The Conqueror's Shadow (5 page)

Outside those walls, atop the same small rise on which the regent's tent rested so long ago, a figure stood, watching the city's lights wink out one by one. The people of Denathere would sleep soundly this night, worn out from celebrating their liberation from the Terror of the East, safely ensconced behind their walls. And impressive walls they were, higher and thicker than those that had fallen before Rebaine's assault, topped by guard towers equipped with catapults and ballistae. Even given Denathere's poor position, the new walls alone made the prospect of taking the city a daunting one.

Or they would have, had their enemy not already waltzed in unchallenged, bearing food and drink and gifts for the celebration.

Cold, dead eyes narrowed as a nasty grin crept its way across his face. Even with its violent history, Denathere remained a city of naïve, complacent people.

It was astounding how little had changed in the seventeen years since he'd been betrayed and abandoned within those walls.

“Report, Valescienn.” The voice was hollow, with the faintest of echoes.

Well
, Valescienn amended slightly, turning slowly around,
there
have
been a
few
changes …

Valescienn himself had aged little. His hair was still a moonlight blond, his ice-blue eyes still utterly devoid of anything resembling humanity, and the same spiked ball-and-chain still hung at his side. There were a few more circles beneath those eyes, and a second scar—across the right side of his forehead—joined the one he'd sported for years. Otherwise, he showed little indication that nearly two decades had come and gone since his last visit.

The master he faced now, however, was most certainly not Corvis Rebaine.

He was shorter than the Terror of the East, for one; shorter, in fact, than many of his own soldiers, standing several inches below six feet. A flowing black tunic covered his arms, emerging from beneath a set of bracers and cuirass that appeared, bizarre as it seemed, to be made of dark reflective stone. His black leggings and leather boots were similarly guarded by greaves of the same material. Spidery runes were etched in silver into the onyx-like substance. Numerous rings—all of silver, save for one of a simple pewter, with an emerald stone-adorned his fingers, slid on over thin lambskin gloves.

The entire ensemble was topped with a heavy black cloak, slit vertically to create a shifting effect, implying movement even where there was none. It boasted a deep hood, one that only partly hid an utterly featureless mask of stone. Even in the dim light of the rapidly fading dusk, Valescienn looked into the face of his new lord and saw only his own darkened and twisted reflection staring back at him.

“I have been watching the city for some time, my lord,” Valescienn began.

A hand waved impatiently, the rings creating a scintillating silver arc as they moved through the dying light. “Tell me of the men. Are they in place?”

“They are. I've been sending them into Denathere in small groups for the past week, just more celebrants come to the party.” He smiled grimly. “I imagine more than a few have forgotten themselves and become quite as drunk as the citizenry, but most should be ready for your signal.”

“They had better be. Any of our men who are found drunk within those walls are to be treated like any other citizen. Is that clear?”

Valescienn frowned. “Yes, my lord. But I wonder if …” He trailed off when it became clear his master was no longer listening. He took the time, instead, to observe the man he'd chosen to serve.

The dark-garbed figure began to pace. The silver runes upon his armor, seen through the shifting streamers of his cloak, danced and wiggled their way across his body. Valescienn averted his eyes. Rebaine had been frightening, but Lord Audriss was
disturbing
. Power radiated from the man like a fever, infecting all who came near with a sense of their own inherent inferiority. Valescienn had feared Rebaine in the same way he feared any man—and there weren't many—who could best him on the field of battle. Audriss, however, scared him to the depths of his soul, made him afraid in places he hadn't known he possessed. And that, more than any other reason, was why he served the man now.

Audriss pivoted, and Valescienn noticed, for the first time, the dagger he wore on his left. A black hilt sprouted from an equally black sheath—little wonder that the weapon was nigh invisible against the outfit and the cloak. But now that he had spotted it, Valescienn wished he hadn't, for as he became aware of the crescent blade, it, in turn, became aware of
him
. A sense of impending violence, of gleeful anticipation, crept into his mind through the cracks and crevices of his soul.

With a ragged gasp, Valescienn tore his eyes from the dagger. He knew what it was that Audriss carried at his side, recognized it as cousin to the axe Rebaine had wielded. But Rebaine, even in the crush of battle or the most depraved depths of slaughter, never unleashed the full
power of the Kholben Shiar. Audriss, he was certain, would have no such compunction.

Then, even more uncomfortable with Audriss's silence, he asked, “My lord?”

The pacing behind him stopped; he swore he could hear even the rustle of the robes as the hood twisted about to face him. “Yes?”

“If I may be so bold, what are we waiting for?”

“That, actually.”

A low fog appeared at the base of the hill, emerging, so it seemed, from the earth itself. Climbing slowly, it rose until it covered the grass at the top of the hill, and Valescienn's boots to the ankle. And then it erupted, forming a pillar the height of a large man. The currents flowed inward, a spinning maelstrom of white. As the mist disappeared from beneath his feet, Valescienn couldn't help but glance downward. The grass glistened wetly, but the reddish tint, and the metallic aroma flaying at his nostrils, suggested strongly that it was not dew coating the ground around him.

A face appeared in the column of mist, made up entirely of hollows in the fog. The sockets filled with thick, bubbling blood, which coalesced into a pair of red, but otherwise human, eyes. The rest of the face flushed with blood as well, and then the body beneath it. And just like that the mist was gone, and a third figure stood beside them.

His face, features sharp as a razor, gazed unblinkingly at Valescienn. His hair was black and straight, falling in a loose mass down to his shoulders. He wore a simple white tunic, open to the waist, oddly spotless and crisp despite the damp environs, and grey leggings tucked into black riding boots. His fingers, long and slender, ended in perfectly manicured nails. His lips were full, almost feminine, and his flesh was perfectly smooth.

“An interesting choice,” the new arrival said as he examined Valescienn, his voice melodic.

“He serves my purposes admirably enough,” Audriss replied.

The stranger stared a moment more, then strode over to the black-robed man. As he walked, Valescienn saw that the fog had not entirely dissipated; it still trailed from the newcomer's feet, stretching from his boots to the ground with each step, clinging like watery mud.

“Valescienn,” Audriss said, as casually as though he were performing the introductions at a family reunion, “this is Mithraem.”

The strange figure bowed once, formally. “An honor, I am certain.”

Valescienn, who recognized the name with a certain sick horror, was finding it very difficult to breathe.

Mithraem smiled once, a shallow, mirthless expression, and dismissed Valescienn's presence entirely. “The Legion stands ready for your signal.”

“Excellent.” Audriss beckoned once to Valescienn, who stepped forward, his mind numb. “That, indeed, is what I was waiting for. Tell the men, Valescienn. I want them ready for battle the instant our people inside take the walls.

“We attack tomorrow.”

THE FINAL COOL GUSTS
of spring faded away, and summer descended upon Chelenshire. Men went about their daily tasks, each assuring the others that the heat bothered him not in the slightest, each frantically wiping sweat from his face and forehead with a shirtsleeve when he felt no one was watching. The weather, merely uncomfortable rather than reaching the blazing levels it would attain in another month, didn't weigh down the children of the village. They went about their own chores or dashed hither and thither (save for the younger ones who remained stuck on “to and fro”) in play, as their whims and circumstances—and mostly their parents—dictated.

For their own part, Lilander and Mellorin had completely abandoned the chores to which they'd been set, choosing instead to chase each other around the yard with a bucket of well water, screaming and shouting and generally soaking anything unfortunate enough to cross their winding and unpredictable path. But Tyannon was in the house working on mending the outfits the children ruined yesterday, and Corvis—hard at work repairing the fence they used to pen their horse, Rascal, and already sweating profusely—decided quite resolutely that it was too damn hot to go chasing after a pair of children who had more
energy to spare than he. Let them wear themselves down a bit,
then
he'd go after them.

He grinned, though it didn't quite reach his eyes.
You never could stop thinking tactically, could you, Rebaine?

“Ho there, Cerris!”

It was the name he'd given when he and Tyannon moved here, a name close enough to his real one that he could explain away any misunderstandings or slips of the tongue. He'd grown as accustomed to hearing it as he was his real name, but he
was
startled to hear it now. Few visitors wandered out to the edge of town in the rising heat of late morning.

Carefully laying down the hammer with which he'd been working, Corvis straightened to his full height. Approaching him on the road was a man perhaps a decade his senior, his pace steady, though perhaps not as quick as it once was. He was round but not quite fat, short but not squat. He wore over his shoulders an embroidered cloth that would, on a woman, have been called a shawl, but which he himself insisted was a mantle.

For just a moment, Corvis grimaced. This visit likely meant news from outside, from the world beyond Chelenshire—news Corvis was never glad to receive. Every time he heard of the kingdom beyond, of the political wrangling and Guild maneuvering and cultural decay, he couldn't help but wonder, ever so briefly, if the world would be better off had he not given up all those years ago, and if it were he who ruled from the halls of Mecepheum.

Then he would look at his home, or his wife, or his children, and his regrets would fade.

Until the next time.

“And a good day to you, Tolliver,” Corvis called, swiftly gathering his thoughts as the man drew nearer. He breathed shallowly, for the scent of the man's acrid sweat preceded him by several paces. “Rather a warm day for a stroll, isn't it?”

“You have no idea,” the town mediator gasped at him, leaning one hand heavily upon the fence post between them and gulping in great, heaving breaths. His face was red from the heat and the exertion of
what was, for him, a lengthy walk. “I'm rather astounded that I haven't just melted on the spot.”

“That,” Corvis remarked sagely, “would be a large spot indeed.”

Tolliver glared at him, panting. “It's all very well for you to make fun, scrawny as you are. You've little enough to fear from heat, after all. Three or four drops of sweat are enough to cool you completely.”

“I can't sweat,” Corvis told him. “Scrawny as I am, people mistake it for crying, and then I can't go anywhere for the constant offers of help and sympathy. I tell you, it's a burden.”

That glare lasted a moment longer, and then the mediator's face burst into a beaming grin. “That's what I like about you, Cerris! You've a sense of humor!”

“Oh, is that what you like about me? I'd wondered.” He gestured toward the house. “All joking aside, it is hot out here. Can I offer you something?”

“Most kind, thank you.”

They were perhaps ten paces from the house when Lilander, shrieking happily, raced past them from around the corner. Corvis had just long enough to recognize what was about to happen, but insufficient time to do a thing about it.

With a gleeful laugh, his daughter appeared from around the same corner, the bucket of water clenched in both fists. The liquid missile left the bucket before she registered Tolliver's presence, and by then, of course, it was far too late. With a remarkable show of speed and agility, she'd vanished back around the house before either her father or his guest finished blinking the water from their eyes. Lilander, recognizing that the game had taken something of an unexpected turn, bolted the other way.

“I see your children are feeling well,” Tolliver said, his voice dry—the only part of him that was, at that point.

“Only until I get hold of them,” Corvis muttered. “Mellorin and Lilander. Ha! I should have named them Maukra and Mimgol!”