The Conquerors Shadow

by Ari Marmell

  The older man shrugged. “No place in particular, I’d wager. Jassion would never admit to it, but this is a rough time for him. This situation can’t help but bring back memories of his sister. He’s probably just spending a great deal of time alone with his thoughts.”

  “Yes,” Lorum agreed slowly. “That’s probably it.” But he continued to gaze into the empty hallway, long after Jassion’s rapid footsteps faded into memory. Absently, he fingered his signet ring, his badge of Imphallion’s highest station, and he frowned. Then he simply shrugged.

  “Come, Nathan. With or without our hotheaded baron, we’ve got planning to do, and little time in which to do it. Wherever Jassion’s gotten off to, I’m sure it’s no concern of ours.”

  Chapter Eight

  “So?” Tyannon called as Corvis trudged back over the low rise. “How does it look?”

  She stood leaning against a tall, scraggly tree that offered precious little in the way of actual shade, one hand absently clutching her belly where it was just beginning to swell. Leaves crackled under her feet as she shifted her weight, and the air smelled strongly of autumn.

  “The property’s a steal,” Corvis said, stopping next to her and taking a moment just to inhale the scent of her hair; it had changed, ever so slightly, in recent months. Ever since …

  “Corvis? You’re doing it again.”

  “Sorry. Uh, where …? Right. The inn’s not exactly the loveliest place I’ve considered staying, but it’s affordable enough. We’ll have a roof until the house is done. And there are a few folk in town willing to help with the carpentry for some extra coin. I don’t know if we’ll have the whole thing done in time for the baby, but there’ll be enough to live in.

  “That is, if you’re still sure this is where you want to live? Chelenshire isn’t precisely the pinnacle of civilization …”

  “That’s why I like it,” Tyannon told him, running her free hand across his jaw. “Are you changing your mind? You promised me—”

  “No! No, not at all. Just wanted to be sure.” Corvis frowned thoughtfully, glancing back the way he’d come. “You know, Chelenshire doesn’t have much of a government, really. An official town mediator for disputes, an informal council of elders to make decisions, and that’s about it. I bet with someone to teach them a better way, they could—”

  “Corvis?” Tyannon’s hand dropped away from his face. “If you so much as think it, I promise you you’ll wake up one morning with something very, very large lodged somewhere that’s really not equipped to handle it.”

  “Ouch,” Corvis began with a grin. “Then maybe I …”

  The words caught in his throat as he turned, nearly solid enough to choke on. Her tone had been light, her lips still turned upward in the faintest wistful smile, but her eyes were harder than Corvis had ever dreamed possible. And he heard, without either of them giving it voice, Tyannon’s real ultimatum: If you so much as think it, you’ll wake up one morning … alone.

  “Maybe I’ll just go and arrange for the lumber,” he finished softly.

  “Why don’t you do that, then?”

  “CORVIS?”

  Tyannon? Is that you? Oh, thank gods! I’ll never leave home again, Tyannon, never leave you and the kids, never …

  “I know you’re awake, Corvis. I can hear it in your breath.”

  No. He recognized the truth, heard it in the words that penetrated his cocoon of pain and exhaustion. Not Tyannon. The voice, though unmistakably feminine, was deeper, flavored with an accent that hinted coyly of unknown lands.

  Corvis kept his eyes firmly shut, hiding tears he refused to shed. “You always were observant, Seilloah,” he slurred, forcing a smile he did not feel.

  “Hmph. Observant enough to know you’re still feeling the effects of that damn infection. And observant enough to recognize your voice when you began shouting earlier. Fortunate for you that I did, too. What possessed you to try to battle the sidhe?”

  “It seemed,” Corvis told her, the fuzziness fading from his voice, “to be a good idea at the time.” Painfully, he forced open eyelids that felt glued together with tree sap, and sat up.

  “Careful. You’re weak.”

  “I’d noticed.”

  With silent thanks that his vision, at least, had fully recovered from his ordeal, Corvis examined his new surroundings and found exactly what he would have expected from a forest hut. A stone hearth took up one entire corner, a merrily crackling fire warming a kettle of something that emitted a foul, bitter bouquet. Plants cluttered the room—potted, hanging, roaming free, and in one case growing directly through a gap in the floorboards—through which Corvis saw small forms dashing back and forth.

  And there, sitting on a stool beside the bed, was Seilloah.

  He had always thought of her hair as batwing in hue: black, save for those certain oblique angles from which it was deepest brown. Her eyes were the same mischievous green he remembered. The years had etched a few extra lines into her face, taken a few pounds from her flesh, but she still possessed what Corvis had always thought an ageless beauty. She wore a dark brown dress of the simple style she’d always favored.

  And he remembered her well enough not to be taken in by her harmless image and apparent concern, genuine as it may have been.

  “Thank you,” he said simply.

  She snorted. “I wasn’t about to let you pass on without finding out what you were doing here. Damn it, Corvis, this isn’t some gentle wood you can just wander through to commune with the animals! This is Theaghl-gohlatch, for the gods’ sakes! What were you thinking?”

  “Come now, Seilloah. You don’t think this is coincidence, do you?”

  She nodded. “I figured as much. You were looking for me.”

  “But of course.” He grimaced at the sudden shock of pain through his left arm. He glanced at it, seeing only blood-soaked bandages that exuded a hint of the same bitter aroma emanating from the kettle.

  “Though admittedly, I didn’t intend to do it by practically dying on your doorstep.”

  “You battled the sidhe, Corvis. That you only practically died is astonishing.”

  “The sidhe.” He shook his head, then caught himself, expecting a sudden wave of vertigo that never came. “They’ve got a pretty nasty bite for myths and legends. I’ll have to tell Davro he was right.”

  “Davro?” Seilloah asked sharply. “Davro was with you? Corvis, I didn’t find any trace of him. I’m afraid—”

  “No, Davro’s quite safe. Smarter than I am, apparently. He refused to come into the forest at all. He’s camped in the woods, outside of—Seilloah, how long have I been here?”

  “You were out for a day or so. Before that, I think you followed my trail for, oh, three hours, give or take.” She scowled as her guest struggled to stand. “Lie down, Corvis. You need a while to recover.”

  “Can’t,” he mumbled, casting about for his equipment. “Davro’s going to leave by day’s end. Said if I wasn’t back in two days, he was calling me dead and going home.”

  Seilloah rose, placed a hand on Corvis’s chest, and casually shoved. He toppled, much like a felled tree but with less grace, across the mattress and furs. “I’ll send him a message, let him know you’re alive. Besides, you’re not really dressed for the forest.”

  Noticing for the first time that more than his gear and weaponry were missing, Corvis flushed and yanked the covers back over him. Seilloah laughed.

  “It’s not as if I haven’t seen it before, Corvis.”

  “That was a long time ago, Seilloah. I’m married now.”

  “Really? This is a tale I’ve got to hear.” Her eyes locked on her guest, she sank back down on her stool. “Davro was just planning to leave, was he? That’s not the ogre I remember.”

  “He’s less thrilled about helping me this time around. Quite frankly, he didn’t want to leave his sheep farm.”

  “His what?”

  Corvis shrugged. “Apparently, all that time he was traveling with me and
squishing people in my name, he was also watching how people other than ogres lived. You know, farming, herding, and otherwise not waiting on Chalsene Night-Bringer to deliver victims to be raided.

  Seems he decided it was nicer than a life of further bloodshed back home.”

  Had the witch’s jaw gaped any lower, it might well have been lost in her cleavage.

  “I think,” Corvis exhaled, “I’d better start at the beginning.”

  “And I think,” Seilloah replied, “that I’d better put something on the fire a little more potable than this healing salve. It sounds as though this might just take a while.”

  IT DID. Over multiple cups of an odd but refreshing herbal tea, the entire tale emerged. He spoke of his years with Tyannon—as hostage, companion, friend, and finally lover. He shared, as best mere words allowed, his happiness over the past years, his joy at the birth of his children, and the peace he’d never imagined he could have. He spoke of the rumors of Audriss’s campaign, and his fury at the men who’d dared attack his daughter. The recitations finally drew to a close with Corvis’s entry into the darkened passage. “You pretty much know what happened after that. Interesting home you’ve got here, Seilloah. The décor’s nice, but I can’t say much for your neighbors.”

  “We’ve got an understanding,” she muttered absently, her eyes distant. Then she frowned. “I think you went too easy on those men near your home. You know what they would have done to Mellorin.”

  “I know,” he said flatly. “I suppose getting there in time to stop them put me in a better mood. If I’d been too late, I assure you they’d still be screaming.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Abruptly as it appeared, her frown flipped upward into a large, cat-and-canary grin. “I can’t believe you put poor Davro in that position,” she laughed. “Gods, he must have been furious!”

  “Tried to skewer me with a big spear, actually. But he’s a smart ogre. He knows this is his best option. Which reminds me—I sort of promised him you’d find some way to see that his animals are taken care of until we get back.”

  “Oh you did, did you?” Seilloah’s eyes flashed green—in anger or mirth, Corvis wasn’t certain. “Were you so very certain that I’d be willing to help you in your endeavors? Were you planning to blackmail me, too?”

  “You know, Davro asked me that exact question. No, Seilloah, I’d never do that to you.”

  Now those green eyes went cold. “Because you’d never do such a thing, Corvis, or because you don’t have anything on me?”

  Corvis grinned sheepishly. “Admittedly, if I did have something on you, I might have to consider it. But I’m glad I don’t. I don’t want to pull that sort of thing with you. Davro was a good lieutenant, and his help will be useful. But you were a—”

  “If you say friend, I may seriously consider poisoning you myself.” Her gaze grew heavy, oppressive. Corvis felt it as a pressure on his chest, a catch in his breath. “You didn’t have friends, Corvis. Not Davro, not Valescienn, and not me. You had people you could trust enough to let you use them. Nothing more.”

  “That’s not true, Seilloah. With you, I …”

  Her unblinking gaze would not allow him his feeble denial. Defiantly, Corvis drew in a breath. “Seilloah, whatever we were or weren’t in the past, I’m asking you now: Will you help me?”

  “Corvis …” She rose gracefully from the stool and sat beside him on the bed, one hand resting on his own. “If I told you that I’d only help if we returned to what we were—along with a promise, of course, that Tyannon need never know—if that was the price of my aid, would you accept?”

  He stared at her for a long moment, the blood draining from his face. And then, finally, “No. Some things have to be sacred, even to me. I’m sorry.”

  “Good,” she said, rising once more to her feet. “Then just let me gather some supplies, and we’ll go when you’re up to it. Your clothing and weapons are under the bed.” She began puttering about the room, collecting this and arranging that.

  “You’ll help me?” he asked, confused by the abrupt change in mood. “Just like that?”

  She stopped and straightened up, staring into the fire, her back to the man she knew so well and not at all. “Not for your sake, Corvis. For hers.”

  He blinked several times, puzzled, before comprehension finally dawned. “For Tyannon? Why?”

  “Because,” Seilloah told him, hair gleaming in the flickering firelight, “I thought once, long ago, that I might have been her. And I’d have wanted someone to help me and my children.

  “Rest now,” she said abruptly, returning to the task at hand. “We should get a move on as soon as you’re able. Can’t keep Davro waiting. Ogres are notoriously impatient.”

  Corvis watched as she packed, pondering. Then, with a mental shrug, he reached beneath the bed for his possessions. They lay within easy reach: his pack, his sword, his clothes, and, bizarrely, a short spear, scarcely the length of his arm, covered in ever-shifting runes.

  Even as his fist closed around it, he felt the Kholben Shiar taste his soul, as it did to all who dared heft it. He watched Sunder shape itself accordingly, melting down, forming once more into the axe with which he was as familiar as his own skin. And he wondered, thinking of the spear it had briefly been—the weapon of a hunter, not a warrior—what it had seen inside Seilloah.

  THEY REMAINED UNMOLESTED as they traversed the darkness of Theaghl-gohlatch. The path seemed less claustrophobic this time around, though whether the cause was Seilloah’s light spell (substantially brighter than Corvis’s) or the extra company, or the simple fact that he wasn’t feverish and dying, Corvis couldn’t say. He heard rustling in the surrounding foliage, but whatever paced them remained content to watch.

  “Seilloah, why would you want to live in this place?” he finally asked.

  “What’s wrong with it?” she responded innocently.

  “Seilloah …”

  She smiled. “I’ve always preferred forests, Corvis. You know that. And with this one, I don’t have to worry about the stray hunter or woodcutter wandering too close to my home and getting away before I can, ah, invite him to dinner. People leave this place alone—everyone except you—and that’s what I wanted.”

  “You and Davro both. Did everyone I knew go on to become a hermit?”

  “Quite possibly,” she told him. “People were oddly suspicious of strangers at the time. I think most of the kingdom was struggling to rebuild from something or other. Some catastrophe. Can’t recall offhand what it was.”

  “Cute. So if you didn’t believe in my cause, why’d you help me?”

  “Who said I didn’t believe? I still think you’d make a better ruler than anything else we’ve got available. Doesn’t mean I’m blind to the consequences. Corvis,” she added abruptly, “you know full well that my sphere of influence is somewhat limited. If Audriss has at his command anything approaching the level of sorcery that you used to have, I can’t counter it.”

  “You’ll do fine,” Corvis responded stiffly.

  “Corvis—”

  “No.”

  She bulled on. “Where’s Khanda?”

  “Someplace safe.”

  Corvis’s tone didn’t make it entirely clear whether he meant someplace safe for Khanda, or from him. “It’s your decision, of course, Corvis, but shouldn’t you at least consider—”

  “No.”

  She sighed. “Fine. Have it your way.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  They emerged into the diffuse light of the surrounding woods just after midday. Davro, his back stiff and his spear clenched tight, stood some twenty feet from the gaping passage. Rascal, his ears flattened, waited behind the ogre, tugging at his tether.

  “I knew you were coming,” the ogre said stiltedly. “The trees grew a mouth and told me.”

  “The trees around here,” Corvis said casually, “do seem unusually verbose.”

  “Davro,” Seilloah greeted the ogre with a smile.

&n
bsp; “Seilloah.”

  “It’s been a long time, my large friend. You’re looking quite well.”

  “As are you. Did he blackmail you, too?”

  “That’s starting to get just a little old,” Corvis interjected.

  “So are you,” Davro spat back. Corvis raised an eyebrow, which the ogre chose to ignore.

  “My animals—” he began.

  “Corvis already asked me. It’ll be a strain from this distance, but I can put the entire herd into a hibernation, of sorts. They won’t need food or drink—they’ll barely breathe, for that matter—for at least several months, probably a couple of seasons. If we’re not done by then, I’ll try to think of something a little more long-term.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s a handy trick,” Corvis commented. “Why didn’t you ever do that on the armies we faced?”

  Seilloah sighed. “Because sheep and pigs are docile. Trained warhorses are too ornery to cooperate, and as far as humans go, it’s far more difficult for witchcraft to manipulate anything with a soul. Why don’t you concentrate on how to deal with Audriss, and leave the witchcraft to me, all right?”

  Corvis untethered Rascal from the tree and set off to the northwest, leading the horse and followed by his companions. Seilloah assured him that a suitable mount would await her at the edge of the woods, so they need not walk all the way to ogre territory. As they marched, snatches of conversation drifted through Corvis’s hearing.

  “… any humans lately?” the ogre was asking.

  A deep sigh. “No, that’s the one disadvantage to living in isolation, I’m afraid. And it means some of my best recipes are going to waste. You?”

  “Nah. I don’t care for the way humans taste, remember? I thought I told you that.”

  “You might have. It’s been a while, Davro.” Another sigh, this one more hopeful. “It’ll be nice to get out in the world again, at least for a little while. Maybe we can find a vagabond or two no one will miss. They tend toward the stringy, but if you can mix them with the right kind of vegetables and a good helping of potatoes, they make the most fabulous stew …”