"Say it just once, Corvis. For old times' sake."
… eyes that each boasted a pair of pupils side by side, uneven pools of infinite darkness. And beneath their stare, Corvis could scarcely whisper, or even breathe.
"Khanda…"
Chapter Twenty
HE COULDN'T THINK, couldn't move, couldn't breathe. His mind was swaddled in a rotting shroud, muffling the sights, the sounds, the scents of the world. It took long moments to recognize that the pain in his side was caused by the broken rock on which he lay, that the peculiarly harsh rain drizzling down across his face actually consisted of the splinters of shattered buildings.
But it was, all of it, unreal, diaphanous, a waking dream. Only the flesh-wrapped nightmare gazing gleefully down upon him was real.
"I can't…" He had trouble forcing the words to come, his lips and his tongue made numb as the blood drained from his face. "It's not possible. You can't be…"
"Astonishing." Kaleb-Khanda-shook his head sadly. "I knew you'd counted on me for a lot, old boy, but I'd never realized that included forming coherent sentences. How have you gotten by all these years?"
"I banished you!" Corvis actually sounded accusing, as though Khanda's reappearance was a personal betrayal. He struggled to sit up, groaning at the aches and bruises that flared anew across his battered body.
"What can I say, Corvis? Hell's not what it used to be. Security's really gone to-well, you know."
But the old soldier's brain was finally catching up with his senses. "Someone had to call you… Call you back by name. That's what they got from Ellowaine, isn't it? Your godsdamn name!"
He rolled aside, as rapidly as the rocks and his own wounds would allow, lifting Sunder in one hand, but it was a pathetic blow, a feeble spit of defiance. Khanda casually backhanded Corvis's forearm and the limb went numb, the Kholben Shiar falling from limp fingers. Corvis curled around himself, clutching his throbbing arm…
And from where he lay, he saw a bit of rubble behind the demon, an uneven heap of wooden detritus, begin to shift.
"Why?" he asked, forcing himself to meet Khanda's repulsive eyes. "Why would they summon you?"
Khanda grinned, an inhuman rictus from ear to ear. "I don't believe I'm going to tell you that."
"Why not?"
"Because you want to know." That awful grin grew even broader. "And because, ultimately, it doesn't matter. You humans are such petty, insignificant schemers. You think you're playing games, but you're all just pieces."
Corvis forced himself to smile. Across the street, Irrial had dizzily crawled through the dirt to the boards, begun laboriously to dig toward whoever lay moving beneath. Keep his attention… "Are we? It seems to me you wouldn't be here without one of those 'pieces.' And I know a little something about summoning incantations, Khanda. You don't exactly have free rein. If you did, you'd have had more than enough power to find me long ago. You're limited here, demon. You're human."
The world briefly vanished behind an array of blinding suns as Khanda struck him across the face. "Why, Corvis, such language." He sighed theatrically and settled himself on the ground, sitting cross-legged as though beside a comfortable campfire. "But you're right, of course. I don't have anywhere near my full might. Even when I was living inside a pendant and a slave to your every primitive whim, I wasn't at my best. There's never been a demon freely unleashed upon your world, not in your recorded history anyway. Even the most maddened conjurers aren't that crazy. And that, old boy-not revenge, though I certainly welcome it, and not my orders-is why I've come for you."
"I thought," Corvis grunted, struggling to get his feet under him so he might rise, "that you weren't going to tell me what this is about."
"I'm not going to tell you what they want," Khanda corrected casually. "But I want you to understand what I'm doing. It's so much more fun if you know enough to be horrified. You see, you have something I need."
He leaned back, waiting, clearly content to let the former warlord ask-or figure it out for himself.
It doesn't make any sense. I don't have anything… The demon couldn't use the Kholben Shiar; Khanda knew more or less everything Corvis knew, up until six years ago. There was nothing.
Except…
"Oh, gods…"
Khanda actually clapped like an excited schoolgirl. "I knew you'd get there. You really were almost competent at times, for a human." He leaned in, voice marred by excited breathing. "I can't use my own power against him. The summoning and binding spells won't permit it. But someone else's magic, an incantation that doesn't draw on my own abilities? That's something else entirely. And I was around you, and your pet witch, more than long enough to learn human methods of sorcery.
"Think of it, Corvis! With that spell, I can force 'Master' Nenavar to release me from my bonds, to grant me not only my freedom but my power! Enough to make this wretched dung-ball of a world my plaything-to make Selakrian look like a charlatan. You remember what Mecepheum looked like six years ago? That was nothing!" A narrow string of spittle dangled from the corner of the demon's mouth. "And you kept the invocation when the rest of the tome burned to ash. You made it all possible."
A soft clatter sounded from behind. Wooden planks cascaded away in a small avalanche beneath Irrial's chapped and bleeding hands. Khanda started, began to look around…
"It's gone, Khanda!" Corvis shouted triumphantly in his face. "I burned the pages years ago. You've wasted your time!"
"Oh, Corvis." A hand shot out, clutching Corvis's chin with bone-bruising strength. Khanda made a soft tsk, tsk, wiggling the man's jaw until the joint very nearly separated. "All this time, and you still don't understand me at all. I don't need the pages. The words are written down…" He released his grip and jabbed a finger into Corvis's forehead hard enough for the nail to break skin. "… here. I tried to get what I needed from Audriss first, you know. Would've saved me a lot of time. But there wasn't enough essence left in his skull." He shrugged. "What are you gonna do?"
It was rhetorical, of course, but Corvis answered anyway. "Stop you," he said simply, his confident tone hiding-or so he hoped-the gaping, empty abyss that had opened in his gut. "We've been through this, Khanda, a long time ago. You don't have the willpower to get into my mind."
The demon leaned even closer, until their noses nearly touched. "That was, as you say, a long time ago. I'm stronger now. I'm a lot angrier at you. And," he said, straightening up again, "if you prove too stubborn, I'll just make you watch while I do all sorts of unpleasant things to Mellorin."
Corvis's breath slammed into a brick wall at the base of his throat. His face, corpse-pale already, went whiter than the helm he'd once worn.
"Oh, my. Did I not tell you she was here? I'm so sorry; how utterly thoughtless of me. Still, perhaps it won't be too unpleasant for her," Khanda continued lightly. "She's really very fond of me. She might even enjoy it, as long as I don't tell her you're watching."
He never realized the scream was his, never remembered lunging at the hell-spawned monstrosity. All Corvis knew was that suddenly he hung in the air, feet kicking, Khanda's fist about his throat. The demon was standing now, and a missing lock of hair suggested that Corvis's speed must have surprised even him.
But it was all for naught, all just another dance at the end of Khanda's strings. For in that moment of mindless, bestial rage, Corvis had not been, could not be, thinking of anything else.
And with all thought discarded, all effort and concentration gone, Khanda had slipped easily into his mind like a worm eating through an apple.
He felt the obscene presence sliding inside him, a slick and slimy thing, a tongue running across his thoughts, tasting his dreams. Images flickered, reflections of the recent past, and all were tainted and rotting at the edges where Khanda had touched them.