The Conquerors Shadow

  “Oh, gods!” The man’s broken arm spasmed as he gestured. “I can’t tell you! I can’t! He’ll …” He froze, his lip quivering, as the spade rose slowly to point at him.

  “I doubt they’ll be able to save that arm,” Corvis told him. “But you have three other working limbs.” He smiled, though there was no mirth at all in the expression. “At the moment.”

  “Who are you?” the man whispered.

  The past seventeen years had failed to rob Corvis of his flare for theatrics. Very deliberately, he allowed the spell that had set the roots and branches against his enemies to lapse. Murmuring the words of a new incantation under his breath, he released the spell even as he drew breath to answer his prisoner’s terrified query.

  It was a simple illusion, easily mastered by the youngest apprentice of the First Circle, but it was more than sufficient. For the span of perhaps a dozen heartbeats, he towered over the cringing soldier, encased once more in black steel and gleaming white bone, an iron-banded skull staring down upon its latest conquest.

  “I,” he intoned as the mirage faded, the last remnant of a forgotten dream, “am Corvis Rebaine.”

  For long moments after the illusion flickered away and was gone, the injured man stood, frozen, his shallow breathing the only sign that any life remained to him at all. Even the steady patter of dripping blood came briefly to a halt.

  And then he laughed. It was harsh, high-pitched—bordering on the manic—an ugly sound. It twisted itself around the trees, insinuating itself between the leaves and through the holes in the trunks. Animals, creatures that had hunkered down and hidden during the clamor of the battle, pricked up their ears, flattened their tails, and fled.

  But this was no mocking cackle, as Corvis at first assumed, no last act of defiance. It was flavored instead with sheer desperation, blind panic, and perhaps the first hint of looming madness.

  And still he laughed, until tears ran freely down his cheeks and his face reddened for lack of breath. Only when he literally lost the strength necessary to keep it up did the fit subside, leaving him standing, fully spent, before his captor.

  “Are you quite through?” Corvis asked coldly.

  “Corvis Rebaine.” The bandit shook his head, eyes wide, teeth and lips twitching randomly from a rictus grin to a clench of pain to slack-jawed fear. “Of course. It would have to be.”

  “Why are you here? Who sent you?”

  “We’d wondered if you were dead, you know,” the man told him, oblivious to the questions he’d been asked. “After that fiasco at Denathere, everyone figured you’d be back for revenge, but it never happened. We …” He froze, the words clinging by their fingertips to the inside of his throat, as Corvis again raised the spade and held it, tip down, over the man’s left foot.

  “Three limbs. Remember?”

  “Audriss,” he whispered, his face white. “Audriss sent us.”

  The ground tilted beneath Corvis’s feet. He wasn’t supposed to come here! Chelenshire is useless to him!

  He was supposed to leave us alone …

  “Why?” Corvis demanded. “Is he headed here?”

  “I—I shouldn’t …”

  The spade dropped an inch or so.

  “No! No, please! I don’t know! I swear I don’t! We were just one of a dozen scouting parties! He’s sent us all over Imphallion! Getting the lay of the land, seeing what kind of resistance he might face! But I don’t know which way he’s going! I don’t know! I don’t! I—”

  “I get it! Shut up!”

  Corvis thought furiously in the sudden silence. It didn’t quite ring true, yet he couldn’t bring himself to believe the man was lying to him. Whatever the case, any illusions he’d harbored that Chelenshire could somehow avoid the whole affair had been brutally shattered into so many splinters.

  He glanced around him as though seeing the area for the first time. Four corpses, and one man on the ground, twitching, who wouldn’t survive the next few hours without the attention of a healer—attention that Corvis was not inclined to provide.

  But that left one man standing.

  “The first question,” he muttered, “is what to do with you.”

  “Mercy! I told you everything I know! Mercy, I beg you!”

  Corvis nodded once. “Mercy, then.” He spun about once, his left hand yanking the stolen sword from the earth. Momentum carried him about, full circle, and the man’s head bounced across the dirt to fetch up against a nearby oak. The rest of the body toppled sideways, the broken bones of the arm digging furrows into the soil.

  “Considering what I want to do to you,” Corvis told the head, meeting its lifeless gaze, “that’s mercy enough.” The sword, coated in blood, tumbled to the ground; the spade followed a moment later. Somehow, he didn’t think either he or Tyannon would care to use it in the garden anymore.

  Corvis knelt, cradled his daughter in his arms, and slowly made his way home.

  Chapter Three

  “Are you certain about this?”

  Even in the darkened basement, lit only by a single black candle in the room’s center, the irritation was obvious on the younger man’s face. “I’m certain that if you ask me that one more time, I’m going to strongly consider feeding your liver to the gnomes.”

  The ancient fellow, his skin desiccated and shriveled almost to parchment, recoiled, one hand nervously rising to stroke the remaining wisps of beard. “It’s just … You understand what it is you’re trying to awaken here?”

  “Better than you. Do it, before I decide to use your soul to awaken him the old-fashioned way.”

  The old man muttered something unintelligible, knelt beside the candle with a creaking of tired bones, and began to chant. Three times, his old voice wavered nearly enough to break the spell, and three times the younger man reached for his blade, ready to spill the wizard’s life.

  But there was no need. Faint, so faint that even the lone candle was almost enough to drown it out, the tiny stone that was the object of their attention began to glow.

  /Feed …/ It was weak, barely an echo of a whisper, but they both heard it in their minds.

  “Soon,” the younger man cooed, his tone almost seductive. “Soon, my friend, you’ll have all the souls you could ever wish for. But first I need your help to locate someone, someone who knows some very important secrets.”

  /Who …?/ It was almost a groan, little more.

  “A rather violent fellow by the name of Valescienn.”

  “WELL,” Audriss said, leaning back heavily in his velvet-lined chair, “that was unattractive.” He negligently waved a hand through the image hovering over the mahogany table before him: Corvis Rebaine carrying Mellorin from the woods. It scattered like pipe smoke and faded away.

  /It’s not as though you didn’t know what he was capable of,/ the now familiar voice in his mind responded drily.

  “Perhaps, but it was surprisingly brutal.”

  /Most animals get that way when their young are threatened./

  “Indeed.” Audriss rested his chin on an open palm—only here, in the sanctity of his most private chambers, would he dare to remove the featureless mask—and stared moodily across the table. “He used magic in that battle.”

  /Assuming Rebaine hasn’t signed any sort of treaty with the local flora, or learned to disguise himself as a suit of armor, I’d say that was a distinct possibility./

  The dark-garbed warlord ignored the sarcasm. “I thought you said he and your old friend had parted ways.”

  /Spells that simple, Rebaine can perform on his own. And Audriss, if you refer to Khanda as my “old friend” one more time—well, I have a truly horrendous genital-rot curse I’m just itching to try out on someone./

  “‘Itching.’ Hysterical. Tell me, are all your kind as obnoxious as you are?”

  /I have a gift for it./

  “Because if they are, I should just stick Rebaine with you and Khanda. Between the two of you, he’d do anything I asked just for a few moments of p
eace and quiet.”

  /Speaking of whom, are you certain we shouldn’t be watching him now? Are you so convinced he’ll act as you anticipated?/

  “Quite certain. I haven’t left him any other option.”

  /He could run./

  “Oh, no. Not Rebaine. I know him too well for that. No, he’ll do exactly as I expect him to, you can bet your soul on that.”

  /Funny. Now who thinks he’s the court jester?/

  Audriss’s reply was interrupted by a sudden knock on his heavy chamber door. A quick snap of the fingers, and his black mask affixed itself perfectly to his face. Even as he rose, a second gesture sent the door swinging ponderously open, seemingly of its own accord.

  “My lord?” the soldier standing without asked nervously.

  “I distinctly recall giving an order recently,” Audriss said, tapping one finger against the chin of the mask with exaggerated care. “Now, what might that have been?”

  The soldier, a young man who’d served Audriss long enough to know that responding to the question was not a wise move, swallowed nervously.

  “I’ve got it!” Audriss announced. “Could it have been that I was not to be disturbed?”

  “I—I beg your pardon, my lord! But—but we felt you should know—”

  “Yes?”

  “We’ve captured another group of refugees attempting to flee Denathere. A large family and their servants, or so it appears.”

  “I see.” They weren’t the first citizens to attempt an escape from the sudden reign of Audriss—called by some under his rule the Serpent—and they wouldn’t be the last. “It seems we’ll require another example. Give the women to the soldiers, have the men impaled alive before the front gate.”

  “And the children?”

  Audriss sighed; did he have to do everything? “Slaves’ quarters. Raise them to be useful.”

  “Yes, sir!” The warrior moved to depart.

  “Soldier!” Audriss called abruptly. The man froze.

  “Y-yes, sir?”

  “Those are, you realize, my standing orders. I gave them after the first escape attempt. Why am I repeating them to you now?”

  “S-sir, it’s just—I thought—”

  Audriss sighed again. “Are you hungry?”

  “I … no, sir, I …” It dawned on the young soldier only belatedly that, just perhaps, his lord had been addressing someone else.

  /I could eat./

  “He’s yours, then.”

  The soldier’s mouth opened, wide but deathly silent. A faint green glow shone behind his eyes; his jaw gaped wider, and wider still, until muscles tore, skin peeled, bone shattered. The glow faded as quickly as it appeared, and the man collapsed.

  /A tad bitter, but not too bad./

  “I’m so glad you approve. Tell Mithraem he can have the body.”

  /I believe he needs them alive, but I’ll ask./

  “Fine. Enough chatter for now, though. I’ve got a long night of planning ahead of me. And I’d like to see if my citizens take the proper lesson from the impaling.”

  The chamber door slammed shut.

  NIGHT BROUGHT SMALL RELIEF from the harsh heat of summer, the best the citizens of Chelenshire could hope for. The moon gazed down on windows left ajar, flung open in a largely futile attempt to banish the day’s accumulated warmth. Stars twinkled above a town that restlessly tossed and turned, asleep in its own sweat.

  In one house, at the very edge of town, the heat was even greater. For in that house, an entire family shared a single room, as they’d done for three nights running.

  The day following the incident in the woods, Corvis and Tyannon described the assault—albeit with certain details judiciously edited out—to a stunned populace at the monthly meeting. Their tale was met with outraged cries, and it was all Tolliver could do to bring the meeting back to order. Clearly, Chelenshire could no longer “wait and see,” but what their next course of action should be was a matter of no small consternation. For the nonce, Tolliver had promised a regular patrol of volunteers throughout the surrounding area.

  It was, Corvis knew, a useless gesture. Were Audriss to send any more raiders, any of Chelenshire’s “militia” would find themselves overwhelmed before they could so much as pull steel. Still, it made the people feel better, and it allowed Tolliver to feel as though he’d done something to protect his friends and his friends’ children. Corvis kept his doubts and concerns to himself.

  Now three days later, the town was no safer and the children continued to sleep with their parents. Mellorin woke screaming on a regular basis, her nightmares refusing to abate and permit her to heal.

  The children had never known who their father really was. They, like everyone, had heard tales of the warlord Corvis Rebaine, but they’d never once associated him with “Cerris,” their father. Corvis and Tyannon were determined to keep the truth from them at all costs.

  But now that truth refused to stay away, and Corvis found himself too old and tired to outrun the past.

  He finally came face-to-face with the decision he’d been avoiding since the instant he saw his beautiful daughter—dirty, bloody, and scared out of her mind—trembling on the forest floor.

  Corvis gingerly pushed the thin sheet aside. With a grace remarkable in a man his age, he slid across the room. Boards creaking only slightly beneath his tread, he drifted past his sleeping children, pausing just once to look down at his daughter’s face. At the moment, at least, she wasn’t dreaming. Her expression was smooth now, at peace. His own eyes closing, he offered up a brief and silent prayer to Shashar the Dream-Singer, asking only that her sleep remain serene, unbroken by nightmares. And then he was gone, pushing the bedroom door shut.

  More swiftly now, he moved through the house as though seeing it for the first time. The kitchen and parlor, the first rooms completed, in which they’d slept wrapped in blankets while the rest of the house grew slowly around them. The children’s room, largely unoccupied for the past several days; he stared grimly at the toys scattered about the floor, the pretty ribbons hanging from the sill, the purple stuffed horse that Mellorin was “too old for” but kept “because Mother made it for me.” All these and more he saw, and his rage swelled once more at the thought of what these men had stolen from his children.

  And then he was there.

  The door was narrow, sandwiched between two walls that didn’t quite converge. The room beyond was not large, and while hardly a secret chamber per se, it was remarkably easy to miss. He and Tyannon used it primarily for storing old things they no longer needed but refused to dispose of.

  Corvis pulled the door ajar with nerve-racking slowness, wincing as the hinges shrieked not unlike a cat fed tail-first into a loom. Then, shrugging mentally—either he’d woken someone or he hadn’t—he stepped inside.

  And promptly tripped over one runner of the cradle he’d spent so many hours sitting beside, rocking first Mellorin and then Lilander into slumber. He caught himself before he tumbled head-over-heels into the pile of miscellaneous clutter, but it was a near thing.

  His head shaking in dissatisfaction, he leaned carefully against an old moth-eaten tapestry. Though neither fancy nor particularly valuable, it had been one of his favorite possessions for many years, until the wear and tear, the holes and the smudges, forced him to admit it could no longer be displayed in any tasteful fashion. And thus it lay here, rolled up and stuck in a corner of a storage closet: tattered, irreparable, and too well loved to be discarded.

  Rather, Corvis reflected sourly, like a tired old fool I could mention.

  He was stalling; he knew it even as he looked over the cradle, the tapestry, and everything else that lay in the cluttered room. It was time either to do it, or to give up and go back to bed.

  For a long moment, he felt so very tempted to do just that. He had a family. He was comfortable here. And what he now contemplated was quite possibly the most idiotic thing he’d ever conceived.

  But there was another part of him th
at remembered, in graphic detail, the fate of all who once stood in his way, whose only crime had been to have the misfortune of living in a city that he, Corvis Rebaine, had wanted.

  Yes, he had a family. And he’d be damned in the eyes of every last god if he’d let such a gruesome end befall them. Audriss must be stopped, before Mellorin, Lilander, or Tyannon could be threatened again.

  Cerris, citizen of Chelenshire, couldn’t stop him.

  Corvis Rebaine, the Terror of the East, might.

  He reached downward, pushing aside myriad mementos of past years, until he’d cleared enough space to see it. The handle was old, slightly corroded, and coated with dust and cobwebs. Over a decade had passed since he’d so much as seen what lay within, and he’d never thought he would again.

  Then why, he couldn’t help but ask himself, did you keep it at all?

  Shut up, he replied to himself sharply. Getting a firm grip on the handle, he twisted and yanked.

  And then he bent over again, rubbed his head where he’d hit the wall behind him, got an even firmer grip—it was easier, now that his first attempt had cleared the dust off the small handle—and yanked once more.

  The trapdoor shot open as though spring-loaded. A sudden burst of musty air puffed into the closet, the cloud of dust rising above him, an enraged spirit awakened from what was supposed to have been eternal slumber.

  But when the dust cleared, when his eyes adjusted to the darkness within the small alcove, he saw only what he expected to see. A black drop cloth over a large chest. And within that chest …

  An axe. A suit of black armor, spiked, plated with bone. And a helm formed to evoke an iron-banded skull.

  Shaking violently as a newborn calf, Corvis lifted the helm from its place in the chest, where it had lain untouched for years. The jaw gaped open as he lifted it up, as though the skull itself were greeting him. Corvis gazed intently into the sockets, examining the dark strips of iron crossing the face and continuing around the head. He glanced down at the armor itself, saw his reflection, though blurred, in the dusty black plates, saw the thin spines jutting from the cuirass. He pondered, in his mind’s eye, the image the entire ensemble must have projected.