But he was no mage, no priest. A warrior only. He could not heal her, no matter what he wished.
So he sat, legs crossed, sword upon the stone floor. Ordinary guards most often stood, for the simple reason that guarding was boring work...and boring work sends people to sleep.
Cenphalph was in no danger of falling asleep. He was more than ordinary. He was Sard. One of the remaining members of the ancient order, invested with speed, endurance, talent with the blade. A smart man, maybe, but not particularly educated in words or arts...smart in the ways of battle. A good man to have sitting beside your door should you be heart sick, suffering...and in danger, yes, though not, perhaps, the one that Tirielle A'm Dralorn would have chosen.
But then j'ark is dead, isn't he? She's stuck with me.
Cenphalph almost groaned right along with Tirielle the next time she cried out. Her anguish, even through her sleep and the thick door and the whistling winds, was plain. It hurt Cenphalph to hear it.
He was not immune to the pain she felt. She'd lost a lover she didn't know she had. Cenphalph had lost a brother. j'ark, perhaps the greatest swordsman among them, had died so that they could succeed in their task.
Had he been the best of them?
Now they were fewer, still. His brothers Yuthran and Briskle, Unthor, j'ark...
How long until we are all dust?
Cenphalph opened his eyes and sighed. He tried to keep his soul still, to meditate on the loss of his brothers, but his heart was...confused...no matter how he tried to still it. He knew what he needed. Action. A purpose. A renewing of the battle that had led him here to this distant land, this Sturma.
Waiting was hard, and dull.
Tirielle cried out in her sleep again and he shook his head, took his sword and pushed himself to his feet. He needed to do something...to act.
The hall was too narrow to practise his forms with the longsword. His remaining brothers would be at rest in their quarters, battling their own demons in their sleep. Up above him, he could feel Quintal and Drun, still waking. No doubt discussing their next step, their next move.
But he could feel something else, too. Something he'd felt already, and more closely than he'd like. A source of great power. Nearing.
For a time it had gone away, and he'd been glad.
Now it was coming back, and he wasn't sure he liked what that would herald. Yes, he wanted action...but the kind of action that he understood.
But this creature, this thing called Caeus that he felt in his blood...he was beyond mortal understanding. He was not mortal. Far from it. Caeus was closer to their enemy's kin than their own.
And yet they would do his bidding? Now, at the end of days?
The pull of the creature's power made Cenphalph's whole body irritable. Behind the door, Tirielle felt it, too. Her groaning became more panicked, more urgent.
There was no doubt. The Red Wizard returned.
*
Chapter Twenty
Drun Sard's once sun-bright, golden eyes were dulled and tired. Ever-thin, he ran to gaunt now, his shoulder bones jutting like axe-blades against the cotton he wore.
Quintal, the leader of the Sard and Drun's friend, pretended not to notice. He tried to imagine Drun sickened for the loss of their brothers, four dead now...Yuthran and Briskle betrayed and killed by...something they could not understand.
But it was more, and Quintal could not fool himself. Drun was sickening inside.
Drun was never armoured, nor armed. Quintal, however, wore his shining armour with his back squared, like the weight of it was no burden. His cloak hung to the backs of his knees. His sword, as ever, upon his left hip.
Together they spent the entire night saying much and saying little in equal measures, like friends do. Like men joined at the heart through purpose and understand that goes deeper than words.
They were high above the city, atop the highest tower in the castle, looking at the bright, falling star in the black night, burning away the cloud cover as it hurtled down. The sun, Carious, a God of a kind to their order, broke the horizon. The bolt of fire raced the sun through the still-wide swathe of night's darkness.
'He's dangerous, Drun,' said Quintal, flicking his head to the burning spot in the sky as though there was any doubt about whom they spoke. 'Look...the power of the suns in a man? What are we doing?'
'We're saving the world, Quintal,' said Drun. He sounded tired. He was tired. Drun Sard was very, very old...and very ill. . 'And you quickly forget our powers are kin to his.' Even speech was tiring for him. To bring himself to this tower had nearly killed him, and Quintal had wordlessly loaned his friend a strong shoulder
He didn't think he had long left on Rythe, but he was too busy to die.
'Fine, Drun. Fine. But you understand my meaning well enough. They're wary of us, these people, these Sturmen...and we of them. We're emissaries, yes, but warriors first. They're afraid of him, of us...and we of them...how can we fight the coming battles when we can't even organise ourselves? It's too vast, Drun. Too heavy a burden.'
'No one man can see all of it, Quintal, I agree. You? I? No.'
'You think he can? You think he knows? That blighted creature? The Red Wizard is insane, Drun. Don't deny it.'
Drun sighed, but he nodded. 'I fear you are right, my friend. I think perhaps the centuries have turned our saviour to madness. Caeus is not what he was rumoured to be...but what choice do we have?'
'We fight as we always fought. We watch ourselves, we fight with blade and magic. The Rahken will stand with us, as will the Sturmen, if we can find a way to make them whole. The Kuh'taenium will rally around Tirielle. The Seafarers? Perhaps...when the world shook their land was made whole. It is a time of legend, of fable...myths turn to truths, the lost and forgotten are found...I say let those of us who are of this world fight for this world...not him. Not him.'
Drun closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them they shone with golden light. Dimmer, perhaps, than they had once been, but still like the summer's sun through a nothing more than a morning haze, perhaps.
Blessed by the suns themselves, the Sard were no strangers to fey power.
But the blighted wizard?
Drun agreed with Quintal. Caeus was too dangerous. Too powerful. And yes...insane. Insane, for sure.
'I think perhaps...I think you are right, Quintal. We would be fools to rest all our hopes in Caeus. He is one of their kind. Too alien, unknowable. I think he intends to help...but can we trust him? We need him, yes...but to put the hope of humanity in his hands? And this red light on the horizon...I find it troubling.'
'The red light is their herald, Drun. What else can it be, but a harbinger of the Return?'
Drun nodded, a sad motion of his head that was more grey, thin hair moving in the wind than a man moving under his own volition. Drun did not wish for he and Quintal to be right.
It was he, Drun, who had brought the three to Teriyithyr. He, ultimately, who had led Tirielle's Rahken companion, Roth, to his death...
And how many others? For a priest, I have much blood on my hands...
It was a heavy burden to bear...and if he had been wrong? Mislead? All these years? Myth, foretelling...a mistake? Then was he fool enough to continue on, to trust in the words of seers long dead that this man, this being, Caeus, could save their world?
Was he that big a fool?
The seers of millennia had not foretold the blight within Caeus, had they? What else had they, for all their wisdom and talent, misconstrued throughout the ages?
The Order of Sard...were we naught but a mistake?
Drun's heart ached at the possibility.
But Quintal...the others...they must not see this indecision. They must not. So Drun forced his old, tired heart to seem sure, even if it could not be sure.
He continued, stifling a cough before it could build to more. 'Too much trust in a creature we ourselves do not trust. We need to fight our battles...but Quintal...the power in the creature Caeus that
we fear so much?'
'Yes?'
'We fight a race of beings as powerful, or more, than even Caeus, perhaps. We need him...his kind of power. We need it. There is no choice...we fight the Elethyn.'
'Mankind won once before.'
Drun shook his head, sadly, this time. 'Don't be blinded by pride, Quintal. Humankind did not prevail.' Drun flicked his head toward the plummeting ball of fire in the sky. 'He did. With human aid, with the Rahken at his back, true...but without him?'
'You say we stand no chance without the mad wizard?'
'No, Quintal, I don't say that. I say we need him...but we need human kind, and the Rahken, too. We need magic the likes of which Rythe has not seen in two millennia or more...'
'Magic we have not got. The mages are dead, hunted. The witch-kin are no more. The Rahken retain a kind of power, yes...but magic in this land slumbers, still. He, you...you are the last of the mage lords.'
Quintal spoke true enough, Drun knew. He did not like it, but what little magic remained in the peoples of this world was...woeful.
And I think, perhaps, that I will not see the battle, thought Drun, but did not voice his thoughts.
There must be hope...and if there is not, then there must seem to be.
It could be no other way.
'The Protectorate and, at a remove the Hierarchy, have played their hand well, Quintal. But I do not think they have destroyed magic entirely. They have tried...tried, yes. But it is in the blood, still. I exist, do I not? There are others like me...the Rahken train more. The seer, too. She is one of a kind.'
'And broken, Drun, you forget...'
'I do not forget. But broken can be mended. Can be healed.'
'Our magic is weak,' said Quintal, anger, maybe fear, somewhere deep within his tone.
'Now, yes...but it is not dead,' said Drun, kindly.
Above them, the burning man slowed and tumbled upon the air, then, softly, alighted on the stone beside the two mortal men. Like a man taking a simple step on solid ground, rather than a man who had fallen back to the land from conversing with a sun.
Smoke drifted from the Red Wizard. He was badly burned by the feat of travelling at such speed, his skin black and crisp, but he showed not even the slightest discomfort. He smiled at the two men in greeting, and they saw that even his teeth and tongue had been blackened.
Skin cracked as he smiled and something - not blood, no...not blood - seeped from those wounds. More like smoke than blood. Like the Red Wizard had been burned to nothing even within, within his core, his blood on fire and leaking smoke into the damp morning air.
Drun and Quintal took a step back, unbidden. The creature's flesh healed as they watched. Blackened skin, scorched hair, even his eyes had suffered the sun's embrace.
The most powerful wizard on the world of Rythe...perhaps since the dawn of the world itself...healed himself within a few moments. The rents in his flesh sealed. His teeth whitened. His hair flowed back from his scalp once more.
Finally, he could speak. 'Carious tells me...they come. The sun itself is terrified...this worries me.'
Caeus' flesh no longer poured with smoke, though the stench of scorched flesh lingered, making Quintal's golden eyes water. The stink was acrid and harsh enough to deflect from the Red Wizard's awful message for a second or two.
Caeus blinked his bloody-red eyes and focused completely, at last.
'And,' he added, as he clothed himself in some garment that it seemed he made from his will alone, 'Carious tells me I am insane. I am insane, my burning God tells me, as I stand within an embrace hot enough to turn a world to nothingness. It tells me this while I burn and burn within that embrace. Tells me I am insane, and I wonder, too, at this. This terrifies me. I think, perhaps, Carious himself has gone mad from fear. Does it need to tell me, Caeus, the last of the sun's bastard children on Rythe, that I am mad when it is obvious that I am? Such a thing itself is madness, is it not?'
Quintal glanced at Drun, carefully.
Drun noticed the glance, noticed that Caeus noticed everything...mad or not.
'The Elethyn?' said Drun, simply. He was thinking, yes, but what could his thoughts avail him now? He, who had once thought himself a power upon the world of Rythe, standing before a creature who could stand before Carious itself and return whole?
Caeus nodded, a smile in his mad, bloody eyes. 'My kin come. I think they must be stronger, still.'
'How long?' said Quintal. 'How many?'
Caeus shrugged. 'Does it matter? Months, mere months, now. Maybe even days...they are stronger than we thought. How many? I do not know. Once, we were few. Now? I cannot guess. Legion or just a few of my kind...it does not matter. They will eat Rythe's suns and this world will die.'
'And humankind with it.'
Caeus nodded, then, as he was about to say more his crazed eyes clouded...one instant blood red, then, a mottled grey, as though an angry cloud slid past.
It was fast, but Quintal and Drun both saw the change.
'You fools!' said Caeus, his eyes once more red and his face stern. Not a killing look, but the look a parent might give an idiot child. 'You let him go?'
'What? Who?' said Quintal, wary, still. Ever wary where the Red Wizard was concerned.
'The little king...the man who would be...he is gone!'
'Renir?' said Drun, sending out his own power even as he spoke. His mind, once within Renir's, was attuned to the man's thoughts. Like tendrils of sunlight, throughout the castles many halls and room, Drun searched for the man who would be king...
And found that Renir Esyn was simply not there.
'He's right,' said Drun, his sun-blessed light snapping back into his tired eyes. 'Renir's gone.'
'He can't have gone far,' said Quintal.
'How ever your kind took the world I do not know,' said Caeus. 'Sometimes I think I made a mistake. Not gone from the castle, Quintal of the Sard. Gone.'
And then Caeus bowed his head and did something that neither Quintal nor Drun had thought they would ever see.
The Red Wizard's face, when he looked back, was dripping with bloody tears.
'He is gone...and Carious was right, of course. In my madness I allowed pride to rule me. Hubris was ever my enemy. I...I am...sorry?'
The word sounded alien, even on Caeus' alien tongue.
'I went to my God to find the Crown of Kings. Carious sees all...but not that. I went to my God with my power a shield and a pennant, like an army victorious...but I am not. I should have gone as a supplicant, but my Lord God Carious burned me and chastised me like an errant child...and it was right to do so. For all my power, I am no more than a simple fool.'
'Welcome, Caeus,' said Drun, and with a gentle and careful hand, touched the Red Wizard's shoulder. 'Welcome to humanity.'
Perhaps another creature would have found such a compliment demeaning. But Caeus' blighted eyes once again turned back to mottled grey, if only for the merest instant.
He nodded, finally. His tears simply disappeared, sucked back into his face like rain into dry earth.
'Drun, Quintal...I am mad. I am dangerous. But I will help where I can. But you should know this...for all my strength in the arts of power, in the ways of the mage...there is something of this world that eludes me. There is a splinter in my sight, in my foresight...a shard of blackness that I cannot find nor penetrate.
'And it worries me.'
'Then,' said Drun, 'we will watch for treachery, for danger, from unexpected quarters.'
Caeus nodded. 'I am...tired. Tired at last. Excuse me.'
Drun and Quintal watched the creature go, this time taking the stairs to his rooms like a mortal might. Drun thought he had never seen anything or anyone look so...worn.
*
Chapter Twenty-One
In the heart of the continent of Lianthre, far across the sea from Sturman shores, there is a spot of land that looks, and feels, like some horrific and deep black cancer.
Upon the map, it is no more than a mark
, a note, and a name.
That name is Arram.
Arram is the cancer, and its tendrils spread wide across the land.
*
Chapter Twenty-Two
A solitary Protocrat sat at an ancient wax and ink stained desk deep within the bowels of the sprawling complex named Arram. Few of the protectorate, even those within the council of twenty-one who led the vast, and now impatient, armies of the protectorate, knew what the lone creature did.
His name was Fernip Unger. He was good, perhaps, at two things: reading, and writing. He had been a student of letters throughout his entire life, and the saddest thing he found was that so few of his kin even knew what he did.
Maybe only one other, but he was dead now. Klan Mard had seen the entirety of the Protectorate's archives. Had, in fact, etched it into his very being. Created in himself a Bone Archive.
Fernip knew these things, but yes, he knew more.
But did anyone ever ask of him, but for Anamnessor Mard? Did anyone ever come down to the dark of the libraries and the archives beneath Arram and tap Fernip upon his bony shoulder?
'Fernip? I wonder if you could tell me what the Island Archivists knew of all this...' they might say. Perhaps one day, someone might have come with such a need. And perhaps Fernip would have told them. Would have told Jek Yrie, or Mermi Fros, the truth.
The truth beneath the lie.
Above, something shifted within the complex, and the dust from the endless rows of books, parchments, tablets, was agitated, drifting angrily into the air. Fernip did not feel the need to cough, but the dust alighted on the text before him. The text which he wrote.
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