Legend

by Robert J. Crane

  The God of War stared at him with red eyes aglow, in disbelief, his head cocked slightly to one side, his right hand on the hilt of his own blade. “You foo—”

  Cyrus charged at him, weapon raised, all his hatred poured into this strike. I’ll only get one shot, but if I can get inside his guard before he can draw his sword—

  He covered the distance between them in a second, churning the earth with the strength of his footsteps, chunks of dirt ripping free of the ground and tossed behind him with the force of his steps. Cyrus’s arms were tensed, ready to strike, ready to pour his anger into his attack, to unleash this pent-up fury into his act of war against Bellarum.

  The smell of grass and dirt filled his nose, lingering on the back of his tongue, combined with the smell of the sweat that ran down his face in rivulets. It stung his eyes but he ignored it, running hard as he watched the red eyes widen, the hand of Bellarum tensed around the hilt of his blade. He’ll never raise it in time, Cyrus thought, but no smile came, no satisfaction …

  Cyrus brought down his sword, remembering the last time he’d clashed with Bellarum. The eyes, he thought. I have to strike for the eyes, avoid the armor and—

  Bellarum moved subtly, so subtly that Cyrus’s eyes barely caught the motion of the hand not holding his sword. The God of War’s legs did not move, his stance did not change, his upper body did not so much as quiver save for that one hand, which came ’round and hit Cyrus squarely in the breastplate with an open palm—

  Cyrus saw Bellarum’s hand extended as in a dream. It was a tap, little more, that landed with but a single extended finger against Cyrus’s breastplate. Cyrus had been in full charge, the power of Praelior and his own strength all bent toward this assault. His momentum was forward, all his desire bent upon his charge—

  And it was all arrested in the moment he met Bellarum’s finger.

  The rattle that ran through Cyrus’s armor was as if a gale had struck it while it hung loose upon a wooden dummy. The pieces of plate and chain crashed against one another, a symphony of metallic sound. The force of the blow reminded Cyrus of a time when he’d been struck by a horse at full gallop, yet it was even more powerful.

  Knocked off his feet, he sailed through the air, the calm blue sky and grassy plains distorted into a whirl of color.

  He seemed to spin for hours, for days … then he smashed into the earth in a cloud of black dust and pain, his armor rattling as he rolled, all Arkaria spinning around him. His fingers were numb, his legs in agony. He looked down and saw one of them askew, tilted in the entirely wrong direction.

  His face was partially buried in the ground, blood seeping into his eye, the smell of it thick in his nose. He drooled a great foul glob of it out of his mouth, his split lips kissing the wet dirt. A hard piece of something pressed against his cheek on the inside, and Cyrus realized belatedly that it was a tooth knocked free. The pain took him over for an age, and there was a sound like bells ringing in his ears.

  “I never aspired to be the God of War,” came a voice heavy with regret from somewhere over his shoulder. Cyrus’s eyes felt heavy, and he struggled for breath. “I wanted to protect people, too. I never wanted to be called killer, murderer … demon.” A sharp intake of breath racked Cyrus with a painful cough, but the words kept coming nonetheless. “Never wanted to be scorned, hated. You embraced my name when few would.” There was a pressure at Cyrus’s shoulder, and he was suddenly turned over, Bellarum’s hand glowing in front of him. The pain subsided, but only barely, and the glowing red eyes met his as Cyrus found himself incapable of speech.

  “I guided your steps when you were in danger of faltering,” the God of War said sadly. “Tried to teach you the lessons I learned by hard experience—that protecting people is a foolish dream. Your people, my people, the elves—it doesn’t matter.” The God of War looked up into the sky, surveying it. “A dog has more decency and loyalty.” He made a noise somewhere between a sigh and an angry snort as his gaze fell back upon Cyrus. “I had thought you could be different … but perhaps you aren’t. You have in your hands the power to deliver to me that which I truly want.” He leaned over Cyrus and clenched a mailed fist, angled points sticking off the armor menacingly, capable of perforating Cyrus’s face with a punch that would destroy him. “But you won’t.”

  Bellarum stood up straight, stiffly, and was silent for a long moment. “You are wounded, but not fatally any longer. Crippled, perhaps. I don’t know, but I doubt it. I have healed you minimally, for you need time—time to think, to consider. The path you now walk is folly.” He looked down, hurt glowing behind the red in the eyes. “To challenge me is to die, and if you haven’t completely lost your reason, you will see that. I can reward you or break you, and which you receive will be your choice, Cyrus.” He reached for the hilt of the sword in his belt and drew it, waving it before Cyrus’s eyes.

  “That’s right,” Bellarum said as Cyrus’s dulled gaze slid over the sword as it blurred in front of him. It looked dimly familiar. “You recognize it, don’t you? It belonged to your wife.” His words cut through the fog in Cyrus’s mind, bringing a fresh pain of their own. Cyrus blinked at the sword as the God of War went on. “Consider carefully what I offer you—what I could return to you.” His voice went hard. “And consider what will happen to her if you refuse me again.” He sheathed the sword with an ominous, rattling clatter. “Think about it all—and we will talk again when you’ve had some time to regain your strength—and hopefully your senses.”

  And with that, the God of War left in a twinkle of spell-light, and Cyrus stared at where he had stood until the pain of his injuries dragged him away into what felt like darkest night.

  62.

  Alaric

  When Rin and I told Chavoron what had happened, I was consumed with worry. My stomach felt as though the hand of one of those massive green-skinned trolls had reached into my guts and twisted them into knots. I expected the patient man’s fury to finally break loose like one of the Tempestus’s storms, relentless and pounding, lightning dancing across the sky and thunder rattling the windows.

  We had killed the Eruditia. For the first time in an age, a Protanian had been murdered.

  Whatever I expected, fury and storm, fire and rage, I received none of it as Rin’s calm, measured words came out slowly, dropping the weight of responsibility for what had happened almost entirely upon himself. The way he explained it made me sound like a hero who stepped up to save his life as the Eruditia cast the spell that was her own doom.

  Chavoron listened quietly, pensive as ever, his hand folded over his mouth, expressing no reaction as Rin’s story came to its inevitable end. Silence hung in the Citadel of Light and Hope, no light nor hope evident as the three of us stood in a silence that I found almost more unsettling than the thought of Chavoron murdering us all in a fit of temper.

  We stood in that silence for ten minutes as Chavoron stared straight ahead with unfocused eyes. Truly, his mind was a wonder, constantly taking in and evaluating information, churning out answers to problems he had perhaps not considered only moments earlier. I could see his quiet thinking draw to a close as he blinked twice, and tears streamed out both his eyes and down his navy cheeks. “All right,” he pronounced at last, “thank you, Rin, for your report.”

  Rin stood stiff at attention, as he tended to do, and opened his mouth. I could see the words warring to get out, uncertain ones, his face flickering with the animus of eight arguments, of things he wished to add, but finally he flushed a darker shade of midnight and simply bowed his head and left soundlessly.

  Chavoron stayed standing for a long moment after Rin had left, and I waited to see if he would command me to depart. Part of me expected him to lose all pretense of control and fling me bodily out the balcony door, over the edge of the tower and down, down to the street below.

  He did not. He finally pulled his hand calmly away from where it had been stroking his goatee, stepped toward his bed, and started to prepare himself for sl
eep as he did every night.

  He followed his ritual even more carefully than usual, a blank look in his eyes all the while, his mind far, far away, most probably in Zanbellish. I watched him go through the motions, fingers fumbling in a way they never had before.

  Chavoron lay down wordlessly, without saying so much as a “Good sleep” to me, the way he usually did. I found my bed in silence as well, forgoing my usual ritual, instead crawling between my sheets in my muddied tunic, wondering if I would be throttled to death or stabbed or similarly disposed of in the night.

  I had supposedly killed a Protanian, after all, and I was still truly no more than a slave.

  I awoke from sleep I did not know I had entered to the sound of soft weeping from somewhere ahead. I sat up in my bed, the cool night air filtering in from an open balcony door. I had surrendered my sword in Zanbellish before I’d returned with Rin to the Citadel, when I’d parted ways with my men. Even through the fatigue and pain of the battle, I had seen the look of satisfaction in their eyes at their mission being accomplished.

  My covers slipped off as got to my feet and padded toward the balcony door. I peeked around its edge and found Chavoron standing there beneath a naked moon, not a cloud in the sky, his skin ashen grey in the moonlight.

  He sniffed, and I felt strangely drawn to this display, something I would have thought of only months earlier as weakness in the extreme. To weep in frustration had occasionally been my lot, and I loathed myself every time it happened, every time the potency of my emotions overwhelmed my control like a river rising in flood.

  “I suppose you think I am being ridiculous,” Chavoron said softly. “I would probably think so if I were you.” He turned, the tears sparkling like stars on his cheeks where they had fallen. “Coming from the place you do, where fights and death come with alarming regularity.” He sniffed again and turned away, looking up into the sky.

  “Death comes here, too,” I said, watching his back as I stood at the door, afraid to come further onto the balcony, as though I were intruding. “To the old. To the sick.”

  “Natural death is not to be feared, it is to be embraced,” Chavoron said. “Or by most of us, at least. I would celebrate it, the wending path coming to its end, like a journey to finally reach a home long unvisited. Others, as you have heard, do not embrace this thought so willingly. There is room for debate, for argument, for a multitude of views, but on this we all agree: the permanent death of one of our peoples to fighting, to murder … it is like a rift in our souls, a great carved-out hollow within that cannot be filled.” He hung his head.

  “She was going to kill Rin,” I said. It was close enough to the truth, but the words still felt somehow like a childish excuse.

  “I do not blame you for your unenviable choice,” Chavoron said. “You did what I sent you to do. But this thing that has happened is akin to … to two horrible choices, neither one palatable, yet the decision still needs to be made.” He shook his head. “There is little doubt in my mind that the Eruditia would not have stopped with Rin. She had a point to make, belief in her heart that it needed to be made. Only death would be a sufficient brake to her plans.” His voice cracked. “Yet I mourn her still … and all that her end portends for the rest of us.”

  “Rin said that everything would change,” I said. “But … I don’t understand.”

  “Our most important commandment has been violated,” Chavoron said. “How can things not change?”

  “But why would—”

  “Because now their eyes are open to the possibilities,” Chavoron said, extending a hand over Sennshann. Lights twinkled across the city, and I looked out, realizing that more of them than usual were lit in the night. “Even now, the word spreads. The Eruditia has brought a calamity upon us in forcing this choice. It is as bringing magic to your people—a cork has been removed from the bottle, and its contents will seep and stain. The Eruditia will not be the last of us to die.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “You’ve made this the pillar of Protanian society. Why does one death change that?”

  “Because there can be no reprisal for it,” Chavoron said calmly, and he turned to look right at me. “Do you not see? You and Rin are the instruments of this decision that the Eruditia made, and she has effectively won even by dying. If I punish or kill you, I would be committing a great injustice in order to enforce this rule.”

  “But if you need to, then do it,” I said, my mouth dry. Had I really just suggested he punish me? The words seemed to slip out naturally.

  “I appreciate the offer,” Chavoron said, “but to uphold our law by creating more injustice is … it would be the basest hypocrisy on my part. I talk about consequence, about trade-off. This trade-off, of punishing you and Rin for taking up this task, for preserving your own lives … it would be a dark, cynical maneuver, calculated to sacrifice you in hopes that it would restore the order that the Eruditia’s choice has upset. Sacrificing justice to restore order is—it is a trade-off I am not willing to make. I don’t care for the kind of ruler it would make me.” He turned around, and said, more quietly. “And I am not willing to sacrifice your life in the vain hope that it will set things right.”

  “This can’t be the end,” I said. “There are—there are things yet to be tried, things we—we need to accomplish to—”

  “Of course,” Chavoron said. “But they will not be discussed anytime soon. People will be talking of these events for months. Progress in other arenas will be impossible.”

  My mouth felt dry, and I wanted to curse what had happened. If only there’d been another way; I imagined Olivier with his hand around the sword, blade buried in Eruditia’s face, and I remembered my promise to him. “You think people will hate you for this. Blame you for what happened.” I thought of Olivier and how he had turned on me.

  “I know they will,” Chavoron said, “and they would be right to at least consider the possibility.”

  “One of my men,” I said, tentatively, wondering if this request would distract or set off Chavoron, “no longer wishes to be associated with me.” Chavoron turned, eyes straining to look at me in the dark. “I don’t know what you intend for them—”

  “I will uphold the bargain you struck,” Chavoron said quietly. “They will join our house, for to break my word would be an even greater pox upon this day. This lone man, though—what do you want done with him?”

  “He wants to go elsewhere,” I said. “A different house, if possible.”

  “Anything is possible,” Chavoron said. “But you will have to find the house willing to take him, for any of your men associated with this … this thing that has happened,” he said delicately, “they will be unwanted by any other house, as even a slave, let alone in any other capacity.”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do, then,” I said. I sighed, my ideas, my visions, my thoughts of gathering power to return home evaporating in the storm of the moment. “If you don’t wish to sacrifice me, then, at least, is there anything I can—”

  “You should leave for a time,” Chavoron said quickly, as though he’d been waiting for the offer. He looked up at me, and here I saw his mind at work, solving the problems before him.

  I opened my mouth in surprise. “Where … where would I go? To your … sanctuary?”

  “I think not,” Chavoron said, though he did not elaborate. “You should go to Jena, see her home.”

  “Her father hates me,” I said.

  “I doubt that is the case anymore,” Chavoron said quietly. “You should go there for a time, see the mines, see … see all that the Eruditia fought against.”

  “But my actions killed her,” I said, taken aback. The smell of the night air was cool, threading its way up my nose and into my mind.

  “And you should do her the grace of at least carrying that weight properly,” Chavoron said, turning his back to me once more. “Tomorrow you will go, then, and stay … for a time.”

  He did not say any more on that subject or any
other, though I stayed there at the door for hours, waiting to see if he would speak, would acknowledge me, would deign to notice my presence or give command.

  He did not.

  And in the morning I left for Jena’s home without a word spoken between us, sure that Chavoron was forever done with me.

  63.

  Cyrus

  “Are you ready to go home now?” Vara asked, the sun glinting on her shining hair like burnished gold.

  The chill that had seemed to have crept into Cyrus’s bones vanished like snow on a warm day when the sun rose in the sky. He felt the warmth seeping in, soaking into his skin through the layers of armor and mail as he teetered slightly atop Windrider. He took a deep breath and fresh air rushed into his lungs to replace the stale smell of dirt that had been lingering on the back of his tongue.

  Windrider was moving forward at a canter, and Cyrus swayed gently with the powerful horse’s movements. It was a feeling of freedom under the open sun, and Cyrus blinked as he stared at his wife. She was right there, almost close enough to touch, her silver breastplate gleaming in the sun. She wore an impish smile that teased him, urged him forward. There was suggestion and promise hidden in it, that lazy curve of her lips beckoning him forward at her invitation, as if to say that to go home would hold another possibility, one that was warmer even than this lazy afternoon.

  Cyrus took another deep breath and felt his lungs swell as he closed his eyes again. The brightness shone through his shut eyelids, and he felt a smile spread slowly across his face. He opened his eyes and she was still there, still atop her horse, eyebrow slightly cocked in the way she did, questioning him oh-so-pleasantly. “Well?” she asked, holding tightly the reins of her stallion, the Plains of Perdamun spread out in every direction before them. “Are you ready to go home?”