“You'd think they'd take wagons or horses,” Niamh wondered aloud.
“All seized. Part of the restitution; they killed an awful lot of horses in their raids,” Andren said. “Serves them right.”
“The goblins are finished as a power. Goliath is cast out, bankrupted and homeless.” Vara looked at Cyrus with a smile of undisguised pleasure. “I would say you got your revenge.”
Cyrus shrugged. “I would say justice was done.”
Andren remained sour. “Still galls me that Malpravus and Orion are allowed to walk free when they should be rotting in a Reikonos jail or hanging from a gallows. Your human justice system makes me sick.”
Vara rolled her eyes. “As I recall, Pharesia let them walk free as well.”
“Oh, yeah,” the healer said, taking a drink from his flask. “What's wrong with people nowadays?”
“The Confederation couldn't sort out exactly who in Goliath was guilty, and I doubt they could contain that many spell casting prisoners for very long,” Cyrus replied. “I think we've hurt them all more than you can imagine. It's true, their schemes have killed quite a few people, but we've taken everything from them.”
Vara stared him down. “You know they'll be back.”
“I know. But like Alaric told them – we'll be watching, and waiting. And when they do come back, it'll be the end for them. No more mercy, no more forgiveness.” He touched his sword, and the power of it flowed through him. “I'm not worried. If they come, we'll stop them.”
“Only if you see them coming,” Vaste retorted. “They aren't known for declaring hostilities before knocking us flat. It's always treachery – the way of the sidewinder.”
They all chewed on that for a moment as the procession grew, the line from Goliath's door stretching down the street. Cy turned to Vara. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
She nodded and followed him away from the group, behind the portal. “It is well that you asked me to speak, I have something I've been wanting to tell you as well.”
He blinked at her. “You go first.”
She pursed her lips. “Very well. Do you recall how you had mentioned your intense dislike of Archenous Derregnault?”
He frowned. “I do. I just saw him a few minutes ago, actually.”
She looked at him with curiosity. “And?”
“I still feel the same.”
She breathed, letting out a small laugh, then turned serious again. “I dislike him as well, obviously, though unlike yourself, for clearly defined reasons.”
His mouth felt dry. She's letting me in, he mused. “Which are?”
“You know that I was an officer in Amarath's Raiders.” She waited for his nod and continued. “When I was there, Archenous was also an officer, and we were proteges of the Guildmaster, a paladin named Trayance Parloure.
“He was a legend, and his personal honor was unquestioned. Archenous and I were both rising stars, new out of the Holy Brethren, deeply ambitious and clamoring to take over for Parloure when he stepped down as Guildmaster.”
“Archenous is not a paladin,” Cyrus said with measured uncertainty.
“Not any longer,” Vara agreed. She seemed to hold on to every word until the last possible moment, as though keeping them on her tongue longer might prevent her from having to finish her story. “We began our expeditions in Purgatory and spent months learning how to overcome the first battles, enduring the taunting of the Gatekeeper the entire time.”
She took a deep breath and paused, as if trying to decide whether to go on. She looked in his eyes and he could see the pain and vulnerability coming to the surface. “On the day we defeated the Trials, Archenous slew Trayance Parloure after we killed the Last Guardian. He did it at the behest of the Gatekeeper, who had been slowly turning Archenous to the path of the dark knight through the months we had spent there.”
“He betrayed his Guildmaster?” Cyrus said, stunned. “Didn't anyone step up to defend him?”
“A few,” she said with a shake of her head. “He killed them all. I was mortally wounded, left for dead. The Gatekeeper taunted me as I lay dying, alone. I pleaded for life as my reward for completing the Trials.”
“You're still here,” he said, hands open, gesturing toward her.
“I survived,” she said with a trace of a smile, “but only just.” She looked away from him, back toward the procession leading out of Goliath's guildhall. “I hope... that story does not make me appear weak in your eyes. I have never pursued revenge against Archenous, though I wanted to more than once.”
Cyrus's eyes flitted to the Guildmaster of Amarath's Raiders, standing watch in the shadows of the Goliath guildhall. “To attempt it would be suicide,” he said. “How many guildmates does he have... and they're the best equipped and most powerful fighters in all Arkaria.” He shook his head. “I don't think less of you for it, nor do I think you're weak. I would say –” he looked into her eyes and saw the faintest drops of water forming in the corners – “that you are wise... and strong... because sometimes it takes more courage to avoid foolish action than to charge into it.”
He reached for her hand and found it, and she stared at his fingers, intertwined with hers and did not pull away. “Thank you for telling me,” he said.
She looked up at him, blue eyes staring into his. “By your word and deed you continue to prove yourself to be the kind of man... that I can trust.” She looked at him for a long moment, then her hand pulled from his and brushed across his face, a slight touch that sent a strange quiver down his spine. She let it linger for only a moment, then slid past him to rejoin the group watching the last members of Goliath retreat from Reikonos.
Cyrus left them all behind, pushing his way through the crowd, out of the guildhall quarter. He slipped through side streets that he had walked for most of his life, passing landmarks that he could recall from childhood. He crossed the square on the opposite side of the long line of Goliath's refugees, taking the same path out of the city as the dark elves that were fleeing.
He turned at the square, heading toward the Citadel, but veered down an avenue before he got there. He found the building he was looking for, sitting in the shadow of the Citadel, a multistory structure that bore a pillared facade that stretched across its entrance doors, cut from quarried marble, with an arched roof that was filled with stone statues of gods in varying poses.
The library.
He entered and made inquiries at the desk in the foyer, where the curator pointed him in the right direction. After a short search, he found it, holding in his hands a leather bound tome, thicker than a loaf of bread with pages so thin they were almost insubstantial. He placed it upon a stand and opened it. The pages were new, the ink still bold, and the words stood out at him – both the words he understood, written in short paragraphs, alongside the words he did not know.
He opened to the first word he searched for, sounding it out. “'Akur',” he said. His fingers ran through the pages until it jumped out at him – a definition as short as any he had seen. “'Last',” he repeated, reading off the page. A smile half-crooked his face. “'Akur' means 'last'.”
He flipped toward the back of the book, still seeking. Page after page he turned, until finally he found the one he sought. His finger skipped down the page and a nervous tension filled his stomach. His finger stopped and he blinked, then read, then blinked again.
“'Shelas',” he breathed. He read the translation once more, just to be sure he had it right. “'Hope',” he said, then pieced the words together. “'Shelas'akur,'” he repeated, turning the words over in his mouth. A strange feeling filled him, a sense that he now knew more – and yet somehow less – than he had before he had found the words.
“Last hope.”
NOW
Epilogue
Clouds filled the skies out the window of the Council archive. Pain gnawed at Cyrus, the memory of all that had come from those days. The ache was one of deep regret; most of all for things not said. He turned his eyes b
ack to the journal and forced himself to read, trying to drown out the thoughts of what had come later. He flipped to a different page, then rifled back a few pages, until he reached a passage that answered a question he had long asked.
I left the Holy Brethren in a fury, sick of schooling, sick of memorizing spells, and sick of arrogant paladins droning on about their damned self-righteous holy crusades. I was eighteen years of age; a baby in the eyes of the elves, yet a legend because of my status as shelas'akur.
Whilst in the Kingdom I was seldom refused anything – which made me sick in and of itself. So I fled, leaving Termina behind for Reikonos, striking out on my own to find my path with the Holy Brethren, something that had been arranged for me since it was discovered I had magical talent as a young child. I left behind the home that I had known for the anonymity of the human world, and found something I had not expected: damned human arrogance.
It manifested in their belief that their efforts had resulted in the defeat of the ancient and powerful trolls, it stemmed from their annoying pride in that gaudy Citadel that jutted above all else in their deformed city (they didn't even build the damned thing!) and worst, it sprang full grown from every human male that ever wielded a sword – a sort of cockiness that spawns from some unfathomable pit in their depths, possibly born from an insecurity so far buried that you would need to extract their gallbladder to find it.
It was annoying, to say the least.
But the talk of the crusades was worst of all. One would proudly proclaim his undying devotion to the ideal of freeing every slave in Arkaria while another would bleat about the plight of the suffering poor and how they deserved to be fed and clothed while another whined about advancing their god above all else – worthy causes, I am sure, with the possible exception of the evangelism (who wants to preach the gospel of the Goddess of Love? Truly.) – but in me they found no suitable audience. I am certain the Lord Knight who taught the Crusader Philosophy course could hear my teeth grind from the back of the room.
When the day came that I was forced to proclaim my crusade, I mumbled something about smiting the self-righteous and left. The Lord Knight let me get away with it; he was an elf, after all. But I never found that damned, insufferable arrogance an attractive quality until the day I met Archenous Derregnault. Tall, handsome and with a deep-seated conviction in the rightness of his cause, I found myself putting aside the word ‘arrogance’ in favor of ‘confidence’.
I do not know whether he pretended not to notice me since I was a year behind him in my studies or whether he genuinely did not, but when, by chance, we were introduced, I can honestly say I fawned over him.
Me.
Fawned.
Over him.
I'm embarrassed by the thought now. But he did some fawning of his own, and it worked out well. We became lovers within a fortnight; he was my first, and tender, and sweet, and his confidence was charming.
He, being a year older, of course left the Brethren before I did. He secured a spot as an applicant to Amarath's Raiders, one of the foremost guilds in all of Arkaria. I was impressed, but not surprised – it's not as though I would have wasted my time falling in love with an untalented warrior destined to spend his life on the bottom, devoid of ambition. He climbed quickly from applicant to member, and by the time I left the Brethren, six months later, bored out of my mind by the excruciating minutia of their curriculum, he welcomed me lovingly back to his arms as an applicant of Amarath's Raiders.
The months passed quickly. The guild was large, but not so large that you didn't know everybody. In fact, in my first two months I had become acquainted with nearly everyone in the guild. I was polite, I was friendly – upon reflection, probably something like a giddy schoolgirl. In love, excited to be there, eyes wide with possibility and danger and living a life of thrills. We would adventure throughout the day in small groups and come together as a guild at night to tackle challenges unfathomable to most.
Then came the Trials of Purgatory.
We found a spell on one of our excursions that opened the gates of that Realm to us, and spent months trying to conquer it. I had known the Guildmaster, Trayance Parloure, in passing, but more by reputation than personally. In our first attempt on the trials, we lost eighty-five percent of our force to the golems on the first island and were forced to retreat. I say with all the humility I can muster that it was only through my quick action that we fared as well we did. Trayance was impressed; he involved me in planning, sought my council.
Archenous became an officer at the same time I did, both of us favored by Trayance to help run the guild as we faced this new challenge. The officers would meet to discuss the intricacies of strategy until late in the night and Archenous would continue our discussions in bed after we made love, long after the other officers were sleeping.
It was through our late night debates that we finally hit upon the ideas for defeating the golems, then the pegasi and Wind Totem. All the while, I felt him drawing away from me. We talked of the battles ahead but made love less and less; Archenous became obsessed with defeating the Trials, of gaining the reward promised by the Gatekeeper.
I watched him, sometimes, when we would take a break after one of the battles. He was always with the Gatekeeper. That bastard. Always taunting us, humiliating people by revealing their secrets and sins to their guildmates.
I know of more than one person that killed themselves in shame after that treatment, after feeling the burn of his words, of feeling their innermost secrets - things they would die rather than admit – given voice and paraded in front of their comrades. He sickened me.
But Archenous... Archenous talked to him. Constantly. When I asked, he said not to worry, he was trying to get the Gatekeeper to part with secrets, things to help us along.
Liar.
When I came up with the strategy to defeat the Siren of Fire, on my own, it came on the heels of a bitter defeat Archenous had led us into. His strategy for battle with the Siren was so poorly executed that it cost us thirty members, permanently dead. Based on his success with the eel, Trayance had put his faith in Archenous without reviewing the plans and it ended in disaster.
I can still hear Trayance's voice in my head, tearing a hole in Archenous in the officers’ meeting. I had known him better than anyone – I should, perhaps, have recognized the look in his eyes when Trayance berated him over and over, but by that point he was so distant to me that I can honestly say I had no idea. Archenous was removed from his position as General and placed in charge of applicants.
When I led us to victory against the Siren, Trayance praised me with effusive, pretty words, just the opposite of what he had done to Archenous only days before. I noticed a seed of darkness growing in Archenous, a bitterness, but I hoped it would pass. He took me savagely that night, and I let him, hoping that we could go back to the way it used to be. But when we were done, he felt... empty.
I focused my attention on the Last Guardian and ignored my flagging relationship. I could fix it later, I assumed, and defeating the trials was what Archenous wanted more than anything, right? Right.
Right.
Right?
It took dozens of defeats. Dozens, to get my strategy right. But they were conservative, always, and we never lost a single person to permanent death, even in my wildest experiments.
The day we defeated the Last Guardian was a day of triumph. There was celebrating, wild, frenzied excitement at the fact that after months of blood and tears and defeats, we could finally claim our reward. Archenous had eyes for my sword since the day we met in the Brethren, and when he stood before the Gatekeeper, he received one very similar. He turned and embraced me, sword still in hand.
All the strain, all the worries, all the concerns were gone in that instant. He kissed me, and it was a blissful washing away of all my fears for our relationship. In that moment, I felt that a return to the days when we had begun was possible. He muttered something under his breath and I felt his hand slip up my backplat
e, tempting me, I thought, with a possibility for later.
Imagine my surprise when his new sword slid into the space between my armor that he had made for it and slid out my belly.
He dropped me unceremoniously, and the applicants that he had been training for months turned on the staunchest defenders of Trayance Parloure. My mentor was killed by a pack of hungry dogs, led by a demon in crusader's clothing. He took my sword, the one given to me by a noble elf with no children of his own, and threw down the one he'd just received from the Gatekeeper. Then he looked down at me. He knew I was still alive while all the others were dead, and he walked out the portal without a backward glance, taking all that was left of my guild with him.
I couldn't move, could barely breathe. The minutes passed like hours. There was a fire in my belly, an agony I couldn't control. I could barely remember the words to a healing spell, and whenever I used them it did nothing to help.
Of course the Gatekeeper was there. “Such a brave effort,” he said in that damned, taunting voice of his. “Such a glorious victory, and you showed them the way! You should be proud.”
At that moment, I would have been proud if I had possessed the strength to impale him on the damned sword that Archenous left me with, but unfortunately, I was in far too much pain. Hours passed. Maybe days. It felt like years. The Gatekeeper faded in and out along with my consciousness, and I found myself hating him and Archenous more and more. He taunted me while I lay there, fed me tender lines about how he had bent Archenous against me, fed his arrogance leading up to the defeat by the Siren and his desire for revenge at being embarrassed by Trayance.
He knew Archenous well; after a few months he had a grasp on the heart and soul of the only man I had ever loved better than I did. And he used it. Archenous knew I would turn on him if he attacked Trayance. And he wanted my sword. Do you know what you can become if you're prepared to betray and sacrifice someone who loves you?
The Sanctuary Series: Volume 02 - Avenger Page 36
