The Warlord's Legacy (57 page)

Over her shoulder, he saw Khanda hurling himself about like an acrobat, spinning between Seilloah’s tendrils, always just beyond reach of Jassion’s furiously hacking blade. Now and again, bursts of fire or shrieking levinbolts would hurtle from the demon’s fists, pour from his eyes. Thanks to the speed and magics of the Kholben Shiar, the baron avoided or even parried most of them, but burns across his arms and chest showed where a few had found their mark.

Corvis saw, too, the witch fluttering in the corner above, raining
feathers and bloody pus as her strength ebbed, the corruption spread through her latest—her last?—body.

And then Corvis’s boot came down on a rough chunk of stone, and he found himself flailing. With a cry of infinite despair, Mellorin lunged.

Still he could have stopped her, could have cut her down with Sunder before the dagger fell. Still he would not.

White-hot agony yanked at his entire body like an angry puppeteer as her blade plunged deep into his left side. He coughed twice, felt the slick steel slide from his flesh as he staggered. Groaning, he pressed his left hand to the wound, felt liquid warmth between his fingers.

“Daddy? I’m so sorry, Daddy …” Even as she wept, she came at him again, bloody knife poised, and it was all he could do to stay ahead of her.

“
Sorry
?” Khanda’s mocking laugh echoed through the cellar. “This is what you
wanted
, Mellorin! Ah, fickle youth …”

A shadow fell across Mellorin and the baroness appeared behind, hands outstretched to wrestle the blade away. The girl spun a brutal kick into Irrial’s knee and continued on, ignoring the other woman as she collapsed to the floor.

“Corvis …” It came from above, the caw of a wounded bird. “Corvis, I can’t hold on much longer. If it doesn’t happen soon …”

“Aw, poor Corvis.” Again from Khanda, literally dancing away from Jassion’s blade. He wasn’t even
trying
to attack anymore, wasn’t throwing fire or arcane bolts. He was, Corvis realized with a choking mouthful of bile, enjoying the show. “Did your little plan fall apart? Did you smuggle poor, dying Seilloah here for nothing?”

Corvis snarled something, but the words that crossed the cellar were Mellorin’s, not his own. “Kaleb! Gods, Kaleb, don’t make me do this! Please …”

“I admit,” Khanda continued, “it’s not as efficient as Selakrian’s charm, but it seems to be doing the trick, doesn’t it? Of course, it’d be a lot harder if part of her hadn’t already wanted to see you dead. Poor abandoned waif. But if it makes you feel better, it’s
mostly
me. I told you, I’ve complete control of my physical form—and I’ve spent many a night these past weeks leaving tiny parts of that form in sweet little
Mellorin. And now look. Why, the result is almost as much fun as the process!”

Corvis stumbled once more, so violently was he trembling, and only Sunder’s unnatural speed enabled him to parry the stroke that followed. Thick blood soaked his trousers, left a trail across the floor, and with every step his wound pumped another spurt of his life.

“Daddy, please! You have to fight back!
Please
don’t let me do this!” But he
could not
. Another stroke of the dagger and Sunder went spinning across the room, knocked from a broken and bleeding hand.

“Do you suppose I’m fortunate enough,” Khanda asked, slicing one of Seilloah’s roots with the edge of his bare hand, “that she might conceive? If so, Corvis, I hope you’ll be good enough to let us name the child after you. It was you, after all, who brought us together.”

Corvis was screaming unintelligible, bestial sounds. Veins stood out in his neck and across his forehead; spittle hung from the corner of his lips. Irrial was back on her feet, struggling to reach them, to do
something
, but with her limp she had trouble even walking, certainly could not keep up with his constant retreat or Mellorin’s relentless advance. Even Salia Mavere, it appeared, was trying now to lend a hand, but she could only crawl and stagger from where she’d been thrown, looking for some way to help.

Mellorin closed, her dagger flashing …

T
HROUGH HIS BURNING FURY
, through his constant slashes and thrusts at a target who evaded his every effort with inhuman grace, Jassion still managed to keep track of what was happening to the others. He saw the Terror of the East forced into retreat, saw blood spilling from his side, and in his soul, he rejoiced. No matter what threat Khanda posed, an uncountable array of wrongs would be set right by Rebaine’s death; no matter what the warlord and Seilloah had planned, surely he, with Talon, could serve just as well. The time had finally come for retribution for Denathere, for all Imphallion …

For Jassion, and for the sister who was ripped from him.

But then, as he swung Talon, he
saw
his sister, saw Tyannon not as the girl he remembered from so long ago, but as he’d seen her months before, for the first time in his adult life. He saw her face, staring, imploring. And he saw, too, Mellorin’s eyes, horrified as she’d taken her first unwilling steps toward Rebaine.

He saw, and he knew that neither woman—none of his
family—
could live with what she was about to do.

And Jassion, the Baron of Braetlyn, abandoned his fight with Khanda to save the life of the Terror of the East—and the soul of the Terror’s daughter.

“I
RRIAL
! C
ATCH
!”

Corvis heard the call, saw Jassion sprinting his way, tossing Talon at the limping baroness as he neared. The distance between them was not vast, but broken pebbles shifted beneath his feet, slowing his headlong plunge, and Mellorin’s dagger rose ever higher.

Rose … and stopped.

Steel glinted, seeming to dance in the flickering firelight. Inches separated father from daughter, and the old warlord knew he should already be dead.

Mellorin’s blade, her hand, her entire body shuddered, muscle and flesh warring against each other. Dried lips split and bled, so tightly were they compressed together. She cried out once, in pain or fury Corvis could not tell, and then she was moving again, once more a slave to Khanda’s whims. But in that one moment of rebellion, she’d bought Jassion the extra seconds he’d needed. She heard his footsteps, turned to face her charging uncle, thrust with the vicious weapon.

Jassion made no move to stop her. He twisted so that the dagger grated across his chain-armored ribs, winced with pain as several links parted, and then slammed into his niece, carrying them both to the floor. He lay atop her, pinning her with his bulk, fighting to grab at her wrists. He saw hope flare in her features, even as she bucked and thrashed beneath him, struggling to break free.

“Oh, no, this will never do.” Flame again roared from Khanda’s hands, reducing the intervening tendrils to ash, but it approached slowly, a tide rather than a rushing river. The demon, Corvis realized, wanted to force Jassion to release the young woman, rather than simply char them both to nothing. He struggled to close on Khanda, and found he could scarcely walk. The agony in his side flared, his legs turned to so much paste, and he collapsed to an awkward crouch.

More feathers rained from above and Seilloah landed clumsily on his shoulder. Half her body was bare of feathers, covered in weeping sores, and her beak was
cracked
down the center. “I’m sorry …,” she told him in a broken whisper.

No … No, it
can’t
end like this …

Khanda screamed, a high-pitched, inhuman thing.

Irrial lay on the floor before the demon, as near as her limping and crawling would allow. Talon stretched from her hand, a slender-bladed duelist’s weapon, its very tip punching neatly into the muscle of Khanda’s calf.

No serious wound, this. Even inflicted by the Kholben Shiar, for the demon it was but a momentary hurt.

But for that moment, Khanda was distracted. Khanda was
vulnerable
.

“Corvis …”

“Is there no other way?” He felt the words catch in his throat, even though he knew she was already dead.

“None.” The crow looked at him, and he wished he could know if she was trying to smile. “Good-bye, my dearest friend.”

“Good …” He choked, then, and there was no time to say more. The crow squawked once, trembled, and lay still.

Groaning with the effort, Corvis rose once more to his feet, turned his tear-streaked face toward his daughter’s struggling form. “Mellorin …”

She knew his tone for what it was. “No! No, don’t …”

“Tell your mother … Gods, you know her better than I do now. Figure out what she needs to hear, tell her I said it. I love you, Mellorin. Whether you believe it or not, I always have.”

“Daddy,
no
!”

But Corvis was already running, the last of his strength pumping through his legs. He had to be there, had to reach him before it was too late.

Khanda had begun to catch his breath, was leaning down to clutch at the weapon in his leg. Irrial had scurried away, knowing full well she had no way to save herself if the demon turned on her. For a moment, as he crossed the cellar, Corvis thought it hadn’t worked, wondered if Seilloah had held on all this time for nothing.

Wondered, and began to despair, until Khanda shuddered. His face went slack, and his entire body fell back against the nearest wall.

No, not
his
body. The body he’d
created
around himself, to wear in the mortal realm. A body over which he had full and absolute control.

A body that, inhabited by a demon, possessed no mortal soul.

I
T HURT
. Oh, Arhylla Earth-Mother, it
hurt
!

The ground beneath her was rough, abrasive against her feet. The scents of thick soil and rock dust and sweat in the air were acrid, scratching at her lungs with ragged claws, until she was certain she must choke on her own blood. Around her, every line, every corner, the edge of every brick, the contours of every stone, were razor-edged, slicing at her even from feet and yards away.

And those lines looked
wrong
. The illumination came, not from above, but from all around her. They burned, the
people
burned; men and women both, and she recognized none of them. She saw no faces, saw no features, for the light emanated from deep inside them, through bone and flesh and fabric and armor.

Every mortal soul,
every
soul, was a light—and that light was terrible. It pierced the eye, no matter how she turned away; cast shadows sharp enough to slit her own flesh; burned against and beneath her skin, inferno and infection intertwined as one, worse than hell’s own fire.

A world, a whole world, of torment, distilled impossibly pure.

But not
everywhere
. Not quite.

Amid the awful glow were patches of comforting shade; open
wounds in mortal flesh seeped blood and pain, and from those spots, the light grew dim. She heard hopeless cries, the song of sorrow and fear, and where despair shrouded any soul, the burning abated.

She laughed a cruel, exulting laugh, rejoicing as the agony of those nearby lessened her own, if only just. Laughed, and wept, for she understood that in a world of such perfect torment, the waning of her own pain was the only joy.