Ari Marmell - The Warlord_s legacy

The ever-thickening smoke was more oppressive even than the weight of stone looming above. Black and oily, coughed up by sickly, sputtering torches, it swirled and gathered until it threatened to blot out what little light the flames produced, to transform the passage-ways once more into a kingdom of the blind.

The stones were old: Dark and made darker by the smoke, they were joined by mortar so ancient it was little more than powder. The corridor, a winding artery of grimy brick, smelled of neglect-or would have, were the air not choked by that selfsame smoke. All along those walls, clad in the sundry hues and tabards and ensigns of half a dozen Guilds and at least as many noble Houses, soldiers stood rigidly at attention, fists wrapped around hafts and hilts, and did their best to glare menacingly at one another. It was an effect somewhat ruined by the constant blinking of reddened eyes and the occasional racking cough.

At the corridor's far end, an ancient wooden door stooped in its frame like a tired old man. Cracks in the wood and gaps where the portal no longer sat flush allowed sounds to pass unimpeded. Yet something within that room seemed to hold most of the thick haze at bay.

It might have been the press of bodies, so tightly crammed together that they had long since transformed this normally chilly chamber into something resembling a baker's oven. It might have been the hot breath of so many mouths jabbering at once, speaking not so much to as at one another in diatribes laden with accusation and acrimony.

Or it might have been the tension that weighed upon the room more heavily than smoke and stone combined. Perhaps one could, as the aphorism suggests, have cut that tension with a knife, but it wouldn't have been a wise idea. The tension here might very well have fought right back.

Gathered within were the men and women to whom those soldiers in the hall were loyal, and they were doing a far better job than their underlings of glaring their hatreds at one another. Clad in brilliant finery and glittering jewels, the leaders of several of Imphallion's most powerful Guilds stood with haughty, even disdainful expressions, weathering the array of verbal abuse-and occasional emphatic spittle-cast their way. Across the room, separated from them only by a flimsy wooden table whose sagging planks somehow conveyed a desperate wish to be elsewhere, stood a roughly equal number of the kingdom's noble sons and daughters.

Nobles whose anger was certainly justified.

" miserable traitors! Ought to be swinging from the nearest gibbets, you foul"

" filthy, lowborn miscreants, haven't the slightest idea the damage you've"

" bastards! You're nothing but a litter of bastards! Dismiss your guards, I challenge!"

And those were among the more polite harangues against which the Guildmasters were standing fast. Their plan had been to allow the initial fury to wear itself down before they broached the topic for which they'd called this most peculiar assembly, here in an anonymous basement rather than Mecepheum's Hall of Meeting. But the verbal barrage showed no signs of dissipating. If anything, it was growing worse, and the presence of the guards in the hallway no longer seemed sufficient to prevent bloodshed between these entrenched political rivals.

Perhaps sensing that precise possibility, one of the nobles advanced to the very edge of the table and raised a hand. A single voice slowly wound down, then another, until the room reverberated only with the sounds of angry, labored breathing. A red-haired, middle-aged fellow, Duke Halmon was no longer Imphallion's regent-Imphallion no longer had a regent, thanks to those "lowborn miscreants"-but the nobility respected the title he once held.

Leaning forward, two fists on the table, the white-garbed noble spoke to his fellow aristocrats behind him even as his attention remained fixed on the Guildmasters. "My friends," he said deeply, "I feel as you do, you know this. But this is a most unusual gathering, and I'd very much like to hear the Guilds' reasons for arranging it."

"And they better be damn good ones," spat the Duchess Anneth of Orthessis. Behind her arose a muttered chorus of agreement.

Across the room, expressions of condescension turned to frowns of hesitation. Now that it was time, nobody wanted to be the first to speak.

Halmon cleared his throat irritably, and Tovin Annaras-master of the Cartographers' Guild-shuffled forward with little trace of his accustomed athletic step. Smiling shallowly, almost nervously, he took a moment to brush nonexistent dust from his pearl-hued doublet.

"Ah, my lords and ladies," he began, "I realize we've had more than our share of differences of late. I want to thank you for being willing to-"

"Oh, for the gods' sakes, man!" This from Edmund, a grey-haired, slouching fellow who bitterly resented his recent defeat at the hands of middle age. Edmund was Duke of Lutrinthus and a popular hero of the Serpent's War. "Our provinces are starving-not least because of you Guildmasters and your tariffs!-Cephira's massing along the border, and many of us had to travel more than a few leagues to be here. Would you please dispense with the false pleasantries and just come to it?"

Again, a rumble of assent from the blue-blooded half of the assemblage.

A lightning strike of emotion flashed across Tovin's face, from consternation to rage, and it was only a soothing word from behind that prevented him from shouting something angry and most likely obscene in the duke's face.

"Calm, my friend." Even whispered, Tovin knew the voice of Brilliss, slender mistress of the rather broadly named Merchants' Guild. "No turning back now."

He nodded. "None of that matters today, m'lords," he said tightly, looking from Edmund to Duke Halmon. "What we must discuss today is of far greater-or at least far more immediate-import."

Scoffs burst from several of the nobles, but Halmon's eyes narrowed in thought. "And what, pray tell, could possibly qualify as more-"

"Lies," Tovin interjected without allowing the question to continue. "Broken promises. Murder. Treason. Real treason!" he added, scowling at those who had hurled that word at the Guildmasters mere moments before. "Treachery that threatens us all, Guild and House alike."

It was sufficient to quiet the jeers of disbelief, though more than one noble wore an expression of doubt that was nearly as loud.

"All right," Halmon said, following a quick glance toward Edmund and Anneth, both of whom nodded with greater or lesser reluctance. "We'll hear you out, at the least. Speak."

With obvious relief, Tovin turned toward Brilliss, who moved to stand beside him. A deep breath, perhaps to steady her own nerves

And the room echoed, not with her own slightly nasal tone, but with a shriek from the hallway, a scream of such despair as to bring a sudden chill to the chamber, making even the most irreligious among them contemplate the inevitable fate of his or her own soul.

More screams followed, in more than one voice. The rasping of steel on leather echoed through the hall, weapons leaping free and ready to taste blood, but it was not quite sufficient to drown out the sound of cold bodies striking the colder stone floor.

Edmund, who had stood beside the great Nathaniel Espa while leading the troops of Lutrinthus into battle-who had been present during the near destruction of Mecepheum at the hands of the crazed warlord Audriss-was the first to recover his senses. "Back! Everyone, back away from the door! Halmon! Tovin! Get that table up against it!" It wasn't much of a barricade, but it was what they had. More important, it got the wide-eyed, gape-mouthed aristocrats moving.

Not a man or woman present wore armor, for despite the animosity between Guilds and Houses, none had anticipated bloodshed and besides, that's what the soldiers out in the hall were for. Several did, however, carry swords or daggers, if only for show, and these took up a stance between their unarmed compatriots and the sudden violence outside. Halmon and Tovin retreated from the table and each drew a blade-the duke a short broadsword, the Guildmaster a wicked dirk-and stood side by side, mutual antagonism momentarily buried, though scarcely forgotten.