The Warlord's Legacy by Ari Marmell

Author:Ari Marmell [Marmell, Ari]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Epic, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780553807776
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2011-01-25T05:00:00+00:00

“THE SPELL WAS NEVER MEANT TO WORK this way,” Seilloah explained some time later, as they sat huddled in a cramped, dusty room on the second floor of an inn so cheap that even the bedbugs were obviously slumming. On the way, they’d explained to the witch everything they knew about what was happening, what wasn’t happening, and why. Once they’d arrived, Irrial had claimed the room’s only chair, brushing aside the cobwebs before she sat, while Corvis perched on the edge of the sagging mattress. The witch herself was holding court from the center of a rickety table.

“But I was desperate,” she continued. “I didn’t know what else to do, and I had to warn you.”

“Thank you,” he told her, his voice rough with repressed emotion. “How long …?”

“I don’t know, Corvis. It’s so hard … My mind keeps drifting. And these poor creatures, they can’t contain a human soul for long. This is my—I don’t know, I’ve lost count. At least my sixth or seventh body since I left Theaghl-gohlatch, and I can feel it dying. Sooner or later, one of them will die around me, and I won’t have the strength to move on.” The tip of her tail twitched, drawing patterns on the dusty tabletop. “But I’ll stay with you for as long as I have left, Corvis. And I’ll help where I can.”

He nodded, swallowing hard. “Can you work your magics?”

“It’s harder than it was, sometimes a lot. But yes. That’s how I found you, actually. I just traced back the spell you’d cast on me.”

“But that spell was cast on your body. If it’s—you’re—dead, how …?”

“I’m a better magician than you are.” Again she managed a faint smile. “Even as a rat.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” Irrial muttered. Then, “Who’s Jassion? You never gave me the chance to ask when Tyannon mentioned him.”

“The baron of a seaside province called Braetlyn,” he told her, biting each word in two as it emerged. “He’s a cruel-minded, vicious bastard with a piss-boiling temper and a chip on his shoulder the size of hell’s own gate. Which is where I should have sent him a long bloody time ago.”

‘Finally! We agree on something.’

“Corvis,” the witch said seriously, “have you horribly irritated any powerful wizards lately?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“Jassion’s companion. Kaleb.”

Irrial and Corvis exchanged glances. “We’ve heard the name,” he told her, “but I don’t know him.”

“Well, he knows you. And he’s a bad one. Maybe even as strong as Rheah Vhoune was.”

Corvis pursed his lips, remembering the woman who’d been one of his most potent foes before the threat of Audriss the Serpent had forced them into an uneasy alliance. “There aren’t supposed to be any sorcerers that powerful anymore. Well, not in Imphallion, anyway.”

“Somebody should have told Kaleb that.”

“Maybe he’s not Imphallian,” Irrial suggested, determined to contribute despite understanding only half the conversation. “Could he be Cephiran?”

“He didn’t have a Cephiran accent,” Seilloah said thoughtfully, “but that doesn’t prove anything. Hell, he could be Tharsuuli for all I know.

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