The Conqueror's Shadow (60 page)

“That,” Corvis said, his face gone preternaturally pale, “does not look like the result of a failed spell.” His hands were sweating profusely inside his gauntlets, and his gut curled into a ball and crawled up into his chest.

“He's mad,” Salia whispered, hands tracing the holy icon of Verelian over and over in the air before her. “He's absolutely mad!”

“Rheah,” Corvis asked, “what went wrong?”

The sorceress stared over the city, listening as the cries of the dying
grew audible over the screams of the damned. “I didn't know—I couldn't know …”

“Know what?” Ellowaine demanded, her voice tinged with lurking hysteria.

Seilloah shook her head, though she, too, could not look away from the primal creatures stalking through the city, obliterating anything and anyone in their way. “That's the problem with summoning spells,” she said softly, fists clenched tight. “Actually calling something up is bloody easy. It's controlling them that takes real skill.”

“In other words,” Espa rasped from behind them, “the only thing Rheah's false key may have accomplished—”

“Is that Audriss can't control them, either,” Corvis finished for him. “But since he
wants
them to tear the city apart until they reach us, he hasn't realized anything's wrong.” He swallowed once. “Nice job, Rheah.”

“Shove it, Rebaine!” Rheah snapped, rage blazing in her tear-reddened eyes. “How could I have known he was mad enough to attempt a Grand Summoning? I did the best I could under the circumstances, which is more than I can say for some people involved in this mess!”

“Those
can't
be the Children of Apocalypse!” the priestess insisted, still tracing her deity's rune before her as though she would never stop. “The gods themselves imprisoned those abominations! No mortal, however powerful, could have created a spell to free them!”

“Maybe they're not,” Corvis told her. “Maybe they're just demonic essences inhabiting projections of the Twins. And you know what difference that makes to us?”

“None at all,” Rheah acknowledged, her gaze shifting from Salia to the warlord. “All right, nothing's changed. We have to stop this. The entire city's dead within hours if we can't do something.”

Corvis nodded. “Rheah, many spells collapse if the caster dies. Do you think this is one of them?”

“I honestly don't know.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I can't imagine Selakrian would have wanted those things running around uncontrolled if something happened to him. So he
might
have built in a safeguard.”

“Why would he create that spell at all?” Ellowaine shrieked.

“Because he could?” Rheah shrugged. “Rebaine, I have no idea if killing Audriss will stop this or not, but I don't see any other alternatives.”

“Right, then.” Corvis peered carefully at Audriss, forcing himself to ignore the massacre taking place at the edge of town. Though it sickened him to admit such a thing, the Twins' personalities—regardless of whether they were the true mythic entities or mere demonic fakes-were actually working
for
them. The monsters' insistence on slaying
everything
was slowing them down, as they sifted through burned rubble and drowned and diseased bodies to be sure nothing survived. Had they simply covered as much ground as possible, they'd have been halfway to the Hall of Meeting already.

It wouldn't be long before Audriss realized something was wrong. They had to move quickly. Corvis continued his examination of the Serpent, trying to make out details despite the distance and the smoke, looking for …

There. Barely visible in the flickering, vicious glow of the ravenous inferno spreading, a tiny gleam of silver around the wrist of the black-clad warlord standing in the air above Mecepheum.

“Rheah,” Corvis asked quickly, “I need to talk with Khanda. Can you make that happen?”

“What?” Seilloah screeched before Rheah could do more than draw breath. “Corvis, are you insane? Khanda betrayed you! Betrayed us all! Who the hell cares what he has to say? Especially now!”

“I do,” Corvis said simply. “Trust me, it's important. Rheah?”

The sorceress frowned, trying to concentrate past the horrible screams. “What's your normal range of communication?”

“Physical contact is optimal,” he told her, “but I've spoken to him from six feet away through a door.”

Rheah shook her head. “Not from here, then. If we could get within, oh, twenty-five or thirty yards, I might manage something.”

“Then we'd best get moving.”

This time, it wasn't just Seilloah who stared at him. “You want us to go out
there?”
Salia gasped hoarsely at him.

“Us, no.
Some
of us, yes.” Corvis refused to back down under the
weight of their combined gaze. “Listen, if we sit here and cower, or argue about it, they're going to tear this city out from under us and kill us anyway. Then Audriss wins. Period. I have exactly one idea, and it's a bad one, but it's all we've got, and it means I
have to speak with Khanda
. So yes, I'm going out there, and yes, some of you are coming with me, or we might as well just fall on our swords now, because I bloody well guarantee it's an easier death than the one coming for us!”

It was, strangely enough, Rheah Vhoune, rather than Seilloah or Ellowaine, who first nodded her assent. “What's your plan, then?”

“Not much,” Corvis admitted. “You're with me, to help me talk to that damn traitor. Seilloah, Ellowaine, and Espa are coming along to keep any trouble off us while you work your magic. I—”

“I beg your pardon,” Nathaniel said coldly, “but I don't recall agreeing to any such thing. As far as I'm concerned, you're just as big a threat as—”

“Nathan, shut up!” Rheah snapped, her hair practically whipping Corvis's face as she spun to confront her old friend. “As of right now, Rebaine's the best chance we've got of stopping this, seeing as how he's the only one here with even a single idea! So either propose something else, or shut the hell up and cooperate!”

The old knight actually recoiled, clearly taken aback. “But … but Rheah—”

“What part of ‘shut up' didn't you get, Nathan?” Another turn. “All right, Rebaine, we're with you, at least for now.”

And a good thing it is, too
, Corvis noted, watching as the cowed Espa climbed his way back to the floor, grumbling under his breath, and went to retrieve his sword. “Salia,” he continued, “you're in charge here until we get back. There's not much you can do against those things, but if any of Audriss's soldiers make it this far, it's up to you to organize a defense. You up to it?”

“I believe I can do that, yes.”

“Good. Rheah?”

The sorceress chanted a low, discordant verse, and then Corvis, Seilloah, Espa, Ellowaine, and Rheah swiftly floated up and over the broken walls to touch down softly in the street. The citizens in the vicinity,
already dashing around in mindless panic, took one look at the warlord's armor and scattered. Audriss, the Children of Apocalypse, and now Corvis Rebaine. If the Day of Judgment truly had come upon the city of Mecepheum, its heralds could have been no more frightening than those who fought over the capital today.

Weapons drawn and faces determined, the motley band moved across the cobblestones, directing their path toward the center of town and the megalomaniac demigod striding through the air above it. Audriss probably wouldn't see them coming—he seemed enraptured by the devastation wrought by his summoning.

But Audriss was not the only one guilty of tunnel vision.

THE FAINTEST STREAM
of mist, cloaked by the smoke of burning buildings and heaps of rubble and bodies, paralleled their path. It had no eyes to see them, yet it paced them perfectly, never drawing more than a few yards ahead or behind. It had no ears to hear, yet their words had struck like a physical blow.

Although he currently lacked features with which to express it, Mithraem seethed with an overwhelming rage. So powerful was the fury of this most ancient and most powerful of the Endless Legion, it was all he could do not to materialize, to rip into the nearest mortals whoever they might be, to rend them limb from limb, and to gorge upon their blood until even his eternal thirst was satisfied.

How dare he? How
dare
that delusional little fool keep this from him! “Not that big a deal” indeed! Selakrian's tome, by all the darkest gods! And Mithraem had let his best chance at it slip right through his fingers! If he'd known which book Rebaine's sycophants were offering for trade, he'd never have told the Serpent word one of it. With that book in his hands, he wouldn't need Audriss, or
any
mortal allies, ever again.

Which was, he knew, why Audriss
hadn't
told him about the book, but that knowledge didn't make the situation any less infuriating.

Audriss, Duke Lorum, the Serpent, whatever he called himself
today … Even with such power at his beck and call, his dreams of god-hood were just that: dreams. No spell could make him more than inherently human. Long life he could have, but never immortality.

Mithraem, though, was forever. With Selakrian's power, he
could
rule as a god among men, and he could do so until the end of time itself. Nor was he troubled with the slightest tugs of morality to which even Audriss was susceptible. The Serpent had seen a few decades in which to purge himself of the weakest and most frail of human emotions. Mithraem had seen over a hundred, more than enough time to smother the final flickering embers of such nonsense.

All of which made him far more worthy of this power than Audriss was or could ever be.

But this would do, for now. Audriss trusted Mithraem, thought himself in control. Let him think it. Let him grow complacent in his newfound power. Mithraem's patience was that of a true immortal; he could wait. He could wait.

Right now, though, he must make certain Audriss didn't lose the tome to someone else, someone less susceptible to Mithraem's future machinations. And that meant stopping whatever pathetic scheme Corvis Rebaine and his ilk hatched.

Perhaps he could even work this to his advantage. This might even inspire the warlord to trust the Endless Legion more than he already did.

His unseen expression shifting from a snarl of rage to a self-satisfied smirk, Mithraem drifted closer to the unsuspecting party, and the cobblestones in his wake gleamed slick with blood.

It is an old, old legend, found today only in the most ancient, most ragged of books, forgotten by all save the most learned sages and storytellers. It tells of a small city, a community called Sanvescu. No Imphallion name, this, but a name—indeed, a city—that rose and fell long before the successful crusade of Imphalam the First. Sanvescu stood deep within a mountain range, low on the slopes and sheltered from all but the worst of the winter storms by the heavy darkwoods that grew nearby, thick as wool on an unsheared ewe. The folk there were simple, serious and hardworking, religious, and superstitious. They believed in the virtues of simple garb, simple fare, and companionship with one's neighbors.

Sanvescu, the legend tells, was also a community beset by horror. A trio of brothers holed up for several nights in the temple of Chalsene, gorging their eyes and minds on the most ancient and secretive teachings of the Night-Bringer—including those that most civilized branches of the Church had long since excised. Tales of sacrifice, of atrocities, of power granted in exchange for blood and the rights of the strong over the weak—these were their intellectual provender. Was this merely curiosity
gone wrong? Or were these a criminally minded family seeking divine permission and holy absolution for the horrors they were already inclined to perform?

Whatever the case, these brothers became the collective nightmares of Sanvescu. Families were slain, their bodies laid carefully in occult symbols. Men, women, and children disappeared off the streets, their blood found adorning the altars of Chalsene. For months, the citizens of Sanvescu huddled in terror, unsure even if their tormentors were mortal, or something from beyond life's flimsy veil.

It was Sanvescu's sheriff, by the name of Harlif, who finally ended the town's nightmare—and in turn unleashed one upon the world entire. For Harlif finally recognized, through tracks and bloodied smears, that each atrocity was committed by three men together, a piece of knowledge that led him eventually to the trio of siblings. The men were bound and, without ceremony or trial, hanged until dead and buried in shallow graves. Atop each grave, the townsfolk planted a heavy oak—unearthed from the nearby forests—to symbolize the cycle of the gods, the life that must always sprout from death.

And had Harlif left it at that, accepted the victory and the city-wide acclaim that he had well and truly earned, that would have been the end of it. But Harlif was angry, Sanvescu was angry, and the relatively swift dispatch of their tormentors had not assuaged them.