The Conquerors Shadow

by Ari Marmell

  Mithraem, to his core, was not.

  Even as the thing approached, the wizard’s hands rose and syllables older than civilization tumbled from her lips. The air around her crackled, the room filled with the smell of smoke and ozone. Desperate to stop the advancing nightmare, Rheah pulled no punches. The most powerful offensive spell she knew coalesced before her, stabbing at her foe, the dagger of the gods.

  It was a bolt, but this was no lightning. Energies of all hues, from blinding whites to subtle blues and greens, raced the length of the stream. It slammed into Mithraem’s chest, hurling him into the far wall hard enough to crack the surrounding brick and shatter the glass. His sword fell from his fist, landing unnoticed by the window. Smoke rose from the floorboards as the heat radiated outward, yet frost formed on the walls as the energies of the arcane assault vied for dominance. A strike of pure elemental power, it contained all that was—earth and air, fire and water—and nothing of this world could stand against it.

  But Mithraem, of course, was not of this world. For long seconds, she leaned into the bolt, covered in a sheen of sweat. On the energies flowed, wave after wave, pinning her target to the wall. And then her reserves simply ran out. With a final crackle, the spell dissipated, and Rheah collapsed to her knees, sucking in great gasps of air.

  Stone and wood and plaster shifted, dust cascaded from the wall, and Mithraem pulled himself from the wreckage.

  His tunic hung in rags, disintegrated by the spell. Ash coated his torso and face, burns spotted his chest, and half his hair had burned away to reveal a horribly charred scalp. But still he stood, and still he neared, mouth gaping in a taunting smile that showed his white, gleaming, perfect teeth against the blackened canvas of his face.

  Too exhausted even to run, Rheah could do nothing as the creature bent down beside her, brushed his lips sensuously across her throat, and began to drink her life away.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Tyannon stood at the room’s only window, the shutters open just enough to offer a clear view of the stables, and idly tapped a finger on the sill. It wasn’t that she was particularly anxious to be anywhere in particular. Rather, she’d found herself generally impatient of late, and had no clear idea why.

  The heavy snows of midwinter had kept them in town for weeks, far longer than they’d planned to stay. They also, however, kept travel on the nearby roads to a minimum, so Corvis had told her that he wasn’t too concerned about the possibilities of pursuit or attack.

  Now that spring was beginning to draw its first shallow breaths, rather like a newborn babe, they’d be moving on shortly. Corvis had gone down to the stables to make some sort of arrangements, while Tyannon gathered their possessions from around the room. Had he left her alone like this months before, she’d have been gone so fast that even the gods would’ve had trouble keeping up.

  Now, though? Tyannon knew she wasn’t a prisoner anymore, not really. She told herself that she simply had nowhere else to go, but she knew that wasn’t true, either.

  No, the truth was that it was growing harder and harder for Tyannon to reconcile the warlord she’d heard of with the man traveling beside her. She knew his crimes, still occasionally shuddered at remembered horror stories, and of course there were still those memories of that day beneath the Hall. But the man she knew—the man who seemed vaguely beaten down by the world around him, the man who had thrown down his weapon to keep her from harm, the man who clearly had no real idea of what to do with her—that man seemed someone else entirely. Someone better.

  And Tyannon found herself unduly curious as to which one was the “real” Corvis Rebaine.

  The door flew open as Corvis heaved himself, and his burden, into the room. With a loud clatter and a grunt of strain, Corvis lifted the saddlebag and set it upright against the wall. Tyannon’s eyebrow rose as he took just a moment to massage his back.

  “Did you need help with that?” she asked archly.

  “You couldn’t have offered at the bottom of the stairs?”

  Tyannon’s lip twitched. “What fun would that have been?”

  Corvis grumbled something unintelligible and drew open the bag’s ties. There seemed to be nothing within but a collection of cheap and rusty tools; Tyannon knew it to be an illusion, one of the magics that Corvis could manage without the aid of that thing that used to hang around his neck. With another grunt, he upended the bag, allowing its true contents—a suit of armor, constructed of black steel and bone spurs, smelling strongly of oils—to spill across the floor.

  Tyannon couldn’t quite repress a gasp of revulsion.

  “I’m not wearing it,” he assured her swiftly. “I just … I wanted you to see this for yourself.”

  “See what?”

  He didn’t answer, not immediately. Instead, Corvis dug into the pile of pieces, retrieving two that clearly didn’t match the others. One was a heavy tome, its ancient leather covers warped and bent. The other was the ruby-red pendant on its innocuous silver chain.

  Grimacing, as tense as though he were sticking his hand into a serpent’s den, Corvis reached out and clutched the amulet. “Hello, Khanda.” Then, “Cute. Funny as always,” and “I’m not sure. Almost two months, maybe.”

  Tyannon could not, of course, hear the other side of the conversation. Part of her wanted to grab the pendant away, hurl it out the window, or simply to scream her fury at its mere presence. She did none of those things, though, simply watched, and listened …

  And she could have sworn that, just perhaps, she heard the faintest trace of an enraged scream from deep within the ruby as it, and the ancient codex, suddenly vanished in a pulse of crimson light.

  Corvis stood, his shoulders straightening, and damn if he didn’t look years younger than he had only moments before. Not yet certain what she’d seen—or perhaps simply unprepared to believe—Tyannon stepped forward. Tentatively, she reached out a foot to prod the spot on the floor where the book had lain, and even poked a finger into the palm of Corvis’s hand.

  “They’re gone,” he told her, his voice softer than she’d ever heard it. “For good.”

  “Why, Corvis?”

  Did he actually blush as he turned away? “Because I know it’s what you wanted.”

  Tyannon considered once more the two different men she knew as Corvis Rebaine—and she wondered, for the first time, if just maybe she herself might have a hand in determining, once and for all, which of them was real.

  HIS EXPRESSION THOUGHTFUL, Khanda rose from his throne, the muscles beneath his flesh flowing with unnatural grace and precision. As he stepped aside, Corvis finally saw the surface of the throne on which the demon sat, the source of that labored breathing. Even after his exposure to the horrors of this hellish realm, the warlord sucked in his breath. The crystalline seat and backing of the throne was padded, for Khanda’s comfort, with a cushion stitched together from the missing faces of the souls within the forest. Flattened mouths panted desperate, horrified breaths, moaned silently in torment. Tears ran from the corners of blinded eyes long squashed and dried.

  It was definitely time to leave.

  “It might work,” Khanda finally admitted, thumb and forefinger slowly stroking his chin in a mockery of human contemplation. “We’ll have to be bloody quick about it, though, or Audriss will figure it out. And he holds the pendant, Corvis, which means he’s technically in control.”

  “Didn’t stop you from turning coat on me at the drop of a hat, now, did it?”

  “No, I imagine it didn’t.” The demon scowled. “I have your word on this. When this is over, I go free. You release me from this damn prison!”

  “That’s the deal.”

  “If you renege on me, Corvis …”

  “Have I ever lied to you, Khanda?”

  If anything, the scowl grew deeper. “I suggest you get moving. Even as slowly as time’s going by outside this place, you don’t want to dillydally. Big snakes and spiders eating people, and all that.” Another pause. “Rheah Vho
une did tell you how to get back, didn’t she?”

  “I sort of figured it was just a matter of concentration, actually.”

  “Right. So why aren’t you concentrating?”

  Corvis concentrated.

  A SMALL CORNER of Rheah’s mind peered through the haze of exhaustion and the clouds of numbing panic, observing, almost clinically, the process slowly killing her. Her skin stretched as the pores on her face gaped wide, as her blood welled up in those pools of flesh. What little strength remained seeped from her, leached out with her stolen blood.

  The greater part of her, the part not even remotely calm, sobbed once reflexively at what was happening to her. For a moment, Mithraem pulled away, blood-drenched teeth exposed in a mocking leer.

  “It’s been a long time,” he whispered in a hoarse caricature of passion, “since I’ve had a sorcerer. And you, if it means anything, you’re one of the best I’ve tasted.”

  For that single instant, when the blood stopped flowing, Rheah rallied her self-control. She retained enough for one last spell; she had to have enough!

  Nothing offensive. Her body couldn’t take the strain, and if this walking corruption had survived the elemental lightning bolt, nothing she could throw at it would do any better.

  But there was a way. In her studies and experiments, Rheah had learned much about the human form, things most common folk didn’t know, couldn’t understand. And one of those obscure little facts—about the nature of the liquid pumping through her, that Mithraem now stole in his own peculiar brand of rape—might just be enough to save her.

  It was a simple spell, one of her favorites, designed to ruin an enemy’s weapon. But she must cast it now, exhausted, weakened nigh unto death, with greater precision than she’d ever before attempted.

  Under her breath, Rheah began to chant.

  Mithraem bent forward once more, his lips returning to the side of her face, as she’d known he would. And then, with the last of her rapidly failing consciousness, she spat the spell’s final syllables.

  Skilled as she was, it proved nearly impossible. The enchantment was intended for a sword, an axe. Her office was decorated with just such weapons. Now she cast it upon something much smaller, something completely unseen.

  But she was Rheah Vhoune, Initiate of the Eighth Circle, and by all the gods she would make it happen! The spell’s energies crept out, invisible and undetectable, insinuating themselves into the fluids passing between her and the enemy, from her flesh to his lips.

  And even as it passed through those lips, the iron in her blood transformed to wood.

  So fast was Mithraem drinking the life from Rheah’s body that, even as his tongue detected the sudden, grainy taste of the blood, he’d taken three full swallows before he could stop.

  A mouthful of strange, watery blood splattered across Rheah’s face as Mithraem spat. His expression fell slack as he rose, retreating from his “helpless” victim. Desperately he hacked, coughed, trying to clear his system of the unnatural substance he’d taken in. The blood—or what had originally been blood—swept through his flesh, permeated his bones, fed life to dead and desiccated organs that belonged deep in the earth.

  And then it reached his heart. There was oh so little of it, scarcely the tiniest fraction of the blood that had been transformed. But in this body that should not exist at all, it was enough.

  For the first time in generations, the first time since he’d truly lived, eating and breathing as mortals eat and breathe, Mithraem screamed. It held no menace, this high-pitched shriek, nothing predatory, no great font of evil. Only fear and despair, the last hopeless cry of a dying immortal.

  Seilloah rose from the bloody floor. From collar to knees, the front of her dress was drenched with blood, clammy and sticky against her skin. The tattered cloth gaped open where she’d yanked the stake from her stomach. Pink and fragile flesh, already bruising, sealed the wound like a patch upon the hull of a sinking ship. It would keep her from bleeding to death until she could do a more thorough job.

  Emotionless, remorseless, the witch stepped around her flailing foe, scouring the room. There. Seilloah lifted Mithraem’s own sword from the floor and raised it high.

  Mithraem, lord and master of the Endless Legion, eldest of his kind, ceased abruptly to scream. His head, mouth agape, landed not with a percussive thump but a liquid splash. Black rot and viscous corruption splattered the room, accompanied by the fetor of a dozen corpses splayed in the summer sun. Mist poured from the decomposing sludge, barred by the permeating wood from seeking a new shell, new life. A single sob, harbinger of endless grief and childish fear, echoed throughout the room. And then the mist faded into the floor and was gone.

  A heavy hand clamped down on Seilloah’s shoulder from behind. With a startled shriek she spun, Mithraem’s sword raised in a marginally competent grip.

  “Sorry,” Corvis said.

  “If we hadn’t just gone through nine kinds of hell to keep you alive,” Seilloah snarled, gasping heavily, “I’d seriously consider running you through.”

  With slow, drowsy movements, the warlord surveyed the room. His expression grew puzzled when he saw Nathaniel Espa lying in a heap, shifting to true concern when his gaze fell upon the crumpled forms of Ellowaine and Rheah.

  “Mithraem,” Seilloah answered his unspoken question. “He’s gone now. For good.”

  Corvis nodded. “How are they?”

  “Espa and Ellowaine are in no immediate danger, though some of those limbs may never work properly again. But Corvis, there’s nothing anyone can do for Rheah. She’s lost too much blood.”

  Softly, the Terror of the East knelt down beside the supine form of the woman who was once his most dangerous enemy. Almost tenderly, he took her pallid hand in his own iron-clad grip.

  “This … isn’t exactly the way I expected … to go,” she whispered, voice so soft he could barely hear it. “It’s a good thing … nothing went wrong with … the spell. I … couldn’t have … helped you. Was it … worth it?”

  “I spoke to Khanda,” Corvis confirmed. “He’ll help. I’ll save your city, Rheah. I don’t know if my word means a damn to you, but I give it anyway.”

  The sorceress shuddered once. “Then hadn’t you better … get moving?”

  “Rheah, where’s the key? The real key?”

  Weakly, the sorceress laughed. “Rebaine, do you think … I’m delirious? We may be on the same … side right now, but you’re still … you. It’s far from here, safe … safe from you, from everyone. No one will … threaten my city again. No one …”

  One breath. One more.

  “I really wanted … to see a Sorcerers’ Guild …”

  Rheah Vhoune, Initiate of the Eighth Circle, sighed one final time, and didn’t breathe again.

  Gently, Corvis closed her eyes. And then, with no hesitation, he reached into the pouch on Rheah’s belt and removed a small scroll case, similar to the one she’d given Audriss.

  “There’s no way she wouldn’t have kept it on her,” he replied to Seilloah’s questioning look. “On the off-chance she wrested the book away from Audriss, she’d have wanted to be able to use it against us.

  “Take care of Ellowaine,” he said, rising to his feet and sticking the case into his own pouch. “If I’m not back within half an hour, get her out of here, and tell Losalis to get the men the hell away from Mecepheum.”

  “Corvis, I should go with you! If you need help, I—”

  “Won’t be able to provide it.” The Terror of the East yanked Sunder from his baldric. The blade gleamed, despite the absence of any direct light. “This is between Audriss and me now, Seilloah. If I lose, this city goes down with me. Don’t be here when that happens.”

  He reached out a hand, placed it gently on the shoulder of his old friend, and squeezed. Tight-lipped, Seilloah nodded once.

  Corvis turned on his heel and departed.

  Her face marred by pain, Seilloah surveyed the room. Her eyes fell upon the injured, s
upine form of the great Nathaniel Espa, and despite her agony, a feral grin slowly crept across her face.

  BEHIND THE BLANK and barren stone, the first traces of puzzlement flickered across Lorum’s face. His new pets were causing untold destruction, slaying all who stood in—or anywhere near—their path, and that was good. But they were dawdling! They moved forward only slowly, stopping frequently to ensure that everything around them was laid waste, that no spark of life escaped their unquenchable fury.

  Growing angrier by the minute, the Serpent actually shook the tome he held in his hand. The Twins should have made a beeline for the Hall of Meeting, as he’d commanded! If the council survived this little exercise, things would be substantially more difficult for him later on.

  He’d wanted to make a definite impression, to cast himself into the pages of legend, but he’d also intended to have a capital city left afterward. That was looking less and less likely with every subsequent street engulfed in flames or swamped beneath rivers of diseased ichor.

  His steps thoughtful, the warlord called Audriss marched across the air toward the nearest building, a wide, three-story tenement. As though the swirling eddies of smoke formed the most solid of stairs, he descended from his lofty perch to stand instead upon real stone, his formerly silent boots now crunching on the gravel. From this new vantage, he once more flipped through the book, searching for clues as to why he’d lost control.

  “Oh, it’s not the book, Audriss. It’s just that you’re an idiot.”

  The Serpent actually jumped, so startled was he to hear any voice, and this voice in particular, on the rooftop. But sure enough, there he stood, encased in that ridiculous spiked armor, his hair hanging limply around his ears, Sunder grasped in battle-weary hands.

  “Corvis,” the warlord purred, teeth clenched in a predatory grin that his enemy couldn’t see, “how good of you to join me. Pray tell, to what particular aspect of my idiocy do you refer? You might want to make it snappy, mind. From the looks of things, this building won’t be here in another, oh, five minutes.” He gestured with his free hand at the Children of Apocalypse, currently demolishing the Weavers’ Guild Hall not three hundred yards distant.