" A narrow string of spittle dangled from the corner of the demon's mouth. "And you kept the invocation when the rest of the tome burned to ash. You made it all possible."
A soft clatter sounded from behind. Wooden planks cascaded away in a small avalanche beneath Irrial's chapped and bleeding hands. Khanda started, began to look around…
"It's gone, Khanda!" Corvis shouted triumphantly in his face. "I burned the pages years ago. You've wasted your time!"
"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, c
learing 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.