The Warlord's Legacy

by Ari Marmell

  And the flames abruptly angled upward before ceasing entirely. At Seilloah’s urging, the tendrils lashed at Khanda yet again, knocking him backward and disrupting his attack. For the second time in as many minutes, the room went abnormally, impossibly silent.

  In that instant of calm, Corvis saw the others staring at him, nightmarish phantoms in the flickering light of the many small fires that illuminated the cellar. And he saw in their faces a growing despair, for what, really, could they do against such a foe?

  Struggling to catch his breath, he gestured toward Khanda, who was even now rising once more to his feet. “Wound him! It’ll be enough!” He didn’t know if they heard, wasn’t even certain how loudly he’d spoken, but Jassion and Irrial both nodded all the same. They separated, advancing on the demon from different sides. In her right fist, the baroness clutched her dueling blade—better than nothing against Khanda, albeit only just—but Jassion’s hands remained empty.

  Khanda stood tall, hands raised, and from above came the first hint of whistling—of the air itself splitting—as he prepared to call down another storm of undiluted eldritch force. Corvis cocked his arm back as though to hurl Sunder like he had Talon, and just as he’d hoped, Khanda flinched, allowing his spell to fade. Immortal the demon might be, but with the aid of the Kholben Shiar, they had taught him to fear pain.

  The others lunged, taking advantage of that momentary distraction. Irrial’s blade sank deep into the meat of Khanda’s side; a mere sting, less than an inconvenience, but at least a start. Jassion, however, hurtled past his foe; stooped, instead, by Nenavar’s corpse and lifted Talon from the human wreckage. Clutching the hilt in both hands as it sculpted itself again into his great two-hander, he took a single step toward Khanda and offered a twisted smile.

  The demon waved, and Jassion felt himself lifted from his feet, as had happened thrice before. This time, however, he recognized the gesture and twisted aside while thrusting with the demon-forged blade, as though parrying a corporeal weapon. Perhaps it helped, perhaps he’d simply avoided the worst of the spell, but he tumbled only a few yards before landing in an awkward crouch.

  Seilloah’s roots and tendrils continued whipping themselves at Khanda, forcing him to split his attentions, lest he be knocked aside or bound long enough for either Kholben Shiar to deliver up far greater torment.

  Mellorin appeared suddenly at his side, her own dagger held before her. “Go!” she insisted, placing herself between her lover and her father’s relentless approach. “I can hold them long enough for you to get out!”

  Corvis pulled up short just beyond his daughter’s reach, his eyes imploring, his soul shivering at the gleam in Khanda’s own.

  “No …” The demon turned away, devoting his attention to Jassion and Irrial. “No, don’t keep him off me. Kill him.”

  “What? No! Kaleb, I don’t think I’m—”

  “Kill him.”

  Her face gone slack in horrified disbelief, tears beginning to roll along her cheeks, Mellorin advanced on her father, blade held high.

  “Mellorin!” Corvis stretched forth a hand, only to yank it back as her blade nearly took off the tips of his fingers. “Mellorin, stop!”

  “I’m trying!” And he saw, then, the unsteady gait as she approached, the twitching and shuddering that ran through her limbs without slowing her movements one iota. “Oh, gods, what’s happening?”

  Corvis backpedaled as fast as the loose rubble would permit, Sunder held defensively, casting about desperately for some solution. Time and again Mellorin’s blade struck, and each time he parried only to find himself faced with a new angle of attack. She was good, she was fast; better and faster than he’d ever have expected. He felt his chest swell with pride even as he wondered how to stop her. More than once she left herself open, and he felt the tug as Sunder, or perhaps his own instincts, goaded him to strike. But by every god and every damned soul, he would not!

  Over her shoulder, he saw Khanda hurling himself about like an acrobat, spinning between Seilloah’s tendrils, always just beyond reach of Jassion’s furiously hacking blade. Now and again, bursts of fire or shrieking levinbolts would hurtle from the demon’s fists, pour from his eyes. Thanks to the speed and magics of the Kholben Shiar, the baron avoided or even parried most of them, but burns across his arms and chest showed where a few had found their mark.

  Corvis saw, too, the witch fluttering in the corner above, raining feathers and bloody pus as her strength ebbed, the corruption spread through her latest—her last?—body.

  And then Corvis’s boot came down on a rough chunk of stone, and he found himself flailing. With a cry of infinite despair, Mellorin lunged.

  Still he could have stopped her, could have cut her down with Sunder before the dagger fell. Still he would not.

  White-hot agony yanked at his entire body like an angry puppeteer as her blade plunged deep into his left side. He coughed twice, felt the slick steel slide from his flesh as he staggered. Groaning, he pressed his left hand to the wound, felt liquid warmth between his fingers.

  “Daddy? I’m so sorry, Daddy …” Even as she wept, she came at him again, bloody knife poised, and it was all he could do to stay ahead of her.

  “Sorry?” Khanda’s mocking laugh echoed through the cellar. “This is what you wanted, Mellorin! Ah, fickle youth …”

  A shadow fell across Mellorin and the baroness appeared behind, hands outstretched to wrestle the blade away. The girl spun a brutal kick into Irrial’s knee and continued on, ignoring the other woman as she collapsed to the floor.

  “Corvis …” It came from above, the caw of a wounded bird. “Corvis, I can’t hold on much longer. If it doesn’t happen soon …”

  “Aw, poor Corvis.” Again from Khanda, literally dancing away from Jassion’s blade. He wasn’t even trying to attack anymore, wasn’t throwing fire or arcane bolts. He was, Corvis realized with a choking mouthful of bile, enjoying the show. “Did your little plan fall apart? Did you smuggle poor, dying Seilloah here for nothing?”

  Corvis snarled something, but the words that crossed the cellar were Mellorin’s, not his own. “Kaleb! Gods, Kaleb, don’t make me do this! Please …”

  “I admit,” Khanda continued, “it’s not as efficient as Selakrian’s charm, but it seems to be doing the trick, doesn’t it? Of course, it’d be a lot harder if part of her hadn’t already wanted to see you dead. Poor abandoned waif. But if it makes you feel better, it’s mostly me. I told you, I’ve complete control of my physical form—and I’ve spent many a night these past weeks leaving tiny parts of that form in sweet little Mellorin. And now look. Why, the result is almost as much fun as the process!”

  Corvis stumbled once more, so violently was he trembling, and only Sunder’s unnatural speed enabled him to parry the stroke that followed. Thick blood soaked his trousers, left a trail across the floor, and with every step his wound pumped another spurt of his life.

  “Daddy, please! You have to fight back! Please don’t let me do this!” But he could not. Another stroke of the dagger and Sunder went spinning across the room, knocked from a broken and bleeding hand.

  “Do you suppose I’m fortunate enough,” Khanda asked, slicing one of Seilloah’s roots with the edge of his bare hand, “that she might conceive? If so, Corvis, I hope you’ll be good enough to let us name the child after you. It was you, after all, who brought us together.”

  Corvis was screaming unintelligible, bestial sounds. Veins stood out in his neck and across his forehead; spittle hung from the corner of his lips. Irrial was back on her feet, struggling to reach them, to do something, but with her limp she had trouble even walking, certainly could not keep up with his constant retreat or Mellorin’s relentless advance. Even Salia Mavere, it appeared, was trying now to lend a hand, but she could only crawl and stagger from where she’d been thrown, looking for some way to help.

  Mellorin closed, her dagger flashing …

  THROUGH HIS BURNING FURY, through his constant slashes and thr
usts at a target who evaded his every effort with inhuman grace, Jassion still managed to keep track of what was happening to the others. He saw the Terror of the East forced into retreat, saw blood spilling from his side, and in his soul, he rejoiced. No matter what threat Khanda posed, an uncountable array of wrongs would be set right by Rebaine’s death; no matter what the warlord and Seilloah had planned, surely he, with Talon, could serve just as well. The time had finally come for retribution for Denathere, for all Imphallion …

  For Jassion, and for the sister who was ripped from him.

  But then, as he swung Talon, he saw his sister, saw Tyannon not as the girl he remembered from so long ago, but as he’d seen her months before, for the first time in his adult life. He saw her face, staring, imploring. And he saw, too, Mellorin’s eyes, horrified as she’d taken her first unwilling steps toward Rebaine.

  He saw, and he knew that neither woman—none of his family—could live with what she was about to do.

  And Jassion, the Baron of Braetlyn, abandoned his fight with Khanda to save the life of the Terror of the East—and the soul of the Terror’s daughter.

  “IRRIAL! CATCH!”

  Corvis heard the call, saw Jassion sprinting his way, tossing Talon at the limping baroness as he neared. The distance between them was not vast, but broken pebbles shifted beneath his feet, slowing his headlong plunge, and Mellorin’s dagger rose ever higher.

  Rose … and stopped.

  Steel glinted, seeming to dance in the flickering firelight. Inches separated father from daughter, and the old warlord knew he should already be dead.

  Mellorin’s blade, her hand, her entire body shuddered, muscle and flesh warring against each other. Dried lips split and bled, so tightly were they compressed together. She cried out once, in pain or fury Corvis could not tell, and then she was moving again, once more a slave to Khanda’s whims. But in that one moment of rebellion, she’d bought Jassion the extra seconds he’d needed. She heard his footsteps, turned to face her charging uncle, thrust with the vicious weapon.

  Jassion made no move to stop her. He twisted so that the dagger grated across his chain-armored ribs, winced with pain as several links parted, and then slammed into his niece, carrying them both to the floor. He lay atop her, pinning her with his bulk, fighting to grab at her wrists. He saw hope flare in her features, even as she bucked and thrashed beneath him, struggling to break free.

  “Oh, no, this will never do.” Flame again roared from Khanda’s hands, reducing the intervening tendrils to ash, but it approached slowly, a tide rather than a rushing river. The demon, Corvis realized, wanted to force Jassion to release the young woman, rather than simply char them both to nothing. He struggled to close on Khanda, and found he could scarcely walk. The agony in his side flared, his legs turned to so much paste, and he collapsed to an awkward crouch.

  More feathers rained from above and Seilloah landed clumsily on his shoulder. Half her body was bare of feathers, covered in weeping sores, and her beak was cracked down the center. “I’m sorry …,” she told him in a broken whisper.

  No … No, it can’t end like this …

  Khanda screamed, a high-pitched, inhuman thing.

  Irrial lay on the floor before the demon, as near as her limping and crawling would allow. Talon stretched from her hand, a slender-bladed duelist’s weapon, its very tip punching neatly into the muscle of Khanda’s calf.

  No serious wound, this. Even inflicted by the Kholben Shiar, for the demon it was but a momentary hurt.

  But for that moment, Khanda was distracted. Khanda was vulnerable.

  “Corvis …”

  “Is there no other way?” He felt the words catch in his throat, even though he knew she was already dead.

  “None.” The crow looked at him, and he wished he could know if she was trying to smile. “Good-bye, my dearest friend.”

  “Good …” He choked, then, and there was no time to say more. The crow squawked once, trembled, and lay still.

  Groaning with the effort, Corvis rose once more to his feet, turned his tear-streaked face toward his daughter’s struggling form. “Mellorin …”

  She knew his tone for what it was. “No! No, don’t …”

  “Tell your mother … Gods, you know her better than I do now. Figure out what she needs to hear, tell her I said it. I love you, Mellorin. Whether you believe it or not, I always have.”

  “Daddy, no!”

  But Corvis was already running, the last of his strength pumping through his legs. He had to be there, had to reach him before it was too late.

  Khanda had begun to catch his breath, was leaning down to clutch at the weapon in his leg. Irrial had scurried away, knowing full well she had no way to save herself if the demon turned on her. For a moment, as he crossed the cellar, Corvis thought it hadn’t worked, wondered if Seilloah had held on all this time for nothing.

  Wondered, and began to despair, until Khanda shuddered. His face went slack, and his entire body fell back against the nearest wall.

  No, not his body. The body he’d created around himself, to wear in the mortal realm. A body over which he had full and absolute control.

  A body that, inhabited by a demon, possessed no mortal soul.

  IT HURT. Oh, Arhylla Earth-Mother, it hurt!

  The ground beneath her was rough, abrasive against her feet. The scents of thick soil and rock dust and sweat in the air were acrid, scratching at her lungs with ragged claws, until she was certain she must choke on her own blood. Around her, every line, every corner, the edge of every brick, the contours of every stone, were razor-edged, slicing at her even from feet and yards away.

  And those lines looked wrong. The illumination came, not from above, but from all around her. They burned, the people burned; men and women both, and she recognized none of them. She saw no faces, saw no features, for the light emanated from deep inside them, through bone and flesh and fabric and armor.

  Every mortal soul, every soul, was a light—and that light was terrible. It pierced the eye, no matter how she turned away; cast shadows sharp enough to slit her own flesh; burned against and beneath her skin, inferno and infection intertwined as one, worse than hell’s own fire.

  A world, a whole world, of torment, distilled impossibly pure.

  But not everywhere. Not quite.

  Amid the awful glow were patches of comforting shade; open wounds in mortal flesh seeped blood and pain, and from those spots, the light grew dim. She heard hopeless cries, the song of sorrow and fear, and where despair shrouded any soul, the burning abated.

  She laughed a cruel, exulting laugh, rejoicing as the agony of those nearby lessened her own, if only just. Laughed, and wept, for she understood that in a world of such perfect torment, the waning of her own pain was the only joy.

  Pummeled by agony, weeping ever harder as she sought only to lash out, to inflict more pain to detract from her own, she doubled over, gazing down …

  The body she wore was not bird, nor beast, nor her familiar feminine form garbed in earthen browns and forest greens, but clad all in black, a thing that was not human in human form.

  And Seilloah remembered. Who she was, where she was, what she must do; she remembered.

  She also understood now, just a little, what Khanda was. And she almost, almost pitied him.

  Then Seilloah rose up, gathered her strength for the very last time, and reached out through the body she wore, wrestling it away from the demon it housed …

  CORVIS CLOSED, AND FOR A SINGLE heartbeat, he saw Khanda’s lips curve, not in his own smile, but in Seilloah’s. He saw, and his heart exulted.

  Khanda had no soul, perhaps, but his will was great. For only seconds, those few heartbeats before the demon understood what had happened and fought back, would the witch have control.

  But those few seconds were enough for her to draw upon the demon’s own power, to send it flowing through muscle and bone and organ. To reshape his body within, rather than without.

  To m
ake him well and truly and utterly mortal.

  Corvis swept up Talon from where it lay at their feet. He smiled, too, meeting Seilloah’s eyes behind Khanda’s. And then, both hands clenched upon the brutal Kholben Shiar, he struck.

  The axe punched through half the demon’s rib cage with a shower of bone and blood, embedding itself deeply in the stone wall beyond. Khanda—and it was Khanda, again—stared at him, then down at his mangled body. He raised his head, he opened his lips …

  SHE WELCOMED THE PAIN OF THE BLADE, the swift fading of the body she wore. It meant that she’d won, that the far greater torment in which she’d lived for so long would soon fade, that she had not suffered it in vain, that …

  Her limbs shuddered around her; a wave of fire and rot washed over her thoughts, sweeping them away. In the dark of the cellar, or perhaps in her own mind, a pair of eyes gleamed open, staring at her through four separate pupils.

  And just before the world faded away, she heard that terrible voice, one last time, in her own soul.

  /Not alone!/

  “NOT …” KHANDA COUGHED, wet blood spraying his enemy’s face. “Not alone …”

  Then he was gone, just another corpse to fall at the feet of Corvis Rebaine.

  Corvis turned toward the others, a smile stretching across his face, and took a single step …

  The sky screamed, the whistling of the final spell Khanda would ever cast. Corvis heard it coming, tried to dodge aside, but the last of his strength was gone. His entire left side was numb, the floor around his feet a slick pond of blood. He fell back, slumping to the floor against the wall, sinking down to Khanda’s side. He reached, grasping at Talon, trying to pull himself up once more, and the Kholben Shiar shifted, grinding even farther into the battered and broken stone of the cellar.