The Conqueror's Shadow (37 page)

The warrior nodded once and was gone. Even from within, they could hear his deep voice booming out over the town, and soldiers begin trickling in to help.

“Corvis,” Seilloah said brusquely as she crumbled several kinds of dried grasses into the pitcher, “come here.”

“The bastard was never planning to attack us,” he snarled as he approached. “This was his plan from the beginning. I'll wager that if we were to search those woods, we'd find he never even used the lumber we heard his men cutting. It was all a bloody distraction.”

“That's nice. Corvis, listen to me. There's another step to this that I need you to handle personally.”

“That
doesn't bode well. What do you need?”

“The reason Audriss chose urthet, I'm sure,” she said as she stirred the rapidly thickening concoction with a convenient ladle, “is that, as far as most people know, there's no antidote. It takes longer for some people than for others, but once you've taken a sufficient dose, it's
always
fatal.”

Corvis felt his blood run cold. “But you
can
help them, right?” he asked plaintively.

“No, Corvis, I'm sitting in the midst of a tavern full of dying men stirring random leaves into bad wine because I've been looking for a new hobby. There
is
a remedy for urthet, one very few people know about. It involves, among other things, a goodly number of herbs and powders, and not a small touch of magic. But it also requires a small quantity of urthet itself.”

“Someday, you'll have to explain to me how you can use a poison to cure a poison.”

“Someday, but not now. The problem is, as I said, urthet is pretty damn rare. I don't have any of it.”

“So then what—”

“I need you,” Seilloah said, very slowly and succinctly, “to find anyone in this tavern beyond saving. Anyone who's already dead. I need you to take them into one of the back rooms, and I need you to bring me back their blood. As much of it as you can.”

For all the horrors he'd seen, all the horrors he'd
perpetrated
, Corvis blanched. “Seilloah, I—”

“Do it, Corvis, or Audriss wins right here and now.”

He did it. With the help of several of the mercenaries, several dozen bloated corpses were laid out in the Pixie's main storeroom. And then, after he'd sent the men back to assist the others, the warlord grabbed a knife and several basins, swallowed heavily once, and bent to work.

He was sweating when he emerged some moments later. He carried a number of bowls, basins, and bottles, stacked precariously, and all covered in whatever spare cloth he could find. Balancing them carefully, he stepped back behind the bar and laid them down beside the witch.

“Is that all?” she asked curtly; then, before he could reply, continued, “Never mind, it'll have to do. Start adding it to the mixture.” She gestured toward a number of bottles filled perhaps halfway with the thick substance she'd concocted. “No more than two spoonfuls per bottle, though.”

“If the men knew what was going into this cure of yours,” Corvis told her, doing his best not to really think about what he was doing, “we'd never get them to drink it.”

“That's why we're not telling them, Corvis.” She frowned briefly at the sound of one of the victims trying to retch around a bloated tongue. “Not that any of these poor fellows would understand a word you said to them right now, anyway. We may have to force-feed them.”

“Hmm.” The warlord kept working, his mind racing. “Seilloah,” he began, a thought occurring to him, “should we give this stuff to the healthy soldiers as well? Sort of a precaution in case they're poisoned later on?”

“Not a good idea, Corvis. This stuff we're making counteracts urthet, but it's also extremely toxic in its own right.”

Corvis froze. “What? But then what's the antidote for this stuff?”

“Pure urthet, of course,” she replied in a tone that implied that he'd been foolish even to ask.

“You mean—”

“I mean that what I'm making here will cure anyone already poisoned, but it'd probably kill anyone else. Shall I explain to you the exact principles behind it, or would you rather just assume I actually know what I'm doing?”

“I'm just going to sit here and mix this stuff.”

“Good boy.”

In the end, only about two hundred of Corvis's men died, though more than four times that number had fallen victim to the deadly herb. Several of Losalis's most trusted men were scouring the town, searching both for the perpetrators of this attack and for any further victims. The tavern was full of men laid out side by side and head-to-toe, wrapped in blankets and groaning in constant pain, but most would eventually recover.

“How long will they be sick?” Corvis asked after hearing the prognosis.
Fairly near exhaustion, Corvis leaned with both hands on the bar, staring grimly out over the new carpeting of living flesh.

Seilloah shook her head, collapsing onto one of the stools across the bar from him. Her hair hung down in listless tangles, and she was splattered with the blood several patients spat on her in their agonized throes. “I can't say. If the stronger men got only a moderate dose, they'll probably sleep off most of the aftereffects by tomorrow evening. Others may take as long as three or four days. And that's just taking the poison itself into account. More than a few of the men injured themselves during their convulsions, broke bones or bit their own tongues off. If you're asking me how soon we can be ready to move or fight at full strength … I'd say probably five days, maybe a week.”

“Damnation,” Corvis muttered.

“Can we stand up to an attack now?” she asked anxiously. “A fifth of our soldiers are down.”

“Audriss won't attack us,” the Eastern Terror told her. “These are mercenaries, Seilloah. If the bastard had actually managed to kill a thousand of them, we'd probably have lost twice that many to desertion. Fighting and dying in battle is one thing to these men, but falling to poison …” Corvis shook his head. “As far as he knows, I don't have enough of an army left to be any threat to him. He's just going to go around Vorringar and continue on his merry way. And there's not a damn thing I can do to stop him!”

“But you still have your army, Corvis. And weren't you telling me earlier that the larger the force, the slower it moves? We can catch him if we have to.”

“It's not
quite
that simple, Seilloah. Besides, at the moment I'm not sure what we'd do if we
did
catch him. But you're right, it's not over.” He sighed wearily. “We both need to get some sleep, first and foremost. Then we need to meet with Davro and Losalis again. We've got to decide our next move, and I don't particularly care for our options.”

THOUGH CORVIS SLEPT DEEPLY
, the following morning didn't find him feeling particularly well rested. The black-and-bone armor
grew heavier every time he donned it, and the pendant around his neck weighed him down, a stone around his soul.

He'd clanked loudly as he stepped over the recovering mercenaries, muttering encouragements and promising bloody retribution for the dishonorable assault.

“What we need to know,” Davro said as soon as they'd gathered in the storeroom, “is how Audriss poisoned the ale in the first place. If we can't figure out how he did it, we can't defend against it if he tries again.”

“I don't know that there's anything particularly mysterious about it,” Losalis said thoughtfully, scratching at his beard. “As many men as we've got here, it wouldn't be too hard for a few outsiders to slip into the crowd. No one here could possibly know everyone by sight.”

Corvis, however, disagreed. “I don't think so, Losalis. Audriss wouldn't risk letting a human agent fall into our hands. I've got ways of getting information from them they wouldn't be able to resist.

“No, Audriss has stolen yet another page from my book, it seems. He's got the gnomes working for him.”

Even Davro shuddered at that. “Creepy little buggers, aren't they?”

“They are. They're also nigh undetectable by magic and just a little bit sneakier than a hunting owl when they want to be. It would require pretty much zero effort for one of them to have snuck in here and poisoned the drinks.” Corvis frowned. “Given their other penchants, it's also likely that it was they who killed our missing soldiers.”

“So if they're so undetectable,” the hulking lieutenant asked, “how do we keep this from happening again?”

“Tedious as it is,” Corvis said, “we have Seilloah or myself check over the food and drink stores on a regular basis. Magic may not detect the gnomes, but it should do just fine for detecting any contamination of the food.”

/Speak for yourself, fragile one. I don't have the first notion of what might or might not poison you. You're all so damn easy to kill, it's a wonder you didn't all keel over dead two minutes after the gods spit you out into the world like so much phlegm./

“How colorful. I'm sure Seilloah can explain to you what to look for.”

“I can do what?” Seilloah asked suspiciously.

Corvis sighed. “Later, people, later. As it happens, while I don't intend to take any chances, we probably don't have to worry about Audriss trying this again. It didn't work, and he won't waste any time reusing old tactics. The trick is to figure out what he's going to do next.”

“He's going after the key,” Losalis said simply.

The warlord blinked. “He's
what?”

“The key. The one to decode that spellbook you were talking about. He's going after it.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Davro demanded.

“Think strategically,” Losalis replied. “So far, Audriss has shown a substantial—one might even say impossible—level of knowledge of your previous campaigns. Correct, my lord?”

Corvis nodded with a scowl. “He has. The fact that he even knows about the spellbook has me stumped.”

“However he knows, he knows. I think we have to assume that he also knows about the necessity of the key, yes?”

“Your logic's getting a little fuzzy there, Losalis,” Seilloah told him.
“We
didn't know about the key until Corvis actually held the book in his hands.”

“Audriss knew that Lord Rebaine found the book,” the warrior pointed out, “but he didn't ask why it wasn't used at Denathere. That book would have made the difference between victory and defeat. Had I been in his place, I'd have tried to find out from Lord Rebaine why he didn't use the book. Unless, of course, I already knew.”

“It's possible that he simply didn't think I'd tell him,” Corvis suggested, absently drumming his fingers on the wooden crate.

“I suppose it is. Still, I think we have to assume that he knows about the key, if only so that we can plan for the worst.”

“All right, I'll buy that,” Davro said. “But how do we know he hasn't already got the key?”

“Because he didn't tell Lord Rebaine that he had it. If Audriss was serious in trying to talk you over to his side, my lord, he'd surely have enticed you to bring him the book by presenting himself as the only person who could make it work.”

Corvis blinked twice. “Losalis, are you sure you're a warrior and not a politician?”

The dark-skinned warrior winced. “Please, my lord. There are limits.”

Corvis once more began to pace, the clack of his boot heels resembling the sardonic applause of a single, mildly amused observer. “It took me years to narrow my research to the point where I was
almost
sure the book was at Denathere,” he said slowly, his mind racing. “I couldn't even begin to guess where to find the key.”

Unnoticed by the others, Davro pivoted slowly and strode to the nearest corner, staring absently into the dust and cobwebs and dusty cobwebs that hugged the walls and ceiling. Something was nagging at him, as though he'd picked up a mosquito bite somewhere between his brain and the inside of his skull.

“My lord,” Losalis began, his arms folded, “who else knows about the spellbook?”

“Ha! If you mean who else has heard of it, the answer is pretty much anyone who has ever read any tome or treatise written about magic.

“On the other hand, if you want to know who knew where to
find
the book, or knows that I have it now … well, everyone in this room, of course, and Audriss. He might have told someone, I suppose, but I don't think it likely.” Corvis shook his head in frustration. “I don't see how anyone else could know, but I don't see how Audriss can possibly know, either, so take that for whatever it's worth.”

Seilloah smiled bitterly. “Well, so far we've narrowed the possibilities down to anyone. Anyone covers a substantial number of people, Corvis.”