“It’s all right,” she told him softly—and then the implications finally struck home. “Where
is
Jassion?”
“Gone.” Kaleb looked deep into her eyes. “He went with them. They must have done something to him; he wasn’t himself.” Carefully, remembering to limp, he rose and moved past her, toward the door. He bent with an audible grunt to lift Talon, extended it hilt-first toward the hesitant young woman.
“No, I couldn’t …”
“You can give it back to him, if you feel the need, once we’ve freed him. But it’s just the two of us now, Mellorin. And we’re stronger with it.”
Trembling fingers closed about the hilt, and the Kholben Shiar shifted, folding in on itself. In seconds Mellorin held a brutal, thick-bladed knife with a wide guard, a weapon equally suited for parrying a larger blade or gutting an unsuspecting foe. A street fighter’s weapon.
“I guess the formal training didn’t take,” he joked with a wince.
For several heartbeats she examined the blade, and then resolutely placed it on the floor beside her and stepped forward to take his hands, guiding him back to bed. Allowing her to seat him, he gazed up at her.
“Mellorin …” He paused, cleared his throat. “If this is too much, if you want to give up, I couldn’t blame—”
“Hush.” She placed a finger against his lips. “I won’t leave you to do this alone, not now.”
He offered her a wide smile, then gently kissed the tip of her finger. Her entire body quivered. Slowly he reached out, pulling her to him.
“Kaleb …”
Whatever she might have had to say was lost in a long, impassioned kiss. He pulled back for just a moment, offering her the chance to speak, but there were no words in her quickened, frantic breaths. They fell back, moving as one, and they had no more need for words at all.
But if the soft sounds from beneath him were gasps of passion, even love, in Kaleb’s fire-blackened heart there lurked only a horrid exultation.
T
HEY COULD NEVER COMPREHEND IT
, of course, but the horses had every reason to be grateful for the sorry state of Corvis and his companions. Had they been able, the riders would likely have ridden the poor beasts to death under the twin pressures of the hastening spell—cast by Seilloah, this time, as Corvis was in no shape to invoke it—and their desperation to put distance between themselves and the manifest demon.
Instead, as they pounded across the open road, every step a jolt of sheer agony, the wind driving dust and grit into open wounds, Corvis knew they would have to stop, and stop soon. If they didn’t, the ride itself might well kill them, saving Khanda the trouble.
Well, he noted bitterly, Khanda and the Cephirans.
Khanda, the Cephirans, and the agents of the Guilds.
And possibly the gnomes, if they’d found their missing brother.
And Jassion himself, for that matter.
It was all enough to make a fellow
really
depressed.
For long hours, Corvis didn’t see the road before him, or the horse’s mane waving in his face. He saw only the farmhouse, less than a mile from the village proper, in which Jassion had
sworn
they’d left Mellorin, and the rented loft in which he’d sworn they would find her.
They hadn’t. Indeed, they’d found no sign of
anyone
within the
house, be it Mellorin or the homeowners. Corvis would have stayed, torn apart the whole house—the whole
village
—with his bare hands, no matter that it took hours or even days; would have gladly consigned his life to Khanda rather than leave his little girl in the demon’s clutches. When his companions had made to drag him from his search, to flee before the creature freed itself, he’d actually reached for Sunder.
It had, astoundingly, been neither Irrial nor Seilloah but
Jassion
who’d gotten through to him. “Rebaine, if that creature finds us, he’ll slaughter us.
All
of us. You think it’ll matter to him if Mellorin’s with us? So long as he can use her, she lives! Would you be the one to change her from ally to enemy in his eyes?”
And so, though Corvis wept with frustration and burned with the need to feel the baron’s neck break beneath his squeezing fingers, they had gone. On stolen horses they fled, and swiftly the old warrior learned that he would not easily lose himself in the journey, for each pain he escaped was replaced by another.
Every limb ached. His back screamed in agony where he’d struck the rubble, and each jostle of the horse’s steps made it worse. His jaw pounded, the laceration on his forehead itched, his gut ached where the very tip of Talon had stuck him after transfixing Khanda. And thank Kassek and Panaré both that it had
just
been the tip; it didn’t take much for the Kholben Shiar to kill. (Corvis hadn’t bothered to ask Jassion if he’d
meant
to stab them both, since he was pretty sure he knew the answer.)
But all that, Corvis could have managed. It was the wound to his mind and soul that threatened to lay him low. He couldn’t rid himself of the memory of Khanda’s foul presence in his head. He felt filthy, violated. He swore something slick and viscous clung inside him, coating his thoughts. He hurt anytime he tried to reason, and the simple act of remembering burned like an infected sore. Even picturing Mellorin, allowing himself the worry and concern that was his right as a father, was almost too painful to bear. Corvis had never been a religious man, but he prayed now beneath his breath, begging the gods to let him heal before the poison in his psyche fermented into true dementia.
At least, if nothing else, the voice that had yammered at him for years, and so much more frequently in recent weeks, seemed to have gone silent. Had it truly been a lingering remnant, now returned to the resurrected demon? Or had it been imagination, the first signs of a fracturing mind, now buried beneath a more severe insipient madness? Corvis dared not even guess, and it hurt too terribly to think about; he knew only that, as silver linings went, trading a phantom of Khanda for the real thing left much to be desired.
He twisted in the saddle, groaning and clutching his stomach, struggling to see the others. The clouds seemed to be following them from town—were they, too, fleeing Khanda’s presence?—and they wept a persistent drizzle that hung in the air, forming a glutinous fog. The moon was nothing but a gleaming sliver within those clouds, selfishly hoarding its light, and were it not for the sounds of hooves and the sporadic groan of pained fatigue, Corvis might have thought himself alone.
But then, he didn’t need to see, not really. He’d seen his companions well enough when they’d mounted up, and assuredly none of them had gotten
better
over the intervening miles.
He tried to shout, to make himself heard over the horses and the rain, and succeeded only in driving himself into a fit of hacking coughs. Fine, then. They’d just have to follow. Corvis yanked on the reins, driving his horse off the path and across a rocky, scrub-dotted plain.
Here there were insufficient trees in which to hide. But the knolls and rises of stone, while lacking both the height and the sheltering caves of those through which they’d earlier passed, boasted the occasional overhang within the bowl-shaped depressions that feebly masqueraded as valleys. Poor cover indeed, but it would keep
some
of the rain from their heads—and, more important, hide them from casual search. They might even risk a brief fire, if they kept it banked low.
Corvis didn’t know if the others realized what he was doing, or followed him purely out of habit, but nobody hesitated or questioned the change in direction.
It was tricky, picking a course through the rocky slopes on horseback. Corvis was forced to gather what little focus he could muster and
cast a spell of illumination. He kept it dull, scarcely brighter than a candle. It was feeble, but it was enough, and some moments later they tromped listlessly into a hollow between two hills.
Corvis toppled from the saddle in what couldn’t even generously be called “dismounting,” landing on his feet through sheer force of will. He watched as the others filed slowly into the meager light upon horses lathered in sweat and rain. Irrial remained in the best shape of them all. Though her skin was pallid, her hands lacerated, her limbs covered in bruises, she displayed no serious injuries and her shoulders remained unbowed. With as much care as she could muster, she hauled Seilloah’s canine form from a broad leather saddlebag and laid her gently on the earth. The witch was trembling, whimpering in agonies that resulted only partly from recent travails. Open sores marred her matted fur, and her tongue lolled out in constant panting. Corvis didn’t need her to explain that she would need a new body soon—or that she had only a few “mounts” remaining before her magics could no longer sustain her.
That thought, in turn, drew his attention to the final rider, and Corvis found his physical discomfort washed away. Jassion was teetering precariously, one foot in the stirrup as he dismounted, when the older warrior seized him by the shoulders, hauling him bodily from the horse and slamming him against the slope of the nearest hill. Dust erupted around the impact, then fell from the air as the raindrops transfigured it into mud. Corvis loomed over him, fists clenched so hard they trembled. He’d torn open the shallow wound in his belly, making his tunic and trousers run red, but he hardly seemed to notice.
“You
bastard
!” He lurched forward, landing with one hand on the slope, the other grasping at Jassion’s neck. “You brought
Mellorin
into this? Does your own godsdamn family mean
nothing
to you?”
Jassion’s own hands closed on Corvis’s wrist, holding the choking fingers just inches from his throat. He snarled a response, but the words were lost in the steady drizzle and the heavy gasping of two enraged foes.
This close, and with the worst of the blood washed away by the weather, Corvis saw that the injury he’d inflicted to Jassion’s face wasn’t quite so bad as he’d thought. Only a small chunk of the nose had
actually been ripped away. What remained would always be mangled, clearly disfigured, but with proper attention and a skilled healer, the baron would be able to breathe properly, smell the scents of the world around him, speak without impediment.
Except that Corvis didn’t plan to give him the time to heal. Or, for that matter, to breathe.
There they remained, locked together by flesh and hatred—for mere seconds, for untold centuries. Until a gleaming length of steel appeared between them, a serpent’s tongue flickering between their faces.
“That’s enough! Both of you, back off.” Startled, Corvis loosened his grip and stepped away, even as Jassion stood upright.
It took Corvis a moment to recognize the voice. Much time had passed since he’d heard Irrial speak as a baroness, but she did so now, her back and her blade held straight, her expression and her voice harder than the surrounding rock. Even battered and bedraggled in the falling rain, Corvis thought she’d never looked so imperial.
And the part of him that could still push some amount of coherent thought through the residue in his soul and the fury burning in his blood believed, without doubt, that she would
use
that blade if they did not heed her command.
“Irrial, what—?”
“No. You first, Rebaine. That—that
thing
. That was the demon you spoke of? That was Khanda?”
“It was,” he said, casting a bitter glare at Jassion.
It was nearly invisible, so rigid did the baron hold himself, but his face wilted just a little. “I didn’t know. I
couldn’t
know.”
“Couldn’t you?” Corvis demanded. “I don’t—”
Again, Irrial cut him off. “Shut it!” She shook her head, sending water spraying in all directions. Then, after a moment, “Baron Jassion?”
“My lady?” he answered reflexively.
“Why did you help us?”
Fingers curled and uncurled, a jaw shifted as teeth ground together. Jassion seemed to wrestle with his emotions more fiercely than he had with Corvis himself.
“Because …” He took a deep breath, spat the words as though they burned him. “Because I will not be responsible for setting this Khanda loose upon Imphallion. Because some things”—and his voice dropped in amazement at his own admission—“are more important even than
this.
” His glare left no doubt as to who “this” meant.
“Good. Then you two can damn well put this aside until we’ve dealt with the bloody
demon!
Afterward, I don’t care. Slaughter each other, drown in each other’s blood, carve each other into fish bait—I
don’t care
. But so help me gods, you’ll do it
afterward
, not now!”
Corvis knew that the look he cast at Jassion was petulant, petty—as petulant and petty as the one he received in exchange. But Irrial was right, and no matter how he wanted to deny it, to feel the baron’s bones break under his fists, to drive Sunder through that despised face, he
knew
she was right.
It was, for that matter, no more than he’d asked of
her
, from the instant he’d told her his real name.
Lacking the energy even to grumble under his breath, Corvis stalked away to the far side of the tiny vale.
It was only after he’d slumped down, shifted a few times trying (and failing) to find a position where the rocks didn’t bite into his aching back, that he noticed the shivering hound beside him. The smell of wet dog was a slap across the face, but he figured it wiser not to comment.
“Yes?” he asked in a coarse rasp.
“You’re not just going to leave it like this!” Seilloah demanded.
He would, at least, do her the courtesy of not pretending to ask what she was talking about. “Only for a time, Seilloah. Only until—”
“You said you’d kill him!”
“I will, damn it! But not
now
. Irrial’s right. We need him.
Mellorin
needs him! He knows too much about what’s going on for us to just throw that—”
“Corvis, he
murdered me
!”
He reached out to take her snout in his hand, but she jerked aside. “And if there’s any way for me to make him pay for that, I will,” he swore. “But Seilloah, this
has
to come first! This—”