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.
"Irrial! Catch!"
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. It 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.
Pummeled by agony, weeping ever harder as she sought only to lash out, to inflict more pain to detract from her own, she doubled over, gazing down…
The body she wore was not bird, nor beast, nor her familiar feminine form garbed in earthen browns and forest greens, but clad all in black, a thing that was not human in human form.
And Seilloah remembered. Who she was, where she was, what she must do; she remembered.
She also understood now, just a little, what Khanda was. And she almost, almost pitied him.
Then Seilloah rose up, gathered her strength for the very last time, and reached out through the body she wore, wrestling it away from the demon it housed…
CORVIS CLOSED, AND FOR A SINGLE heartbeat, he saw Khanda's lips curve, not in his own smile, but in Seilloah's. He saw, and his heart exulted.
Khanda had no soul, perhaps, but his will was great. For only seconds, those few heartbeats before the demon understood what had happened and fought back, would the witch have control.
But those few seconds were enough for her to draw upon the demon's own power, to send it flowing through muscle and bone and organ. To reshape his body within, rather than without.
To make him well and truly and utterly mortal.