The Warlord's Legacy

by Ari Marmell

  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 Panaré 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.

  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 S
under 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 himself 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!”