The Conqueror's Shadow (9 page)

“
‘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 peace 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 that 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.

And though he fought to keep it away, one specific thought kept returning, over and over again, to the forefront of his mind:

What the
hell
was I thinking? I must've looked like a world-class idiot in this thing!

It was a humbling realization. To look back and realize that he'd been strutting about like a peacock in some grown-up version of a children's costume was a tremendous blow to the ego. For some minutes he could do nothing but stare in abject horror at the thing in his hands. The skull's gaping jaw now appeared to be laughing at him, and he felt a sudden urge to join in.

“The saddest part,” he told the helm seriously, “is that I always thought I looked so damn impressive back then. It took me almost twenty years to get the joke, and now that I have, it's not all that funny.”

The skull, perhaps having laughed itself out of breath, chose not to reply.

“But the fact is,” he explained to the helm, “it always had the desired effect. People were scared of me.

“Of course, I imagine people would be frightened of anyone who did what I did, no matter if I'd been wearing a purple kilt and a wimple. I suppose it'll have to do.”

His hands initially fumbled with the buckles, but the old familiarity began to seep back into his movements, washing away the rust and clumsiness of years of disuse, the fingers recalling what the mind had long forgotten. Undersuit, chain hauberk, greaves, thigh guards, cuirass, bracers, arm guards …

And helm. Damn, that thing cut down the peripheral vision something fierce! But at least the armor was on.

It was not quite so well as it used to fitting. Some of the straps he tightened to their limit. He'd lost a great deal of muscle mass since he'd last worn this infernal getup, and the pieces were sized for a broader man. It would do, and it fit well enough that nothing should fall off or out, but it felt wrong.

And I'm quite sure
, he noted, feeling around at the helm,
that when I wore this last, my hair wasn't long enough to stick out the bottom. I must look like I've got a sheepdog in here with me
.

Corvis clanked from the room as quietly as he could—which wasn't saying much—in search of a mirror.

Tyannon, her arms crossed, her left foot tapping steadily to an unheard drummer and one eyebrow raised in a statement far more eloquent than words could ever convey, awaited him in the hallway.