The Warlord's Legacy (14 page)

And following on the heels of that comment, a plan crept fully formed into the forefront of Cerris’s mind. For several long moments, as the others continued their fruitless debate, he examined it in horrified disbelief. Yet over the past days, he had spent much time walking the streets, idly examining Rahariem’s defenses, seeking inspiration—and despite himself, he had to concede that it might actually work.

‘
Wow. You really
have
gone insane, haven’t you
?’

Every face in the room lit up with elated anticipation when Cerris announced that he had an idea—expressions that swiftly grew hostile when he refused to tell them what it was.

“Look, it’s better you don’t know,” he explained—lamely, he admitted—trying to quell the rising chorus. “It’s something I need to handle on my own.”

“Cerris, you can’t ask us to …”

“… could you possibly do by yourself that we couldn’t …”

“… not staking my life on a plan you won’t even …”

“… bloody idiot if you think I’m going to trust …”

And on, and on, until the individual words lost all meaning, the voices coalescing into a meaningless, angry rumble. But Cerris stood, arms crossed, unrelenting—and struggling fiercely to ignore that wretched voice, needling him, reminding him ‘
There was a time they wouldn’t have questioned you. They wouldn’t have
dared.
Gods, you’ve grown soft in your old age. Or maybe it’s old in your soft age. But soft and old, regardless.
’

Finally, the verbal floodwaters subsided enough that he might make himself heard over the din. Perhaps “Everyone shut the hell
up!
” wasn’t the most politic way he might have made his case, but it bought a moment of astonished silence.

‘
That’s a little more like it. Still needs work, though.
’

“Perhaps,” he said more quietly, “I’ll be able to explain later. I
can’t
now. It was you,” he said, meeting Andevar’s glare, “who chose the supply caravan as our target. And you”—now directing a somewhat gentler expression toward Irrial—“who begged for my help. Well, I’ve helped, and I’ll continue to help, but I’ll do it
my way
. I remind you that we no longer have the time for debate. I need you …” His gaze swept every man and woman present before ending, once more, on the baroness. “… to trust me,” he finished gently.

Nobody left the meeting happy that night, and the new suspicion in Irrial’s eyes sunk painfully into his gut like a steel-shod hoof, but at the last they had agreed. What else, ultimately, could they do?

C
ERRIS SLIPPED FROM THE HIDDEN
chamber several hours before dusk. Despite the mask of confidence he’d worn to reassure his allies, he knew damn well his plan was fraught with hazards. It was not these that caused him to chew nervously at his lips and cheeks, however, or to wipe a constant sheen of sweat from his palms. No, instead it was the thought of the magics he must invoke …

An intricate, ancient spell whose prior use had cost him everything he treasured, and delivered precious little of what it promised.

Streets and alleys, homes and storefronts, citizens and soldiers passed by all unnoticed, for Cerris’s attentions were turned inward.
He’d long since committed the incantations and tendon-contorting gestures to memory. He hadn’t dared keep the original writings on his person, for this was the last surviving spell of the Archmage Selakrian, a page torn from his ancient tome before the spellbook perished in flame. To keep such a terrible prize was to invite the attention, if not the enmity, of Imphallion’s small but potent community of sorcerers.

But even with his iron will and a mind as sharp as the Kholben Shiar, he had difficulty retaining such arcane formulae, for this was a complex spell indeed, well beyond Cerris’s normal proficiency. He had cast the invocation several times before—most recently a few years back, on a particularly stubborn Rahariem merchant—and he recited it over and over on his walk, lips moving and twisting until they were numb, but still he remained only half convinced that he’d properly recalled it.

Evening’s advance scouts were peering over the horizon, perhaps hoping to see where the sun would hide himself tonight. A cool breeze wrestled with the lingering heat of the day when Cerris neared his destination, many blocks from the western gates. Swiftly he ducked into a nearby alley, changing into the Cephiran hauberk and tabard he’d kept from his escape. By now his combination of military walk and sporadic illusions came naturally, and nobody offered him a second glance—in most cases, not even a first one—as he strode boldly toward the nearest cluster of Cephiran defenses.

For many minutes he wandered, head high and shoulders straight, as if he knew precisely where he was going, but constantly watching, cataloging, timing. It took only a short while to track the movements of various servants and low-ranking soldiers who brought missives and water to those who manned the gates, those who patrolled atop the walls …

And those who crewed the Cephiran siege engines.

It took an even shorter while for Cerris to corner one of the servants alone and to take his place, disposing of the body down a nearby cistern.

Lugging a sloshing bucket, Cerris climbed the narrow stone steps toward the nearest of half a dozen platforms the Cephirans had erected along the ramparts. Drawn upward as if hooked by some divine fisherman,
his gaze rose, taking in the awesome power of the wooden monstrosity above. Dozens of feet high, equipped with a counterweight heavier than many houses, it seemed to exude a living malevolence. Cerris had seen more than one trebuchet in action, and held nearly as much awe for their power as he did for the magics of the Kholben Shiar, but he hadn’t the slightest notion of how to operate it.

That was all right, though. Operating the infernal machine wasn’t his job.

Over the following hour, Cerris acquired the tiniest piece of each member of the trebuchet’s crew. From the first, a rag with which he’d blotted the worst of the evening’s sweat from his face; from the second, a dollop of spittle collected after he hawked something up onto the floor; a few strands of hair from the third, when Cerris brushed a nonexistent wasp from his shoulder; and so forth.

And then he was gone, back down the stairs and out into the streets, as casually and unobtrusively as he had come.

Privacy was actually harder to come by than anything else he’d required, but he finally found a home, broken and abandoned during the Cephiran siege and never reoccupied. He scrambled over piles of rubble, cringing from walls that rained dust and seemed to be waiting only for the right time to crumble inward and squash him into a delectable pâté, but he found two of the inner chambers standing, and that was one more than he needed.

Pushing aside bits of broken brick, he cleared a spot to sit that was, if not comfortable, at least not actively painful, and lowered himself to the floor. First he laid Sunder beside him, in easy reach. Next he carefully spread out the various bits and dollops and goo before him, placing each just so,
this
far from the others,
that
far from him. And for the next several hours, his voice steady but low, mouthing impossible syllables until his tongue felt like taffy and his throat as though he’d been gargling eggshells, Cerris struggled to invoke what just might have been the most potent spell in Imphallion.

A
SIZABLE PROPORTION
of the nation’s citizenry firmly believed that Duke Meddiras, the middle-aged governor of Denathere, was paranoid. The so-called Jewel of Imphallion, Denathere was second in importance only to Mecepheum itself. Yes, it was geographically and conceptually the heart of Imphallion, where the major highways that were the veins carrying Imphallion’s lifeblood converged. And yes, more than half the Guilds kept their greatest halls and highest offices within its borders.

But surely Meddiras—or “Mad-diras,” as some called him—went rather to extremes. Since he’d assumed the title of duke almost six years ago, he’d tripled the size of the city’s standing militias. From the old city walls, new layers of stone had been layered upward and outward, until most of Denathere was surrounded by a rampart larger than that of Mecepheum, or of border cities under far greater risk of siege. What few stretches of the outer wall had not yet been sufficiently reinforced were bandaged in great wooden scaffolds, swarming with both paid laborers and petty criminals sentenced to indentured servitude. Meddiras had even attempted to institute more thorough entry requirements, demanding that the guards search
every
visitor and
every
wagon from top to bottom. He’d relented only when the merchants had threatened
everything shy of open revolt. Men and women in hauberks or breastplates marched atop the walls in groups of five or more, and various engines—from small ballistae to great catapults as large as Cephira’s trebuchets—lurked every few hundred feet, eager to hurl death upon any foe who might dare approach.

Yes, nearly everyone thought Duke Meddiras paranoid—but nearly everyone, even those most inconvenienced by Denathere’s slow transformation into a military city—also had to admit that the man had his reasons.

Twenty-three years ago, the city had fallen to the armies of the Terror of the East, at the end of his fearsome campaign. And here, almost seven years ago, Denathere had fallen once more to the forces of Audriss the Serpent, at the
start
of his own.

Meddiras, who inherited the dukedom when his aunt perished at the hands of the Serpent’s soldiers, would sooner have ripped out his own fingernails with his teeth than allow history to record him as the third duke in a row to see Denathere conquered.

And that paranoia had saved his life once already. For Duke Meddiras, and several of Denathere’s Guildmasters, had some weeks ago been invited to Mecepheum, to participate in a meeting of great import, a dialogue between the nobility and the Guilds to discuss some means of reconciliation.

Or so the message had stated. Meddiras and Denathere’s Guildmasters, in a show of unprecedented unity, had refused to leave their city while the murderous dawn of war threatened from beyond the eastern horizon. They had dispatched emissaries in their stead—emissaries who, like everyone else present in that meeting chamber, were now purported dead at the hands of Corvis Rebaine.

That rumor, unconfirmed though it might be, sent Meddiras and his court into a frenzy, and his captains and military advisers ran themselves ragged following his assorted orders. The gates to Denathere were now so choked with guards that it was challenging even to drive a cart through them, and those gates shut firmly more than an hour before dusk no matter how many travelers sought admittance. Every noble manor and keep, every governmental office and Guild hall, was
surrounded by vassal soldiers and hired mercenaries, and the street patrols were redoubled yet again. It looked very much as though Denathere had been flooded by a pounding rain of swords and armor.

In the end—for the Guildmasters and for Meddiras himself, if not for his city—it was, every last bit of it, a wasted effort.

In an inner room of a large stone house, a faint breeze kicked up where no breeze could possibly blow. The dust and dead beetles accumulated over years of neglect danced across the carpet, fetching up against the walls, and the flimsy wooden door whistled in its uneven frame. Had anyone been present within the room, and had he possessed a
remarkably
acute nose, he might have noted the faintest humid odor, rather akin to mildewed parchment.

The impossible wind ceased as swiftly as it appeared, and then there
was
someone in the room, standing at the heart of the miniature storm. One hand clutching the bridge of his nose, the other outstretched to prop himself against the nearest wall, the wizard Nenavar took deep, deliberate breaths, trying to allay the quivering of his muscles.

Teleportation was so much easier when I was younger …

It would pass quickly enough; it always did. While he waited, he placed his back against the wall and allowed himself to slide. There he sat on his haunches, the overly large sleeves of his fine tunic dragging in the dust. He found himself, for lack of anything better to do, staring at the floor.

“I really must remember,” he muttered to himself, “to hire someone to tidy up while I’m away.”

After a few moments, Nenavar felt his strength (such as it was) returning, and he rose. Night had fallen outside, and no lamps burned within the house, but the old man had little trouble finding his way. This was but one of several abodes he owned throughout Imphallion’s major cities, and all had been built to his specifications, identical to one another in every particular. Such intimate familiarity with one’s destination made teleportation easier—not to mention rather less prone to catastrophic accident—and exhausting as it was, Nenavar far preferred it to weeks on horseback.

He felt a few startled glances from neighborhood folk who knew the house to be empty, but otherwise attracted little attention as he shut
the door behind him and stepped into Denathere’s streets. The throng bustled around him, jostling and deafening even at this hour, and he felt himself cringing, his skin threatening to unwrap itself from his body and go hide in a corner. Gods, he hated being touched!