She stood at the crater’s edge and looked over. “He didn’t finish me, though. He helped me. Said he’d heard my plea. He said his name was Alaric Garaunt and that this was a Sanctuary for those in need.” Her voice quavered. “He helped me inside … he helped me … so much. Helped to see you protected, as best we could. He gave me … hope.
“And nothing was ever the same after that.”
She stood there for a long moment, and then opened her green eyes. “Do you want to be alone?”
Cyrus felt as if his heart were about to flow over. “Yes,” he said quietly
“And you have bound yourself somewhere so that you can return there?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will leave you to unburden your heart,” she said, and disappeared in a twinkling of light, her face wet with tears. She faded, leaving only the bright blue sky and the unending plains behind her, and Cyrus, alone at last, at the place where he had lost everything.
56.
Alaric
“Are you sure they’ll come?” Mathurin’s worry was obvious as we strode through the gates of the camp, walking side by side, the tension rising by the moment. The night was still misting, gentle rain drizzling down from dark clouds overhead.
In truth, I wasn’t entirely sure. These men had denied me before, after all. I’d been beaten in their company, and many among them had hated me until I started teaching them the way of the sword that Mathurin had taught me. “I certainly hope so,” I said grimly, “or I suppose it’ll be just you and I storming Zanbellish.”
Mathurin laughed. “If any two could handle it, it would be you and I.”
Orovan waited at the last gate with two of his guards, his squat body making him look like the stony golem he would eventually become. “A little late for a visit, isn’t it?”
“We’re here to take my troops,” I said, going straight up to the gate. Mathurin walked confidently, so I did as well.
Orovan’s eyebrows soared like they’d had a Falcon’s Essence spell cast upon them. “On whose authority do you imagine that will happen?”
“On the authority of Chavoron,” Mathurin said crisply. “The First Citizen demands this done, so do it!”
Orovan froze in place, stunned. “That is not within his authority. I am the administrator of this camp.”
Mathurin and I traded a look. Chavoron had warned us this might be a problem. “Chavoron assumed you might be reticent to take this responsibility upon yourself. So he offers a bargain,” Mathurin said.
“What sort of bargain?” Orovan asked, leaning in.
“There’s a governorship available,” Mathurin said, and I could hear a little tension in his words. I realized he wanted that governorship for himself, even though he probably understood that he was nowhere close to being offered it. “A territory Chavoron himself has discovered a path to. It could be yours, should you cooperate.”
Orovan’s eyes showed a flicker of greed. “I am not nearly foremost enough to get myself a territory on merit. He promises one on favor?”
“It is his to give, since he discovered it,” Mathurin said, with some reluctance. “He has formed it into a mountainous retreat, earthy and full, with possibilities of mining and the quiet peace of the earth. This is his favor to give, and whoever takes it will receive a title along with it—the Rotan, the lord within the earthen depths.”
Orovan’s eyes danced lustfully as he contemplated this turn. “And it could be mine?”
“Entirely yours, yes.” The hint of loathing in Mathurin’s voice was like the scrape of steel against stone. He kept it well veiled, but I heard it nonetheless. Then again, after seeing Chavoron’s sanctuary for myself, naturally I wanted one of my own, even absent the apparent status they conveyed among the Protanians.
“He has a bargain,” Orovan nodded quickly. He turned to his guards, who were watching the whole exchange wide-eyed. “See that they can leave with the slaves.” He looked like nothing so much as a toad hopping around trying to catch fat flies upon his tongue.
“Well, now that that’s settled,” Mathurin said under his breath, not bothering to hide his loathing any longer, “perhaps we can set about this business of negotiating the next bargain.”
“You make bargains and negotiation sound like the most abhorrent things,” I said.
Mathurin’s face showed a flicker of distaste, his helm still carried under his arm. “They are. There is a way things should be, and while I recognize the necessity of these dealings, I wish I could simply push things to their proper shape. It would be simpler.” He paused as the gate rattled back to admit us. “It should be easier to make things right than to make them worse, and yet it is not so.” As soon as the gate was open, Mathurin slipped in and I followed him, both of us hurrying toward the barracks on the far side of the camp.
One of the guards was already turning out the men, waking them out of sound slumber. I heard feet hitting the ground before I turned the corner to the door, heard the grunts and moans of men stirred from dream, complaints filling the air. When I walked through into the room, though, the complaints died quickly and silence reigned once more.
“My prince,” Varren said, coming up to me and standing at attention. His beard looked better tended, and he was cleaner than when last I’d seen him. “What brings you to us in the middle of the night?”
“There is a slave revolt,” I said, “in a place called Zanbellish. One of the blue men—a woman, actually,” I saw bristling in the crowd; women in Luukessia did not get up to antics of any sort without the judgment of entire communities landing upon them, “has started an uprising of the slaves. She has armed them, and they mean to kill anyone who comes to stop them.”
I felt an uncomfortable energy run through the crowd before me; this was expected. Chavoron had warned me that their sympathies would not entirely be with our cause, something that hadn’t occurred to me until he mentioned it. Part of me had just assumed blind loyalty to me—again. He was teaching me differently. “I know what you’re thinking—‘This is good. So what if the blue men die?’” I forced a smile. “Some of you are probably even thinking that it’s a wonderful thing, and you hope that many of them die and that it spreads all over the empire.
“It’s not going to spread all over the empire,” I said, and they listened intently. “These men are going to die in Zanbellish, crushed under an overwhelming response from the imperial army. We fought Protanians in Syloreas. We know what they can do when they mean to simply knock us down for capture.” I looked around, trying to read the eyes before me. “Imagine what they can do when they mean to kill.”
Here I was lying; the imperial army was hanging back for fear of death. It was a curious thing, an army afraid to die. My father’s armies had suffered death constantly, even when they weren’t in battle. We’d lost a number of men on the march north to Syloreas—exhaustion, disease, malnourishment in a few cases. One fellow had even died of exposure, sleeping out in a damp night that had turned cold.
But here in the Protanian Empire, people didn’t die randomly, not even in the army, thanks to their spells. And they didn’t kill each other, which I found even more curious. I watched my men stir with interest. “I come to you with a proposal from … the emperor,” I said, fudging Chavoron’s title a bit. They weren’t likely to understand “First Among Equals,” after all, coming from a place of kings. “If you come with me, if you help me put down this slave revolt … you will all of you be granted freedom from this camp, to join the House of Garaunt—my house.”
“I follow you,” Varren said, bowing his head low. “My prince.”
“It sounds so very peculiar when he calls you that,” Mathurin said under his breath.
Other calls of loyalty followed. I saw Stepan bowing his head in agreement with my proposal, a few rows back, his eyes intent on me. He’d already agreed, essentially, but I could see the doubt in his eyes, wondering if I would deliver on my promise. He needn’t have worried. It was Chavoron’s deal,
not mine, and even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t undo his will.
“I’ll take your deal,” Olivier said, stepping out of the crowd. I almost gasped when I saw him, his face black and blue, one of his eyes swollen shut, “if I can go to a different house than yours.” He looked at me through his barely open eye, the left one, and I felt a pang of pity for my oldest—and once my only—friend in this land. The state of his eyes reminded me of … me, after one of my own men beat me senseless in the wagon.
“No other house is going to want you,” Mathurin said quickly. “Other than as a slave in their service. And you’re of little use to us in a fight. You probably can’t even see.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Olivier said defiantly. “And I can see well enough to know what stands in front of me.”
“Fine,” I said, pity, disgust and need for haste ruling me, “you can come along, and you can go to a different house than mine once this is over, if you can find one that will have you.”
“I accept your terms,” Olivier said with burning resentment, “and I will find a way to prove my value in this bargain.”
“Then we have concord,” Mathurin said, the corner of his mouth rising in a coming smile. “It is time we must be off—for this shameful affair has already dragged on entirely too long.”
57.
Cyrus
Cyrus stood among the quiet grasses of the Plains of Perdamun, watching them stir in the breeze, the summer wind racing through them, all hint of chill gone and replaced with an increasing warmth. His armor’s blackness seemed to gather unto it the heat of the sun, baking through to the chainmail beneath and the underclothes upon his skin, little drops of perspiration rising from him. He took a long sniff of the air and thought he could smell the hints of something burnt, as though whatever spell Bellarum had used to scourge Sanctuary from the earth had left traces behind.
He stood there, swaying gently in the wind, wondering if it would come strong enough to blow him over, and he closed his eyes. He let the warmth seep in, yet still felt cold inside. He’d heard the words they’d spoken, all of them, but they hadn’t been comforting. They had been sounding the bells for the death of Sanctuary, a funeral. Death had come, had stayed, and was never to leave. It reminded him faintly of the tolling he’d heard in Termina when the time came to summon the citizens to worship.
“I never believed as you believed.” He said it out loud, the words escaping through the first crack in the wall he’d built to keep it all inside. He’d killed gods in these last days—again—but this time with planning aforethought, with revenge in the mind, and it felt different from when he’d thrown himself in the path of Mortus’s hand to—
To save her.
He took another deep breath of the fresh air, searching for that hint of scorching, some sign that they’d burned his home out of the ground. He could smell the dry dust that was floating in the crater, here and there miniature whirls of wind in its depths. A trickle of falling pebbles sounded across the way, and he watched them tumbling to the bottom where they disappeared into the shadow of a boulder.
“There’s nothing down there,” he mused aloud to himself again, stalling, almost afraid to let out what he’d kept in so hard while the others were here. The sun was sinking lower in the afternoon sky, shining down at an angle to his right, threatening to blind him when it worked its way below the lip of his helm. Cyrus tapped himself on the breastplate, and the rattle sounded above the wind. “There’s a lot in here, though.”
Cyrus fell into silence for a time after that, letting the world move around him. He imagined he could hear birds in the distance, though he couldn’t. There was a great silence on the plains, save for the wind, rippling uncontrolled, with no walls to serve as its brake, across the open fields. He stared into the blue sky, imagined he could see her eyes in there, and closed his own.
“Come back to me,” he whispered, his skin tingling beneath the armor, little chills working their way down his arms and the back of his neck. “Come back to me, Vara.
“If there’s a way for you to come back … I need you to,” he said, and he opened his eyes to see the blue sky again. “Imina once told me that I cling to my friends because I have nowhere else to go and nothing to do with my life.” He looked around, expecting a response, anything—a bird singing, some sign from above. “That was never true … until now.”
He crossed his hands uncomfortably before him. “Now she is right. Because when this is over … they’ll all leave. Some of them have already started to find their places in this new Arkaria, this new order. They can see their next moves, they can see the hints of life beyond the staggering peaks before us, beyond this daunting task. If we can make it through … they’ll be all right, every one of them. Because they have other places to be … they have other callings for their lives, great callings … great battles ahead but … great destinies ahead of them as well, I can see it …
“But I have no destiny ahead of me,” Cyrus said. “I am alone. I have had my fill of the fight, all my life’s will is bent toward the finishing of this last task. I’m going to kill Bellarum. And it won’t be for revenge—or not just for it, at least. I like to think you’d understand that when I put the blade to him, it’s not because he took you away. It’s because he is, in his purest, most hateful form, the antithesis of life, the destroyer of it, the chaos that descends with its hungry maw on our peoples. You and I fought that our whole time in Sanctuary—we fought it in the form of the Dragonlord, when it raised its head as Goliath, when it moved through the goblins, the dark elves, the scourge, as Mortus and Yartraak.”
He took a long breath and let it out so slowly it rippled its way through the budding hairs on his upper lip like the winds over the plains. “He has become everything we were battling against. And he took you from me. I will finish this, and then … if I live … I’ll be alone. Narstron and Andren are gone. The others will move on with their lives … so …
“Come back to me,” Cyrus whispered. “Please. Or …
“Or I’ll come home to you.”
The dull ache in his chest felt strangely satisfied, for the moment, to speak those words even into the wind. He looked once more at the stone, but did not read the words, fearing what they said, fearing how they might pierce him right to his heart. He closed his eyes and turned away from the crater, away from the monument—
And saw the dark figure behind him, in armor with hard edges, eyes aglow in the late afternoon day like twin coals burning through the eye holes in his helm.
“That was touching,” Bellarum said, standing completely still, like a tree planted here at the edge, life upon death, another memoriam. But he was not, not any such thing, and Cyrus felt his face turn in anger at the sight, his hand falling upon the blade at his side. “No,” The God of War said, “not yet.” He smiled beneath his helm, lips split in a grin. “We will battle, Cyrus, of course, if you’re stubborn enough to desire that, but first …
“We need to talk.”
58.
Alaric
The air in Zanbellish felt surprisingly cool, crisp even, the moon overhead shining down on a city lit like Sennshann, but smaller, with buildings that didn’t go nearly so high. They were squatter, longer, as though designed so that they didn’t stretch into the sky and block the clouds and sun.
My legion was behind us, Mathurin with me as we marched through the streets. No one was out in the middle of the night, though it felt as though eyes were watching us every step of the way as we headed for the place where the slaves had revolted. I admired the buildings as we passed, luminescent in the quiet night, in the quiet streets, a different sort of place than Sennshann, which, I realized, I had grown to consider my home.
“Don’t be too impressed,” Mathurin said, guiding us along. I could hear the men talking behind me in hushed tones of awe. When I looked questioningly at him, Mathurin went on. “This city should not exist. It was built here in defiance of nature, an astounding display of ego, lik
e your opponent in a fight sticking his chin out, daring you to hit it. The ground here was raised with magic from swampy bottoms, with unstable sand not fit to build a shack on. The weather was abominable—the hottest, most insufferable humidity I have ever experienced came when I marched with guardsman out beyond the bounds of the city.”
I walked in silence, turning my attention to my sense of feeling. I caught none of what he was describing, the air balmy and mild, not a hint of the heaviness he implied.
Mathurin was smiling when I looked back at him. “You’re wondering why it’s not hot now, aren’t you? That’s the work of the Aurous. He’s created enchantments, like the artificial light in Chavoron’s and the Yartraak’s realms, except these control weather. Cool air comes off them in pleasant currents, drying out some of the wetness and soaking up some of the warmth. The Tempestus even crafted winds that dispel the typhoons that come through and wreak havoc.” He looked into the straight lines of the streets ahead of us. “This place was meant to be a statement of our grandeur. It would appear that the Eruditia means to use it to show us some much-needed humility.”
Legend Page 41
