The Conqueror's Shadow (42 page)

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.”

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.

Audriss decided to let the impertinence pass without comment for the nonce. “I offered gold and jewels for their cooperation.”

“That's all?” Then, sensing the Serpent's glare even through the mask of stone, “Maybe they don't like—uh, money?”

“I
know
they can be bought! Rebaine managed it. He—”

But the gnomes, whatever else they might or might not be, were clearly not hard of hearing. “It offends him!” hissed the nearest, a hunchbacked creature speaking through a mouth of blocky, broken teeth. “The Audriss offends him, yes, with insult and vexation, and he will break its neck … Break its carapace of rock, yes, and feast upon the sweetmeats within.”

Audriss blinked, trying to translate the foul gnome's speech
into something comprehensible. “I offered you no insult!” he insisted finally. “I offered you only payment for—”

“Not payment, no!” The gnome was spitting, now, its brethren shifting angrily behind. “The Audriss offers, yes, to give him things, but not the Audriss's to give, no, not to have or to take! The mans rape the wombs of the Earth, yes, the stone and the dirt and the mountain roots. And from him, from
all
of him, it takes the bones, yes, the bones of all him before, yes, of early days! And then it offers them back, yes, as
payment?
He, all of he, will feast upon the meats and bones of all mans, yes, its bones as it has taken the bones of old from the rock, yes, the earth! He will break the necks of all mans until none, no, not a one remains, and the earth is silent, yes, again silent and peaceful and ravaged no more.”

For long moments Valescienn and Audriss stared at each other, struggling to make sense of what they'd heard, knowing that the wrong word—or even the right word spoken too late—would be disastrous.

/Ancestors, you dim-witted apes,/
Pekatherosh finally interjected.
/By offering gold and gems, you've essentially offered them bits and pieces of what they believe to be the bones of their ancestors, raped from the living earth by mankind./
Audriss could almost
feel
the demon shrug.
/Sounds like a fine gift to me, really, but who can account for taste?/

“If that's truly what they believe,” Valescienn whispered, still vaguely bewildered even after his Lord had repeated the demon's explanation, “what the hell can we offer them?”

But behind his mask, Audriss had begun to smile. “Why, the same thing Rebaine must have offered, Valescienn. The chance to reclaim whole
cities
of their stolen ‘bones,' and to feast on the meats of
many
mans—uh, men. Come, my friend,” he said, turning once more to the slathering creature before him, “I think perhaps I can make amends for my previous insult.”