The Warlord's Legacy

by Ari Marmell

  A resounding crack echoed as the demon’s magic slammed into the splintered ceiling above. Dust choked the air, perhaps an unnatural mist rising to hide the next world from mortal view. Corvis fell prone beneath the weight of the invisible force, felt the first of the stones falling on his shoulders like hail, heard the rumble of shifting masonry, and allowed himself to drift away.

  NOTHING MOVED but a final handful of rocks, clattering off the heap of stone that now filled a quarter of the cellar. They bounced with hollow clacks and clicks, finally tumbling across the floor and fetching up against the corners. The clouds of grit began, oh so gradually, to sift down from the air, the echoes of the ceiling’s collapse to fade from aching ears.

  Mellorin attempted to stand and found she could not for the weight atop her. Only then did she remember where she was. “I …” She swallowed, trying to clear the dust from her mouth, her throat. “I’m all right, Uncle Jassion.”

  She felt the suspicion, the tension in his tentative shifting, but he moved. She rose, knees wobbly, abandoning her blood-encrusted dagger on the floor. Her steps hesitant, she staggered toward the heap of broken stone that had buried one man she had thought she’d loved, and another she’d thought she hated. She felt a dampness on her cheeks, but for the moment she wept no more. Her soul was distant, numb; she had no more tears to shed.

  Without thought, she reached toward the stones, and blinked in dull confusion at the fingers that clamped around her wrist, halting her.

  “Don’t,” Jassion told her. It took her a moment to recognize the foreign tone in his mangled voice as compassion. “We don’t know how precarious that pile is. You could bring it down on you.”

  “I never … I never got to …”

  “I know. I’m sorry, Mellorin.” And damn if it didn’t sound like he meant it, too.

  She heard shuffling, watched from the corner of her eye as Irrial appeared beside her. Mellorin flinched as the older woman laid a hand upon her shoulder, but did not pull away.

  “He loved you, Mellorin. Whatever else you hear about him—and there will be much you’ll wish you hadn’t—believe that he loved you.”

  “I think … I think I almost do.”

  With that she crossed back across the chamber, leaving the unsympathetic stone behind, crouching to retrieve the one piece of her father that remained. Again Sunder shifted in her hand, becoming the heavy dagger she already knew so well, already despised, already needed. She glanced about her, saw Jassion, Irrial, and Guildmistress Mavere all watching.

  Still on her knees, she ran a finger across the tiny feathered body that lay nearby. It rocked beneath her touch, one wing falling open to reveal mottled patches of bare skin between clinging feathers.

  “There’s so much I don’t understand, so many lies Kaleb—Khanda?—told me. You’ll explain it to me?” It seemed directed to the room at large, rather than any one soul. “All of it?”

  “We will,” Jassion promised.

  “Even the parts you don’t think I want to hear,” she insisted.

  “Yes.” Irrial, this time, her tone no less sincere.

  “Thank you.” Mellorin rained dust as she rose, but made no move to brush herself clean.

  “For what it’s worth,” Mavere began, her voice weak from her injuries, “I’m sorry. If we’d known Khanda would try this, we’d never have called him.” Her gaze flickered from one to the next, imploring. “But something had to be done, don’t you see? For the good of Imphallion, we—”

  She grunted once, less in pain than surprise, and slid, with a final rattling sigh, to the floor. Her expression blank, Mellorin shook the Guildmistress’s blood from Sunder’s edge.

  Irrial grimaced, Jassion nodded. Neither spoke.

  “We should go,” the warlord’s daughter told them.

  Her uncle nodded again. “There’s much to be done. We have to try to explain what’s happened, and to mount a defense—a true defense—against Cephira.”

  Irrial quirked her lip. “That might’ve been easier if we had—”

  “No.” Jassion shook his head. “She’d never have admitted to any of it. It would’ve been our word against hers. As it is, we’ve precious little proof, but …” He shrugged.

  “But we have to try.” Irrial took one step, a second, and staggered. “I don’t think I can ride. I certainly can’t climb out of here. Go.”

  “My lady, we—”

  “Take Mellorin back to Mecepheum. You can send someone back for me with a coach. And rope. Lots of rope.”

  The baron nodded reluctantly and began examining the broken ceiling overhead.

  “Jassion? Send a squad of soldiers, too, would you? Just in case.”

  “Of course.”

  IT TOOK SOME DOING, especially since they refused to touch the stones that had become a makeshift cairn for Corvis and Khanda both, but eventually they stacked together sufficient rock and timber for Jassion to leap up and clasp the edge of the floor above. After a moment of scrabbling, while the others held their breath and prayed the stone would hold, he vanished over the rim. He reappeared a moment later, one arm reaching downward. It probably wasn’t necessary—Mellorin could likely have made the jump herself—but he offered, and she accepted. A bit more scrabbling, Jassion called out once more to ensure Irrial would be all right for the duration, and then they were gone.

  For several minutes the baroness waited, until all sounds had ceased above and she was certain the others were on their way. Then, leaning against the wall for support, she inched her way toward the unsteady heap of rock.

  And again, for long minutes, made no move at all.

  Who had he been, there, at the last? Who had slain Khanda, had risen in the face of a mortal wound and lashed out to save, if not the entire world, then his beloved daughter? Corvis Rebaine, the Terror of the East? Or Cerris of Rahariem, whom Irrial herself had once thought to love, and who—though that love was past—might have been a friend and companion worth having?

  Irrial didn’t know. But as sure as she was that nobody could have survived either that dreadful wound or the weight of the crushing stones—let alone both together—she knew that she must do all she could to be absolutely certain. No matter how futile the effort.

  How many times, after all, had Corvis Rebaine already performed the impossible?

  She could accomplish little enough by herself, perhaps, but at least she could make a start until the soldiers arrived to aid her. Grunting with exertion, the baroness of Rahariem leaned down and heaved aside the first of many stones.

  Epilogue

  MELLORIN STOOD CALF-DEEP in snow, one hand resting on Sunder’s hilt, and struggled to peer through the whirling blizzard at the path before her.

  She had indeed learned much about Corvis Rebaine, and as she’d been warned, there was much of it she wished she hadn’t. Still she’d sought more—and more she had discovered. From Tyannon and Jassion, from Irrial and even from Davro; from scholars and sages, historians and even oracles. She devoured it all, until there was no more to be learned.

  And she’d learned what she must do with that knowledge. She wondered if, in the many months that had come and gone, her mother had begun to forgive her—or if she ever would.

  But it didn’t matter. Mellorin knew her father, now. She knew why he’d left, and if she couldn’t yet forgive him for that, she could at least understand. She knew what he’d hoped to accomplish and the world he’d hoped to build … And she knew where he’d gone wrong.

  She had no children waiting for her. She could avoid his mistakes. She could do it right. But she, like her father before her, needed the power to make it work.

  Her guide, scion of a local Terrirpa tribe, reemerged from the wall of snow and beckoned with a fur-clad hand. “We should hurry, good mistress, lest the blizzard grow any worse.”

  An absent nod was her only response as she gazed upward, as though through sheer force of will she could see into the uppermost reaches of Mount Molleya, or the hidden cav
e at their peak where her prize awaited, entombed within the ice.

  I’ll build the world you wanted for us, Father. I’ll make you proud.

  Plans for the future and memories of the past twining around each other behind her eyes, Mellorin waved her guide forward and began to climb.

  About the Author

  ARI MARMELL would love to tell you all about the various esoteric jobs he held and the wacky adventures he had on the way to becoming an author, since that’s what other authors seem to do in these blurbs. Unfortunately, he doesn’t actually have any. In point of fact, Ari decided while at the University of Houston that he wanted to be a writer, graduated with a creative writing degree, and—after holding down a couple of very mundane jobs, in retail positions and as an advertising proofreader—broke into freelance writing. He has an extensive history of writing for role-playing games, but has always worked on improving and publishing his fiction at every opportunity. He has several shared-world novels and short stories in publication—including Agents of Artifice, a Magic: The Gathering novel—but The Conqueror’s Shadow was his first wholly original published book. The Warlord’s Legacy is the next book in the Corvis Rebaine Saga. He also has a new book, The Goblin Corps, coming out soon.

  Ari currently lives in an apartment that’s almost as cluttered as his subconscious, which he shares (the apartment, not the subconscious) with his wife, George, and two cats who really need some form of volume control installed. You can visit Ari online at www.mouseferatu.com