The Conqueror's Shadow (11 page)

“SOME TIME,”
as it turned out, had been months. “Some time,” as it
also
turned out, hadn't offered any insight to make the choice any easier.

A veritable avalanche of papers and parchments covered the scarred surface of the oaken table. Reports and tactical commentary in at least
four languages peered from the pile, various and sundry symbols tracing a twisted course across the table.

On the end farthest from the door, a map lay spread across a relatively uncluttered area. Torchlight flickered over the images, the shadow of some mad giant dancing across entire nations. The room echoed with the final screams of the dying fugitives. The houses of the condemned, set to the torch at the Serpent's command, sent a thick, woody smoke across the city, thickening the air even in this lofty chamber.

Audriss hunched over the map, one metal-clad hand spread, palm-down, in the plains to the east of Imphallion.

“Abtheum, I think,” the black-garbed warlord muttered softly into the smoky air around him. “Yes, definitely Abtheum.”

/“Definitely” as in “definitely,” or “definitely” as in “I'm going to change my mind again in an hour”?/

“I do not,” Audriss snapped indignantly, “recall asking your opinion!”

/You rarely do. It's never stopped me from giving it anyway, has it?/

“Impudent creature!”

/Indeed. I thought you'd decided last night that
Orthessis
was “definitely” our next objective. Now it's Abtheum again. I humbly suggest that you come to a final decision sometime this millennium. There's only enough food in Denathere to keep your armies fed for a generation or so./

“It is difficult,” Audriss admitted, crossing his arms and standing straight to glare at the map, as though this entire predicament were the cartographer's fault. “They're both viable targets. They both lie on routes that will eventually take us to Mecepheum, and neither is defended particularly better than the other.”

/One could always try flipping a coin./
The voice hesitated for a moment.
/It's a shame Imphalam the First couldn't have built his capital someplace more convenient. This “march the armies across hundreds of miles to take Mecepheum” bit makes for some interesting strategizing, but it grows old rapidly./

“Aren't you pretty much ageless anyway?”

/That does not, alas, make me any less prone to boredom./

With a grunt of annoyance, Audriss spun from the table and began
to pace the long chamber, stopping now and again by the window to breath deeply of the scented smoke. “It is,” he offered hopefully, “still possible we won't need to keep up this farce anyway. Perhaps Denathere is as far as we need go. Perhaps—”

/He's here./

The Serpent halted. Even as he watched, a dense white mist began to seep in beneath the door frame, leaving a thick residue of blood on the wood. Audriss idly waited as his ally's features appeared in the pillar of mist, filled in with blood, and flushed solid.

“I'll admit that it's theatrical,” the Serpent said sharply, “and perhaps even useful in any number of circumstances. But it takes a damn sight longer than it would just to open the bloody door like a normal person!”

Mithraem, smoothing out a nonexistent wrinkle in his pristine white shirt, raised an eyebrow and smiled, revealing a perfectly straight set of gleaming ivory teeth. “‘Bloody door,' is it?”

“Bah! What have you learned?”

Mithraem stretched languorously, a great cat in vaguely human clothing, and then strode to the nearest chair, leaving bloody prints on the floor. Unmindful of Audriss's growing impatience, he extended his legs out comfortably before him, crossing them at the ankles, and steepled his fingers together in front of his face.

“Well?” the warlord demanded.

One side of the pale man's mouth quirked. “You, my friend, should learn patience.”

/He's got a point, actually. You do tend toward the abrupt./

“This is what I get,” Audriss spat bitterly, “for surrounding myself with immortals.”

“It does,” Mithraem told him, “tend to influence one's outlook.” Then, “My agents have spent many nights discussing the issue with the city's leaders, noble and Guildsman alike. They were quite insistent, actually. I'm certain we've learned from them everything we can.”

“And?” Audriss asked, his voice not quite breathless.

“As we expected, I fear. Not one of them has any idea what Rebaine was searching for in the catacombs—and thus, no information of any use to you.”

“Damn!” The table jumped at the impact of the Serpent's fist; papers cascaded onto the floor, and only Mithraem's inhuman reflexes prevented a wine goblet from overturning onto the map.

“Tsk, tsk, Audriss.” He held the drink up before him in toast, sniffed it once—his expression quickly shifting to one of intense distaste—and placed it back on the table. “Quite careless of you. Besides, it's not as though this was unexpected. I—”

At the sound of spasmodic scratching, two pairs of eyes flickered to the chamber door.

“It appears,” Audriss said, “that I'm destined for interruptions tonight. Enter!”

Heralded by the creaking door, a misshapen form, garbed in filthy black rags and tatters, shambled into the room.

Little more than three feet in height, the new arrival was painfully gaunt. Its limbs hung in nominally human ways, although select bulges and twists suggested muscle and bone that were not present in any child born of woman. It jerked constantly as it walked, and in motion it became less human still, for its limbs jutted in directions displeasing to the eye, bent at angles to make staunch men squirm. Two eyes, closer together than they should have been, blazed an irritated pink above a maw full of jagged and broken teeth.

“The Audriss is busy, yes, busy with other things,” the creature said to the room in general, its voice the sound of broken bone ground against a rock. “He wonders, does it want him to come back later?”

Though none could possibly see it, Audriss shuddered once inside his armor. Gods, but gnomes gave him the shivers!

“No,” he commanded, his voice steady enough to belie his unease. “Give your report.”

The shambling little creature nodded and slid forward a few more steps, pausing to examine the bloodstains Mithraem had left on the ground. Audriss could actually see the thing's nose twitching.

“I said report!”

“Yes.” The gnome looked up from his contemplation. “He comes from the catacombs underneath, yes, below. Much digging, moving of rocks. Did the Audriss know, he wonders, that many of the tunnels were collapsed, yes, full of rocks?”

“I knew. It's why I've given him—you—so long to search the damn place!”

“Ah, he sees, understands, yes. All the rocks moved, tunnels are cleared, empty. Some will not stand, no, fall again when he moves braces, supports. But the catacombs are searched, all of them, yes.” The gnome rubbed its hands together, the calluses on one palm grating noisily against the jagged nails of its fingers.

“And?” Audriss demanded. “What did you find?”

“Find, yes. Underground room, below, at the end of corridors. Metal door, yes, but melted, opened, burned away. Not natural, no. Magic. He feels it in his bones, yes, when the magic comes.

“But the Audriss will be unhappy, he thinks, yes it will. He searches the room, yes, all of the room, until there are no more places for hiding, no, not for secret things. Nothing is there, he thinks, no. The Audriss will have to look elsewhere for its treasure, yes, for what it wants. He wonders,” it said abruptly, cocking its head to one side with an audible snap, “where it will go now? He wonders, will he go with it?”

“Of course you'll go with it—me!” Audriss shouted furiously.

“Can it … pay?” There was a soft slapping sound as a thin tendril of spittle dropped from the gnome's lips to land on its shoes.

“We have a bargain, gnome.” Audriss felt his lip curl at the memory of what he'd had to offer. “You hold up your end of it, I'll hold up mine.”

“He honors his bargains, yes, agreements. He wonders, then, where it wants him to be, yes, to go.”

Audriss sighed and turned back to the map. Abtheum or Orthessis, Orthessis or Abtheum. They were both viable, both tactically sound, both defensible if the armies chose that point to make their own stand …

And both, unfortunately, at least three months away at the speed of an army's march. Damn! Imphallion's sprawl was definitely no asset to a would-be conqueror.

It was, thankfully, a decision that Audriss felt he could put off for a while longer. “The armies,” he told the others, “will have to travel by the main roads. The supply wagons won't make it through the wilderness. And it's the same road either way up to … here!” His finger
stabbed downward, covering a small dot on the map. “Once we take this town here, we'll decide if we're heading northwest to Orthessis or southwest to Abtheum.” He peered closely at the parchment, looking for a name. There. Vorringar.

“You can meet us there?” he asked the disgusting little creature.

“Meet, yes, be there. He can go. He wonders what it wants him to do, yes, when he gets there many walks before it does. The things above the ground are slow, yes, and clumsy.”

“Just wait for us. We'll contact you in the usual manner when we arrive.”

“Good, yes. He goes now to say what the Audriss has told him, yes.” Still muttering to itself, the gnome shambled away through the door.

“Odd little creature,” Mithraem remarked drily. “Do they all call themselves ‘him'?”

“Something about their language, or how they think, or what have you. It's obnoxious.” A sudden thought occurred to Audriss, purely irrelevant but intriguing. His eyes flickered down to the ring that gleamed a sullen green upon his finger. “Pekatherosh?”

/Yes?/

“Have you ever consumed a gnome?”

/No. Can't do it./

“Can't—but you eat souls.”

/Exactly./

So much for curiosity. “I'd been hoping either you or the gnomes would find what we were looking for here,” he said to Mithraem, “but I can't say I'm surprised we didn't. Even if he couldn't make use of it, Rebaine isn't stupid enough to have left it here.”

“Still,” the other acknowledged, “we had to know.”

“We know now,” the warlord snapped. “I'm leaving a garrison at Denathere, to occupy the city. Can you assign any of the Legion to support them?”

Mithraem rose gracefully from his seat. “I can station a few of my people here. They won't enjoy being left behind, but they'll obey well enough.”

“Good. Tell them not to gorge themselves while I'm gone; I'd like to have a city left when I get back.”

“What a novel idea. I'll be sure to tell them.”

“Do it quickly. I want the men packing the instant the sun's risen. We're leaving in two days.”

/And what of Rebaine?/
Pekatherosh asked once Mithraem had dissolved again to mist and seeped through the open doorway.

“Rebaine will play his part, never you worry. For now, I'm more concerned with the war effort itself.”

/You don't
sound
all that concerned./

“I'm
not
‘all that' concerned. The only things between us and our next objective are a handful of small towns—including Vorringar. It's such an insignificant little speck, it barely made it onto the map at all.

“The next stage of the operation is a cakewalk, Pekatherosh. There's nothing between here and Vorringar to slow us down.”

Slowly, the world bouncing beneath him and his head pounding with each jolt, Corvis fought his way back toward consciousness. Leaves and twigs appeared before him, just in time to sting his face as he passed. The saddle on which he sat was hard and uncomfortable—the heavy ropes that chafed his wrists and ankles were worse.

Blinking languidly, trying to focus through the pain rattling around in his skull, he peered blearily about him. The dappled horse trod along a wooded path through thick copses of trees, following a broad-shouldered, greasy-haired fellow who clutched the animal's halter. The hem of his cloak and the heels of his boots—all of him Corvis could really see from behind—were worn and frayed, bespeaking a life of constant travel.

His gestures slow and deliberate, hoping to avoid being heard above the clop-clop of the hooves and the faint rustling of the leaves, Corvis fidgeted at his bonds. All he learned, to his chagrin, was that his captor knew what he was doing: His feet were bound together beneath the horse's girth, tight enough that he couldn't possibly kick the beast into sudden movement, and his hands had barely an inch of slack from the pommel to which they were tied.