Free The Conqueror's Shadow by Ari Marmell Page B

the best the citizens of Chelenshire could hope for. The moon gazed down on windows left ajar, flung open in a largely futile attempt to banish the day’s accumulated warmth. Stars twinkled above a town that restlessly tossed and turned, asleep in its own sweat.
    In one house, at the very edge of town, the heat was even greater. For in that house, an entire family shared a single room, as they’d done for three nights running.
    The day following the incident in the woods, Corvis and Tyannon described the assault—albeit with certain details judiciously edited out—to a stunned populace at the monthly meeting. Their tale wasmet with outraged cries, and it was all Tolliver could do to bring the meeting back to order. Clearly, Chelenshire could no longer “wait and see,” but what their next course of action should be was a matter of no small consternation. For the nonce, Tolliver had promised a regular patrol of volunteers throughout the surrounding area.
    It was, Corvis knew, a useless gesture. Were Audriss to send any more raiders, any of Chelenshire’s “militia” would find themselves overwhelmed before they could so much as pull steel. Still, it made the people feel better, and it allowed Tolliver to feel as though he’d done something to protect his friends and his friends’ children. Corvis kept his doubts and concerns to himself.
    Now three days later, the town was no safer and the children continued to sleep with their parents. Mellorin woke screaming on a regular basis, her nightmares refusing to abate and permit her to heal.
    The children had never known who their father really was. They, like everyone, had heard tales of the warlord Corvis Rebaine, but they’d never once associated him with “Cerris,” their father. Corvis and Tyannon were determined to keep the truth from them at all costs.
    But now that truth refused to stay away, and Corvis found himself too old and tired to outrun the past.
    He finally came face-to-face with the decision he’d been avoiding since the instant he saw his beautiful daughter—dirty, bloody, and scared out of her mind—trembling on the forest floor.
    Corvis gingerly pushed the thin sheet aside. With a grace remarkable in a man his age, he slid across the room. Boards creaking only slightly beneath his tread, he drifted past his sleeping children, pausing just once to look down at his daughter’s face. At the moment, at least, she wasn’t dreaming. Her expression was smooth now, at peace. His own eyes closing, he offered up a brief and silent prayer to Shashar the Dream-Singer, asking only that her sleep remain serene, unbroken by nightmares. And then he was gone, pushing the bedroom door shut.
    More swiftly now, he moved through the house as though seeing it for the first time. The kitchen and parlor, the first rooms completed, in which they’d slept wrapped in blankets while the rest of the house grew slowly around them. The children’s room, largely unoccupied for the past several days; he stared grimly at the toys scattered about the floor,the pretty ribbons hanging from the sill, the purple stuffed horse that Mellorin was “too old for” but kept “because Mother made it for me.” All these and more he saw, and his rage swelled once more at the thought of what these men had stolen from his children.
    And then he was there.
    The door was narrow, sandwiched between two walls that didn’t quite converge. The room beyond was not large, and while hardly a secret chamber per se, it was remarkably easy to miss. He and Tyannon used it primarily for storing old things they no longer needed but refused to dispose of.
    Corvis pulled the door ajar with nerve-racking slowness, wincing as the hinges shrieked not unlike a cat fed tail-first into a loom. Then, shrugging mentally—either he’d woken someone or he hadn’t—he stepped inside.
    And promptly tripped over one runner