Ghosts of Sanctuary

by Robert J. Crane

  “Shall we?” Curatio asked, stepping up next to Alaric. “I don’t wish to leave our friends to this destruction on their own. They might get up to no good.”

  “Indeed,” Alaric said with that maddening smile, “and I’m sure your unquenchable desire to inflict unholy elven wroth upon humans has little to do with your calculus in this.”

  “I got over that long ago,” Curatio said, smiling back, “when I finally met a human whose head was so thick that my efforts to bash his skull in came to naught.”

  Alaric drew his sword, and Shirri almost gasped. The faux Cyrus … he was so … bizarre a spectacle. But this man … this Alaric …

  There was something about him …

  “Wait here,” Alaric said, smiling with encouragement. “We shall be back shortly.”

  “I doubt it,” Shirri said as the two of them hurried off across the street. The Cyrus impersonator was already almost to the watchmen, who were regarding the approach of a black-armored figure with some discomfort even before he shed his cloak and entered a full charge, no weapon drawn. “But I’ll be waiting … at least until I see you get slaughtered,” she said, considerably lower, stepping back into the shadows of a nearby alley to see what happened next.

  15.

  Cyrus

  The first of the watchmen on the sidewalk flew through the window, no need for Praelior. The shattering of the glass resonated richly through the canyons of the street, and the scream of the second watchman as Cyrus lifted him over his head and threw him through the next window provided a similar satisfaction, the urge to destroy anything and everything he encountered something of a throwback to times when Cyrus could recall venting his righteous rage upon the unrighteous.

  “Feels like Enterra all over again,” Vaste said as Cyrus leapt in the front window, drawing his sword as he did so. “Except above ground … in the Reikonos of the future … with taller opponents … no Emperor or Empress … and there’s only five of us. Exactly like Enterra, except for that.”

  “Yes, it’s stunningly similar,” Vara said, leaping next through the shattered window into the darkened shop, Ferocis in hand. Display hutches with glass tops ringed the storefront. A thump in a back hallway resulted, a moment later, in five toughs in ragged black coats pouring out of a back counter and leaping out at them—

  “Trouble, as always, arrives right on time,” Vaste said from somewhere behind them as Cyrus leapt into the fray, Vara at his side.

  Praelior moved with swiftness, taking hands, taking arms, taking lives. Blood flew freely, as did limbs and screams. The work of a skilled swordsman was hardly called for here, in a place where his foes drew daggers and dirks rather than blades that would give them any sort of reach. His greatest challenge was keeping from striking Vara’s armor when he threw an overly enthusiastic stroke.

  “Now it’s a butcher shop,” Vaste said, once they were done. He sounded mildly disappointed, having been boxed out from attacking them himself, Vara and Cyrus standing between him and the fight. “Though usually they keep the slaughter in the back.”

  “Come with me, fool,” Vara said, dragging the troll by his black robes toward the door through which the toughs had appeared. “You go upstairs?” she asked Cyrus.

  He let his gaze sweep the room; there was indeed a staircase just inside the entry door, no partition to separate it from the storefront. “I can do that,” he said, storming toward it.

  Cyrus swept up the stairs and found a series of open doors leading off a hallway. He stopped here, noticing another staircase just down the hall, winding its way up to the third floor. He moved toward the nearest door, which was partially open, and elbowed it wider as he stepped inside. A man was caught, frozen, sitting at a table, a plate of chicken bones in front of him.

  When he saw Cyrus he shoved back from the table, rising as he drew a pistol from his belt. Cyrus drew his own in reply, and thumbed the hammer back, raising it to aim before the man got his partway up. Pulling the trigger, the hammer of Cyrus’s pistol fell, and a soft click sounded.

  The man completed his aim, pointing the long tube end right at Cyrus’s face. He came around the table wearing a smirk, but kept his distance to at least ten feet or so, out of sword’s reach. “Misload it?” the man asked, seemingly amused by Cyrus’s misfortune.

  “I don’t know,” Cyrus said, shaking it slightly. “I poured in the powder first, then put in that little bit of parchment—”

  “Wadding,” the man corrected, voice dripping with amusement.

  “—then the metal ball—”

  “Bullet,” he said.

  “Right, that,” Cyrus said, looking at the pistol. He thumbed the hammer back once more. “But …” He shrugged.

  “Well, you know,” the man said, adopting the air of a conciliatory teacher who’d taken a particularly dull-witted pupil under his wing, “sometimes they just fail.” He motioned at his own belt, where two more pistols hung. “Smart to carry a spare or two, in case.”

  Cyrus looked at his own, examining it, but keeping it pointed in the man’s direction. “How do they fail?”

  “You must be quite the fool to use a weapon you don’t know anything about,” the man said, still smirking. “Perhaps you should have stuck to that meat cleaver in your other hand.” He laughed, scoffing. “But all right, since it’ll do you no good, you—you have quite the inadequate impersonation going on there, friend. Cyrus Davidon? Pff, as though that’s not been done over and over. Sometimes, when the hammer falls, it fails to produce the spark necessary to ignite the powder.” His grin grew wider. “No spark, the powder doesn’t blow, the bullet doesn’t get propelled out of the barrel, and because of that, you die. Basic knowledge.” He raised his weapon high and his arm grew tense. “All for want of a little fire.”

  Cyrus stared at the back of the pistol, where the hammer landed. Now that it was thumbed up again, he could see a tiny, pin-sized hole, and ran his index finger over it. “So … I just need a little fire … here?”

  “A little late for that now,” the man said, “but y—”

  Cyrus’s pistol rang out, and the man staggered, an angry red hole having appeared in the center of his forehead. A drizzle of blood ran down the side of his face. His mouth moved as if to speak, but no words came out.

  “A little fire, I can still do,” Cyrus said, taking a couple steps forward and gently wrenching the pistol from the dying man’s grasp. He keeled over, and Cyrus bent, unbuckling his belt. “Good advice about carrying extras, though. I think I shall take it.” And he buckled the man’s belt above his own, adjusting it so that the pistols rode at the small of his back, at his front, and on the hip beside his own holster. “Might need some adjustment later, but … many thanks.” He looked at the man, who was now twitching in death. “A little late for you, though, I suppose.”

  “Are you now so used to conversing with us folks deemed long dead,” Curatio said, entering the room behind him, “that you feel the need to talk with those who truly are?”

  “Just offering thanks where thanks are due,” Cyrus said, turning to look at the healer, whose mace dripped with red. Cyrus ran a hand over his purloined belt and new pistols. “How do I look?”

  “A question best asked of your wife,” Curatio said, “but for my part, I would say, ‘Garish.’”

  “You wear white robes everywhere, what the hell do you know about what’s fashionable?” Cyrus asked, brushing past him as Alaric emerged from a room at the end of the hall, his own weapon now covered in red. “What do you think, Alaric?” he asked, gesturing to the belt.

  “It doesn’t go particularly well with your boots,” Alaric said after but a glance, immediately sprinting up the stairs to the next floor. “Or your honor!” he called back.

  “He’s on that honor thing again,” Cyrus said.

  “Yes,” Curatio said dryly, following behind him, “it’s almost as though he lives for it.”

  Cyrus hurried up the stairs to find the Ghost clashing with a young man
with a dagger. “Put it down!” Alaric said in his harshest voice. The youth, quaking, slashed at him.

  The blade passed ineffectually through Alaric’s torso as he turned to mist, and the youth’s jaw dropped further. The boy looked at the weapon in his hand, then back up at Alaric.

  “Put it down, leave this place, and never take up arms as part of this Machine again,” Alaric said, putting his sword, Aterum, to the youth’s neck.

  “Okay,” the young man said, letting the dagger clatter to the wood floor with a heavy rattle. “I just … needed the money.”

  “Find an honest trade instead,” Alaric said.

  “But not candlemaking,” Cyrus said, brushing past them, “as apparently you’d end up working for the same people.”.

  “Where is the woman?” Alaric asked, keeping his weapon at the boy’s throat as Cyrus checked the rooms off the hallways behind him.

  “What … woman?” the youth asked. Cyrus cast a look back and saw the boy’s hands shaking in the air.

  “The Machine took a woman,” Alaric said. “Where is she?”

  The boy was trembling from head to foot now. “You’re … going to have be more specific. They take a lot of women. From all sorts of places.”

  Alaric’s face tightened, and he raised his hand so the blade was more cleanly positioned. Cyrus paused to watch, keeping one eye on the stairs up, presuming more enemies awaited up there, and the other on Alaric’s interrogation.

  “I—I—when was she taken?” the boy asked, dissolving into stuttering wildly.

  “This very night,” Alaric said.

  “None of our guys went out last night,” the boy said. “Could it have been, uhm … the coal yards guys? Over on Market Street?”

  Alaric surveyed him with that lone eye, his anger like a blinding flash to Cyrus, who almost wanted to look away from the seething wrath, even though it was not directed it him. Like the sun, though, it made him uncomfortable to stare at it. “Do you have prisoners here?”

  “Uhh … next floor up … second door,” he said, still shaking.

  Alaric looked to Cyrus.

  “On it,” Cyrus said and sprinted up the steps.

  Coming out the top of the stairs, Cyrus found a veritable gauntlet of trouble waiting for him. He looked back as he emerged, the hallway running parallel to the stairs filled with five thugs wielding pistols. Grimacing, he dipped his head, pointing the top of his helm toward them, so as to expose his neck as little as possible, and poured on Praelior’s speed—

  They began firing before he’d even fully emerged. The spang of the metal bullets rattled against his armor with each impact, thunder echoing in the hall.

  Cyrus crested the stairs and drew his own pistol, aiming at the foe farthest from him, a man who wore brightly colored clothing beneath his black leather coat. Red shirt, green sash around his waist, and his pants were a wild shade of purple. “You offend mine eyes,” Cyrus pronounced, and fired, making the man’s shirt even redder.

  He dropped the pistol and drew another, taking aim at the next farthest fellow, this one in ragged clothing. With the speed of Praelior at his fingertips, it was no difficult feat to aim carefully, down the carved notches at the end of the barrel, and then send a bullet right into that fool’s face.

  Now he was upon the nearest of them, the man still holding his pistol, his stunned jaw dropped almost to his ankles. Cyrus cleaved his head from his body with a quick swipe, then shoved the still moving carcass aside and plunged into the next, and the next. When he was done, his five foes were dead, not one of them with a chance to reload their weapon.

  Putting the blade of Praelior under his arm but careful to let his hand rest upon the pommel, he paused and retrieved his two dropped pistols, then reloaded them, the whole process taking less than thirty seconds with Praelior’s aid and careful movements. The weapons securely replaced upon his belt, Cyrus took up Praelior in hand once more, and now had godly strength, speed and dexterity—plus he had four pistols at his easy disposal.

  “I could have killed you eight times while you fidgeted with those damned things.” Alaric’s voice almost causing Cyrus to jump in surprise. He hadn’t even heard the Ghost approach.

  “Admittedly, it’s no force blast spell,” Cyrus said as Alaric surged past him, kicking open all the doors all on the floor except the second, “but it seems useful to have a means of answering a ranged attack.”

  “They are weapons without honor,” Alaric said, sweeping his gaze around the last of the rooms he’d opened. Cyrus peered past him; it was sleeping quarters, just as the other three had been. Badly tended, with unmade bedrolls that looked like they’d been unmade forever.

  “Yes, because plunging metal into your foes is dishonorable,” Cyrus said with irony of his own. “Why, no one should die that way. Speaking of—what happened to the boy dunder downstairs?”

  “He lives to see the error of his ways,” Alaric said, situating himself in front of the last door. “Perhaps a chance at redemption will allow him to find the courage to change.”

  “Or he could just warn his comrades at the coal yard that we’re coming, guaranteeing we’ll run into a lot of those bullets you find so dishonorable,” Cyrus said.

  “Then they will reveal themselves for who they are, and we will kill them nonetheless,” Alaric said.

  “Easy for you to say when you haven’t been shot by one of them yet,” Cyrus said. “I assure you, they are not gentle in their arrival, and unguarded flesh will be torn asunder as easily as if a dagger were to pierce it.”

  “Then it is fortunate that we are guarded,” Alaric said, and smashed the last door with a heavy kick, ripping it from its hinges. He was through it less than a second later, rushing into the room with sword at ready.

  “But not everyone is,” Cyrus said, following after him, already sober to the spectacle within.

  There were six women in the room, all huddled as far from the door as possible. There were no windows, no light, and the women were filthy, the smell of an overripe chamberpot causing Cyrus to draw a quick breath and hold it before he proceeded deeper inside.

  Alaric whispered something, and a faint glow appeared at his fingertips. Nessalima’s Light, Cyrus realized—though sadly muted. It was barely more than a candle’s worth of illumination.

  “It is all right,” Alaric said. “We are here to save you. You will be free to go.”

  The women huddled, shrinking from him as Alaric took a step forward. Cyrus followed a step behind. “I don’t think they’re quite hearing you, Alaric—”

  “It’s him,” one of them whispered, and the muffled moans of fear stopped instantly.

  “It’s who—oh,” Cyrus said.

  “My lord,” one of the women said, scurrying forward, dragging her ragged clothes behind her and throwing herself on Cyrus’s leg. It took all he had not to recoil, not just from her utterly filthy appearance, but from the idea that a strange woman would anchor to his leg like a child. “Is it you, my lord? We have prayed for you, for your deliverance from this evil—”

  “It would appear we’ve found some of your worshippers,” Alaric said. If he had any feelings on the subject other than amusement, Cyrus could not detect them in his tone.

  The other women came at him then, flinging themselves upon him, grabbing at his armor and clinging, crying, begging for salvation. “Ahh … yes …” Cyrus said, “I am here to save you.”

  “What is all this?” Vara’s voice came from somewhere out in the hall, and she appeared a moment later, greeted with the spectacle of her husband being clutched around the legs and waist by six strange, extremely dirty women.

  “It’s a rescue,” Cyrus said, trying to hold back the sense of rising claustrophobia that came from being stuck in a dark, confined room with people clutching at him.

  “You’re doing it wrong,” Vara said. “You’re supposed to get them out, you know. Not just stand around with them grabbing you.”

  “Just be glad I don’t wear Terian
’s old armor or they would have impaled themselves trying to thank me or greet me or—whatever,” Cyrus said.

  “Worship you,” Alaric said. Now there was amusement.

  “Come along,” Cyrus said, trying to gather them all up. “It’s time to get out of here, ladies.” And he began to usher them toward the door, and then the stairs. They were crying, gratitude rushing out in tears, confessions of some sort, blubbered and almost incoherent, and all of them seemed to be talking to him at once. “Yes,” he said, trying to manage that panic he felt within at all these people vying for his attention, gripping at his arms and his legs and his entire self, “I know, it must have been terrible, but you’re all safe now. I’ll see to it.”

  “Listen to your god,” Vaste said from the landing below as Cyrus limped his way down, half-carrying at least three of them and trying to keep one of them from inadvertently impaling herself on Praelior in her desperate enthusiasm to be near to him. “For truly he has come to lead you from out of the darkness and into the light.”

  One of the women let out a shriek at the sight of Vaste, and two others screamed immediately after her. “Thank you for that, you ass,” Cyrus said, cringing at the sound as he escorted the women—some now actively fighting him to keep away from the troll—past Vaste. “This is why you’re forgotten, in case you wondered. Because you don’t make anyone’s life easier.”

  “Seems a fair trade,” Vaste said with a shrug, going on past him and up the stairs. “I get to enjoy my life while making you miserable, and you get to be worshipped in your afterlife.”

  “I’m not dead yet!” Cyrus called after him, struggling to get the women downstairs.

  “Give it time,” Vaste called after him. “Another day or two of being worshipped like this and you’ll be begging for death.”

  Cyrus did not argue with him, as he was still trying to fight to get one of the women, screaming now, in notes of wild hysteria, carefully gathered back to him to get her out of this miserable place. In any event, part of him wondered if the troll might be right.