The Conquerors Shadow

by Ari Marmell

  “We also have reason to believe that the entire situation with Audriss may actually be the work of Corvis Rebaine—”

  He’d never finished the thought, because the room erupted: a geyser of shouting, a volcanic upheaval of pure, unadulterated noise.

  Sebastian, his face flushed, tried for several minutes to make himself heard over the tumult beneath him, shouting himself hoarse to no avail. Finally, he turned toward the individual sitting directly to his left and shrugged sheepishly. In return, he received an icy glower. Then, with a whisk of leather on fabric, the other person stepped to the very edge of the dais, gazing down at the pulsing bedlam.

  Rheah Vhoune brushed a few strands of hair from her face, cast a simple spell under her breath, and then shouted, “Quiet!”

  Her voice thundered through the room, quite literally stunning some of the Assembly as it blew past. The chamber fell into a shocked silence, broken only by a tinkling sound as the cry made its way to the far wall and shattered the window.

  “Thank you,” she said in a normal tone of voice. Rheah wore a formal gown, rather than her accustomed tunic and leggings, but she sported her hardened leather cuirass and bracers.

  Even the most powerful of wizards finds it difficult to do much about a crossbow bolt in the back.

  “I think it’s clear,” Rheah told them sharply, “that we’re accomplishing nothing of value. I move we adjourn for the day, early as it may be, and take this up in the morning once we’ve all had time to assimilate the news we’ve just heard.” Somehow, without actually moving, she managed to briefly cast another glare in Sebastian’s direction.

  “Umm, yes,” the Speaker said quickly. “I second. Motion carried.”

  The sorceress nodded. “Remember, ladies and gentlemen, that what the Speaker has told you is rumor and hearsay. There’s no proof one way or the other.” She smiled dourly. “When you go and blab this particular gossip like lonely fishwives, you may want to be certain you mention that part.”

  She waited, unmoving, as the huge crowd, mumbling and whispering furtively, filtered from the hall. Then, her jaw a clenched vise, she faced the Guildmaster.

  “Um,” Sebastian began eloquently.

  “You imbecile! You rat-brained, jaw-wagging idiot! How could you be so stupid?”

  “I … Rheah, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry. You’re sorry! Gods damn it all, you jackass, you’ll have this entire city in a blind panic!”

  “I’m pretty close to blind panic myself, Rheah! The very idea is terrifying.”

  “And that’s exactly why you should have kept your flapping mouth shut about it!” Rheah clenched her fist as she ranted, in part to keep herself from casting anything she couldn’t take back. “I ought to transform you into a radish!”

  Sebastian blanched. “You wouldn’t actually do that, would you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never tried it.” She snarled at him. “In your case, it might actually improve your higher brain functions, though.”

  “Now, Rheah, I am the Speaker of this council. Whatever power you may have, I outrank you, and I think I’m due a little—” The bearded merchant tried suddenly to retract, turtle-like, into his tunic as the sorceress advanced on him, fingers twitching erratically. She stopped only when she trod on his feet, her nose inches from his. Her breathing was audible, as was the grinding of her teeth, and her face had gone nearly as red as her gown.

  “Ah, perhaps I’d best return to my chambers,” Sebastian said hastily.

  “That might,” Rheah said very softly, “be the best idea you’ve had all day.” She stepped aside, and Sebastian managed—barely—to keep a dignified pace until he was out the door.

  Only then did Rheah direct her attention to the rest of the High Council, all of whom sat motionless. “Anyone who cares to comment,” the sorceress said darkly, “is welcome to take the floor.”

  There were, startlingly enough, no volunteers.

  “Good. I’ll see you tomorrow.” And then, rather than subject the lot of them to the humiliation of fleeing from the room as their leader had done, she herself turned and strode out.

  SHE WAS MUTTERING SOURLY when she reached her private office. The door unlatched itself with a soft click and drifted soundlessly open at her approach. A shimmer passed through the room, and a cheery fire instantly crackled into existence in what had been, mere seconds ago, an empty fireplace. The curtains drew themselves up, allowing an unobstructed view of Mecepheum’s main avenue, and the drawers in the ornate mahogany desk unlocked themselves with a rapid series of snaps. The weapons hanging from the wall shone, as though dusted and wiped clean. Several swords, a mace, a halberd, all made not of steel, but flimsy wood. Every one had been wielded against her at some point in the past, and every one had been sharp steel before her magics rendered them harmless.

  By the time Rheah Vhoune stepped over the threshold onto the lush fur carpeting, the entire room looked as if a battalion of valets had spent meticulous hours preparing it.

  There are, after all, some fringe benefits to being a wizard.

  Finally running low on worthwhile curses to grumble to herself, Rheah spun angrily around the desk and threw herself angrily into the thickly upholstered chair—

  And froze, lips parted in the midst of a final curse, as she saw the figure sitting across the room from her.

  He was dressed in dark leathers, worn smooth and dulled with years of use. A heavy cloak fell from his shoulders and wrapped loosely about his arms, a garment well designed to ward off winter’s icy winds. The hood was raised, masking the intruder’s face in a liquid pool of shadow. His left hand rested idly on a large battle-axe, and his fingers played idly across the flat of the blade.

  It was the first time in a very, very great while that Rheah Vhoune found herself surprised by anything. It was not, she decided upon reflection, a pleasant experience.

  “How did you get past the wards on the door?” she asked, forcing her voice into a preternatural calm.

  “With some difficulty.” The stranger’s voice was a bit gravelly, and while she couldn’t exactly claim that it was familiar, it rang faint and distant bells in the recesses of her mind. “You’re very good, my lady. One of the best I’ve ever seen.” The intruder paused thoughtfully. “Though I must say …” Another pause. “The Merchants’ Guild? That doesn’t really strike me as being—well, you.”

  “And you know me so very well, do you?” Her posture relaxed, Rheah leaned back in the chair, her initial chagrin fading into a murk of anger and curiosity, flavored with just a pinch of fear. She was more than confident in her ability to handle any normal assailant, but the fact that this man broke into her office without tripping even one of her defenses suggested that he was far from normal.

  “Better than you might think, Lady Rheah.”

  The sorceress suddenly smiled. “I might say the same. You might as well lower the hood, Lord Rebaine. You can hardly hide behind it, or your silly skull mask, forever.”

  She had the pleasure, then, of seeing the figure in the chair start visibly. His unoccupied hand gripped the armrest tight enough to make the wood creak, and he leaned forward as though pained. Then, with an audible exhalation, he slowly pulled the hood back.

  Rheah wasn’t certain what to expect, but somehow, this greying, thin-faced man sitting before her—a man whose best days had passed him by years ago—was a far cry from anything she might have anticipated.

  Then she looked into his eyes, and knew that this was indeed Corvis Rebaine, the Terror of the East. And it wasn’t because his gaze was cold, unfeeling, or cruel, though she didn’t doubt that he could be all those things and more. It was, instead, the subtle trace of horror lurking at the very back of those eyes. A lingering revulsion, probably long forgotten by Rebaine himself, at the memory of all the atrocities that he had committed. Only a man guilty of the most foul deeds could loathe himself so much.

  It was almost—almost—enough to make her pity him.

>   “How did you know?” he asked, unaware of her intense scrutiny.

  Rheah laughed once, sharply, and then stared at him, one hand idly fiddling with a hummingbird-shaped brooch that was the only ornament she wore. “Your own fault, I’m afraid, Lord Rebaine. You know, you used to do a much better job of killing anyone who might threaten you.”

  Corvis looked at her quizzically, not understanding.

  “A few months ago,” she explained patiently, “a guardsman recognized you. In the village of Kervone.”

  Comprehension dawned, and Corvis leaned back, smiling bitterly. “Seilloah told me that would come back to haunt us.”

  “Seilloah always was the wise one in your little coterie. So she’s doing all right, then? How about Valescienn? And your ogre lieutenant, what was his name again? Dabro?”

  “Davro,” Corvis corrected absently. “You’re not impressing me anymore. Everyone knew the names of my lieutenants.”

  “Ah. How foolish of me.” A vicious grin spread over her features. “Then tell me, how’s Khanda?”

  Another pause, and then, oddly enough, Corvis responded with, “No, you absolutely may not!” It took her a moment to realize the warlord wasn’t speaking to her.

  “I see he’s here as well. One big demented family.”

  “Rheah, we don’t have time for this sort of sparring. Audriss is coming.”

  The sorceress raised an eyebrow. “The dominant opinion is that Audriss is a front for you.”

  “Audriss? That bug? I hardly think so.”

  “If he’s such a bug, Lord Rebaine, and if you aren’t behind him, then what are you doing here?”

  Corvis leaned forward once more, face intent. The firelight skittering across his features gave him an ephemeral, ghostly quality, the echoes of a dream that refused to fade. “He threatened my family, Rheah. I don’t take well to that.”

  “Family? Who in the world would marry … Rebaine, you didn’t!”

  Corvis smiled sheepishly. “It was actually her idea, Rheah.”

  “Somehow,” she said, her voice cold once more, “I don’t think Jassion’s going to see it that way.”

  “My point,” the warlord snapped, “is that Audriss wants something, and it’s not just Imphallion itself. If he should happen to get his hands on it …”

  “Don’t play coy with me, Rebaine.” It was Rheah’s turn to lean forward, her relentless gaze boring into his own. “You want to know if I’ve found the key to the book you stole from Denathere.”

  “All right, Khanda swears that you can’t be reading my mind, but—”

  “Is it his, Rebaine?” The sorceress seemed, in her anxiety, to have momentarily forgotten her hatred for the man before her. Her voice held nothing but excitement, the giddiness of a schoolgirl running home for gifts on the Winter Solstice. “Is it Selakrian’s spellbook?”

  Corvis chewed his lower lip for a span, fingers once again drumming on the head of the Kholben Shiar. And then, despite himself, he nodded. “It is.”

  “I knew it!” Rheah crowed happily. “Gods, Rebaine, you should have just offered it up to the wizards’ community. We’d probably have handed you Imphallion on a silver platter in exchange for that book!”

  The black-clad intruder blinked. “I never actually thought of that,” he admitted. Then, with a head shake, he continued, “No, I don’t think I’d have done that. I’d only have been king at the sufferance of whoever finally cracked the code. Being a puppet ruler is worse than being no ruler at all. If there’s to be a demigod walking the face of the world, I’d rather it be me.”

  “And the great Corvis Rebaine is the only mortal worthy of that sort of power?” she asked sarcastically.

  “Worthy? Not at all. I just trust myself to handle that responsibility more than I do anyone else.”

  “Of course. Yes, Rebaine, I have the key. I spent thirteen years hunting down bits and tatters so I could piece the rest of it together. And no, you can’t have it. If you think I’ll put that sort of power in your hands, you’re even crazier than everyone thinks you are.”

  “My concern,” the warlord said darkly, “is to ensure Audriss doesn’t get it. Nothing more.”

  “Oh, of course. And you came all this way—snuck through a city that would be more than delighted to rip you into so much chutney, crept through the halls of the most powerful Guild in the kingdom, and broke into my personal office—to warn me not to hand Audriss the means to becoming a god? Heavens, it’s a good thing you got here when you did. I was about to send it to him by carrier pigeon first thing tomorrow.”

  “No, I—”

  “You know what I think? I think that you haven’t changed in seventeen years. I think you saw an opportunity to get your hands on the one thing that would have won the last war for you. I don’t know if you’re working with Audriss—I think I almost believe that you’re not—but you’re still a danger to me, my friends, and my kingdom. And not only am I not giving you the key, I don’t particularly feel inclined to let you leave this room.”

  Corvis stood, Sunder clasped in both hands, Khanda’s glow exuding from beneath his leather tunic. “Do you really think you have the power to stop me, Rheah?”

  “Who said I was going to stop you?” she asked innocently.

  To his credit, Corvis was almost fast enough to block the blow. Almost. The heavy cudgel landed like the kick of an angered charger. He staggered, fingers going limp on the shaft of his axe, his concentration far too splintered to bring Khanda’s power to bear. The Baron of Braetlyn advanced alongside four of his men, all of whom, it seemed, simply stepped from the wall by the fireplace. The heavy club in his hand and murderous fury on his face, Jassion swung again and again, the hollow slap of wood on flesh soon giving way to the sharper snap of breaking bone. When he finally stopped, cheeks flushed with rage and breathing heavily, Corvis Rebaine was alive—though once he finally woke up, he’d almost certainly wish he wasn’t.

  “I do not,” the baron said softly, “want to go through that magic again.”

  “I know it was uncomfortable,” the sorceress apologized, absently brushing two fingers against the hummingbird brooch that had activated the magics. “Slow teleportation is painful, but his pet demon would have detected anything less subtle. The ache should fade by day’s end. Tomorrow morning at the latest.”

  “I think, however, that it was more than worth it.”

  Rheah knelt to examine the warlord’s broken form. Swiftly she yanked the pendant from his neck and dropped it on the floor beside her. Then, absently rubbing her fingers as though to clean them of some lingering taint from even so brief a touch, she whispered the words of a counterspell, intended to disperse any lingering sorceries the demon might have cast upon his master. Magics unraveled beneath her will, and the wood beneath the carpet—to say nothing of several of the Terror’s broken bones—creaked audibly as Rebaine’s unobtrusive garb transformed back into its original form: that of his infamous steel-and-bone armor.

  “Did you have fun?” she asked the baron sourly, clearly disapproving. “The point here was to take him captive, not beat him into some sort of stew.”

  Jassion spun to face her, eyes blazing. “You’re damn fortunate I didn’t kill him on the spot!” Then, in a calmer tone, “But then, this may be the best way. We all have questions for him. And I, for one, am eagerly looking forward to making him answer them.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Audriss wasn’t entirely certain, as the hideous shape bowled him over, exactly what he had said wrong.

  The cavern echoed with the sudden impact of steel on stone, the bending and snapping of armored plates, the cracking of bones beneath inhuman fingers. The thing atop him thrashed about, clasping two hands of disparate size around the warlord’s throat. Audriss knew well that only the magics of his armor kept him alive, and even through that protection he felt an ache in his muscles, a shortness of breath.

  He hadn’t even realized the damn thing was coming at him! Mismatched limbs
, flailing about at unimaginable angles—it was impossible to tell which way the creatures were moving. They were like nothing Audriss had ever dealt with, a people seemingly stitched together by a blind god who’d heard only secondhand descriptions of men.

  Though every instinct fought against it, Audriss released his grasp on the thing’s wrists. Immediately the pressure on his throat increased—blood pounded in his ears, the torchlight dimmed before his eyes—but Audriss twisted, turned, subtly shifting the massive weight that crushed him to the floor, until …

  A gravelly shout bursting painfully through his throat, Audriss yanked Talon from its scabbard and drove it, again and again and again, into his attacker’s rigid, inhuman flesh. And though the creature lacked the organs to be found in a human’s chest, still the Kholben Shiar found something vital in its violent probing. It shuddered once, this vile thing, and then lay statue-still.

  With a second shout—more of an inflated grunt, really—Audriss shoved the corpse away, gasping gratefully as the hands were pulled from his throat. With far more grace than either his armor or his injuries should have permitted, he rolled swiftly to his feet, Talon clasped in one hand, the other clenched in a fist to expose the glowing ring on his finger.

  Pekatherosh flashed a nauseating green—sent power thrumming through the cavern—and for a moment, at least, the two sides disengaged. Men and gnomes glared at one another across a pile of bodies that consisted, Audriss was disgusted to note, almost entirely of his own soldiers. The gnome he’d slain with Talon was one of exactly two of the twisted little vermin to have fallen in the sudden melee.

  Valescienn drifted up behind, towering over the warlord yet somehow shrinking into his shadow. “What the hell did you say to them?” he demanded.