by Ari Marmell
“I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with all of this,” he continued more softly, “though I think I can guess a good chunk of it. But what I’m certain of is that all your plans won’t be worth a gnome’s chamber pot if Khanda breaks loose. So you tell us, Salia. Which way do you want it?”
THEY’D NEEDED HER COMPLIANCE, prayed for it, even counted on it—but that didn’t mean they were remotely ready to trust it. Throughout the nerve-racking trek through the corridors and stairs of the Hall of Meeting, one or the other of them remained at Mavere’s back, ready to act if she even looked askance at a passing guard, the others equally alert in case any of the passing guards looked askance at them. Even after they’d gathered their horses, and hers, they walked the beasts through Mecepheum’s streets, the better to ensure the Guildmistress remained within easy reach. Only once they’d passed through the main gates did they mount up and ride, and even then they took steps to ensure Salia remained in their midst.
The faint but steady autumn breezes and overcast skies had brought a certain chill to the roads. Thus, though she’d claimed that the ride was only a few hours, they’d taken the opportunity—always with careful eyes on Salia, of course—to acquire some traveling cloaks and coats before leaving the city. It was partly for the sake of their own comfort, but mostly as an excuse, under the guise of “friendly assistance” while shopping, for Irrial to search their unwilling guest for concealed weapons. More than once, Corvis sensed the priestess’s gaze upon him and had looked around to see not merely the anger and the fear that he’d anticipated—even, he had to admit, reveled in—but also a peculiar puzzlement.
He wasn’t about to ask her what was wrong, of course. But he did wonder.
As they traversed a minor highway that was festively garbed in fallen leaves of red and gold, Corvis watched Jassion with idly hostile curiosity. The baron fiddled with the ties around his throat, trying to keep the knot of his bandage from getting caught in the folds of his new midnight-hued cloak. He fidgeted, craned his neck—and somehow, even from the rear, Corvis could tell that he frowned.
Perhaps sensing the older man’s questioning gaze, Jassion tugged on the reins, dropping back a few paces. “I’m no great believer in omens,” the nobleman told him, “but I have to admit, I’m not pleased at that.”
Corvis glanced up and noted, despite their growing distance from Mecepheum, a number of crows circling high above. He thought back to the birds perched atop the roof of the Hall of Meeting, and he, too, frowned thoughtfully.
“Keep on going with the others,” he said suddenly, wheeling his own horse about. “I’ll catch up.”
“What? Where are you—?”
“Probably nowhere. You’ve just got me paranoid now. I want to make sure nobody’s following—that Mavere didn’t somehow manage to signal anyone.”
“Paranoid indeed,” Jassion said. “But probably wise,” he acknowledged, riding on ahead.
CORVIS DID INDEED CATCH BACK UP a few moments later and fell into step behind the others.
“Anything?” Jassion called over his shoulder.
“No danger,” Corvis replied, wrapping his own crimson cloak more tightly against the autumn chill. “As you said, just paranoid.”
Irrial might have detected the odd tenor in his voice, or that he sat somewhat straighter in the saddle than before. But Irrial rode at the front, with Salia between her and the others, and Jassion didn’t know his hated ally well enough to notice. He simply nodded, and the four rode on.
Above, the crows continued to circle for a few moments more, and then, one by one, they departed for more worthwhile surroundings.
MECEPHEUM, AS BOTH IMPHALLION’S CAPITAL and its richest community, was one of those cities that doesn’t seem to know when to stop. Like a noblewoman’s skirts, neighborhoods and estates spread from the main walls.
At the edge of what could even pretend to be called Mecepheum stood a large estate. A squat stone manor occupied the property’s center, surrounded on three sides by gardens and on the rear by a hedge maze that ran across several gentle knolls. A marble wall separated the grounds from the outside, but it wasn’t much of an impediment—the iron gate in its center was unbarred, and the wall itself a mere three feet high. Obviously, it had been built not as security, but just an ornate and expensive means of declaring My territory starts here.
Save for the lack of guards, footmen, or even a bell-pull at the gate, there was nothing to differentiate it from any of the other rich, aristocratic estates that sprouted sporadically—gilded mushrooms, as Corvis couldn’t help but think of them—throughout these long swathes of pseudo-Mecepheum.
“I have to admit,” Irrial said as they halted just outside the gate, “it’s not what I was expecting.”
“Nor I,” Jassion said.
“No?” Salia scoffed. “You imagined a bleak tower of black stones? An imposing castle of impossible spires? Or maybe a dank cave somewhere?”
“Well, he is a powerful wizard …,” Irrial protested mildly.
“And you’ve been reading too many melodramas. Nenavar earns his wealth by hiring his services out to any who can afford them—a rare and select few, to be sure—and enjoys that wealth as any man would. What better place for him to live than here?”
“If we’re through critiquing the aesthetics of the nice diabolist,” Corvis asked irritably, “do you suppose we might get a move on? I’d like to take steps to prevent it before Khanda finally shows up and tries to rip my spine out through my arsehole.”
“I don’t actually read many melodramas,” Irrial informed them as they moved toward the gate. “I prefer to watch them performed on stage. I find it a lot more—”
“Irrial?”
“Yes, Corvis?”
“Let it go.”
Jassion pushed the gate wide and led them onto the property. Corvis, who’d half expected it to swing ponderously open on its own, was peculiarly grateful that the wizard hadn’t enchanted it to do so. The path led, straight as a lance, through nicely trimmed grasses and well-maintained gardens of tulips and potato blossoms to the manor door. At no point were they approached or harassed, nor did they see any sign of movement, from either the property or the house itself, for which the breeze could not account.
“Are you certain he’s here?” Jassion demanded.
Salia shrugged. “How would I know?”
The door, like the manor itself, was thick, solidly built, but relatively unadorned. It boasted a brass knocker in the form of a simple ring, a smaller knob—also brass—and nothing more.
Corvis shrugged and pounded on the heavy wood. They heard the echoes reverberating through the chamber beyond, and a large chamber it must have been, but even after many minutes and several more knocks, they received no response. He clasped the knob, more out of habit than any real hope the door was unlocked, and sure enough it declined to cooperate.
“I refuse to be killed,” he told the others without bothering to look back at them, “because one man happened to be out for tea when we showed up on his stoop.” He muttered a few words, casting a spell to make obvious any wards or curses Nenavar might have placed upon his door. He spotted only a handful, far fewer than he anticipated, and knew that none could withstand the touch of the Kholben Shiar. Directing his companions to stand back, he hefted Sunder and brought it down beside the knob.
Wood, metal, and magic splintered, the door swung ajar, and beyond it Corvis and the others saw …
… Nothing. The house was empty. One great hollow chamber, lacking even interior walls.
“I love what he’s done with the place,” Corvis said blandly.
“I don’t understand,” Salia muttered, flinching from Jassion’s angry glare. “I’ve sent multiple couriers! This is where he told us to find him, and this is where they’ve come.”
And Corvis abruptly understood. “But he wanted them to find him. Us, perhaps less so.” He stepped from the door to stare up at the nearest window, idly spinning S
under at his side. “It’s a neat trick, Nenavar!” he shouted, his words carrying to all corners of the property on a voice that had once bellowed across battlefields. “I don’t know if it’s a teleportation you’ve cast on the doorway, or an illusion, or even a bubble of an alternative realm inside the house. And I don’t care. My companions and I have nowhere to be, so I’m more than happy to take the time to chop through your damn walls! Maybe that’ll take us around your little spell, or maybe I’ll just have to keep it up until the house collapses. Either way I promise that it’ll end with you and me both in a bad mood.
“Or you can assume that, just maybe, Mavere had a good reason for bringing us here, and you can deign to talk to us.”
Silence. Until, from behind him, Irrial called out, “Khanda’s found a way to free himself from your spells!”
Corvis stared at her. She just shrugged.
The door slammed shut of its own accord, then opened once more. This time it revealed a cozy foyer, replete with burning incense and a cloak rack.
“Come in.” The voice was thin, old and on the edge of quavering. It also came from everywhere at once. “Make yourselves at home. But Rebaine, I know what you’re capable of, and I know what the Kholben Shiar are capable of, and I assure you I have more than enough power to deal with you both.”
“Of course you do.” Corvis watched his companions hang their cloaks upon the pegs, ignored their questioning glances when he refrained from doing the same. When they were ready, he led the way into the hall beyond.
Here was all the opulence the manor’s exterior eschewed. Fine paintings hung in gilded frames; recessed niches held golden candelabra. More braziers filled the air with a subtle incense, a little cloying for Corvis’s tastes but not overwhelming. Even a few of the windows, which had appeared mundane from the outside, showed themselves to be ornate stained glass when viewed from within. Through several of those, Corvis caught glimpses of movement—trees, perhaps, or low-hanging fog—that didn’t remotely match the terrain of the estate outside. He wondered where in the world those windows looked. Then he wondered onto which world those windows looked, and then he decided to stop wondering.
Assuming that their host would let them know if they chose wrong, Corvis ignored the various closed doors and smaller side passages to either side of the hall, continuing straight until it opened up into a great room. Bookshelves stood like soldiers at attention along one wall, while a large staircase occupied another. The rest of the chamber boasted plush sofas and small reading tables. A balcony loomed above, and the man staring down at them could only have been Nenavar himself.
He looked, to Corvis, like a vulture masquerading as a man.
“I’m sorry, Nenavar,” Salia began. “I didn’t really have any—”
He waved a hand in arrogant dismissal. “What’s this nonsense about Khanda, Rebaine? My creatures cannot harm me, and I’d certainly never release him from his bonds!”
“If you’re so certain of that,” Jassion murmured, “why did you let us in?”
“He can’t harm you with his magics,” Corvis corrected, ignoring the baron (as usual). “But Khanda’s picked up some human sorcery along the way. You’ve no protection from that.”
“Perhaps,” he admitted grudgingly, “but there’s no magic he could master potent enough to defeat me before I could cripple him.”
Corvis tapped a finger against his own head. “Not even one of Selakrian’s own incantations, Nenavar?”
Even from where he stood, he saw the blood drain from the wizard’s face, saw his hands clench on the railing. “You kept one?”
“I did.”
“Then perhaps the solution, Rebaine, is to kill you.”
“You could try.” The old warlord smiled. “Of course, Khanda’s already ripped most of it from my mind. You sure me being dead would stop him from getting the rest out of me?”
Nenavar disappeared from the balcony, whether via teleportation or simply stepping back into the shadows, Corvis couldn’t guess. He reappeared a moment later through one of the room’s sundry doors.
“We’ve much work to do,” he said simply. “I’ll require your help in setting up; it’ll go much faster than if I do it myself.”
“That’s it?” Jassion asked incredulously from behind. “No oaths, no threats of what’ll happen if we try to harm you, no safeguards? Just ‘we have work to do’?”
Nenavar offered an uneven, sickly smile. “Would you like to have a demon roving about our world unchecked, my lord?”
“Not especially.”
“Oddly enough, neither would I. Now be silent and either assist or get out of our way.”
For half an hour and more, Corvis and Nenavar mixed powders and herbs, drew ornate sigils across the great stone-floored cellar beneath the house. Irrial, Salia, and Jassion pounded constantly up and down the steps, fetching and carrying at Nenavar’s decree—some with greater alacrity than others.
“I think,” the old wizard told Corvis as the Guildmistress stomped away once more, “that Mavere still does not entirely believe you are telling the truth.”
“Why do you?” Corvis couldn’t help but ask.
“Because you have not attacked me. Because I do not think you would have revealed that you possess one of Selakrian’s invocations just to run a bluff. And because the notion you’ve raised is horrifying enough that I cannot afford to risk it.”
“Perhaps you ought to have considered that before you bloody well summoned Khanda in the first place!”
Nenavar smiled, then winced as he knelt to expand the sigil, his old joints popping loudly in the quiet. “It’s what I do, Rebaine. I’m a conjurer. I’ve never had any difficulties before.”
“And you’ve summoned demons before, have you?”
“A time or two. You’ve actually encountered my work yourself, you know.”
Corvis froze a moment, then continued crushing dried leaves in a small iron pestle. “Have I?”
“Indeed.” But he refused to elaborate.
“Why are you even a part of this, Nenavar? What’s it all about?”
“Money. A lot of money, and a promise of continued employment in the new order.”
“Heh. That’s never a good phrase. Tell me.”
“Nenavar!” It was Mavere, returned to the cellar with an armload of supplies. “Keep silent!”
But the old wizard, perhaps rattled by his guests’ revelations and reluctant to alienate those who stood between him and his errant minion, ignored her command. “What do you think, Rebaine? I’m sure you’ve got most of it puzzled out already.”
Corvis nodded and handed over the powder, watching as Nenavar sprinkled it throughout the corners of the room. “I know it involves Cephira and some of Imphallion’s Guilds,” he said. “And I know you got Khanda’s name from Ellowaine.”
“Right … A bit more of this, if you would.”
Returning to the worktable and spilling out more leaves, Corvis continued. “It’s a power play, obviously. It always is, where the Guilds are concerned. But I’m tired, I hurt, and I’m just a bit worried about Khanda right now.” He mashed down on the leaves with more force than necessary, practically bending the iron in which they lay. “So you tell me.”
“Nenavar …,” Salia warned. Again, he chose not to listen.
“I know not who first came up with the idea, whether it was General Rhykus or an Imphallian Guildmaster. Cephira would conquer the eastern reaches of Imphallion, and the Guilds wouldn’t interfere. Most of the eastern provinces are still strongholds of the nobility, so their power would be substantially weakened. Once done, only then would the Guilds move, fielding their own armies to ‘prevent’ the invaders from moving any farther, perhaps driving them back—but only partway to the border. Cephira annexes new territories, since the eventual treaty would allow them to keep what they’d taken. The Guilds get to be the heroes who saved the rest of Imphallion from Cephiran conquest. Between their new public support and the further weakenin
g of the noble Houses, they would squelch the political infighting between Guilds and aristocracy once and for all, transforming Imphallion into a true mercantile empire.”
Corvis was certain he was driving his teeth back through his gums, so tightly was his jaw clenched, and Salia physically recoiled from his fury. He noticed only then than Irrial and Jassion stood upon the stairs as well, having paused in their errands to hear the wizard’s revelations.
“Let me see,” Corvis growled darkly, “if I can fill in the rest, then. The Guilds had to eliminate several nobles who weren’t based in the east, but were too entrenched to ignore. And they needed an excuse to explain why they didn’t react to the invasion sooner. So here comes ‘Corvis Rebaine,’ whose murders accomplish both right nicely.” He took a step toward the stairs, his fists trembling. “I am so bloody sick of being used!”
“But it wasn’t just nobles,” Irrial noted from atop the stairs. “ ‘Rebaine’ butchered Guildsmen, too.”
“Oh, I can answer that, too,” Corvis told her. “Only a few Guildmasters would be in on this scheme—and some of them probably decided it was too treasonous even for them to swallow. So they had to go, before they could talk. And that also nicely covered up the fact that most of the intended victims were nobles.
“None of which answers my main question: Why Khanda?”
Salia said nothing, her face stiff.
“Because he knew you well enough to make the murders truly convincing,” Nenavar answered in her stead. “Because he possessed enough power to reach the targets no matter what precautions they took, and because it put a neutral third party—that would be me, since I was technically working for both sides—in position to force either the Guilds or the Cephirans to abide by the terms of the agreement, should one or the other attempt to renege. Although any demon would have done for those latter purposes, of course.”
