“I was trying to spare them—” Cyrus let out a low breath and lowered his head. “Do you know what a heresy charge brings in its wake?”
“I’ve heard,” she said. “It sounds most disagreeable.” She snapped her green eyes onto his as she brushed her long brown hair back over her shoulders. “But you are being corralled by most corrupt forces. Two guilds which can only be described as evil, and two nations whose leadership is … well, let us say, unpleasantly divided.”
Cyrus frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Statecraft,” Cattrine said with a sigh, turning away from him. She began to walk off but held up a hand to stop him from following. “I have matters to attend to, Cyrus. You need to decide, and quickly, if your misadventures in the south and your ambush by Bellarum have stolen all the fight from you. For you have a long and dangerous one on your hands, and while we in Emerald Fields are most certainly your allies …” she stopped and turned, looking somehow taller than he could ever recall seeing her before, so different from the woman in the muddied dress he had met years earlier when she came to him to bargain from a position of weakness, “… but we are not fools, and I will not lead my nation into war with a General who has lost all heart for the fight.” She gave him a small smile and then walked off purposefully to rule her country.
10.
“That all sounds a bit dismal,” Vara said after listening to Cyrus’s description of the day’s events. They sat on a couch in the corner of the Tower of the Guildmaster, the balcony doors open and a light, chilly breeze blowing in. He’d found Vara on the walls at his return, watching the empty horizon for signs of trouble. A cold, sunny sky had lingered overhead until the last hour, when it had begun to sink over the horizon, the mountains to the south visible out the far doors, the snow-capped peaks turning purple.
“Cattrine spoke to me as if I’d lost all heart for battle,” Cyrus said, still stinging from his former lover’s rebuke. From anyone else, it might not have carried the same weight. From her, it felt like a slap, a judgment, a pox on my damned soul. Vara did not stir, but her face bore a look of great discomfort. “You feel it, too,” Cyrus said after a moment’s breath.
“You are not perhaps as … ornery as you once were when it comes to battle, no,” Vara said. “I sense no lack of courage on your part to plunge into danger. More a lack of willingness to send your armies into the fight.”
“We have lost so many friends, Vara,” Cyrus said. “I have sent people to their deaths in more fights than I can count, and the cost has been dear. And for the last few years, we’ve been taking increasingly harder hits. Narstron, Niamh, Alaric—though he may still be alive, I concede—your mother, Nyad, Odellan, Cass, Belkan, Thad … Andren …” He said the last one hollowly. “We’ve seen good people die in corners of Arkaria where they didn’t need to.”
“I hear the list of names you speak, but I can’t shake my feeling that this is all down to your defeat at Leaugarden, isn’t it?” Vara asked quietly.
“It’s down to death, everywhere,” Cyrus said. “I chose the path of battle, and so did our guildmates … but it doesn’t make it any easier when they die and I live. Until now, at least I had the luxury of knowing I had a sword that helped even the odds in these fights. With Praelior, victory, if not assured, was certainly more likely.”
“You are more than a sword, Cyrus,” Vara said. “You were always more than a sword. You defeated the Dragonlord without Praelior and led us into Purgatory without the damned sword—and with fewer numbers than any of the Big Three boasted at the time.”
“Of course, later we found out Alaric and Curatio could beat the Trials all on their own,” Cyrus said bitterly. “And they’re both gone now.” He cut her off before she could interrupt in protest. “I’m not … angry or upset or bitter about them leaving. It’s just … Arkaria is changing. Sanctuary is changing. We’ve lost ground. Everything we worked so hard to build is …”
“Crumbling,” she said, nodding. “I know. I’ve felt this before, you know, when Archenous stabbed me in the back and left me to die in the Trials, after murdering my guildmaster and stealing my damned sword.” Cyrus pictured the blade that Derregnault had thrust in his face, the patterns of runes on the blades. “I know what it’s like to lose that which you have poured your life into, to feel it slipping like sands between your fingers as you watch in horror, unable to do anything to staunch the flow. If not from that, then seeing Termina invaded and destroyed most certainly awoke me to that sense of loss.” She inched closer to him on the couch, her armor squealing as it caught on a pad, tearing it. “Damn these things.”
“I know you know,” Cyrus said. “And you are right about Leaugarden. I may have lost friends elsewhere, to assassins, to goblins, to the Scourge, to the dark elves, to the dragons, but Leaugarden … that was the place where Malpravus smashed me as a General. It’s a lingering wound. In the Society they taught me not to flinch from the pain, to guard against the fear that came after the blow, because the fear would paralyze you, keep you from fighting against the next and the one after. I’ve been flinching for over a year. Not in the battle itself, but before it. It was a humbling moment in a way that being pushed back by the Scourge or having to retreat from the bridge in Termina wasn’t.” He shook his head. “They were an unstoppable force of nature, those … things in Luukessia. But at Leaugarden … all I faced was Malpravus and Yartraak, and they …”
“They showed you the lengths they would go to in order to win,” Vara said, her head down. “The same lengths our enemies would go to now, incidentally. Sending that dark elven trollop to your bed to spy on you and murder you at their command—that is perhaps the level of viciousness we can expect now.” She pulled off her gauntlet and placed a slightly moist hand upon his face. “Are you ready for that?”
“Is there any way to be ready for that?” Cyrus asked with a wan smile. “Terian counsels war against insane odds, suggesting I simply go back to being a tricky general, and Cattrine brings up the same point as you. She fears my willingness to fight this fight, fears that leading her nation into war with me wavering would be foolish. And I don’t blame her. I can’t see a path to victory from where I stand.” His admission rang in the empty air of the tower as the door to the nearest balcony creaked in the night. The sun was down, and now darkness swept into the room, the torches having lit on their own some time ago. “How am I supposed to lead these people when I have no idea what to do? When my only inkling of a plan is to line them all up and charge into impossible battle?” Her hand rested on his face. “What do I even do, Vara? Other than despair, which seems to be costing me more than it is worth in this moment?” She stared into his eyes with her bright blue ones. “I don’t know how to win this fight. And I don’t know how to even fight it with what we have left.”
“Then perhaps it’s time to count on your friends,” came a voice from near the balcony. Cyrus leapt to his feet, as did Vara, both their swords drawn instantly. A cold tingle of fear broke over Cyrus’s skin as his new blade, still foreign to him, rattled in his grasp.
Terian stepped out from behind the balcony door, Alaric’s helm clutched beneath one arm, and the Battle Axe of Darkness in his other hand. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt all this grim despair, but we need to talk.”
“We talked earlier,” Cyrus said, feeling himself relax only an inch at the sight of Terian. His eyes fell to the axe, and the cold chill on his skin did not subside. With that in hand, and me with this sword … he could massacre us.
Terian’s gaze followed Cyrus’s and a flicker of amusement danced across his lips. “I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t come here to kill you, dumbass. I’m here to help you.” He tossed the axe deftly toward Cyrus, who caught it, fumblingly, with his free hand.
“As did we all,” Cattrine said, stepping out from behind the door with Terian, a spell of invisibility casting her in a faded light. Cyrus could see her, ghostly clear, as she lingered next to Terian.
&
nbsp; “Who said that?” Vara asked, sweeping her gaze piercingly toward the source of the voice. She murmured a spell under her breath to give her sight past illusion, and then she made a faint grumbling sound. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Sorry,” Cattrine said, the veil of invisibility still shading her. “I can’t remove a spell once it has been cast upon me. But … we need to talk.”
“I talked with both of you not but a few hours ago,” Cyrus said, clutching the axe in his hand.
“We talked in public,” Terian corrected him. “We said things, mouthed platitudes meant to be circulated in rumors that would make their way back to listening ears outside our own nations. Now … now we need to have a real conversation. Eye to eye, with no outside listeners.”
Vara looked at him with practiced disdain of the sort that Cyrus had become very familiar with in his first years of knowing her. “And what do we need to talk about now, in secret, under the cloak of darkness—and how did you sneak into the tower?”
“Falcon’s Essence,” Terian said with a grin.
“Should have been stripped when you crossed the wall,” Vara said suspiciously.
“It was,” Terian agreed. “Which is why Bowe recast it before we climbed to the top of the tower, we three.”
“How did you get through our guards at the wall?” Cyrus asked with suspicion of his own.
“Your defense is porous,” Terian said. “I own the loyalty of several of your guildmates on duty right now.” He held up a hand to stifle the outrage that started to pour from both Cyrus and Vara. “Trust me … this is good.”
“It’s good that you have spies in our midst?” Vara beat Cyrus to the nasty accusation. “We’re your allies.”
“Yes,” Terian said, nodding, “which is why I’ve got them watching Sanctuary, trying to find out who within these walls is loyal to other parties.”
“This is low, even for you, Terian,” Cyrus said.
“This is not the way of the white knight,” Vara said.
“I wasn’t always a white knight,” Terian said grimly, “and I’m not just a white knight now—I’m the Sovereign of Saekaj and Sovar—”
“I suppose that absolves you of any need for honor or decency,” Vara said, but her voice held little of her usual dagger-point anger. She was more resigned, as though this were somehow expected. “In spite of your new armor and class, you have retained a surprising amount of your old self.”
“And you’ll be very thankful for that soon, I predict,” Terian said, glancing sidelong at Cattrine. “Because I hate to break this to you sensitive souls, but a paladin isn’t going to walk out of this ambush you’ve stumbled into. You’re going to need more.”
“Which is why you’re here to talk?” Cyrus asked.
“Exactly,” Cattrine said. “This is why we’re having a discussion out of sight. So we can address the things that cannot be talked about where anyone might hear them. So we might talk about how to win this battle.”
“Well, you’ve gone to all the trouble of sneaking up here,” Cyrus said, now feeling even wearier than before. “We might as well hear you out.”
“I hoped you’d say that,” Terian said, smiling tightly. “And I hope you don’t mind that we’ve brought a third, someone uniquely positioned to help us in this matter.”
“Your druid? Bowe?” Cyrus asked, starting to move back to the couch to seat himself. “If you trust him, I suppose I do.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Terian said, and a thin smile spread across his lips. “But it’s not Bowe. He’s back at the wall.”
Cyrus froze, about to take a seat. Vara, next to him, had cocked her head in curiosity.
“Come out,” Terian said to someone hiding behind the balcony door, and Cyrus felt a shudder run through him, as though he knew what was coming before it did.
She stepped out into the moonlight, her hair washed out even paler than when last he’d seen it, the ghostly aura surrounding her somehow even more faded than that of an invisibility spell. She shimmered in the darkness as she came around Terian, a little tentatively, her hand clutched on the blade of a dagger at her belt.
Cyrus’s eyes narrowed as she halted between the Sovereign of Saekaj and the Administrator of the Emerald Fields. She looked straight at him with those purple eyes, faded to a faint violet under the power of her weapon’s ability to cloak its user, and felt his jaw lock as his teeth clenched.
“Oh, you,” Vara said with utter disdain. She cast a look at Cyrus, her eyes afire. “Give me that bloody axe, I’m going to—”
“Please don’t,” Aisling Nightwind said, and she pulled her dagger out of its scabbard and tossed it lightly at Vara, who caught it and stared at her, fury still contorting the elven paladin’s features. Aisling stood with hands raised, now solid under the moonlight, washed out, her navy skin paler than he remembered it being under this same light.
“And why should I not?” Vara asked, clutching the dagger, her own skin rippling as she disappeared under the blade’s power, fading into a shadowy version of his wife, her golden hair turned white under its spell.
“Because I’m at your mercy,” Aisling said, casting a glance to Terian, who nodded in a reassuring way. “Because I mean you no harm … and,” she said, licking her lips, a faint trace of fear crackling her voice, making it unsteady, “… because I’m here to help you.”
11.
“The problems are simple,” Terian said, pacing back and forth, Alaric’s old armor squeaking faintly with each step as he made his way across the Tower of the Guildmaster, “we have foes we cannot easily best in a direct fight—”
“And so you bring the Duchess of Treachery to advise us,” Vara said, still clutching Aisling’s dagger in her hand. Her knuckles practically glowed beneath the shade of the spell the blade cast to turn her invisible to the eye. “You ask us to trust she who once plunged a knife into my husband’s back after spying on him for the God of Darkness from within his very bed.”
“Perhaps coming here was a mistake,” Aisling said. She was leaning against the narrow stone wall between the balcony doors, which were now sealed shut against the elements and other intruders. “They don’t want my help, Terian.”
“Whether they want it or not is irrelevant; they need it desperately,” Terian said, halting his pacing and giving Vara a hard look. “Yes, she slept with Cyrus. Yes, she spied on him. Yes, she stuck a blade in his back and helped cause the most horrifying defeat Sanctuary ever suffered on a battlefield. I was there, I saw it, I partook in it.” He drew himself up to his full height, which was somewhere around Vara’s own, and yet he looked considerably more commanding now. It’s an effect much like what I saw with Cattrine earlier—these people I’ve known are becoming more than they were before. “And frankly, that’s the kind of treachery you’re facing now, so you might want someone skilled in it on your side.” He pressed his lips tightly together and some of the navy bled out of them, leaving them an almost cerulean shade. “Gods know you’re not in a position where you can afford to be choosy with your allies.”
“Thus far,” Cattrine said, stepping up, her own expression guarded, her face shrouded in some of the shadow offered by the torchlight, “you have led Sanctuary nobly and bravely, but you have demonstrated an utter lack of guile when it comes to statecraft. Even your maneuver against the titans, using the dragons as your pawn, was so lacking in secrecy that any other power in Arkaria would have seen through it. The dragons, being insular, failed to detect it and acted accordingly against the titans. Here …” she cast a sideways look at Terian, who nodded, “… you will find no such advantage.”
“Sanctuary has spies within its walls,” Aisling pronounced. “Many. More than you could imagine. More than just me.”
“Yes, and some of them are traitors who work for the Sovereign of Saekaj,” Vara said acidly, looking right at Terian.
“Those ‘traitors’ will help keep you safe,” Terian said darkly. “Others—and there’s no telling ho
w many—most assuredly will not.”
“If you know we have traitors,” Cyrus said, still clutching Terian’s axe from his place on the couch, “give me their names.” He lifted the haft high. “We’ll go forth and have a merry time of lining them up and removing their heads.”
“I don’t know who the traitors are,” Terian said. “I know who I own in Sanctuary. And I have spies elsewhere, remnants of a network put together by my predecessor and expanded by me. Some of the people who betray don’t even know they betray you. They rumor, they gossip … innocent activities, but the whispers circulate and fall into the wrong ears, the ones who are intending treachery, and so the word spreads to spymasters across Arkaria.” He sighed as he looked at Vara and Cyrus. “Goliath and Amarath’s Raiders have spies. Endeavor and Burnt Offerings have spies. The Human Confederation and the Elven Kingdom—”
“Have spies, yes, I get it,” Cyrus said, looking sidelong at his bride. The tightness on her face hinted at a steely discomfort. “Is that true?” Her gaze flicked to him. “Does Amarath’s Raiders have spies?”
“Of course,” Vara said. “Almost all guilds do. How do you suppose that Isabelle knew so much about Sanctuary when first we met?”
“Yet we don’t,” Cyrus mused quietly, looking at the stone floors of his quarters.
“That was Alaric’s doing,” Terian said.
Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) Page 7
