Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness

by Robert J. Crane

  “Or at least his sword,” Kahlee said shrewdly.

  Terian froze, his mouth suddenly dry. “You can’t take Cyrus Davidon’s sword.”

  “It is physically possible,” Vincin said.

  “If you can pry it from his cold, dead hands,” Terian said, “yes. Personally, I would not rate your chances terribly high on that, and you’d make a hell of an enemy in the process in the form of the entire guild of Sanctuary, whose help we could dearly use. It’s a terrible idea, and I suggest you rule it out now. The sword isn’t the coup, in any case. The wielder is …” He clenched his teeth, swallowing pride he didn’t even know he had left. Dammit, Cyrus, now I see you for what you were all along—the winner for good reason. “Cyrus is perhaps the greatest warrior in Arkaria, even absent the sword. With the sword in his hand, he could kill Yartraak. You give it to some other idiot and run them into the throne room, they’ll fail.”

  “What if that other idiot is you?” Kahlee asked.

  Terian felt the weight of the blade at his side, the red sword of his father that he’d hoarded for his own for so long. “I’m a good swordsman, but … I’m not Cyrus. I’m better with an axe, in fact.”

  “I cannot tell you how pleased I am to hear you say that,” a voice came from behind the stone door, causing Kahlee to jump to her feet, Terian swiveling his head as the office door swung wide again. This time, it was not a friendly face that crept from behind it, nor one that Terian saw any hint of pleasure in.

  “Father,” Terian said, as Amenon Lepos stepped into the room, his helm under his arm and his face dark, the skin desiccated on his cheeks with a hint of rot set upon it. He looked humorless, as always. In his other hand, he carried a long, black axe, the blade swung over his shoulder as though he were ready to use it on all three of them, his face as expressionless as if he were stepping into a battle with his enemies.

  30.

  Aisling

  She lurked on a rooftop in Sovar, one of the ones that didn’t have a cloth dwelling pitched atop it. Her eyes fell over the whole of the town before her, down the hard slope into the back deep, the lowest part of the slum city. I may not have been born here, but I belong here in the eyes of Dagonath Shrawn. How funny is it that he has never once considered that I came from the same place he did?

  Traditionally, Sovar in midday was a raucous, rowdy place, but now the dark elven voices were hushed. She’d walked the streets in this place for the last several weeks and been surprised at how empty they seemed compared to the days when she’d lived here. She remembered well the days when she’d disappeared into this city, rich girl hiding from her past, and every alleyway had been packed with life, teeming with people scratching by on the scraps thrown to them by the Sovereign.

  At the thought of the Sovereign, she felt a very real surge of disquiet that she couldn’t immediately toss into the gaping abyss inside her. She’d dealt with him for weeks, after all, him and Shrawn, asking the same questions over and over about Cyrus Davidon, trying to find a new approach to get her back into his graces. She’d felt the sting of their insults, of their desire to call into question her skills, even her motivation. They’d threatened her, they’d threatened Norenn, and Shrawn had given him a good beating right in her presence.

  She’d played along, of course, murmured words of assent, but Yartraak had actually ended up being her saving grace on this one count. Two weeks into her “interrogation,” he’d surrendered the idea of sending her back to Cyrus Davidon to re-ingratiate herself to him. With red eyes alight with new possibilities, he’d dismissed her, and she’d slipped away before Shrawn could have her dragged somewhere to wait for him.

  Sovar hadn’t exactly been a perfect solution, though, not at all. She wasn’t on the run, after all, so much as she was giving Dagonath Shrawn some time to deal with other issues that were surely on his mind. She wasn’t invisible here, after all. If Shrawn was worth his salt as a dealer of information, he’d have known where she was renting a room for quite some time now, as she’d made little effort to hide it. She had troubled herself to hide the second place she’d rented, though she was virtually certain Shrawn would have gotten a clear idea of her “back-up” plan as well.

  And that was fine, because neither of them was really part of her plan at all.

  She crouched atop the roof near the front gate of Sovar, looking down on the town below, and waited. She figured Shrawn would send someone any day now; it was bound to happen. She’d be summoned back before the Sovereign, be told what to do once more—it was virtually assured that it would be the order she’d rather reluctantly accepted would be coming.

  To kill Cyrus Davidon.

  She watched a string of orphans working their way across the rooftops, leaping with skill and carelessness born of youth, running and jumping from point to point. She cringed as she observed them; though hardly maternal, she nonetheless winced at the thought of a dire end for at least some of them. The tops of the buildings in Sovar were deceptive in their construction. Some were cloth, some were fired clay, and some were weaker materials covered over to look like they were either. It all made for frightfully unpredictable footing, and she knew that she would not entrust her life to that method of movement unless she had absolutely no other choice.

  “Get down here, girl!” came a voice from the alleyway below, drawing Aisling’s calm glance to the figure in the darkened space between the two buildings. Three floors down, a grey-cloaked wizard with a pointed hat waited, looking up so that Aisling could see her pink, fleshy face and the straw hair running out from beneath the hat.

  Aisling looked down at her with a detached calm. She took a breath, taking her time getting down by jumping lightly off the roof and catching herself on a rock window with strong fingertips, then scaling her way down to the one below and finally to the alley floor.

  “Look like a monkey of the southern lands, you do,” Verity huffed as Aisling stood back up next to her. “Climbing around on buildings like one of those ruffians that darts from place to place stealing everything they can get their dirty hands on.”

  Aisling’s eyes fell on Verity’s hands, clean and pristine, wrapped around her wooden staff. “I’m surprised your hands aren’t dirtier.”

  Verity reached out and hit her on the side of the head with the staff. Aisling let her, again, but this time it was hard enough to close her eyes and draw her hand to the site of the blow, prompting a ringing sound in her ears. “Ouch,” she said, playing it up to be worse than it was.

  “You’ve got a bloody cheek,” Verity said as Aisling came back to upright again, blanching from the blow. That didn’t take much in the way of feigning. “Think you’re hiding out here? Shrawn knows about your place in the mids.” Verity grinned, wide and satisfied. “And about the other one in the Back Deep, too, in case you think there’s anything that escapes his notice.”

  Aisling kept her eyes partially closed, playing off the lingering pain of the blow to add a layer of disbelief that turned to hopelessness. She didn’t speak, however, unsure of how subtle she should play the disappointment of being “caught.” “What do you want?” she asked instead, croaking out the question with a modicum of pain.

  “Your orders have come in,” Verity said, hard and with no small amount of glee. Aisling had a vision of her as the type of person who would hang a body over a crevasse just to watch them twist, promising to pull them up if they did just one thing for her but laughing inside all the while.

  “Fine,” Aisling said, opening her eyes the rest of the way, letting the pain of the blow fade from her reaction to the wizard. “What does he want me to do?” She injected just the right amount of subservience, that little cross where defiance met utter lack of ability. She doesn’t need to know what I’ve got up my sleeve. A little flutter filled her stomach; it had been a while since she’d seen Genn in any case, so all she had was what she’d come up with on her own.

  “He wants you to go back to Sanctuary,” Verity said, already preparing her spe
ll. Her love of suffering sprang up in her expression once more, and Aisling imagined the wizard squashing a fat bug, slowly twisting with it caught on the edge of her boot, the guts squirting out from the force of the trapping. “One last time …”

  And there it is, Aisling knew, as the world of Sovar, of the dark underworld began to vanish around her, as predicted. She almost felt a pang of regret for what she knew was coming. But only almost.

  Sorry, Cyrus.

  The thought was all the care she had left to spare for him, and it disappeared as easily as she did, whisked away to perform the task immediately at hand, her dagger ready to do the dark task she’d been preparing to do for years.

  31.

  J’anda

  One Hundred Years Earlier

  The hated elves fled over the hills of the Plains of Perdamun, their shining armor catching the light of the sun as J’anda Aimant watched with a smile on his lips, his robe drawn tight against the winter chill. That will teach them, he thought with a great satisfaction as the rout unfolded before him, an army twice the size of the one he stood with breaking and running after only a minor bloodying at best.

  “I doubt they even know they’ve been run ’round by an enchanter,” General Ardin Vardeir said as he sat ahorse, watching the fleeing elves. The tingle of the southern winter was perhaps weaker than in the lands of the humans up north, but it was far colder than the caves of Saekaj or Sovar that J’anda was accustomed to. “I’ve never seen anything quite like that, lad—though I hope to again, darkness willing.”

  J’anda took the compliment in the way it was intended and bowed low as his youthful body allowed. “The pleasure was mine, General, though I must say, you should be disappointed in the rest of your enchanter corps.” He glanced back at the rest of the spell casters behind him with a smile that was as smug as it was assured. “If they only held up half of what I was able to do, we could run the elves from here back to Pharesia without them ever thinking to turn around and fight back.”

  “And you’re humble, too,” Vardeir said with a light laugh. “What’s your name again, lad? Amante?”

  “Aimant,” J’anda said, bowing a little lower. “J’anda Aimant.”

  “Well done, Aimant,” Vardeir said, a smile of satisfaction running across his lips. “I think it’s about time we pursued, turned this retreat into a rout. Wouldn’t want these elves to think they’ve been anything less than hammered into vek’tag steak at our hands, after all.” He urged his horse forward, and part of the army started to follow. The smell of horses was strong in the air, and the General turned to issue a final order as his officer corps galloped after him. “Trimane! See that this enchanter’s name is recorded for special mention to the Sovereign!” He said something else as well, but it was lost under the thunder of hoof beats.

  J’anda stood upon the hill, looking at the dark elven army taking up pursuit of the elves, and barely noticed when the young man on horseback came to a halt at his side. “Well done,” the youthful voice came down, almost playful.

  J’anda looked up into a coyly smiling face, with slight dimples in the cheeks making the young man look perhaps younger than he might have without them. His dark hair was swept over his shoulder but loose, hanging there ready to whip in the wind if he spurred the horse to a gallop. His dark blue flesh was a deeper navy tone that indicated significant amounts of time out of the caves of Saekaj and Sovar, but his manner was all Saekaj. He wore armor under his cloak, and what could be seen under the draping coat told the enchanter that this warrior was a high born.

  J’anda bowed swiftly, again. He’d learned long ago as a child of the mids in Sovar that deference was one’s best protection as a citizen of the lower chamber against those from the higher ranks of Saekaj. “Kind of you to say.”

  “It’s a rare talent that can fool a whole army,” the young man said with that same smile. It was delicate, even though the young man did not look delicate. He’d caught the name, hadn’t he? What had the General called him? Trimane?

  “I suppose I’m unusual in that regard,” J’anda said, looking behind him into the corps of spell casters for the army. He caught a glimpse of Vracken Coeltes slinking behind a healer, sullen eyes nearly hidden in the shadow of his cowl.

  “It’s always pleasant to stray from the norm,” Trimane said, watching him carefully, as though he’d said something of great significance and was watching for J’anda’s reaction.

  J’anda let only a flicker of emotion crack through. “Indeed,” he said, replying as carefully as he could, “I find the unusual path to be the only one worth following.”

  “I hope to see you back in Saekaj, then, J’anda Aimant,” Trimane said, bowing his head. “I’ll make certain that the company secretary makes clear distinction about your role in this battle.” With a last look, he moved his horse into action and rode off, over the hill, after the retreating elves.

  J’anda stood watching as the cavalry rode in pursuit of the army he’d broken—well, helped break, anyway. He felt the stirrings of pride as he watched his countrymen run down the elves, and he watched, hoping to catch just one more look at one of the figures receding in the distance.

  32.

  Terian

  Terian looked at the axe cradled in his father’s hand with a growing sense of unease, his hand hovering over the scabbard of his sword. He shot Kahlee a glance and saw a similar sense of misgiving plastered upon her face, just a shade paler than it usually was. How long was he listening out there? How much of our treason did he hear?

  “Your servants are absent,” Amenon said with a crackling voice, the axe brandished high. It was smooth and a little ornate, not the sort of thing he tended to carry. Father likes swords. What the hell is he doing with—?

  Amenon tossed the axe down at Terian’s feet. It clattered across the floor with a hard rattle, settling with its wide blades almost touching his boot. He brought his eyes up to look at his father and saw the customary lack of amusement there. “I’ve brought you a replacement for the sword you now wear. Give it back to me.”

  Terian glanced at the axe, then to his father. “Say please.”

  Amenon’s eyes narrowed. “Please.”

  Terian unbelted and slid the scabbard free, tossing it wordlessly at his father’s feet.

  “That easy?” Amenon asked, watching him with slitted eyes, as though he couldn’t believe it.

  “It’s better suited to you in any case,” Terian said coolly. “I’ve missed having an axe, so …” He looked down at his new weapon. “Is it any good?”

  “It’s mystical,” Amenon said, stooping to retrieve his sword. He snatched it up hungrily, fingers fumbling with it as though he were nervous. “I took it off a dwarf in the Riverlands, some mercenary who fought better than any of the other creatures I’ve encountered in battle of late. It imbues you with a little extra strength, some dexterity.” He placed the sword in his belt carefully, his hands almost shaking. “It’s not exactly an even trade, but—”

  “Your weapon was handed to you by the Sovereign, crafted by the best blacksmiths and spell-weavers in Saekaj,” Terian said with a faint shrug and a sense of resignation. His eyes flitted to the red blade as his father slid it out of the scabbard a few inches. He felt no hunger to possess it any longer, just a deep regret for the choices he’d made with it in his grasp. If only I could blame it on the sword … “It doesn’t have many equals.”

  “True enough,” Amenon said, sliding the blade back down to the depths of the scabbard. He straightened, and there was something satisfied in the way he looked now. “Malpravus sent me to find you on an errand of his own as well as mine.”

  Terian cocked an eyebrow, then looked around at Kahlee and Vincin. “Did he? Do tell.”

  “Our army is coming to a place called Leaugarden, in the Riverlands,” Amenon said. “It’s the last strategic breaking point before our armies come out of bottleneck. He expects a fight and has inklings that the Council of Twelve will attempt to buy the loya
lty of Sanctuary to assist this battle.”

  Terian nodded slowly, his earlier sense of resignation flooding deeper within him. “Makes sense. Is there a wizard going back anytime soon?”

  “The one who brought me here waits for you,” Amenon said. His face was utterly devoid of feeling. “Haste would be wise.”

  “Yeah,” Terian said, gathering himself up and taking hold of the axe at his feet, hoisting it over his shoulder. “Malpravus isn’t much for waiting.”

  “The war waits for no man,” Vincin offered sagely, prompting Terian to look back to his father-in-law. “Think on what we discussed.”

  “I’ve already thought about it, as Kahlee told you,” Terian said, feigning a smile. “Be assured, I’m in full accord with you.” Vincin’s eyes flashed with light. Hopefully he isn’t of a mind to betray me. “We’ll talk about it when I get back, but until then—”

  “Arrangements to make,” Vincin agreed and looked meaningfully at Kahlee. “Contingencies to consider in all things, of course.” He smiled weakly. “I’ll have everything ready by the time you return.”

  Terian tried to hide his relief. It’s good to know that when the second most powerful man in Saekaj intends to betray the Sovereign, he’s at least got the power to protect his family. Especially when he might not be the one doing the betraying … Terian extended his hand and Vincin grasped it, giving it a good shake. “Thank you,” Terian said. He kissed Kahlee lightly on the cheek, catching the full meaning of her gaze telling him more than she would have said in the presence of both their fathers. “Where did you leave this wizard?” he asked Amenon.

  “Downstairs,” Amenon said, with a hint of regret as he ran a gauntleted hand over the stone door. Probably remembering the days when it was his office. “I will be leaving you there; I need to return to the Legion of Darkness for the next phase of training our new class.”