The most wonderful thing about it was that it was a simple, ordinary house.
Not a large structure, but roomy enough for the comfort of its inhabitants, with a bit of space to spare. The walls were solid, dependable, fitted together over many months by loving hands. The builder had used no magic in the house’s construction, though certainly he could have. But that would, in a way, have defeated the entire purpose.
Windows sparsely dotted the structure, numbered and positioned perfectly. They were sufficient to admit the bright sunshine during the day, and the glimmer of moon and stars at night; to cool the house during the warm summer months, yet not so numerous as to make it difficult to warm against winter.
The house sat on the very outskirts of town. It was near enough to be neighborly, but retained a certain modicum of privacy unachievable in the heart of the small but bustling village. Chelenshire, it was called, a rather weighty name for a community of perhaps five or six dozen souls.
Another advantage to the house’s position at the edges of Chelenshire: It kept the inhabitants away from the slow but steady traffic that passed along what was once a major trade route. The odds of a stranger recognizing the house’s inhabitants were minuscule, but even “minuscule” was a risk not worth taking.
This morning, in particular, was a sunny one. The air was warm without quite crossing the fine line into hot, the sky a bright and cloudless blue. Birds wheeled above, droves of them, rejoicing in the last of the fine weather before the blistering heat and the rare but torrential storms of summer fell heavily upon them. Squirrels, gophers, and the occasional rabbit dashed across the grass, each on its own quest for fruits, vegetables, nuts, or whatever else might volunteer itself for lunch. An entire garden’s worth of food lined up in neat rows on two separate sides of the house. Lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, tomatoes, onions, squash, and more tomatoes—the lady of the house was abnormally fond of tomatoes—all beckoned invitingly. But though they would occasionally stop beside the garden, perched upon hind legs, to stare longingly at the repast calling to them, none of the rampaging rodents ever set paw into the garden itself. Something about the area itself kept the animals—as well as slugs, snails, and a huge variety of harmful insects—at bay.
There may have been no trace of magic in the building of the house, but the garden was another story entirely.
With a soft grunt of pain, the man currently at work yanking weeds from the bed of squash leaned back on his heels, one hand pressed to the small of his back. He was, he reflected grimly, too old to be spending hours on end hunched over the vegetables.
Hell, he didn’t even like gardening! It was his wife’s passion, she who spent so much of her time maintaining the place day after day. For his own part, he’d have been quite content to purchase the vegetables at the market. But though the money was not an issue—he’d enough saved from past endeavors to live many years in luxury—she had pointed out that such a lifestyle in Chelenshire would attract unwanted attention. And it was to avoid notice, after all, that they’d moved to Chelenshire in the first place.
Thus the garden, and their occasional hunting trips, and her embroidery and needlework, and his days spent in town, helping old man Renfro down at the forge or advising Tolliver on matters of policy.
But the forge was silent today, as was most of Chelenshire, in observance of Godsday. And she’d asked him, as a personal favor, to help in the garden. He shook his head, bemused, waiting for the pain in his back to recede. It was many years now since he could refuse her anything.
Of course, he reconsidered as he suddenly stood in response to another back spasm, maybe it’s time to start.
He wasn’t an especially conspicuous figure, not like in his younger days. He was taller than average—taller than most of the men in the village, certainly. In his prime, he’d been mountainous, his body covered with layers of rock-solid muscle; even Xavier, Renfro’s large son, was a delicate flower compared with what this man once had been.
Middle age stole that from him, though a combination of strict exercise and natural inclination saved him from going to fat, as so many former men of war inevitably did. He was, in fact, quite wiry now, slender to the point of gaunt. His face was one of edges and angles, striking without being handsome, and the gaze of his green eyes piercing. Hair once brown had greyed; it hung just past his neck, giving him a vaguely feral demeanor. Even now he could do the work of a man half his age, but he wasn’t what he used to be.
And his back still hurt.
“Daddy, Daddy!”
The grin that blossomed across his face washed away the pain in his back. Quickly he knelt down, catching the wiggling brown-haired flurry that flung itself into his arms. Standing straight, he cradled the child to his breast, laughing.
“And a good afternoon to you, Lilander,” he said mock-seriously. “What are you running from this time?”
“Monster!” the boy shouted happily.
Gods willing, he could not help but think, this will be the worst sort of monster you ever know.
What he said, though, was, “Indeed? Is it a horrible monster?”
Lilander nodded, giggling.
“Is it nasty? Is it gross and disgusting?”
The boy was laughing loudly now, nodding even more furiously.
“Is it—Mellorin?”
“Hey!” called another voice from just beyond the garden. “I heard that!”
Both father and son were laughing now. “Come on out, Mel. I’m just teasing.”
Her own lips twisted in a disapproving moue, a brown-haired girl, just shy of her teenage years, stepped from around the corner. She wore, as they all did, a simple tunic and breeches of undyed cloth. She was, her parents had decided, far too prone to dashing and racing around to dress her in skirts.
“Well, you don’t look as though you were chasing him,” the grey-haired man commented seriously. “You don’t seem to have been running at all.”
“I don’t need to run,” she said smugly, staring up at the two of them. “I’ll catch him eventually anyway.”
“Oh? And why’s that?”
“I’m smarter than he is.”
Lilander stopped laughing and scowled down darkly at his older sister. “Are not!”
Mellorin sighed theatrically. Her father, fully aware that he would soon have to be stern and fatherly, restrained a grin. She was so much like her mother.
“I refuse,” she said with exaggerated dignity, “to be drawn into that kind of argument with a child.”
The man’s lip quivered, and he coughed once.
“Are not!” her brother insisted again.
Her eyes blazed suddenly. “Are too!” she shouted.
All right, that was about as far as it needed to go. “Children!” the man barked, sharply enough to get their attention but not so loud as to suggest he was angry—yet. “What have I told you about fighting?”
“I don’t know,” Lilander said instantly. “Besides, she started it.”
“Did not!”
“Did too!”
Shaking his head, the children’s father gave them both another sound lecture—one he’d given hundreds of times previously, and fully expected to give hundreds of times more, possibly starting as early as lunch—and sent them both into the house. The windows weren’t quite thick enough to keep the recurring cries of “Are not!” “Are too!” from invading the garden.
“Louder than ogres,” he muttered with a trace of a smile as he turned back toward the vegetables.
“More dangerous, too,” came the reply from behind him. “They broke another window this morning. That’s why they were outside in the first place.”
She stood at the edge of the garden, leaning on a rake. She frowned at him, but he’d known her long enough to see the spark of laughter in her eyes. Her hair, a richer brown than his own had ever been, was braided in a simple tail. A few rogue strands fell across her face; she brushed them aside reflexively, unaware of the gesture.
“You’re beautiful,” he told her sincerely.
“And you’re trying to change the subject. I’m too tired to be flattered.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, I’d be more than happy to look after the children today. Of course, it means I’d be forced—reluctantly, I assure you—to skip helping you out here in the garden …”
“Oh, no! No, you’re staying out here with me if I have to stake you up like one of my tomato plants. You—”
A sudden shattering drifted from the general direction of the kitchen, followed immediately by “Mellorin did it!” “Did not!” “Did too!”
Their mother shook her head, sighing. “As soon as we go deal with whatever disaster just happened in the house.”
“Ah,” he replied, “normal life. It’s what we wanted, isn’t it?”
She laughed again, even as they started moving, the garden temporarily forgotten. It was amazing, even after all these years together. “I love you, Tyannon,” he said simply.
Tyannon smiled back at him, this man who had been her husband for half her life. “I love you too, Corvis.”
Corvis Rebaine followed his wife back into the house, pondering for just a moment how much things could change in seventeen years.
* * * *
THE CELEBRATION WOUND gradually down, leaving all of Denathere deliciously exhausted.
The westerly sun shed the last rays of the day upon the lingering vestiges of barely controlled chaos. Streamers of bright cloth littered the roads, as though a rainbow had shattered above the city, strewing shards carelessly about. Children, their exuberance not quite worn down by a full week of freedom and too much sugar, ran around madly, laughing happily or shouting at one another, determined to experience the absolute maximum of fun before their parents called them home for supper and bed. Even a few adults still danced in the streets, one hand clenched about a flagon of ale or mead or wine, the other clenched about the waist or wrist—or, in a few of the darker alleys, other parts—of a second like-minded citizen. Vendors shouted hoarsely to passersby, trying doggedly for one final holiday sale.
But most of the city residents, worn out from a full week of revels, were snug in their beds, beginning the painful recovery that all too often follows excessive jubilation.
At the edge of town, Guild-hired mercenaries cranked the handles of a huge wooden wheel. Chains clanked, gears rotated, wood creaked, and the gates of the city ponderously slammed shut. The sound, a solitary clap of thunder, rolled across the city. Drunk men sobered slightly at the sound, and the happiest citizens shivered briefly, for it was a palpable reminder of what they were celebrating—what they had so very nearly lost.
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!”
Tolliver blanched and offered a swift sign against evil. “I wish you’d not speak those names aloud, Cerris. No point in tempting fate, is there?”
“My apologies, Tolliver. For my slip, and for my children’s actions.”
The other man smiled good-naturedly. “Well, they’re hardly as bad as the Children of Apocalypse, for all that. Truth to tell, Cerris, the water’s as welcome as anything else. I haven’t felt this cool since I left my house this morning.”
“Is there any particular reason,” Tyannon asked from a nearby chair as they passed over the threshold, “you’re dripping so profusely on my floor?”
“Tiniest cloudburst in history,” her husband told her with a straight face. “Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Tyannon smiled, rising to her feet. “And how are you today, Tolliver?”
“Oh, I can’t complain, Tyannon. Well, I could, actually. It’s bloody hot out there. But it wouldn’t do a one of us any good, so I’ll pass.”
She brought towels, and the three of them sat down around the table with mugs of ale and a platter containing a heavy wedge of cheese and a variety of vegetables.
Tolliver looked around him, taking it all in as he did each time he visited. The house was the same on the inside as it was without: plain and simple, homey in a way that his own much larger dwelling could never be. Wooden cabinets lined the walls in the kitchen, simple but comfortable chairs surrounded the thick table at which they sat. This was a place of peace; a family could be quite happy here.
It was Tyannon who broke the meaningless small talk that filled the first few moments of their repast. “Tolliver, you’re always welcome here, and it is a joy to visit with you. But I’m afraid I don’t quite believe you’re here for entirely social reasons.”
Tolliver’s lip quirked. “Am I that transparent, Tyannon?”
“Oh, no,” Corvis said, hiding his grin behind an upraised mug. “Many things, Tolliver, but not transparent.”
But this time Tolliver didn’t rise to the bait. “I fear you’re quite right, Tyannon. The truth is, I’m here to invite the both of you to a town meeting tonight.”
Corvis and Tyannon frowned as one. Chelenshire held town gatherings on a regular basis to discuss policies or changes in local law, problems with crops, that sort of thing. But …
“This month’s meeting isn’t for another two weeks,” Corvis observed. “Who called this one?”
“I did, actually.”
“Why?” Tyannon asked, the slightest catch in her voice.
Tolliver sighed. “Audriss struck again a few nights back.”
Despite the blazing heat outside, the room grew chill. This man calling himself Audriss had appeared some few months before, a great army at his back. Since then, several towns and even a pair of small cities had fallen to his relentless advance. So far, Duke Lorum was either unable or unwilling to send his own armies to meet them.
Corvis himself felt a shiver of fear trace its way slowly, caressingly down his spine. He knew which cities and towns had fallen; he knew, more than any other man alive, what their significance was.
He was fairly certain, too, that he knew what news Tolliver was about to deliver. For the first time in years, he found himself praying: praying, in this case, that he was wrong.
“Is he moving in this direction?” Tyannon asked quietly.
“No, not that we know. It’s just … he’s never done anything of this magnitude before.”
Corvis closed his eyes. He wasn’t wrong. He could have spoken along with Tolliver, word for word.
“Denathere has fallen.
“Again.”