Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness

by Robert J. Crane

  “Yes,” J’anda agreed, though not entirely certain what he was agreeing with.

  Screams and cries of rage and anger mixed with those of fear and pain, groans mingled with exhortations, fury with exhaustion. It was an unpleasant sound, battle of a kind he’d never heard before, and he caught only glimpses of what was going on as the line between him and the front dissolved.

  “Should we cast something?” Zieran asked. Her question was jarring. J’anda watched an angry, weaponless woman in threadbare red clothing hurl herself onto a guard and meet a blade straight in the chest. She looked down at the mortal wound as dark blue blood seeped out, staining her ragged tunic, and she punched the guard in the face and rained hammering blow after hammering blow on him until he was pulled down under the tide of the mob.

  “I …” J’anda paused mid-thought. Over the shoulders of the soldiers and on the other side of the fight, he caught sight of a familiar staff, the purple glowing globe within its metal framing held aloft. Shrieks of fear radiated out to its right, the sound of soldiers losing their courage from magical ends.

  “Coeltes,” he whispered under his breath, eyes narrowing to slits as he caught sight of his quarry.

  “J’anda—” Zieran shouted, but he was already pushing his way through the crowd, casting spell after spell to ensnare the minds of those in the mob, to mesmerize them for just a moment, creating a small wave of forward momentum on his own side that let him walk ahead as though the sea were pulling aside for his sake.

  All thought of sides forgotten, J’anda moved ahead to confront his enemy—the only one he truly felt he had left.

  78.

  Aisling

  She could move in the crowd like a shadow, unseen and too fast by half for those around her. She deftly dodged through holes where they appeared and slipped past the pointed spear of a Saekaj guard without even needing to worry that he’d stab her. Her alacrity was off the charts, and she could sense that the perception that others had of her was somehow altered, as though the tinge of darkness that had appeared the moment Terrgenden had thrust the blade in her hand made the eyes of others more likely to slide right off her like water off a slippery rock.

  She tried to decide what she should do about it and resigned herself to following the crowd for now. It wasn’t a place she wanted to be, not truly, but it felt like where she needed to be. An implement of justice? An advocate for it? She watched another guard torn apart, this time up close and slowly, and wondered at the man’s story. Was he some deep, dark Saekaj villain, spending his every day glorying in the pain of those beneath him? Was he some sainted soul who tried not to hurt anyone as best he could while doing his job? No, more likely he was somewhere in between, but it bothered her to think of him as a person while the crowd ripped him to pieces and left only shreds of him, as though they’d been turned into some undead scourge.

  She glanced around her, unhurried now that she had a weapon in hand that made her feel secure. It was a strange thing to stand in the middle of a battle for once and feel not totally wary. She’d crept in behind lines of enemies before, but now she was in among those she supposed were almost her own—though she did not feel that way about them. She was watching them slam into a line of forces directed by Saekaj, by—

  Yes. There he was.

  Dagonath Shrawn.

  He sat up the slope, his staff in hand, barking orders that were lost to the roar of the mob overwhelming his guards. He was far enough back not to be imperiled, yet, but she suspected that would not last, especially since she was now at the front of the crowd surging through. She glanced back to see Norenn behind her a ways and started forward, threading her way through the opposition nearly unseen, wondering exactly what she’d do when she finally got to Shrawn.

  79.

  Terian

  The battle had been joined, and it was utter havoc. The guards were absent their position at the gates of Saekaj, and Terian had passed through the empty streets fearing the worst. When he’d found them all in lines snaking their way down toward Sovar, he’d known that it was bad. This, perhaps, was worse than he’d feared, though, this narrow and frightening hell that seemed as though it were a cauldron ready to boil over. He could see the battle down the way, sensed the guards at the back of the line already nervous at the sounds coming from ahead, the clamor and clangor of a fight that did not sound remotely civilized.

  “Oh, my,” Terian said, and looked back at Erith, who trailed behind him. He blinked, looking for— “Where’s Kahlee?”

  “Huh?” Erith turned her head, looking along with him, as though his wife would materialize out of the air. “I … didn’t notice she was gone until now.”

  Terian frowned, glancing about. “Should have known she had her own plan when she refused to square with me about her motives.” He shook his head. “If this gets ugly, make sure you have your return spell ready to run.”

  “Oh, I will,” Erith said, plunging in behind him as he started pushing his way through startled and frightened guards who seemed only too happy to let him pass, as though his movement toward the front would somehow keep them from having to advance. “But what’s going to happen to you if you get overwhelmed?”

  “I’ll die, I reckon,” Terian said. “Don’t want to join me, do you?” He shot a grin back at her, not letting his nervousness show. It took a second, but she shook her head. “Run if you need to. No point in both of us going down if it turns sour.”

  “You’re a real hero, Terian,” she said, and for the first time he didn’t hear sarcasm in her voice.

  “Well, let’s hope I live long enough to have someone other than you tell me so,” he said then froze as he heard a shout from behind him. As he turned his head and took in what he saw, he felt his stomach drop precipitously.

  “Wow,” Erith said, and the sarcasm was back. “The odds on that one just got a hell of a lot longer, didn’t they?”

  “They did indeed,” Terian said, and he could feel the color draining from his face as he began pushing his way back through the line of stunned guardsmen, making his way back up to the fore of the army, which was now back the way they came. “Very, very long.”

  Up the slope and descending toward them quickly, Amenon Lepos stood shoulder to shoulder with Sareea Scyros—and an entire legion of the dead followed just behind them.

  80.

  J’anda

  The soldiers around him were breaking and running, but J’anda kept his eyes on the purple orb fixed atop the Staff of the Guildmaster of the Gathering of Coercers, watching it rise and fall with each spell that Vracken Coeltes cast. Fear permeated the air around him—the squeals of terror, of the worst horrors that could be imagined, the absolute lowest thoughts a man could conceive of—they were paraded around in the minds of those Coeltes afflicted, made manifest in their heads and poured out in a self-fulfilling prophecy as grown men panicked and fled, causing even those unaffected by the spell to lose their nerve and run.

  J’anda kept his course, throwing out the spell of mesmerization in front of him, pacifying those in his path and pushing them aside as he worked toward Coeltes. He caught glimpses of the man, grinning as he did his work, glorying in the spread of fear, the application of terror, the near-viral propagation of it amongst his enemies—

  He’s always enjoyed it.

  J’anda could feel the cold rage fire hot, burning up from within his belly where it had taken refuge these last months, stoked by what he saw, by the bastard’s sheer joy in afflicting others in that way. Grown men fought to run, faces plastered with anguish and horror as they shoved into the lines behind them and were grasped, stabbed, impaled, torn asunder by the mob that followed. J’anda cast his calm upon it as best he could, but it was like trying to hold back the tide with only a bucket.

  He loves fear.

  The trailing edges of purple magic spun through the air as Coeltes cast another spell, broke another mind, and J’anda watched a man ripped to pieces in front of him with rough implements, s
creaming as blood sprayed from his mouth, more terrified of the vision placed in his head than of his flesh being torn apart and his eyeballs gouged out of his face—

  J’anda’s hands burned, his heart burned, his soul was aflame with anger of the sort he normally did not allow to bubble up within him. It was a righteous fury, fueled by a hundred years of shame, of feeling exposed and humiliated and broken and burned all in one—

  It ends now.

  J’anda summoned up the last of the calm he could find within himself and let it rush out in one good burst, sending a dozen men in front of him to their knees, then to the ground, nearer to asleep than dead, spun into an unconscious state by his reckless, emotionally charged casting.

  “Vracken Coeltes!” J’anda shouted, and the Guildmaster’s staff bobbed as its bearer paused to look at the falling ranks before him. He saw the hint of panic in Coeltes’s eyes, and raised his hands to cast against the man just as the purple staff moved—unfathomably fast, faster than youth alone explain it—and its orb pointed right at him.

  The swell of magics burst forth at J’anda, the purple light filling his vision, swirling around him, and dragging him within himself as he heard nothing but a silent scream fill his ears, one that sounded all the more familiar because he knew it was his own.

  81.

  Aisling

  She could have killed a hundred by now if she’d wanted to, they moved so slowly. As it was, Aisling had yet to kill a single person, she simply balleted around them, dancing past unnoticed save for the breath of air in her wake. She’d moved to the side of the tunnel for the sake of perspective, and it was giving her a good view of everything, the battle passing her by nearly unnoticed.

  She stood apart and watched J’anda drop some twenty men between her and Coeltes as Coeltes moved to engage him. He moved fast enough that he seemed to be operating at her speed. She caught a glimpse of the staff in his hands and nodded in understanding. She did not, however, move to assist the enchanter. I think this is his fight … even if it goes against him.

  Her attention was elsewhere, in any case; Shrawn was standing fast, holding his ground as he raised his staff and dropped an enormous fire spell that hit both his own soldiers and the racing front rank of the mob. It exploded like a barrel of Dragon’s Breath and when it receded, ash and melted metal were all that remained of men and armor. His own line failed to re-form where he had done it damage, and the fury of the mob raced in like water to fill a hole in the earth.

  Shrawn’s grimace was obvious, his lack of art in battle even more so. He cast again and again, his flame burning more and more enemies out of his path but doing little good save to delay the inevitable surge. The ranks of guards in front of him died in quantity, some to his own increasingly panicked spells, others to the rush of angry citizens of Sovar with their stolen and makeshift weapons.

  It was Norenn who got to Shrawn first, who battered him as he burned alive the last man in front of him. Aisling was already moving when she saw him get there, saw him club the wizard—Sovereign of Saekaj, if that was what he wanted to call himself—and dropped him to the floor of the cave.

  Like a river rushing around a rock, the mob rolled around Norenn, something she thought was curious until she saw Xemlinan and two others steering them from a few feet back. It gave Norenn the room he needed as he pulled the staff out of Dagonath Shrawn’s hand and held it aloft before bringing it down on Shrawn’s head. She was close enough now to see the old wizard’s head rock back, his eyes close from the pain, then snap open again in fear, fully aware of what was about to happen.

  “… tortured me for years,” Norenn said as she edged through the crowd. She made it behind him just as he struck Shrawn again, drawing a quiet cry from the pudgy old bastard. He looked helpless on the ground before Norenn, like a fat baby who wanted to curl up in a ball. “You thought you could do whatever you wanted to whomever you wanted, and that there’d never be anyone strong enough to make you answer for it.” He raised the club again. “But your day is over, Shrawn, and I will make you—”

  She stabbed Norenn in the back and watched his mouth gape open from the side. She stabbed him again, and again, and again, through the heart, never letting him turn around to see it was her. She laid him out, letting him fall face forward into unknowing death.

  When she was done, she took Shrawn’s hand and brought him to his feet. He blinked, trying to see her in the shadow, and she realized she wanted him to. In an instant, the shadowed sense of the world dropped away, and she knew he could see her plain.

  “It’s you,” he whispered, dark blood running down his face. “You saved me. I’ll see you rewarded for this. You’ve done a great service and—”

  She ran the new blade across his neck wordlessly, fast enough to interrupt his ability to so much as speak. He just stared, stunned, as the dark blood sprayed right into her face. Then she stabbed him in the belly, slower, opening him up, letting all that cold fury that had settled in her own guts over the years pour out as she opened up his. She didn’t say a word the whole while, just gutted him, and when she was done, let him drop, still choking from his slit throat, to the cavern floor.

  He stared up at her, unable to speak, eyes offering up a desperate plea that went ungranted; she simply showed him her blade, navy with his blood and Norenn’s. “This is justice,” she whispered as Dagonath Shrawn died before her eyes, and she wondered if what she’d said had any element of truth to it, or if perhaps it was just another in a long line of lies she’d told herself these last years.

  82.

  Terian

  “Is that your—?” Erith asked from just over Terian’s shoulder, her eyes fixed on Amenon in his hard-angled armor, his glowing red blade close at hand.

  “Yeah,” Terian said, realizing the Goliath army was mingled with the dead, coming down the tunnel in front of the gates of Saekaj, ignoring the open target in front of them in favor of the army ahead. Knock aside the hand with the sword in it first, then deal with the exposed neck. “That’s him.”

  “And he’s part of Goliath now,” she said, “great.”

  “He’s dead,” Terian said, pushing his way through the last rank of guards to the front of the fight. “You can’t even blame him; he’s Malpravus’s puppet now, through and through.” The last part he said loudly enough that he was sure that Amenon heard him. If his father had any reaction, it was not obvious, at least not like Sareea’s. Hers was to draw her curved, sharp-edged sword and hold it in front of her.

  “What is this?” Sareea called in the intervening space between them as the army of Goliath came to a halt with a raise of Amenon’s hand. “Do mine eyes deceive me, or do I see a dark knight clad in the ragged armor of a fallen paladin?” She sneered and hissed as she spoke, full of jeer and insult. “Have you gone back to your old ways, Terian, trying to pretend you are a dragon that flies when really you’re a snake that crawls the earth?”

  “I’d rather try and fly than be content with letting my belly drag the dirt,” Terian said, clutching his axe and stepping out from the lines of guardsmen all around him. “Which, incidentally, is a great way to describe associating with Goliath.”

  “You do not know that of which you speak,” Amenon said through his helm, his voice low and impatient.

  “I see you’re working for Malpravus now,” Terian said. “Tell me, was it because you wanted to, or because he controls your thoughts?”

  “I have all the same thoughts as before,” his father answered with the same irritability as ever. “That my son is a disgrace, a shame, and your new attire proves once again that you are no child of mine.”

  “I’m carrying Noctus,” Terian said, brandishing the axe high, “surely that’s got to count for something.”

  “It will count for nothing,” Amenon said, “save for that I will take the weapon from your dead hand and use it for my own good.”

  “That’ll be two of your own children that you’ll have killed for your own self-aggrandizement,�
� Terian said. “I’m sensing a pattern.”

  “Do you sense your own death?” Sareea called out, breaking from her line to match his father’s steps forward. They’re going to attack me as a team. How novel for dark knights. “Because that approaches more swiftly than any ‘pattern.’”

  “I sense that it’s going to take some time and effort to shut you up,” Terian said, sighing with impatience as he let her come forward while his father circled to his left. “Luckily, I have both to spare.”

  “You have very little time,” Amenon said, and moved into his blind spot. Or at least, where it would have been on my old armor—I can see him perfectly. Sareea moved in the opposite direction, forcing Terian to fix his gaze on her. “You are a piteously bad dark knight, waiting for your enemies to strike at you—”

  Terian saw the move from his father and swung the axe low, knocking aside the red blade and sweeping back around in time to catch Sareea’s hooked edge and throw it aside. He retreated a few steps to put them both in front of him, standing at the third point of their triangle. His father’s hand danced up, and he felt the clawing of the lockjaw curse upon his throat. It felt like fingers clamped on his neck, pushing into his skin and restricting his breath—

  “Not so fast,” Erith said, and the pressure released. Sareea and his father both turned their heads to look at the source of the voice, audible over the sound of battle down the tunnel. “Oops,” Erith said, backing up into a line of soldiers that was already doing some backing up of their own. She was exposed, at least a half step in front of a group of guards that did not look eager to fight.

  Terian swept forward and attacked, knocking Sareea’s weapon aside and then striking his father from behind with a hard axe blow that knocked him sideways, but stopped on his armor. Terian stepped between them and Erith, holding his axe up defensively. “I’m the one fighting, and I’m over here.”