by Ari Marmell
Audriss pivoted, and Valescienn noticed, for the first time, the dagger he wore on his left. A black hilt sprouted from an equally black sheath—little wonder that the weapon was nigh invisible against the outfit and the cloak. But now that he had spotted it, Valescienn wished he hadn’t, for as he became aware of the crescent blade, it, in turn, became aware of him. A sense of impending violence, of gleeful anticipation, crept into his mind through the cracks and crevices of his soul.
With a ragged gasp, Valescienn tore his eyes from the dagger. He knew what it was that Audriss carried at his side, recognized it as cousin to the axe Rebaine had wielded. But Rebaine, even in the crush of battle or the most depraved depths of slaughter, never unleashed the full power of the Kholben Shiar. Audriss, he was certain, would have no such compunction.
Then, even more uncomfortable with Audriss’s silence, he asked, “My lord?”
The pacing behind him stopped; he swore he could hear even the rustle of the robes as the hood twisted about to face him. “Yes?”
“If I may be so bold, what are we waiting for?”
“That, actually.”
A low fog appeared at the base of the hill, emerging, so it seemed, from the earth itself. Climbing slowly, it rose until it covered the grass at the top of the hill, and Valescienn’s boots to the ankle. And then it erupted, forming a pillar the height of a large man. The currents flowed inward, a spinning maelstrom of white. As the mist disappeared from beneath his feet, Valescienn couldn’t help but glance downward. The grass glistened wetly, but the reddish tint, and the metallic aroma flaying at his nostrils, suggested strongly that it was not dew coating the ground around him.
A face appeared in the column of mist, made up entirely of hollows in the fog. The sockets filled with thick, bubbling blood, which coalesced into a pair of red, but otherwise human, eyes. The rest of the face flushed with blood as well, and then the body beneath it. And just like that the mist was gone, and a third figure stood beside them.
His face, features sharp as a razor, gazed unblinkingly at Valescienn. His hair was black and straight, falling in a loose mass down to his shoulders. He wore a simple white tunic, open to the waist, oddly spotless and crisp despite the damp environs, and grey leggings tucked into black riding boots. His fingers, long and slender, ended in perfectly manicured nails. His lips were full, almost feminine, and his flesh was perfectly smooth.
“An interesting choice,” the new arrival said as he examined Valescienn, his voice melodic.
“He serves my purposes admirably enough,” Audriss replied.
The stranger stared a moment more, then strode over to the black-robed man. As he walked, Valescienn saw that the fog had not entirely dissipated; it still trailed from the newcomer’s feet, stretching from his boots to the ground with each step, clinging like watery mud.
“Valescienn,” Audriss said, as casually as though he were performing the introductions at a family reunion, “this is Mithraem.”
The strange figure bowed once, formally. “An honor, I am certain.”
Valescienn, who recognized the name with a certain sick horror, was finding it very difficult to breathe.
Mithraem smiled once, a shallow, mirthless expression, and dismissed Valescienn’s presence entirely. “The Legion stands ready for your signal.”
“Excellent.” Audriss beckoned once to Valescienn, who stepped forward, his mind numb. “That, indeed, is what I was waiting for. Tell the men, Valescienn. I want them ready for battle the instant our people inside take the walls.
“We attack tomorrow.”
THE FINAL COOL GUSTS of spring faded away, and summer descended upon Chelenshire. Men went about their daily tasks, each assuring the others that the heat bothered him not in the slightest, each frantically wiping sweat from his face and forehead with a shirtsleeve when he felt no one was watching. The weather, merely uncomfortable rather than reaching the blazing levels it would attain in another month, didn’t weigh down the children of the village. They went about their own chores or dashed hither and thither (save for the younger ones who remained stuck on “to and fro”) in play, as their whims and circumstances—and mostly their parents—dictated.
For their own part, Lilander and Mellorin had completely abandoned the chores to which they’d been set, choosing instead to chase each other around the yard with a bucket of well water, screaming and shouting and generally soaking anything unfortunate enough to cross their winding and unpredictable path. But Tyannon was in the house working on mending the outfits the children ruined yesterday, and Corvis—hard at work repairing the fence they used to pen their horse, Rascal, and already sweating profusely—decided quite resolutely that it was too damn hot to go chasing after a pair of children who had more energy to spare than he. Let them wear themselves down a bit, then he’d go after them.
He grinned, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. You never could stop thinking tactically, could you, Rebaine?
“Ho there, Cerris!”
It was the name he’d given when he and Tyannon moved here, a name close enough to his real one that he could explain away any misunderstandings or slips of the tongue. He’d grown as accustomed to hearing it as he was his real name, but he was startled to hear it now. Few visitors wandered out to the edge of town in the rising heat of late morning.
Carefully laying down the hammer with which he’d been working, Corvis straightened to his full height. Approaching him on the road was a man perhaps a decade his senior, his pace steady, though perhaps not as quick as it once was. He was round but not quite fat, short but not squat. He wore over his shoulders an embroidered cloth that would, on a woman, have been called a shawl, but which he himself insisted was a mantle.
For just a moment, Corvis grimaced. This visit likely meant news from outside, from the world beyond Chelenshire—news Corvis was never glad to receive. Every time he heard of the kingdom beyond, of the political wrangling and Guild maneuvering and cultural decay, he couldn’t help but wonder, ever so briefly, if the world would be better off had he not given up all those years ago, and if it were he who ruled from the halls of Mecepheum.
Then he would look at his home, or his wife, or his children, and his regrets would fade.
Until the next time.
“And a good day to you, Tolliver,” Corvis called, swiftly gathering his thoughts as the man drew nearer. He breathed shallowly, for the scent of the man’s acrid sweat preceded him by several paces. “Rather a warm day for a stroll, isn’t it?”
“You have no idea,” the town mediator gasped at him, leaning one hand heavily upon the fence post between them and gulping in great, heaving breaths. His face was red from the heat and the exertion of what was, for him, a lengthy walk. “I’m rather astounded that I haven’t just melted on the spot.”
“That,” Corvis remarked sagely, “would be a large spot indeed.”
Tolliver glared at him, panting. “It’s all very well for you to make fun, scrawny as you are. You’ve little enough to fear from heat, after all. Three or four drops of sweat are enough to cool you completely.”
“I can’t sweat,” Corvis told him. “Scrawny as I am, people mistake it for crying, and then I can’t go anywhere for the constant offers of help and sympathy. I tell you, it’s a burden.”
That glare lasted a moment longer, and then the mediator’s face burst into a beaming grin. “That’s what I like about you, Cerris! You’ve a sense of humor!”
“Oh, is that what you like about me? I’d wondered.” He gestured toward the house. “All joking aside, it is hot out here. Can I offer you something?”
“Most kind, thank you.”
They were perhaps ten paces from the house when Lilander, shrieking happily, raced past them from around the corner. Corvis had just long enough to recognize what was about to happen, but insufficient time to do a thing about it.
With a gleeful laugh, his daughter appeared from around the same corner, the bucket of water clenched in both fists. The liquid
missile left the bucket before she registered Tolliver’s presence, and by then, of course, it was far too late. With a remarkable show of speed and agility, she’d vanished back around the house before either her father or his guest finished blinking the water from their eyes. Lilander, recognizing that the game had taken something of an unexpected turn, bolted the other way.
“I see your children are feeling well,” Tolliver said, his voice dry—the only part of him that was, at that point.
“Only until I get hold of them,” Corvis muttered. “Mellorin and Lilander. Ha! I should have named them Maukra and Mimgol!”
Tolliver blanched and offered a swift sign against evil. “I wish you’d not speak those names aloud, Cerris. No point in tempting fate, is there?”
“My apologies, Tolliver. For my slip, and for my children’s actions.”
The other man smiled good-naturedly. “Well, they’re hardly as bad as the Children of Apocalypse, for all that. Truth to tell, Cerris, the water’s as welcome as anything else. I haven’t felt this cool since I left my house this morning.”
“Is there any particular reason,” Tyannon asked from a nearby chair as they passed over the threshold, “you’re dripping so profusely on my floor?”
“Tiniest cloudburst in history,” her husband told her with a straight face. “Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Tyannon smiled, rising to her feet. “And how are you today, Tolliver?”
“Oh, I can’t complain, Tyannon. Well, I could, actually. It’s bloody hot out there. But it wouldn’t do a one of us any good, so I’ll pass.”
She brought towels, and the three of them sat down around the table with mugs of ale and a platter containing a heavy wedge of cheese and a variety of vegetables.
Tolliver looked around him, taking it all in as he did each time he visited. The house was the same on the inside as it was without: plain and simple, homey in a way that his own much larger dwelling could never be. Wooden cabinets lined the walls in the kitchen, simple but comfortable chairs surrounded the thick table at which they sat. This was a place of peace; a family could be quite happy here.
It was Tyannon who broke the meaningless small talk that filled the first few moments of their repast. “Tolliver, you’re always welcome here, and it is a joy to visit with you. But I’m afraid I don’t quite believe you’re here for entirely social reasons.”
Tolliver’s lip quirked. “Am I that transparent, Tyannon?”
“Oh, no,” Corvis said, hiding his grin behind an upraised mug. “Many things, Tolliver, but not transparent.”
But this time Tolliver didn’t rise to the bait. “I fear you’re quite right, Tyannon. The truth is, I’m here to invite the both of you to a town meeting tonight.”
Corvis and Tyannon frowned as one. Chelenshire held town gatherings on a regular basis to discuss policies or changes in local law, problems with crops, that sort of thing. But …
“This month’s meeting isn’t for another two weeks,” Corvis observed. “Who called this one?”
“I did, actually.”
“Why?” Tyannon asked, the slightest catch in her voice.
Tolliver sighed. “Audriss struck again a few nights back.”
Despite the blazing heat outside, the room grew chill. This man calling himself Audriss had appeared some few months before, a great army at his back. Since then, several towns and even a pair of small cities had fallen to his relentless advance. So far, Duke Lorum was either unable or unwilling to send his own armies to meet them.
Corvis himself felt a shiver of fear trace its way slowly, caressingly down his spine. He knew which cities and towns had fallen; he knew, more than any other man alive, what their significance was.
He was fairly certain, too, that he knew what news Tolliver was about to deliver. For the first time in years, he found himself praying: praying, in this case, that he was wrong.
“Is he moving in this direction?” Tyannon asked quietly.
“No, not that we know. It’s just … he’s never done anything of this magnitude before.”
Corvis closed his eyes. He wasn’t wrong. He could have spoken along with Tolliver, word for word.
“Denathere has fallen.
“Again.”
Chapter Two
“We’ve breached the gates, my lord.” The triumph in Valescienn’s voice was layered with a thick coating of contempt, like a morning frost that refused to melt away beneath the feeble sun. “If you want to call them gates. Denathere is ours.”
Corvis Rebaine, the Terror of the East, grunted softly and nodded—both acknowledgments utterly lost within the confines of his death’s-head helm. For long moments he stood atop a small hillock and stared, almost mesmerized by the columns of smoke that reached tentatively upward as though uncertain how best to reach the clouds above. The screams of the city reverberated in his mind, echoed within his helm. He knew the scent of blood and burning couldn’t possibly have reached him yet; he must be imagining it, remembering its like from a dozen prior cities.
He wondered if anticipating it now was worse than the day it had stopped bothering him entirely.
“My lord?” Valescienn prompted. “This is it, Lord Rebaine. Can I assume that your intricate plans and strategies call for more than standing here staring at it? Because I’ve got to tell you, we could’ve done that without fighting first.”
The expressionless skull turned coldly toward one of the few men undisturbed by its gaze. “How long would you estimate before Lorum’s armies reach us?”
“Well, he’s finally got the Guilds whipped into line, and they knew we were headed this way. Probably no more than a couple of days, and possibly less than one.”
“Then we’d better make every minute count. Get the men to start searching. And Valescienn?”
“Yes, lord?”
Inwardly, Corvis sighed. “We can’t afford to waste any time on heroes and patriots. Put up the usual deterrents.”
Valescienn grinned, tossed a casual salute, and was gone. And for many moments more, Corvis watched as the heads and the bodies of the dead were hoisted high, raining gore down upon the streets in a foul monsoon, to hang as a warning to any who might yet be inclined to resist.
THEY DID INDEED ATTEND the town meeting, though there was, as Corvis glumly predicted, a great deal of fear and shouting and little in the way of meaningful results. Frankly, he didn’t even hear much of it, for his mind was so thickly swaddled in the stifling blanket of old, uncomfortable memories. Tolliver, his face and voice calm, moderated the gathering, keeping as much order as he could. It wasn’t much, but he tried.
“How could this happen?” one hysterical voice in the crowd asked him.
“According to a few who escaped,” Tolliver told them, “Audriss slipped some of his men into the city during the celebration. They took the walls from the inside.” He didn’t feel the need to point out the irony involved: The celebration that opened the door to the city’s conquerors marked the anniversary of a previous invader’s defeat.
“This Audriss is as bad as Rebaine ever was!” someone shouted.
“Maybe it is Rebaine!” suggested a third voice. “How would we know?”
I know, Corvis thought to himself. But somehow, I don’t think you want to hear how I know.
In the end, the consensus was to wait, to keep an eye on which way the invaders turned from Denathere, and to prepare. The same thing they’d decided after the previous meeting, and the one before that. The same thing the rest of Imphallion was doing.
Corvis remained silent throughout the meeting and during the walk back home. They shared a late supper, put the children—who’d escaped with only a brief scolding for their stunt with the water bucket—to bed, and Corvis and Tyannon retired as well. And still, he said nothing.
“Sweetheart,” Tyannon whispered to him, some moments after he thought she must have fallen asleep, “what troubles you?”
He actually smiled, then. “The news is not bad enough?
I need more to disturb me?”
“Need? No. But I know you, Corvis. Something is bothering you.”
He sighed, rolling over to face her. “You’re right.” He shook his head faintly. “I’ll tell you if you ask, Tyannon. But it means talking about … then.”
She frowned. “I hate thinking of Corvis Rebaine, Terror of the East, but I haven’t forgotten him. Tell me.”
“All right. When I was first planning my campaign, I couldn’t know exactly when the Guilds would grow frightened enough to push Lorum into action. I knew I had to fight my way to Denathere—”
“Why?” she asked quickly; it was, after all this time, the one secret he’d never told her. What could he possibly have been seeking in that city that could inspire him to make the worst tactical decision of his career, and lose his army in the process?
As he’d done so often before, he ignored the question. “But I wasn’t entirely certain how I’d get there. It’s not exactly easy moving an army across hostile territory, even without organized opposition. I had to be prepared to alter course if Lorum’s forces mustered before I was ready.”
“Yes?”
“I mapped out two specific plans, Tyannon. Two campaigns, two routes for my armies to take from our mustering point beyond Imphallion’s borders all the way to Denathere. What I did, almost two decades ago, was in line with one of those plans.”
Tyannon’s voice dropped to less than a whisper, as though her throat were choked with ice. “Are you saying—”
Corvis nodded. “Audriss followed the other. Somehow, this man got hold of the maps and plans I created twenty years ago. The plan he followed to get his army to Denathere was mine.”