From beyond the door, battle cries melted into screams of agony, and a cacophony of many voices faded with terrifying swiftness into few. Like the chiming of old and broken bells, blades clattered as they rebounded from armor. A horrifying roar shook the walls until mortar sifted down from the ceiling. The smoke that poured through the cracks in the door grew horribly thick, redolent of roasting flesh.
"Dear gods," Duchess Anneth whispered, dagger clutched in one hand, the linked ivory squares that were the symbol of Panare Luck-Bringer in the other. "What's out there?"
And to her an answer came, though clearly sent by neither Panare nor any other of Imphallion's pantheon.
A sequence of lines etched themselves across the brittle door, as though it burned from the inside out. For the barest instant the portal split into eight neat sections, each peeling back from the center like a blossoming flower, before the wood gave up the ghost and disintegrated into a thousand glowing embers. Without the door to lean against, the table slumped forward, clattering into the hall to lie atop corpses-and bits of corpses.
More than two score soldiers had stood post in that hall, drawn from the various Guilds and Houses of those who met within this basement chamber. Only one figure stood there now, a hellish portrait framed in the smoldering doorway, a figure that owed fealty to none of the frightened men and women within.
Whimpers rose from what few throats hadn't choked shut in mortal dread, and more than one blade scraped the stone floor where it had fallen from nerveless fingers. For nary a Guildmaster or noble present failed to recognize the man-the thing-looming before them.
Plates of steel armor, enameled black as the inside of a closed casket, encased him from head to toe, showing only thin gaps of equally dark mail at the joints. Across the chest, the shoulders, and the greaves were riveted plates of pale white bone. Spines of black iron jutted from the shoulder plates, and from those dangled a worn purple cloak. But it was the helm, a gaping skull bound in iron bands, to which all eyes were drawn.
It was a figure out of nightmare: the nightmare of an entire nation, dreamt first more than two decades ago, and again six years past. A nightmare that should never have been dreamt again.
"You promised us…" It was a whisper as first it passed through Duke Edmund's lips, but rose swiftly into a scream of lunatic terror. "You promised!"
And the unseen face behind the skull laughed, even as he strode forward to kill. A VICIOUS CLATTER, a sullen clank, and the grotesquely armored figure stepped through a very different doorway, entering a woodwalled room several streets away from that cellar-turned-abattoir. Soot and crimson spatters marred the armor, as did the occasional scrape where a soldier's blade had landed in vain. Without pause he moved to the room's only chair and slumped into it, oblivious to any damage he did the cheap furniture.
And there he waited, so motionless within his cocoon of bone and metal that the armor might have been vacant. The sun drifted west, its lingering rays worming through the slats in the shutters, sliding up the walls until they vanished into the night. The room grew dark as the armor itself, and still the figure did not move.
A latch clicked, hinges creaked, and the door drifted open and shut in rapid succession. This was followed by a faint thump in the darkness, which was in its turn followed by a sullen cursing from the newcomer and a brief snigger from the armored figure.
"Gods damn it," the new arrival snapped in a voice made wispy with age, "is there some reason you didn't bother to make a light?"
"I'd rather hoped," echoed from within the horrid helm, "that you might trip and break something. Guess I'll have to settle for what sounded like a stubbed toe."
"Light. Now."
"As you demand, O fossil." Fingers twitched, grating slightly against one another as the gauntlet shifted, and a dull glow illuminated the room's center. It revealed the newcomer to be a tall, spindly fellow clad in midnight blues, with an equally dark cloak thrown over bony shoulders. His bald head was covered in more spots than the face of the moon; his beard so delicate that he appeared to be drooling cobwebs; his skin so brittle it threatened to crack and flake away at the joints.
"Better?"
The old man scowled. "Better, what?" he demanded in a near screech.
The sigh seemed to come from the armor's feet. "Better, Master Nenavar?"
"Yes," the old man said with a toothy grin. "Yes, it is." He looked around for another seat, spotted none, and apparently decided not to give his servant the satisfaction of asking him to move. "I assume it's done?" he said instead. "You smell like someone set fire to a butcher's shop."
"Nope, not done. Actually, I explained your entire plan to them and led them back here. He's all yours, gentlemen."
Nenavar actually squeaked as he spun, arms raised before him in a futile gesture of resistance-only to find nothing more threatening behind him than cheap paint slowly peeling off the walls.
"I imagine you think you're funny," he growled, crossing his arms so as not to reveal the faint trembling in his hands. The man in the armor was too busy chortling to himself to answer-which, really, was answer enough.
"Of course it's done," he said finally, once he could draw sufficient breath to speak. "They're all dead."
"All?" Nenavar asked, his brow wrinkling.
Another sigh, and somehow the helm conveyed the eye-rolling within. "Almost all. A few guards survived. I actually do know how to follow a plan, Master Nenavar."
"You could've fooled me."
"Very likely."
Nenavar glared. "You stink. Get rid of that thing."
The skull tilted upward, as though the wearer were lost in thought, and then it, and the armor, were simply gone.
Every man, woman, and child in Imphallion had heard the description of that armor, heard the horror stories of the warlord and wizard Corvis Rebaine, who had come so near to conquering the kingdom entire. But the man who sat revealed by the disappearance of the bone and steel-now clad in mundane leathers and a cloak of worn burgundy, his features shadowed in the feeble illumination-appeared far too young to be the infamous conqueror.
"You know what you have to do now, Kaleb?" Nenavar pressed.
"Why, no, Master." Kaleb's expression slackened in confusion, and he somehow managed to unleash a single tendril of drool as his lips gaped open. "Could you tell me again?"
"Damn it, we've gone over it a dozen times! Why can't…" Nenavar's fingers curled into fists as he realized he was being mocked. Again.
"Well, it appears you were right," Kaleb told him. "I could have fooled you."
Nenavar snarled and stomped from the room. Or at least Kaleb thought he was stomping; the old man was so slight, he couldn't be positive.
He rose, stretching languorously, and stepped to the window. Pushing the shutters open with one hand, he stared over the cityscape, the winking starlight more than sufficient for his needs.
Yes, he knew what he had to do next. But he also knew that he wasn't expected until after dawn, and that left him plenty of time for a little errand that Nenavar needn't know about.
Whistling a tune just loud and obnoxious enough to wake anyone in the neighboring rooms, Kaleb climbed the inn's rickety stairs and out into the Mecepheum night.
The heat of the day had begun to dissipate, its back broken not merely by the setting of the sun but also by the falling of a faint summer drizzle. Kaleb flipped up the hood of his cloak as he went, more because it was expected than because he was bothered by a bit of rain.