by Ari Marmell
"You bastard!" He lurched forward, landing with one hand on the slope, the other grasping at Jassion's neck. "You brought Mellorin into this? Does your own godsdamn family mean nothing to you?"
Jassion's own hands closed on Corvis's wrist, holding the choking fingers just inches from his throat. He snarled a response, but the words were lost in the steady drizzle and the heavy gasping of two enraged foes.
This close, and with the worst of the blood washed away by the weather, Corvis saw that the injury he'd inflicted to Jassion's face wasn't quite so bad as he'd thought. Only a small chunk of the nose had actually been ripped away. What remained would always be mangled, clearly disfigured, but with proper attention and a skilled healer, the baron would be able to breathe properly, smell the scents of the world around him, speak without impediment.
Except that Corvis didn't plan to give him the time to heal. Or, for that matter, to breathe.
There they remained, locked together by flesh and hatred-for mere seconds, for untold centuries. Until a gleaming length of steel appeared between them, a serpent's tongue flickering between their faces.
"That's enough! Both of you, back off." Startled, Corvis loosened his grip and stepped away, even as Jassion stood upright.
It took Corvis a moment to recognize the voice. Much time had passed since he'd heard Irrial speak as a baroness, but she did so now, her back and her blade held straight, her expression and her voice harder than the surrounding rock. Even battered and bedraggled in the falling rain, Corvis thought she'd never looked so imperial.
And the part of him that could still push some amount of coherent thought through the residue in his soul and the fury burning in his blood believed, without doubt, that she would use that blade if they did not heed her command.
"Irrial, what-?"
"No. You first, Rebaine. That-that thing. That was the demon you spoke of? That was Khanda?"
"It was," he said, casting a bitter glare at Jassion.
It was nearly invisible, so rigid did the baron hold himself, but his face wilted just a little. "I didn't know. I couldn't know."
"Couldn't you?" Corvis demanded. "I don't-"
Again, Irrial cut him off. "Shut it!" She shook her head, sending water spraying in all directions. Then, after a moment, "Baron Jassion?"
"My lady?" he answered reflexively.
"Why did you help us?"
Fingers curled and uncurled, a jaw shifted as teeth ground together. Jassion seemed to wrestle with his emotions more fiercely than he had with Corvis himself.
"Because…" He took a deep breath, spat the words as though they burned him. "Because I will not be responsible for setting this Khanda loose upon Imphallion. Because some things"-and his voice dropped in amazement at his own admission-"are more important even than this." His glare left no doubt as to who "this" meant.
"Good. Then you two can damn well put this aside until we've dealt with the bloody demon! Afterward, I don't care. Slaughter each other, drown in each other's blood, carve each other into fish bait-I don't care. But so help me gods, you'll do it afterward, not now!"
Corvis knew that the look he cast at Jassion was petulant, petty-as petulant and petty as the one he received in exchange. But Irrial was right, and no matter how he wanted to deny it, to feel the baron's bones break under his fists, to drive Sunder through that despised face, he knew she was right.
It was, for that matter, no more than he'd asked of her, from the instant he'd told her his real name.
Lacking the energy even to grumble under his breath, Corvis stalked away to the far side of the tiny vale.
It was only after he'd slumped down, shifted a few times trying (and failing) to find a position where the rocks didn't bite into his aching back, that he noticed the shivering hound beside him. The smell of wet dog was a slap across the face, but he figured it wiser not to comment.
"Yes?" he asked in a coarse rasp.
"You're not just going to leave it like this!" Seilloah demanded.
He would, at least, do her the courtesy of not pretending to ask what she was talking about. "Only for a time, Seilloah. Only until-"
"You said you'd kill him!"
"I will, damn it! But not now. Irrial's right. We need him. Mellorin needs him! He knows too much about what's going on for us to just throw that-"
"Corvis, he murdered me!"
He reached out to take her snout in his hand, but she jerked aside. "And if there's any way for me to make him pay for that, I will," he swore. "But Seilloah, this has to come first! This-"
"Of course it does," she spat at him. "Your concerns always come first, don't they?"
The witch was gone, limping as fast as three working legs could manage, before Corvis could draw breath to reply. NIGHTMARES BESIEGED CORVIS'S SLUMBER. Happy memories bubbled like burned stew through his brain, painful and foul. In the shadows of every image, every dream, he saw Khanda, laughing, and from his gnarled, inhuman fingers hung a limp body whose face Corvis didn't dare allow himself to see.
They slept later than they meant to the following morning, bone-deep exhaustion proving more than a match for their need to keep moving. Most of their aches and pains and wounds weren't much improved. Seilloah hadn't returned, and Corvis's own spells of healing were meager, little better than mundane poultices and herbs. But he'd found that, so long as he didn't dwell on anything in particular, the mere act of remembering didn't seem quite so agonizing as it had the previous night. He dared hope that the residue of Khanda's violation would fade with time.
Even once they'd awakened, they found themselves unable to get started immediately. The low-hanging sky was thick and grey as dirty cotton, the breeze brushed shivering skin with a thin autumn chill, and the ground had become slick mud, but at least it wasn't raining just then. Hollow stomachs demanded breakfast, fearful minds puzzled over why Khanda had not tracked them down during the night, and Corvis couldn't shake the gnawing feeling in his gut that Seilloah might never be coming back.
It was, blended with his worry for Mellorin, a bitter draught to swallow.
"Perhaps," Jassion proposed as he poked at the remnants of the dried meats that had been breakfast, "we injured him worse than we thought?" His voice, through the bandage that now ran across his face like a scarf, was wretchedly nasal. "Maybe he couldn't even find us."
"How did you find us the first time?" Irrial asked.
The baron glanced at Corvis across the charred wood that had recently been a small fire, tensing. "Mellorin."
Corvis could see Irrial and Jassion both holding their breath, and forced himself to remain motionless until he could bring his emotions back under control. "Tell me."
"For what it's worth, Rebaine, she followed us, and it was Kaleb-that is, Khanda-who decided she would come along. I thought… I believed I could protect her.
"In any event," he bulled ahead before Corvis could reply, "Khanda used her as a focus of his spells to find you."
Corvis frowned, then nodded. "Blood relation. My spells wouldn't have been strong enough to prevent that."
"No, but they interfered well enough. We had to be pretty close to pinpoint you. I don't think we've gotten far enough in one night to escape its range, but maybe, if Khanda's wounded badly enough…" He shrugged.
"So, what? You just happened to be near enough for the spell to work? When we were staying in the middle of nowhere, in a village roughly the size of a pinecone?"
"Kal-Khanda said he tracked you via the spells you'd cast on the ogre, Davro."
"Wh-Davro? Did you kill him, too?"
"No." Jassion shook his head. "Mellorin wouldn't allow it, and Khanda went along with her." It was the baron's turn to scowl. "You'd better know, Rebaine. Her relationship with 'Kaleb' has gotten, uh, complicated. As in, teenage-girl-complicated."
Corvis groaned, head actually slumping into his palms. For several moments, the others decided to let him be, though Jassion-despite his concern for Mellorin-couldn't quite repress a nasty grin a
t the pain in the older man's tone.
Only when he finally looked up through bloodshot eyes did Irrial ask softly, "Is it possible? Could they have found us through Davro?"
"I couldn't say," Corvis admitted. "Normally, I'd think not. Seilloah barely accomplished it, and the spell was cast directly on her. But I don't know the full extent of Khanda's power in his present form." A thought struck him. "Kaleb mentioned a 'Master Nenavar.' Does that name mean anything to you?"
Jassion's brow furrowed. "I don't believe so. Though it's fairly obvious that I know less of what's happening than I believed."
"I think," Corvis said, steeling himself with another deep breath, "that you'd better tell us everything." MECEPHEUM. No matter how he tried to avoid it, the answers always seemed to lead him back to bloody godsdamn Mecepheum! He was starting to loathe that city as virulently as he did Denathere, but the Guilds were the only answer Jassion could offer. So Mecepheum it would be.
Although the autumn air was cool and the breezes gentle, the ride was hard, the road long. Their days were a frenetic fog of anxiety, pressing the horses as hard as they dared, walking them when flesh threatened to fail beneath the strain. Their nights, save on those rare occasions when they were fortunate enough to stumble upon a convenient roadside inn, were spent tossing and turning on the hard earth. Corvis could not speak for the others, of course, but his own sleep was replete with the most hideous nightmares, growing ever worse even as his waking thoughts slowly healed from Khanda's ravages.
Each evening, he cast upon himself those spells that would alert him if someone approached too near at night, and each morning he awoke, head aching, with his wards undisturbed. Jassion had apparently, despite his burning hatred, fully accepted the need for cooperation. For the time being.
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 behi
nd 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?"