Master (Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  Lost to him.

  “Do you?” Curatio asked. “Do you indeed?” The healer stood tall and brushed past Cyrus, his mace in hand. “I know more about death that you could possibly even imagine, Malpravus.” The elf’s voice was low and deadly, heavy with menace of a like Cyrus had rarely heard.

  “Your power is limited, healer,” Malpravus said.

  “Actually,” Curatio said, and Cyrus could hear the smile in the way he said it, “it’s yours that’s limited.” He raised the mace high above his head and a blinding flash of white light blasted through the chamber. A shrieking whine deafened Cyrus, leaving a hissing in his ears even as the light faded before him, forcing him to blink the flashes away.

  The dead bodies at Malpravus’s command stood motionless, and then, one by one, began to tumble to floor, lifeless. Cyrus watched them crumple, puppets with their strings cut loose, until the only ones still standing were those behind the Council of Twelve’s desk.

  “Intriguing,” Malpravus said. Cyrus could see the tendrils of hate behind the necromancer’s impassive expression. “It seems that I am not the only master of death within this chamber.”

  “To the contrary,” Curatio said, “I am much more versed in the power of life and am well studied in guaranteeing its end.” He made another motion, tossing a ball of purest spell energy of a sort Cyrus had never even seen. It cascaded with living will across the chamber, like a bolt of lightning covered in glowing red water, forking and flowing toward their foes. The desk in front of Malpravus exploded in a shower of splinters even as a light swallowed him whole into a return spell. Carrack followed into a green light of his own as Rhane Ermoc and Orion both lunged for the man, disappearing along with him.

  Cyrus watched them go with a barely contained fury, the smoke from Curatio’s attack settling in the fore of the room even as splinters of wood fell before them like rain.

  “What … the hell was that?” Vaste asked. Curatio did not answer; he slumped slightly as though he were feeling suddenly weak, bent at the waist. The troll waited a moment. “Oh. Let me guess. More heresy.”

  “Have you ever seen a healer do anything like that before?” Terian asked Vaste, in a voice that plainly accorded him the respect due an idiot. “No? Probably heresy, then.”

  “I have never seen such a thing from any caster of spells,” Mendicant said, voice squeaking in awe. “That was … wondrous.”

  “Wondrous, yes,” Vaste said, “and also carries a death sentence.”

  “They can only kill you once, fool,” Terian said. “Stop whinging.”

  “Perhaps you don’t know this, being a dark knight,” Vaste said, “but there’s this spell called resurrection, and with it they can kill you over and over. I know, because I can cast it.”

  “Where did you learn that spell?” Curatio asked, speaking at last, sounding more than a little drawn. “I hope it wasn’t anywhere that would get you in trouble for heresy.”

  “Touché,” Vaste said. “So … what now?”

  Cyrus walked a slow, steady path to the back of the chamber, to an exit he had seen when last he had been here. He walked across the rich carpeting, pushing his way through the wooden doors that led to the rope-pulled box that transported guests of the Council from the bottom of the tower to the top. To his right stood an open balcony. He steeled himself and swept out upon it.

  Reikonos was burning.

  Black smoke stretched in heavy clouds across the horizon, pillars puffing blackness into the sky. The wood and brick construction of his city lay before Cyrus’s eyes. Dark armies ran through the streets, visible to his eye even from here, like little globules of blood running whichever way gravity pulled them. The screams were one cacophonous horror all melded together, the volume muffled by his distance from the fray.

  “My gods,” Vaste said from his side, staring at the spectacle.

  The smell of burning flesh was upon the wind, and burning other things, too. The wind whipped and the ash was falling. Snow was on the ground, on the rooftops, but the soot of the fires was turning it dark already. He could almost taste it on his tongue. Cyrus put a hand upon the railing of the balcony and stared upon his city, burned, ruined, ravaged.

  “Cyrus,” Vara said gently from beside him. He had not noticed her arrival. “It will do you no good to look upon this. There is nothing to be done here.”

  “Nothing?” Cyrus’s voice was a harsh whisper, a deathly one, and fury filled it to brimming.

  “That’s not entirely true, is it?” Terian asked, easing into place at his other ear. “You know it. You can’t defend this city now, that’s sure; there’s no wall you can put up, no bridge you can guard and let them run against you, match their power against yours in a futile, foolish grind to their death. They are inside, they are everywhere, and wild with the taste of blood and slaughter, these dead.”

  “Because of you,” Cyrus said, and his head turned slowly to take in the dark knight who spoke into his ear.

  “Not only because of me,” Terian said quietly.

  “They like the taste of blood and slaughter?” Cyrus asked, and he could feel the craze of rage force his lips wide into a smile that was near-madness. “I’ll drown them in it.”

  “For once,” Terian said, eyes a little wild, “don’t be the fool warrior who thinks with his gonads that I always—falsely, I might add—accused you of being.”

  “It wasn’t that falsely,” Vara murmured.

  “Use your shrewd mind,” Terian said, ignoring her, “calculate the odds against you in this fight.”

  “And let my city burn?” Cyrus finished the natural extension of the thought, watching the black smoke of the fires drift just ahead of him.

  “You can end this,” Terian said. “But you won’t end it here, and not by throwing yourself into a battle you can’t hope to win. If you want to turn this army around, you need to provide them with a reason to walk away so compelling, they cannot possibly stay for another moment of pillage.”

  “You magnificent bastard,” Vara whispered.

  “Pretend for once I need you to do my thinking for me,” Cyrus said, leveling his gaze on Terian. “What would you have me do?”

  “We go to Saekaj,” Terian whispered, and Cyrus caught a hint of fear in him from the mere statement. “You have a dagger matched against a sword. Saekaj is the exposed neck. Open it and watch the sword lose its menace.”

  “You want me to invade your own home,” Cyrus said quietly. “To stomp down your doors, settle your scores—”

  “I want you kill the God of Darkness!” It burst out of Terian in a fury. “I want you—you wielder of that,” he pointed at Praelior, still clutched in Cyrus’s hand, “I want you to free my damned people, because no one else can. I want you to turn loose your rage and set us all free in one stroke of the sword.”

  “Killing Yartraak will take more than one stroke of a sword,” Curatio said from behind them, his voice still drawn. Cyrus looked to his face and found lines there, age that he had not shown moments earlier.

  “I want you to save my home,” Terian said, and there was weight behind the words that forced Cyrus to look upon the dark knight. His expression was soft within the helm, a quivering lip visible, buried in all the spikes and steel. “I want you to save us, Cyrus Davidon … to save our people. Mine and yours.”

  Cyrus looked out across the horizon, across the fires, across the burning, the killing and the war. The stench of death was with him, hung in his nostrils, the smoke lidded his eyes and made him want to blink them clear. But there is no blinking them clear, is there? No washing them clean of what I’ve seen, no swing of the sword I can make anywhere in this city that will end this, stop the killing.

  He looked south, past the massive city walls, and saw an army there, still filing into gates like maggots bursting from the dead bodies that comprised it. Somewhere beyond his sight was an end to that army, but he could not imagine it in any of the endless fields that he knew rested beyond the gates of Reikon
os. The end was far beyond, far to the south … somewhere in a cave, beneath the cool earth, where darkness made its home.

  The decision was made, and his heart nearly screamed for joy at it. He looked to his right and saw Vara there, cool with certainty. Her hand was upon his arm, as though she had intended to restrain him somehow from Terian. It moved even as he watched, pulled back, with a final pat of … reassurance? She pulled it back and drew herself to her full height. Her eyes were certain, too, and mirrored his own.

  “We go,” Cyrus said at last. “Mendicant … take us back to Sanctuary, if you please.”

  “And?” Terian’s voice cracked. “Then?”

  Cyrus felt the sweet chill of his fury, so righteous in his anger, so delicious it masked the fear perfectly, felt it raise the bumps on his flesh. “And then … we go to Saekaj … into the halls of infinite darkness that Yartraak calls his own—” He looked Terian right in the face,”—and I stab that godless son of a bitch right in the eye until he’s nothing but a shrunken corpse.” Cyrus’s words crashed from him like a righteous fury, burning the air with vengeful certainty. “Just like the last one we killed.”

  Chapter 73

  “I need Fortin with us on this,” Cyrus said, already issuing orders before the spell energy had dissipated to fully reveal the Sanctuary foyer. “Use whatever chain of teleportation you must to get him here.” He caught an acknowledgment muttered from Mendicant before the goblin skittered off between the towering legs of those around him to disappear into the crowd. Cyrus took in the waiting throng with a glance, still swelled to full from his address just an hour earlier, spearmen standing encircled around the great seal. They seemed to relax as he and his small force appeared.

  “What news, General?” Longwell shouted from the balcony above. The torches crackled on the walls, and the hearth roared over the sound of the silence in the cavernous room. Longwell held his lance tight, at attention, like a tower hanging over the room. Like the Citadel, Cyrus thought, oddly.

  “Reikonos is fallen,” Cyrus said, trying to keep his voice and face from betraying his emotion. “The walls are overrun, the armies are in the city.”

  “Do we … retreat?” The voice came quiet and scared from somewhere in the crowd. It was followed by an uneasy silence that told Cyrus everything he needed to know about where his guild was standing. The fear was palpable, the sense of inevitability that came from watching the foundations of your world crumble around you.

  “You’re asking if we should run?” Cyrus spoke to no one in particular, to everyone he could see. He jutted his jaw, gave it consideration. “It is a reasonable question, to be pondered by reasonable men. When the world is fully arrayed against you, why should you go out and greet it with sword and spell, knowing that you will almost certainly be struck down?” He took the whole room in with an easy sweep of his gaze. “Why fight? Why fight when you feel you cannot win? When the fear of what you are facing is so swelling as to cripple you? As if it could grab you by the face and shake you until your heart quails at the thought of opposition. They’re reasonable feelings, for reasonable men. Retreat? Aye, most would.”

  He looked forth, upon his waiting audience, gaze sweeping over countless eyes spellbound and hanging upon him. “BUT WE ARE NOT MOST,” Cyrus said, raising his voice to the rafters. “For whatever reason you joined this guild—gold, power, strength—you are here now. You are one of us, now. And I am here to tell you that our purpose is not simple enrichment, that our strength is not gathered in days of glory to be rattled like a saber to impress those around us. Sanctuary is no mere army for hire to the highest bidder so that our vaults may overflow and our purses may clink when we walk. We were meant to be more; a bulwark against the forces of darkness that threaten to swallow the land—”

  “Darkness, like Yartraak, see?” Vaste muttered under his breath. “So clever.”

  “Hush,” Vara said.

  “I know the fear that you feel,” Cyrus said, “looking at the overwhelming odds mounted against us. They have an army of the dead. They have raised some of our own against us. I take this as insult, and I hope you do as well. Fear them? A reasonable man would—”

  “But not a woman,” Vara muttered.

  “Now you hush,” Vaste replied.

  “—but this is not a place for reason,” Cyrus said.

  “Also true,” Vaste said.

  “Not now,” Cyrus said under his breath then let his voice return to its previous sweeping volume. “Reason tells us to run in the face of fear. Reason would tell you to withdraw from the battle. But reason is not needed here, not now. Courage! Courage is what we cry for. Courage will bring you to the front of the battle lines, will see you against the monsters, the dead and the God of Darkness himself, and see you back safely! Do not fear that which stands before you. Do not run in the face of your enemies. They are not unstoppable, no matter what they may have you think.” Cyrus drew his sword, whirled it in a tight circle once, and held it aloft so that the soft blue glow shone upon the assembled army. “I once looked in the face of a man who was an enemy and I said we accepted none but the brave to roam within these halls. I call upon that bravery in every one of you now. I call upon you to look within, to dive deep into yourselves and find your courage. Courage to stand against the insurmountable. To go into the darkness without fear, because your fellows are with you. We are none of us alone, and as we descend into the darkness of Saekaj Sovar—” He caught the ripple of surprise at that announcement, “—we will be there for each other. We will strike into the black heart of our enemy, and we will kill Yartraak—and end this war.”

  A stunned silence had swept the room throughout the entirety of his speech, and Cyrus felt himself swallow heavily, hoping it was not visible under his gorget. He waited, surveying the eyes, not quite sure what he saw within them—

  “LET’S KILL THE RUDDY BASTARD!” Andren cried, and his shout was swept up in a chorus of approbation so loud that Cyrus felt as though he might be deafened. Armor rattled, swords were held aloft and shaken, and the cry of fury among the members of Sanctuary was such that Cyrus could scarcely believe it.

  “Looks like they’re willing to follow you into blackest death,” Vara said into his ear.

  “What about you?” Cyrus asked, not taking his eyes off the cheering crowd. “Will you follow me into darkness?”

  “If you can find a way to get us there,” Vara said smoothly, prickling a thought in Cyrus’s mind.

  “Dammit,” Cyrus said. “Their portal is bound to be guarded.” He searched for Curatio and found him standing beside Terian, only a few feet behind him. “I don’t suppose you have a secret path into Saekaj?”

  Curatio smiled. “Well, actually …”

  Chapter 74

  They appeared in a small flash, a group of only ten. The room was barely large enough for that, a confined space that reminded Cyrus of the sort of closet in which one might store brooms, but slightly larger. Cyrus’s eyes did not adjust but to show him dark walls, stone-like in origin; finally his eyes brightened through the aid of magic so that he could see the grey stonework that surrounded him from floor to ceiling.

  Cyrus looked over his shoulder, trying to find a portal. He glanced down, looking at the floor then to Curatio, who stood at his right. “It’s in the ceiling,” Curatio said with a smile. Cyrus looked up and saw wooden beams stretching off in either direction; if there was a portal up there, it was wider and taller than the room, and they had to have been right in the middle of it so as not to see a single trace of its stone, runed border.

  “How do you know about this?” Vaste asked.

  “I have lived a very long time,” Curatio said, a little mysteriously. “Long enough to have been acquainted with someone who dated Marei, Goddess of Night, before her death.”

  “And they just happened to give you the spell to teleport to this portal?” Vaste sounded a little suspicious.

  “Indeed,” Curatio said. “It was a sad thing when she died; I doubt
Yartraak even knows that someone else can come to this portal other than him.”

  “Wait, what?” This came from Terian. “Ohhhh … this is how he returns to the palace.”

  “Yes,” Curatio said. “With this here, he can keep his soul bound in his realm, able to use the return spell at any point.”

  Cyrus felt a slight shiver. “The gods use the same magic as you do?”

  “Most people use a very basic version of the magic the gods use,” Curatio said, sounding like he was breathing more than a word of caution. “You would do well to remember that; it is not as though even the fiercest wizard in Arkaria could step into easy battle with the likes of someone such as Yartraak and win. He would overwhelm you with both physical strength and his magic.”

  “Don’t fight him alone,” Cyrus said, “got it.”

  “I will need to bring in the army a few at a time,” Curatio said. “I would advise staying as close to this room as possible; wandering about the palace would be exceedingly foolish.”

  “You could teach someone else the spell,” Cyrus said. “Couldn’t you?”

  Curatio sighed. “Unfortunately, not easily. The way that magic is taught in these days in order to avoid the blocks that we call heresy is quite appalling to someone like myself who was around when the fundamentals of magic were discovered and expanded upon.” He pursed his lips in the dark. “Or, as I have heard others say … ‘Kids these days.’” He smiled, and vanished in the twinkling of light from his return spell.

  “We need to clear the room,” Cyrus said, and there was a sound before him of a door squeaking open. He looked ahead and saw Odellan peeking out through the ever-so-slight light that came through the crack. After a moment he opened it wider, enough for them to pass through into a hallway.

  Cyrus stepped out, long walls stretching in two directions. They stood at a right angle, a turn of the hall; it stretched before them and to their right, curving off into another turn some hundred feet ahead. There were other doors before the turn of the hall, and Cyrus found himself wondering where they led.