The Warlord's legacy

Chapter Twenty

HE COULDN'T THINK, couldn't move, couldn't breathe. His mind was swaddled in a rotting shroud, muffling the sights, the sounds, the scents of the world. It took long moments to recognize that the pain in his side was caused by the broken rock on which he lay, that the peculiarly harsh rain drizzling down across his face actually consisted of the splinters of shattered buildings.

But it was, all of it, unreal, diaphanous, a waking dream. Only the flesh-wrapped nightmare gazing gleefully down upon him was real.

"I can't…" He had trouble forcing the words to come, his lips and his tongue made numb as the blood drained from his face. "It's not possible. You can't be…"

"Astonishing." Kaleb-Khanda-shook his head sadly. "I knew you'd counted on me for a lot, old boy, but I'd never realized that included forming coherent sentences. How have you gotten by all these years?"

"I banished you!" Corvis actually sounded accusing, as though Khanda's reappearance was a personal betrayal. He struggled to sit up, groaning at the aches and bruises that flared anew across his battered body.

"What can I say, Corvis? Hell's not what it used to be. Security's really gone to-well, you know."

But the old soldier's brain was finally catching up with his senses. "Someone had to call you… Call you back by name. That's what they got from Ellowaine, isn't it? Your godsdamn name!"

He rolled aside, as rapidly as the rocks and his own wounds would allow, lifting Sunder in one hand, but it was a pathetic blow, a feeble spit of defiance. Khanda casually backhanded Corvis's forearm and the limb went numb, the Kholben Shiar falling from limp fingers. Corvis curled around himself, clutching his throbbing arm…

And from where he lay, he saw a bit of rubble behind the demon, an uneven heap of wooden detritus, begin to shift.

"Why?" he asked, forcing himself to meet Khanda's repulsive eyes. "Why would they summon you?"

Khanda grinned, an inhuman rictus from ear to ear. "I don't believe I'm going to tell you that."

"Why not?"

"Because you want to know." That awful grin grew even broader. "And because, ultimately, it doesn't matter. You humans are such petty, insignificant schemers. You think you're playing games, but you're all just pieces."

Corvis forced himself to smile. Across the street, Irrial had dizzily crawled through the dirt to the boards, begun laboriously to dig toward whoever lay moving beneath. Keep his attention… "Are we? It seems to me you wouldn't be here without one of those 'pieces.' And I know a little something about summoning incantations, Khanda. You don't exactly have free rein. If you did, you'd have had more than enough power to find me long ago. You're limited here, demon. You're human."

The world briefly vanished behind an array of blinding suns as Khanda struck him across the face. "Why, Corvis, such language." He sighed theatrically and settled himself on the ground, sitting cross-legged as though beside a comfortable campfire. "But you're right, of course. I don't have anywhere near my full might. Even when I was living inside a pendant and a slave to your every primitive whim, I wasn't at my best. There's never been a demon freely unleashed upon your world, not in your recorded history anyway. Even the most maddened conjurers aren't that crazy. And that, old boy-not revenge, though I certainly welcome it, and not my orders-is why I've come for you."

"I thought," Corvis grunted, struggling to get his feet under him so he might rise, "that you weren't going to tell me what this is about."

"I'm not going to tell you what they want," Khanda corrected casually. "But I want you to understand what I'm doing. It's so much more fun if you know enough to be horrified. You see, you have something I need."

He leaned back, waiting, clearly content to let the former warlord ask-or figure it out for himself.

It doesn't make any sense. I don't have anything… The demon couldn't use the Kholben Shiar; Khanda knew more or less everything Corvis knew, up until six years ago. There was nothing.

Except…

"Oh, gods…"

Khanda actually clapped like an excited schoolgirl. "I knew you'd get there. You really were almost competent at times, for a human." He leaned in, voice marred by excited breathing. "I can't use my own power against him. The summoning and binding spells won't permit it. But someone else's magic, an incantation that doesn't draw on my own abilities? That's something else entirely. And I was around you, and your pet witch, more than long enough to learn human methods of sorcery.

"Think of it, Corvis! With that spell, I can force 'Master' Nenavar to release me from my bonds, to grant me not only my freedom but my power! Enough to make this wretched dung-ball of a world my plaything-to make Selakrian look like a charlatan. You remember what Mecepheum looked like six years ago? That was nothing!" A narrow string of spittle dangled from the corner of the demon's mouth. "And you kept the invocation when the rest of the tome burned to ash. You made it all possible."

A soft clatter sounded from behind. Wooden planks cascaded away in a small avalanche beneath Irrial's chapped and bleeding hands. Khanda started, began to look around…

"It's gone, Khanda!" Corvis shouted triumphantly in his face. "I burned the pages years ago. You've wasted your time!"

"Oh, Corvis." A hand shot out, clutching Corvis's chin with bone-bruising strength. Khanda made a soft tsk, tsk, wiggling the man's jaw until the joint very nearly separated. "All this time, and you still don't understand me at all. I don't need the pages. The words are written down…" He released his grip and jabbed a finger into Corvis's forehead hard enough for the nail to break skin. "… here. I tried to get what I needed from Audriss first, you know. Would've saved me a lot of time. But there wasn't enough essence left in his skull." He shrugged. "What are you gonna do?"

It was rhetorical, of course, but Corvis answered anyway. "Stop you," he said simply, his confident tone hiding-or so he hoped-the gaping, empty abyss that had opened in his gut. "We've been through this, Khanda, a long time ago. You don't have the willpower to get into my mind."

The demon leaned even closer, until their noses nearly touched. "That was, as you say, a long time ago. I'm stronger now. I'm a lot angrier at you. And," he said, straightening up again, "if you prove too stubborn, I'll just make you watch while I do all sorts of unpleasant things to Mellorin."

Corvis's breath slammed into a brick wall at the base of his throat. His face, corpse-pale already, went whiter than the helm he'd once worn.

"Oh, my. Did I not tell you she was here? I'm so sorry; how utterly thoughtless of me. Still, perhaps it won't be too unpleasant for her," Khanda continued lightly. "She's really very fond of me. She might even enjoy it, as long as I don't tell her you're watching."

He never realized the scream was his, never remembered lunging at the hell-spawned monstrosity. All Corvis knew was that suddenly he hung in the air, feet kicking, Khanda's fist about his throat. The demon was standing now, and a missing lock of hair suggested that Corvis's speed must have surprised even him.

But it was all for naught, all just another dance at the end of Khanda's strings. For in that moment of mindless, bestial rage, Corvis had not been, could not be, thinking of anything else.

And with all thought discarded, all effort and concentration gone, Khanda had slipped easily into his mind like a worm eating through an apple.

He felt the obscene presence sliding inside him, a slick and slimy thing, a tongue running across his thoughts, tasting his dreams. Images flickered, reflections of the recent past, and all were tainted and rotting at the edges where Khanda had touched them.

/Really, Corvis./ The voice reverberated in his mind, so much worse than the phantom echoes of the past years, eclipsing his thoughts entirely. /Another noblewoman? Since you didn't prove up to conquering, are you trying to fuck your way to the throne now? Or do you just find that the inbreeding makes them more docile?/

Corvis could only gurgle. Even if he could have forced the words past his tongue, his mind thrashed too violently to form them.

More movement, more images. A nauseating stench began to permeate his memories, corrupting even the most pleasant into something foul, something better forgotten. /The dog? Seilloah's the dog?/ Corvis's head felt as though it would burst as it filled with a cruel and hysterical laughter. /Well, I always said she was a bitch, didn't I?/

On it went, and on, farther and farther back. Through Corvis's recent travels; the life he'd made and the plans he'd pursued as part of Rahariem's Merchants' Guild. And farther still, through his nightmarish experiences in Tharsuul, land of the Dragon Kings, and his all-consuming eldritch studies-not to empower his new plans, as he'd maintained and even believed, but as a means of escaping the pain of Tyannon's rejection.

He would have threatened, demanded, cajoled-even, gods help him, begged for it to stop. But he could not. Khanda hadn't even left him that.

Until… /Ahhh. There it is! And just in time. If I had to relive any more of your pathetic existence, I might just vomit. And you call my home 'hell'…/

Corvis saw the words flash across his mind, one at a time, and Khanda peeled them off like scabs. Gradually, inevitably, the entire spell began to form, until the demon was but a single passage from the end.

The scream, when it came, sounded in Corvis's mind and ears both, threatening to shatter hearing and sanity alike. A geyser of pain erupted from his gut even as he fell to the street, a motionless rag doll.

Khanda stood, his body rigid, jaw agape in astonished agony. A mask of blood and ruined, splinter-coated flesh peered over his shoulder from behind, and the wavy blade of a demon-forged flamberge jutted obscenely from his ribs.

"I don't know precisely what you are," Jassion rasped, viciously twisting Talon in the wound. "But I heard enough."

The world held its breath. Corvis gawped up at the two men he hated most in the world; at Irrial standing behind them, her hands raw and bleeding where she'd dug Jassion free; and Seilloah slinking at her feet, one paw twisted at an impossible angle and clutched painfully to her chest.

Slowly, Khanda looked down at the length of hellish steel that had skewered him like a haunch of pork. And then, finally, he spoke.

"Ow."

Though it clearly pained him, he twisted at the waist, widening his own wound as he moved, and jabbed two fingers into the ragged flesh that had once been Jassion's nose.

The baron shrieked, stumbling back with both hands to his face, leaving the sword sticking clear through Khanda's torso. And Khanda himself could only laugh at the stunned consternation in his enemies' eyes.

"I have complete control over my body, Corvis, save for those limitations the summoning spell imposed on me. Why would I possibly choose to make myself mortal? Don't you understand, you cretins? You cannot kill me!" He extended a hand as though tossing a ball, and Jassion staggered farther-but only a few steps. He levitated for but an instant, clearing the earth by only a few inches before he fell once more. And for the first time, Khanda looked genuinely concerned.

"No." He spun, and there was Corvis, standing once more. Sunder slammed hard into Khanda's ribs, cracking bone and sending the demon hurtling aside. "But it looks like we can hurt you, doesn't it? Seilloah!"

The dog looked up sharply, peered at the rubble toward which he was pointing. She needed no more than the long years they'd worked and fought side-by-side to figure out what he was asking, and she nodded. Again the stalks burst from the earth, this time lifting the heaviest of the stones and planks.

Beside the road, features now twisted in an agonized rage, Khanda was rising once again.

"Jassion!" Corvis called. "It's the Kholben Shiar! Their magics must interfere with his!" And again he pointed, not at the rubble Seilloah's plants were hefting but at the hard-packed earth below.

Please, gods, make him understand!

And though he twitched visibly, perhaps in frustration at the thought of taking orders from Corvis Rebaine, he obviously did. Jassion leapt the intervening detritus and slammed into Khanda before he could find his balance. The baron grasped Talon's hilt and twisted, forcing demonic blade and demonic body downward. They toppled, the tip of the Kholben Shiar plunging into the earth. Jassion leaned on it, thrusting with all the strength he had left until it slid as far as it would go, the crossbar lying flush with Khanda's skin, staking him to the road.

The plants slackened their grip. Wood and stone rained down to bury Khanda in a makeshift cairn-and would have buried Jassion as well, had he not anticipated what was coming and rolled desperately aside. Obviously, and perhaps understandably, Seilloah held a grudge.

He rose, somehow directing both an infuriated glare at Corvis and a wistful, longing look where his weapon lay interred.

"Is he dead?" Irrial asked shakily.

"You heard him," Corvis said, turning away. "We can't kill him. That probably won't hold him for more than a few minutes." He began to run, but managed only a few paces before his aches and bruises and burning lungs reined him back to an unsteady, stiff-legged walk. The others fell quickly into step behind him.

"Can we possibly get far enough in a few minutes?" Irrial wondered aloud.

"That depends-on him." Corvis halted abruptly, raised Sunder's edge to hover within inches of the startled Jassion's throat.

"Where's Mellorin?" FOR LONG MINUTES THE STREET WAS STILL, the nighttime silence broken only by the creak of settling rubble and the fearful cries of distant villagers too terrified to leave their homes. Low-hanging clouds began to thin, moon and stars peeking out to see if the chaos had ended.

A peculiar snapping, combining the whistle of a sharp wind with the crackling of a bonfire, sounded a few yards down the road. The dust swirled as though kicked by a giant invisible foot, and a shape-human, feminine, lost in slumber-materialized in the dirt. It would have astonished anyone watching, had there been anyone watching, but the street, and the surrounding windows, were empty.

Again, silent moments passed. The debris shifted, stone screeching on stone, wood breaking, and something that had once appeared human rose from the wreckage with a scream to shame the damned. Limbs hung at agonizing angles, splintered bone protruding through rents in the flesh. Blood caked its skin, flowed from a hundred tiny wounds. From its body, unmarred by the impact of the rubble, protruded the Kholben Shiar.

Shattered hands, aquiver not so much with agony as rage, clutched at the blade. He could feel the insatiable hunger within the metal, a power that flowed from the same infernal wellspring as his own. He bit back a hiss of revulsion at its touch, all the while promising Rebaine and Jassion a thousand deaths.

He'd expected that the Kholben Shiar could likely hurt him, even if they could not kill; known that the magics of other demons, no matter what form contained them, would cause him pain. But until he'd felt the weapon sliding through him, piercing mind and body, pinning him to the earth, he'd not truly understood what that meant. Khanda had not worn his human form long enough to comprehend mortal anguish, and nothing-not his various minor wounds, not even the torment of Nenavar's ire-had prepared him for an agony the equal of any found in hell.

Inch by inch, fingers shredding themselves even further against the edge only to form anew, he pressed back upon the blade, driving it out. Finally he felt the pressure and the pain ease, heard Talon clatter to the ground behind him, and he gasped in very human relief.

On legs that bowed like saplings, that should never have supported his weight, the inhuman creature in human form staggered from the cairn. With each stride his body twitched, reshaped by the demon's will. Step, and a leg ceased bending, bones knitting together and kneecap sliding into place. Step, and an arm snapped back into its socket, its fingers straightening with a series of pops. Step, and the blood fell from his face, revealing not the demonic visage that Corvis had recognized, but the more mundane features that had borne the name Kaleb.

But though the greatest wound, the mark of Talon itself, had closed, it did not fade entirely. For all his control over his corporeal body, he lacked the inner strength to finish the job. Soon, yes, when he'd had the opportunity to rest, to recover from the unexpected torment. But not now.

Leaving the weapon where it lay-hoping that some villager might be stupid enough to come out and try to claim it, offering him an excuse to tear someone apart-Khanda moved along the road, following the scents of fear and pain and very familiar blood. Past several houses and a smattering of shops he walked, until he came to a large wooden structure with a great hole battered in the side.

Subtle, Corvis. Do you even know how to use a door?

He didn't need to enter. The scent wafting from within was more than enough to identify it as a stable. Nor did he need to examine the hoofprints that emerged, for he could literally see the magic rising off them like early-morning mists. Clearly, his prey meant to put as much distance between them as possible. Wise of them, that. Futile, but wise.

With a deliberate, unhurried pace, he returned to the wreckage, drumming two fingertips on his lips as he thought. He'd misjudged Jassion, assumed that the baron's burning hate would blind him to all else. Of course, he hadn't intended that Jassion even hear his words to Corvis. He'd thought the baron safely unconscious, if not dead. Still, it was a mistake that had cost him, and-though he'd never have admitted it-shamed him. Once, Khanda had been a far better judge of mortal souls. His long association with, and his smoldering anger at, the Terror of the East had obviously clouded that judgment. Not again. His most important ally remained, and of her he would make absolutely certain.

And there she was. Khanda jerked to a stop, staring at the ground beyond the rocks that had imprisoned him. He'd not seen her when he first emerged, too distracted by his pain and fury, but there she lay, asleep, not half a dozen yards from where he'd been buried.

Ah, Corvis, you big softy. You went after her, didn't you? For that was the true nature of the spell he'd cast upon her when she first joined him in his travels. Not to protect her, as he'd allowed both her and Jassion to believe, but to conjure her to his side should her father come too close, ensuring they had no opportunity to reconcile.

Wincing, he knelt and lifted Talon by the hilt. He could feel the weapon squirming, and the skin of his own palm crawled at its touch. It had not been forged for his kind; its shape did not change, for he had no soul to taste. For his own sake, Khanda would have gladly left it behind.

But Kaleb would not have, and for a little longer, Kaleb remained essential.

Clutching the Kholben Shiar in one hand, gathering the ragged remnants of his clothes with the other, Kaleb moved to her. He knelt, removing the enchantment that kept her in slumber, and then collapsed to the road beside her, waiting for her to awaken.